Other countries are founded on blood and soil. The USA is founded on an Idea.

A commenter to a blog at Ammoland here has one of the best explanations of the difference between the United States and every other country on the face of the earth, and thus explains the fact of American Exceptionalism.I have tried to explain this in the past, only to have my explanations fall on deaf ears.  Perhaps the commenter can reach those I could not, since he writes much more elegantly than I do.

The commenter, one oldshooter says the following:

The idea that the 2nd Amendment only covers militia service and purposes is incorrect from a grammatical standpoint, and there is no reason to think the drafters were poor grammarians-quite the opposite, in fact. Because of the way the explanatory “militia clause” is used in the amendment, it is not, grammatically speaking, a limitation on the imperative, “shall not be infringed” clause. However, there is a much more far reaching principle involved. If you consider their writings at the time, and the principles the Founding Fathers were basing our country and government on, you will see that the most fundamental principle underlying all others was the idea that the government was instituted by the people, for the purpose of safeguarding the personal liberty of each individual citizen. The basic idea is that your liberty to rant, rave, and swing your fist should be unlimited-until your fist reaches the end of my nose. Or to use Jefferson’s words, your freedom should be unimpaired, “so long as it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” This in fact, is the idea that makes America “exceptional,” as no other country on Earth has EVER been founded on such a radical principle. It is far more common for nations to ascribe to either the monarchical principal that the people (the “Subjects”) live to serve the sovereign/monarch, or a socialistic one (a la the NAZIs) that the individual citizen lives to serve the state, and the benefit of the state supersedes the benefit of any individual citizen. That idea is based on the Utilitarian Philosophical principal that “the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few.” Americans believe the exact opposite, that the liberty of the individual outweighs (and should underlie) the behavior of the government. The Founders weren’t “wimps,” and didn’t see the government’s job as protecting the people, but rather as safeguarding the people’s inherent right, and ability, to protect themselves. THAT guiding principle is ultimately the explanation for why the 2nd Amendment protects everyone’s right to keep and bear (ie, to own and carry) “arms” (ie, weapons, including the most effective weapons today-guns), for whatever use they please, so long as they do not hurt innocent others. It is a direct outgrowth of our exceptionalism-the protection of the individual’s inherent right to arms is, in fact, simply another good example of American exceptionalism. That also explains why anti-Americans like Obama, Hillary, and Socialists in general, neither think America is exceptional, nor see anything wrong with infringing the citizen’s inherent rights to self-defense-they just don’t believe in “Americanism,” that is, in the basic founding politico-philosophical principles on which our country is founded.

The United States is not like a nation such as England, or Germany, Japan, or China, or any of the nations that make up the continent of Africa. Those countries are based on ethnic majorities and and regional and historical areas: blood and soil. The United States is an idea, and if you take away its founding idea, you take away the United States. What you have left is the Former States of America.  Indeed, it is why I no longer fly a United States flag at my house.  We are no longer living in the United States.  Instead, for a number of years we have been living in the FSA.

Finally, a hat tip to David Codrea at the War on Guns for pointing me to this post.  Thanks.

The Only Rights Someone Else Need to Respect Are The Ones YOU are Willing to Defend

The Daily Caller has the poop on the deliberate bait and switch know as gun control here. The video is the work of undercover members of Project Veritas. This is, of course, of a piece with the leaked DNC e-mails, the Clinton private server e-mails, etc. etc. etc.

Do not doubt that if Hillary is elected, she will do her best to nullify the Second Amendment.  Of course, that does not me she will take away your right to bear arms, for no one can take that away but our Creator.  But it is a right she will no longer have to respect.  Remember that the only rights someone else needs to respect are the ones YOU are willing to defend.  

Then there is this. Bill Whittle may be right, that maybe now Bernie supporters will be more sympathetic...nah. They are too self absorbed at the moment to feel anything for anyone else. But if it makes them feel better, I feel for them, I really do.  Such betrayal is difficult to stomach.

7 Things the Left Doesn't Want You to Know About Their History

Dinesh D'Souza has an article over at Townhall.com entitled 7 Things the Left Doesn't Want You to Know About Their History. I am surprised more people do not know this history, or the history of the Republican party for that matter. Republicans can be proud of our Abolitionist founding, and our fight for civil rights before and after the Civil War. It is amazing to me that the Democrats have laid claim to being the party of civil rights, and that Republicans have just let them. As D'Souza points out, the KKK, the Dred Scott decision, the building of the segregation movement, and many more were all Democrat. Margaret Sanger, whose birth control, and later abortion idea was specifically designed to limit the number of blacks was taken up by the Democrats with enthusiasm. The founder of the Democrat party, Andrew Jackson, dispossessed the Indian Tribes of their land and set in motion the profoundly Unconstitutional idea of Manifest Destiny.  If it weren't that so many lawyers, prosecutors, judges, and their political bosses are Democrat, the whole party might have been indicted on RICO charges.

Go read D'Souza, then tell me if you would rather have Hillary elected President.

Carrying a 1911 style Pistol

I recently came across a blog entitled Jeff Coopers Five Facts of 1911 Life. As I carry a 1911 style handgun most everywhere, I am always interested in things 1911. My own choice was a Kimber TLE II, which has everything you need, nothing you don't, and always goes bang when you pull the trigger. Of course, many other weapons are fine instruments as well, and I have nothing but respect for anyone who carries on a daily basis.  I decided on a 1911 after a lot of time trying others pistol types, and settled on a Kimber after reviewing other brands of 1911.  The Kimber works for me.  For me, the manual of arms for that weapon is the simplest, and most intuitive.  YMMV.

