Keeping with the theme of lies from the left...
By Henry Percy
In August 2012, Fareed Zakaria wrote a piece for Time magazine in which he asserted that "gun violence in America is off the chart compared with every other country on the planet. The gun homicide rate per capita in the U.S. is 30 times that of Britain and Australia."
Because the arguments he made then are being parroted anew in the drive for gun control, his assertions cry out for examination in light of the facts. To start, why would he single out the "gun homicide" rate rather than the total homicide rate? I know a couple whose son was beaten on the back of the head with a tire iron. While his parents are bitter that neither offender was charged, I never heard them say, "Well, at least Tom was murdered with a blunt instrument rather than a gun."
Unfortunately, Mr. Zakaria neglects to document the sources for his facts, if indeed they are facts. Though holding a PhD from Yale and serving as a trustee for that institution, he does not recognize plagiarism when he commits it -- he issued an "unapologetic apology" for stealing much of his article and was suspended from publishing in Time for a month. Well, he did not call it stealing, merely a "terrible mistake ... a serious lapse." But he will be happy to talk to your Rotary Club -- his fee is only $75,000.
Let's look at homicide rates as reported in the 2011 Global Study on Homicide, conducted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The latest year with the most complete data is 2008, used here. The total homicide rate for the US was 4.1 times that of the UK and 4.5 times that for Australia. Still not good, but nowhere close to the "30 times" Mr. Zakaria laments.
The UN Global Study has data on 187 countries, ranging from a high of 61.3 per 100,000 in Honduras to 0 in Palau. Where was the United States? Number 99, with 5.4 homicides per 100,000. Over half the countries in the world had a homicide rate higher than ours.
Homicide in Developed Countries
Because admitting that the US homicide rate is low compared to over half the world's countries would undercut their arguments, gun-controllers instead compare us to "rich" or "developed" nations -- carefully cherry picked, of course. I cannot count how many articles I have read about the rapid expansion of the middle-class in Mexico, about Brazil's status amongst the rapidly rising BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China), etc. Mexico's homicide rate in 2008 was 2.4 times greater than that of the US, Brazil's 4.2 times greater. Somehow these countries are ignored when someone like Mr. Zakaria wants to make a point.
Of course, statistics always need qualification. For instance, the murder rate in the US would be higher were it not for the improvement in emergency room procedures in the past 10 years alone. On the other hand, homicides for many Third World countries are understated for a variety of reasons: they lack reliable, centralized databases, people are hesitant to report crimes to a corrupt police force, and so on. In addition, governments have plenty of incentive to understate their homicide rates, such as encouraging investment or not scaring away tourists. In short, many of the figures contained in the UN Global Study are probably too low.
Small versus Large Countries
There is another problem with comparing every country on the globe head to head: the vast differences in population size and makeup. For instance, Palau, an island nation in Micronesia, has a population of 21,000 and a homicide rate of zero. They could have two murders next year and suddenly move up to position 68. Comparing a country the size of the US, with 315 million people, to a country the size of Palau makes no sense. I am fairly confident there are many American cities with populations of 20,000 with a homicide rate of zero.
Homicide rates within the US vary tremendously by locality, as data from the US Census Bureau shows. For 2009, the high was 24.2 per 100,000 (District of Columbia) and the low 0.9 (New Hampshire). Moreover, New Hampshire is only half as murderous as Belgium, one of the "rich" or "developed" nations writers like Mr. Zakaria are so fond of comparing us to. In fact, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Utah, and Vermont all have rates lower than Belgium's.
Mr. Zakaria finds a "blindingly obvious causal connection" between "easier access to guns" and homicide rates. If that is so, why does the nation's capital, with some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, have a homicide rate nearly 27 times higher than that of New Hampshire ("Live Free or Die"), which has some of the most permissive gun laws (open carry without license, concealed carry licenses for $10)? Why does Illinois, likewise boasting extremely restrictive gun laws, have a rate over 9 times higher than New Hampshire's? If there is a "blindingly obvious causal connection," could it be that high homicide rates go hand in hand with restrictive gun laws? Or could the problem be with people, human beings, rather than inanimate objects?
Race
Shortly after being sworn in as Attorney General, Eric Holder told an interviewer that the US is "essentially a nation of cowards ... we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about things racial." I don't know if Mr. Holder is an "average American," but here's a small contribution to the national dialogue on "things racial" from the Bureau of Justice Statistics:
In 2008, the homicide victimization rate for blacks (19.6 homicides per 100,000) was 6 times higher than the rate for whites (3.3 homicides per 100,000) ... the offending rate for blacks (24.7 offenders per 100,000) was 7 times higher than the rate for whites (3.4 offenders per 100,000).
Guns from Mexico?
Just before New Years I was channel surfing and paused upon seeing the stern visage of the Rev. Jesse Jackson opining on the 500 murders in Chicago in 2012. He said he was not going to accept that, and added, "These guns come from the suburbs and from Mexico." Mexico? The advocates of gun control have been telling us for years that guns flow from the US to Mexico. While it has always been debatable how many of Mexico's weapons come from America, we do know that well over 2,000 were delivered to the drug cartels courtesy of our own federal government through Operation Fast & Furious. Now we are to believe that the bad guys in Chicago transport weapons across an international border and over 1,300 miles north?
Gun-Free Households
Then there is Amitai Etzioni, University Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University, writing on the Huffington Post. He urges everyone to put up a "gun free" sign in their home, apartment or condo and counsels parents not to allow their children to play in homes without the signs. Can't we just declare the whole world "gun free" and eliminate murder?
David Gregory, in a recent interview on NBC with Wayne LaPierre, head of the National Rifle Association, mocked the notion of posting armed guards in schools. As it happens, Mr. Gregory sends his children to Sidwell Friends School, where the children of presidents traditionally go (Amy Carter and Chelsea Clinton studied there, as do Sasha and Malia Obama). With tuition at $34,000, Sidwell caters to millionaires and billionaires.
The "Friends" in the school's name refers to the Society of Friends (Quakers) who run it. Sidwell has an 11-member security department, many of them police officers (presumably armed, though it is difficult to know). These are in addition to the Secret Service detail that protects the Obamas' two daughters. It is a delicious irony that Quakers, dedicated pacifists, might welcome so many guns in their midst.
Here's a question for Professor Etzioni: Should David Gregory refuse to let his children play with Sasha or Malia because the White House is not gun free? If signs are so effective, here's an opportunity for the president to lead from the front by disarming the Secret Service and hanging "Gun-Free Zone" signs on the railings around the presidential mansion.
The Mentally Ill
What can be done? How about legislation making it easier to commit the mentally ill. Most were deinstitutionalized in the 60s and 70s? Between 1955 and 2000, the number of state psychiatric hospital beds was reduced by 93%. The campaign to release inmates was largely driven by: 1) the belief that the unstable could simply take medications and live in the community; and 2) cases of wrongful committal (yeah, man, the people that are locked up are the only sane ones, man, just watch One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest). Were people wrongfully committed to mental hospitals? No doubt. Are people wrongfully imprisoned? Of course. Is that sufficient reason to dismantle our criminal justice system? Are schizophrenics better off pushing a shopping cart, jibbering to themselves, and sleeping under overpasses? But, someone says, most of the disturbed are harmless. True. But how many Jared Loughners, James Holmeses, and Adam Lanzas can we tolerate wandering around among us?
Getting someone committed in Connecticut is nearly impossible:
Police said they had no evidence Lanza had been medicated when the killings occurred. But even if Lanza had a proven history of mental illness, having him forcibly committed would have been nearly impossible.
Connecticut is one of a handful of states in America that does not have an "assisted outpatient treatment" law. Under AOT laws -- the kind proposed and ignored earlier this year in Connecticut -- states can force a mentally ill person into treatment if there is a risk of harm to others. Without them, states typically cannot institutionalize someone unless they've already done harm to themselves or others.
What organization was largely responsible for defeating the bill to make involuntary commitment easier? The ACLU.
The suggestion that we make involuntary commitment easier raises outcries from advocates of personal freedom on both the right and left. But the sad truth is that the treatment mental professionals offer the severely disturbed is to: 1) prescribe psychotropics and hope they take them; or 2) prescribe psychotropics and institutionalize them, where they are forced to take their meds. The second option is usually impossible due to both the law and the lack of beds.
I know a woman whose highly intelligent son became schizophrenic in college and, without going into specifics, became a serious threat to himself and others. The court ordered him to stay on his medications, which he has -- so far. Will he do so for the rest of his life? Who knows, because the price the drugs exact is greatly diminished mental capacity. He is employed by a large retail chain as a box boy with no hope of advancement. The heartbreaking part is that he knows he has diminished capacity: not long ago he said, "Mom, remember when I used to be smart?" But distressing as his story is, far more tragic is a Jared Loughner or Adam Lanza living freely among us.
Henry Percy is the nom de guerre for a technical writer living in Arizona. He may be reached at saler.50d [at] gmail.com.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Friday, January 25, 2013
Governor Cuomo: Dishonesty is not Enough
All of us here are fully aware of the level of scumbag that highly visible liberals will sink to and we all know what a leftist, reactionary sack of crap Mario jr. is. Wait until the end for the really offensive, in so many ways, comments of "Fast Eddie" Rendell. They must be stopped and we have to use their own rules against them. From this article I see their method as "By any means necessary." OK sounds goos to me.
By William A. Levinson
New York's Governor, Andrew Cuomo, and his predecessor Eliot Spitzer (aka Emperor's Club VIP Client 9), are well known for their dishonesty and lack of integrity. As shown by their own state government's Web site, both fomented malicious, groundless, and frivolous lawsuits whose sole purpose was to harass law-abiding gun manufacturers. The failure of Cuomo's latest anti-gun legislation to exempt police officers proves him incompetent, and amendment of the law to exempt police officers reinforces his dishonesty even further.
Malicious Lawsuits Against the Gun Industry
Client 9, along with then-HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, are on record as orchestrating frivolous and malicious lawsuits whose sole purpose was to harass firearm manufacturers into bankruptcy. This is from Client 9's own Web site (emphasis is mine):
With the action, New York becomes the first state in the nation to sue gun manufacturers.
"For more than a year, we sought to achieve reasonable reforms through negotiations with the gun industry. It is now clear that most manufacturers and wholesalers are unwilling to give up the profits they reap from selling guns into the criminal market. So we must now seek a court to order to do what any good corporate citizen would have done voluntarily, and make our homes, streets and schools safer," said Spitzer, who was joined at a New York City news conference by U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo, anti-gun violence advocates and law enforcement officials.
Spitzer's lawsuit charges nine gun manufacturers, three importers and twelve wholesalers with contributing to and maintaining a public nuisance through ongoing production and distribution practices. Among the manufacturers named are: Glock; Sturm-Ruger; Colt's; Beretta; Taurus; Bryco; and Intratec.
...Secretary Cuomo said, "The gun industry should follow the lead of Smith & Wesson and accept common sense-safety standards to keep guns out of the hands of children and criminals.
...Unlike lawsuits filed by more than 30 cities and counties during the last two years, the Attorney General's case focuses on a statutory provision of New York law that explicitly defines unlawfully-possessed handguns as a public nuisance.
...Specifically, the manufacturers and wholesalers are accused of contributing to and maintaining the public nuisance by engaging in design and distribution practices that place guns in the hands of criminals in New York State.
We agree that an unlawfully-possessed firearm is a public nuisance and even worse, just as an unlawfully-possessed narcotic (controlled substance) is a public nuisance. These items do not, however, fall into the wrong hands through the fault of their manufacturers. Gun manufacturers sell their products to the public only through Federally licensed dealers. FFL dealers who value their licenses do not sell to minors, and they must run background checks to make sure they don't sell to criminals. Pharmaceutical companies sell controlled substances via licensed pharmacists, who in turn require a doctor's prescription before they will hand such items over to a patient. The handful of doctors and pharmacists who engage in drug diversion are held professionally and, in some cases criminally, responsible, but nobody would even think of blaming the manufacturers.
Client 9's and Andrew Cuomo's attempt to sue gun manufacturers, therefore, illustrates their lack of ethics, character, and integrity. Their malicious lawsuit was, by the way, dismissed by a court of law. This fact is particularly telling, and damning as well:
In its suit, New York City contended that the gun makers had made themselves liable under that narrow exception, by failing to monitor firearms retailers closely enough and thus allowing guns to end up in the hands of criminals.
This takes us back to the simple fact that firearms retailers are licensed as such by the Federal Government and, in the absence of disciplinary action such as revocation of an FFL, the manufacturer can reasonably assume the retailer to be in compliance with the law. Cuomo's latest anti-gun legislation has meanwhile proven him incompetent as well as a declared enemy of the entire Second Amendment.
New York Bans Target Pistols and Police Sidearms
We showed previously that New York, under Andrew Cuomo's leadership, has declared war on the entire Second Amendment by banning .22 caliber target pistols that, while theoretically usable for self-defense, are best suited for making inexpensive holes in pieces of paper. Most of these pistols take 10-round or even larger magazines, and are therefore now illegal in New York. Now there is concern that the reckless, slipshod, and irresponsible haste with which New York's legislature enacted its new gun law also outlaws police sidearms that accept more than 7 rounds. Governor Cuomo must now scramble to "clarify" what the law means, and possibly amend his law to exempt the police. This exemption underscores his dishonesty even further.
Cuomo Opposes the Natural Human Right of Self-Defense
When Governor Cuomo argues that only the police should have magazines larger than 7 rounds, he is saying openly that private citizens do not have the natural human right of self-defense. If a private citizen needs to use a handgun for anything other than sporting purposes, he needs it for exactly the same reason a police officer needs it: self-protection against one or more violent aggressors. The only difference between the private citizen and the officer is that the latter has both the duty and the authority to intervene in situations in which it would be ill-advised or even illegal for the citizen to involve himself.
A police officer might have to defend himself from somebody he has challenged for breaking into an unoccupied building, or even from somebody who turns a non-criminal traffic stop into a lethal confrontation. You and I don't even have the authority to compel another driver to pull off the road and stop his vehicle, although we can call 911 to report a drunk or reckless driver. We might, however, have to defend ourselves from one or more violent home invaders. Once the perpetrator(s) initiates deadly violence against either a police officer or a private citizen, the defender has a legitimate need for a weapon that can end the violence. This could be a 9 mm pistol with a 17-round magazine, or a .45 Automatic with one-shot stopping capability. In either situation, the defender should have at least one extra magazine, and should know how to change magazines quickly.
Former PA Governor Rendell Adds Another Layer of Outrage
If Andrew Cuomo's outright dishonesty is not enough, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who also supported frivolous lawsuits against the gun industry, added still more outrage. These words should mobilize all supporters of the Bill of Rights, and alienate his own side in the bargain:
"...the good thing about Newtown is, it was so horrific that I think it galvanized Americans to a point where the intensity on our side is going to match the intensity on their side."
The only "good thing" about the Sandy Hook shooting was the perpetrator's decision to finally rid the human species of himself. The fact that Mr. Rendell finds this brutal crime politically convenient, along with Rahm Emanuel's "Never let a good crisis go to waste," tells us everything we need to know about the other side's ethics, character, and indeed basic humanity.
