Thanks, Obama, For Another Injustice

It is shocking to me that a Federal Court of Appeals could find that the mere act of going armed for self defense constitutes automatic suspicion on the part of the police.  But, according to David French writing for National Review Online, in an article entitled Fourth Circuit Takes Aim at Gun Owner Rights, that is exactly what the Fourth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals 0did. French writes the article from the point of view of gross judicial activism, which it of course is. The judges literally wrote new law. But it is also a civil rights issue with little in the way of evidence to back it up. The judges went way beyond the facts to strike at concealed carry permit holders, lawful gun owners all.

The case in question was a frisk of a felon in possession of a gun, of whom the police had a reliable tip that he was  carrying a weapon.  Ok, so far so good. But then the judges go further as French reports:

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals just suffered from an outbreak of bad judging. In an en banc opinion, the court ruled that after a lawful traffic stop, the police may frisk any person who they believe may possess a firearm, regardless of whether that person possesses a concealed-carry permit. The court actually typed this sentence: “The danger justifying a protective frisk arises from the combination of a forced police encounter and the presence of a weapon, not from any illegality of the weapon’s possession” (emphasis added.) The implications were clear: Even lawful gun owners are by definition “dangerous” and can be broadly treated as such by the state.

This is nothing short of an open invitation to the State to treat all gun owners as criminals in possession of arms, whether they are actually carrying or not.  Since any time a police officer stops a car for any reason, the existence of a concealed carry permit comes up on his computer, he knows before he confronts the individual that he has such a permit.  By law, we in North Carolina must also tell the officer that we have a permit and whether or not we are armed.  But even if not armed, the police do not have to believe us, and can prone us out on the side of the road on the mere suspicion that we might be dangerous.  This opinion gives them the right to suspect anyone who might be carrying a firearm.

This kind of reasoning, and judicial activism belongs more in the Ninth Circus...er...Circuit than in the Fourth.  According to David Codrea at the War on Guns, we have Obama to thank for this abortion of justice.

Thanks, Obama.

Someone who truly "gets it"

David Codrea at the War on Guns point to this site: All Federal Gun Control is Unlawful - Plubius Huldah I do not know if Plubius Huldah is her real name, probably not, but she certainly understands the law. Go have a listen. Its 25 minutes long, but well worth it.

 As I have noted before, among Constitutional Conservatives, the eventual goal is to repeal all Federal gun control. States can, of course, impose gun control, but would be wiser to impose gun regulation in accordance with their duty to develop and train a functioning militia.  Plubius Huldah makes all these points in her speech: that our right to arms comes from God, not the Constitution; that all Federal gun control is Unconstitutional, therefore null and void; that the Federal government is the creation of the States, and therefore the States sovereignty is higher than that of the Federal government; that the Federal Constitution list 21 powers, none of which is to regulate or control guns.

People tell me that I just don't "get it," that in today's complicated and highly sophisticated world we can be ruled by an ancient document written by slave holders.  But if you read the contents of text messages and tweets, one can be forgiven for thinking that we have actually become less sophisticated in our present day.  Then people were educated, today they are trained for jobs.  In the end, I don't buy the hype.  I believe we can still be ruled by the Constitution, and that the closer we cleave to it, the more free and prosperous we will be.

Wynton Marsalis has Class to Go Along With a Towering Talent.

As someone who has played the trumpet, and someone who loves to hear well played trumpet and brass music, I have long respected the ability of Wynton Marsalis to play the instrument with seeming superhuman ability.  His classic recording of Baroque Music for Trumpet sets new standards for the interpretation of music, and includes a moving version of Pachelbel's Canon in D that my Wife considers the absolute greatest recording of that piece ever done, bar none. I have gone to Wolf Trap twice to see Mr. Marsalis perform, as well as Dizzy Gillespie, and I have attended the Lincoln Center on two occasions to see performances of the original Canadian Brass.  Of course while his great classical recordings set new benchmarks, his jazz recordings are incredible.  I have Standard Time vol. 1 and 2.  I see there is a 3 that I need to obtain at some point.