The M1911 pistol was John Moses Browning's masterpiece, well ahead of its time.  It served the armed forces if the United States in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.  Many special forces units still use it, as well as many law enforcement units.  It is heavy, at 38 oz. but strangely carries well concealed.  In the summer, with a Hawaiian shirt or a Guyabera it completely disappears.  A sport coat completely hides it, yet it is ready to go in an outside the waistband (OWB) strong side holster.  Browning made minor improvements to his design, including getting rid of the grip safety when he designed the Hi-Power, but he never made another giant leap like the M1911.  The ergonomics of the 1911 style pistol fit my hands, and the weapon just points naturally,  It is well balanced, and the weight helps it absorb some of the recoil.  In its original configuration, it can be detail stripped entirely without tools. No other gun can claim this distinction.

The proper way of carrying a 1911 pistol is cocked and locked.  When I first put the pistol on, there was some controversy, as Mrs. Polykahr was used to revolvers.  To her, it looked unsafe.  I carried it about the house for about a week, unloaded, to demonstrate that it was indeed safe.  I also pointed to Jeff Cooper, the father of the Modern Technique of the Handgun.  She wasn't impressed, but eventually relented..

In any case, I have carried my 1911 pistol in what Jeff Cooper termed "Condition 1" where the pistol has a full magazine inserted, has a round in the chamber, is cocked and has the thumb safety ON, since I first got it.  Counter-intuitively for most people not familiar with the gun, it is the safest way to carry a 1911 pistol.  If you carry in any other condition, you will handicap yourself in bringing the gun into action, or you will endanger yourself and those around you.  Here is what Boatman has to say:

Condition Three. Chamber empty, hammer down. This requires you to manually cycle the slide before firing. To return the gun to its carry position after firing, you have to drop the magazine, empty the chamber, drop the hammer, reload and reinsert the magazine, all without shooting an innocent bystander. Condition Three is the slowest-into-action of any method of carrying a 1911 and, as such, is a dangerous concession to those whose nervous systems are conditioned to revolvers whose hammers are always at rest when not in use and which are not equipped with the operator-controlled safety systems of the 1911.

Condition Two. Chamber loaded, hammer down. This requires you to cock the hammer with your thumb before firing. It also requires you to very carefully pull the trigger and lower the hammer over a loaded chamber before returning the gun to its holster. The technique for manipulating a Condition Two carry is best practiced out in the country in a freshly plowed field, where the bullets will not ricochet off the pavement or the occasional rock every time you re-holster your gun.

One often sees cops, on police shows, racking the slide as they go into a situation, implying they had not chambered a round before hand. This is the equivalent of Condition Three, and is very dangerous. You are not always, as a concealed carrier, going to have the luxury of knowing in advance that you need to have your weapon out and ready. Indeed, the bad guys are going to attempt to get the jump on you and you are usually going to be behind the power curve and trying to catch up. In such a situation, you may be holding the bad guy, who may be wielding a knife. with your weak hand while using your strong hand to bring the gun into action. The thumb safety naturally falls under your thumb, and you should ride it as you bring your weapon up to use it. If you had to rack the weapon first, before firing...well...you would probably be dead.  Condition Two is just plain dangerous all around.  I can't think of anything more inducing of an accidental discharge than pulling the trigger and trying to control the hammer as it drops on a loaded chamber! What foolishness.

There are weaknesses and compromises in every pistol design, and the 1911 style pistol is no different.  Some pistols are finicky about ammunition, though the Kimber has proven to be largely immune to such issues.  But my example has proven to be finicky about what magazines are used to feed the ammunition.  While others have had great success with Chip McCormick magazines, I find these do not drop free when spent.  Wilson Combat 47D mags have proven to be unreliable, though they are highly recommended in the 1911 community.  The magazine I have found works best is Kim Pro Tac Mag.  While it is somewhat expensive, it has proven to be totally reliable in my gun, and drops free when I push the magazine eject button. Note that I use the 8 round magazines, which work fine in my gun, but 1911 purests will eschew the 8 rounders for traditional 7 rounders.

Magazines are usually the weak link in the pistol system, so if you carry for self defense, you must be ruthless about culling old magazines that no longer work reliably.  Yes, you may get a few more years out of a mag by replacing a spring, but the feed lips can become misaligned by a very small amount, and you will never be able to find and fix such a problem.  It is better to toss out a magazine that is not feeding reliably and purchase a new one.  Indeed, just keep a lot of extras so you are never out.

Holster makers make every style of holster ever conceived for the 1911 Government Model, so popular is this style of handgun. As a result you will find a dizzying array of holsters in leather, kydex, fabric, and the newer kydex and leather combination holsters.  After trying several styles, I settled on two that work for me.  One is a clone of Bruce Nelson's Summer Special.  The Summer Special is an inside the waistband (IWB) holster that, when worn at the 3:30 position, brings the gun in tight to the body. I have never had an issue with either of my Summer Special style holsters. The other holster that I have found works well for me is the Mitch Rosen 5JR holster. The 5JR is a pancake style holster, first popularized by Roy Baker in the mid 1950s. It also holds the weapon close to the body, and the draw from this holster is fast. For concealed carry, I use the open top version. Again, I have never had a problem with this style holster. A final word on carry is to get a good solid gun belt. Gun belts do not have to look like heavy duty affairs. There are many belts designed to look stylish but still be substantial enough to carry a gun. These belts will be expensive, costing perhaps $75-$110, but they are worth their weight in gold.

The 1911 pistol is a working pistol, and should be carried, maintained, and shot often.  Having it sitting in a gun safe is, in my opinion, a tragedy.  It serves no purpose whatsoever if it is merely a safe queen, trotted out to be petted once in while, then put back because you don't want to mar it in any way.  It will only acquire the patina of hard use that makes historical pistols valuable if it is used for the purpose it was designed.

