I said in an earlier piece that enforcing a bad law rigorously is one way to get rid of it, but I stressed that was true in America. I am open to any contrary evidence, because I don’t LIKE this, but there really doesn’t seem to be any law today’s Europeans won’t support.

Knowing what the World War II Generation did to enslave America, a continent which had TWO such wars may be worse off. WWI barely touched America.

American and British laws were routinely changed by juries. The endless list of small crimes that one could be hanged for in Britain was effectively reversed by juries who would not convict a person who could be hanged for stealing a few shillings.

But today it is hard to imagine a British jury defying a judge in any way. I would be glad to be wrong if someone can give some examples. In America, too, juries consider themselves servants of the court.

The decision in the Crown Versus Pierce, where a judge ruled that in the case of Hate Laws, “the truth is no defense,” was the law under the Alien and Sedition Laws passed after the last huge Federalist Party victory in 1798.

But it was the LAST Federalist Party win because in 1800 the American electorate, not the courts, saved freedom of speech. It was hard to get convictions under that law — in America.

But the idea of a jury in today’s Britain disputing a guy in a black dress strikes me as impossible.

Would America pass the First Amendment today?

No other country on earth has what we call the first amendment.

I have pointed out that “since the invention of the wheel” is supposed to mean in caveman days, but when I point out how rare the wheel is, nobody remembers that phrase. Everyone says it, but nobody THINKS about it.

I have seen editorials reprinted from Australia bragging that they have no Bill of Rights and never will. In fact, all you find in American publications is a few columns like William Buckley’s endorsing European Hate Laws.

The Australian and Canadian reaction to mass shootings, which only happen where no honest person has a weapon, is to pass Draconian guns laws. I have heard of no instance where a jury has refused to convict anybody for trying to defend his family.

But I doubt you will see any of this put together in a few words anywhere but in BUGS.

In several states, including South Carolina, liquor laws were repealed by juries. In fact, while the rest of the state debated the law absolutely banning the per drink sale of anything but beer, Charleston had open bars.

The bars were kept open by juries. For a quarter of a century.

Try to imagine that happening with the cowed juries of today.

America is an island with its Bill of Rights. It is an island under assault.

But no one mentions that.

Mayor Giuliani brought down the crime rate in New York City, an seemingly impossible task, by enforcing the little laws. When bums are allowed to litter they tend to go on to outfight robbery.

Every Jewish comedian criticized this as “fascism.” Even Leno mentioned comedians as part of the liberal complex, so I’m not saying anything wild here.

It did, however, WORK. I would never have imagined it would work so well.

This is also, as the comedians said, a form of profiling. The guy who harasses people or openly throws paper on the street is likely to more serious crimes. They are largely minorities, of course.

In other words niggling enforcement of laws works, not because it is niggling enforcement, but because it is a cover for profiling those who, by the color of their skin, are clearly more likely to be lawbreakers.

But niggling enforcement has an entirely different beneficial effect on law abiding people in America.

In America, the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it rigorously. When I came up absolutely everyone who was fashionable was for New York gun control. That ruined Rosie O’Donnell.

I think Zero Tolerance for Weapons has done the new generation a lot of good. Everyone knows about some little kid who was thrown out of school for carrying a plastic knife or something to school.

Gun control is a struggle liberals have lost big time. You know that because they don’t mention it any more. The cops really enforced it because they wanted to be the only high-school graduates who got to walk around with guns.

For people without inferiority complexes, having to carry a weapon is a bother. What really stopped pilots from carrying guns was not he knee jerk reaction to it by liberals. Pilots don’t have the cops’ inferiority complex and they don’t WANT to have to carry a gun.

So they don’t.

That was something most people didn’t THINK about, my continuing theme here. They were arguing over whether a man who had over two hundred lives in his hands should be ALLOWED to carry a gun.

Unlike flying a passenger jet, they said, a gun is a big responsibility.

On TV, the detectives are always taking off their coats and showing guns on them, which makes cops feel Macho. But a pilot has no need of that to get respect in HIS costume.

That’s how human beings think, gang.

If a cop doesn’t have his gun, he usually gets fined. If we want pilots to carry weapons, we will have to pay them to do it. Most lawmakers seemed to think they were “giving” pilots guns, and the pilots would have to take a course to learn how to use them on a plane.

I would guess that if you don’t know the mechanics of planes, training you in the use of guns on a place will be very, very hard. But the lawmakers were so fixated on guns they considered any kind of that magic word police, or Air Marshals, should carry the guns.

Walking in line to board a plane with my shoes off and my pants sagging without the belt, I have mentioned o others around me that the oil countries that sponsor terrorism should have to help pay for this crap.

I point out that if you ask any terrorist one thing he really wants, his answer will include making sure nobody on board is armed. I worked in a prison, and I have yet to find a single prisoner who is not all for gun control.

I have also never found a single prisoner who had the slightest difficulty getting a gun to commit a crime with, in New York or South Carolina. The gun that shot Reagan was bought in Hawaii and used in DC, two places which have gun laws that make that make New York look wimpish.

