The Definition of Crazy

Ben Shapiro at the National Review Online has it mostly right when he says that The Left Ignores Law Enforcement Failures in Parkland. Instead, what the Left is saying is that the NRA and its 5 million or so dues paying members, such as myself, and the many more people who respond to the NRA's alerts are responsible. That is a slander against a lot of people who did not shoot anyone. Indeed, I have not heard of a single member of the NRA who shot anybody. In fact the only person "responsible" for the shooting of students and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was Nicholas Cruz.

However, certain government agencies receive tax money for the purpose of policing the community, among whose duties are to investigate and take appropriate action to prevent people like Cruz from harming himself and others.  Those agencies in this case would be the FBI and the Broward County Sheriff's office.

We now know what happened in Parkland, Fla.: the failure of law enforcement on every level. The FBI received two specific, credible warnings about the Parkland shooter. It did nothing. The Broward County Sheriff’s Office received dozens of warnings — including one from the shooter himself. It did nothing to stop him from obtaining weapons. At least one and perhaps as many as four deputies were armed and present during the shooting. No deputy entered the school to confront the gunman.

No, neither agency has blood on its hands, but the certainly failed to do the jobs they were paid to do. Whoever is responsible for letting Cruz go so far as to be able to buy a gun and storm into the high school that day should be severely disciplined.

So much for who bears actual responsibility in the case.  Now for those who do not.

Then there’s the immoral. Some of the students who lived through the shooting have been spewing pure hatred toward those who refuse to share their enthusiasm for gun control. In CNN’s modernization of Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate, student after student tore into Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), to the screaming approval of a pro-gun-control Broward County audience. Cameron Kasky told Rubio, “It’s hard to look at you and not look down the barrel of an AR-15 and not look at [the shooter].” That statement went utterly unchallenged by moderator Jake Tapper, and was applauded by the crowd. Emma Gonzalez told Loesch, a mother of two, “I want you to know that we will support your two children in the way that you will not.” Again, the crowd cheered its approval.

These statements are utterly unmoored from decency. Rubio hasn’t shot anyone. Loesch hasn’t either. Both of them want to defend children. They’re in the limelight, at least in part, to do just that. But because these students have rightly been granted the full measure of sympathy, they’ve been wrongly granted a pass on disgusting behavior by the media.

Unfortunately, such behavior tends to lead to counteraccusations of a similar sort. Loesch said at CPAC that those in the media “love mass shootings.” This quite properly drew the ire of CNN’s Alyson Camerota, who said that Loesch was “wrong on every single level.” But Camerota’s indignation was strangely absent when, days earlier, Gonzalez told her directly, “If [politicians like Rubio] accept this blood money, they are against the children. They are against the people who are dying,” and Hogg added, “If you can’t get elected without taking money from child murderers, why are you running?”

I have been guilty of the same thing here, lashing out when insulted. When an insult or an accusation is made, if it is not immediately and vehemently denied, most people hearing it will assume it is true. While it may be civil to meekly accept such talk from people who, frankly, don't really know you, the New York way may be better at winning a debate. Donald Trump has stumped the media time and again by giving as good as he has gotten. Maybe we all need to learn that this unfortunately for us, is the new norm.

The reason I became a concealed carrier, and sought out training, got my permit, and go to the range regularly is because I know that the police and the authorities are not in fact the "first responders" in any situation.  If I am there, the first responder would be me.  But I have never been at the seen of a shooting, and I truly hope never to be.  However, I think that others who are like me, who are willing, who teach or work at schools as staff or volunteers should be allowed to carry their weapons at school, and should train to deal with school shooters and indeed with other situations that arise.  Shooters have shown a remarkable propensity to avoid places where their targets may shoot back.  Big surprise.  Will this change in policy stop all school shootings?  No, but it will reduce them considerably.  Will the teachers be able to stop them before the kill more students?  Hard to say, but at least the teachers will have a fighting chance to save lives.

We know what doesn't work: banning certain weapons and background checks.  Both have failed over and over.  We have evidence for what might work:  allowing teachers and staff to be armed, along with giving them some extra training.  Let's not continue to do the same thing over and over expecting different results.  That's the definition of crazy.

Arming Teachers in Schools

An excellent article by Rob Morse over at Slow Facts presents what we already know about President Trump's proposal to arm teachers as a partial solution to the epidemic of school shootings taking place today. The article is entitled prosaically enoughWe Already Arm Teachers in Public Schools. Morse points out that some States already allow arming staff in certain school districts to be armed. No one is forced to be armed, a common bugaboo with the left, just as no one is simply given a gun. It is a right, and as such it is always your decision whether to exercise it or not. Note that some teachers have publicly said that they will not work in a school with armed teachers. I say so be it. We can do without such teachers.

