There was a time when the Libertarians were a sort of third road between liberalism and conservatism, an anarchist movement that opposed both sides equally.

No more.

The Libertarian website, Reason.com, has gone full-bore, white supremacist, fascist, Fox News, Breitbart, Trump-bigoted denialism, as witness the following article:

Punishing Rioters Is Wise. Bogus ‘Seditious Conspiracy’ Charges Are Not. Politics ruin everything, including the criminal justice system. J.D. TUCCILLE | 5.8.2023 7:00 AM

The problem with convicting members of the “Western chauvinist” Proud Boys on seditious conspiracy charges is that it wrongly elevates a violent tantrum by a bunch of thugs to the level of an insurrection, and it lets officials who prosecute them puff themselves up as saviors of the republic.

Worse, the case took liberties with a statute that is probably best forgotten to arrive at its conclusion when normal criminal law could have punished rioters without putting the criminal justice system through contortions.

At this point, you may be shaking your head and wondering whether the article really was written by Tucker Carlson, whose lies about the insurrection (yes, insurrection is precisely what it was) were too much even for Fox (especially since those lies cost Fox upwards of $750 million.)

Apparently, Carlson’s costly lies were suitable for J.D. Tuccille, a former managing editor of Reason.com and current contributing editor.

“A jury in the District of Columbia today returned guilty verdicts on multiple felonies against five members of the Proud Boys, finding four of the defendants guilty of seditious conspiracy for their actions before and during the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” the Department of Justice trumpeted last week.

“According to the evidence at trial, in the months leading up to Jan. 6, the defendants plotted to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power, and to prevent the Members of Congress, and the federal law enforcement officers who protect them, from discharging their duties.”

See the pejoratives, “puff themselves up,” “saviors of the republic”?

He’s describing people who saw criminals committing treason and tried those criminals before a jury, who also saw criminals committing treason, and said so.

Libertarian Tuccille would have you believe that trying, by force, to prevent the “lawful transfer of presidential power” is just, in his words, “a tantrum by thugs.”

A “TANTRUM”? Really, J.D.?

A tantrum is a little boy lying on his back, kicking his heels, and demanding not to be taken home from Disneyland.

A tantrum is the wailing from the little girl who wanted a pony for her birthday and only got a dress.

A tantrum is Ron DeSantis trying to punish a teacher for daring to mention that America’s law enforcement has mistreated blacks.

Armed traitors, crashing through barriers to break into Congress, injuring several police, and with the sole purpose of overturning the U.S. government, while stalking Nancy Pelosi and threatening to hang the Vice President of the United States because he wouldn’t install Traitor Donald Trump as President — that is a bit more than a Tuccille “tantrum.”

If all that does not rise to the level of treason, J.D., why don’t you describe to the world precisely what you think constitutes treason?

In former days, traitors were hung or electrocuted. These traitors got off easy.

“At my Senate confirmation hearing just over a month after January 6th, I promised that the Justice Department would do everything in its power to hold accountable those responsible for the heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government,” huffed Attorney General Merrick Garland, a man who gives every impression that he tremendously enjoys the smell of his own emissions.

“Today’s verdict is another example of our steadfast commitment to keeping those promises.”

Oh, Attorney General Merrick Garland “huffed”?

Is that supposed to mean his outrage was misplaced at seeing traitors roaming the halls of Congress, seeking to prevent the lawful installation of the President?

And the “smell of his own emissions” is the description of the man doing his job exactly as it should be done (unlike the Trumpian toadies who preceded him in that post.)

Would a simple “Tut tut,” a slap on the wrist, “boys will be boys'” admonition to not do it again have pleased Tuccille more?

Really, J.D., what is there about a vicious attempt to overturn a national election that has you outraged about a criminal conviction?

And so, we’re told, the republic is safe from those who would rise against it in insurrection.

But before we consign former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and codefendants Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, and Zachary Rehl to the history books alongside Mosby and Quantrill, Confederate guerrillas of the sort who inspired the seditious conspiracy statute to begin with, let’s consider an important obstacle:

There’s sparse evidence of a meaningful conspiracy “to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States” as required by law.

