May God's Grace Yet Shine on the USA

 Deana Chadwell at the American Thinker today has an article listing The Top Ten Pending Eruptions in American politics today. Go ahead and read all ten for a good scare story. I want to emphasize number 7 on the list, though they all really are of grave concern. Number 7 though is about the loss of our `1st and 2nd Amendment rights. Here's how Chadwell puts it:

7. Not only is our 1st Amendment being challenged, so is the 2nd Amendment. These are lines we cannot cross and yet every time there’s a shooting the ante ratchets up another notch and we all know that if the 2nd Amendment goes, the 1st disintegrates and without those we have no freedoms of any kind. This assault on our freedoms of speech is made worse by the power of the mega-media and its desire to shut us up. It’s a relief to see some states staking out their ground on this issue. Sooner or later we’ll see a three-way face-off amongst states’ rights, federal overreach, and Big Tech.

The Founders wisely gave us the 1st Amendment first because it is the most important set of rights we have. For peace to prevail, everyone must worship the God of their understanding, and no one can say otherwise. We can try to convince, but we can not use force. And everyone, and I do mean everyone, must have a voice and a say in how we are governed. When Democrats rig elections and pull shenanigans, they are taking away the voices of those who follow the rules. But such disputes must be settled peacefully, and not through force. But our Founders recognized that if we were disarmed, the use of force by some to coerce others would become a certainty. History shows this to be true. Without the 2nd Amendment, which sets up a sort of Mutually Assured Destruction for those who use force, the rest of the 10 Amendments wouldn't be worth the paper they were written on.

While I don't necessarily agree with the relative listing of the 10 things Chadwell brings up, she is right that all ten need to be dealt with. I pray God is looking out for us, because we have screwed things up royally.

Biden Views Us As Enemies to be Nuked.

 Today at Townhall.com Kurt Schlichter has an article entitled Nuke the Insurrectionists or Something that looks at exactly what would be involved if the Presicent ordered the military to attack American citizens. The article is a result of President *'s claim that if citizen's wanted to resist tyranny, they would need to have more than just AR-15s. The thing is, though, that if the President views American citizens as proper targets for bombing and with air power, shelling with tanks and other and large scale military operations, he must view us as his enemies. In other words, we have elected a dangerous (to us) man to the White House.

Please go read Schlichter's article, as his analysis is spot on. He asks a lot of pertinent questions, and the answers indicate that he may well be blowing smoke. But this one, for me, is the real issue:

“How would you protect the supply lines to the fighter bases from attacks by armed citizens? How many of your limited ground forces would you allocate to securing supply lines between bases and protecting complicit forces living off post from retaliation?”

You know what the most vulnerable part of an F-15, or a tank, or any other combat vehicle is? The people and stuff, like fuel, who make it go. Why would * think that he’d not have to devote most of his force to defensive operations as opposed to offensive ones? Oh wait, it’s because he’s a fool.

Biden is clearly dangerous. If the Democrats had were not also dangerous, they would start procedings to impeach him. They won't. That is a problem too.

Yes, we can own cannons.

 History is an interesting thing, and we should all study and remember it.  In this case, it is a history of the use of privately owned cannon by private individuals in defense or our nation.  The history lesson is delivered by Logan Metesh, at Ammoland.com entitled Actually Mr. President, you CAN own a cannon.

At the time of the Revolutionary War and in the following early years of the United States, there were no laws prohibiting the private ownership of cannons. Neither King George III nor President George Washington (or any other president, for that matter), issued any kind of law that prohibited people from owning cannons.

...snip...

Our colonial navy had approximately 1,200 cannons on board less than 65 ships. The privateers, on the other hand, had almost 15,000 cannons – all privately owned.

Throughout much of this country’s history, privately-raised militia units have fought side by side with regular artillery units, with the only difference being that these militia units were using cannons that had been privately purchased. Many artillery units in the Civil War were funded privately.

The history of arms in the United States has more twists and turns than a dime novel. But one thing is clear: the Founders intended us to have access to the latest technology. President Biden is wrong on all counts.

Climate Change for Christians

 I have used variations of the argument posited in the article by Dean Davis at the American Thinker entitled Climate Change for Christians. Namely, that the fate of the earth is in God's hands, and we can not destroy it. We simply do not have the power to do so, and believing we do is a gross display of arrogance. But I will let Dean tell it, because he does it so much better.

Presently, a naturalistic worldview dominates public policy on climate change, both in Washington and in many blue states. Modern naturalism posits that the universe evolved through random physical processes. This hypothesis entails that our Earth is extremely fragile and that man, often viewed as a clumsy Johnny-come-lately, could completely destroy it if he's not careful. Therefore, an observed trend toward global warming, possibly caused by us humans, generates existential alarm in naturalistic scientists and the people who listen to them.