Whatever weapon system (and it is not just a gun, it is in fact a weapon system) please train with it often.  Your life may depend on it one day, though I pray, gentle readers, that and I will never need to draw it in anger.  But if you do, I want you to prevail.

A Confession and a Pledge to Action

I have a confession to make folks.  I have been one of those who have prosecuted the conservative ideal through gentlemanly debate.  I have been one who has for too long pondered where the red line is between action, sometimes violent action, and tolerating the intolerable, while hoping, against hope, that the country would finally realize where it is headed and turn around.  I have been presenting facts and figures to people who can only understand emotion; casting my pearls before swine.

Many former leftists have been warning us for years that the Left does not play by the rules, indeed does not recognize any rules.  David Horowitz is a prominent former member of the New Left who warned us early and often with such books as The Politics of Bad Faith. But having been brought up to believe that good overcomes evil, I could not bring myself to fight fire with fire. Mike Vanderboegh is another who has come to the light from darkness. I met Mike once or twice at various gun protests. Once in Northern Virginia, right across the river within sight of the Capitol, Washington DC, and once in Greensboro, NC. Even then I could not bring myself to do what Mike has done, sad to say. It seems I did not have the courage of my convictions.  It is cowardly to obey an unjust law, and it is cowardly to compromise with evil.  Or as Jesse Helms, Senator from North Carolina, famously said:

Compromise, hell! That's what has happened to us all down the line -- and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?

Ever since Ted Cruz dropped out of the race, I have been doing a lot of soul searching.  Ted was my guy, the man for whom I had been looking for 40 years.  Ted is a walking, talking, Constitution of the United States of America, and honestly would be a true successor to Justice Antonin Scalia and no doubt welcomed by Justice Sam Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas.  The others I can not in all conscience dignify with the title of Justice.

I have vowed never to vote for the lesser of two evils again.  I have sworn not to put my name to it, nor to give such an abhorrence my blessing.  My personal integrity means too much to me.  High sounding phrases, no doubt, but now when I read these words what they scream to me is what an egotistical ass!  Because what these people have been trying to say is right.  Someone boxing under the Marquess of Queensberry rules can not defeat a mixed martial artist.  Any chair in a bar fight.  Don't bring a knife to a gun fight.   The Left does not play fair, and neither should we.  For a true gentleman is gentle with those who are gentle, but is ruthless to those who are ruthless.

Two articles today at the American Thinker have prompted me to finally write this confession for the entire world to see.  The first, entitled All I know is that gentlemanly conservatism is dead by Christopher Chatrill points out that government is forces, and someone, somewhere, will always be hurt by any action government takes. Which is why a it is so important to have a government fully limited in its scope and power. It is why a Bill of Rights that defines certain rights as off the table for discussion or voting is also so important. It is why we must be ever vigilant to see that the people entrusted with power do not abuse their power.  The founders were mortal men, to be sure, with all the flaws that entails, but they were nonetheless Divinely inspired. Like the Bible, and Shakespeare, what they wrote is timeless. You so called "liberals" who insist that the 200 years since its writing have changed everything, usually without reading it or contemplating its virtues, need to take your arrogant smart phone naval gazing, go sit down and shut the f@#& up. There, was that ungentlemanly enough for you?

The other, which also hit home is For Trump! Against the Disloyalist by Jared E. Peterson. Like most conservatives, I had not thought of myself as disloyal. I had thought of myself as an individual. After all, one name for the Left, which encompasses Communists, Socialists, Fascists, Progressives, Fabians, liberals, etc, etc, ad nauseum, is "collectivists." The opposite of "collectivist" is "individualists," right? Except in the real world these two archetypes don't really exists. Among collectivists there are ranges of opinion, and among individualists, no man is an island. Everyone who survives needs the cooperation of others.  More, if I truly believed that the Constitution was Divinely inspired, then truly I was putting my ego, my self will above that of my Creator.  Clearly, I was wrong.  For that, I am sorry.  Peterson is right, that a Hillary administration would be a disaster, if for no other reason than that they are killing innocent children right here in America through abortion.  No more.  Enough is enough.

I will vote for Trump.  Moreover, I will pledge to do whatever I can to seal his election.  But I will be watching.  I would have preferred a Washington, but I will take a Trump.

Obama explains why there is no reason to control guns. What?

summer patriot, winter soldier points out tha Obama inexplicably explains why there is no public safety concern in America justifying gun control.

in an article posted on july 22, 2016 at time's web magazine, authored by maya rhodan (@ m_rhodan), president barack obama was at some pains to explain why he is the most cynical gun grabber in the history of the republic. he also explained at length why there is absolutely no underlying public health and safety reason to justify "gun control," leaving the only possible basis for it a rather cynical attempt to disarm his political opponents.

he may not have intended to do just that, as he was attacking donald trump's "doom and gloom" assessment of the nation at the republican national convention and trying to point out how successful his administration has been, but, he did just that. he proved that there is no basis in fact nor in our recent history to justify interfering with our rights to possess and use firearms.

The use of all lower case is in the original. But despite writing in the style of e. e. cummings, his point is still made that by any critical examination what Obama actually said, there is no utilitarian reason to take away American's guns. On a principled basis, of course, there is no reason either, unless your principle is to establish a dictatorship. Is that the principle Obama doesn't want to say?

On voting for Trump

I was talking to another conservative last evening, and consoled her with the idea that Cruz is not finished, that we have not heard the last of him.  I likened Cruz to Winston Churchill, and noted that when Ted's time comes, the country will call him to great service.  Oddly enough, today I read that C. Edmund Wright had the same thoughts in an article entitled Time Will Vindicate Ted Cruz over at the American Thinker. wright starts off stating his thesis:

The fullness of time will vindicate Ted Cruz's actions at the National Convention this week, and as a bonus, the reaction has exposed that Donald Trump has indeed jumped in between the sheets with the Republican Establishment. On the second point, let's not quibble over who seduced whom.

