Democrats and the rest of the left get stumped by the reality of cause and effect.
Ariddle posed simply as a philosophical paradox to stimulate discussion among thinkers of the day dates back to ancient Greece; that riddle proffered, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” Paramount to contemplating questions of life stimulated by such philosophical thinking was understanding the law of cause and effect.
Science eventually provided the riddle’s answer, determining the egg came first. A bird—not quite a chicken and thus considered a “proto-chicken”—laid an egg containing a genetic mutation, creating the DNA of the first true chicken.
An analysis of cause and effect is always critical to help resolve problems created as a consequence. Undertaking causes can sometimes unintentionally create negative effects; other times, the consequences may be foreseeable, thus creating an obligation to take action beforehand to limit the negative impact.
In a recent social posting by New York City’s socialist Democrat mayor, Zohran Mamdani, he made no effort to reflect upon cause and effect. His anti-America post came after ICE arrested a city employee, asserting the act represented an “assault on our democracy.”
By Mamdani’s post, the reader assumed an innocent New Yorker was wrongly apprehended. Of no concern to the mayor was why he was taken into custody—i.e., he was an illegal alien with an arrest for assault detained by ICE to examine his status.
Although reasons for the arrested man’s detention were justified, Mamdani’s only interest was in posting his kneejerk reaction to ICE doing its federally mandated job of arresting those who have violated our immigration laws.
While Mamdani’s post was irresponsible by failing to provide an explanation as to why ICE did what it did, an even more outrageous observation on a different matter was made by an official in another state. Arizona’s Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes effectively created an 1881 “O.K. Corral” shooting environment for locals by sanctioning the killing of ICE agents. Unbelievably, Mayes, citing the state’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law as justification, suggested that residents encountering masked ICE agents and feeling endangered had the right to shoot them. But nothing in that law justifies a citizen’s use of deadly force against a law enforcement officer in the line of duty. One would think too, as attorney general, Mayes would have explained, while the defensive law was meant to empower action when a victim’s space was being invaded, it would probably be inapplicable when the space of the ICE agent was being invaded by protesters.
Without any clarification, Mayes added to the confusion with the statement, “It’s kind of a recipe for disaster because you have these masked federal officers with very little identification, sometimes no identification, wearing plain clothes and masks.”
Sadly, on January 24, another ICE-involved killing occurred in Minneapolis. The victim was Alex Pretti and, while the media was quick to portray him as totally innocent, we are learning he was a member of the anti-ICE Signal chat group responsible for coordinating operations against the agency.
Shooting details remain sketchy but it is known he carried a gun and two magazines. It begs the question whether someone so armed was there to peacefully protest. A struggle ensued, during which Pretti was shot and killed.
Despite the shooting, Mayor Jacob Frey saw no need to warn the public to avoid ICE operations or to designate a safe area away from the ICE operations for protesters to demonstrate. Instead, he foolishly asked questions intent on dodging any responsibility on his part for what happened:
How many more residents, how many more Americans need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end? How many more lives need to be lost before this administration realizes that a political and partisan narrative is not as important as American values? How many times must local and national leaders plead with you, Donald Trump, to end this operation and recognize that this is not creating safety in our city?
Frey failed to ask a question, the obvious answer to which would restore the safety he supposedly sought for his city. That question is, “What can I as mayor do to prevent confrontations between ICE agents doing their job and residents opposed to them doing it?”
Frey totally ignored the fact that while Trump does his job as president, ridding our country of illegal aliens, the mayor fails to do his job to ensure the safety of his citizens. Doing so entails warning them against interfering with legal ICE operations and limiting their protesting to distant safe areas.
The failure of Frey and other state and local officials to do this explains why ICE agents have suffered a 1,300% increase in assaults, a 3,200% increase in vehicle attacks, and an 8,000% increase in death threats.
Boiled down to its common denominator, the incidents occurring between ICE agents and anti-ICE activists put two U.S. Constitutional rights into conflict. While anti-ICE activists do have a First Amendment right to protest, ICE agents are within their legal right to perform their federally-mandated duty to arrest illegal aliens. It is that same Constitution that, through the Supremacy Clause, mandates conflicting rights (as long as their congruent with the Constitution), bend to federal authority. This is the point that state and local officials have a responsibility to impress upon their citizens, offering the means by which both groups can effectively exercise their rights.
As evidenced by Mamdani with the arrest of his illegal alien employee, rather than warning NYC citizens about ICE rightfully being able to do so, he rushes to attack it. Yet it is this—the disrespect for U.S. law such aliens exhibit by illegally crossing our borders and automatically triggering ICE’s right to remove them—that Mamdani and other state and local officials choose to totally ignore. It is the cause of ICE doing what it rightfully has to do that creates the risk effect of injury or death to anti-ICE protesters who have chosen to disrespect U.S. law as well by aggressively interfering with ICE operations.
For years now, there have been laws mandating manufacturers provide warnings about their products that may not be known to the public. While the public should be well aware of what risks are undertaken by interfering with an ICE operation, there is a lack of accountability on the part of state and local government officials by their failure to forewarn about this.
Some states recognize the crime of “murder by omission.” It arises when a person with a duty to act to prevent the death of others fails to do so. No better example is befitting of state and local officials failing to so act to warn against public interference with ICE operations or to provide a safe area for protesters to demonstrate than the actions of those in Minneapolis.
It took time for the first, modern chicken to evolve. How much more time needs to pass and how many more ICE/protester victim lives claimed before common sense evolves among our political leaders?
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