Editor's Note: Due to technical issues, the following column is a transcription of Kurt Schlichter's latest "Stream of Kurtiousness." Join Townhall VIP to support our conservative reporting and never miss new opinions and analyses from Kurt!
I'm perhaps not my normal, bubbly self because I just got word that Brigadier General Ronald Flynn has passed away. Ronald Flynn was a legendary Army commander. I worked for him for many years, and I have more stories than I can count. Holy cow. He was a former calvary squadron commander, like me – he was there at my change of command when I took it over. Gave me my stetson along with some other colonels. The guy had so many medals; they were literally continued on another uniform – Airborne, Ranger, Special Forces, Combat Infantry Badge; he even had an Air Crew Badge. This guy had badges on his badges.
I've known him for 31 years—just a great guy.
A little story about him: you all know about Rick Rescorla; he's the guy on the cover of the book "We Were Soldiers Once...And Young." He was the British guy who came to the United States, became an officer here, fought in numerous battles, and was just a legendary guy. He retired as a colonel and started working for an investment company in the World Trade Center. And when the planes hit, he and his team got out like 1,500 of his people, and he was killed going back in to check and confirm that everybody was out. He sang Welsh battle songs to keep people calm as they flowed out. But he went back up. Ron Flynn took Rick Rescorla's platoon in the First Calvary Division in Vietnam. He would always say Rescorla trained those guys well, they were so good, and they saved my life. So that kind of legacy held on when he came over to the California Army National Guard. And there's a whole generation of California Army National Guard officers who learned from Ron Flynn. I just wanted to throw that out there because, you know, everything is so freaking cheery.
Let's get into cases.
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Are you seeing what I'm seeing a lot? It's the"knock on the wrong door" shooters. There seems to be a lot of that being made a thing. There's the young girl who goes into a yard, and somebody comes out and shoots at her; she's driving away. You know, you can improperly use your gun. That is a possibility. Now, it's not common, but it does happen.
There's also the guy who was pounding on the door at midnight or late at night, and he got shot. Side note: congratulations to the left, they have discovered a young black man who gets shot, and they actually care about it because this happens every freaking day in the Democrat cities, and they don't care. But it happens in Kansas City where some 84-year-old guy, who might or might not have dementia, in what might or might not be a giant misunderstanding, shoots a guy, wounds him, and fortunately, he's not dead. But I don't believe anything that's being said about this.
Ben Crump, that pseudo-lawyer, is handling this case. So, my opinion is I don't buy a damn thing about it. Of course, you have a George Soros prosecutor who decides he has to prosecute this old guy, even though the cops say this is not a prosecuted case.
Have you noticed the legal system is complete garbage? Let's talk about Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News.
Now, again, I keep getting calls, "Kurt, what do you think the legal case is?" This is not a legal case. As far as a liable, defamation, slander case goes, it is complete bull. It is nonsense. The idea that you can't have people on news stations make bizarre and false claims is simply not true. The First Amendment allows you to say false things. It does not allow you to commit defamation, which is different. Everything that is false is not defamation. Clearly, at least on the part of Fox, what was said would have been classified as opinion.
This case should have been thrown out immediately, but, of course, it wasn't. Why? Because it was brought in Delaware, and the judge didn't like Fox, and the jury pool didn't like Fox, and Fox said, "Well, we're not going to screw around. We are going to settle this thing." And people have said, "Oh, no one settles a case unless they are wrong!" Well, that's bull. That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. People settle cases all the time that have no merit. Every single day that happens.
Fox obviously thought it was worth its while to get this thing settled rather than go through. Now, could Fox have won on appeal? It probably could have – should have. But that's a lot of time, that's a lot of money. And I have to tell you; appeals are a loser's game. The only time you ever appeal anything is if you have lost, and most appeals fail, and most appeals should fail.
There is a good side, though.
The good side is we can now use this as a suppository in friendly conservative venues against liberal media. Now, this isn't what I wanted, but this appears to be the rule. Understand, this is not precedent – precedent is when you have a court of appeal decision. This is a settlement. It is an informal precedent. It gives people the idea, "Hey, we can do this. This is a possibility. This is something that can occur." And I think now that it will. I think the press is going to have people afraid to come on. Try this: Trump collusion.
If someone goes on MSNBC right now and says, "Well, we know that Trump colluded with the Russians." Well, Trump goes to the district court in southern Florida and sues for defamation because we know there was no Russia collusion. We have the Mueller Report and all that. That could happen. Actually, what would be better is "Trump and his people colluded" – you then have his people sue because you don't want Trump getting wrapped up in all that discovery stuff. But man, wouldn't you like to access all of the embarrassing and internal emails from MSNBC? That would be very interesting, and now that is a possibility because it has happened.
You see these informal precedents in action. You saw the suit by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to stop Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) from going ahead and subpoenaing a former prosecutor in Alvin Bragg's office. The guy who literally wrote a book about how we should be prosecuting Donald Trump. Well, they sued, and the judge said Congress is allowed to subpoena people. Remember, they were subpoenaing Trump a whole lot. And she adds, just to jab them a little bit, "No one is above the law." Right to you, Alvin Bragg. So, that is amazing.
We will see Mark Pomerantz, the prosecutor who decided to write a book about the prosecution because he doesn't seem to view legal ethics the way I do, give testimony, and that's going to be great.
Look – we don't have a legal system. We don't have a justice system. We have an injustice system.
There are other people who had that thing – the freaking Romans!
Remember, in the Roman Republic, when someone served as a consul, aedile, or praetor, he was immune in office, but as soon as he got out, they essentially sued him. Then they could exile you if you lose and take your property. It's not exactly a fair process; you have a couple of orators who are basically trying to convince people – it's less about evidence and testimony than who can be swayed and whose political ox is being gored. And they would do that to each other to destroy their political opponents.
Now, that's one of the reasons why Caesar wanted to remain a proconsul of Gaul and maintain his armies for years and years and years. He knew that the minute he dropped them, he was going to get sued. His political enemies might very well engineer his defeat, and that's the end of his career, and off he goes.
So what did Caesar do? Well, he crossed the Rubicon with his troops and destroyed the Roman Republic.
Now, you may say, "Well, at the end of the day, the Ides of March, he got stabbed." Yeah, he got stabbed to death, but Caesar was nice to his enemies. He gave them clemency. He didn't kill them when he could have...usually. Some of the guys he gave clemency to murdered him. The guy who came next, Octavian, his nephew who was adopted as his son in his will, became Emperor Augustus, and he didn't play that. He freaking killed everybody. I mean, he just killed people left and right. He prescribed it; put their name on a list, kill these people, and if you kill them, the state gets their money, but you get a bounty. Woohoo! So, that's what happened when you took the legal system and started using it as a weapon.
Other guys said, "Well, I can't use the legal system back. I'll use, I don't know, ten legions of dudes with Gladius swords."
It's a bad idea.
We want to resolve political disputes in the political sphere. But when you try to leverage the legal system or corporate power or whatever to get an advantage you couldn't get by convincing people, well, that destroys the system. And where there is no system, there is only power. And you know where power comes from? The barrel of a gun or the point of the sword. And it's always been that way, and it always will be.
Words to live by.
Go get my new book "Inferno," it is amazing. If you are in the Los Angeles area, kurt.schlichter@townhall.com is my super secret email. I can give you information on where I'll be speaking on April 26 down in Manhattan Beach. It is going to be lit. Go to my Locals page; it's all stuff Kurt. I post all of my stuff there. Check out the "Warlords" podcast. That's Jim Hanson and me talking about man things, but women are invited, too. Nothing against you, chicks! Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday are my Townhall columns – thanks a lot!