Shouldn’t a Conspiracy Be Better Organized? “The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result”

“Sparse evidence” except for the plans to gather off-site, and to bring weapons, and to advance on the Capitol at a specific time, even before the crowd arrived from Trump’s exhortations.

“Sparse evidence”? Are we to doubt our eyes and ears while maniacs, emboldened by the head maniac, did everything they could to prevent democratically elected Joe Biden from taking office?

That’s just a little tantrum?

Reuters noted in August 2021. “‘Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,’ said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation.

‘Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized.But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.'”

Except for building the gallows, searching for Pence, and the “Where are you Nancy?” hunting for Pelosi.

Get this. “Only” five percent of several thousand people — that makes what, several hundred? — created the plot, with the rest of the bunch merely followers.

So your claim, J.D. is several hundred people are too few to commit treason?? And because they were disorganized, it couldn’t be treason??  

For instance, if the bank robbers failed to obtain a worthy getaway car — a sign of disorganization — they should not be prosecuted for attempting to rob the bank? What a novel idea from the Libertarian.

And because you and your cronies have failed ever to develop an organized plan for running America without a government, J.D., does that mean the Libertarians are not a real political movement?

Or as a result of disorganization, “only” a few police died, instead of many more, it all was just a tantrum?

That said, if anybody was among those “more closely organized,” it was the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers of the earlier case. But still, prosecutors and the judge had to get creative to arrive at a verdict.

“The sedition trial…was characterized by frequent delays, frayed relations between the defense and prosecution and several decisions by the presiding judge, Timothy J. Kelly, that tested the boundaries of conspiracy law,” reported Alan Feuer and Zach Montague for The New York Times.

It wasn’t the crime that bothers you; it was the “frequent delays and frayed relations” to which you object?

Would you have preferred that the judge rush things through, and the defense and prosecutor got together and sang Kumbaya? Would that have made for a fairer trial”

“Judge Kelly’s rulings allowed prosecutors to introduce damning evidence about the violent behavior and aggressive language of members of the Proud Boys who had only limited connections to the five defendants.

The evidence was damning because the Proud Boys is an organization devoted to the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, in short, a conspiracy of traitors.

The rulings also permitted jurors to convict on conspiracy even if they found there was no plan to disrupt the certification of the election, but merely an unspoken agreement to do so.”

“No plan,” just an “unspoken agreement”? Huh?

If it wasn’t a plan and wasn’t spoken, how did all those traitors know when to show up and then to march in single file, like a well-trained military unit?

The jury heard the evidence and decided that there was a plan and an agreement and that the traitors were speaking quite loudly, screaming in fact, and they came damn close to succeeding.

Only by fractions of a second and a few inches did they fail. They didn’t find Pence. They didn’t find Pelosi. America got lucky.

“Mr. Tarrio was not even in Washington on Jan. 6, having been kicked out of the city days earlier by a local judge presiding over a separate criminal matter,” they added.

And Hitler was not even in France when the Nazis took over. And the Mafia boss seldom iss on site when the murders are committed.

“The Justice Department’s take, of course, fits the narrative favored by Democrats who reflexively describe the Capitol riot as an ‘insurrection.'” Reason’s Jacob Sullum observed.

“But that term implies a level of planning and organization that does not fit the chaotic reality of what happened that day.”

Ah, and there it is: “Favored by Democrats,” J.D. Tuccille’s unintended admission that the attempted coup was a Republican operation, and that he is a GOP apologist.

White supremacists, fascists, and Libertarians hate Democrats. The self-anointed GOP Party of Law and Order, hates the Democrats when they prosecute crimes initiated by Donald J. Trump, the newfound hero of Libertarianism.

The “chaotic reality” is that people planned to use force to stop the count and to stop America’s Democracy, and had they succeeded, the chief traitor would now be the dictator of America.

