Of all the natural, inalienable rights we possess, the right to self-defense is by far the most important. With or without government, with or without any sort of societal structure whatsoever, human beings have the right to stay alive. This is inherent, God-given, unchangeable, and has existed and will continue to exist throughout all of human history. When a mortal threat presents itself, the right to fight back to preserve life - especially one’s own - is the foundation for every other freedom we have. Without it, we are literally serfs existing at the mercy of evil forces around us that would do us harm.
Perhaps that is why normal, sane, clear-thinking people bristle when examples arise of government encroaching upon that fundamental right. When injustice happens to another, we know inherently that the same injustice could easily happen to us. So last week when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg slapped second-degree murder charges on bodega worker Jose Alba for defending himself against a violent ex-con who jumped behind the counter and assaulted him, the outcry was immediate and powerful.
“Jose Alba acted in self-defense,” Republican New York Rep. Lee Zeldin tweeted. “He shouldn’t be forced to spend a single minute behind bars at Rikers Island. This isn’t justice. This is a disgrace. Alvin Bragg must be removed from office.”
“Everyone, like Jose Alba, should have the right to defend themselves against violent criminals when attacked. Period,” YouTuber Steven Crowder asserted.
“My God, just when you think they can't go lower,” wrote Newsweek deputy opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon. “A bodega owner who defended himself from an ex-con is in Rikers on $250K bail. It's not enough to let career criminals loose—if you don't submit to their attacks, YOU will go to jail. The absolute depravity.”
“If the criminal who assaults who is a member of a favored group, you don’t have the right to fight back, you may not defend yourself,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson opined. “You must take whatever he gives you because thugs have more rights than you do.”
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There are many more examples where those came from. However, while I did spot the occasional random liberal decrying what’s happening to Alba, most Twitter blue-checks outwardly speaking up for the embattled bodega employee are conservatives or centrists, not leftists. In a particularly egregious example, a blue-check called “CHIKA” accused Alba of “murdering an unarmed black person.” This is obviously the view of Bragg, a George Soros-funded leftist district attorney. It was the view of the overzealous Kenosha prosecutors who senselessly persecuted Kyle Rittenhouse. It’s also based on the worldview of leftist leaders like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who recently declared, “You can’t use a gun for self-protection in Canada. It’s not a right that you have.”
Sadly, your chances of winding up in prison for defending yourself go up exponentially in places like Canada, Australia, and the U.K., where citizens long ago ceded their rights to a government unwilling and unable to defend them against law-breakers but more than willing and able to prosecute those who dare to defend themselves. Attorney and podcaster Eric Matheny pointed out that Alba “wouldn’t be in jail if he lived in Florida” because the state “recognizes the right of self-defense when you’re the victim of a violent felony.” If there ever was an argument for living in a U.S. red state, this is among the strongest.
Bragg, like other district attorneys of his ilk, routinely slaps violent offenders on the wrist even as he seeks to send a bodega worker to prison for decades for the ‘crime’ of defending himself. This is, of course, the very definition of anarcho-tyranny - in which violent criminals run wild, mostly unchecked, while ordinary citizens have the book thrown at them for fighting back. It also has its roots in Bolshevik thought. Consider this chilling quote from Volume 2 of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago.”
In the Criminal Code of 1926 there was a most stupid Article 139 – “on the limits of necessary self-defense” —according to which you had the right to unsheath your knife only after the criminal’s knife was hovering over you. And you could stab him only after he had stabbed you. And otherwise you would be the one put on trial. (And there was no article in our legislation saying that the greater criminal was the one who attacked someone weaker than himself.) This fear of exceeding the measure of necessary self-defense lead to total spinelessness as a national characteristic. A hoodlum once began to beat up the Red Army man Aleksandr Zakharov outside a club. Zakharov took out a folding penknife and killed the hoodlum. And for this he got….ten years for plain murder! “And what was I supposed to do?” he asked, astonished. Prosecutor Artsishevsky replied: “You should have fled!” So tell me, who creates hoodlums?
If you want to understand the motives and actions of today’s leftists, you need only study history, particularly that of Bolshevism and Communism in the 20th century. Writes author and pundit Mike Cernovich: “Jose Alba has been wrongfully imprisoned because he’s seen as a kulak. He owns a bodega. This makes him an appropriate enemy of neo-Bolsheviks. Pay attention to the Holodomor. Soros and his demonic DAs want to recreate that here.”
This - the persecution of the innocent and the veneration of violent criminals - is an evil that cannot be appeased or reasoned with. It must be defeated, and failure isn’t an option unless we want a bloody return to the worst horrors of the last century.
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