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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Monday, July 26, 2021

Losing Our Liberty All at Once?

Once upon a time, and it was not so long ago, an American could recognize totalitarianism and say “Thank God we’ve escaped that.” Can we still say that?

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Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for The Road to Serfdom from David Hume (the other, like Hayek’s title, came from Tocqueville). “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.”   Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.   I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts.  I would be happy to ask Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time. Perhaps as long as 20 years. 

Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the “Oath Keepers,” a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” (You can see how this ends already, can’t you?) The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers. They arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett came from his home in Florida to join the Trump “Stop the Steal” rally that took place on January 6. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon. He left some ten minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building. ........To Read More.....


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