William A. Levinson, P.E. is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.
By William A. Levinson
New York's Governor, Andrew Cuomo, and his predecessor Eliot Spitzer (aka Emperor's Club VIP Client 9), are well known for their dishonesty and lack of integrity. As shown by their own state government's Web site, both fomented malicious, groundless, and frivolous lawsuits whose sole purpose was to harass law-abiding gun manufacturers. The failure of Cuomo's latest anti-gun legislation to exempt police officers proves him incompetent, and amendment of the law to exempt police officers reinforces his dishonesty even further.
Malicious Lawsuits Against the Gun Industry
Client 9, along with then-HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, are on record as orchestrating frivolous and malicious lawsuits whose sole purpose was to harass firearm manufacturers into bankruptcy. This is from Client 9's own Web site (emphasis is mine):
With the action, New York becomes the first state in the nation to sue gun manufacturers.
"For more than a year, we sought to achieve reasonable reforms through negotiations with the gun industry. It is now clear that most manufacturers and wholesalers are unwilling to give up the profits they reap from selling guns into the criminal market. So we must now seek a court to order to do what any good corporate citizen would have done voluntarily, and make our homes, streets and schools safer," said Spitzer, who was joined at a New York City news conference by U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo, anti-gun violence advocates and law enforcement officials.
Spitzer's lawsuit charges nine gun manufacturers, three importers and twelve wholesalers with contributing to and maintaining a public nuisance through ongoing production and distribution practices. Among the manufacturers named are: Glock; Sturm-Ruger; Colt's; Beretta; Taurus; Bryco; and Intratec.
...Secretary Cuomo said, "The gun industry should follow the lead of Smith & Wesson and accept common sense-safety standards to keep guns out of the hands of children and criminals.
...Unlike lawsuits filed by more than 30 cities and counties during the last two years, the Attorney General's case focuses on a statutory provision of New York law that explicitly defines unlawfully-possessed handguns as a public nuisance.
...Specifically, the manufacturers and wholesalers are accused of contributing to and maintaining the public nuisance by engaging in design and distribution practices that place guns in the hands of criminals in New York State.
We agree that an unlawfully-possessed firearm is a public nuisance and even worse, just as an unlawfully-possessed narcotic (controlled substance) is a public nuisance. These items do not, however, fall into the wrong hands through the fault of their manufacturers. Gun manufacturers sell their products to the public only through Federally licensed dealers. FFL dealers who value their licenses do not sell to minors, and they must run background checks to make sure they don't sell to criminals. Pharmaceutical companies sell controlled substances via licensed pharmacists, who in turn require a doctor's prescription before they will hand such items over to a patient. The handful of doctors and pharmacists who engage in drug diversion are held professionally and, in some cases criminally, responsible, but nobody would even think of blaming the manufacturers.
Client 9's and Andrew Cuomo's attempt to sue gun manufacturers, therefore, illustrates their lack of ethics, character, and integrity. Their malicious lawsuit was, by the way, dismissed by a court of law. This fact is particularly telling, and damning as well:
In its suit, New York City contended that the gun makers had made themselves liable under that narrow exception, by failing to monitor firearms retailers closely enough and thus allowing guns to end up in the hands of criminals.
This takes us back to the simple fact that firearms retailers are licensed as such by the Federal Government and, in the absence of disciplinary action such as revocation of an FFL, the manufacturer can reasonably assume the retailer to be in compliance with the law. Cuomo's latest anti-gun legislation has meanwhile proven him incompetent as well as a declared enemy of the entire Second Amendment.
New York Bans Target Pistols and Police Sidearms
We showed previously that New York, under Andrew Cuomo's leadership, has declared war on the entire Second Amendment by banning .22 caliber target pistols that, while theoretically usable for self-defense, are best suited for making inexpensive holes in pieces of paper. Most of these pistols take 10-round or even larger magazines, and are therefore now illegal in New York. Now there is concern that the reckless, slipshod, and irresponsible haste with which New York's legislature enacted its new gun law also outlaws police sidearms that accept more than 7 rounds. Governor Cuomo must now scramble to "clarify" what the law means, and possibly amend his law to exempt the police. This exemption underscores his dishonesty even further.
Cuomo Opposes the Natural Human Right of Self-Defense
When Governor Cuomo argues that only the police should have magazines larger than 7 rounds, he is saying openly that private citizens do not have the natural human right of self-defense. If a private citizen needs to use a handgun for anything other than sporting purposes, he needs it for exactly the same reason a police officer needs it: self-protection against one or more violent aggressors. The only difference between the private citizen and the officer is that the latter has both the duty and the authority to intervene in situations in which it would be ill-advised or even illegal for the citizen to involve himself.
A police officer might have to defend himself from somebody he has challenged for breaking into an unoccupied building, or even from somebody who turns a non-criminal traffic stop into a lethal confrontation. You and I don't even have the authority to compel another driver to pull off the road and stop his vehicle, although we can call 911 to report a drunk or reckless driver. We might, however, have to defend ourselves from one or more violent home invaders. Once the perpetrator(s) initiates deadly violence against either a police officer or a private citizen, the defender has a legitimate need for a weapon that can end the violence. This could be a 9 mm pistol with a 17-round magazine, or a .45 Automatic with one-shot stopping capability. In either situation, the defender should have at least one extra magazine, and should know how to change magazines quickly.
Former PA Governor Rendell Adds Another Layer of Outrage
If Andrew Cuomo's outright dishonesty is not enough, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who also supported frivolous lawsuits against the gun industry, added still more outrage. These words should mobilize all supporters of the Bill of Rights, and alienate his own side in the bargain:
"...the good thing about Newtown is, it was so horrific that I think it galvanized Americans to a point where the intensity on our side is going to match the intensity on their side."
The only "good thing" about the Sandy Hook shooting was the perpetrator's decision to finally rid the human species of himself. The fact that Mr. Rendell finds this brutal crime politically convenient, along with Rahm Emanuel's "Never let a good crisis go to waste," tells us everything we need to know about the other side's ethics, character, and indeed basic humanity.
William A. Levinson, P.E. is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
They're Coming to Take Our Guns Away, Ha-Haaa!
Wake up America. Here come Diane and Barack and Mario jr. Keep your focus down-range.
By Chad Stafko
You may recall the 1966 cult-classic by Napoleon XIV titled, "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa." The lyrics of that song describe an individual who is out of his mind and who is being taken "to the funny farm" and to "the loony bin" so he can be attended to by "those nice young men in their clean white coats."
The subject of the song is simply considered a danger to society, a menace if you will, crazy, and unable to make rational decisions on his own. He's unreasonable and refuses to conform to the society around him.
Enter today's debate over guns. Obama, Biden, and the rest of the political left are using similar language and characterizations in their description of gun owners. Theirs is a coordinated effort to paint American gun owners as crazed, government-hating lunatics, whose guns, used for sport, recreation, and defense are somehow a great danger to our society, potential Adam Lanzas or Jared Loughners.
Of course, this should come as no surprise. Recall Barack Obama's description of middle-class voters and the challenge he faced in getting their votes way back in 2008, "It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Today's push by the leftist media has managed to raise the insult level even higher recently. Take Carol Costello of CNN for example. On December 27th, in questioning NRA President David Keene, she shared this comment from her Facebook page, "Why is the NRA crazy? Why are they, like, out of touch with reality?"
Costello paints a picture of gun owners as out of step with society, yet recent polling is hardly indicative of such. A Gallup poll conducted earlier this month found that only 38% of Americans are dissatisfied with current gun laws, while 43% are either satisfied or believe the laws should be loosened.
Other polls have found only a slight majority of Americans believe there should be any increase in gun control legislation. Yet, we the legal gun owners of America are somehow considered out of touch and crazy? According to the liberals, legal gun owners who want to sustain their ability to defend themselves against those who wish to do them harm is some type of right-wing, extremist idea...an idea that they lament is found in our Constitution in the Second Amendment.
Oh, but there is plenty more insulting characterizations of legal gun owners from other prominent liberals and the White House.
Take former Pennsylvania Governor, Ed Rendell. Appearing on that bastion of balanced reporting, MSNBC, Rendell characterized gun owners as "looney, nuts, off their rocker."
Note that Rendell isn't just saying we legal gun owners of America are wrong, but that we're lunatics and far out of the norm of society. Don't you think if Rendell had the power to somehow confiscate every gun in America he would jump at the chance?
Also, consider President Obama's comments Monday regarding those who oppose the heavy gun control proposals he's to announce Wednesday, "As far as people lining up and purchasing more guns, I think that we've seen for some time now that those who oppose any common sense gun control or gun safety measures have a pretty effective way of ginning up fear on the part of gun owners that somehow, the federal government's about to take all your guns away."
So, it's the 2nd Amendment crowd, the National Rifle Association, and conservative talkers and writers who are, in the words of Obama, "ginning up fear." Really? This is the man, remember, who characterized middle-class voters as people who "cling to their guns."
Obama also, back in 1996 when he was running for the Illinois Senate, filled out a questionnaire for a community group in Chicago in which he answered "yes" to a question that included whether the State should ban the manufacture, sale, and possession of handguns.
And yesterday, President Obama took advantage of all the spadework, using his signing session for 23 executive actions to medicalize gun ownership under Obamacare, making it "clear that his health law, known as the Affordable Care Act, allows doctors to ask patients whether they have guns in their homes, and will tell them they are able to report any threats of violence they hear to police"
Indeed, how silly of us, legal gun owners to think that our President would ever seek to take away our guns. Just ignore the fact that he's from Chicago, which has some of the most stringent gun controls in America, and that he mocks those who cling to their guns, and that he filled out a questionnaire for a liberal community group in which he agreed that guns need to be out of the possession of Illinoisans.
And, we're the crazy ones?
Chad Stafko is a writer and political consultant living in the Midwest. He can be reached at stafko@msn.com
By Chad Stafko
You may recall the 1966 cult-classic by Napoleon XIV titled, "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa." The lyrics of that song describe an individual who is out of his mind and who is being taken "to the funny farm" and to "the loony bin" so he can be attended to by "those nice young men in their clean white coats."
The subject of the song is simply considered a danger to society, a menace if you will, crazy, and unable to make rational decisions on his own. He's unreasonable and refuses to conform to the society around him.
Enter today's debate over guns. Obama, Biden, and the rest of the political left are using similar language and characterizations in their description of gun owners. Theirs is a coordinated effort to paint American gun owners as crazed, government-hating lunatics, whose guns, used for sport, recreation, and defense are somehow a great danger to our society, potential Adam Lanzas or Jared Loughners.
Of course, this should come as no surprise. Recall Barack Obama's description of middle-class voters and the challenge he faced in getting their votes way back in 2008, "It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Today's push by the leftist media has managed to raise the insult level even higher recently. Take Carol Costello of CNN for example. On December 27th, in questioning NRA President David Keene, she shared this comment from her Facebook page, "Why is the NRA crazy? Why are they, like, out of touch with reality?"
Costello paints a picture of gun owners as out of step with society, yet recent polling is hardly indicative of such. A Gallup poll conducted earlier this month found that only 38% of Americans are dissatisfied with current gun laws, while 43% are either satisfied or believe the laws should be loosened.
Other polls have found only a slight majority of Americans believe there should be any increase in gun control legislation. Yet, we the legal gun owners of America are somehow considered out of touch and crazy? According to the liberals, legal gun owners who want to sustain their ability to defend themselves against those who wish to do them harm is some type of right-wing, extremist idea...an idea that they lament is found in our Constitution in the Second Amendment.
Oh, but there is plenty more insulting characterizations of legal gun owners from other prominent liberals and the White House.
Take former Pennsylvania Governor, Ed Rendell. Appearing on that bastion of balanced reporting, MSNBC, Rendell characterized gun owners as "looney, nuts, off their rocker."
Note that Rendell isn't just saying we legal gun owners of America are wrong, but that we're lunatics and far out of the norm of society. Don't you think if Rendell had the power to somehow confiscate every gun in America he would jump at the chance?
Also, consider President Obama's comments Monday regarding those who oppose the heavy gun control proposals he's to announce Wednesday, "As far as people lining up and purchasing more guns, I think that we've seen for some time now that those who oppose any common sense gun control or gun safety measures have a pretty effective way of ginning up fear on the part of gun owners that somehow, the federal government's about to take all your guns away."
So, it's the 2nd Amendment crowd, the National Rifle Association, and conservative talkers and writers who are, in the words of Obama, "ginning up fear." Really? This is the man, remember, who characterized middle-class voters as people who "cling to their guns."
Obama also, back in 1996 when he was running for the Illinois Senate, filled out a questionnaire for a community group in Chicago in which he answered "yes" to a question that included whether the State should ban the manufacture, sale, and possession of handguns.
And yesterday, President Obama took advantage of all the spadework, using his signing session for 23 executive actions to medicalize gun ownership under Obamacare, making it "clear that his health law, known as the Affordable Care Act, allows doctors to ask patients whether they have guns in their homes, and will tell them they are able to report any threats of violence they hear to police"
Indeed, how silly of us, legal gun owners to think that our President would ever seek to take away our guns. Just ignore the fact that he's from Chicago, which has some of the most stringent gun controls in America, and that he mocks those who cling to their guns, and that he filled out a questionnaire for a liberal community group in which he agreed that guns need to be out of the possession of Illinoisans.
And, we're the crazy ones?
Chad Stafko is a writer and political consultant living in the Midwest. He can be reached at stafko@msn.com
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Obama Supporters Are Shocked, Shocked, I Tell You....
Dumb and getting dumber. There is no coming back for America. Period. Only preserving what you got. Taxes are far too high; all of them income, property, sales, capital gains, death. We get far too little for them. Dumbass liberals (oxymoron, I know) this fucker and his minions lied to you just like the rest of us the only difference is people with brains knew he was coming after all of our money. The more money they have the more control they have, same goes for guns. Wake up and start fighting back you people are like fuckin zombies went it comes to this guy. Seriously.
January 7, 2013
Selwyn Duke
My mother always used to say, "Life is the best teacher." Sure is -- and sometimes it smacks you right upside the head. It appears that this has happened with Barack Obama supporters now witnessing their paychecks shrink in the wake of tax increases. And they're none too happy. In fact, they're shocked.
Shocked, I tell you.
Providing examples of this liberal anger and angst, Joseph Curl writes:
"What happened that my Social Security withholding's in my paycheck just went up?" a poster wrote on the liberal site DemocraticUnderground.com. "My paycheck just went down by an amount that I don't feel comfortable with. I guarantee this decrease is gonna' hurt me more than the increase in income taxes will hurt those making over 400 grand. What happened?"
Well, pal, I'll explain it. George Bush has found a way to control Obama's mind, sort of like a zombie. I mean, you don't think the great orator's mouth makes all the mistakes it does (off-Teleprompter) because it's actually controlled by the great orator's brain, now, do you?
Curl continues:
The Twittersphere was even funnier.
