Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers is making me wonder about the district that has continually reelected him for the last forty-four years. He made the news last week when he said on the floor of the Senate that “my ISIS is the police.”
Nebraska Watchdog – “I would tell young people: If you tell somebody to go across the world to fight for ISIS, they can put you in jail if you just talk about it. If you want to fight injustice, don’t — you don’t have to go around the world to find the ISIS mentality, your ISIS is in America. And you’re likely to die over there, one way or the other. So if you’re going to die, die making your home safe. My home is not threatened by ISIS, mine is threatened by the police. The police are licensed to kill us: Children, old people.”
National Review – “If I was going to carry a weapon, it wouldn’t be against you, it wouldn’t be against these people who come here that I might have a dispute with. Mine would be for the police,” he said. “And if I carried a gun I’d want to shoot him first and then ask questions later, like they say the cop ought to do.”
Nebraska Watchdog – The state lawmaker froma Omaha defiantly stood Thursday on the floor of the Nebraska Legislature and rejected many of his colleagues’ calls for him to apologize — or even resign — for comparing cops to ISIS terrorists and suggesting he’d shoot a cop if he weren’t nonviolent and had a gun.
“I meant what I said and I said what I meant,” Chambers said.
He said the irony is that lawmakers were discussing freedom of expression on Wednesday, and said it was ignorant and “idle talk” to suggest taking any kind of legal action, since lawmakers are immune from civil or criminal liability in connection with anything they say in the Legislature.
“I’m not going to resign,” he said. “I’m not going to apologize. Why do you think I would apologize?”
For two hours, senators took to the microphone to talk about what they thought of Chambers’ comments, which were made last week during a legislative hearing on a gun bill that would allow people to carry concealed guns in bars.
State Sen. Beau McCoy of Omaha led the charge, saying he’ll stand up every day and demand a “strong denouncement” and apology, noting Thursday morning that two police officers were killed in other states in the past 48 hours.
Sanders seems to be an eccentric person. His appearance on the floor of the Senate is disrespectful (see above photo) and he has had some very odd moments in recent years. In 2007 he made the news for suing God in an effort to stop natural disasters. His suit asked for “a permanent injunction ordering Defendant to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.” He cited that the “defendant directly and proximately has caused, inter alia, fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues…”
The lawsuit was dismissed when the judge ruled that because the defendant has no address, legal papers cannot be served.
Sanders’ attitude toward the police is a prime example of why there continues to be violent confrontations between thugs and the police. Since he’s been reelected for more than four decades I’m sure he has the respect of his community, largely black, and his outrageous attitudes are likely not going unnoticed by his young, male constituents. Like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, Sanders is throwing gasoline on the fire and seemingly doing everything he can to perpetuate the violence.
While the Nebraska Senate has disowned his remarks and continually asked him to apologize, who is it that is being castigated by others for his remarks about encounters with the police? Why, Franklin Graham, of course!
Last week, Franklin Graham made a post on his Facebook page, addressing the violence and offering a solution to avoid being in a police shooting.
Graham’s remarks make perfect sense. How many people would still be alive if they had simply followed a police officer’s instructions instead of attacking them? But apparently, such logic is not welcomed by all, and Graham was rebuked strongly in an open letter.
The Blaze – Writer and faith leader Lisa Sharon Harper, among others, subsequently dismissed Graham’s post as “short” and “patronizing,” noting that pastors and the faithful who are opposed to its sentiment came together to write an open letter rebuking the faith leader.
“We didn’t know if our words would resonate. We only knew the truth that we must speak in response to Graham’s outsized influence coupled with apparent ignorance,” Harper wrote in an op-ed describing the letter. “In the end, a broad representation of national evangelical leaders agreed to sign this letter to Graham as principal signatories.”
She said that Graham’s comments wouldn’t be tolerated and that faith leaders across the nation felt compelled to speak out.
“We will not tolerate this type of flippant, patronizing commentary from faith leaders on critical issues that mean life and death for many in the body of Christ and in communities across America,” she wrote. “We won’t tolerate it, even one more day.”
Faith leaders who signed the letter said it isn’t really all that simple, telling Graham that his words were “paternalistic” and have “hurt and influenced thousands.”
“You have sinned against us, fellow members of the body of Christ,” the letter reads.
You can read the letter in its entirety here.
With faith leaders such as these it is no wonder that so many seem to share the belief espoused by Ernie Sanders, that the police in our communities are America’s ISIS. I challenge any of these so-called leaders to find even one instance of police in our country slicing off someone’s head with a knife, raping and murdering children, burning people alive or lining up hundreds of people and murdering them with machine-gun fire. If they truly believe the police here are as bad as ISIS then clearly, they need a field trip to the Middle East to experience the real thing. I’m sure ISIS would welcome them with sharpened knives.
What this all comes down to is personal responsibility. If people such as Michael Brown and Eric Garner, who both died in encounters with the police, had obeyed lawful instructions given them by armed police officers, they would still be alive today and we would not know their names. But instead, they chose to disobey, to fight, to resist. They gambled with their lives and lost. But somehow it’s the fault of the police? Thugs disobey lawful orders and fight the police, then these faith ‘leaders’ and other pariahs of society blame the police for the consequences.
Personal responsibility is a thing of the past for the thugs of society and thug-apologists like these so-called faith leaders.
I read the entire letter that was written to Franklin Graham and not one word of it disputes his simple admonition that following a police officer’s instructions will get you out of the encounter alive. Instead, the letter claims that resistance is warranted due to ongoing racial injustices. Indeed, fighting with a police officer and getting killed will solve that problem. Ridiculous.
These faith leaders have done nothing with this letter but further fan the flames of animosity. With this letter they are telling those who listen to them that they are right to resist the police, to fight with them and to attack them. More people will get killed, and probably some police, and those who penned this letter will bear some of the blame for all of it. I suppose it’s hard for their followers to learn personal responsibility when the leaders exercise none themselves.
The next time Ernie Sanders is pulled over for speeding he should thank his lucky stars that it will be by a police officer instead of a member of ISIS. Unless he chooses to attack the officer he’ll get out of the encounter with just a warning or a speeding ticket instead of a knife slicing into his neck.
Sanders and these faith leaders seem to be devoid of personal responsibility themselves. Not only do they make incendiary comments, but they use their positions of influence to send a message to their constituents and followers that the police are evil and will kill them if they don’t kill the police first. With such people leading their communities it should come as no surprise when we continue to have Michael Browns and Eric Garners who think they can fight with the police and not end up in the morgue. With this letter to Graham, that seems to be what these faith leaders want.
It appears that common sense has been completely forsaken in our country. What Franklin Graham wrote is the embodiment of common sense, yet so many seem to take offense at the truth it contains. And we wonder why America is in the shape it is in?
I think it goes hand in hand with the attitude of so many on the left who are just looking for ways in which they can claim to be offended. These people and those who listen to them are just waiting for every opportunity to scream racism or police brutality, even when all the evidence says otherwise.