Congress has made us helpless before whoever is terrifying the populace in New Jersey, writes Andrew P. Napolitano. This is contrary to the reason for which we have government.
A drone hovering during a training program in 2017 at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia. (U.S. Air Force/Eugene Oliver, Public domain)
The skies over New Jersey have been littered with strange flying objects during the past two weeks; and the feds are either hiding the truth from terrified folks on the ground or scratching their collective heads along with the rest of us.
Since early December, there have been between 3,000 and 5,000 reports of large drones — some about the size of a pickup truck. They have three or four arms, at the ends of which are very bright lights.
The drone I saw over the northwest tip of the state appeared to come toward me and then stood perfectly still. Then — in a heartbeat — it was gone. I didn’t immediately call the police but spoke with them through back channels. The New Jersey State Police dispatched a helicopter — manned by two troopers — to pursue this beast but not to interfere with it.
As their helicopter approached, the drone fled from them and seemed to disappear.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy — who had no use for the Bill of Rights during the pandemic four years ago — sees no threat to public safety or public peace. The White House — which must know the origin and nature of these things — also professes ignorance. President-elect Donald Trump — in this instance, a man after my own heart — opined that if this happens on his watch, he’d order the drones shot down.
? Trump addresses the drone sightings pic.twitter.com/nmgS22WXSc
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) December 13, 2024
Don’t expect that from President Joe Biden. Remember the two weeks during which we all watched a huge Chinese “weather” balloon make its way from Alaska to South Carolina, only to have it shot down over the Atlantic? That was a manifestation of the Biden attitude about strange and terrifying flying objects.
Can folks shoot these beasts out of the sky? The uncomfortable answer is: yes and no.
Here is the backstory.
As recently as 2008, the Supreme Court has made it clear that the right to self-defense is pre-political. Stated differently, it is a natural right that existed before the government, it exists in the absence of government, it derives from our humanity and the government cannot abridge it absent due process.
It is also expressly protected by the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Thus, since this natural right is akin to the freedom of speech and religion, neither legislation nor executive command nor even a constitutional change can take this right away.
Only due process — a jury trial at which the government proves personal individual fault — can interfere with a natural right. A thief who robs a bank has violated the natural rights of the depositors and owners of the bank. The thief has given up his natural right to be free and, upon conviction, loses that right for a term of years.
Short of this voluntary waiver of rights by impairing the rights of another, natural rights are real and permanent.
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Thomas Jefferson recognized this when he wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we are “endowed by (our) Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” He went on to argue that the reason we have established governments is to protect our natural rights — and when the government fails to do so, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.
In the same Supreme Court opinion in which the court held that self-defense is a natural right, the late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that individuals can defend themselves using the same mechanical or technological means as bad guys do or as the government does. This was not always the case.
From 1934 until the Scalia opinion in 2008, the court had embraced the myth that the right to self-defense is collective and not individual. Stated differently, under this now rejected and farcical big-government theory, only the government can protect you.
Since the Scalia opinion, individuals can protect themselves from bad guys and from the government when it fails to protect natural rights.
Now, back to the drones over New Jersey.
The same Supreme Court that ruled that self-defense is a personal natural individual right has also ruled that all power in the federal government comes from the Constitution and from no other source. Nowhere in the Constitution did the states give up to Congress control of safety in the airspace over your house.
Scalia during a congressional hearing in May 2010. (Stephen Masker, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Yet, Congress has given itself the power to control air safety and then gave it away to a federal administrative agency, which is also unmentioned in the Constitution. Stated differently, Congress has purported to emasculate the powers of the states to protect the folks in the states.
This explains the reluctance of the New Jersey State Police and even the New York Police Department to disable or capture or chase away these drones.
Congress has made us helpless before whomever is terrifying the populace. This is contrary to the reason for which we have government. The states formed the federal government and not the other way around. When they did so, they delegated only 16 discrete powers to it, and they retained all other powers. Among the powers retained is public safety.
Can Congress negate the power of the states to protect us and simultaneously negate the right of all persons to protect themselves? The short answer is: NO. The lamentable answer is we have allowed Congress to do so.
Will I shoot down the next drone that flies over my home when the state claims it cannot do so and the feds tell me to mind my own business? If I did, I’d be responsible for the natural and probable consequences of such an act, including personal injury and property damage to those on the ground.
The better way to address this is for the states to chase and capture these devices, in defiance of an incompetent federal government. If they won’t, I might just take my chances with a New Jersey jury.
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, was the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel and hosts the podcast Judging Freedom. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
Published by permission of the author.
COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
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The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs…
You Americans….you only can only see through your narrow American lens. “They” are trying to send YOU a frikkin’ message!
Stop Bombing people for Chrissake. Stop raining death from above! Stop killing Children. It’s near Christmas right?
You know..Prince of Peace and all that.
They’re there.
The government is plainly lying to us. “We don’t know what they are or who is operating them. But there is no danger.” Even a child can see through this fallacy. This stinks of a psychological operation, to get us further accustomed to being surveilled and lied to. That is the problem with what is going on. It is not a military training operation. The military has its own ranges that it can use for firing artillery, flying drones, whatever. They do not need to fly over civilian airspace and cause problems at civilian airports in order to train.
