Jackson county, Mississippi, sheriff Mike Byrd was apparently a typical corrupt cop. If the accusations are true, he used his power to get everything from free lawnmower repair to a murder indictment against an innocent man.
Alas, there’s nothing unusual about that. What’s unusual is the way the Christian Science Monitor used Byrd as a tsk-tsking hook for an article about how terribly, terribly dangerous the patriot-supported power of the sheriff is.
You know the belief: the sheriff, the highest elected law-enforcement officer, is therefore the highest law enforcer, period. And — in desperate times — that makes him the final bastion of protection between the people and the federal government. So a lot of patriots hopefully say.
Maybe in some cases, it’ll actually be true. Who knows? Sheriffs in Wyoming have done some interesting things. Sheriff Dave Mattis of Big Horn County, Wyoming (now retired), was an inspiration. And Richard Mack (also now retired) was no slouch.
The sheriff of my county is a nice guy but a devoted drug warrior and believer in financing his operations through stolen goods. I expect he’s closer to the norm and will be a hindrance, not a help, if TSHTF. YMMV of course. But I doubt any of us here are going to wait for a cop to protect us, though we’d appreciate it if it happened.
The thing is, until so many sheriffs recently warned that they wouldn’t enforce new state or federal “gun control,” nobody, but nobody, outside of the patriot movement (or whatever you want to call it) paid the slightest attention to that claim. I never even saw anybody in the MSM bother to sniffily dismiss it. They just ignored it (as they ignore so much else on the “right” that’s even harder to ignore).
Now here comes the usually dispassionate and unbiased-looking (note I didn’t say actually unbiased, though they’re usually pretty decent in their reporting) Christian Science Monitor with a slant that could have come right out of the tabloids: OMG! There’s a crooked sheriff in the land! Look! We found him right there in Mississippi! That proves that all this stuff about sheriffs standing against the fedgov is dangerous! Evil! How could anybody want such criminals “defending” them against the good and noble deeds of Our Protectors in DC?
It’s hands-down the worst-argued piece I’ve ever read in the veddy august CSM.
Good.
I think somebody out there is scared. Which means they believe there’s a real resistance building. With teeth. Liberty’s teeth.
…. heh, heh… yeah.
At least here, that the Sheriff is very interested in how the rest of us can help him do his job when the time comes. He’s an “oathkeeper” and models himself after Sheriff Mack. He can’t do a lot to protect us himself, really. He knows it, and we don’t expect him to do so. Most of us are well prepared to defend ourselves and our neighbors.
Yeah, drug prohibition is a big problem still in Wyoming, but I don’t know of any “forfeiture” insanity going on around here.
Locally we have had the good sense to elect some pretty good sheriffs. Often they have been at odds with the federal and state government which I like. They also don’t get the vapors over guns and generally keep the corruption in check.
The article was pretty sly about it, using innuendo to make the point – probably because they couldn’t come out and just say what they mean: “There are good sheriffs and bad sheriffs, but there are only good presidents, therefore power should be centralized.” Kinda hard to make a case like that. 🙂
I think the declarations of sheriffs that they wouldn’t enforce federal gun laws was based on self-preservation more than anything. They didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire! If a war starts over gun confiscation, any cops who don’t make such a proclamation will not last long. But that event was very revealing, very “Boetie-esque” so to speak. A real earthquake that shook the ruling paradigm. No wonder Congress backed down, heh.
http://mises.org/rothbard/boetie.pdf
Good observation on afraid. Has anyone else noticed how the larger idiots of the party whose main goal is to take our weapons and control all, have been SingTFU lately? Even the Republicans are not making a large spectacle of themselves. Then there’s the media. They still protect the statists but they seem much less shrill about it. I try to read three articles a day from Drudge and my main goal is reading the comments. They are overwhelmingly harsh towards our Federal Overlords.
Indeed, EN! I read comments as often as I have time… and when they are available. The tone of them has changed a lot in the last few years. Even articles at the NY Times, Huff Post and lots of other MSM sites — brutal sometimes.
Same with a lot of the blogs, both “freedom” types and others.
I tend to dismiss much of what is written at sites that do not have provision for reader comments. What might they be afraid of… 🙂
Colorado sheriffs seem to have stepped up, en masse.
[If a war starts over gun confiscation, any cops who don’t make such a proclamation will not last long.]
Total fed/state/local LEOs, 800,000
Total CHLs, 8,000,000 (before the election and resulting flood of applications)
Total gun owners, 80,000,000 (again before the election)
Claire, I know you mean well, but I think you missed the bigger implications here. I don’t think it’s a matter of “constitutional sheriffs” vs. FedGov, but “private sector” individuals vs. all government agents. At the risk of collectivizing them (because I certainly appreciate the role of The Mole), I don’t honestly see the difference between a legislator, a bureaucrat, a judge, and a cop. They are all agents of the State, and given their incentive structure, they are thus inimical to my Liberty. No amount of pandering to the “Oathkeeper” lobby is going to change that.
The best thing I can think of currently would be to encourage all government agents to quit their jobs as soon as they can, for their sake as much as ours.
Kyle — I’m not the one taking the position that sheriff’s will/might/should be on our side against the fedgov. I’m just talking about a position others take — and noticing that it’s finally made the MSM.