In any case, go read the article.  It is short and full of...you guessed it...slow facts.

Fighting Fire with Fire

Once again Kurt Schlichter has a good solution to the war on gun rights being waged by the left, and it involves hitting them where it hurts.  That it would also feed the Schlichter family is not really a problem, since the Left has engaged in the same thing.  You can read Schlichters article at Townhall.com under the title Counterattack Hard Against Liberal Attacks on our Gun Rights and Other Civil Liberties. I have always been a "fight fire with fire" kind of guy, because fighting evil requires it. Evil does not obey any rules and gives no quarter. Evil would as soon look at you as to kill you. In the end, of course, only God can stop evil, but we must be committed to being on God's side. So, I don't see doing the things Schlichter outlines as being particularly non conservative. They are just practical means to fight fire with fire.

Conservatives have developed a notion, from whence it came I know not, that civility is the highest good.  Civility is nice, but when the other side is not civil, we may be forced to take more drastic actions.  The Revolutionary war was fought, after trying to persuade the British to deal fairly with us.  Note that the Revolution was NOT a civil affair.  Indeed, God is not a nice guy, if the Bible is any guide, and his Son could be quite sarcastic towards those he deemed to be hypocrites.  So must we sometimes be less than "nice" in the service of doing what is "right."

Rubio, displaying the political savvy that convinced him to don a studded leather collar and be led around on a leash by Chuck Schumer...

...snip...

These gullible outliers don’t change the fact that the rest of the GOP is solid. That’s why the left is changing the rules and trashing our norms to do what they can’t do politically through intimidation. They have cultural power and we don’t, and they now seek to use businesses to destroy our rights and silence our voices. Understand that they don’t want an argument or a conversation - they want to use their non-governmental cultural power to deny us access to a platform so that we are unable to make our views heard. We need to recognize this dangerous trend and counterattack ruthlessly with our political power.

Conservatism is not a suicide pact, and our principles are not a mandate to unilaterally disarm. We need to make them hate the new rules. Maybe they won't learn anything, but at least they won't win by cheating.

So there's the basic reasoning. If they play by new rules, we should too. In this case, the new rule is that the Left is using its cultural dominance to enlist businesses to support its various causes. It did this with the transgender bathroom issue last year. Here in North Carolina, all sorts of businesses claimed to support the bathroom preferences of a small minority of people. Businesses did not feel the pain too badly, and in any case, there were so few transgendered taking advantage of the bathroom switcheroo, that they faced little opposition from frightened females.  The thought of big businesses boycotting the State eventually buffaloed State lawmakers into relaxing their hard stand against people using the bathrooms of the opposite sex on state property.

Having won that battle, the Left is now using the same tactics to win this one too.  Its time to give them a little of their own medicine.  In truth, businesses are being shaken down. When left to their own devices, we have seen, they tend to fall back on State law as a defensible position. We can not have businesses playing politics in hopes of not being to badly damaged by their muggers.  We must apply a little pain ourselves.

The first step is an executive order at the federal level directing that no federal contract can go to any company that discriminates against an organization based on its advocacy or exercise of an enumerated constitutional right. We wouldn't allow a company to do business with our federal government if it discriminated on other grounds, so why should we do it discriminate on political grounds? Why should taxpayers be subsidizing people who hate them? When those government employees start walking past the Hertz and National counters, the liberal jerks who run those companies are going to find that they're posing and posturing has a price.

Next, Congress needs to pass a comprehensive non-discrimination regime designed to protect us into law and allow individuals and entities the right to sue any business that discriminates on the basis of the advocacy for exercise of any constitutional right. We need to make sure there are huge penalties for non-compliance – how about $1 million a day? We also need attorneys’ fees provisions for the plaintiffs as well, because we want to turn lawyers into bounty hunters seeking out these posers who are doing so much damage to our society by collaborating in the suppression of speech that the elite does not approve of.

We could call it the “Civil Rights Anti-Discrimination Act” and dare the Democrats to vote against it. Now, of course, due to the filibuster, it might be tough to pass a law protecting our rights through Congress, but we own about 30 legislatures. That's 30 states that can each outlaw this kind of discrimination within their borders. So Hertz and National, welcome to a whole bunch of lawsuits in Texas and Wyoming and elsewhere. But hey, it's worth it because of the children, right?

I know Mr. Schlichter here is being a bit of a smart ass, but truly, it is for the children. We have an obligation to pass the freedom we have known on to our progeny. The left wants to take that away from us, and is very near to doing it. We need to get these into law now, while we have the Congress and the White House.

And a child shall lead them

"...and a child shall lead them."  Isaiah 11: 6.