Maybe the Biden regime has lost something it has promised another disreputable regime, maybe a dirty bomb destined for Kiev has gone missing? You know, a dirty bomb sent by the Ukrainians by drone at Moscow in the next few weeks, just the sort of stupid prank the ‘intelligence’ agencies would dream up to expand the war a bit. The bankers really, really need a big war about now.
God help small private airplanes flying in New Jersey airspace.
@jvs:
aren’t small private airplanes enough
of a nuisance in and of themselves?
large amounts of CO2 emissions etc.
N.S.A. practicing…
Much as the federal government INDIRECTLY violates the First Amendment by demanding censorship of those who publicly disagree with Official Narratives on social media (Twitter/X, Facebook, YouTube), the drones are probably the federal government INDIRECTLY violating the Fourth Amendment by collecting data from contracted drone companies on American citizens. Getting warrants is obviously beyond the federal government’s ability (and Kiriakou notes they have immunity anyway). Whether this is just a pilot study to see what data can be collected (the NSA involved?), or something more directed (maybe to induce a law against private citizen drones?) is unclear.
Our grinning federal clowns assuring us that we are safe and that they have no idea what the drones are doing makes this just another game they are playing to rescind the Constitution and increase their control. For our own good of course.
Is the judge implying through innuendo that the hysterical media and political circus in reaction to what was in fact a Chinese weather balloon was justified? That the federal government needed to waste a million dollars on a Sidewinder missile in order to shoot it down? Did I really read that part of the article correctly? Sad to see piss takes like these making their way to Consortium News. This is exactly the same kind of garbage that Russiagate was built on. No, in fact a weather balloon was exactly what it was. The notion that a space-age modern industrial country which regularly sends its own satellites into space needs to rely on ancient 19th century technology to commit espionage is nothing but idiotic, chauvinistic war propaganda.
So now this site now openly supports vigilantism?
Wait till people start missing their Amazon drone deliveries because some citizen with a shotgun thought that it was some sort of commie spy device.
Of course, this same ‘libertarian’ judge would say that the government has every right to fly helicopters and now drones over your house and property to scan your house with infrared to make sure you are not illegally generating heat, and to make sure that no ‘government-declared-illegal-plants’ are growing in your garden. And that if you dared to shoot down one of these drones, you’d be a serious criminal and worthy of time in a federal prison. I largely suspect that soon the drones will be acting as communication relays to enforce the libertarian cameras in your bedroom to make sure that you are not committing the wrong sort of sexual acts with the wrong sort of people. So, be careful that you only shoot down the government unapproved drones and not the government approved drones. And definitely don’t shoot at the government communication monitoring blimps over major cities.
Only shoot down the commie spy drones, please.
Huh? A conservative extolling the purported virtues of Trump and Scalia’s infamous misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment, on Consortium News? Did Joe Lauria lose a bet or what? I could go to the NRA or MAGA websites if I needed those viewpoints…
At the end of this article it says: “The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.” That is there for a reason. We are committed to presenting a diversity of viewpoints. But we obviously do not agree with that interpretation of the Second Amendment, which is only part of the focus of this article. Had it been you would not have read it here. Consortium News is strongly in favor of gun control measures, particularly for a ban on assault weapons.
I am surprised that the NRA does not appear to have followed its usual practice of claiming credit for the latest Republican election win.
The second amendment has nothing to do with personal self-defense. What part of “a well regulated militia” is so difficult to understand? Also did Jefferson write that line about life, liberty, etc. before or after he raped Sally Hemmings, among others?
If someone or something invades the airspace above your property, it is not only your right, but your duty to protect it. Shoot them all and let the Beloved Creator sort it out.
Does that include that New Jersey State Patrol Helicopter that flew into the airspace above his private property?
The key point is that this society regularly violates a citizens airspace and privacy in such a manner on a basis that is so routine that this ‘libertarian’ judge celebrates a government spy craft over his property.
At the very least, be very careful what you shoot at. Many of the things that can invade your personal airspace are either government owned and operated, or at least have government approval to invade you, If you shoot at them, then a libertarian judge will send you to prison for damaging government property and possibly something like obstruction of justice.
I always love your podcasts, Judge Napolitano! But, in this case, I disagree. I don’t think you should shoot one down just for being in the sky near your home. The threat that justifies self-defense needs to be clear and unambiguous. We shouldn’t be allowed to shoot just because we FEEL threatened. If we can base that decision on a feeling, then somebody’s going to shoot a big tall and completely innocent black guy walking down the street because they FEEL threatened.
The person or drone, in order to be legitimately shot in self-defense, needs to have done something threatening besides just simply existing in the skies above Judge Napolitano’s neighborhood.
I don’t know if this will ease your mind any, but, I think they’re most likely US drones.
IF they were spy drones, there wouldn’t be so many. A primary objective of spies is to be discreet. Sending such large numbers of them is NOT discreet.
If they are war drones from a foreign country, they would have already done some damage. You don’t just practice or train in foreign territory. However, you do train in domestic territory.
Therefore, far and away the most likely explanation is that the US military is training up their drone pilots and, of course, lying about it.
So, the scary thing is, they’re still serious about war mongering. They haven’t accepted the multi-polar world. They still want to dominate and, knowing that the US does NOT like its soldiers coming home in boxes, they are training up on remote control fighting.
UNLESS this is some billionaire’s idea of Christmas lights.
Your idea that they are US drones begs the question of why they are doing this. And just because they are US drones, does that make them exempt? No, makes it even more scary if you know what some of these lunatics have in mind for us.