"Really, how am I ever supposed to pay off my student loans if my already small paycheck keeps getting smaller? Help a sister out, Obama," wrote "Meet Virginia." "Nancy Thongkham" was much more furious. "F***ing Obama! F*** you! This taking out more taxes s*** better f***ing help me out!! Very upset to see my paycheck less today!"
How can you pay off loans with smaller paychecks, Virginia? Ask Nancy; she sounds like a real intellectual.
Curl again:
"_AlexTM" sounded bummed. "Obama I did not vote for you so you can take away alot of money from my checks." Christian Dixon seemed crestfallen. "I'm starting to regret voting for Obama." But "Dave" got his dander up over the tax hike: "Obama is the biggest f***ing liar in the world. Why the f*** did I vote for him"?
I could explain why, Dave -- very clearly. But I don't use the kind of language you do. So I'll just say, my good man, that you're what they now call a "low-information voter." And you and your comrades have given us a low-information president.
Curl mentions that more is yet to come, when other Obamabots get their first paychecks on the 15th. I'll add that even this is just the tip of the iceberg. Wait 'til they feel the full bite of ObamaCare and whatever else is coming down the pike.
Well, as the old Dutch proverb goes, "We grow too soon old and too late smart."
Then again, sometimes the age shows up without the smarts.
Curl tells us that many liberal posters are blaming these tax hikes on Bush. This is no surprise. I'm telling you, some of these people's epitaph will read, "It's Bush's fault."
January 7, 2013
Selwyn Duke
My mother always used to say, "Life is the best teacher." Sure is -- and sometimes it smacks you right upside the head. It appears that this has happened with Barack Obama supporters now witnessing their paychecks shrink in the wake of tax increases. And they're none too happy. In fact, they're shocked.
Shocked, I tell you.
Providing examples of this liberal anger and angst, Joseph Curl writes:
"What happened that my Social Security withholding's in my paycheck just went up?" a poster wrote on the liberal site DemocraticUnderground.com. "My paycheck just went down by an amount that I don't feel comfortable with. I guarantee this decrease is gonna' hurt me more than the increase in income taxes will hurt those making over 400 grand. What happened?"
Well, pal, I'll explain it. George Bush has found a way to control Obama's mind, sort of like a zombie. I mean, you don't think the great orator's mouth makes all the mistakes it does (off-Teleprompter) because it's actually controlled by the great orator's brain, now, do you?
Curl continues:
The Twittersphere was even funnier.
"Really, how am I ever supposed to pay off my student loans if my already small paycheck keeps getting smaller? Help a sister out, Obama," wrote "Meet Virginia." "Nancy Thongkham" was much more furious. "F***ing Obama! F*** you! This taking out more taxes s*** better f***ing help me out!! Very upset to see my paycheck less today!"
How can you pay off loans with smaller paychecks, Virginia? Ask Nancy; she sounds like a real intellectual.
Curl again:
"_AlexTM" sounded bummed. "Obama I did not vote for you so you can take away alot of money from my checks." Christian Dixon seemed crestfallen. "I'm starting to regret voting for Obama." But "Dave" got his dander up over the tax hike: "Obama is the biggest f***ing liar in the world. Why the f*** did I vote for him"?
I could explain why, Dave -- very clearly. But I don't use the kind of language you do. So I'll just say, my good man, that you're what they now call a "low-information voter." And you and your comrades have given us a low-information president.
Curl mentions that more is yet to come, when other Obamabots get their first paychecks on the 15th. I'll add that even this is just the tip of the iceberg. Wait 'til they feel the full bite of ObamaCare and whatever else is coming down the pike.
Well, as the old Dutch proverb goes, "We grow too soon old and too late smart."
Then again, sometimes the age shows up without the smarts.
Curl tells us that many liberal posters are blaming these tax hikes on Bush. This is no surprise. I'm telling you, some of these people's epitaph will read, "It's Bush's fault."
Monday, January 21, 2013
"The Gun Is Civilization"
by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it. In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some. When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunken guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat— it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force, watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it. In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some. When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunken guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat— it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force, watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Who might be domestic enemies of our Constitution?
I have been saying this since I started this little blog.
January 11, 2013
K.E. Campbell
Article VI, clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution reads
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned...shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution...
Accordingly, on January 3rd, members of the 113th U.S. Congress took the following oath
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.
Who might be domestic enemies of our Constitution?
In previous American Thinker posts, I have written about the wisdom of the late Henry Hazlitt. As to the question posed above, Hazlitt articulated well the answer in a 1956 article and other writings.
"The greatest threat to American liberty today," he wrote, "comes from within." Specifically, Hazlitt was referring to "a growing and spreading totalitarian ideology." Uncomfortable though it may be to say or express it, proponents of that ideology were then and are now the enemy referenced in the congressional oath. They are those who are hostile to our heritage.
"[It] isn't too difficult to recognize the totalitarian mind," and by implication the devotees of the doctrine of government control over the individual, "when we meet one." In short "Its outstanding mark is a contempt for liberty." Acknowledging the difficulty in precisely defining liberty, Hazlitt contrasted it with its antithesis, slavery.
The roots of totalitarianism lie in the "contemporary faith in the necessity and benevolence of a continually expanding government intervention." Totalitarians, according to Hazlitt, want total control, but not necessarily total suppression. They "suppress merely the ideas which they don't agree with, or of which they are suspicious, or of which they have never heard before; and they suppress only the actions that they don't like, or of which they cannot see the necessity. They leave the individual perfectly free to agree with them, and perfectly free to act in any way that serves their purposes..."
Hazlitt prophetically described "three main tendencies or tenets" toward the "road to totalitarianism" that we find ourselves on. First among them is "the tendency of the government to attempt more and more to intervene, and to control economic life," that is, the
...pressure for a constant increase in governmental powers, for a constant widening of the governmental sphere of intervention. It is the tendency toward more and more regulation of every sphere of economic life, toward more and more restriction of the liberties of the individual. The tendency toward more and more governmental spending is a part of this trend. It means in effect that the individual is able to spend less and less of the income he earns on the things he himself wants, while the government takes more and more of his income from him to spend it in the ways that it thinks wise. One of the basic assumptions of totalitarianism, in brief (and of such steps toward it as socialism, state paternalism, and Keynesianism), is that the citizen cannot be trusted to spend his own money. As government control becomes wider and wider, individual discretion, the individual's control of his own affairs in all directions, necessarily becomes narrower and narrower. In sum, liberty is constantly diminished.
The second main step to totalitarianism is, according to Hazlitt, "the tendency toward greater and greater concentration of power in the central government at the expense of local governments," that is,
...the growth of power in Washington at the expense of the states.
The concentration of power and the centralization of power...are merely two names for the same thing. This second tendency is a necessary consequence of the first. If the central government is to control more and more of our economic life, it cannot permit this to be done by the individual states. The pressure for uniformity, and the pressure for centralization of power, are two aspects of the same pressure.
...Planning from the center is possible only with centralization of governmental power...[The] federal government assumes more and more of the powers previously exercised by the states, or powers never exercised by any state; and the Supreme Court keeps steadily stretching the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution to authorize powers and federal interventions never dreamed of by the Founding Fathers. At the same time recent Supreme Court decisions treat the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution practically as if it did not exist.
The third step is "the tendency toward more and more concentration of power in the hands of the executive at the expense of the legislative and judiciary." According to Hazlitt,
In the United States this tendency is very marked today. To listen to our pro-totalitarians, the main duty of Congress is to follow the president's "leadership" in all things; to be a set of yes-men; to act as a mere rubber-stamp.
The dangers of one-man rule have been so emphasized and dramatized in recent years...that any warning of this danger to Americans may seem needless. Yet most Americans, like the citizens of the countries already victimized by their native [totalitarians], may prove incapable of recognizing this evil until it has grown beyond the point of control. One invariable accompaniment of the growth of Caesarism is the growing contempt expressed for legislative bodies, and impatience with their "dilatoriness" in enacting the "Leader's" program, or their actual "obstructionist tactics" or "crippling amendments." Yet in recent years derision of Congress has become in America almost a national pastime. And a substantial part of the press never tires of reviling Congress for "doing nothing" - that is, for not piling more mountains of legislation on the existing mountains of legislation - or for failing to enact in full "the President's program.
What invariably results is capitulation and an ambiguous law "setting forth a number of vague but high-sounding goals and [creation of another] agency or commission" that "proceeds to become a prosecutor, court, and legislative body all rolled into one" and "starts laying down a series of rulings and handing down a series of decisions, many of which surprise no one more than the congressional members who created the agency in the first place."
Hazlitt had much more to convey about the dictatorial trend, the enemy within, and their tactics and techniques. I recommend reading the entire article and other of his books and publications. We are far down the road Hazlitt warned us about -- due in large part to U.S. Senators' and Representatives' forsaking of their sworn duty to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
January 11, 2013
K.E. Campbell
Article VI, clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution reads
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned...shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution...
Accordingly, on January 3rd, members of the 113th U.S. Congress took the following oath
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.
Who might be domestic enemies of our Constitution?
In previous American Thinker posts, I have written about the wisdom of the late Henry Hazlitt. As to the question posed above, Hazlitt articulated well the answer in a 1956 article and other writings.
"The greatest threat to American liberty today," he wrote, "comes from within." Specifically, Hazlitt was referring to "a growing and spreading totalitarian ideology." Uncomfortable though it may be to say or express it, proponents of that ideology were then and are now the enemy referenced in the congressional oath. They are those who are hostile to our heritage.
"[It] isn't too difficult to recognize the totalitarian mind," and by implication the devotees of the doctrine of government control over the individual, "when we meet one." In short "Its outstanding mark is a contempt for liberty." Acknowledging the difficulty in precisely defining liberty, Hazlitt contrasted it with its antithesis, slavery.
The roots of totalitarianism lie in the "contemporary faith in the necessity and benevolence of a continually expanding government intervention." Totalitarians, according to Hazlitt, want total control, but not necessarily total suppression. They "suppress merely the ideas which they don't agree with, or of which they are suspicious, or of which they have never heard before; and they suppress only the actions that they don't like, or of which they cannot see the necessity. They leave the individual perfectly free to agree with them, and perfectly free to act in any way that serves their purposes..."
Hazlitt prophetically described "three main tendencies or tenets" toward the "road to totalitarianism" that we find ourselves on. First among them is "the tendency of the government to attempt more and more to intervene, and to control economic life," that is, the
...pressure for a constant increase in governmental powers, for a constant widening of the governmental sphere of intervention. It is the tendency toward more and more regulation of every sphere of economic life, toward more and more restriction of the liberties of the individual. The tendency toward more and more governmental spending is a part of this trend. It means in effect that the individual is able to spend less and less of the income he earns on the things he himself wants, while the government takes more and more of his income from him to spend it in the ways that it thinks wise. One of the basic assumptions of totalitarianism, in brief (and of such steps toward it as socialism, state paternalism, and Keynesianism), is that the citizen cannot be trusted to spend his own money. As government control becomes wider and wider, individual discretion, the individual's control of his own affairs in all directions, necessarily becomes narrower and narrower. In sum, liberty is constantly diminished.
The second main step to totalitarianism is, according to Hazlitt, "the tendency toward greater and greater concentration of power in the central government at the expense of local governments," that is,
...the growth of power in Washington at the expense of the states.
The concentration of power and the centralization of power...are merely two names for the same thing. This second tendency is a necessary consequence of the first. If the central government is to control more and more of our economic life, it cannot permit this to be done by the individual states. The pressure for uniformity, and the pressure for centralization of power, are two aspects of the same pressure.
...Planning from the center is possible only with centralization of governmental power...[The] federal government assumes more and more of the powers previously exercised by the states, or powers never exercised by any state; and the Supreme Court keeps steadily stretching the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution to authorize powers and federal interventions never dreamed of by the Founding Fathers. At the same time recent Supreme Court decisions treat the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution practically as if it did not exist.
The third step is "the tendency toward more and more concentration of power in the hands of the executive at the expense of the legislative and judiciary." According to Hazlitt,
In the United States this tendency is very marked today. To listen to our pro-totalitarians, the main duty of Congress is to follow the president's "leadership" in all things; to be a set of yes-men; to act as a mere rubber-stamp.
The dangers of one-man rule have been so emphasized and dramatized in recent years...that any warning of this danger to Americans may seem needless. Yet most Americans, like the citizens of the countries already victimized by their native [totalitarians], may prove incapable of recognizing this evil until it has grown beyond the point of control. One invariable accompaniment of the growth of Caesarism is the growing contempt expressed for legislative bodies, and impatience with their "dilatoriness" in enacting the "Leader's" program, or their actual "obstructionist tactics" or "crippling amendments." Yet in recent years derision of Congress has become in America almost a national pastime. And a substantial part of the press never tires of reviling Congress for "doing nothing" - that is, for not piling more mountains of legislation on the existing mountains of legislation - or for failing to enact in full "the President's program.
What invariably results is capitulation and an ambiguous law "setting forth a number of vague but high-sounding goals and [creation of another] agency or commission" that "proceeds to become a prosecutor, court, and legislative body all rolled into one" and "starts laying down a series of rulings and handing down a series of decisions, many of which surprise no one more than the congressional members who created the agency in the first place."
Hazlitt had much more to convey about the dictatorial trend, the enemy within, and their tactics and techniques. I recommend reading the entire article and other of his books and publications. We are far down the road Hazlitt warned us about -- due in large part to U.S. Senators' and Representatives' forsaking of their sworn duty to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
Saturday, January 19, 2013
When Kids and Guns Mix
Teach your children well...
January 11, 2013
By Selwyn Duke
We all know what can happen when kids and guns mix. And today I will tell you some stories about that very thing. The kids' names were Kendra and Alyssa, and then there was the 11-year-old boy whose name we just don't know. What we do know is that they lived in places called Bryan County, Albuquerque, and Palmview. We know that guns were in their homes -- and that something horrible befell them.
Last year, 12-year-old Oklahoman Kendra St. Clair was home alone, unsupervised. At some point she accessed her mother's handgun -- a .40-caliber Glock. Then Kendra pulled the trigger.
And that bullet tore into flesh.
You probably know the rest of the story.
Or maybe not.
The bullet tore into the flesh of a 32-year-old home invader, causing him to flee. Kendra was left scared and crying, but unscathed.
The story of Albuquerque 11-year-old Alyssa Gutierrez turned out differently. Three teenage burglars broke into her home, but they fled after she merely grabbed her mother's rifle. No one was hurt, but the criminals were caught.
But sometimes innocents do get shot. Such was the case with an 11-year-old Palmview boy in 2010. At home with his mother, he got his hands on a .22-caliber rifle. And after the two armed and masked illegal aliens who had broken into their home shot through their bedroom door after the mother refused to open it, hitting the son in the hip, the boy returned fire. He struck one of the criminals in the neck, causing them both to flee. They were apprehended when the wounded miscreant showed up at a local hospital.
These were children who lived in places called Bryan County, Albuquerque, and Palmview. Thank God, they still live in those places. And that's what can happen when kids and guns mix.