The biblical worldview (BWV) posits that God is the creator, sustainer, and ruler of all things, including the weather. It also posits that man is his vice-regent on Earth, specially appointed to develop and care for the home he has given us. Because of man's fall into sin, God has temporarily burdened his originally perfect creation with various natural evils such as extremes of heat and cold, drought, storm, earthquake, etc. Ultimately, these "severe mercies" are wake-up calls designed to discourage nature-worship and bring the wanderers home.

Dean also has a word or two for those who worship at the alter of Gaia. The God of Creation created everything that is, and everything that is not. There is no Gaia. So called "Mother Nature" is a figure of speech, not a real thing. And in God's world you are more valuable than anything else he has created.  He will not let us destroy the earth, even if we had the power to do so.

Ponder that.

Why Are They Pushing So Hard?

 Patricia McCarthy has a post at the American Thinker entitled Vaccines: When the boomer generation's wisdom meets the millenials' will to submit. There are two threads running through the article. The first is asking what the heck is with the millenial generation's apparent willingness to roll over and play dead? Where is the natural suspicion of the government? The other thread running through the post is this:

Some doctors believe that thousands have died as a direct result of the vaccines. Dr. McCullough is only one of them. There are hundreds of them from all around the world. The man who invented mRNA, Dr. Robert Malone, is on record warning about the potential dangers of the vaccines, especially for the young. He’s of course been censored by all of the mainstream media except Fox News and several alternate sites that have yet to be silenced. So if your friends and family members confine their vaccine information gathering to CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC and MSNBC, they know only what the government/media wants them to know, that they must, must, must submit to one of the three vaccines available in order to survive a flu for which there are numerous treatments. One has to ask what the hell is in those jabs that the global elites are so determined to mandate our submission to them? Never in US history has the federal government pushed an experimental medical procedure so relentlessly.

There must be a reason, and we should know what that reason is. Is it money? One reason might be that the companies that developed the vaccines have spent a lot of money, and worked a backroom deal to kick back to the politicians in return for pushing the vaccine. But then, the companies have already gotten that remuneration through Operation Warp Speed (thank you President Trump.) So...

Other reasons seem more sinister. For example, what did the government know and when did they know it in regard to the Wuhan Labs release of the virus? It seems more and more likely that in fact the virus was deliberately leaked as a bioweapon. Did the government know this early on? Is that the reason for Operation Warp Speed? Is that the reason everybody has to get a jab?

Then, there is the Bill Gates involvement in the virus and the response to it. Gates is known to believe that the earth is overpopulated. Somehow the Malthus heresy seems to spread despite the fact it has been debunked over and over. Is there something in the vaccines that we will only find out about after it is too late that limits our time on earth? I am sure McCarthy has similar thoughts.

Sadly, there have been many thousands of deaths due to COVID, most of them among the very elderly who suffered from one or several co-morbidities. NY Gov. Cuomo seemed to almost relish the thousands of deaths in his state rather than take advantage of the field hospitals and hospital ship Trump provided. The same is true of Gov. Murphy of NJ and Newsom of CA. These are horrific men without a shred of character; the preservation of their own political power governs every move they make. They care nothing at all for their actual constituents. The people are just bits of data to be moved about on carefully constructed charts of their own making. Like any pollster, they can make the numbers “show” whatever they want them to show.

All of this demonstrates to millions of us that there must be something so treacherous, so unscrupulous, so potentially lethal about these vaccines that we will never submit to them. Jill Biden was booed in Tennessee when she complained that only three in ten Tennesseans had been vaxxed. She stupidly responded that “you’re only booing yourselves.” She may be the dumbest First Lady ever; and the most grasping for undeserved power.

Why are the pushing the vaccines so hard? Isn't it each person's responsibility to determine for themselves what medicines they take, what treatments they get? Last I heard, doctors are health advisors, not health dictators. In a different time, one was supposed to ask questions, ask about the risks, weigh the risks and benefits, before making a decision. But with the vaccine, one is spposed to just accept the jab without even the benefit of a doctor visit. What gives?

The Right Side of History

 Per the Epoch Times the Supreme Court Rules Foster Agencies Can Deny Certification to Same Sex Couples on Religious Grounds. Reality and Truth won out in this case. The Supreme Court has here pushed back against the war on Christians.

Interestingly, there truly is a war going on against Christians and religious Jews, and it is because secularism, and particularly Marxism is a religion itself. And like any religion, it sees its dogma as the Truth, and therefore it must force everyone to acknowledge that truth. But Christians and Jews do not acknowledge the secularists, because Christians and Jews recognize a Higher Power, the God of Creation, whose rules and laws precede the secularist and will still Be long after the secularist have gone away.

If you want to know which is the right side of history, it is hard to beat the Lord. For Jesus said "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Clinging to Reality and Truth

 I like the cut of Paul O'Brien's jib, so to speak.  He encourages we "normal" Americans to stand up, tell the Truth, with a capital "T" in his article at the American Thinker entitled It's A Good Life...Until They Kill You.