One thing that has impressed me about Wynton Marsalis is that he has kept his political opinions to himself. Marsalis is a towering talent, putting to shame many lesser lights who sound off really just to get attention. He works with young students extensively, and as noted, performs occasionally as well. So, it was with interest that I read Clarice Feldman's blog on American Thinker entitled Wynton Marsalis Nails It on Performers Boycotting the Inauguration. There was a time when if a President asked someone to perform at a function, if that someone could arrange to do so, he did. It didn't matter whether he was the one for whom you voted. Respect for the office compelled even the loyal opposition to accede to such demands.  After all, if the President wants you to perform, he clearly finds you talented and accomplished enough to showcase for his guests.  Can one not feel honored for that?

With the election in 2008 of Barack Obama, I did not cry, or throw a fit, or riot, or do any of the things Leftists have done.  I knew what Obama was, and I considered McCain to be really no better.  My one nod to protest was to take down the flag that I have flown in the yard.  It is still folded up, by the way.  When people ask why I no longer fly my flag, I point out that we no longer live in the United States of America.  We now live in the territory once occupied by the United States of America.  It is true, Barack Obama and his minions have turned the once great USA into a banana republic.  None of the things he believes about this country are true.  We were not colonial powers, we did not steal the resources that made us the biggest economy on the globe.  It was, after all Texas oil, not Middle Eastern oil that fueled much of our industrial expansion, and we bought the Middle Eastern oil, we didn't steal it.  And the steel used to fight WWII, that came from the Great Lakes region.

 When the same people came out in support of Obama in 2012, I was again appalled, but I still did not protest beyond keeping my flag down.  I have watched as Obama and his administration have torn the fabric of this nation, starting with the rule of law, and the Constitution.  But they did not do it alone.  No, it was more a case of Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians.  Now that the Lilliputians are on the run, we must finally destroy them (not literally) or drive them out.

I read a lot or enthusiastic things about Trump's agenda from people that, as far as I know, have little knowledge of it,   Truth be told, however, it Trump puts good and decent Supreme Court Justices in place, honors and defends the Constitution, and brings back the rule of Law, it will be enough.  I will be able to fly my flag again..  In the meantime, I think I will put on my copy of Baroque Music for Trumpets once again.  Good on ya, Mr. Marsalis.

There is no bridging the gap, squaring the circle, or third way

Here is a theme I have been contemplating since the election of Donald Trump.  You hear, amidst the anguish, the gnashing of teeth, and the vows of resistance, calls for unity.  "Can't we all just get along?"  I have come to the conclusion that unfortunately, the Left has gone too far, and that there really is no way to bridge the gap.  For one thing, we no longer have common goals with disagreements on how to accomplish them.  The truth is that Conservatives and the Left have diametrically opposed goals.  We have diametrically opposed understanding of the nature of people. There is no way to square the circle;  Clinton's third way is as dead as a door nail.

David Solway, writing in the American Thinker today expresses that thought very well in a piece entitled United We Fall. Solway's point is that the gap can no longer be bridged, and the attempt to do so, especially by appeasing them, will not work. Solway:

The left, which includes the majority of national institutions -- the legacy media, the academy, television, Hollywood, the social media providers, the judiciary, online and print groups, government departments, the Democratic Party and much of the Republican Party, the political class as a whole and the army of liberal voters -- will never be pacified. The left will never cease in its efforts to scheme against a Trump -- or any conservative-leaning -- administration.

Trump must take seriously Newt Gingrich’s warning against the temptation to “give in” to the left when opposition starts to mount from every quarter -- the Greens, government employees, the teachers’ unions, indeed the entire progressivist Category 5 hurricane of demands and vilification. Not only should Trump resist that temptation, he must not waste his time and energy seeking to heal what cannot be repaired, but needs to engage in a kind of domestic cold war, using every legislative means in his purview to contain a dangerous and implacable internal enemy. This is realpolitik applied locally.

The fact of the matter is that the people fighting on the Left will never give up. They can not, for their whole identity is tied up in the notion that believing in these causes makes them better that the poor benighted rest of us Bozos on the bus. We can pray for them, but we must not give them an inch. For their idea of compromise is us giving something up. They never give anything up. And whatever "compromise" you make is always a good first step.  Since their values are rootless, they are constantly moving the goal posts and can never be satisfied.