It seems that the Left always misinterprets the words of the Bible.  If you read the verse in context, you will understand that Isaiah is here talking about the coming Messianic King, who will judge with righteousness.  Of course, the prophesy has been fulfilled in the birth, life, death and Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  But we will not experience these things until we enter His Kingdom.  Meanwhile, children need to learn from the experience of the adults who have lived and have experience, as well as from those who wrote things down.  But they do not have the experience to lead just yet. 

I don't have a lot of time today to dissect these two pieces from the American Thinker, so I ask that you read each in turn.

The first is from yesterday, by Jeffery T. Brown entitled The Yelling of the Lambs. Brown takes issue with what he calls the "newly minted child activists" who are suddenly demanding, with no real background information, no experience, indeed, nothing that would recommend their suggestions to us, that we abandon the Second Amendment now. Here's Brown:

For all of those who are angry about the Parkland attack and those before it, and who insist that the experiences of the newly minted child-activists for rescinding the Second Amendment require us to do what they demand, ask yourselves: do I want a society where my rights are determined by the raw and manipulated emotions of my accusers? Do I want my rights decided by what children feel? It is self-evident to rational people that anger, especially misinformed anger, is not a basis for good policy. However, it is all that progressives can offer. At least it helps them to deflect that armed teachers would have ended that attack before more of those children died, making their refusal to allow that defense for years an act of complicity in its outcome.

Being a victim and being young do not make one nobler or smarter than he was before he was attacked. The experience of being attacked certainly makes one vulnerable to exploitation by those who would manipulate the victim, but it does nothing to enlarge the victim's limited understanding of complex issues that are often polluted by corruption and disinformation. Victimhood does not create virtue or wisdom, but it does cause rage and emotion among those cultivated to default to feelings.

The sad fact is that people seem to no longer do the research, sort through the haystacks to find the needles, that must be done to understand and to debate the issues. Instead they resort to the notion that our modern times are somehow different. But man has not changed since he first walked the earth. Therefore, something like the Second Amendment is timeless, like the Bible, or Shakespeare's plays. As people, we always need to be able to defend ourselves against our fellow man, and today that means with a gun. Tomorrow it may mean with an electronic weapon of some sort, but we will always need to bear arms for our own protection, not the least of which will be form our own government.

The second article is from today, entitled Your Feelings Have Nothing to Do with My Rights by William Sullivan. Using as a starting point a tweet by Ohio Governor John Kasich Sullivan writes:

If the practical result is that my rights are inarguably infringed, why would your feelings, my feelings, or anyone else's feelings have any relevance whatsoever?

This is not a discussion. These are my rights. How you feel about the exercising of my rights doesn't matter at all. And if it is decided that your feelings warrant the legal erosion of my rights, isn't it clear that what we're talking about are not, in fact, "rights" as understood by our Founders, but allowances that government either permits or rescinds based upon the whims of a perceived majority opinion?

What Sullivan is reacting to are again the many people who say they somehow feel unsafe, or threatened by, people running around with concealed weapons. Of course, the fact that these weapons are concealed means that nobody but the one carrying the weapon actually know it. Therefore, most of this so called feeling is in reality manufactured for the purpose of ginning up a majority to repeal the Second Amendment.

It's important to note that while the majority rabble may undoubtedly care immensely about its own feelings, it does not care about your liberty. What the popular majority desires and what your liberty requires are two distinctly separate conversations. To quote Lord Acton: "At all times, sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities."

So does it matter if a majority want stricter gun control in general polling? No. Does it matter that Don Lemon, Jimmy Kimmel, and all the other leftist celebrities who've been granted implied expertise on the subject continue to pitch the easily disproven notion that fewer guns will somehow lead to fewer murders by gun? No. Does it matter if millions of high school students are demanding policy prescriptions toward strict federal gun control, despite having never owned a home where everyone they love and are honor-bound to protect at all costs, and everything they've worked a lifetime to earn, can potentially be stolen from them if they are left unable to adequately defend themselves? A thousand times, no.

Because our laws, our social contract, matter more than the whims of a majority.

Please note too that the NRA did not commit the Parkland school shooting, and that 5 million members of that organization are totally innocent of the crime. Nor did President Trump, nor the Republicans in Congress. This crime was committed by one individual. Sheriff Israel, if anyone, can be blamed for not taking action to get the individual some help, but the fact is that as always, you can lead a person to the right help, but you can't make him take it. The fact is that we have all the laws we need to stop these crimes. What is needed is for the men and women of law enforcement to do their jobs.

30 Year Shooting Veteran Debunks AR 15 Myths

The strident cries from the Left to ban the AR-15 rifle, I suspect, are partly bargaining chips to try and stop the concealed carry reciprocity bill that is currently stalled in the Senate.  For the Left, politics is a sport.  I don't think they expect to actually get a ban on the AR 15, but they certainly wouldn't turn it down if they did.  Still, the Left  lies when they claim that banning the AR 15, or for that matter, any of the other things they want to ban, would make any difference. But for that, we need to knock down the many myths surrounding the AR 15, and for that, we need to listen to Michael Filozof.