If you're unacquainted with my work, you perhaps didn't expect this piece to take the turn it did. You perhaps didn't hear these stories; the mainstream media doesn't report such things much. But now that you have, ponder this question: do you wish these children hadn't had access to firearms? Because they won't if the gun grabbers of the world have their way.
Of course, the above real-life stories are just that: anecdotes. Some will say they're rare and not statistically significant. And I suppose they are rare; most people will never face such evil and have the ability to thwart it. Yet they're not nearly as rare as a Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech: your chance of dying in a school shooting approximates that of being struck by lightning. In contrast, Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck estimates that 2.5 million Americans each year use guns for self-defense and that 400,000 of them say they would have been killed if they hadn't been armed. That's 400,000 a year.
Do I believe they all would have been murdered? No. People have a penchant for the dramatic, and fear and stress can corrupt judgment. But even if only one half of one percent of them are correct, that's 2000 innocent lives saved with guns every year. This is approximately 76 times as many as were killed at Sandy Hook and considerably more than were lost in all American gun massacres during the last 40 years. And if five percent of them are right, it amounts to 20,000 innocent lives saved -- far more than the number murdered with guns in America every year.
Ah, "that big 'if,'" some will say. Woulda', coulda', maybe, perhaps, I suppose. Of course, we should also consider that those 2.5 million annual defensive gun uses represent rapes, robberies, and assaults thwarted -- usually without firing a shot. And that's part of the problem. It's a headline when a gun goes off; it can be head to the next story when a criminal is merely scared off. As for hypotheticals, they aren't as emotionally compelling as a school shooting, where you see victims' pictures, grieving relatives, and emergency vehicles dominating your TV.
Perhaps it would be different if we, as in a science-fiction movie, could somehow get a glimpse into alternate gun-free futures, where the world's Kendras and Alyssas and millions of other good citizens couldn't defend themselves. Maybe if the citizenry saw in living color how many of these people, while now safe, would have been left brutalized, killed, and lying in a pool of their own blood, we could compete for emotional impact. Thus we should remember, to use a play on a Frederic Bastiat saying, that a bad policy-maker observes only what can be seen; a good policy-maker observes what can be seen -- and what must be foreseen. Dead innocents killed with guns can be seen; the innocents who would be killed were it not for guns must be foreseen.
Yet even what can be seen, such as the stories I opened with, won't usually be because they don't fit the anti-gun mainstream-media narrative. Instead we hear about how 13 children a day are killed with firearms, with no mention that this "'statistic' includes 'children' up to age 19 or 24, depending on the source [most of these incidents involve teenage gang members shooting each other]," writes Guy Smith at Gun Facts. Or we're asked questions such as "Why does anyone need an AR-15?" Perhaps we should ask the then 15-year-old Houston boy who used that very weapon to defend himself and his younger sister against two burglars in 2010.
Here's what you might learn: being a light gun (seven pounds) with little recoil, it's an ideal firearm for youngsters and women. A lady I knew once fired a shouldered shotgun when she was a girl, and the kick knocked her on her backside; an AR won't do this. This is partially because its high-tech mechanism absorbs much of the recoil energy, but also because it is not nearly as powerful as even many hunting rifles.
How can this be? Isn't this "scary black gun" a "killing machine," as Piers Morgan put it? As explained and illustrated in this video, this class of weapons is designed to wound a 170-lb. man, while a high-powered hunting rifle's purpose is to kill a 300 to 800-lb. deer or moose. In fact, in some states and countries it is illegal to hunt large game with an AR-caliber round (.223) for fear that its relative ineffectiveness will leave a wounded and suffering animal wandering the forest. As to this, note that the AR-wielding 15-year-old Houston boy shot one of the intruders at least 3 times - and the man lived. It might have been a different story had the teen used a 30.06 deer rifle, and a very different one with a buckshot-loaded shotgun.
So do kids and guns mix? Well, kids and their guns have sometimes been mixing it up with criminals -- and coming out on top. But neither kids nor anyone else mixes well with guns when ending up on the wrong end of one. This happened at Sandy Hook. It happened in Aurora, CO. It happens during many other garden-variety crimes. And it could conceivably happen scores of thousands of times more every year. The only way to find out precisely how many more times is to disarm the American people.
Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com
January 11, 2013
By Selwyn Duke
We all know what can happen when kids and guns mix. And today I will tell you some stories about that very thing. The kids' names were Kendra and Alyssa, and then there was the 11-year-old boy whose name we just don't know. What we do know is that they lived in places called Bryan County, Albuquerque, and Palmview. We know that guns were in their homes -- and that something horrible befell them.
Last year, 12-year-old Oklahoman Kendra St. Clair was home alone, unsupervised. At some point she accessed her mother's handgun -- a .40-caliber Glock. Then Kendra pulled the trigger.
And that bullet tore into flesh.
You probably know the rest of the story.
Or maybe not.
The bullet tore into the flesh of a 32-year-old home invader, causing him to flee. Kendra was left scared and crying, but unscathed.
The story of Albuquerque 11-year-old Alyssa Gutierrez turned out differently. Three teenage burglars broke into her home, but they fled after she merely grabbed her mother's rifle. No one was hurt, but the criminals were caught.
But sometimes innocents do get shot. Such was the case with an 11-year-old Palmview boy in 2010. At home with his mother, he got his hands on a .22-caliber rifle. And after the two armed and masked illegal aliens who had broken into their home shot through their bedroom door after the mother refused to open it, hitting the son in the hip, the boy returned fire. He struck one of the criminals in the neck, causing them both to flee. They were apprehended when the wounded miscreant showed up at a local hospital.
These were children who lived in places called Bryan County, Albuquerque, and Palmview. Thank God, they still live in those places. And that's what can happen when kids and guns mix.
If you're unacquainted with my work, you perhaps didn't expect this piece to take the turn it did. You perhaps didn't hear these stories; the mainstream media doesn't report such things much. But now that you have, ponder this question: do you wish these children hadn't had access to firearms? Because they won't if the gun grabbers of the world have their way.
Of course, the above real-life stories are just that: anecdotes. Some will say they're rare and not statistically significant. And I suppose they are rare; most people will never face such evil and have the ability to thwart it. Yet they're not nearly as rare as a Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech: your chance of dying in a school shooting approximates that of being struck by lightning. In contrast, Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck estimates that 2.5 million Americans each year use guns for self-defense and that 400,000 of them say they would have been killed if they hadn't been armed. That's 400,000 a year.
Do I believe they all would have been murdered? No. People have a penchant for the dramatic, and fear and stress can corrupt judgment. But even if only one half of one percent of them are correct, that's 2000 innocent lives saved with guns every year. This is approximately 76 times as many as were killed at Sandy Hook and considerably more than were lost in all American gun massacres during the last 40 years. And if five percent of them are right, it amounts to 20,000 innocent lives saved -- far more than the number murdered with guns in America every year.
Ah, "that big 'if,'" some will say. Woulda', coulda', maybe, perhaps, I suppose. Of course, we should also consider that those 2.5 million annual defensive gun uses represent rapes, robberies, and assaults thwarted -- usually without firing a shot. And that's part of the problem. It's a headline when a gun goes off; it can be head to the next story when a criminal is merely scared off. As for hypotheticals, they aren't as emotionally compelling as a school shooting, where you see victims' pictures, grieving relatives, and emergency vehicles dominating your TV.
Perhaps it would be different if we, as in a science-fiction movie, could somehow get a glimpse into alternate gun-free futures, where the world's Kendras and Alyssas and millions of other good citizens couldn't defend themselves. Maybe if the citizenry saw in living color how many of these people, while now safe, would have been left brutalized, killed, and lying in a pool of their own blood, we could compete for emotional impact. Thus we should remember, to use a play on a Frederic Bastiat saying, that a bad policy-maker observes only what can be seen; a good policy-maker observes what can be seen -- and what must be foreseen. Dead innocents killed with guns can be seen; the innocents who would be killed were it not for guns must be foreseen.
Yet even what can be seen, such as the stories I opened with, won't usually be because they don't fit the anti-gun mainstream-media narrative. Instead we hear about how 13 children a day are killed with firearms, with no mention that this "'statistic' includes 'children' up to age 19 or 24, depending on the source [most of these incidents involve teenage gang members shooting each other]," writes Guy Smith at Gun Facts. Or we're asked questions such as "Why does anyone need an AR-15?" Perhaps we should ask the then 15-year-old Houston boy who used that very weapon to defend himself and his younger sister against two burglars in 2010.
Here's what you might learn: being a light gun (seven pounds) with little recoil, it's an ideal firearm for youngsters and women. A lady I knew once fired a shouldered shotgun when she was a girl, and the kick knocked her on her backside; an AR won't do this. This is partially because its high-tech mechanism absorbs much of the recoil energy, but also because it is not nearly as powerful as even many hunting rifles.
How can this be? Isn't this "scary black gun" a "killing machine," as Piers Morgan put it? As explained and illustrated in this video, this class of weapons is designed to wound a 170-lb. man, while a high-powered hunting rifle's purpose is to kill a 300 to 800-lb. deer or moose. In fact, in some states and countries it is illegal to hunt large game with an AR-caliber round (.223) for fear that its relative ineffectiveness will leave a wounded and suffering animal wandering the forest. As to this, note that the AR-wielding 15-year-old Houston boy shot one of the intruders at least 3 times - and the man lived. It might have been a different story had the teen used a 30.06 deer rifle, and a very different one with a buckshot-loaded shotgun.
So do kids and guns mix? Well, kids and their guns have sometimes been mixing it up with criminals -- and coming out on top. But neither kids nor anyone else mixes well with guns when ending up on the wrong end of one. This happened at Sandy Hook. It happened in Aurora, CO. It happens during many other garden-variety crimes. And it could conceivably happen scores of thousands of times more every year. The only way to find out precisely how many more times is to disarm the American people.
Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com
Thursday, January 17, 2013
The Second Amendment Is Not About Hunting
Fuck Obama's gun regulations. We all know the reason he is doing this. Hell James Madison knew this over 200 years ago. Fuck you Mr. D-Bag president.
January 11, 2013
Michael Geer
You know it. I know it. The unspoken truth is the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America is about citizens resisting and overcoming tyranny. A common law and natural law right considered for 200+ years as an inalienable right. Speaking plainly, the 2nd is our bulwark against government which becomes despotic.
Armed free citizens are the final bulwark against tyranny by local, state or federal government.
When the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights committed our people to founding a new Nation guns were natural and necessary. For putting food on the table and, wait for it, personal defense against hostilities.
Armed citizens have a long history of taking action to correct despotic governments. Feudal economies faded away due in no small part to enough peasants acquiring arms. And the will to use them.
Federalist 46. James Madison, known as the author of most of the Bill of Rights said of arms and the common man ...
(excerpt) The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterrupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism. Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it. (end excerpt)
Note Madison addressed Federalist 46 to the citizens of the state of New York. Whose Governor even now is posturing to further reduce citizen rights clearly illumined by the author of the Second Amendment, James Madison.
The Second Amendment exists for the citizen. For whatever lawful purpose the citizen deems. Personal safety, hunting, and even unto "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation..."
Our Founders secured for us this Right at the risk of their lives, and most certainly their comforts, property, honor and families.
The Second Amendment stands as the final say against government grown unbearably despotic. It is not about hunting.
Go here for perhaps the best exposition on the Second you will read.
Michael Geer welcomes comments at geer.michael@gmail.com. He is an author and publisher www.priceriverpublishing.weebly.comhttp://www.aintnotruthlikeit.com/index.html
January 11, 2013
Michael Geer
You know it. I know it. The unspoken truth is the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America is about citizens resisting and overcoming tyranny. A common law and natural law right considered for 200+ years as an inalienable right. Speaking plainly, the 2nd is our bulwark against government which becomes despotic.
Armed free citizens are the final bulwark against tyranny by local, state or federal government.
When the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights committed our people to founding a new Nation guns were natural and necessary. For putting food on the table and, wait for it, personal defense against hostilities.
Armed citizens have a long history of taking action to correct despotic governments. Feudal economies faded away due in no small part to enough peasants acquiring arms. And the will to use them.
Federalist 46. James Madison, known as the author of most of the Bill of Rights said of arms and the common man ...
(excerpt) The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterrupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism. Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it. (end excerpt)
Note Madison addressed Federalist 46 to the citizens of the state of New York. Whose Governor even now is posturing to further reduce citizen rights clearly illumined by the author of the Second Amendment, James Madison.
The Second Amendment exists for the citizen. For whatever lawful purpose the citizen deems. Personal safety, hunting, and even unto "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation..."
Our Founders secured for us this Right at the risk of their lives, and most certainly their comforts, property, honor and families.
The Second Amendment stands as the final say against government grown unbearably despotic. It is not about hunting.
Go here for perhaps the best exposition on the Second you will read.
Michael Geer welcomes comments at geer.michael@gmail.com. He is an author and publisher www.priceriverpublishing.weebly.comhttp://www.aintnotruthlikeit.com/index.html
Self Governance is Under Attack, not just the Second Amendment
Will YOU let them?
January 11, 2013
Neil Snyder
On Wednesday, Rasmussen Reports released the results of a poll revealing that only "74% of American Adults continue to believe the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun." This finding is perplexing because the Constitution hasn't changed. You can actually see it in the National Archives, and right there in the Bill of Rights you will find the Second Amendment. It reads as follows:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The language in the Second Amendment isn't vague or confusing. Since only 74% of our fellow citizens believe that we have a constitutional right to own guns, it's safe to conclude that roughly a quarter of our population isn't familiar with our founding document and the principles that it sets forth. That's disheartening because our forefathers fought and died to secure those rights for us, and we're in the process of frittering them away.
The Bill of Rights was included in the Constitution because the people demanded it. They were fearful that the United States of America would become something altogether different from the nation that they fought to create unless those rights were specifically enumerated in the Constitution itself.
As it turns out, their fears were justified. One-by-one, our founding principles are coming under attack, and one-by-one, they are being abrogated. For example, something as seemingly innocuous as healthcare has pitted the United States government against Christians throughout the nation thanks to Obamacare, and our First Amendment rights have been trampled upon.
The Federalist Papers is a collection of 85 essays that were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to convince the people of our fledgling country to support the Constitution. They lay out the arguments for the creation of a form of government that Abraham Lincoln referred to as "of the people, by the people, and for the people" in his Gettysburg Address.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes...
The constitutional issues being decided upon today threaten to remake this nation into something that our Founding Fathers would not have tolerated, much less supported. It's time for us to decide if we still believe in self governance. If we do, are we willing to defend that governing principle? Stated another way, is our country's government still of the people, by the people, and for the people, or is it a dictatorship? The answer to those questions will determine the kind of nation that we leave to future generations.
History teaches that the world is full of tyrants who would like to control us.
Will we let them?
Neil Snyder is the Ralph A. Beeton Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia. His blog, SnyderTalk.com, is posted daily.