It is naïve to assume that the political fissure between left and right, collectivism and individuality, Socialism and classical liberalism, fantasy and reality, can ever be bridged. In essence, this is a perennial conflict, one which the great satirist Jonathan Swift in The Battle of the Books, drawing from the classics, described as the enmity between the predatory spider, who purls illusions out of his own entrails, and the foraging bee who produces sweetness and light and convulses the spider’s self-spun “citadel.” It is a conflict between opposed epistemological frames of reference -- in Swiftian terms, that of the fanatic parvenu and that of the companionable humanist. Today it is a war between progressivists and conservatives, between utopian experimentalism and traditional values. The rupture cannot be parged. One should not invest in a fruitless and destructive effort to create unity where none is possible.

Where the effort to achieve unity has real meaning is in the attempt to mend the surmountable divisions of opinion within the conservative family in order to form a strong front against the forces that would subvert the political coherence and even the survival of the nation. Unity only makes sense if it is accomplished within the often disparate group of genuine patriots who may disagree on many points, yet who are basically at one in struggling to establish the rule of law and a functioning democratic -- or rather, republican -- polity. But to work for the unification of oil and water is not only an egregious error but a recipe for social and political disunity.

In his own unique way, Kurt Schlichter is making the same point in a polemic at Townhall.com entitled And Now the Left's War on Normal Americans Truly Begins. Hillary said that half of Trump supports we a basket of deplorables, which we took as a badge of honor. After all, do be despised by the despicable is indeed a badge of honor. If forced to say who I stand with, I stand with the Deplorables.

President Donald Trump replaces President Faily McWorsethancarter Friday, but we’re not going to be able to Netflix and chill in the fight for freedom. The left and its establishment allies are desperate to regain the power they see slipping away, and we need to understand that the only way to stop them is to beat them to a pulp and leave them whimpering in the fetal position, crying out for their genderfluid mommies.

The left’s strategy is simple – deny normal Americans normalcy. After all, that’s what we really want, a return to normal. We haven’t experienced real normal since the Democrats denied the legitimacy of W’s election in 2000 – you know, during one of those time frames when denying the legitimacy of the president was cool, a phenomenon that coincidentally only occurs whenever a Republican wins. Then came 9/11 followed by 15+ years of botched wars and economic decline, along with an unprecedented cultural offensive against normal Americans. Once the only place you heard that average Americans were racist sexist homophobic everythingist everythingphobic was on college campuses; now, with the active assistance of Obama and his collaborators, it’s everywhere – in our entertainment, in the media, in our faces

. And we’re sick of it  #ThisIsWhyYouGotTrump

I did mention his own unique fashion, right? But seriously, putting aside his attempts at humor, and recognizing that he is speaking metaphorically when he writes that w need to "beat them to a pulp...mommies," the only way we will be rid of Leftism is to defeat the ideology. The only way to defeat the ideology is to defeat the proponents of that ideology. I propose we take a leaf out of the Trump playbook, and do not take them seriously. Laugh at them. Make fun of them. Shame them. Treat them like they have been treating us. And as always, defend yourselves.  Don't assume others watching know that you are not a racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamaphobe.  But have fun while making them squirm
 Leftists do not have a sense of humor, for everything everywhere, everyday is about virtue signalling and one-up-man-ship. Make fun of that too.

Christians need to become the Church Militant again

I have been going through a spiritual upheaval of late, which has made me cranky and somewhat angry. I think it has been resolved, and for the first time I am finding again peace and serenity, in knowing that God is in control, and I am not. But though God is in control, if I ask Him, he will tell me what I can do today. I did. And he led me to an interesting piece on Townhall.com by Michael Brown entitled Will the 'Trump Effect' Trickle Down to Conservative Christians?.

I have come to believe that conservative Christians have been convinced that they have lost the culture wars by the constant drumbeat of the faux news media, television and movie entertainment, schools and other cultural outlets that have constantly told us that the Left is winning.  And it has been remarkably effective.  The Left has also infiltrated and hijacked our mainline protestant churches such that abortion and the ordination of openly gay individuals is not just tolerated but openly celebrated.  At the same time, the old Christian hymns are no longer sung, favoring instead a milquetoast infantile "Christianity" instead of the old militant style.  But I have seen our Congregational charter, and it talks about our commitment to be the "Church Militant."

