Thanksgiving is the wrong day on which to mark the murder of a Texas State Trooper, gunned down in his vehicle after stopping Darbrett Black, a repeat criminal offender.
The public safety department said the trooper made a traffic stop about 3:45 p.m. on Interstate-45 in Freestone County. The trooper went up to the car, talked to the suspect, and returned to his patrol car.
close dialogThe trooper died in his car after the suspect fired multiple times with a rifle, the department said.
This occurred only one day after Brandon McDaniel shot at police in Huntsville, Texas after first attempting to evade police and crashing his car, then fleeing on foot.
Black’s murder of the unidentified trooper bought him two hours of life on the run and, ultimately, will end with him in a spot on Texas’ death row. Who knows what McDaniel thought he would accomplish by attempting to shoot at and outrun the police, on foot of all things? Who cares? His motivation, like Black’s, ceased to matter the moment he picked up a weapon and aimed it in the direction of law enforcement officers.
Americans enjoy freedom of speech, expression, and association as Constitutional rights. These rights which exist only through the continual enforcement of the rule of law, a thankless task performed by officers of every race and nationality under extremely difficult, dangerous conditions. These officers need and deserve the support and respect of every American of every creed and color, every day of the year.
Fact: Black and McDaniel are both African-American. What of it? It’s their actions, not their skin color, that marks them as public enemies. In this they join Devin Kelley, the white-as-a-sheet ex-Air Force serviceman who earlier in the month murdered 26 Texas churchgoers in a cold-blooded revenge shooting, as being undeserving of either human sympathy or protection.
Fact: Devin Kelley should have been thrown in the stockade for domestic violence and barred from possessing a firearm. Darbrett Black should also have been behind bars, not driving around free.
Liberals make the issue about the tool, guns, and ignore the problem: human beings’ bad behavior. Fundamentally the issue is that Americans have lost the ability to judge the kidnappers, rapists, and murderers among us for what they are. There is, behind all things, a fear of taking a definitive position on anything, of judging any act, no matter how depraved, as wrong, lest some fool with an Internet following take offense. Far too often, only those who wrongly believe the platitude of non-judgment are allowed to speak.
My foil in this is Dave Winer, who is an interesting enough fellow that I still follow him even though ~30% of what he writes is pure nonsense. Recently Dave wrote:
When people say someone is tone-deaf, clueless, doesn’t get it — someone’s mind is closed, one point of view is dominating others.
Of course, it’s desirable to keep an open mind until the plurality of the facts are known. After that, however, continuing to pretend that A is not A is mere foolishness. Tone-deafness, in other words, is frequently simple disagreement misinterpreted by one whose intellectual preparation is unequal to the task of acknowledging the right of another to have his/her own opinion.
At BSP, our philosophical position is that everyone has the right to be just as wrong as they want to be. However, law-and-order is an entirely different, pragmatic, non-philosophical matter. In that regard, society must pursue a policy of firm, resolute decision-making as regards socially tolerable behavior. Kelley, Black, and McDaniel are individuals who demonstrated a record of unacceptable criminal actions and were given a pass to walk among us as equals. The result of this leniency now evident.
Changing our pattern to expel criminals from society will require some guts. It won’t be easy, because it’s not the hip think to do, like tweeting about Roy Moore or Al Franken copping an unwanted feel ten – or thirty – years ago. It will be much harder than that, because it’s real and it’s personal and, most importantly, it’s now. It’s about admitting that your daughter, your brother, your uncle, or some stranger who happens to share a skin color, country of origin, or political viewpoint with, is a rapist or a murderer and telling the truth about it. No prevarication, no obfuscation, no justification, no excuses.
That is what justice is: Speaking the truth and letting the chips fall where they may.