At a press conference on August 12th, 1986, President Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” I remember the media went into quite a tizzy at that quote; even then, the legacy media (which is pretty much all there was) was wholly partisan. Now, the Mises Caucus presents another example of someone being confronted by a government agent who is just there “to help.”
When this citizen opened the door to find these three (two FBI agents and one county Sheriff’s deputy) at his door, he should have replied with two questions:
“Do you have a warrant?”
“Am I being detained?”
Since these three would have had to answer “no” to both of those, the next statement would be, “In that case, please vacate my property immediately, or I will have you charged with trespassing.” That is where this encounter should have ended.
But since that didn’t happen, let’s parse through the statements made by these officers.
At the outset, the unseen citizen did the right thing in insisting these officers identify themselves. But he did continue to engage.
“I’m here to talk to you,” the primary agent (at least, the one who did the most talking and who does not give his name in the video) began, “…to see if you can give us a little help.”
When asked, “On what?” the primary says, “I can discuss it, but we need to sit down and talk first.”
snitches get stitches! now get off my property!