The other day, I linked to John Derbyshire’s post at the Corner on Britain’s state of “anarcho-tyranny:”
The late Sam Francis gave us the invaluable term “anarcho-tyranny” to describe that state of society in which “we refuse to control real criminals (that’s the anarchy) so we control the innocent (that’s the tyranny).”
Britain is far gone in anarcho-tyranny. Among my Christmas mail were a card and letter from a relative we barely communicate with the rest of the year. To make up for her side of the delinquency, she sends us a nice chatty summary of all that’s happened to her large and bustling family in the previous twelve months.
As I noted, Derbyshire concluded, “Anarcho-tyranny: coming soon to a jurisdiction near you” — which we like to call around these parts, “California.” Victor Davis Hanson has extensively discussed anarcho-tyranny in the once-Golden State, but at NR today, in a post titled “I Am Meredith Graves,” Kevin Williamson explores how it works in the Big Blue Redoubt on the other coast:
I fully expect that Meredith Graves will do time for having had the bad sense to attempt to exercise certain God-given and unalienable rights at a place in which they were famously attacked. While I have enjoyed the back-and-forth between Robert VerBruggen and the others on the legal and constitutional questions of interstate concealed-carry protocols, I enjoy them the way I enjoy watching a tennis match: The skill involved in the volleys is impressive, but it is only a game. Our Second Amendment jurisprudence, like our First Amendment jurisprudence, seems to me to be simply an unprincipled political fight. We should heed the wisdom of Roy Cohn: “Don’t tell me what the law is, tell me who the judge is.”
Rather than weigh in on the legal questions, let me offer another view: I am Meredith Graves. At least, I have found myself in a very similar situation, but had a very different outcome.
Read the whole thing.
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