Michael Filozof has an article today at the American Thinker entitled  Cries to Ban the AR 15 Are Based on Ignorance and Hysteria. Filozof is particularly qualified to speak about the AR 15:

I've shot service rifle competitions for nearly 20 years and held the classification of "Master" for nearly eleven. I've probably put 20,000 rounds through AR-15 rifles. Though I've never been in the military, I have more familiarity and proficiency with the weapon than most active-duty soldiers. So I think I am as qualified as anybody to dispel the common myths about the AR-15.

Filozof debunks a lot of the myths surrounding what has become the All-American rifle. One of these myths is that the AR 15 is a particularly powerful weapon. I can't tell you how many times I have read that this rifle is extremely powerful. Yet anyone who writes such a thing is either lying through his teeth, or has no idea. The typical AR 15 rifle is chambered in 5.56 NATO or .223 Remington. This is a tiny bullet, .223 inches in diameter, weighing 85 grains. By comparison, most high powered rifles are .308 inches in diameter. A longtime standard is the 30-06 Springfield used during WWII in the M! Garand. The diameter of the bullet is .308 inches and weighs 165 grains. This is a powerful round, though not the most powerful.  Indeed, the low recoil of the rifle make it ideal for target shooting, especially for women.

I mentioned that the Left plays politics as a game, a sport.  But it is also for the Left a deadly serious.  The Left plays politics to win and they play for keeps.  While they are calling for a ban on the AR 15,  most know the truth: that banning the AR 15 won't stop crime because so few are used in crimes.  And, as Filozof points out:

Banning AR-15s is not the answer to school shootings. Neither the Columbine killers nor Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, nor University of Texas shooter Charles Whitman, used AR-15s, and all of them managed to commit terrible crimes.

It would have been entirely possible in, say, 1875 to murder 17 schoolchildren with 19th-century technology, such as a brace of Colt revolvers and a Winchester lever-action rifle – or, for that matter, with a broadsword or double-bladed axe. Why didn't it happen then? Probably a couple of reasons. As the Supreme Court ruled in 1892, back then, the U.S. was a Christian nation. It isn't any longer, and today we're dealing with the negative consequences of our 21st-century neo-paganism. And back in 1875, children were not compelled under penalty of law to attend government schools (where self-defense is legally forbidden, ensuring that they will be sitting ducks) until late adolescence.

School shootings are absolutely unacceptable. But banning modern firearms is equally unacceptable. Nor would it be effective: Norway's stringent gun control failed to stop Anders Breivik from killing 77 people; France's ban on "assault weapons" didn't stop the Bataclan shooters from killing 130; and Egypt's rifle ban didn't stop the massacre of 305 worshipers at a Sinai mosque last year. Britain's total confiscation of handguns and semi-automatic rifles failed to prevent Derrick Bird from shooting 23 people (12 fatally) with a bolt-action .22 in 2010

Parkland School Shooting Hero Should Have Been Armed

Today, over at the American Thinker, Patrick Jakeway has an article about a brave school guard who saved some kids lives during the recent Parkland, Florida shooting, but lost his own life in the process. Aaron Feis, the Disarmed School Guard was disarmed because of stupid government laws, and idiotic school policies.

Fies was a football coach at the school, but being a football coach is usually an after school job, and typical football coaches usually have another job during the day teaching a subject.  In Fies's case, his day job was being a school guard.  But as a school guard, he was disarmed.  What was he supposed to do in the event of a shooter entering his school and begin shooting the students under his care?  Well, we found out:

Aaron Feis, husband, father, school guard, and football coach, rushed toward the fire and, by all accounts, engaged the shooter Nikolas Cruz soon after Cruz started shooting. The Sun-Sentinel reported that Feis "was one of the first to respond." When the "Code Red" went off, head football coach Willis May asked over the walkie-talkie whether the sounds were firecrackers. Feis retorted: "Those aren't firecrackers. I'm going in."

Leftists and their useful idiots claim that children, and young people would be traumatized by the presence of guns in the schools, that armed adults would somehow make them feel anxious, or somehow warp their little skulls full of mush. This idea is utter nonsense. Children, to the extent that they even notice such things, tend to be more practical about such matters than the "experts" in child education seem to give them credit. But even so called "Red Letter Christians*" don't seem to understand that the day when swords will be beaten into plowshares is after Christ comes again. For now, we Christians have a foot in two worlds, the temporal world and the world of the Spirit.  In the world of the Spirit, we won't need weapons, but for now, we do, and we should never forget that it is our duty to have them when trouble erupts.

