A Right to Protect or Defend?

The American left is sending the public a message - they aren't interested in protecting you and you have no right to protect yourself.

Yesterday I quickly posted an immediate thought on Facebook that the attacks on law enforcement in New York over the death of a mentally ill homeless man at the hands of a person defending everybody else on the train proved that identity has transcended everything - facts, truth, reality - and now is the basis for guilt or innocence. If you are black, you are innocent or simply a victim, if you are white, you are guilty and an oppressor and that when society devolves to this level of tribalism, there is no justice, only violence. Polite society is being pushed to the point where, if it is to survive, it will necessarily become impolite, and often in a very prejudicial way.

After considering that thought overnight, I came to realize there is another component, possibly even more dangerous than the melanin-based jurisprudence of an identity crazed society.

If you consider the statements of public officials on the left side of the ledger, as well as the protests last night calling for the odious, Soros backed DA, Alvin Bragg, to charge the former Marine and two others who subdued the threat. I think the term “threat” is accurately applied, because this man, Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old New York City homeless man had been arrested forty-two times between 2013 and 2021, including four arrests for assault, the rest for transit fraud and criminal trespass. At the time of his death, Neely had one active warrant for an alleged assault in connection with a 2021 incident.

But none of that matters to the left, most of whom are uniformly lining up behind an attempt to exonerate Neely’s past and create a George Floyd narrative around the events.

“Jordan Neely's murder is the direct result of efforts to dehumanize and demonize New Yorkers who are experiencing homelessness, living with mental illness or just existing in the world as Black and poor”, says Sara Newman, director of organizing at the Open Hearts Initiative in New York City.

“Jordan Neely was murdered. But because Jordan was houseless and crying for food in a time when the city is raising rents and stripping services to militarize itself while many in power demonize the poor, the murderer gets protected,” tweeted AOC.

Co-squad member Ayanna Pressley stepped it up with her tweet, “He was 30 years old. Black men deserve to grow old—not be lynched on a Subway because they were having a mental health crisis. Jordan deserved better. Accountability now.”

Lynched.

A charged term intended to evoke and connect images of Emmett Till to Jordan Neeley. But this wasn’t Mississippi in 1955, it was New York in 2023 and Neely wasn’t Till.

Beyond the message is that despite his prior arrests, his homelessness, his mental state and most of all, his skin color, Neely could never be anything other than innocent, the other message that is being sent is that people are not justified in taking his threats seriously and doing what is necessary to protect themselves.

All over this country, even as the postmodernist progressive city officials, District Attorneys, and prosecutors, downplay the rise in crime in their jurisdictions, are telling the public that you have no right as an individual to protect yourself – and if you do, you will be prosecuted.

The media is full of cases where a perpetrator is shot for breaking into a home or business and the defender is arrested and charged. Bragg charged Jose Alba, a bodega owner, for defending his life and livelihood against a threat captured on video. Bragg also charged Moussa Diarra, a Manhattan parking garage attendant, with attempted murder, assault, and criminal possession of a weapon for firing back after being shot when confronting a thief in the garage where he worked on West 31st Street.

It isn’t just New York, recently an elderly rancher in Arizona was charged with murder for protecting his wife and property from illegal aliens who trespassed and openly intimidated his frail wife.

Kyle Rittenhouse was charged with murder in the aftermath of the violent riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, ultimately was exonerated by a jury that decided it was self-defense but is currently defending himself in a wrongful death civil suit brought by the father of Anthony Huber, one of three attackers and a man who was attacking Rittenhouse with a skateboard.

The theme here is that if you deign to protect yourself, especially if your assailant is of a certain protected class, there are people just waiting to go all Michael Brown/George Floyd on your ass. Nobody should be subject to capital punishment just for attacking you, you should just let it happen.

This perspective is also the root of the attacks on the Second Amendment. You don’t “need’ a firearm say every Democrat in Congress. You are just supposed to let it happen and hope for the best – and maybe the defunded, demoralized, understaffed police will get to you in an hour or so. That is if the prosecutors haven’t preemptively decided they aren’t going to prosecute.

The paradox here is, of course, that the people who are claiming the individual has no right to be armed, much less protect themselves, their families, or their property, are the very people who want police defunded and certain behaviors decriminalized in the name of equity and social justice. They have even said out loud that looting, ransacking, and arson are equivalent to reparations and in the words of the former Baltimore mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, we must give “those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.”

“We won’t protect you and you have no right to protect yourself”, doesn’t really seem to be a winning message.