For those who may not remember the militant style of Christianity, I do not mean that we should be out killing anyone (except in defense of ourselves and our loved ones when someone presents the real threat of death or serious injury.)   That we leave for Islam, representing the pretender to God's throne. Rather the militant style is to speak with authority and conviction about things we know, and to boldly testify about things we know are wrong.  But these things must be said in love, for though Jesus loves, part of that love is to allow us to choose.  Heaven of hell, it is our choice.  The only thing separating us from God is---us.

Michael Brown is correct, but you may not be convinced.  Perhaps you need a little more.  No doubt you are aware of the displays of the tantrums the left has been going through, the crying, the gnashing of teeth, the attempts to claim victory by some set of rules, not of course THE RULES, the attempts to have the Electoral College overturn the election, and now the attempt to delegitimize the President Elect by the use of faux news.  No doubt as well these have provided some schadenfreude to shell shocked conservative Christians.  Note, if you did feel some sense of schadenfreude, shame on you, but in all fairness, I did too.  Anyway, to put some of this in context, here is Thomas Lifson over at the American Thinker to explain it to you.

Lifson, writing in a blog entitled Why the Left hates Trump so intensely, that nails the reason squarely on the head. It turns out that what the Left has been preaching is not real. Oh, they have put up a beautiful facade, rather like a Hollywood set, complete with the cowboy sleeping in a tilted back chair with his hat pulled down over his eyes. Everything is correct down to the furniture and the period costumes until you notice that an extra is wearing a wrist watch. What???  That is the Trump Effect.  You can read more about it by clicking on the Reddit link in the Lifson piece.

We must all softenour hearts, and toughen our minds if we are to become once again the Church Militant, who once conquered the world, not with the sword, or bullets, but with the Truth.

Father, may I have a softer heart and a tougher mind to carry out your work today.  Amen.

The god who hates

It is Sunday morning, and my church has cancelled services, as have most of the churches in the area due to the weather.  I have just read Raymond Ibrahim's article at the American Thinker entitled Muslim Persecution of Christians. Ibrahim points out that Muslims hate Christians because Christians rejected Muhammad's religion of hate in favor of the religion of God, which demands love. Part of that hate is generated by a gross misunderstanding of Christian religion, and I suspect goes back to the Council of Nicea wherein the doctrine of the Trinity was ratified by the Bishops, and Gnosticism was rejected. Ibrahim writes:

How much hate must a woman have to enter a church, smile in the faces of Christians, pretend to be worshipping alongside them -- here’s a similar example from Turkey -- and then knowingly leave a bomb precisely where it would kill mostly women and children? How much hate must a man have for people who are peacefully praying that, in order to kill as many of them, he is willing to kill himself?

The answer is an unfathomable -- and, to Western and Christian minds, unbelievable -- amount of hate. Yet, the wonder isn’t that the church was bombed but rather that many are surprised by it. After all, many Muslim scriptures, clerics, mosques, schools, satellite stations, and Internet sites -- even the ministry of education -- openly incite hatred for Egypt’s indigenous (but “infidel”) inhabitants: the Christian Copts. Among other forms of animosity, they teach that Muslims must hate -- and show that they hate -- Christians, even if they are their own wives.

Worse, they teach that the most abominable crimes in God’s sight -- “worse than murder and bloodshed” -- take place inside churches: there, Christians flaunt their rejection of Islam’s core doctrine of tawhid (“monotheism”) by ascribing partners to God (shirk) via their worship of the Trinity. This is why some of Islam’s most revered ulema (scholars) describe churches as “worse than bars and brothels” and “dens of iniquity” which “breed corruption throughout the lands” (see Crucified Again, pgs. 32-36).

