This past week the International Conference of Police Chiefs met in Dallas, Texas. I had several friends who were in town, and they wanted to have some real Texas BBQ brisket. So, on Monday evening we met at one of my favorite spots, Ten 50 BBQ in Richardson. It was great to sit and talk with friends who are part of the Thin Blue Line to protect and serve us every day. Our conversation also focused on the challenges that our law enforcement officers face. Recently, I spoke at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Brunswick, Georgia, and addressed the topic, “What is the Law?”

I referred the audience to the seminal book by French economist Frederic Bastiat written circa 1850 titled, “The Law.” Bastiat asserted, “the law is the organization of the natural right (the theory of John Locke) of lawful defense: it is the substitution of collective for individual forces, for the purpose of acting in the sphere in which they have a right to act, of doing what they have a right to do, to secure persons, liberties, and properties, and to maintain each in its right, so as to cause justice to reign over all.”

What Bastiat believed was that each individual possesses a natural right to protect themselves, their life, their liberties, and their property. However, for a civil society to exist, the government assumes the collective responsibility from the individual to provide that right for everyone. If something else were to exist, we would devolve into a lawless state of anarchy, resembling the movie “The Purge” — which was an annual evening of lawlessness and mobocracy. Bastiat postulated, “If every man has the right of defending, even by force, his person, his liberty, and his property, a number of men have the right to combine together to extend, to organize a common force to provide regularly for this defense.”

Therefore, Bastiat explains what “The Law” is and defines why the government has the role and responsibility of law enforcement. As a matter of fact, our rule of law, the US Constitution has in its preamble this charge for the government, “…in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice (doesn’t have any qualifying adjective), ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare (hmm, passive verb, not provide welfare), and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity . . .”

Those are some very key active verbs — establish, ensure, provide, and secure.

So, why is the government — our elected officials — creating lawlessness and chaos on our streets, effectively undermining their own charge to ensure domestic tranquility, by releasing dangerous criminals and felons back onto our streets? As well, why is it that we have a government that is not securing our “Blessings of Liberty,” but rather seeking to undermine our natural right to protect and defend ourselves? I ask that in light of the fact that we have a purposeful and intentional release of criminals which has resulted in an epic increase of violent crime. We the People, according to Bastiat, surrendered our natural right to defend ourselves for a collective, common force, that is charged to do that mission.

We have a government that has unconstitutionally decided that it will not secure our border, and not provide for a common defense of our national sovereignty. The result is a massive drug, sex, and human trafficking crisis, with more lives lost to fentanyl in two years than our losses in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined.

We have government elected officials who chant “defund the police,” the established common force that is granted by We the People the right to protect our lives, liberties, and properties. We have elected officials who are emboldened and advocating for mob rule and allowing the mob to go about and destroy private businesses, without consequences or ramifications. The government of the United States is supposed to establish justice, but how is it that certain individuals find themselves arrested and prosecuted by the government, while others are set free?

How did we get to the point where black-clad and masked individuals can come together to instill fear, intimidate, coerce, threaten, and enact violence against American citizens and businesses who under “The Law” are supposed to be protected from such dangerous and abhorrent behavior and actions? Recall the young Army Sergeant in Austin, Texas, who had an armed Antifa/BLM protester aim a rifle at him while he sat in his vehicle . . . of course, Antifa/BLM had illegally blocked traffic. This young soldier had the natural right to defend himself, as Bastiat states. He also, per the Second Amendment to the Constitution, possessed the right to keep and bear arms, that being necessary to the security of a free State. So, why did the government in Austin arrest and charge him?

Progressive socialists, leftists, fascists, Marxists, and communists always employ and deploy an organized mob to do their bidding. As a matter of fact, it was Barack Obama who once talked about a civilian force that was equal in strength to our US military. Hitler had his SA, the Brown Shirts. Once upon a time, the Democrat Party created a domestic terrorist organization called the Ku Klux Klan. It was the Democrats who were against Blacks being armed and able to protect their lives, liberties, and properties . . . some things never change. The same group is again advocating for gun control, meaning disarming legal, law-abiding citizens in the midst of their lawlessness, rising crime, and mobocracy.

As you prepare to cast your electoral patronage this election season, think about the candidates who are true to Bastiat’s definition of The Law. Think about who is encouraging lawlessness and mobocracy. Consider who is undermining the common force that is charged to protect and defend us. And, do not forget those who do not believe that you have a natural right to defend your lives, liberties, and properties.

Remember: you have the individual right to defend yourselves . . . and to ensure domestic tranquility, please take a training class if you are unfamiliar with firearms.

Steadfast and Loyal.