Liberty & Freedom
Ruby Ridge
Liberty & Freedom
To quote John Wick 'Im thinking I might be back', it has been a while and I apologise for not keeping up with my musings on herem, but life sometimes throws curveballs at us and all we can do is try and bat them away. Nonetheless thank you for sticking around if you have and if you haven't maybe this can encourage you back.
Now onto the listed subject, quite a subject to tackle upon my return. Freedom and liberty can mean different things at different times and can be a deeply personal subject based on an individual's interpretation of what it means. Much like Confucious' fly analogy, how can a fly understand the lifespan of a turtle, an idea of freedom and liberty for someone living under tyranny could be something someone else takes for granted in a “freer” society. So I thought about how to express freedom and liberty as a concept or idea, but it is something bigger than me, it isn't for me to judge what it means. Therefore, how to attack the thoughts I do have, well I've decided to use an external, historical example in order to show what freedom and liberty isn't and perhaps somewhere in there we can find a consensus as to what it is. Before we get into it though I want to preface this by saying I am not getting into a debate about the personal politics of those involved, this is a wider discussion on freedom and liberty.
That example was an incident in 1992 that took place over ten days, the siege of Ruby Ridge. Waco would have perhaps been a more obvious choice given the similarities between them, but Waco has been done in more detail and by more crafted fingers before. That isn't too diminish what happened at Waco, but Ruby Ridge was a more personal, focused event. So what was the lead up the events at Ruby Ridge. The Weaver family consisting of Randy, Vicky and there three children Sam 14, Sara 16 and Elisheba 10 months; had moved to Ruby Ridge after Vicky had religious visions detailing a potential apocalypse event. They wanted to get completely off-grid, they saw the world as ultimately doomed, corrupt governments, corrupt institutions and a coming religious reckoning. This was when they found some land at Ruby Ridge and built their homestead there, they were largely free of the yolk of state control, no electricity and a hunter gatherer lifestyle.
However it was Randy's selling of illegal firearms that put them under the radar of state authorities. Once arrested by the ATF he was given an ultimatum, inform on your neighbour; a neo-nazi group, which it is important to add that the Weaver's had been attending some meetings of, or face prison time. Randy, already wary of government authority, declined and was therefore charged with firearms offences, along with a court date. Randy had no intention of attending said court and so began the ATF and marshalls reconnaissance of the Weaver's home on Ruby Ridge. So six marshalls made their way up towards the Weaver's cabin, camouflage and assault rifles in hand. At the sametime Randy, Sam and a family friend were emerging from the cabin to go on a hunt for deer, along with the weavers dog Striker. The marshalls decided it would be a good idea to test the dogs reaction if they approached the compound and therefore began throwing rocks at the cabin. The dog obviously reacted aggressively to this incursion on his territory. The response by the marshalls was to shoot the dog dead, Sam who was carrying a rifle and upon seeing his pet killed opened fire on the men hiding in the bush. This led to exchange of gunfire in which Sam was shot in the arm, upon turning and running back towards his home, he was shot in the back and killed by the marshalls. Randy and Kevin ran back to the cabin, in the exchange a marshall was shot and died, this led to an escalation in both manpower and tools available through the siege being handed over to the FBI.
The FBI then placed sniper teams around the cabin, along with troops continuously moving around the perimeter of Ruby Ridge. It is important to note at this point that the neighbouring compound of the neo-nazi group became more vocal and began to twist what had occurred to their own means. I mention this only because of the earlier association and would be imprudent not to. It was at this point the Weavers had retrieved their son's body and moved it to a shed within the confines of the cabin ground. At the sametime the FBI at the perimeter of the grounds began to change the rules of exchangement, which they stated to be due to the death of a law enforcement official; these new rules would include the use of lethal force for seeing an adult simply holding a gun, despite the FBI already having a preset for rules of engagement that meant a law enforcement officer could only open fire in a matter of self defence or in defence of a civilian. All the Weavers were in the cabin, when Randy, Kevin and Randy’s daughter Sara decided to move to the shed to pray over the corpse of his son. Vicki saw him off whilst holding their 10 month old baby Elisheba. An FBI sniper then opened fire on Randy hitting him in the back, all three began to run back to their cabin with Vicki holding the door open for them. The sniper opened fire again hitting Kevin and killing Vicki outright, but thankfully not harming the baby Vicki was holding. The siege was ended on the 30th August, not by any law enforcement official who by this point the Weavers were refusing to converse with, but by civilian negotiators.
So why is this perhaps more important than Waco and should get more attention and why did I select it for a discussion on freedom and liberty? Well the Ruby Ridge siege predated Waco as mentioned, it was started by the same agency the ATF, but here there were more direct infringements upon basic freedoms. The original charge against Randy was for an illegal modification of a firearm, the shortening of a shotgun barrel by a quarter of inch below the legal limit. To put this into context the average length of a shotgun barrel is 26” so a quarter of an inch is approx 0.9% of the total length. We also have the reissuing of the rules of engagement, which flew in the face of the normal rules and may have been activated retroactively in order to protect the original marshalls from blame for Sam's death. Finally we have a note that was passed around by the FBI on-site commander, detailing how the original gun charge against Randy was nonsense and that the Weavers were within their legal right to open fire on a group of men hiding on their land and had just shot their dog. So why freedom and liberty, lets look at the original charge against Randy a 0.9% infraction on gun length, in a statistical study that took results from 2011 less than half (approx 42%)1 of police officers charged with crime had any conviction against them and approx half kept their jobs. This becomes an issue when officers are enforcing laws on citizens they cannot themselve follow or if they do there is no repercussions for them. Where is the freedom of a citizen to go through an impartial legal process starting with arrest if impartiality is mirage, it simply becomes gang on gang violence in the old fashioned framework of the cops & robbers. We then have the killing of a child, the attempted murder of two male adults and the murder of a mother whilst holding her baby. Many were quick to defend Derek Chauvin under the guise of George Floyd being a career criminal who had pistol whipped a pregnant woman, but where were the repercussions for the officer who lethally endangered a baby or who shot a child running away in the back. This brings about a question can we have freedom and liberty in a society where people willing to break the law without repercussion are there to enforce the law, surely this is no different than an extortion racket committed by a gang upon a business owner ‘Pay us and we will protect your business from other criminals or we will burn your business down’. is that a free society? Is it a society with liberty of the citizenry? Did the proportion of force used against the Weavers match the crime that bought law enforcement to their home, a quarter of an inch or was this state sanctioned execution as the Weavers wanted no part of a society they saw as corrupted and therefore did not take part in expected aspects of that society such as paying for energy, taxes, purchasing mass produced food. These are by no means small infractions upon an individuals right to freedom and liberty, these are the actions of an over-inflated, self-indulgent state, who couldnt get what they wanted and the opposing side wouldnt back down. As John Stuart Mill stated, the only reason for state interference is when an individual threatens direct harm to larger society, the Weaver’s presented no threat to larger society as they had already removed themselves from society at large. Even the statement that Randy had shot at a helicopter was later proven to be false as the pilot stated that no shots were fired, no threat to wider society; but a family still broken owing to state sanctioned executions.
Police Integrity Lost: A Study of Law Enforcement Officers Arrested, Stinson P, Liederbach J, Brewer S, Lab S, http://www.bgsu.edu/policeintegritylost , Jan 2016