Operation Choke Point: Choking the Free Market and Breathing Life Into Tyranny

Greetings.

Let's talk about Operation Choke Point. First of all, what is it? Essentially, it is a Department of Justice (DOJ) program that is aimed at putting pressure on banks and other lending and financial institutions to dissuade them from doing business with so-called "high-risk" or "reputation risk" industries. These industries include, but are not limited to:

-ammunition sales
-gun sales
-fireworks sales
-prostitution and escort services
-dating sites

It should be pointed out from the get-go that most, if not all, of these services are legal, if not morally wholesome or socially desirable. Banks thus have a protected right to do business with them.

It should also be pointed out that, as of today, the United States House of Representatives, in an increasingly rare moment of actually representing the people who elected them, has voted to defund Operation Choke Point as a whole. While the likelihood of this measure clearing the Senate and getting President Obama's signature once it reaches his desk is pathetically low, the U.S. House should be applauded for its fortitude and honorability in doing the right thing.

http://www.conservativeactionalerts.com/2014/05/house-defunds-doj-choke-point-bullying-operation/

Predictably, conservatives and other right-leaning citizens will look at this and immediately be outraged over the fact that the firearms industry is being targeted; and rightfully so. Any infringement on the Second Amendment, to include targeting gun sellers and their banks, should be met with no small measure of righteous indignation.

However, there is also another aspect of this that every American, regardless of their position on guns or any other single issue, should be equally outraged over. I speak of the power, usurped by government, to target any industry with any set of arbitrary regulations for the purpose of "choking" that industry out of existence by over-regulating its financiers.

From top to bottom, "Operation Choke Point" is about as tyrannical as it gets. First of all, nowhere in the U.S. Constitution nor in any founding document nor in any written piece of parchment by a Founding Father, is government given ANY authority to use arbitrary regulation and targeting to effectively stifle any legal industry. But yet that is exactly what is happening here.

Second of all, and perhaps even more importantly, who decides which industries are "high-risk" and which aren't? What is the criteria for such a determination? Can the term "high-risk" be applied to any industry that the government deems fitting? What if the right (or wrong) government officials wake up one morning and suddenly determine that industries like organic food producers, religious service providers, book publishers, dairy farmers, and other contributors to society are suddenly "high risk" for one reason or another? Who makes these determinations? Do we, as supposedly "free" citizens, REALLY want one person or even a group of people to have the kind of power to dictate to us what is good for us by crushing industries that they might not find desirable or wholesome?

If the answer to that last question is "no," then here's another question: at what point do we, the people, draw the line and tell government to stop dictating to us, explicitly or implicitly via activities such as Operation Choke Point, what is good for us? Because that is what this is ultimately about. We are ceding more and more of our liberties every day all in the name of safety and security when all it takes is a cursory look at history to point us back to the path of liberty. Benjamin Franklin said it best: "They that would sacrifice essential liberty to purchase a little temporary security deserve neither and will lose both."

And yet we ignore his words.

It's time to take a stand and, in this particular instance, stand with Congress. Write your Senators and encourage them to pass the resolution when it hits the Senate floor. Let's do all we can to preserve economic liberty while a modicum of it still exists.

Let your voice be heard!

Praesent Libero!

-Warren Brisbane