Five Modest Proposals: The Honey-Bee Rule

          The Honey-Bee Rule

 

Here’s a modest proposal for the police:

Kill A Civilian, Lose Your Job.

          If a policeman kills a civilian, then he’s kicked off the force, immediately, automatically, and permanently. No delay, no exceptions, no appeals. The policeman gets pension and honors if the review board says he did right, without pension and with prosecution if the review board says he did not; and the review board has civilians on it, and its proceedings are public. The cop gets job placement and PTSD counseling; we owe him that much. But he must never do public  policing again; he owes us that much.

Call this the “Honey-Bee Rule”, for under this rule, the policeman’s weapons are like a honeybee’s stinger; career suicide to use.  Even when killing is justified, killer cops must leave the force.

          The Honey-Bee Rule must be enforced rigorously. We know what happens when we are lax about this. The police swagger, their trigger fingers get itchy, and they tell juries, “I feared for my life when he pulled out his wallet”. Such cowardice becomes systemic.

Under the Honey-Bee Rule, the police will lose their subsidized love of military hardware, and will insist on less lethal options. For instance, talking the suspect down, like they do in civilized countries.

Automatic dismissal for homicide is hard on the police. They will complain that this rule creates impossible professional dilemmas. All true, but nonetheless, this check on police power is necessary. After all, who is to be boss? The police or the people? The boss gets to be a jerk; the servant must say yessir. Tyranny is when the police get to be jerks; liberty is when the people get to be jerks. I choose door #2.

Five Modest Proposals: Second Amendment Repair Act

            Five Modest Proposals

 

 

          Second Amendment Repair Act

The Honey-Bee Rule

          Discorporation

          Nuclear Blatancy Day

          Neutralizing Tecumseh’s Curse

 

 

Second Amendment Repair Act

 

I propose the following as Federal legislation.

The Second Amendment Repair Act

1. The right of the people to keep and bear arms in a well-regulated State militia shall not be infringed.

2. Well-regulated militias shall not arm those under adult age, nor arm those found guilty of treason as defined by the Constitution.

3. States have the right to enforce other militia regulations.

 

Commentary by the author:

Compare clause 1 of SARA to the original 2nd Amendment:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Alas, poor Amendment! The sentence lies there, broken into four fragments, as if someone had dropped it on the floor. My critique of the 2nd Amendment is both literary and political; for its shattered incoherence is due to an unresolved political dispute. Washington insisted on good regulation of Jefferson’s popular militias; his objection was jammed on as a subordinate clause given top billing.

Clause 1 of SARA fixes the grammar of the 2nd Amendment. It’s a single coherent clause; that prevents partisans from exaggerating one clause and ignoring another. The original had well-regulation as an explanation for the need for the right to bear arms; here well-regulation is part of the right itself. This makes explicit the necessary link between rights (arms) and responsibilities (well-regulated). Clause 1 is as much about gun control as about gun rights.

This re-emphasis on regulation empowers clause 2. No children in arms, nor traitors; that’s necessary. If the militia is well-regulated, then it may not arm children or adolescents, who are not well-regulated people; and if the militia is of the state, then it may not arm those levying war upon the states. I choose these two regulations for the sake of clarity. Age is on public record; and treason is defined in the Constitution. (Article 3, section 3.)

          Clause 3 establishes that the states may regulate militias as they see fit, as a matter of state’s rights.

          This proposal is very conservative, in the non-Orwellian sense of the word ‘conservative’. It makes few changes in the original text, beyond rewriting it for clarity. This rewriting explicitly mandates both gun rights and gun control. Such rewriting is necessary because of the 2nd Amendment’s fragmented condition.

          Since DC vs Heller in 2008, we have been living with a partial reading of the shattered 2nd Amendment, one that ignores the first two fragments and fetishizes the next two. So due to Scalia’s judicial activism, for over a decade the 2nd Amendment has been half-repealed, to malign effect now self-evident.

I propose that we repair it, and reinstate it, whole.

 

 

Honest Politicians

Honest Politicians

        A Discreditorial for the National Liar, April 1, 1994

 

 

Patriotic traitors

Conservative destroyers

Liberal enslavers

Socialist profiteers

Free-market monopolists

Austerity spendthrifts

Philanthropy tightwads

Progressive bigots

Feminist sexists

Gay homophobes

Macho wimps

Liberated prudes

Celibate lechers

Prohibition addicts

Legalization crooks

Pro-life killers

Pro-choice regulators

Anarchist tyrants

Rebel fascists

Law-and-order rioters

Jingo cowards

Pacifist assassins

Skeptical dupes

Pious sinners

Holy warriors