He then spends several paragraphs comparing the conventional wisdom of the era to what actually happened, noting the the conventional wisdom got it mostly wrong, before making this point:

First, about this whole notion of political suicide: I thought what we were looking for was someone willing to put truth ahead of career expediency and the next election cycle. I obviously misjudged what some of you wanted.

Frankly, I was shocked at the way so many otherwise conservative people went all in for Trump. It seems that having someone on the national stage speaking what was on their minds was more important than having someone dependable to actually, you know, treat the Presidency of the Republic as it is meant to be treated by the Founders. Personally, what I found is that few people actually know the Constitution, or care about the Constitution. They just want to slap around the libs for a while. Few people seem to understand too that we are indeed a Republic, not a Democracy, and that many of the things Congress is engaged in are not Constitutional. The Court has long ago left off doing its Constitutional duty, and the Presidency...well, you get the idea.

On this pledge issue, I would like a few questions answered. First, didn't Trump threaten not only to break the pledge, but even to run third party multiple times? And didn't his legions adore him for it? He did, and they did.

Are there no circumstances under which the honorable thing to do is to break a pledge, a promise, or a contract? We all know there certainly are. And by the way, breaking contracts and promises is a large part of Trump's business career. Hell, it's the art of the deal, after all. Declaring bankruptcy four times is indeed the breaking of four significant pledges!

I won't even mention the multiple infidelities. That would be tacky.

And why do you supporters even want a Cruz endorsement? If he's Lyin Ted, he did Trump a favor. Dittos if he is this tool of Goldman Sachs. Is it even necessary to bother with the detail that Trump is considering a Goldman appointee as Treasury secretary?

Now, I do not control any of this, and I am not so naive as to believe my vote actually counts. I am not sure weather I will vote for Trump yet, or simply abstain. Once again I am forced into a choice between very bad and even worse, only this time I think it is a choice between one evil and another evil.

I may be wrong.  Certainly if Trump wins, I will hope that he turns out to be the man my friends think he is,  Heaven knows our Republic needs someone to clean out the rats nest of corruption that Washington has become.  Its just that I don't think Trump is the one to do it.

How Democrats Steal Elections

If you want to know how Democrats steal elections, you might take a look at Paul Murphy's How Democrats Steal Elections. It seems as if its a miracle if somebody honest wins an election.

The Spiritual Value and Meaning of Money

On Sunday, July 10, 2016, Fay Voshell had an article at the American Thinker entitled Brexit Reveals the Complete Bankruptcy of the European Union. While the article spends a lot of time talking about the spiritual bankruptcy of the EU, what it really is is a call to reawaken our Christian identities both in Europe and in America. Voshell:

We Americans should be grateful that Great Britain has recovered some of its memory as a nation and has indicated she does not wish her national identity to disappear down the memory hole. We can be glad she sees herself and her people in more than economic terms or as part of a faceless bureaucratic super state.

One can even hope that she and America as well may also recover the memory of her Christian past and put it to work in visualizing a Christian framework for the nation. That effort would be heroic, largely because the effort of recovery of memory and the actualization of a vision for the future is supremely heroic work.

Today’s concerned Christians find themselves in the situation of England’s Christian community during 1938, when their country was facing the prospect of totalitarian aggression and absorption into a secularist super state determined to rule all of Europe...

Between the misleading title, and the quote above, Voshell explains the the spiritual bankruptcy of the European Union and its insane regulatory regime. The EU has misplaced the notion of equality before the law, and equality before God, and turned it instead into equality of stuff.  But of course equal stuff just means less stuff for everyone.  For even though the capitalist notion of serving others by creating new things to satisfy the public's desires, serves those who create them, it nevertheless achieves God's goals precisely because it serves others.

While Bernie Sanders may rail at 23 different choices for under arm deodorant, those choices would not be available if people didn't think we needed them and chose to buy them.   Moreover, under arm deodorant choices aren't starving America's children. This is where Marxist theory that drives the EU, and increasingly the US breaks down. The Marxist looks at the total resources available to us as a sort of pie. If you get a bigger slice, somebody else must get a smaller slice. It seems very logical...except it doesn't work that way. When somebody brings something new to the market, the pie gets bigger. The more successful a product is, the bigger the pie gets. When somebody else brings another thing to the market, the pie gets bigger still. And along the way, as a byproduct of bringing things to market, people get jobs, pay taxes, and society is enriched.

I am typing on a devise that wasn't invented yet when I was 20. For those who don't remember, everything was done with paper, pencil and ink.  Even the electronic calculator had not been invented yet.  Calculations were accomplished by slide rules, or adding machines.  If you were working on the space program, you could have some of your work done on one of the room size computers using languages such as FORTRAN, with each programs step punched on Hollerith cards.  Information that we now take for granted was available only to the rich, or to those with access to a major library because the cost of having subscriptions to all the news papers, journals, etc. was very expensive. The thing that allowed the personal computer revolution, the internet, and a host of other technologies was something called Disk Operating System, or DOS.  DOS was a system languishing unused until Bill Gates recognized its value, bought it, and founded Microsoft.  Microsoft made Bill Gates billions of dollars, but it didn't make those billions by stealing them from others,  It made billions of dollars by creating something of value that wasn't there before, in essence increasing the size of the pie.  Henry Ford did the same thing a in developing the Ford Model T and the assembly line.  Indeed, all such inventions increase the size of the pie, and enrich not only the inventor, but the workers, the financiers, indeed, everybody.  Reagan's saying that a rising tide floats all boats was more true than he was given credit for.

