Thunder On The Left
By Larry Pratt (10/17/03)
Gary Aldrich is one of the best-known FBI agents (now retired) in the country.
Aldrich resigned from his post at the White House and blew the whistle in his book, Unlimited Access, on the abuses of power that characterized the Clinton administration.
Aldrich has broadened his attack on the socialist drive for total control with his latest book, Thunder on the Left. The book covers a wide range of subjects, but several are of particular interest.
Take the war against SUVs. The socialist mindset of the environmental extremists wants to regulate SUVs out of existence. They think we should drive around in environmentally sensitive cars -- even if they are flimsy little death traps.
As I read this, I could not help but think of the socialist control freaks' campaign to impose gun locks of one type or another on the American gun owner. Safety, they say, is their chief concern. But as I have pointed out elsewhere, gun locks are dangerous devices which encumber one's self-defense firearm. They could be quite unsafe in an emergency, and are unlikely to be found on an assailant's gun.
In any case, "safety" is something that is only used by the socialists when they think they can con us into going along with one of their zillion regulations. The point is, they will use any argument they think will get them what they want -- control. Real safety for the average person is not high on their list of priorities.
Aldrich deals with one of the socialist creeds, that of "no profiling." Aldrich hits former FBI director Louis Freeh for refusing to profile Arabs who happen to be the main group from which terrorists have been recruited. Yet, the FBI, under the politicization of the Clinton White House, had no problem profiling political enemies of the President, namely the "vast right-wing conspiracy." The FBI actually produced a study, Operation Megiddo, of suspect conservative individuals and groups, particularly pro-lifers and militia organizations. This diversion of resources contributed to the FBI's cluelessness about the 9/11 attack.
Political correctness was a major contributor to the FBI's failure to benefit from their arrest of terrorist Zecarias Moussaoui prior to 9/11. Moussaoui had been arrested after he had come to the Minneapolis FBI office's attention for taking flying lessons without wanting to know how to take off or land a plane. The Washington FBI headquarters refused permission to examine the hard drive of Moussaoui's computer. Had they done so, they would have found the blueprint of the 9/11 attack. But Washington did not want to be guilty of profiling.
With the information that Aldrich provides in this and other cases, one could safely conclude that political correctness is a killer. Had this been part of the debate around the passage of the Patriot Act, it is possible that there would have been more reluctance for Congress to hand over such unconstitutional powers to the President.
Gun control is something that Aldrich clearly supports, that is, controlling the gun with both hands. He thinks it is wrong for police officers to have more firearms freedoms than the rest of us: "But, if an off-duty federal agent and your average police officer can enjoy that level of protection [carrying a concealed firearm], why is it that the average law-abiding citizen cannot?"
The colonial patriot, legislator and governor of Virginia, Patrick Henry, is one of Aldrich's heroes. He reminds us that Patrick Henry was, among other things, a militia leader. His famous St. Johns Church speech calling for "give me liberty or give me death" was made to get his fellow legislators to fund the militia in order to fight a tyrannical government.
Henry was reacting to the outrages committed by the English government of King George III. The Declaration of Independence listed the acts of terrorism sponsored by the Crown against Americans. These acts had been directed against children, women, the sick and the elderly -- the same as today.
Defense against a terroristic tyrant was the fundamental reason for enshrining the right to keep and bear arms in our Bill of Rights, Aldrich points out. No wonder Patrick Henry is usually excluded from the politically correct history books in use by the government schools.
Gary Aldrich should be made head of the FBI.
[ Gary Aldrich was interviewed on Larry Pratt's Live Fire talk show and can be heard at http://www.gunowners.org/radio.htm ]
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