Michelle Lujan Grisham’s gun-banning tyranny is not an isolated case study into the political proclivities of radical leftists.  She just happens to be the latest maniacal dictator to overstep established boundaries designed to limit government control and guarantee the rights of free people.  She is living the dream of all authoritarians, euphorically riding her office to new lows and defying even the simplest logic and common sense – that criminals are the people committing senseless gun violence, and that no order or decree will cause criminals to become peaceful, contributing members of society.

Lujan Grisham announced her abuse of emergency powers, which seeks to ban concealed or open carry of firearms in Bernalillo County (New Mexico’s most populous county), in the company of Albuquerque police chief Harold Medina.  Medina was squishy in his initial response to the order, but now sounds like Bernalillo Sheriff John Allen, who rightly opposes it on grounds of his Constitutional oath.  Deep down inside, I’d bet Medina knows he should have had arrested the governor himself for her flagrant abuse of executive power, and you can bet your bottom dollar the New Mexico State Police is experiencing serious upheaval now that they’ve been put on the spot to enforce tyranny on behalf of such a depraved executive.

Freedom lies with We The People.  John Adams told us the Constitution could only be upheld by a moral and religious people, presumably because only they can exercise the spiritual self-control required to restrain the basic human instinct to control and dominate others.  Benjamin Franklin said we had a Republic, “if you can keep it.”  Lujan Grisham and her deranged ilk, Republican and Democrat alike, are a natural byproduct of our own passivity and unquenchable thirst for more and better stuff, like the next trip, the next promotion, the latest season of a favorite show, and any government cheese that can be acquired.  This is why I capped off my “LIVES” admonition with show up represented by the letter S.  Only the most committed guardians of freedom show up, and in an example like this, ensure their voice is known to the local law enforcement that we will not abide by tyranny and depravation of our natural rights.  Talking to the local law enforcement may be easy depending on where you live today, but that has not always been the case throughout human history.  Talking to the law in some societies has meant convening with the Romans, rendezvousing with the Gestapo, or collaborating with the KGB.  Time is of the essence to make yourself heard.

America was founded by statesmen.

Definition, per Oxford Languages: a skilled, experienced, and respected political leader or figure.

The magistrates we have in office today are often experienced, but experienced in doing evil and committing grievous offenses against the people.  They are rarely skilled at anything of wholesome nature, and respected by none, hence the single-digits approval ratings found for Congress.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were rivals, perhaps what we would call frenemies today.  Adams and Jefferson found themselves on opposing sides of ideological factions in the early days under the Constitution, but together were part of the group we know as founding fathers, who put the interest of the new nation above all, and respected the rights they believe were granted by virtue of being made in God’s image, and thereby deserving dignity and the natural, human rights that follow.  Both men, perhaps divinely, died on July 4, 1826, the 50^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, old and full of years.  Jefferson actually died first, but it is believed Adams, on his deathbed, uttered “only Jefferson remains,” believing he himself would be the first to move on to the afterlife.

Today’s magistrates, with very few exceptions, are not statesmen.  They are reprobates.

Definition: an unprincipled person.

By allowing government oppression to take root one unjust ruling or illegal mandate at a time, we’ve now found ourselves pinned by a boulder so heavy, it requires divine intervention to get out from under here in the year 2023.  A predecessor of Michelle Lujan Grisham wouldn’t have had the guts to issue such a mandate when I was born, not even forty years ago.  It took incremental cuts into the tendons and sinews of our Constitutional framework to erode us to the point that we are begging our law enforcement to get with the program and uphold the law, and why we are now having to circulate The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates to re-educate our own citizens as to what their rights are.

Lujan Grisham was given an inch, and now takes a mile, or even more.  Her special emergency powers animate her to greater evil, and if this is not contained, a county-wide 30-day ban will be expanded by executive order to apply indefinitely, and to all of New Mexico’s 33 counties.  The totalitarian left and Vichy right conspire together to move the proverbial football down the field one cloud of dust at a time, and the surge of America First populism has expedited their plans and forced them into a series of pitiful mistakes, like Lujan Grisham’s and the series of indictments, the first of their kind in history, against an American president.

Statesmen are not born.  They are made.  Our founding fathers were either home educated, or educated in classical academies, where they learned language, history, mathematics, and philosophy.  They were so appraised on the failures of the Old World, which itself had made progress in the field of freedom from the divine rule of kings, that those very lessons were used to influence our early founding documents, from the Declaration, to the Articles of Confederation, to the Constitution.  These banners of freedom took wisdom and shrewdness to author and were underpinned by the courage of those who came forth with them at risk of their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.

What are we doing to become statesmen?  If we already consider ourselves as such, what are we doing to mint more statesmen?  We will never replace the Lujan Grishams, Lombardos, Whitmers, and Kemps of the magistrate world if we do not contribute a supply of potential statesmen to the world of self-government.  Local statesmen are required to pursue violations of freedom and liberty, and to stand in defense of rights in all 3,143 county equivalents in this nation, throughout all 50 states and Washington, D.C., and our five overseas territories.  We do not yet have them, and must continue to push for them, educating them in the ways of a free people.

Here is a checklist for you and your family.

Have You?

­___Read the Bible cover to cover

___Read the Declaration of Independence

___Read the Constitution

___Met your county commissioners

___Met your chief of police

___Met your Sheriff

___Met your State Representative and Senator

___Registered to vote

___Registered all like-minded friends and family to vote

___Attended county meetings

___Picked a role in LIVES

___Detached from the left’s economy

___Expanded your library

Conclusion

The list above is incomplete, but is a great way to get started reforming your existing thoughts and beliefs that may have allowed complacency, the enemy of liberty, to set in.  That attitude of complacency, compounded throughout a dense population, has left us vulnerable to the whims of tyrants.  We must create an army of statesmen who are able to defend their views with virtue, intelligence, candor, wit, and historical reflection if we are to transform the realm of self-government.  That begins with you, right now, and where you are.

Author’s [Seth Keshel’s] Note: I was driven to write this after spending an evening disgusted over increasingly authoritarian behavior.  This checklist, as with all to-do items, is open to all my SubStack subscribers.  I am, however, an independent voice in this fight for freedom and am self-funded.  If you find my work worthwhile and are able, I would be grateful for your paid membership to this journal.  Thank you!