U.S. Capitol belongs to people

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for November 10, 2021)

Pretending the January 6th demonstration was an insurrection is silly. An "insurrection" which didn't seek to topple any government, which was in support of the sitting president, and where the armed people were all on the other side? Nonsense.

On top of this, it infuriates me that anyone could be charged with a crime for entering a building which belongs to the people-- not to government-- and for protesting there. To treat this as a crime is injustice. Any government pursuing this sort of case against any individual has delegitimized itself beyond repair. It's done.

Did the demonstrators have a right to be protesting inside the building? Yes, they absolutely did. Would I have joined the protest? Not a chance.

The U.S. Capitol belongs to you. It doesn't belong to politicians or the Capitol Police. If anyone is trespassing, it is those congresscritters who are doing things the Constitution doesn't allow them to do. They are ignoring their clear Constitutional limits and doing the opposite of what the people they supposedly represent want them to do, within those limits. They are the ones who have no right to be on the Capitol grounds.

We can disagree over whether there's any point in protesting a criminal government. I don't believe there is, since I don't think any political government can be redeemed, but I'm not going to criticize those who hold out hope there may still be a slim chance. If you think it's time to protest, it's probably too late for a mere protest to fix anything.

To arrest the protestors was criminal, but the government's crimes went beyond that.

The monetary punishments levied against those who demonstrated are no different than any other violent mugging. It's especially telling when a fine and restitution are imposed separately. A fine is simply another tax-- more theft by government. And government can't be owed restitution because it isn't an individual; it has no rights that can be violated.

I don't know the Clovis doctor who was recently sentenced for entering the U.S.Capitol. I would probably disagree with him on most topics. I was not a Donald Trump supporter because I don't support politicians of any sort, ever. It doesn't matter. What he did wasn't a crime in any real sense. The crime was committed by those who sought to punish him and others like him. I'll always remember who these real criminals are.

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"But the dictionary says..."

If you want to understand why I don't automatically accept the dictionary definition of words, here's a new example.

The definition of "anti-vaxxer" was changed in the Merrian-Webster dictionary to include "opposes...regulations mandating vaccination". Combined with how the definition of "vaccine" was itself recently changed (at least by government) so it could include the Covid shots, this should break anyone's loyalty to "dictionary definitions".

Check out what I said about "mandatory vaccines" back in 2015, and see whether my opinion has changed since that time.

I have never been an anti-vaxxer. Not by my own definition nor by the definition that used to appear in dictionaries. But by this new definition...?

As I point out in my own Liberty Dictionary, dictionaries don't tell you what words really mean, but how they are used. 

Any dictionary that is authoritarian/government-supremacist in its bias is going to define words to be more useful to what "authorities" want you to think. That's why the dictionary definition of "anarchy" is so bad. Why the dictionary definitions of "freedom" and "liberty" are so incomplete or misleading. "The dictionary" doesn't exist-- every dictionary is going to slant things according to the authors' biases.

I'm not suggesting we go all Humpty-Dumpty, but that we realize the authors of dictionaries are also prone to do just that. They aren't immune.

Check the dictionary definition, then weigh it against what you know to be true. You may find they don't agree.

-- H/T to JP

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