Precisely in order to protect us against evil men and government incompetence and malfeasance, the following words were written in 1789 into the 2nd Amendment by men who had pledged their lives and honor in pursuit of life and liberty (author's emphasis):

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

"Shall not be infringed" is an unequivocal command. It is a travesty of justice that Mr. Feis's constitutional right to protect himself and those innocent children was infringed. Based on Coach May's testimonial, Mr. Feis wittingly charged into the fray knowing that he would face powerful gunfire and that he was disarmed.

So, what is the solution? Quite frankly, the solution seems to be to have those teachers, administrators, and other adults who happen to be at the school for various reasons and are willing, to be armed. Of course, as always, those not willing should not be forced to become armed. But I believe a lot of teachers would be willing, and would feel better knowing that they were trained and armed to deal with these situations, rare though they are. I would suggest that armed teachers carry concealed. As with concealed carriers in the general public, carrying concealed provides a tactical advantage to the armed teacher, and protects him or her from people, like the "Red Letter Christians*" may disagree.

*  The idea of liberal and leftist "Christians" is apparently a "thing."  But, of course the last book of the Bible was written circa 2000 years ago.  The lessons to be drawn from the Bible were explicated long ago.  Somehow these people have what must be described as a "living" Bible whose lessons evolve with the evolving understanding that these enlightened individuals.  Miraculously, the latest Leftists fads remarkably line up with the Almighty's word.  For instance, the radical Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) "discovered" that homosexuality was a-ok with the Lord after all this time, and began ordaining homosexual pastors.  Who knew?  I wonder when the Red Letter types will get rid of this whole "sin" thing, and accuse God of creating evil.

The Pagan Left Takes Off its Mask

Fay Voshell is speaking out about Leftists mocking Mike Pence for his Christianity.  You can find the article at the American Thinker today entitled Madness, Christianity, and the Left. David Limbaugh had a similar article on February 16 entitled I Wish I Were As Bad a Christian as Mike Pence (is). I can say the same thing as David Limbaugh. I read the Bible daily, and I pray daily. But sometimes I have trouble getting to it. Luther called it despising God's word. I suppose so, and it points to my sinful nature, so I wish I were as bad as Mike Pence, because then I wouldn't be as bad as I am.

Miss Voshell, however, has the more intriguing article on the topic.  She points out that Christians are finding themselves in the same position as when the movement first started, and pagans made up the dominant culture:

Such inversion of truth is what happens when a society is pagan or reverts to paganism, as is clearly illustrated in the case of the Apostle Paul, who was deeply involved in pagan (politically correct and politically reinforced) politics similar to that of today.

Summoned to appear in court by the Roman rulers of his day, Paul testified concerning his conversion to Christianity before Festus, procurator of Judea, and King Herod Agrippa II, who was in an incestuous relationship with his sister Bernice.

Paul spoke before the two men about the core claims of billions of Christians throughout the ages: Christ has died; Christ has risen; Christ will come again. He presented the case for Christianity compellingly, clearly, and persuasively.

The response from the two leaders before whom Paul was being tried? Agrippa was not persuaded. Festus shouted, "You are out of your mind. Your great learning is driving you insane" (Acts 26).

I have been reading a book by Alvin Schmidt entitled How Christianity Changed the World. If the burqua, the hijab, the oppression and restriction of women feels like paganism, well you would be correct. This is how women lived in pagan society for thousands of years before Christianity came into the world. If widespread abortion and infanticide feels like paganism to you, we that's because before Christianity, babies were often just left exposed to the elements to die. The discovery of a mass grave of abandoned babies in Ashkelon, Israel in Roman times, here is but one article. There are other sites as well. It was not illegal, and indeed, was considered a legitimate form of birth control to simply expose your newborn to the elements and let it die.

There is more.  Hospitals for the public were built by Christians to attempt to heal the sick, as Christ had.  Yes, there were a limited number before that treated soldiers, but widespread hospitals were a new innovation invented by Christians.

So, it is perplexing, given this history, that the "ladies" on the view feel free to mock Mike Pence, a decent man.

For some time, it has been in vogue among the left to consider Christianity itself an insane belief system. Certainly, such seems to be the case for some of the talking heads on ABC's The View. According to Joy Behar, one of the most dangerously insane people in the United States is the vice president of the United States, Mike Pence.

Let's be frank: a well known spokeswoman has so thoroughly absorbed the left's definition of insanity that she believes she can trash without consequence a good man whose core beliefs are based on beliefs held by Judaism and Christianity for over four thousand years. Of course, she would never dream of trashing the Muslim mayor of London in a similar manner.