Muslims for some reason, I suppose lack of imagination, believe that the One, True, and Living God could not be at once experienced by humans as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To believe that our God could not at the same time be in the Heavens, and on the earth, while inspiring people everywhere with his love is to think that God is too small. God is not in a box. He is not only in Heaven, which is a convenient construct for limited humans, but rather God is everywhere, at all times, in all places, always the same. God was there at the beginning, but so was his plan for salvation through Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. All three are but manifestations of Him. They are different ways of experiencing Him.  God will be there at the end because he is already there, waiting for us to arrive.  God truly is the alpha and omega.

The greatest gift, of all the many I have received from Him, is love.  In turn, I must try to love my fellow man (and woman) as he has loved me.  Of course this does not mean romantically, but rather to attempt to understand, to empathize, and to do my best to help my fellow creatures.  Remember that Jesus performed the ultimate act for us.  Though innocent, in the real sense of the word, and not just legally innocent, he died for us, to take our sins and wash us clean, then rose from the dead to show us that death had been conquered for all time, for all people.  This was how much God loved us, that He would die for us, since we were incapable of reconciling ourselves to Him otherwise.

Why couldn't we reconcile ourselves?  Because there is no man who is perfect.  We all deserve to die, and so sacrificing ourselves does nothing.  Whether we die sooner of later makes no real difference since we are all under sentence of death.  Only God Himself could come down, live the perfect life, and die to atone for our sins.  Nothing less would do.  Nothing more was needed.

So, where do the Gnostics, who now call themselves Muslims, go wrong?  By trying to pin down where God is.  I do not pretend to understand the Trinity, because being a limited human being, I can not.  I just accept that it is so.  I accept it as a matter of faith, and I accept it as a great, most generous gift.  It is a gift so magnificent that I can only call it Grace.  But the Muslims insist that God can not be both Father and Son simultaneously.  But as we have seen, why couldn't the God of Creation, who made everything that is, and everything that is not (for there are many things that COULD have been had not He discarded them) also put a back door, so to speak into physics to allow Him to be everywhere all the time?  I see miracles happen daily, and those miracles would not happen without divine Providence.

Whenever Muslims kill Christians for their faith, eulogies for the latter -- including for St. Peter’s 28 slain -- often invoke the words of Christ: “The time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God” (John 16:2). Not only is this verse prophetic; it’s key to understanding why Christians are under attack throughout the Muslim world: Their persecutors truly “think they are offering a service to God” by killing Christians. And they believe this, not because they are “radical” or have “perverted” the teachings of Islam, but because the impostor god of Islam tells them so.

Muslims will only stop hating and killing Christians when they finally abandon the god who hates and accept the God who Loves.  But, while the God who Loves, directs us to pray for them, to proselytize to them as best we can, he does not expect us to go about unarmed and incapable of defending ourselves.  You need to carry a gun with you even in church.

If you are not armed, you may be depending on the kindness of strangers

John Hawkins has an excellent article exposing the nasty underbelly of racism at the heart of the events that unfolded in Chicago this week.  Four black men and women tortured a white mentally challenged man for 48 hours, made him drink toilet water, yelled F*** white people, F*** Donald Trump, and streamed the whole thing live on Facebook.  I doubt the victim here voted for anyone, but in any case these young men and women knew whether he voted and for whom he voted if he did.

Hawkins as entitled his article If you Listen to Liberals, Why Not Kidnap and Torture White People? And, of course, he is right. In their rush to delegitimize the election and make it seem as if they have a legitimate reason for obstructing the Trump agenda, Leftwing websites have offered up a barrage of anti white hate articles.

Think about the significance of that. These animals WANTED their friends to see what they were doing and assumed they’d react positively to it. They thought that because this kid was white and they talked about Donald Trump a little bit, people they knew would be okay with what they did.

This attitude does not come out of nowhere; it comes out of a Faustian bargain that liberals have made on race. If you are a white liberal, you call people whom you don’t like racist. This protects you from the charge because if you’re calling someone else a racist, how can you actually be a racist? Then you imply that, “If you join us in calling everyone who opposes our plans racist, you will also be protected from being called racist.”