So what about all this suits God's purposes?  God loves us.  God is also the creator of everything that is, and everything that is not.  In other words, everything ultimately belongs to God.  God gives us the things we need for survival, and expects us to give back out of our abundance.  The greater our abundance the greater our obligation to share.  To see the truth of these statements, all you need to do is look at the relative prosperity of the Western nations as opposed to the paucity of the staples of life in the old Soviet Union.  Russia had more physical resources than the United States, but wasn't able to turn them into useful products because of the economic and political system.  Or look today at the Sharia states, and see how poor they are and how wealth Israel is in the same region, with less resources.  Oh yes, the rulers have wealth, but the people do not.

Did I say that God loves us.  Yes, but God does not love us as for example he loves the animals.  We have a greater purpose than living to eat, and eating to live.  Our very souls demand a purpose greater than ourselves.  What is that purpose?  You can only find your individual purpose in prayer and meditation.  But you will find it somehow, in some way, as helping your fellow man.  Yes, it may enrich you as well, but your true purpose, your calling, will be helping others.  Sometimes, it may mean picking up a gun, as the Sons of Liberty International have done in Iraq to help defend the Chaldean Christians from annihilation at the hands of ISIS. Or it might be something as small as moving cars from place to place so that people can rent them and conduct their business efficiently. Often it is not What you do, as you Attitude about what you do.

I must also comment that what we are now seeing in the US is not true capitalism, as outlined by Adam Smith in the   Wealth of Nations, but rather an unholy alliance of rich financiers and government conspiring to keep innovation from coming to market. It would be as if the carriage makers got together with government to squash the automobile. This cronyism is the very opposite of capitalism, and more akin to the feudal system of the middle ages.

Back to Voshell:

It is 1938 in England, Europe and in America. Britain has made the giant step toward recovering her national identity and sovereignty. It remains to be seen if the Christians within her and her cousin America will take the next step and heed Mr. Oldham’s clarion call.

Will our nations once again seek to make the Christian understanding of the meaning and end of man’s existence ascendant in national life?

With God’s help, we can.

Indeed

The BLM has chosen Thug Culture

Leon H Wolf has a post over at RedState that places cold blanket over statements you read that our police are generally doing a professional job.  While I believe these statements to be true, I can not discount that the black community has evidence that the police have treated them unfairly not only in the past but in the present as well.  At the same time the so called "gentle giant" was not such a case, nor was Freddy Gray.  When you break the law, you take risks that can mean you may be killed.  But you can read Wolf's essay at The Uncomfortable Reason Why It Came to This in Dallas Yesterday.  Yet, there is also this: Because I was Black?  I have had experiences like Rusty Walkers that cause me to discount some of the stories people tell. The myth of "white privilege" also does not match up well with my own experience.  My own experience is that corruption, and just plain bad luck haunt everyone, indeed, that they are the common human condition.

While I can agree with Wolf on the reasons why it happened, I can not condone the actions taken.  Is it right that because Hillary got off for crimes she obviously committed, and others went to jail for less,  that now I can go about killing just any politician I can find?  No? Or what about the murder of Nicole Simpson by OJ.  A jury found him innocent even though he was manifestly guilty as sin.  Can I now go around killing blacks at will?  No?  By this reasoning of course I can.  But this reasoning is flawed.

As anyone who has read Radley Balko's body of work knows, police corruption, police over militarization, and police mismanagement affect both blacks and whites.  As anyone who watched FBI Director Comey knows, corruption occurs even among the untouchables.  As anyone who has followed the War on Guns knows, the ATF has bad guys among its ranks.  But what we also know is that these bad guys are not the majority of the police or of Federal agents.  Most police do indeed act professionally most of the time.  Most take a great deal of abuse from the public, and I applaud them for doing the job anyway.

At the same time, the police, at whatever level are expected to demonstrate an example that is a notch above what the average person demonstrates. This should be understood when they put on the badge, and they should be reminded periodically.  Police, like the ordinary citizen should be seen as obeying the traffic laws and other laws even more meticulously than the ordinary citizen.  What our police departments need is to be more ruthless about disciplining those who do wrong, and making such discipline more public.  It is perhaps harsh, but when the police do actually do something wrong, they should be very publicly punished.  When a police officer kills someone without justification, they should be made an example.  I also believe that more departments should be outfitting their officers with collar cameras.  While these will not resolve every case, they probably make both the officers and the public better behaved.

In choosing to highlight cases like Michael Brown and Freddy Gray, the Black Lives Matter movement has chosen thug culture as the authentic black culture.  But the average person, black or white, will never accept it.  The success of the the Civil Rights movement can be attributed to the fact that they chose the high ground, and advocated non-violence.  While the media and certain racial hustlers don't want to admit it, race relations have indeed improved since the 1950s.  Whites are not the enemy, and really never were.  Rather than start a race war, a war that BLM can not win, we all need to stand together against corruption in our police departments, and in our politicians.  All lives matter.

The Pulse of Gun Control

David Codrea has his latest Gun Rights column in Guns Magazine up over at the War on Guns. Go read it. And check into the War on Guns regularly. David has his finger on the pulse of the gun rights community.

Why "liberals" are anti-gun.

An intriguing editorial in the Sonoran News by Dr. R. B. A. DiMuccio may explain the Incredible Hopelessness of America's Gun Conversation DiMuccio writes:

Today’s political landscape is rife with puzzles and paradoxes in desperate need of Rosetta Stones. The one that I want to discuss is this: Why are we so profoundly incapable of having a reasonable dialogue about guns? National Review writer David French describes the “conversation” as hopelessly polarized. It’s as if, he laments, we are coming from entirely different worlds when processing events like the massacre that took place in Orlando.

