The Cadet was home last week.

It was nice having her back in Le Château de Lieberman, even if it was only for a brief period of time. Incidentally, what Sandy and I are really looking forward to is Thanksgiving… Carolyn is about to turn 30 and Chaney is about to turn 21… Thanksgiving itself sort of spans the distance between their two respective birthdays, and we have decided to have a full-on family reunion in Vegas this year. Having both girls under our locus of control will be nice, if somewhat illusory. They are their own women, and Sandy and I cannot be prouder.

During her stay we had a short discussion about Napoleon of all people.

Yeah… that Napoleon… Bonaparte, not to be confused with the movie of the same name.

At West Point, Napoleon is sort of an adopted “national hero”. His military tactics, as well as his penchant for sheer audacity, is something the United States Army has decided is worth emulating amongst its officer corps.

Now full disclosure: There are many people across this planet who have a decidedly loathsome regard to Napoleon. They have good reason too. As a military leader, he was (for the most part) extremely successful. Well… there was Waterloo, but we can overlook that for a bit. Waterloo should be remembered for the battle, not necessarily for the Abba song.

In any event, when a military leader is “successful”, that sort of presupposes that a bunch of people with whom he came in contact with were “unsuccessful”. Magnify that beyond the simple corporate structure of a military and expand that to an entire continent, or multiple continents, that means there is a boatload of people who found themselves on the receiving end of his army.

I had asked her, “Do you guys actually study his tactics from the perspective of implementing them in tomorrow’s army, or do you just do a historic analysis of what he did?”

She responded by saying essentially a “little of both”. Clearly, the weapons we have available today are far more advanced than early nineteenth century arms, but there are lessons he can teach us that transcend the specifics of a particular battle space, regardless of time or location.

I found this interesting, and, to be frank, it resonated with me. I thoroughly appreciate the benefits of seeing history and learning lessons from those who have come before us.

This somewhat obtuse journey leads us to a controversy that is near and dear to many of you good readers: The Attorney General of California, “The Bonta”, doxxing that vast majority of you.

Napoleon was a phenomenal military leader. That much is certain. He was also a phenomenal administrator. That honestly is his enduring legacy. He set up systems of social organizations throughout Europe, Africa, and even in the southern portion of the United States that still endure to this day. Part of that enduring legacy is firm belief in the institutional validity of… well… the “institution”.

Evidently California did not read the memo.

A few months back someone at the Supreme Court released a draft copy of the Dobbs decision drafted by Justice Alito. There are vast conspiracy theories as to who the culprit actually was, ranging from disgruntled clerks, to Alito himself (this last one is the most intriguing to me, incidentally). Regardless of who did it, it did send a message: “Don’t like the hand you’ve been dealt by the institution? Go vigilante, and do your own shit.”

Whether the release of the draft was to prepare the American population for the decision that was coming (the Alito self-leak theory)… or it was done as a means of politically influencing the justices (the liberal clerk theory), most people have adopted that it was done for the purposes of changing the imminent opinion.

The Bonta and his demons at DOJ were evidently taking cues from this as well.

A couple of weeks ago, The Bonta proudly put up on the DOJ website data about firearms ownership, CCW permit holders, and those who registered their “assault weapons”. This dissemination of information had been planned and was done pursuant to a new statute. The goal was to provide empirical data to anti-gun researchers at various academic institutions to prove how wonderful life would be if we could only keep guns out of the hands of subjects and where they rightfully belong: in possession of the State.

Then the Supremes threw a monkey wrench into the whole process. They released a decision (NYRPA) that potentially can affect every single piece of gun control legislation that exists at both the state and federal level.

The Bonta and Governor Haircut and their hoplophobe minions were livid. Their entire raison d’être has been the disarmament of the population and now the Supremes were saying essentially, “you can’t do that”.

So… on the fateful day the information was to be released, the DOJ did just that… they released it. All of it, including the names, addresses, and phone numbers of everyone who has had a CCW since 2011. Information, that under law must remain secure and confidential, was just thrown out there, flapping in the breeze… and downloadable to boot.

People who had received CCWs because estranged former spouses had made specific violent threats against them had all of their personal information released. Law enforcement officers, both state and federal that had received CCWs, now had their home addresses released so the violent offenders whom they had brought to justice could track them down for a little bit of retribution.

The Bonta was quickly made aware of the problem, and did take action…

Twelve hours later.

Law enforcement agencies that had provided these CCWs to their former employees and the general public were pissed… really, really pissed. They demanded answers from the DOJ.

The DOJ began circling the wagons. They refuse to talk, even to this day. It has become a cluster f#$k of biblical proportions, and all evidence suggests it was done for one single purpose: piss off CCW holders and gun owners for having the temerity to demand their Constitutional rights.

But, hey! All is good! Many of you probably received a letter from the DOJ telling you they are giving you free credit monitoring for a year! So yeah… you’ve got that going for you.

I have said (here in these pages for that matter), that the rule of law and the Constitution have been largely ignored by both political parties. My assumption has always been the Constitution has been seen as an impediment to particular political and social initiatives of various groups.

We are now witnessing the wholesale dismantling of the Constitution for one single reason: grievance. The government itself, unsatisfied that authoritarianism is coming to fruition at too slow of a speed, has taken upon itself to engage in extra-judicial, extra-Constitutional conduct for the basest of all reasons:

Revenge.

Somewhere, in some part of the world, a New Duke of Wellington is listening to an Abba song.