From there, liberals turn up the heat. They encourage groups like Black Lives Matter and obsess over people who get shot while doing stupid and dangerous things around the police even though more whites than blacks are shot by the cops. They claim that common sense measures like having ID at the polls are the equivalent of “voter suppression.” They promote and encourage “bigoteers” like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Melissa Harris-Perry, Deray Mckesson, Shaun King and Michael Eric-Dyson among many others. Their entire careers are predicated on coming up with new and exciting ways to accuse people Democrats don’t like of being racist. Then there’s “white privilege” which is really a generalized and dumb way of attacking people for being the wrong color.

There it is. The Left is using black people to advance their agenda, which of course is an agenda of white people. By constantly picking at the wound, igniting the flame of black resentment, and than pouring gasoline on the fire, the Left is exploiting black people to do their own bidding. The fact that some people, like Van Jones seem to profit from this is all the more irksome.

Truth be told, this is why a black conservative like Clarence Thomas had to be 'borked' at his confirmation hearings. The existence of a conservative black Justice delivering rulings from the bench of the Supreme Court was just too much for the Left to stand.  Fortunately for conservatives, Thomas did not bend under a ruthless attack, and today sits on the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile the Left plays with fire and depends on the goodness of the American people to keep it from becoming a holocaust. While I don't believe that any of them actually cares a whit about blacks or their plight, which in some cases is desperate, they wouldn't play these games if they thought they might actually ignite a race war that would end in their own deaths. Fortunately for them, only a small percentage of the population either black, white, or brown, is racists. Only a small percentage of the population is homophobic.  And what they
 call Islamaphobia is simply recognizing reality.

For this reason, all good people should be armed.  Those who are not are depending on the kindness of strangers.  Truth be told, such kindness may be in short supply when needed.

National Reciprocity Introduced

Katie Pavlich points out that it was a North Carolina Representative, Richard Hudson who introduced the National Reciprocity bill into the House.  You can read Ms. Pavlich's post at Townhall, entitled NRA Backs Newly Introduced National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Bill  Pavlich quotes Mr. Hudson:

“Our Second Amendment right doesn’t disappear when we cross state lines, and this legislation guarantees that. The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 is a common sense solution to a problem too many Americans face. It will provide law-abiding citizens the right to conceal carry and travel freely between states without worrying about conflicting state codes or onerous civil suits," Hudson released in a statement. "As a member of President-elect Trump’s Second Amendment Coalition, I look forward to working with my colleagues and the administration to get this legislation across the finish line."

The National Rifle Association is throwing its support behind the legislation.

Just so.

Then there is this take, from Leesa K. Donner over at the American Thinker entitled Donald Trump and the Gun Law Revolution. Ms. Donner writes from the perspective of someone coming out of the American gun culture:

The problem with current concealed carry laws is this: concealed carry gun restrictions are so muddled and baffling that they have citizens wondering whether they can even go from county to county within their states with their firearms for fear that they are violating one law or another.

Case in point: Most of my youth was spent inside gun clubs around western Pennsylvania, where firearm safety was indoctrinated in us with every type of firearm available – from a Colt .45 to a .357 Magnum. By age fifteen, I was entirely comfortable with pistols and by sixteen a .20-gauge shotgun. Having spent a lot of time on the firing range, I decided that a concealed carry permit was in order when my husband ran for public office in 2011. There are a lot of crazies out there, and one never knows.

Living in liberal Fairfax County, Virginia meant filling out and then filing a half-inch sheaf of paperwork along with a personal trip to the county courthouse. Finally, months later, my permit arrived. Whew!

But because we reside in the D.C. Metro area, the permit served only to complicate things. Could I take my firearm the twenty-minute drive into the District of Columbia? What about when I traveled fifteen minutes in the other direction into Bethesda, Maryland, where we worship and belong to a club? If you know anything at all about D.C. and Maryland, you know that those are two places where you most certainly do not want to get caught with a gun unless you want to find out what's on the menu at the county lock-up. The constant confusion about what was allowed where ultimately proved to be a fundamental impediment to my right to carry.

I can attest to the the problems she faces as a resident of Fairfax County, Virginia. I lived there for 20 years, and worked in downtown Washington, DC. Crossing into Maryland is like crossing into a foreign country. With license plate readers now, it is possible for anyone with a concealed carry permit from a different State or Commonwealth to become the target of over zealous police. I just didn't go to Maryland unless I absolutely had to.  Even if you left your gun at home, they can and will sometimes detain you for hours for just crossing into the State.