It is sad that the women of the View have such a stunted view of history, unlike our founders who studied history including ancient history. They then would see that Margaret Sanger ushered in not a new freedom for women, but a return to paganism. They would see that the move toward homosexualism, and other perversions, while common enough to the human condition, at the least, not be celebrated. They would see that the Muslim treatment of women does not represent freedom, but rather subjugation and exploitation.  It is only through the efforts of generations of Christians, many of them women, that today they can mock the Vice President of the United States on television without consequences.

The point is that the teachings of one man, Jesus of Nazareth, changed people, and then those people changed others, until the world began to change. Indeed, it can be argued that much of modern science and technology grew out of a fundamental belief that God is rational, and that his laws are therefore discoverable.

The Apostle Paul said that he would gladly be a fool for Christ.  Paul was a great and a learned man.  Can I, a poor miserable sinner, be willing to do less?

What the Left Wants

I don't have a lot of time today, but I do have a good read for all two of you gentle readers.  Kurt Schlichter, ever the conservative bomb thrower, has a great piece at Townhall.com today entitled The Liberal Media's Slobbering Over the Norks Reminds Us Why We Have the Second Amendment. 

Schlicter's point is that the media elite's wet kiss to the people who are part of North Korea's government puts them on the side of torture, of exploitation, of slavery, and starvation. If that is what they like about North Korea, what do they want for this country? The obvious point is they want the same here.  Schlichter sums it up with this:

Thank you, you suckers, fellow travelers, and butcher-huggers of the American mainstream media. With the freedom from your fellow leftists’ petty oppressions that we’ve been enjoying under President Trump, we could have been lulled into sleep and forgotten that you literally fetishize a corpse-strewn communist dictatorship. So we must honor the Founders by exercising our right to create facts on the ground, large caliber facts that will keep these people from achieving the dream that their pet press showed us. Despite all its endless commercials, the only products the Olympic coverage should convince you to buy are guns and ammo.

You should read the whole thing, though, if for no other reason than that Kurt Schlichter is always entertaining as he routinely acerbically skewers liberal idiots in his weekly columns at Townhall.com. But take what he says to heart too.

What Would America Be Like Without the Second Amendment

I am currently reading a book by Alvin J. Schmidt entitled How Christianity Changed the World. Schmidt is a retired Professor of Sociology, and a member of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Schmidt starts out asking what if Christ had not been born? He then goes on to show how the movement Jesus started changed people, and thus changed a number of horrible cultural practices that obtained throughout the ancient world. These practices would still be widespread had not Jesus been born. Infanticide and abortion was commonly practiced in ancient times.  Of course, boys would be favored in such a regime over girls.  Girls and women were chattel slaves, the property of their fathers and then their husbands.  The veil was common, and whatever Muslims may tell you, it is a sign of male superiority; always has been.  The practice of suttee, where a widow was burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre was cultural practice until outlawed by the British.  Child brides as young as twelve were often married to elderly men.  Thus a woman as young as 15 might be burned with her dead husband. Christians established the first hospitals for the public, the first colleges and universities, and advanced science.

I asked Mrs. PolyKahr if the car would have been invented without Christianity.  She thinks it would.  I am not so sure.  A number of technological innovations were made during the Greek and Roman times, but these remained one off, and the ideas never spread, nor were the value of these innovations fully realized.  The cultural was not there.  But Christianity introduced a new culture, one of greater freedom, not just for men but for women as well.  This freed us to have yet more ideas.  Christians value of life also meant that we slowly out reproduced the ancient world, with their abortions and infanticides, and their widespread homosexual practices.

On thing I know would not have been had it not been for Christians is the United States Constitution..  The Constitution is a profoundly Christian document, and this nation was founded as a Christian nation.   So, even if we would be living here, in this land, we would not be living under the United States Constitution, and therefore we would not have the Second Amendment.  Peter Skurkiss writes a think piece for the American Thinker entitled A Second Amendment Thought Experiment wherein he asks: What would American be like if we didn't have the Second Amendmeent?  Of course, guns would likely be highly restricted, that is a given. 

That's the easy part of the answer. But there's more to it than that. Without the 2nd Amendment, might not the social and cultural landscape of America be different from what it is today?

To understand why, look at how far within living memory the U.S. has drifted from its founding principles. The country has been pushed further and further to the left by undemocratic means in the form of judicial decrees and bureaucratic edicts, many of which have no basis in written law or the Constitution. Abortion, homosexual marriage, transgender rights, and massive illegal immigration are examples. And think of all the statewide referendums that have been overturned by the courts because the results went against the progressive agenda. So much for “every vote counts.”

Furthermore, we live in what is called an “agency state.” Loosely written laws give government bureaucrats the power to set rules and regulations that have the effect of law. We've seen government departments like the EPA, staffed by environmental radicals, running amok with their regulatory power. Probably no federal government agency is innocent of bureaucratic overreach, some more than others, which is why the country is choking on 'laws,' many of which people neither know of nor can understand.

