The following is a letter I sent to Utah Gov. Cox asking him to not deploy the Utah National Guard in a law enforcement role in other states:
I am writing to implore you to not deploy the Utah National Guard at the behest of President Trump with the purpose of occupying other states and American cities. This is not the appropriate use of the Utah National Guard, as military units should not be used in a domestic law enforcement role, a position that is rooted deeply in American history.
One of the precipitating events that led to the American Revolution was the Boston Massacre, which occurred on March 5, 1770, when the king’s soldiers fired on a crowd of Bostonians, killing five. Bostonians had been protesting the Townshend Acts, a series of laws passed by Parliament imposing taxes and duties on the colonists, laws passed without the colonists’ consent or ability to redress Parliament for their grievances because, as colonists, they lacked representation in back in London. These conditions set the state for Americans’ conception of liberty: no taxation without representation, a healthy skepticism of standing armies, and thanks to the work of John Adams, the right of the accused to a fair trial.
Utah is also no stranger to being invaded by an army sent by the central government. In 1857 Col. Albert Sidney Johnston, acting under orders from President Buchanan, led an expedition to the then-territory as a show of force meant to intimidate the local populace simply because the Buchanan administration did not agree with Utahn’s conceptions of religious liberty.
(I should note that while I am not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints, I am Jewish, so I will always side with a religious minority’s right to freely worship as enshrined by the U.S. Constitution.)
Needless to say, Utahns didn’t take too kindly by this invasion and did all they could to prevent the movement of troops into the Salt Lake Valley by blocking their passage through Echo Canyon.
Both of these incidents should give you pause about the implication of deploying the Utah National Guard in a manner for which it is neither accustomed nor legitimate. The alleged reasons the president is asking for troops is purely fictional.
Violent crime in Washington, D.C., is at a 35 year low, and now the president threatens to send the military to cities like Chicago, New York and other population centers under the same fallacy, so the only conclusion I can come to for this request is that the president wishes to declare war on the American people and to send an occupying force to areas of the country that he deems are not sufficiently supportive of his administration.
This is the United States of America, where disagreeing with the president is not a crime. Donald Trump may wish that this country more closely resembles places like Russia, North Korea and El Salvador, where masked agents of the state can kidnap people off the street at will, but here in the United States the Constitution guarantees due process, Habeas Corpus, and the like.
Free societies do not have a secret police, and if you were to aid the president in this endeavor you would be complicit in transforming the United States from a free and open society into an authoritarian personalist dictatorship.
Not to belabor the point, but I will leave you with a few excerpts from the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson listed these charges against the king as justification for why the colonists were demanding their independence, but if I were to just read these to you today with no context at all, you’d think they were describing the actions of Donald Trump and I think that should give you pause:
- He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
- He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
- He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
- He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
- He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
- He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
- For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.
- For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.
- For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.
- For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.
- For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.
- He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.
Micah Kagan
Kamas