There’s no easy way to portray the resulting conviction as anything other than a stretch. In fact, less-loaded criminal charges could and did serve to penalize the defendants for their disruptive actions in Washington.

“Destruction of property, impeding Congress, and assaulting police officers, while crimes, don’t allow prosecutors and their political allies to portray themselves in heroic terms.

That is how Tuccille, who surely would have been hiding under his desk and wetting his pants, had he been faced with the violent traitors, insults those who defended America.

(Or Tuccille would have joined Josh (rabbit) Hawley, running terrified.) He cowardly insults the real heroes, the police, while treasonably defending the indefensible.

Rioters are violent troublemakers, but seditious conspirators can be portrayed as part of a larger movement that intends harm to the whole country.

Lest we forget, the “larger movement that intends to harm the whole country exists. It is the MAGA “stop the steal” movement, as fascist as any movement in America.

Sadly, having learned nothing from the relative taps on the wrists the insurrectionists received, they continue with their election denial, even today.

But that is not anti-democracy, anti-America enough for the Libertarians.

Had the traitors succeeded, Pence would have been hung; Pelosi might have been injured or killed; even more, police would have died, and Congress would have become meaningless.

But sedition, according to Tuccille? Nah.

And now comes the false comparison of all false comparisons, typical of the right-wing, white supremacy crowd of bigots with which Tuccille seems to have aligned:

The Trump administration floated pulling this same stunt with seditious conspiracy charges (often incorrectly framed as just “sedition”) against rioters during the civil unrest of the summer of 2020.

“Attorney General William Barr told the nation’s federal prosecutors to be aggressive when charging violent demonstrators with crimes, including potentially prosecuting them for plotting to overthrow the U.S. government,” The Wall Street Journal’s Aruna Viswanatha and Sadie Gurman reported at the time.

“Sedition charges require proof of efforts to overthrow the United States Government,” Harvard Law’s Laurence Tribe responded.

“Talking in these terms based on what’s happening is grotesquely irresponsible. It’s way beyond monarchical. It’s paranoid and dictatorial. Opus Dei, anyone?”

Likewise, the ACLU called Barr’s proposed seditious conspiracy prosecutions “a tyrannical and un-American attempt to suppress our demands for racial justice and an end to police violence.”

See, in the Tuccille, Libertarian world, when unarmed blacks are killed by police, again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and finally, in frustration at the law’s unwillingness to protect them they riot, this supposedly is similar to Trump’s “patriots” trying to overturn the government.

What was their MAGA grievance? They didn’t like the outcome of the election and with no evidence whatsoever, claimed it was stolen and decided to steal it back.

Tuccille claims the two situations are the same. What a disgusting and thoroughly false comparison

Now the shoe is on the other foot, with a new administration wielding seditious conspiracy charges as weapons against another set of rioters with a different flavor of politics.

Yes, it’s just a “different flavor of politics.” To Tuccille, the coup was just a few poor little Republicans, who persecuted by the police, are innocently airing their grievances. Right?

Again, the rioters’ actions would justify prosaic criminal prosecutions if their partisan loyalties weren’t at odds with those in power.

But why just punish political opponents for bad behavior when you can smear them and their associates as dangers to the nation?

Hey, now, trying to overturn democracy is just “bad behavior”  akin to shoplifting or parking in a no-parking zone. Right?

In a country as divided as ours, everything becomes a bludgeon against hated others. Politics ruin everything, including the criminal justice system.

And with his final words, Libertarian J.D. Tuccille, at last, tells the truth. Politics has ruined the criminal justice system.

Ask any black or Mexican or gay or Muslim or Jew who has lived under the bootheel of the right-wing, fascist, bigoted group known as the Libertarian/GOP.

Ruining the criminal justice system is the specialty of hate-mongering bigots, like those Southern sheriffs who wore white sheets and lynched blacks.

Yet even they didn’t try to overturn the election of the President of the United States.

That was left to the Proud Boys and their apologists, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump and the Tuccille Libertarians.

 

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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