What does this have to do with the 2nd Amendment and gun ownership? Simple. Most office-bound bureaucrats, left-wing judges, and government elites are not exactly prime examples of virile American manhood. Quite the opposite. When you think of this government class, which is predominately male, a picture of a feminized metrosexual springs to mind, especially the higher up you go in the hierarchy.

This point is this. In the back of their minds, even if it is buried at a subconscious level, these people fear an armed citizenry. An armed citizenry puts a check on how far and how fast the government class dares to push its progressive agenda by unconstitutional means. True, the 2nd Amendment by itself has not completely stopped the unconstitutional drift to the left, but one has to believe it has prevent what could have been from being what is.

To see the real history of the Left. you need to read another book by Jonah Goldberg entitled Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left form Mussolini to the Politics of Change I am sure Goldberg regrets the second part of that title, for the book is larger in scope, but such are the compromises required by editors. The Left goes back to the French revolution, and has been with us since our founding. The differences start out small. They are the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.  It was while reading this book that the idea first struck that the Second Amendment guaranteed all the other Amendments, and more importantly that in a country with a Second Amendment, a person is a citizen, while in a country without, a person is a subject.  But it is not an original idea.  St. George Tucker, writing in 1803 on William Blackstone's Commentary on the Laws of England noted:

This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty . . . . The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms, is under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

President Reagan said: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same." Like so many things the great Renadus Maximus said, this one is fundamentally true. Without the Second Amendment, this nation would be far different from what it is, let alone what it was. We need to be ever vigilant, and support and expand the Second Amendment at every opportunity. One such opportunity presents itself now, with the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act. Write your Congresscriters and tell them how you feel.

“You have to understand… how he going to get his money to have clothes to go to school? You have to look at it from his point-of-view.”

Over at the site, Bearing Arms, is a report on a mother of a robber who is mad because an armed employee of the Pizza Hut store her son was robbing killed him with his own concealed carry gun.  The son, and two others attempted to commit armed robbery.  This mom uses the tired argument that I was first offered by a prosecutor back in the 1970s, that robbery isn't a capital crime, and therefore the robber should not be shot.  You can find the story by Tom Knighton here.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that if a man is willing to point a pistol at you, and demand your money (with the implied threat of deadly force for failure to accede to his demand) then what prevents him for going ahead and shooting you anyway? Can someone read a person's mind and know what he is thinking? I certainly can not, and I suspect nobody else can either.  If the prosecuting attorney can read peoples minds, then is he not complicit in the commission of a crime, of which he had foreknowledge?  If a person decides to rob another person at gun point, he should be considered an outlaw, which term used to  mean that a robber is no longer under the protection of the law.  When did we begin to protect the law breaker rather than the law abiding?

Knighton:   

This, of course, is standard operating procedure after some criminal scumbag is killed committing a crime. Invariably, they begin to lash out and claim the shooter was out of line. Perhaps the most famous example was the cousin of Trevon Johnson, who was shot and killed after breaking into a woman’s home, who famously said, “You have to understand… how he going to get his money to have clothes to go to school? You have to look at it from his point-of-view.”

No, we don’t.

I get that people are upset that their loved one is dead. I get that. I also get the frustration that they are dead because of the actions of another human being who apparently won’t be punished. However, it’s also important to understand why that person won’t be punished. Self-defense is a basic human right. No one is required to accept being hurt by criminals, which means they get to fight back. Sometimes, the good guys are better or faster than the bad guys, and we get a case like this one.

Of course, I understand why the editors of newspapers allow such tripe to be reported in their pages. Most editors have a bias against guns, at least other peoples guns, and believe the general reader won't be able to see the illogical arguments on display.

For the record, I do believe that one should give up stuff rather than risk taking a life if that is possible.  But one doesn't always, or even unusually have that ability.  That is why we carry guns.

A Constitutional Crisis (No, Really!)

Perhaps you, like I, have been waiting to see if the Republican majority (i.e. the Stupid Party) would release the FISA memo, or would cave to the Democrats' (i.e. the Evil Party) caterwauling.  Amazingly, the FISA Memorandum has been released with only minor edits requested by the FBI and the Committee Democrats. I was surprised, but there appear to be a few Republicans with a bit of spine and a pair of...well...you get the idea.