January 11, 2013
Neil Snyder
On Wednesday, Rasmussen Reports released the results of a poll revealing that only "74% of American Adults continue to believe the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun." This finding is perplexing because the Constitution hasn't changed. You can actually see it in the National Archives, and right there in the Bill of Rights you will find the Second Amendment. It reads as follows:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The language in the Second Amendment isn't vague or confusing. Since only 74% of our fellow citizens believe that we have a constitutional right to own guns, it's safe to conclude that roughly a quarter of our population isn't familiar with our founding document and the principles that it sets forth. That's disheartening because our forefathers fought and died to secure those rights for us, and we're in the process of frittering them away.
The Bill of Rights was included in the Constitution because the people demanded it. They were fearful that the United States of America would become something altogether different from the nation that they fought to create unless those rights were specifically enumerated in the Constitution itself.
As it turns out, their fears were justified. One-by-one, our founding principles are coming under attack, and one-by-one, they are being abrogated. For example, something as seemingly innocuous as healthcare has pitted the United States government against Christians throughout the nation thanks to Obamacare, and our First Amendment rights have been trampled upon.
The Federalist Papers is a collection of 85 essays that were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to convince the people of our fledgling country to support the Constitution. They lay out the arguments for the creation of a form of government that Abraham Lincoln referred to as "of the people, by the people, and for the people" in his Gettysburg Address.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes...
The constitutional issues being decided upon today threaten to remake this nation into something that our Founding Fathers would not have tolerated, much less supported. It's time for us to decide if we still believe in self governance. If we do, are we willing to defend that governing principle? Stated another way, is our country's government still of the people, by the people, and for the people, or is it a dictatorship? The answer to those questions will determine the kind of nation that we leave to future generations.
History teaches that the world is full of tyrants who would like to control us.
Will we let them?
Neil Snyder is the Ralph A. Beeton Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia. His blog, SnyderTalk.com, is posted daily.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Hitler vs Obama - 25 Signs That America Is Rapidly Becoming More Like Nazi Germany
From the Worth-Reading-Blog. Dead-on-Balls accurate. Enuff said.
Monday, May 14, 2012
The United States of America is becoming more like Nazi Germany every single day. In fact, the Nazification of America is almost complete. The parallels between Nazi Germany and the United States of today are going to absolutely shock many of you. Most Americans simply have never learned what life was really like back in Nazi Germany. Under Adolf Hitler, Germany was a Big Brother totalitarian police state that ruthlessly repressed freedom and individual liberty. Under Adolf Hitler, Germany adopted socialism, dramatically increased government spending and raised taxes to astronomical levels. Under Adolf Hitler, abortion became legal in Germany, the government took over health care and Christianity was pushed out of the public schools and out of public life. To prove all of these points, I am going to use extensive quotes from two sources. Kitty Werthmann was a child living a peaceful life in Austria when Hitler took over her nation. Her eyewitness accounts about what life was like under Nazi Germany are invaluable. In addition, I will also be quoting extensively from author Bruce Walker. He is the author of a book entitled "The Swastika Against The Cross: The Nazi War On Christianity", and during his years of research he has uncovered some absolutely jaw dropping stuff. After reading the information in the rest of this article, there should be no doubt that the United States is becoming just like Nazi Germany.
Nazi Germany shows us what happens when the state becomes god. Adolf Hitler was certainly more racist than the leaders of America are today, but other than that there are very few differences between the road that Adolf Hitler led Germany down and the path that the United States is being led down.
The following are 25 signs that America is rapidly becoming more like Nazi Germany....
#1 Nazi Germany was a totalitarian Big Brother police state that constantly monitored everything that German citizens did.
Today, the bureaucrats that run things in the United States are also absolutely obsessed with constantly trying to monitor us. For example, there are now control freaks that inspect the lunches of preschool students in certain areas of the country in order to make sure that they contain the "right" foods....
A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.
The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day.
The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs - including in-home day care centers - to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.#2 Nazi officials often used their positions of power to force others to do dehumanizing things.
This is exactly what the TSA is doing today. It would be really easy to imagine some Nazi military officers forcing a young woman to walk back and forth in front of them several times so that they could admire her form. Well, that is what TSA agents are doing to American women today. The following comes from a recent Wired article....
TSA agents in Dallas singled out female passengers to undergo screening in a body scanner, according to complaints filed by several women who said they felt the screeners intentionally targeted them to view their bodies.
One woman who flew out of Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport several months ago said a female agent sent her through a body scanner three times after the agent commented on her “cute” body.#3 In Nazi Germany, even women and children were treated like dehumanized cattle.
Well, today schoolchildren are being strip-searched all over the United States. Down in Georgia, one student was recently strip-searched by public school officials after another student falsely accused him of having marijuana.
Another student down in Albuquerque was recently forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched because he had $200 in his pocket. The student was never formally charged with doing anything wrong.
#4 In Nazi Germany, authorities could stop you and search you at any time and for any reason.
In America that is not supposed to happen, but it is happening. Last year, TSA "VIPR teams" conducted approximately 8,000 "unannounced security screenings" at subway stations, bus terminals, seaports and highway rest stops.
If you are not able to produce "your papers", there is a good chance that you will get thrown into prison in America. For example, a 21-year-old college student named Samantha Zucker was recently arrested and put in a New York City jail for 36 hours just because she could not produce any identification for police.
#5 Under Adolf Hitler, there were massive increases in government spending.
According to eyewitness Kitty Werthmann, just about everyone was getting some sort of a handout from the German government....
Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.Of course, as I have written about so many times before, this is the exact same thing that we are seeing in the United States today.
#6 Under Hitler, taxes were raised dramatically in order to pay for all of these social programs.
Kitty Werthmann says that "our tax rates went up to 80% of our income."
In the United States our tax rates have not gotten that bad yet, but when you total up all federal taxes, all state taxes, all local taxes, all property taxes and all sales taxes, there are a significant number of Americans that do pay more than 50% of their incomes in taxes.
#7 The economy of Nazi Germany was very highly socialized.
As Ludwig Von Mises once correctly observed, the German economy under Hitler was not capitalist at all....
What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.The United States has not gotten to the level of Nazi Germany yet, but we do have a socialist president and back in 2009 the cover of Newsweek boldly proclaimed that "We Are All Socialists Now".
#8 In Nazi Germany, if you conducted business outside of the socialist paradigm you were heavily punished.
Well, the same thing is happening in the United States today. For example, the FDA has been runningelaborate entrapment schemes that are designed to entrap producers of raw milk. Any "unauthorized commerce" is dealt with very strictly by the U.S. government these days.
#9 In Nazi Germany, government regulation of business got wildly out of control.
The following is eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann....
My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn't meet all the demands. Soon, he went out of business.
If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.
We had consumer protection. We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.Of course we all know about all of the ridiculous regulations that the U.S. government is burdening businesses with today. In every day and age control freaks love to stick it to business people that are just trying to make a living.
#10 Under Hitler, free market capitalism was absolutely hated.
National Socialist theologian Gregor Strasser once stated the following....
We National Socialists are enemies, deadly enemies, of the present capitalist system with its exploitation of the economically weak … and we are resolved under all circumstances to destroy this system.And as I have written about previously, a lot of Barack Obama's strongest supporters are socialists and communists, and an increasing number of Americans are showing disdain for capitalism. In fact, some recent polls show that young adults in America actually have a more favorable view of socialism than they do of capitalism.
#11 In Nazi Germany, the health care system was taken over by the government.
The following is more eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann....
Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna . After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.Of course we all know what is going on in America today. The government spends nearly half of all health care dollars and Obamacare is going to mean more government control over the health care system than ever before.
#12 Under Adolf Hitler, abortion was made "safe and legal" in Germany.
It turns out that Hitler was a huge fan of the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger. And as I wrote about recently, it was Sanger that once said the following....
"The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."Hitler echoed this sentiment when he wrote the following in Mein Kampf....
"The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring. . . represents the most humane act of mankind."After the Nazis came to power in 1933, abortion was very quickly legalized. By 1935 there were approximately 500,000 abortions being performed in Germany every single year.
Yes, Hitler very much encouraged Aryan women to have as many children as possible. But he also very much viewed abortion as a way to reduce "undesirable" populations.
Unfortunately, something very similar is happening today. Abortion clinics are often located in the "poor" part of town, and a staggering 72 percent of Planned Parenthood's "customers" have incomes that are either equal to or beneath 150 percent of the federal poverty level.
#13 In Nazi Germany, killing the "defective", the "weak" and the "disabled" was considered to be a good thing because it made the German people "stronger".
Unfortunately, many in America today have fully embraced the eugenics principles which were so dominant in Nazi Germany.
A 3 year old girl named Amelia was recently denied a kidney transplant because she is considered to be "mentally retarded", and we all remember what happened to Terri Schiavo.
Not only that, the editorial page editor of the Detroit News recently proposed putting contraceptives into the drinking water in Michigan because the state has become a "breeding ground for poverty".
This kind of sick thinking is rapidly spreading in America, and that is a very frightening thing.
#14 In Nazi Germany, education was nationalized and God was kicked out of the schools.
The following is more eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann....
Our education was nationalized. I attended a very good public school. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler's picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn't pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles, and had physical education.Unfortunately, the exact same thing is happening to U.S. public schools.
#15 Under Adolf Hitler, God was mocked and religion was pushed out of every corner of public life.
Just check out the following information uncovered by author Bruce Walker....
The Nazi tract Gott und Volk was distributed in 1941, and it describes the life cycle of German youth in the future, who would: “With parties and gifts the youth will be led painlessly from one faith to the other and will grow up without ever having heard of the Sermon on the Mount or the Golden Rule, to say nothing of the Ten Commandments… The education of the youth is to be confined primarily by the teacher, the officer, and the leaders of the party. The priests will die out. They have estranged the youth from the Volk. Into their places will step the leaders. Not deputies of God. But anyway the best Germans. And how shall we train our children? Thus, as though they had never heard of Christianity!”Once again, this parallels what we are seeing happen in America today. Last year, a high school student in Southern California was suspended for two days because he had private conversations with his classmates during which he discussed Christianity. He was also banned from bringing his Bible to school ever again.
For many more examples of this phenomenon, please see this article: "18 Examples Of How Christians Are Being Specifically Targeted By Big Brother".
#16 Adolf Hitler fully embraced the theory of evolution, and Darwinism provided the intellectual foundation for much of Nazism.
At a Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg in 1933, Hitler declared that "higher race subjects to itself a lower race . . .a right which we see in nature and which can be regarded as the sole conceivable right".
Hitler was obsessed with the "survival of the fittest" and he took this theory to its logical extremes. The following is how one author put it....
"Hitler was influenced above all by the theories of the nineteenth-century social Darwinist school, whose conception of man as biological material was bound up with impulses towards a planned society. He was convinced that the race was disintegrating, deteriorating through faulty breeding as a result of a liberally tinged promiscuity that was vitiating the nation’s blood. And this led to the establishment of a catalogue of ‘positive’ curative measures: racial hygiene, eugenic choice of marriage partners, the breeding of human beings by the methods of selection on the one hand and extirpation on the other"But of course we have no problem with teaching this flawed theory to our children in the public schools of America today.
Haven't we learned anything from history?
#17 Under Adolf Hitler, the state started taking over the job of child care.
The following is more eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann....
When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology.Of course this is exactly what is happening in America today. Children are raised by day care centers and public schools, and most parents spend very little time with their own children.
#18 In Nazi Germany, it became fashionable to mock Christians and the Christian faith.
The following is more from author Bruce Walker....
By 1935, the virulently anti-Christian leader of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Shirach issued a regulation that prohibited any child from belonging simultaneously to a church youth group and the Hitler Youth, and gradually membership in the Hitler Youth became almost obligatory – parents were told that their children would not get jobs in the civil service unless they belonged to the Hitler Youth and employers were told not to hire children who did not belong to the Hitler Youth. Christian schoolchildren who did not belong to the Hitler Youth or its female counterpart were routinely beaten up by young Nazi thugs.
Boys inducted into the Hitler Youth were required to explicitly reject Christianity by oaths like this: “German blood and Christian baptismal water are completely incompatible.” At Hitler Youth center at Halle, was the following prominent statement: “The Faith fanatics, who still to-day slide down on their knees with faces uplifted to heaven, waste their time in churchgoing and prayers, and have not yet understood that they are living on the earth and that therefore their task is of a thoroughly earthly kind. All we Hitler people can still only look with the greatest contempt on those young people who still run to their silly Evangelical or Catholic Churches in order to vent their quite superstitious religious feelings.” Those that believe that the Nazis embraced Christianity are delusional. The following are direct quotes out of Hitler Youth training manuals....
“Christianity is a religion of slaves and fools.”
“How did Christ die? Whining at the Cross!”
“The Ten Commandments represent the lowest instincts of man.”
“Christianity is merely a cloak for Judaism.”
This is definitely where things are going in America today. Our television shows and our movies regularly mock Christians and they are always portrayed as the "bad guys".
In addition, the name of Jesus is rapidly becoming a forbidden word. Some U.S. courts have even ruled that it is unconstitutional to use the name of "Jesus Christ" during any official government meeting. The following comes from a recent WorldNetDaily article....
But the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are standing by their victory in a U.S. circuit court decision that states even "a solitary reference to Jesus Christ" in invocations before the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners' meetings could do "violence to the pluralistic and inclusive values that are a defining feature of American public life."#19 Under Adolf Hitler, sexual promiscuity was actually encouraged.
The following is more eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann....
My mother was very unhappy. When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent. I told her she couldn't do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful. There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun no sports, and no political indoctrination. I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it. Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing. Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me. They lived without religion. By that time unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler. It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly. As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn't exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy.Of course the exact same thing is happening in America today. If you doubt that your tax dollars are going to promote sexual promiscuity, then I have a video for you to watch. It is a video from the American Life League, and you can view it right here. DO NOT let any children watch this video. It is done by a pro-life organization but it is very graphic. I have posted a link to it because it is imperative that parents understand what is really going on out there. But please be warned that it is very, very graphic.
#20 Once the Nazis took power, they rapidly implemented gun control legislation and later on they took all of the guns away from the populace.
Kitty Werthmann remembers very well what happened in Austria under the Nazis....
Next came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long after-wards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.Last year, more than 10 million guns were sold in the United States, but gun control legislation continues to become even more strict, and it is only a matter of time before the federal government tries to disarm the U.S. population completely.
#21 Under the Nazis, large numbers of children were taken away from good families.
The following is more from author Bruce Walker....
Parents who resisted Nazi anti-Christian indoctrination too strongly simply had their children taken away from them. The Nazis even forbade parents to give their children Christian names and ordered babies instead to be given names like Dietrich, Otto or Siegfried. The home teaching of Christianity by parents in the home was forbidden. Not content with simply driving Christianity out of public schools, Himmler banned all Confessing Church seminaries and instruction in 1937 and he closed all private religious schools two years later.Doesn't this sound exactly like where America is headed?
In many states, CPS ("child protective services") has become one of the most feared government agencies. All over the nation, thousands upon thousands of children have been removed from good homes because the parents were not raising them "correctly".
You can read about one particularly bad CPS horror story right here.
#22 Under Adolf Hitler, society became very highly militarized.
Of course we are seeing the same thing in the U.S. right now.