I have also never had a single passenger disagree with me about how the terrorists should help pay for this nonsense.

In Why None Dare Call It Treason I said I would talk about what happened to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who drew a major portion of their income from siding with the Soviets when the Soviet Empire fell.

This is a practical question, a question anyone who knows anything about real political science would wonder about. But since only Mommy Professors are in political science, they have no idea what makes real politics what they are.

A political science Mommy Professor sees these hundreds of thousands pf Cold Warriors as disappointed idealists. He does not see them as job-seekers.

Until Obama, it was hard to realize how many people’s job resume consisted entirely of “social activist.” I’ve SEEN them. In 1995, when the Democrats lost their majority in Congress and a third of the entire staff on the Hill went to the Republicans it was barely mentioned outside the Beltway.

Another wave of Idealists and Intellectuals hit the streets. Barely five years before, an even greater wave of pro-Soviet Idealists and Intellectuals hit the streets. As the USSR went down every single professional pro-Peace, pro-Soviet, whatever term you want to use, became an Environmentalist.

It is important to realize that intelligent Americans, no matter how anti-American, do have one trait in common: They MAKE their opportunities.

Watch out now, I may be tooting my own horn, but I come from the Belly of the Beast. If you want an easy life in DC, you go to Harvard and join the CIA or the civil service. Totally contrary to popular conception, Capitol Hill is not a place for time-servers.

One man who wrote a popular book called “Workaholics” points out to his New York audience that, contrary to their beliefs, New York was not America’s workaholic center, Washington was. For a New Yorker to take second place in anything “tough” is like a World War II veteran admitting anyone else was in a REAL War.

But I could show up at Capitol Hill offices at 2 a.m. and the place was lit up like a Christmas tree. John Ashbrook caught me in my office at 2 a.m., took one look at me, and said, “Bob, you’ll work better if you’re ALIVE. Get out of here.”

So I have to tell you that the activists on the other side were nothing like what you would think of as Washington bureaucrats. A senior staffer who lost his job at the age of fifty would go out and MAKE himself another one.

This would never occur to anyone as part of the growth of the Environmentalist Movement, the swelling of the militant Anti-Racist Movement.

I was right there, so as the USSR fell I dreaded what would come next from those people who had opposed me in the Cold War.

No political science professor is ever going to think of the tens of thousands of people in the political real world the collapse of a leftist cause brings. A new supply of activists, what he calls Idealists, causes a surge in other movements.

Call it Supply Side Idealism.

Your doctor, your preacher, your lawyer and your accountant are in a position to give you orders. So is your “superior.” No one gets all his orders obeyed.

On an organization chart, the guy two ranks up routinely calls a “subordinate” to find out what should be done in a particular area. My boss — note the lack of quotes — John Ashbrook, was called for an interview by his state’s largest newspaper — the Plain Dealer.

He told the writer that I would call with what he had to say, gave me the number, and he had no idea what he had said until the the Sunday paper came out.

Hindenburg was commander of the German forces in World War I but it was pretty well know that Ludendorff ran the show.

It is understatement to say that an organization chart doesn’t tell you the real story. Everybody says he knows that, but I notice that every succeeding Administration in Washington, no matter how militantly it goes in, is tamed in each Department by the career staff getting them all tied with a “reorganization” instead of with changing policy.

In other words, as usual, everybody KNOWS the chart doesn’t tell the truth, but when faced with a situation where this fact is crucial, he hasn’t THOUGHT about it.

I keep telling people that “the President really doesn’t have any power.” He is so tied down by fiscal reality and election reality that his opinions don’t really make that much difference.

Real power is the ability to make the world the way you want it. How much does the president have that ability? He is only able to balance considerations. He even gets those balances from his advisors.

No matter whether they are called monarchies, anarchies, democracies, or dictatorships, all real governments are oligarchies.

Reagan was criticized for working forty hours a week. He had stepped into the presidency after governing the largest state in the country for eight years, and he knew the limitations of a chief executive.

When asked about Reagan’s forty hours, I would say, “When a hand reaches for the Red Phone at three o’clock in the morning, I don’t want that hand shaking with fatigue.”

I knew a self-made multimillionaire who said, “If I HAVE to work more than forty hours a week, I fire somebody.”

Ben Franklin has been quoted down through the centuries as the ultimate advocate of hard work, “early to bed, early to rise” and so on. If you actually read his short autobiography, it sounds startling modern.

Franklin said, yes, he got a reputation for hard work by waking everybody up in Philadelphia pushing his wheelbarrow down the street at six o’clock in the morning.
He points out that what was important was not being there at six, but that “ I became KNOWN for it.”

It was public relations. If anybody THOUGHT about it, why the hell would a PRINTER need to be pushing a loudly rattling wheelbarrow down the street to work every morning?

But Franklin knew damned well that, then or now, no one who wanted to preach would THINK about it.

They didn’t.