The basic facts of that incident are not in dispute: A self-professed ISIS jihadist indiscriminately slaughtered dozens of innocent people at a gay nightclub, literally pledging his loyalty to ISIS via a phone call to a 9-1-1 dispatcher as he was committing the atrocity. Seeing this, conservatives generally zeroed in on the evil of the perpetrator and addressed the broader war on terror. Viewing the same facts, leftist commentators and pundits invariably settled on a narrative driven by a fixation on “America’s gun culture,” a narrow focus on stricter gun control, and blanket calls for “tolerance” of the “LGBTQ” agenda by conservatives and Christians.

Naturally, I find the liberal diagnosis of the problem, and the "liberal" prescription insulting and wholly inadequate. As a Christian, and a conservative, I sympathize with the gay community, even while acknowledging that their lifestyle is sinful. But, if Jesus loves these people, who am I to deny it.  Jesus does indeed love them, but not their homosexuality.  In Christian love, therefore, I must try to gently turn them from an active gay lifestyle.  But that is not out of hate.  The second thing I find unhelpful is the fixation on guns.  As a conservative, I know that the problem is not the tools he chose to use, but the evil heart of the man who did this,  He could have chosen a bomb, a gas attack such as Saran, or to become a suicide bomber.   The tools a perpetrator uses reflects the tools he is most familiar with, and nothing more.  In any case, at this late date, you can not practically ban guns.  The technology is too well known, and despite what liberals may thing, it is much too easy to manufacture a gun, especially if it is a one off version.

But all of that doesn't begin to answer the question, which is why is this debate hopelessly deadlocked?

Fortunately, in our quest to comprehend the incomprehensible, we have a Rosetta Stone in the form of Jonathan Haidt’s book, “The Righteous Mind.” Haidt’s moral-foundations theory is an extraordinary body of work that is meticulously empirical and thoroughly cross-cultural (agree or disagree this how Haidt defines his terms). In a nutshell: liberals’ moral reasoning rests almost exclusively on the left-most of six moral pillars. Liberal moral cognitions are triggered by indications of suffering and injustice. The conservative moral matrix couldn’t be more different. While it is somewhat biased toward the right-most moral pillars, conservatives clearly demonstrate a relatively balanced concern for all six.

The implications of this difference are far-reaching. Liberals seek to establish “justice” for those they view as harmed, but with essentially no concern for other moral foundations. Conservative moral thinking is “advantaged” in the sense that it is likewise prompted by indications of suffering but also by threats to foundational societal principles and institutions.

Haidt puts this “conservative advantage” to the test—literally. The test (page 287 in the book) involved asking hundreds of subjects to guess how people in the opposite camp would respond to political/moral questions. The result? Conservatives describe the liberal morality far more accurately than liberals describe conservative morality. The most dramatic errors in the entire experiment came when “very liberal” respondents were asked to empathize with conservatives around the care/harm pillar.

In short, conservatives can relate to liberals but the converse is not true. And there may not be a better example of this than the “gun conversation” going in in America right now. Consider the typical liberal triggers and conclusions in responding to the Orlando massacre: For liberals, the culprit is not radical Islam but the NRA; the victimization and suffering easily justify challenging the Second Amendment, which either doesn’t actually guarantee the individual right to bear arms or was meant only to account for flintlock rifles and the like.

We conservatives have often made fun of liberals moral posturing and moral signalling, as if these and other behaviors could solve anything. A typical behavior is the candle light vigil, These pop up after every major tragedy, and the only thing they seem to accomplish is to allow people to be seen as caring, for all the good that may do. Now I finally understand.  It also explains liberals' inexplicable imperiousness to the utter failure of the welfare state and similar programs.  These programs were never put in place to actually DO anything, but once again to signal compassion and caring.

 

But what about those who believe that individual liberty and the right to self-defense are foundational? What about people who accept 200-plus years of Supreme Court rulings and several state constitutions and agree that the Second Amendment self-evidently guarantees the individual right to bear arms? What animates them after Orlando is the same grief, shock, and revulsion that liberals experience. They feel a similar desire to find ways to prevent and limit the deadliness of such occurrences. But what’s almost literally a world apart is that they want to accomplish this without undermining the individual’s liberty—the right to self-defense or the right to bear arms.

As DiMucci concludes, we may know the "why," but there appears to be no solution to the question of how to we get around this? Half the country simply does not understand the other half,  I do not know if this lack of understanding is sheer stupidity, or just plain obstinance.  I know many who have given up, and I am often tempted to, but I care about my grand children too much.

And then there is this: while liberals may be anti-gun as a way to signal moral compassion, what about the Left.  What's their excuse?

Paul Ryan Faces Mutiny in his Own Ranks

Redstate has a post up entitled Paul Ryan Faces Mutiny over Gun Grab Gambit. Of course, you need to read the whole thing. As far as I can tell, Justin Amish is the hero here, being the first to pointing out the Unconstitutional nature of this bloody abortion on social media.

Here's the thing.  Suppose you are a typical person making ends meet, with a little free excess income that you can save up for a $500 pistol, and maybe cough up the roughly $100 training and application fees so that you can carry your pistol legally. Your job takes you to some questionable neighborhoods There are a lot of jobs like this, and a lot of people quietly carry even though their employers may frown on it. Better to be fired than to be killed.  Somehow you get on a list, and now you have to go into court to get off that list.  First, the odds are stacked decidedly in the Government's favor.

This is essentially a warmed over version of the terror watch list prohibition. If you think that any judge is going to rule in your favor if a law enforcement agency says you might commit an act of terrorism at some point in the future, you really need to get out more. It ain't gonna happen because that judge is not going to take a chance that the government was right.

But then there is the very real impediment of the costs of going into court to prove your innocence (as if this could logically be done. All you could really show is a lack of evidence.) The cost of going to court range in the neighborhood of $10,000. Who has that much in disposable income? If you don't think this is a very real danger to Americans' rights, you haven't been paying attention.