Clarice Feldman has her take on the affair in her weekly "Clarice;s Pieces" article at the American Thinker entitled The 'Constitutional Crisis' the Fourth Estate Birthed. Feldman cites Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal, and Mark Penn of The Hill in noting that none of the claimed objections to releasing the FISA memo were true. It doesn't reveal sources and methods. Further, the hypocrisy of the press is shocking. the same NY Times and Washington Post, who argued that the public was entitled to know what was in the Pentagon Papers, and published them, now wants the public NOT to know the contents of the Trump Dossier or the findings of the House Intelligence Committee. Feldman:

Lacking any coherent policies, the Democrats have pinned their hopes on persuading Americans that Trump is Hitler, Stalin, a usurper and a traitor who must be impeached. Their reaction to the release of the memo underscored their fright as this last remaining hope -- impeachment -- slips away. A prominent voice on that end has been Congressman Adam Schiff, who claimed falsely that the memo was inaccurate. Other Dems claimed it would reveal sources and methods that would endanger national security. (It didn’t, by the way.) The Wall Street Journal’s “Best of the Web” took hard aim at Schiff:

"In March of 2007, a very libertarian sort of Congressman announced that he was “deeply troubled” by what he called “abuses of authority” by the FBI in acquiring personal information on U.S. citizens. Over the years, he urged various restrictions on the ability of the executive branch to get information on Americans’ phone calls. In order “to protect privacy and increase transparency” he sought in various ways to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- the very court that approved the electronic surveillance of a Trump associate for reasons that are still not entirely clear.

Way ahead of the news, he specifically introduced the “Ending Secret Law Act” which according to a press release from his office, “would require the Attorney General to declassify significant Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) opinions, allowing Americans to know how the Court has interpreted” its legal authorities.

He said that his legislation “will help ensure we have true checks and balances when it comes to the judges who are given the responsibility of overseeing our most sensitive intelligence gathering and national security programs.”

His name is Adam Schiff, and he is now the ranking member on House Intelligence. But oddly he doesn’t seem to want to take credit for his early concern for civil liberties."

You can read Ms. Feldman's article for yourself, and you should. It covers the topic very well. I would like to also highlight an additional piece, a blog post over at Streetwise Professor:

Some of the reporting and commentary on this issue has been utterly incredible (in many senses of the word). For example, Trump overruled current-FBI director Wray’s objection to releasing the memo. The WaPo framed this as “Trump defies Wray.” Um, who the hell works for whom? If there is defiance going on, it is Wray’s going public with his objections to the actions of his Constitutional superior. Wray should have raised his objections in private to Trump, and if overruled (as he was, in the event), kept his mouth shut in public, or resigned–and then kept his mouth shut. To lobby publicly (and disingenuously, by raising national security concerns) in an attempt to pressure his superior into doing something is beyond the pale.

Or should be, anyways. But one thing that this entire sordid episode has demonstrated is that the bureaucracy generally, and the intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies in particular, consider themselves an independent power, a co-equal–superior actually–branch of government, the Constitution be damned. Trump is deemed the usurper. Indeed, it is clear that many senior members of the FBI, DOJ, and the intelligence community considered it their right to intervene in the election in order to prevent Trump’s election, and failing that, to kneecap his presidency. And virtually all of the political class in the US is on their side. This is the real Constitutional crisis.

You should view this as a Constitutional danger regardless of your partisan leanings. For ask yourself: would you like the same to be done to your guy (or gal)?

It is also disgustingly ironic that in a fervid controversy about the alleged intervention of the Russian siloviki into an American election reveals that high-ranking American officials in control of the vast powers of US law enforcement and intelligence used siloviki methods (including most likely disinformation planted by Russian siloviki!–you can’t make this up!) in an attempt to influence an American election and then to cripple the winner of that election when their original plotting failed/

Indeed, the Russian siloviki have it going for them that they aren’t nauseatingly sanctimonious about their skullduggery–refreshingly cynical is more their style. James Comey and others cannot say the same.

The emphasis is mine.

This is what happens when the protections in our Bill of Rights are allowed to be weakened.  The NSA spying, the secret courts, all are violations of the 4th Amendment.  Just because part of our communications happen to go over the air waves (which the government claims, also unconstitutionally) does not give the government the right to those communications, any more than they can read your mail because it goes through government hands.  Even if, and that is a big IF, they are protecting you, that is no excuse for violating the 4th Amendment, or indeed any of the Bill of Rights.  In a similar way, the Gun Control Act of 1968 is a violation of our Second Amendment rights,   It represents a prior restraint on people acquiring guns legally, though it does not stop them from acquiring them illegally, which is its stated purpose.  Whether the Supreme Court agrees is also immaterial, since they, as members of the Federal government, are unlikely to oppose the Fed except in the most egregious of cases.

Somehow, we the people must ultimately take back control.  Electing Trump will probably not do the job, but it is a beginning..But, it also matters that We the People have faith in our system of government as laid out in the Constitution, and that we also have a stiff spine and a pair of...well...you get the picture,   If needs be, we must be willing to shout down the voices of those who call for government protection, because we know, as they do not, that the government doesn't really protect you.  They protect themselves.