National Reciprocity, or making gun permits as regular as drivers licenses is a logical next step.  I hope it passes.  Meanwhile, don't get too comfortable.  Our next step is Constitutional Carry for everyone..0

Teaching Boys to be Men

David French today had an interesting article in the National Review on the war on boys and men being waged by the radical feminists entitled Dear Feminists, 'Male Vulnerability' Isn't a Virtue. French notes that boys will be boys, because boys are hard wired to be more aggressive, more energetic, more prone to risky behavior than are girls. It is just biology.

So, the great task before the parent of a boy, and particularly the father of a boy, is to channel boyish behaviors in such a way as to produce a purposeful man.  Let's face it, left to their own devises, and without any correction, boyish culture results in Lord of the Flies.

Having gone through adulthood in the era of Gloria Steinem, and having now watched both my grand daughter and grandson growing up, I can attest that the boy came out different, from the start. He was a boy, period. He still is, because my daughter does not buy off on the nonsense of the feminists. French writes:

Indeed, traditional concepts of masculinity, which asked men to cultivate physical and mental toughness, to assume leadership roles in the home, in business, and on the battlefield, and to become guardians and protectors, became the “trap” or “man box,” to quote the University of Richmond’s ridiculous “authentic masculinities” site. The most destructive words a boy can hear? “Be a man,” at least according to the mandatory freshman orientation at Gettysburg College.

But here’s the problem — vulnerability isn’t a virtue. It’s a morally neutral characteristic at best and a vice at worst. Yes, some men are more naturally sensitive than others, but we now ask — no, beg — men to indulge their emotions, as if the antidote to awful male aggression is a good cry.

There are good reasons why generations of fathers have taught their sons to “man up,” and it’s not because young boys are blank canvases on which the patriarchy can paint its oppression. It’s because men in general have essential natures that are different from women. We tend to be more aggressive, more energetic, and less nurturing than women, and the fundamental challenge of raising most boys is in channeling that nature in productive ways, not in denying or trying to eradicate its existence. In other words, we need to make men more purposeful, not more vulnerable.

A single mother who happens to grow up among boys may be able to deliver the message, but will be unable to demonstrate it. This why every family needs a father and a mother, Neither are dispensable. Children need both. The role of the mother is fairly well defined, but the father's role has become muddied. The father needs to be not just the main bread winner, but also the source of protection of his brood, and the transferer of the traditional male values. I would count in that list of things all boys should learn, in no particular order, to sharpen a knife, to correctly wield tools, to tie a tie, to respect women and to value family and friends, to polish shoes and mend clothing, and a hundred other things that a father needs to teach his son. But most of all, a father teaches his son, by his actions, how to be a man.

Can the Left Deliver Us from Rock?

Kevin Williamson penned a blog post over at the National Review "Corner," which is their version of a blog spot, entitled The media's dishonest reporting on firearms. We in the gun rights movement have been complaining about this for years. The media generally imbues the discussion of firearms with loaded language rather than simply reporting the facts.  Indeed, the facts are often clouded by garish descriptions of the weapon used.  Instead, the focus should be on the criminal who chose to wield whatever weapon to kill someone. It is the criminal mind with evil intent that is the problem.

The reason journalists report firearms this way is partially out of ignorance. Most of the press has no idea, indeed has never fired a gun, doesn't know the first thing about them, and assumes what you see in movies is the real thing. But of course no one is going to make a movie that shows the real thing; nobody would come to watch it. It is too prosaic. In the movies, one shot from a 9mm round sends people flying backwards. In reality, they barely move. Handgun rounds are simply not that powerful, and most people survive a handgun round unless it is delivered to someplace like the central nervous system, or something that will bleed out quickly like the heart or the kidney. In a real gun fight, only the coolest of characters (which again, most people are not) is capable of consistently delivering such shots.

Another way to think about hand gun power is to realize that the weapons recoils backward as much as it pushes the bullet forward.  The more powerful the round, the harder it is to control.  Think of it like this: the bang goes both ways.  If a handgun round could push someone down, it would also push the shooter off his feet.