As an aside, looking at the statistics for this blog, I notice that my readership numbers are trending upward on a daily basis, but I am not getting any comments.  Doesn't anyone out there have anything to say?

Schumer's Gambit

Andrew McCarthy has an article over at National Review exposing Chuck Schumer's latest attempt to skirt around the Constitution in order to negate the Second Amendment entitled Democrats "Emergency" Attack on the Second Amendment. A Hat Tip to David Codrea over at War on Guns Go read the whole article.

Of course, Chuck Schumer knows all of this, and he is well aware that the right to self defense, and the right to  means to do so, predate the Constitution, and that it can not be negated by statutory law. He just doesn't care. If he can convince Republicans to go along with it, and in the current Judicial climate. he would have his fait accompli.

Indeed, I suspect the death of Scalia earlier this year is what Schumer is counting on now.  Remember that Democrats have been trying to take away guns for close to a hundred years.  If Schumer's present gambit would have worked, it would already be done.  But now there is a real possibility that the stalemate on the Supreme Court could be broken in favor of the Left.

Be Prepared

Bob Owens reacts to the news that Hillary Clinton goes scot free right after the FBI Director Comey laid out her guilt for all the world to see over at Bearing Arms entitled When the Rule of Law No Longer Matters, It's Time to Gun Up. Ownes is justifiably outraged. Others I have talked to are similarly outraged, as if they honestly believed it would turn out any other way. I am not so outraged. I have known the Democrat party has become, maybe always was, a criminal organization. If any of the prosecutors who famously prosecuted the mafia under RICO statutes had any integrity, they would be prosecuting Democrat officials across the country (and not a few Republican officials as well.)

But, Owens outrage aside, his point is still well made.  Jesus said in Luke, that any of his now apostles who do not have a sword, should sell their cloak and buy one.  Today that translates as anyone who does not have a gun should sell whatever he needs to and buy one, and 1000 rounds of ammunition to go with it.  No, I am not advocating revolution.  Rather what I am saying is you will need it for self defense in the coming months and years.  When no one respects the law, anarchy is sure to reign.  Be prepared is my motto.

Having found freedom in Christ, I will not be returned to slavery

First, I want to highlight some changes to the reading file to make it more relevant.  I have eliminated a number of blogs in the file that have gone dark, and not posted in a year or more.  However I have added the  The Armed Lutheran to the list. The Armed Lutheran is a member of an ELCA congregation. ELCA stands for, as he says, "Every Liberal Cause in America." That's a joke, don't you know, but seriously, it stands for Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He brings in Lutheran pastors to he radio program to explain things from a moral perspective. Self defense is truly a right and a duty from God. But at the same time, revenge is God's place, not man's.  As in the Lord's prayer, it helps to know your place in the universe.

Next up is a piece from the American Thinker today by Michael N. Mattia entitled The Second Amendment is the First Domino in the Toppling of the Bill of Rights Please go read all of it. Read it? Good. The theory explained in this short essay is the reason I place so much emphasis on Second Amendment rights. I actually want ALL the rights listed in the Constitution.  But I recognized early on that in order to fully strip us of our rights, they would have to nullify the Second Amendment first.
Forty years ago, when I first became involved with guns and gun rights in a serious way, the saying was that if the outlawed guns, only outlaws would have guns, meaning that the powers that be would turn law abiding citizens into outlaws.  Because when, ever, has it gone well for a group of people to give up their weapons?  Eventually, someone enslaves those people.  The "conversation" has been going on since before that time, and came to a temporary conclusion with the Heller and McDonald decisions. The "Progressives" (read Communist, Socialists, Fascists, Neomarxists, etc.) having resoundingly lost the debate, now wish to pretend it never happened and start all over again.

Well, I say, NO!  No, you can't have them.  Like Charlton Heston I say "From My Cold Dead Hands."  Having found freedom in Christ, I will not be returned to slavery.  And that is what the Progressives are aiming at.

Independence Day

Today is July 4, 2016.  Last night I could hear fireworks going off in celebration.  But frankly, I have not felt like celebrating 4th of July in a long time.  As I have said in the past, we now live in a land called the USA, but it no longer is.  I call it the Former United States of America, FUSA for short.  I have also noted how lawless the FUSA has become, and have also noted that what no longer binds them no longer binds me as well.  But these ideas are now going mainstream with the publication today of Kurt Schlicter's piece entitled You Owe Them Nothing=Not Respect, Not Loyalty, Not Obedience. It is a decidedly bitter piece, no doubt because the author feels betrayed by those he was taught to respect, to obey, and to be loyal. Here are Mr. Schlicter's words:

So if you are still obeying the law when you don’t absolutely have to, when there isn’t some government enforcer with a gun lurking right there to make you, aren’t you kind of a sucker?

snip...

The Romans had principles for a while. Then they got tempted to abandon principle for – wait for it – short term political gain. Then they got Caesar. Then the emperors. Then the barbarians. And then the Dark Ages. But hey, we’re much smarter and more sophisticated than the Romans, who were so dumb they didn’t even know that gender is a matter of choice. Our civilization is permanent and indestructible – it’s not like we are threatened by barbarians who want to come massacre us.

...snip...

They don’t realize that by rejecting the rule of law, they have set us free. We are independent. We owe them nothing - not respect, not loyalty, not obedience. But with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we will still mutually pledge those who have earned our loyalty with their adherence to the rule of law, our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

It is long past time that we take our rights (and our responsibilities as well) and quit asking for permission just because they say we should. We do in fact, owe then nothing, and our rights are granted by God, not by Government permission. To those who would point to the Apostle Paul that Governments are appointed by God, I would say this: Governments are to be obeyed as long as Governments act in accordance with God's word. Our so called masters have not for a long time, and it is time we cease recognizing any authority the may claim over us.

Today I declare my independence.