Sadly, this is even happening to our public schools. According to blogger Alexander Higgins, students in kindergarten and the 1st grade in the state of New Jersey are now required by law to participate "in monthly anti-terrorism drills". The following is an excerpt from a letter that he recently received from the school where his child attends....
Each month a school must conduct one fire drill and one security drill which may be a lockdown, bomb threat, evacuation, active shooter, or shelter-in place drill. All schools are now required by law to implement this procedure.This is the kind of thing that a sicko like Adolf Hitler would try to do, and it is not good for our children.
#23 In Nazi Germany, the prisons were absolutely packed.
Right now, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world by far and the largest total prison population on the entire globe by far.
Even children are being arrested in alarming numbers. In a previous article, I described how one 12-year-old girl down in Texas was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume and how police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl in Massachusetts.
#24 Under Adolf Hitler, there was basically no freedom of speech.
In the United States today we are told that we still have freedom of speech, but that freedom is being "chilled" in thousands of different ways.
For example, the FBI is now admittedly recording Internet talk radio programs all over the United States. The following comes from a recent article by Mark Weaver of WMAL.com....
If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI.
The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet.
The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence.So please speak freely on talk radio. Just realize that the feds will be recording every single word.
#25 Under Adolf Hitler, paranoia was standard operating procedure.
In Nazi Germany, every citizen was a potential threat and everyone had to be constantly watched for suspicious activity.
Of course the exact same thing is happening in America today. Just about anything you do can get you labeled as a "potential terrorist" by the government.
According to a new DHS report, the following are some of the beliefs and ideologies of potential terrorists....
-"fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)"
-"anti-global"
-"suspicious of centralized federal authority"
-"reverent of individual liberty"
-"believe in conspiracy theories"
-"a belief that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack"
-"a belief in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism"
-"impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists)"
-"insert religion into the political sphere"
-"those who seek to politicize religion"
-"supported political movements for autonomy"
-"anti-abortion"
-"anti-Catholic"
-"anti-nuclear"
And the definition of "suspicious activity" has become so broad in America that it pretty much covers 100% of us. In 2012, the following activities are considered to be "suspicious" by the FBI....
-shielding your computer screen from others
-paying with cash
-acting "nervous"
-using multiple cell phones
-requesting a specific room at a hotel
-traveling with a large amount of luggage
-refusing maid service at a hotel
-staying in your room for too long
-changing your appearance
In addition, the U.S. government has decided that it would be a really good idea for all of us to spy on one another. The "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign looks like it could have been pulled right out of a Gestapo security handbook.
But America is not supposed to be about spying on one another and reporting each other to the secret police.
America is supposed to be about liberty and freedom.
Monday, May 14, 2012
The United States of America is becoming more like Nazi Germany every single day. In fact, the Nazification of America is almost complete. The parallels between Nazi Germany and the United States of today are going to absolutely shock many of you. Most Americans simply have never learned what life was really like back in Nazi Germany. Under Adolf Hitler, Germany was a Big Brother totalitarian police state that ruthlessly repressed freedom and individual liberty. Under Adolf Hitler, Germany adopted socialism, dramatically increased government spending and raised taxes to astronomical levels. Under Adolf Hitler, abortion became legal in Germany, the government took over health care and Christianity was pushed out of the public schools and out of public life. To prove all of these points, I am going to use extensive quotes from two sources. Kitty Werthmann was a child living a peaceful life in Austria when Hitler took over her nation. Her eyewitness accounts about what life was like under Nazi Germany are invaluable. In addition, I will also be quoting extensively from author Bruce Walker. He is the author of a book entitled "The Swastika Against The Cross: The Nazi War On Christianity", and during his years of research he has uncovered some absolutely jaw dropping stuff. After reading the information in the rest of this article, there should be no doubt that the United States is becoming just like Nazi Germany.
Nazi Germany shows us what happens when the state becomes god. Adolf Hitler was certainly more racist than the leaders of America are today, but other than that there are very few differences between the road that Adolf Hitler led Germany down and the path that the United States is being led down.
The following are 25 signs that America is rapidly becoming more like Nazi Germany....
#1 Nazi Germany was a totalitarian Big Brother police state that constantly monitored everything that German citizens did.
Today, the bureaucrats that run things in the United States are also absolutely obsessed with constantly trying to monitor us. For example, there are now control freaks that inspect the lunches of preschool students in certain areas of the country in order to make sure that they contain the "right" foods....
A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.
The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day.
The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs - including in-home day care centers - to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.#2 Nazi officials often used their positions of power to force others to do dehumanizing things.
This is exactly what the TSA is doing today. It would be really easy to imagine some Nazi military officers forcing a young woman to walk back and forth in front of them several times so that they could admire her form. Well, that is what TSA agents are doing to American women today. The following comes from a recent Wired article....
TSA agents in Dallas singled out female passengers to undergo screening in a body scanner, according to complaints filed by several women who said they felt the screeners intentionally targeted them to view their bodies.
One woman who flew out of Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport several months ago said a female agent sent her through a body scanner three times after the agent commented on her “cute” body.#3 In Nazi Germany, even women and children were treated like dehumanized cattle.
Well, today schoolchildren are being strip-searched all over the United States. Down in Georgia, one student was recently strip-searched by public school officials after another student falsely accused him of having marijuana.
Another student down in Albuquerque was recently forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched because he had $200 in his pocket. The student was never formally charged with doing anything wrong.
#4 In Nazi Germany, authorities could stop you and search you at any time and for any reason.
In America that is not supposed to happen, but it is happening. Last year, TSA "VIPR teams" conducted approximately 8,000 "unannounced security screenings" at subway stations, bus terminals, seaports and highway rest stops.
If you are not able to produce "your papers", there is a good chance that you will get thrown into prison in America. For example, a 21-year-old college student named Samantha Zucker was recently arrested and put in a New York City jail for 36 hours just because she could not produce any identification for police.
#5 Under Adolf Hitler, there were massive increases in government spending.
According to eyewitness Kitty Werthmann, just about everyone was getting some sort of a handout from the German government....
Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.Of course, as I have written about so many times before, this is the exact same thing that we are seeing in the United States today.
#6 Under Hitler, taxes were raised dramatically in order to pay for all of these social programs.
Kitty Werthmann says that "our tax rates went up to 80% of our income."
In the United States our tax rates have not gotten that bad yet, but when you total up all federal taxes, all state taxes, all local taxes, all property taxes and all sales taxes, there are a significant number of Americans that do pay more than 50% of their incomes in taxes.
#7 The economy of Nazi Germany was very highly socialized.
As Ludwig Von Mises once correctly observed, the German economy under Hitler was not capitalist at all....
What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.The United States has not gotten to the level of Nazi Germany yet, but we do have a socialist president and back in 2009 the cover of Newsweek boldly proclaimed that "We Are All Socialists Now".
#8 In Nazi Germany, if you conducted business outside of the socialist paradigm you were heavily punished.
Well, the same thing is happening in the United States today. For example, the FDA has been runningelaborate entrapment schemes that are designed to entrap producers of raw milk. Any "unauthorized commerce" is dealt with very strictly by the U.S. government these days.
#9 In Nazi Germany, government regulation of business got wildly out of control.
The following is eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann....
My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn't meet all the demands. Soon, he went out of business.
If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.
We had consumer protection. We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.Of course we all know about all of the ridiculous regulations that the U.S. government is burdening businesses with today. In every day and age control freaks love to stick it to business people that are just trying to make a living.
#10 Under Hitler, free market capitalism was absolutely hated.
National Socialist theologian Gregor Strasser once stated the following....
We National Socialists are enemies, deadly enemies, of the present capitalist system with its exploitation of the economically weak … and we are resolved under all circumstances to destroy this system.And as I have written about previously, a lot of Barack Obama's strongest supporters are socialists and communists, and an increasing number of Americans are showing disdain for capitalism. In fact, some recent polls show that young adults in America actually have a more favorable view of socialism than they do of capitalism.
#11 In Nazi Germany, the health care system was taken over by the government.
The following is more eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann....
Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna . After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.Of course we all know what is going on in America today. The government spends nearly half of all health care dollars and Obamacare is going to mean more government control over the health care system than ever before.
#12 Under Adolf Hitler, abortion was made "safe and legal" in Germany.
It turns out that Hitler was a huge fan of the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger. And as I wrote about recently, it was Sanger that once said the following....
"The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."Hitler echoed this sentiment when he wrote the following in Mein Kampf....
"The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring. . . represents the most humane act of mankind."After the Nazis came to power in 1933, abortion was very quickly legalized. By 1935 there were approximately 500,000 abortions being performed in Germany every single year.
Yes, Hitler very much encouraged Aryan women to have as many children as possible. But he also very much viewed abortion as a way to reduce "undesirable" populations.
Unfortunately, something very similar is happening today. Abortion clinics are often located in the "poor" part of town, and a staggering 72 percent of Planned Parenthood's "customers" have incomes that are either equal to or beneath 150 percent of the federal poverty level.
#13 In Nazi Germany, killing the "defective", the "weak" and the "disabled" was considered to be a good thing because it made the German people "stronger".
Unfortunately, many in America today have fully embraced the eugenics principles which were so dominant in Nazi Germany.
A 3 year old girl named Amelia was recently denied a kidney transplant because she is considered to be "mentally retarded", and we all remember what happened to Terri Schiavo.
Not only that, the editorial page editor of the Detroit News recently proposed putting contraceptives into the drinking water in Michigan because the state has become a "breeding ground for poverty".
This kind of sick thinking is rapidly spreading in America, and that is a very frightening thing.
#14 In Nazi Germany, education was nationalized and God was kicked out of the schools.
The following is more eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann....
Our education was nationalized. I attended a very good public school. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler's picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn't pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles, and had physical education.Unfortunately, the exact same thing is happening to U.S. public schools.
#15 Under Adolf Hitler, God was mocked and religion was pushed out of every corner of public life.
Just check out the following information uncovered by author Bruce Walker....
The Nazi tract Gott und Volk was distributed in 1941, and it describes the life cycle of German youth in the future, who would: “With parties and gifts the youth will be led painlessly from one faith to the other and will grow up without ever having heard of the Sermon on the Mount or the Golden Rule, to say nothing of the Ten Commandments… The education of the youth is to be confined primarily by the teacher, the officer, and the leaders of the party. The priests will die out. They have estranged the youth from the Volk. Into their places will step the leaders. Not deputies of God. But anyway the best Germans. And how shall we train our children? Thus, as though they had never heard of Christianity!”Once again, this parallels what we are seeing happen in America today. Last year, a high school student in Southern California was suspended for two days because he had private conversations with his classmates during which he discussed Christianity. He was also banned from bringing his Bible to school ever again.
For many more examples of this phenomenon, please see this article: "18 Examples Of How Christians Are Being Specifically Targeted By Big Brother".
#16 Adolf Hitler fully embraced the theory of evolution, and Darwinism provided the intellectual foundation for much of Nazism.
At a Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg in 1933, Hitler declared that "higher race subjects to itself a lower race . . .a right which we see in nature and which can be regarded as the sole conceivable right".
Hitler was obsessed with the "survival of the fittest" and he took this theory to its logical extremes. The following is how one author put it....
"Hitler was influenced above all by the theories of the nineteenth-century social Darwinist school, whose conception of man as biological material was bound up with impulses towards a planned society. He was convinced that the race was disintegrating, deteriorating through faulty breeding as a result of a liberally tinged promiscuity that was vitiating the nation’s blood. And this led to the establishment of a catalogue of ‘positive’ curative measures: racial hygiene, eugenic choice of marriage partners, the breeding of human beings by the methods of selection on the one hand and extirpation on the other"But of course we have no problem with teaching this flawed theory to our children in the public schools of America today.
Haven't we learned anything from history?
#17 Under Adolf Hitler, the state started taking over the job of child care.
The following is more eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann....
When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology.Of course this is exactly what is happening in America today. Children are raised by day care centers and public schools, and most parents spend very little time with their own children.
#18 In Nazi Germany, it became fashionable to mock Christians and the Christian faith.
The following is more from author Bruce Walker....
By 1935, the virulently anti-Christian leader of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Shirach issued a regulation that prohibited any child from belonging simultaneously to a church youth group and the Hitler Youth, and gradually membership in the Hitler Youth became almost obligatory – parents were told that their children would not get jobs in the civil service unless they belonged to the Hitler Youth and employers were told not to hire children who did not belong to the Hitler Youth. Christian schoolchildren who did not belong to the Hitler Youth or its female counterpart were routinely beaten up by young Nazi thugs.
Boys inducted into the Hitler Youth were required to explicitly reject Christianity by oaths like this: “German blood and Christian baptismal water are completely incompatible.” At Hitler Youth center at Halle, was the following prominent statement: “The Faith fanatics, who still to-day slide down on their knees with faces uplifted to heaven, waste their time in churchgoing and prayers, and have not yet understood that they are living on the earth and that therefore their task is of a thoroughly earthly kind. All we Hitler people can still only look with the greatest contempt on those young people who still run to their silly Evangelical or Catholic Churches in order to vent their quite superstitious religious feelings.” Those that believe that the Nazis embraced Christianity are delusional. The following are direct quotes out of Hitler Youth training manuals....
“Christianity is a religion of slaves and fools.”
“How did Christ die? Whining at the Cross!”
“The Ten Commandments represent the lowest instincts of man.”
“Christianity is merely a cloak for Judaism.”
This is definitely where things are going in America today. Our television shows and our movies regularly mock Christians and they are always portrayed as the "bad guys".
In addition, the name of Jesus is rapidly becoming a forbidden word. Some U.S. courts have even ruled that it is unconstitutional to use the name of "Jesus Christ" during any official government meeting. The following comes from a recent WorldNetDaily article....
But the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are standing by their victory in a U.S. circuit court decision that states even "a solitary reference to Jesus Christ" in invocations before the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners' meetings could do "violence to the pluralistic and inclusive values that are a defining feature of American public life."#19 Under Adolf Hitler, sexual promiscuity was actually encouraged.
The following is more eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann....
My mother was very unhappy. When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent. I told her she couldn't do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful. There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun no sports, and no political indoctrination. I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it. Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing. Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me. They lived without religion. By that time unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler. It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly. As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn't exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy.Of course the exact same thing is happening in America today. If you doubt that your tax dollars are going to promote sexual promiscuity, then I have a video for you to watch. It is a video from the American Life League, and you can view it right here. DO NOT let any children watch this video. It is done by a pro-life organization but it is very graphic. I have posted a link to it because it is imperative that parents understand what is really going on out there. But please be warned that it is very, very graphic.
#20 Once the Nazis took power, they rapidly implemented gun control legislation and later on they took all of the guns away from the populace.
Kitty Werthmann remembers very well what happened in Austria under the Nazis....
Next came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long after-wards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.Last year, more than 10 million guns were sold in the United States, but gun control legislation continues to become even more strict, and it is only a matter of time before the federal government tries to disarm the U.S. population completely.
#21 Under the Nazis, large numbers of children were taken away from good families.
The following is more from author Bruce Walker....