The other reason journalists report firearms the way they do is because of agenda advocacy.  Being of the Left, as most journalists are, and the Left's agenda is to eliminate private possession of guns to enable them to more easily rule us, the journalists see their job as to make guns a scary and as illegitimate as possible.  Thus the Bushmaster becomes a high powered automatic bullet hose, possibly capable of aiming itself.  In reality the Bushmaster is a relatively low powered (though more powerful than a handgun) semiautomatic that produces one shot for each pull of the trigger.  By comparison, the old M1 Garand, firing 30-06 rounds was far more powerful.  But fewer people can effectively handle the 30-06, whereas many more can handle the lighter recoil from a .223 round.

The Left also doesn't want, for reasons I have yet to figure out, to admit that the criminal mind with evil intent is the problem.  It seems that somewhere in the mists of time the idea has become rigidly fixed in the Leftist ideology that man is good, but he is led astray by evil objects.  In reality, men are not good, while it is inanimate objects that are neutral, neither good nor bad.  Guns are such inanimate objects.  They are neither bad nor good.  The user determines whether they will be used for good or evil.

Cain's sacrifice was rejected by God, while Able's was accepted.  Rather than asking God why his sacrifice was rejected, and what he could do to please God instead, he took his anger out on Able.  He grabbed an inanimate object, a rock, and smashed Able's head in.  So it began.  Today's guns are just more sophisticated rocks.  Can the Left deliver us from rocks?
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Happy New Year! And good riddance to the old

It is January 1, 2017, and good riddance to what may have been one of the worst years in recent memory.  Glenn Fairman pens a peace today over at the American Thinker entitled Can You Hear It?. Hear what, exactly? The sound of returning muscularity, and masculinity to American shores. The sound of returning liberty to our shores. That sound. Can you hear it?

And lord, what a bullet America dodged! We have been given an opportunity to strengthen what yet remains, and to bottle up the secularists who would scrub the public square clean of any hope for a moral-political regeneration. Just think: The libs had control of every institutionalized avenue of power, and still they lost! And if you don’t think this is a miracle, then you are not seeing things clearly. In hating the Constitution and its understanding of liberty, should we then be surprised that Progressives despise our miracle -- just as they do we who take refuge in it?

...snip...

Having slain the personal for the sake of the political, have they not wrung the charm from life by reviling the precious and common virtues that once moved good men to good deeds? Having traded grace and humility for the curse of perpetual dissatisfaction, have they not sacrificed themselves to a distant and unloving idol -- becoming as cold and loveless as their egalitarian god while toiling incessantly to spin affluence into straw? Wracked with guilt and self-loathing because they were heirs to giants, have they not become the most miserable souls on the face of the earth for disdaining their fathers’ house, and thus warranting the curse?

Fairman has a unique style, one long absent from our writing. We, who believe in, indeed have faith in, the God of Creation, who even before he created the Universe, had us in mind, and already had set his plan for our salvation in motion, have longed for such writing. For we can not fully express ourselves without reference to our God, and our faith in his plan for us. While Fairman talks of "patriotic ardor," the reader must understand that it is patriotism in its proper place, under God, and not displacing the duties we owe our families, our communities, and our State.

Listen: for a while it could not be heard or felt, but eventually it began singing through the wires of our shared unspoken desire -- a reemergence of a mature patriotic ardor -- a welling up of love for resurgent liberties. Awakened from the nightmare, we found that noble principles had not perished in our exile. A manly fire is now burning fiercely and it will soon be unstoppable. If we allow it, its spirit will cleanse the land of leaders who had broken faith, and made common cause with the lowest among us. Let their names be stricken: men tentative in their masculine virtues and unwavering in their resolve to dishonor the patrimony of America.

Fairman's message is a happy one. We have dodged a huge bullet, for which we should thank Providence. No one else could have done
this for us. Go to church today, and pray. Have a happy New Year, be safe, but gird yourself for battle in the coming year.

Edit:  To my many readers in Canada, and overseas, we hope to become again the America that leads the world by example.  We hope to become again the America that values its allies, while holding its enemies at arms length.  The America that goes to war only reluctantly, and when all other means for peace have been tried, but when it does goes with overwhelming force.