The Evil Left Strikes Again

Tom Trinko had an article up over at The American Thinker Thursday that spells out The Heart of Darkness, the Evil at the Core of Liberalism. It is long past time to acknowledge that those who claim the mantle of "Liberal" have long ago left the classical liberals in the dust, and have joined their brothers, the Communists, Socialists, and Fascists in their debauchery.  At issue is the latest from the Supremes on abortion:

This week the abominable evil at the heart of liberalism has been revealed once again.

The Supreme Court has ruled that a woman’s health is less important than ensuring that she can be used as a sex object.

What matters is not a woman’s right to choose but her ability to be used. The Court has said that access to unsafe abortions is more important than ensuring that a women’s life is not at risk when having an abortion.

The Supreme Court also ruled that Muslims must serve pork in their restaurants. Oh wait, no -- the Supreme Court would never issue that ruling, but the Court did rule that pharmacists whose deeply held religious beliefs tell them that abortion is murder must actively cooperate with the murder of unborn blacks -- black women are 5 times more likely to abort their child than white women, a disparate impact that never seems to bother liberals.

That’s on par with saying that Jews must serve as guards at Nazi concentration camps.

Trinko marshalls fact after fact to support his thesis that liberals are no longer simply good people, with bleeding hearts who desparately want to help the poor, but have become the demon possessed destroyers of our culture. For instance, he notes that:

It’s settled science, far more settled than so called climate change, that human life begins at conception. That’s why when polled only 12% of Americans believe that abortion should be allowed for any reason at any time in a pregnancy.

That makes sense given that the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a spinoff of Planned Parenthood, tells us that 1% of abortions are due to rape or incest and 3% are due to possible maternal health problems which means that 96% of abortions are not the hard cases that are used to sell abortion.

Or this:

By saying that abortionists need not have admitting privileges at a hospital, a significant thing if complications develop which they often do, and that abortion mills need not meet the same standards as other surgical facilities the Supreme Court is putting the back alley back into abortion.

Instead of asking what sort of doctors can’t get admitting rights at a hospital, or why abortion clinics don’t want to provide a safe environment for their customers, the Court decided that all that mattered is that as many abortion mills as possible should be open.

These are but a few samples of Trinko's tour de force.  Go read the whole thing, then come back here to read  Jonah Goldberg The Left's Different Approach to Rights it Opposes. Goldberg starts out, channeling Jonathan Swift with a proposal:

I have an idea.

The federal government needs to compile a list of women who shouldn't be allowed to get abortions. The criteria for getting on the list must be flexible. If an official at, say, the NIH or FBI think that a woman should be a mother for some reason or other, he or she can block an abortion. Maybe the woman has great genes or a high IQ or the sorts of financial resources we need in parents. Let's leave that decision where it belongs: in the hands of the government.

Heck, there's really no reason even to tell women if they're on the "no abort" list. Let them find out at the clinic. And if they go in for an abortion only to discover they are among the million or more people on the list, there will be no clear process for getting off it, even if it was a bureaucratic error or case of mistaken identity.

Sound like a good idea?

While I am one who believes that abortion is murder, and murder of the most innocent and the least deserving of punishment, the above idea suffers from the same deficiencies as the "No Fly" list and the other lists the Government maintains: no due process. If a person's rights are to be taken away, even temporarily, the Constitution has a process, and putting someone's name on a secret list is not how it is to be done. Claims of expediency are illegitimate. The Constitution must be honored even when, especially when, it is most unpopular to do it. ( Now, as an aside, whether or not abortion is a right, it can hardly be denied that the unborn have at least an equal right to life, and these conflicting rights, the right to life versus the right to murder, should be adjudicated in front of a judge and jury.  The problem as the law stands is that the State is essentially sanctioning the murder of unborn children in our name.  Our objection to this is not unlike the abolitionists objection to slavery.  It can not stand, and as before, it pits the Republican Party as the party of anti-abortion and anti-slavery against the Democrat Party as the party of pro-abortion and the party of pro-slavery.)

Which brings us to this:

The contradiction I find most glaring and galling is that the euphoric hysteria from the left over the court's decision occurred right in the middle of a conversation about guns and terrorist watch lists.

In that conversation, many of the same voices on the left argued that the federal government can -- nay, must! -- have the unilateral power to put American citizens on a secret list barring them from exercising two constitutional rights: the right to bear arms and the right to due process when the government denies you a right. (Both, unlike abortion, are rights spelled out in the Constitution). Congressional Democrats even staged a tawdry tantrum on the House floor about it.

Never mind that the Orlando slaughter -- the event that set off the House sit-in -- would not have been prevented if the Democrats had their way. Writing for the majority in the Hellerstedt case, Justice Stephen Breyer argued that the Texas statute was unnecessary because "determined wrongdoers" like Gosnell wouldn't be deterred by new laws given that he was willing to violate existing laws.

Maybe so. But isn't that exactly the NRA's position on gun laws? Murderers, never mind terrorists, by definition don't care about the law.

It is indeed.  We in the gun rights community have been making that point for a very long time.  It is good that a mainstream journalist like Goldberg noticed.  Or as Dave Workman noted in 2014 in an article entitled Is it Time to Treat the First Amendment just like the Second? there is "world class hypocrisy" in these laws and decisions, but it is not accidental. It is quite deliberate, and it is evil. Everyone legally residing under the jurisdiction of the Federal Governmentment should receive equal protection of the law. Today, with the left's full knowledge, indeed with its blessing, Christians, gun owners, and other undesirables are being treated differently under the law. If we don't capitulate, the left is fully prepared to step things up a notch, and to ratchet them further if need be. The goal is capitulation, and the Constitution be damned. How will you feel when your grandmother and grandfather are sent to a death camp for being a Catholic and a gun owner?