Parents who resisted Nazi anti-Christian indoctrination too strongly simply had their children taken away from them. The Nazis even forbade parents to give their children Christian names and ordered babies instead to be given names like Dietrich, Otto or Siegfried. The home teaching of Christianity by parents in the home was forbidden. Not content with simply driving Christianity out of public schools, Himmler banned all Confessing Church seminaries and instruction in 1937 and he closed all private religious schools two years later.Doesn't this sound exactly like where America is headed?
In many states, CPS ("child protective services") has become one of the most feared government agencies. All over the nation, thousands upon thousands of children have been removed from good homes because the parents were not raising them "correctly".
You can read about one particularly bad CPS horror story right here.
#22 Under Adolf Hitler, society became very highly militarized.
Of course we are seeing the same thing in the U.S. right now.
Sadly, this is even happening to our public schools. According to blogger Alexander Higgins, students in kindergarten and the 1st grade in the state of New Jersey are now required by law to participate "in monthly anti-terrorism drills". The following is an excerpt from a letter that he recently received from the school where his child attends....
Each month a school must conduct one fire drill and one security drill which may be a lockdown, bomb threat, evacuation, active shooter, or shelter-in place drill. All schools are now required by law to implement this procedure.This is the kind of thing that a sicko like Adolf Hitler would try to do, and it is not good for our children.
#23 In Nazi Germany, the prisons were absolutely packed.
Right now, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world by far and the largest total prison population on the entire globe by far.
Even children are being arrested in alarming numbers. In a previous article, I described how one 12-year-old girl down in Texas was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume and how police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl in Massachusetts.
#24 Under Adolf Hitler, there was basically no freedom of speech.
In the United States today we are told that we still have freedom of speech, but that freedom is being "chilled" in thousands of different ways.
For example, the FBI is now admittedly recording Internet talk radio programs all over the United States. The following comes from a recent article by Mark Weaver of WMAL.com....
If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI.
The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet.
The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence.So please speak freely on talk radio. Just realize that the feds will be recording every single word.
#25 Under Adolf Hitler, paranoia was standard operating procedure.
In Nazi Germany, every citizen was a potential threat and everyone had to be constantly watched for suspicious activity.
Of course the exact same thing is happening in America today. Just about anything you do can get you labeled as a "potential terrorist" by the government.
According to a new DHS report, the following are some of the beliefs and ideologies of potential terrorists....
-"fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)"
-"anti-global"
-"suspicious of centralized federal authority"
-"reverent of individual liberty"
-"believe in conspiracy theories"
-"a belief that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack"
-"a belief in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism"
-"impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists)"
-"insert religion into the political sphere"
-"those who seek to politicize religion"
-"supported political movements for autonomy"
-"anti-abortion"
-"anti-Catholic"
-"anti-nuclear"
And the definition of "suspicious activity" has become so broad in America that it pretty much covers 100% of us. In 2012, the following activities are considered to be "suspicious" by the FBI....
-shielding your computer screen from others
-paying with cash
-acting "nervous"
-using multiple cell phones
-requesting a specific room at a hotel
-traveling with a large amount of luggage
-refusing maid service at a hotel
-staying in your room for too long
-changing your appearance
In addition, the U.S. government has decided that it would be a really good idea for all of us to spy on one another. The "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign looks like it could have been pulled right out of a Gestapo security handbook.
But America is not supposed to be about spying on one another and reporting each other to the secret police.
America is supposed to be about liberty and freedom.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Gun Control and the Paradox of Liberty
Perfection. Truth. Just plain awesome. Everything I have been saying for years.
January 8, 2013
By Christopher S. Brownwell
The hatred of people leads to gun control. I am talking about not the shooter's hatred, but the gun controller's hatred.
Liberals have a reputation for caring about people -- an undeserved reputation. They don't believe that people ought to live free and govern themselves. Liberals like Harry Belafonte, Woody Allen, and Bill Maher have openly advocated that President Obama take the authority of a dictator. Observe how liberal celebrities such as Sean Penn gush over foreign dictators like Hugo Chávez. How many of your liberal friends own a Che Guevara t-shirt or poster? Liberals hate people so much that they do not trust them to govern themselves.
The dirty little secret that everybody knows is that gun control is not about stopping the bloodshed. Even though an automobile does not have the specific purpose to kill, it has more killing power than a firearm. According to the Center for Disease Control, cars kill more people than firearms. Where is the support for an automobile ban? Liberals do not support one. You see, a ban of firearms is not about concern for murder victims.
Liberals are so irrationally attached to gun control because they love government more than they love people. They love government more than they love liberty. They seek government handouts, whether for themselves or for those they think deserve forced charity from the "rich." They adore government over-regulation of things they hate, like guns, logging, drilling for oil, and 20-oz. sodas. They love government regulation of people, like forcing us to purchase health insurance, pay for abortions, provide contraception, eat "healthy" foods.
Government is the sovereign god to liberals. They worship at its altar and support their priests every election despite their crimes and scandals. Liberals demand that their religious morality be forced on the rest of us. Carbon emission regulations, "sin" taxes, and public school lunches are just a few examples of the imposition of liberal morality.
Liberals do not see a need for the people to have firearms because they do not see a need to fear their government. They worship it. Banning automobiles is not on the table because automobiles do not threaten government authority like the firearm does. (But just you wait: when liberals continue to implement their utopian "fundamental transformation of America," the freedom to travel will be taken. Liberals then will support a ban on automobiles.)
The right to individually bear firearms is not about hunting or personal self-defense, although those are subsumed in the 2nd Amendment. The right to bear arms is about securing an arsenal in the hands of the sovereign people in order to strike fear in government officials of the possibility of violence by a well-regulated militia under the guidance and control of an accountable civil authority. We the people have a collective right in our state governments to put our federal government officials in fear of violence for their "long train of abuses and usurpations." This God-given, natural right is embodied in our nation's Declaration of Independence.
I am talking not about wanton, reckless individuals or unaccountable paramilitary groups. Violence has to be accountable to and restrained by a civil authority. But if we truly believe in the sovereignty of the people, if we are truly classical liberals, the fear of proper, organized, accountable violence is a necessity for a free republic. Thomas Jefferson affirmed that "[w]hen governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
Liberty is a paradox. Unrestrained liberty is not freedom, but anarchy. The liberty to do anything you want to do destroys liberty. G.K. Chesterton stated of social and political liberty in his timeless work Orthodoxy, "The ordinary aesthetic anarchist who sets out to feel everything freely gets knotted at last in a paradox that prevents him feeling at all. He breaks away from home limits to follow poetry. But in ceasing to feel home limits he has ceased to feel the 'Odyssey.' He is free from national prejudices and outside of patriotism. But being outside patriotism he is outside 'Henry V.' ... For if there is a wall between you and the world, it makes little difference whether you describe yourself as locked in or as locked out."
What satisfied Chesterton about the Christian paradox is that Christianity achieved the balancing of parallel passions. "[T]he more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild." Therefore, liberty is not the freedom to do anything we want to do. Liberty is the freedom to do what we ought to do.
The paradox of liberty extends to its defense and preservation. If force can take away liberty, force is necessary to preserve it. It is the hatred of violence alongside the willingness to use violence that preserves liberty. In order for us to live as free men, we have to hate the violence that takes away liberty, yet at the same time, we must embrace the violence that preserves it. That is the paradox our founders appreciated and made work for over 200 years.
Modern liberals, however, do not fear the "long train of abuses and usurpations" because they do not believe in popular sovereignty. They worship tyrannical authority. Liberals show affection to and apologize for evil men like Hugo Chávez, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Mao Tse-Tung, Bill Ayers, the Muslim Brotherhood. They show disdain for patriots like John Adams, Patrick Henry, Joe McCarthy, Ronald Reagan, and the Tea Party. Liberals fear their liberty-loving neighbors more than they do their power-hungry politicians. Liberals would rather shackle their neighbors than let them live in liberty.
In a fiery speech on August 1, 1776, Samuel Adams bellowed, "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom -- go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!"
Liberals prefer shackles to the wild adventure of liberty. Because they prefer shackles, they cannot bear others having liberty. In their bleeding hearts is not love for people, but a will to dominate them and to be dominated. Our Founders knew that taking away firearms from the citizen was essentially to turn him into a subject, a slave. Congressman Allen West affirmed this sentiment when he said, "An armed man is a citizen. A disarmed man is a subject."
Turning men into slaves is not love. But that is what gun control is all about: turning men into slaves. Love for mankind is not in taking care of him, but in letting him be free to take care of himself. With gun control, liberals want to take away the means for men to preserve their liberty.
Liberals say they want gun control because they want to end the bloodshed. But beware. What is at the heart of support for gun control is not love of men, but hatred for them.
January 8, 2013
By Christopher S. Brownwell
The hatred of people leads to gun control. I am talking about not the shooter's hatred, but the gun controller's hatred.
Liberals have a reputation for caring about people -- an undeserved reputation. They don't believe that people ought to live free and govern themselves. Liberals like Harry Belafonte, Woody Allen, and Bill Maher have openly advocated that President Obama take the authority of a dictator. Observe how liberal celebrities such as Sean Penn gush over foreign dictators like Hugo Chávez. How many of your liberal friends own a Che Guevara t-shirt or poster? Liberals hate people so much that they do not trust them to govern themselves.
The dirty little secret that everybody knows is that gun control is not about stopping the bloodshed. Even though an automobile does not have the specific purpose to kill, it has more killing power than a firearm. According to the Center for Disease Control, cars kill more people than firearms. Where is the support for an automobile ban? Liberals do not support one. You see, a ban of firearms is not about concern for murder victims.
Liberals are so irrationally attached to gun control because they love government more than they love people. They love government more than they love liberty. They seek government handouts, whether for themselves or for those they think deserve forced charity from the "rich." They adore government over-regulation of things they hate, like guns, logging, drilling for oil, and 20-oz. sodas. They love government regulation of people, like forcing us to purchase health insurance, pay for abortions, provide contraception, eat "healthy" foods.
Government is the sovereign god to liberals. They worship at its altar and support their priests every election despite their crimes and scandals. Liberals demand that their religious morality be forced on the rest of us. Carbon emission regulations, "sin" taxes, and public school lunches are just a few examples of the imposition of liberal morality.
Liberals do not see a need for the people to have firearms because they do not see a need to fear their government. They worship it. Banning automobiles is not on the table because automobiles do not threaten government authority like the firearm does. (But just you wait: when liberals continue to implement their utopian "fundamental transformation of America," the freedom to travel will be taken. Liberals then will support a ban on automobiles.)
The right to individually bear firearms is not about hunting or personal self-defense, although those are subsumed in the 2nd Amendment. The right to bear arms is about securing an arsenal in the hands of the sovereign people in order to strike fear in government officials of the possibility of violence by a well-regulated militia under the guidance and control of an accountable civil authority. We the people have a collective right in our state governments to put our federal government officials in fear of violence for their "long train of abuses and usurpations." This God-given, natural right is embodied in our nation's Declaration of Independence.
I am talking not about wanton, reckless individuals or unaccountable paramilitary groups. Violence has to be accountable to and restrained by a civil authority. But if we truly believe in the sovereignty of the people, if we are truly classical liberals, the fear of proper, organized, accountable violence is a necessity for a free republic. Thomas Jefferson affirmed that "[w]hen governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
Liberty is a paradox. Unrestrained liberty is not freedom, but anarchy. The liberty to do anything you want to do destroys liberty. G.K. Chesterton stated of social and political liberty in his timeless work Orthodoxy, "The ordinary aesthetic anarchist who sets out to feel everything freely gets knotted at last in a paradox that prevents him feeling at all. He breaks away from home limits to follow poetry. But in ceasing to feel home limits he has ceased to feel the 'Odyssey.' He is free from national prejudices and outside of patriotism. But being outside patriotism he is outside 'Henry V.' ... For if there is a wall between you and the world, it makes little difference whether you describe yourself as locked in or as locked out."
What satisfied Chesterton about the Christian paradox is that Christianity achieved the balancing of parallel passions. "[T]he more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild." Therefore, liberty is not the freedom to do anything we want to do. Liberty is the freedom to do what we ought to do.
The paradox of liberty extends to its defense and preservation. If force can take away liberty, force is necessary to preserve it. It is the hatred of violence alongside the willingness to use violence that preserves liberty. In order for us to live as free men, we have to hate the violence that takes away liberty, yet at the same time, we must embrace the violence that preserves it. That is the paradox our founders appreciated and made work for over 200 years.
Modern liberals, however, do not fear the "long train of abuses and usurpations" because they do not believe in popular sovereignty. They worship tyrannical authority. Liberals show affection to and apologize for evil men like Hugo Chávez, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Mao Tse-Tung, Bill Ayers, the Muslim Brotherhood. They show disdain for patriots like John Adams, Patrick Henry, Joe McCarthy, Ronald Reagan, and the Tea Party. Liberals fear their liberty-loving neighbors more than they do their power-hungry politicians. Liberals would rather shackle their neighbors than let them live in liberty.
In a fiery speech on August 1, 1776, Samuel Adams bellowed, "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom -- go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!"
Liberals prefer shackles to the wild adventure of liberty. Because they prefer shackles, they cannot bear others having liberty. In their bleeding hearts is not love for people, but a will to dominate them and to be dominated. Our Founders knew that taking away firearms from the citizen was essentially to turn him into a subject, a slave. Congressman Allen West affirmed this sentiment when he said, "An armed man is a citizen. A disarmed man is a subject."
Turning men into slaves is not love. But that is what gun control is all about: turning men into slaves. Love for mankind is not in taking care of him, but in letting him be free to take care of himself. With gun control, liberals want to take away the means for men to preserve their liberty.
Liberals say they want gun control because they want to end the bloodshed. But beware. What is at the heart of support for gun control is not love of men, but hatred for them.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
When seconds count...
Some of us already knew/know this. Who is going to protect your family?
January 7, 2013
Cliff Thier
We learn today from CNN:
At the police station, dispatchers began to take calls from inside the school. Authorities say the first emergency call about the shooting came in at "approximately" 9:30 a.m.
"Sandy Hook school. Caller is indicating she thinks someone is shooting in the building," a dispatcher told fire and medical personnel, according to 911 tapes.
Police and other first responders arrived on scene about 20 minutes after the first calls.
Police report that no law enforcement officers discharged their weapons at any point.
The gunman took his own life, police said. He took out a handgun and shot himself in a classroom as law enforcement officers approached, officials said.
The police station is 2 miles from the school.
Might it be fair to speculate that if the police arrived in 5 minutes, 15-20 of the 26 killed might still be alive?
If we expect the police to arrive in time to save us from a gunman, we're deluding ourselves.
January 7, 2013
Cliff Thier
We learn today from CNN:
At the police station, dispatchers began to take calls from inside the school. Authorities say the first emergency call about the shooting came in at "approximately" 9:30 a.m.
"Sandy Hook school. Caller is indicating she thinks someone is shooting in the building," a dispatcher told fire and medical personnel, according to 911 tapes.
Police and other first responders arrived on scene about 20 minutes after the first calls.
Police report that no law enforcement officers discharged their weapons at any point.
The gunman took his own life, police said. He took out a handgun and shot himself in a classroom as law enforcement officers approached, officials said.
The police station is 2 miles from the school.
Might it be fair to speculate that if the police arrived in 5 minutes, 15-20 of the 26 killed might still be alive?
If we expect the police to arrive in time to save us from a gunman, we're deluding ourselves.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Obama's Disarming Haste
No different than Lenin, Hitler or Stalin. Wake up America!
January 7, 2013
By Daren Jonescu
According to the Washington Post's Philip Rucker, President Obama is committed to moving quickly on gun violence legislation. Reported as good news, in truth this carefully projected haste and urgency ought to be regarded -- and would be reported, by a media that did not have a stake in leftist authoritarianism -- as the gravest warning sign.
"A warning sign of what?" asks the scoffing useful idiot. "Of the end of even the pretense of liberal democracy, constitutional republicanism, or any other form of government answerable to the governed."
It became a cliché during the last century to say that tyranny has the advantage over freedom in a crisis, because while the legitimate government must follow its own internal processes for assuring the consent of the people (or of their representatives) prior to acting, the tyrant may simply issue a decree, irrespective of anyone's objections.
It is true that legitimate governments comprised of co-equal branches, or of deliberative bodies, are somewhat limited in their power to act precipitately. And that limit is precisely the source of their legitimacy.
In almost all circumstances, sometimes even including the most grave and pressing, legitimate governments are compelled to engage in some measure of deliberation. That is, they are restricted in their actions and responses to what can be agreed upon through a process of reasoning. If there are disagreements about the need for action, they must be heard. If there are quibbles about the course of action to be pursued, they must be heard.
Churchill argued vehemently and repeatedly in and out of the British parliament against Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, and in favor of forceful action. Through this process, his case, which was initially unpopular both in parliament and among the British people, grew in force and effect, and Churchill himself was chiselled by it into a greater leader of men -- precisely when Britain, and the world, needed such a leader. His path to action was longer and more laborious than Hitler's, but he had right on his side -- and he won.
Churchill was forced to these extremes of patient argumentation in the face of an immediate threat to his nation's survival by a tyrannical lunatic commanding the most powerful military in Europe. That is a case study in what I am calling "legitimate government." Illegitimate government, by contrast, would follow the opposite trajectory: pursue the most radical policy proposals while circumventing or avoiding patient argumentation and debate, even in matters of relatively little urgency.
To state this contrast differently, a free nation thinks before it acts in its own best interests, even in a genuine crisis, while an unfree nation is dragged into unthinking action against its own interests, in response to an illusory crisis.
When Rahm Emanuel described the Obama administration's modus operandi as "never let a serious crisis go to waste," many conservatives latched onto this supposed revelation as Exhibit A against the administration's integrity. In truth, Emanuel was putting the idea out there early, in the first weeks of the administration, so that, through repetition, it could be transformed, over the course of Obama's first term, from evidence of alarming cynicism into the definition of responsible governance.
Thus it is that mainstream reporters can now matter-of-factly describe the White House's mission on gun control this way:
Obama's advisers have calculated that the longer they wait, the more distance there is from the Newtown massacre and the greater the risk that the bipartisan political will to tackle gun violence will dissipate.
"This is not something that I will be putting off," Obama said on NBC's "Meet the Press" in an interview broadcast last Sunday.
At the White House meeting, [Sheriff Richard] Stanek said, "the vice president indicated that there was a very short timeline for him to get back to the president with his recommendations because the American public has a short memory."
Think about that. The president and vice president of the United States are urging immediate action on gun control, pre-empting all debate about the measures' constitutionality; and their justification for this urgent, anti-constitutional action is that "the American public has a short memory." In other words, this is not a real crisis (i.e., an ongoing threat), and the public will soon realize that, and carry on with life as usual; therefore, we must act before that happens.
Here is Rucker's account of the administration's intentions:
A working group led by Vice President Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors, the sources said.
As for where the federal government would get the authority to require "universal background checks," monitor the "movement" of private property, impose "stronger" mental health checks (on whom?), or punish private citizens for "giving" guns to minors (teaching your son to shoot?), these are precisely the kinds of questions for which the normal process of legitimate government would be in order -- deliberate, debate, reason. But the administration is unwilling to accept the likely outcome of such a process, and therefore wishes to foist its illiberal ideas on the public without open discussion. We all know the pattern now: in place of the deliberative process designed to protect the public from unjust government, Obama, Feinstein, et al will rush through legislation and executive orders, and then "lead a public relations offensive to generate public support."
There is a striking dissonance between the alleged need to act immediately, and the nature of the measures proposed. Rucker repeatedly tells us the government's response will be "comprehensive"; Biden's working group has "expanded its focus" to areas in which the president may act without congressional support, such as "changes to federal mental-health programs"; the administration is "quietly talking with a diverse array of interest groups"; they are "developing strategies to work around the National Rifle Association," such as "rallying support from Wal-Mart and other gun retailers for measures that would benefit their businesses" (i.e., crony capitalism in the name of restricting gun sales); their proposals constitute a "deeper exploration than just the assault-weapons ban"; and the discussions include the secretaries of Homeland Security, Education, and Health and Human Services.
These are strategies for radical change in the nature and order of American society. One does not solve an immediate crisis by abandoning the entity undergoing the crisis. A man whose kitchen is on fire does not respond by calling a real estate agent to discuss buying a new house; he calls the fire department, and tries to save his property. A nation in a crisis does not abandon its laws and principles; it tries to shore them up with some form of corrective action. Conservatives were rightly disdainful of George W. Bush's nonsense about "abandoning the free market in order to save it." Now, the Obama administration's response to a violation of individual rights (gun violence) is to abandon individual liberty and the right of self-preservation.
A government that responds to a genuine crisis -- such as foreign attack, or wide-scale insurrection -- in a precipitate fashion is acting irresponsibly. A government that manufactures a crisis in order to justify acting precipitately is behaving tyrannically. A government that follows this pattern as its normal method of operation is not merely behaving tyrannically - it is a tyranny.
"Never let a crisis go to waste" is cynical politics of the highest order. "Never let an opportunity to create the illusion of a crisis go to waste" is worse than cynical; it is diabolical. It is also fundamentally delegitimizing of the government that pursues this policy. A health care "crisis" necessitates immediate passage of a bill that no one has read, let alone debated. A student loan "crisis" necessitates a federal government takeover of the loan industry. A fiscal "crisis" necessitates the passage of a bill that was presented to the U.S. Senate -- "the world's greatest deliberative body" -- six minutes prior to the vote. And so on.
Now, a gun violence "crisis" -- which has been cleverly expanded into a mental health "crisis" -- requires immediate, undeliberated measures to begin the final process of ending private gun ownership, while extending the federal government's power to assess, label, restrict, and/or detain private citizens as "mentally unstable," according to guidelines that will be written by the leftist authoritarians at HHS, the Justice Department, and Homeland Security. Talk about the lunatics running the asylum!
The only real crisis at play here is a crisis of liberty; the U.S. federal government has become unmoored from any notion of legitimate representative government, and its illegitimate practices have become broadly acceptable to the American public. Corrective measures are certainly in order, but these will not come from the government. They will come, if they come, from the people.
Here, from the Washington Post article, is the sensibility now governing America's public policy, in a nutshell:
"As we get involved in these ad nauseam debates over the Second Amendment, our children are still at risk," said Jon Adler, national president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. "Debating is not the action verb we need to protect our children."
Actually, Mr. Adler, it is. Debating -- discussing the appropriateness of proposed policy in light of the nation's interests and fundamental principles -- is what legitimate governments do, as long as they wish to represent the will, rather than exploit the ignorance and fear, of the people.
While we're at it, Americans might like to consider a few other action verbs pertinent to this moment, and to "protecting their children": resisting, debunking, teaching, thinking, and fighting.
January 7, 2013
By Daren Jonescu
According to the Washington Post's Philip Rucker, President Obama is committed to moving quickly on gun violence legislation. Reported as good news, in truth this carefully projected haste and urgency ought to be regarded -- and would be reported, by a media that did not have a stake in leftist authoritarianism -- as the gravest warning sign.
"A warning sign of what?" asks the scoffing useful idiot. "Of the end of even the pretense of liberal democracy, constitutional republicanism, or any other form of government answerable to the governed."
It became a cliché during the last century to say that tyranny has the advantage over freedom in a crisis, because while the legitimate government must follow its own internal processes for assuring the consent of the people (or of their representatives) prior to acting, the tyrant may simply issue a decree, irrespective of anyone's objections.
It is true that legitimate governments comprised of co-equal branches, or of deliberative bodies, are somewhat limited in their power to act precipitately. And that limit is precisely the source of their legitimacy.
In almost all circumstances, sometimes even including the most grave and pressing, legitimate governments are compelled to engage in some measure of deliberation. That is, they are restricted in their actions and responses to what can be agreed upon through a process of reasoning. If there are disagreements about the need for action, they must be heard. If there are quibbles about the course of action to be pursued, they must be heard.
Churchill argued vehemently and repeatedly in and out of the British parliament against Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, and in favor of forceful action. Through this process, his case, which was initially unpopular both in parliament and among the British people, grew in force and effect, and Churchill himself was chiselled by it into a greater leader of men -- precisely when Britain, and the world, needed such a leader. His path to action was longer and more laborious than Hitler's, but he had right on his side -- and he won.
Churchill was forced to these extremes of patient argumentation in the face of an immediate threat to his nation's survival by a tyrannical lunatic commanding the most powerful military in Europe. That is a case study in what I am calling "legitimate government." Illegitimate government, by contrast, would follow the opposite trajectory: pursue the most radical policy proposals while circumventing or avoiding patient argumentation and debate, even in matters of relatively little urgency.
To state this contrast differently, a free nation thinks before it acts in its own best interests, even in a genuine crisis, while an unfree nation is dragged into unthinking action against its own interests, in response to an illusory crisis.
When Rahm Emanuel described the Obama administration's modus operandi as "never let a serious crisis go to waste," many conservatives latched onto this supposed revelation as Exhibit A against the administration's integrity. In truth, Emanuel was putting the idea out there early, in the first weeks of the administration, so that, through repetition, it could be transformed, over the course of Obama's first term, from evidence of alarming cynicism into the definition of responsible governance.
Thus it is that mainstream reporters can now matter-of-factly describe the White House's mission on gun control this way:
Obama's advisers have calculated that the longer they wait, the more distance there is from the Newtown massacre and the greater the risk that the bipartisan political will to tackle gun violence will dissipate.
"This is not something that I will be putting off," Obama said on NBC's "Meet the Press" in an interview broadcast last Sunday.
At the White House meeting, [Sheriff Richard] Stanek said, "the vice president indicated that there was a very short timeline for him to get back to the president with his recommendations because the American public has a short memory."
Think about that. The president and vice president of the United States are urging immediate action on gun control, pre-empting all debate about the measures' constitutionality; and their justification for this urgent, anti-constitutional action is that "the American public has a short memory." In other words, this is not a real crisis (i.e., an ongoing threat), and the public will soon realize that, and carry on with life as usual; therefore, we must act before that happens.
Here is Rucker's account of the administration's intentions:
A working group led by Vice President Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors, the sources said.
As for where the federal government would get the authority to require "universal background checks," monitor the "movement" of private property, impose "stronger" mental health checks (on whom?), or punish private citizens for "giving" guns to minors (teaching your son to shoot?), these are precisely the kinds of questions for which the normal process of legitimate government would be in order -- deliberate, debate, reason. But the administration is unwilling to accept the likely outcome of such a process, and therefore wishes to foist its illiberal ideas on the public without open discussion. We all know the pattern now: in place of the deliberative process designed to protect the public from unjust government, Obama, Feinstein, et al will rush through legislation and executive orders, and then "lead a public relations offensive to generate public support."
There is a striking dissonance between the alleged need to act immediately, and the nature of the measures proposed. Rucker repeatedly tells us the government's response will be "comprehensive"; Biden's working group has "expanded its focus" to areas in which the president may act without congressional support, such as "changes to federal mental-health programs"; the administration is "quietly talking with a diverse array of interest groups"; they are "developing strategies to work around the National Rifle Association," such as "rallying support from Wal-Mart and other gun retailers for measures that would benefit their businesses" (i.e., crony capitalism in the name of restricting gun sales); their proposals constitute a "deeper exploration than just the assault-weapons ban"; and the discussions include the secretaries of Homeland Security, Education, and Health and Human Services.
These are strategies for radical change in the nature and order of American society. One does not solve an immediate crisis by abandoning the entity undergoing the crisis. A man whose kitchen is on fire does not respond by calling a real estate agent to discuss buying a new house; he calls the fire department, and tries to save his property. A nation in a crisis does not abandon its laws and principles; it tries to shore them up with some form of corrective action. Conservatives were rightly disdainful of George W. Bush's nonsense about "abandoning the free market in order to save it." Now, the Obama administration's response to a violation of individual rights (gun violence) is to abandon individual liberty and the right of self-preservation.
A government that responds to a genuine crisis -- such as foreign attack, or wide-scale insurrection -- in a precipitate fashion is acting irresponsibly. A government that manufactures a crisis in order to justify acting precipitately is behaving tyrannically. A government that follows this pattern as its normal method of operation is not merely behaving tyrannically - it is a tyranny.
"Never let a crisis go to waste" is cynical politics of the highest order. "Never let an opportunity to create the illusion of a crisis go to waste" is worse than cynical; it is diabolical. It is also fundamentally delegitimizing of the government that pursues this policy. A health care "crisis" necessitates immediate passage of a bill that no one has read, let alone debated. A student loan "crisis" necessitates a federal government takeover of the loan industry. A fiscal "crisis" necessitates the passage of a bill that was presented to the U.S. Senate -- "the world's greatest deliberative body" -- six minutes prior to the vote. And so on.
Now, a gun violence "crisis" -- which has been cleverly expanded into a mental health "crisis" -- requires immediate, undeliberated measures to begin the final process of ending private gun ownership, while extending the federal government's power to assess, label, restrict, and/or detain private citizens as "mentally unstable," according to guidelines that will be written by the leftist authoritarians at HHS, the Justice Department, and Homeland Security. Talk about the lunatics running the asylum!
The only real crisis at play here is a crisis of liberty; the U.S. federal government has become unmoored from any notion of legitimate representative government, and its illegitimate practices have become broadly acceptable to the American public. Corrective measures are certainly in order, but these will not come from the government. They will come, if they come, from the people.
Here, from the Washington Post article, is the sensibility now governing America's public policy, in a nutshell:
"As we get involved in these ad nauseam debates over the Second Amendment, our children are still at risk," said Jon Adler, national president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. "Debating is not the action verb we need to protect our children."
Actually, Mr. Adler, it is. Debating -- discussing the appropriateness of proposed policy in light of the nation's interests and fundamental principles -- is what legitimate governments do, as long as they wish to represent the will, rather than exploit the ignorance and fear, of the people.
While we're at it, Americans might like to consider a few other action verbs pertinent to this moment, and to "protecting their children": resisting, debunking, teaching, thinking, and fighting.
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