Americans of a certain age will recall a Twilight Zone episode called “It’s A Good Life.” In it, six-year-old Anthony Fremont (Billy Mumy) turns 40-something birthday celebrant Dan Holis (Don Keefer) into a jack-in-the-box and “wishes” him into the cornfield. Little Anthony was a monster -- a mind-reading, music-hating brat with supernatural powers. He used his special gift on anyone who dared to think thoughts he didn’t like.

All Dan wanted to do was listen to his Perry Como album, a birthday gift from his wife. Anthony vetoed that idea, of course, so Dan downed a little too much brandy, his other gift, before giving the boy a piece of his mind. As anyone over 60 -- and most over 50 -- probably know, Anthony pointed at Dan, calling him “a bad man, a very bad man” before condemning him to that eternal spring (boing!) in the field.

...snip...

Serling understood that stifling our freedom of thought and expression was monstrous activity, that the victim is more enslaved than simply “canceled.” In a sense, he is killed -- in mind, heart, and soul. Yet, among us we find a legion of zealous advocates for this brand of serial murder. Notoriously, some of these verbicidal maniacs inhabit the halls of Congress, some wear the robes of academia, while others run Big Tech and Big Media. All of them fancy themselves (at least publicly) as champions of the little guy, of the downtrodden, of the historically mistreated. They somehow still don’t understand, despite the lessons of the Third Reich, the Soviets, the North Koreans, the Cubans, et al., that the world they try to create cannot be achieved.

...snip...

So, here’s a modest proposal (and it ain’t satire): we stop playing by their rules and debating in their tongue. “Wokeness” is a hollow a philosophy and a linguistic crime. Ditto “cancel culture.” A movement based on rendering its opposition “nonpersons” is a hideous cult, not a culture. Parents, forbid your children from going along to get along. Remind them that boys are “he” and girls are “she” and that together they are “they.” Remind them “they” represent an actual culture, i.e., Western Civilization, and that if said civilization is to have a future, it must be protected and defended.

These people are bullies, pure and simple. They want power, and are willing, indeed eager, to step on anyone who gets in their way. But like all bullies, they are cowards. O'Brien suggests we take heart, screw u the courage to punch the bully in the nose, and countiue the beating until the bullies go away.

Speaking of bullies, Kurt Schlichter has a piece at Townhall.com entitled CRT can KMA. Kurt calls out the Critical Race Theory for what it is...pure balderdash. And this post has even more of the Schlichter "joie de vivre."

Everyone hates CRT, critical race theory, that bizarre, ridiculous, and morally illiterate hodge-podge of Marxist mumbo-jumbo blended with a healthy dose of the kind of racial hash that would make Democrat David Duke beam. Even the lib wine moms, who were so ecstatic about the recent lack of mean tweeting – ironic that the only man able to give them pleasure was Donald Trump, and he does it by not doing anything – despise this Marxist pestilence. The guys in the campaign business I talk to are giddy and often burst into spontaneous jigs of pure glee at the poll numbers they are seeing. Hey Congress, congratulations! Thanks to CRT, there’s something America hates even more than you!

And there's more, so read Schlichter's article. But keep in mind that the siren song of Marxism will never die. There are always those who want power and money, and they will try to steal it from their fellows. We must not only be vigilant, but also cling tightly to reality and to the Truth.

Texas Becomes 21st State with Constitutional Carry

At Bearing Arms Cam Edwards reports that Abbot Signs Constitutional Carry Into Law In Texas.

The wait is over, and concerns that big city police chiefs might be able to scuttle the signing of Constitutional Carry legislation in Texas turned out to be unfounded. Gov. Greg Abbott put pen to paper on Wednesday, officially signing the state’s permitless carry legislation into law.

While the new law is not an unalloyed good, I still applaud Texas legislators and the Governor for putting a pretty good law into place. This makes Texas the 21st State to have Constitutional carry.

On Proving Election Fraud Hangs Our Republic

The Chinese Communists' war against the United States is not the only war we are facing.  The Left has also declared war against us, only this war is internal, prosecuted by people claiming to be American, but who are working for the other side. These are actually Anti-Americans shamelessly practicing a form of taqiyya in order to fool the public. It explains their love of Muslims. Part of that internal war, conducted by fifth columnists in the government and media is the Presidential election of 2020. Today at the American Thinker Jeff Lukens tells us that Election Fraud is an Issue that Will Not Go Away.

There are many reasons to doubt the 2020 election results. No question, strange things were happening on Election Night. Democrats' push for universal mail-in balloting made fraud much easier to commit. There is evidence of massive foreign cyber-interference as well. The media say there is nothing to see here, but we cannot move on from November 3 until we fully understand what happened.

But of course, the Democrats have been fighting us tooth and nail to keep us from discovering what they did. And you know as well as I do that if they had indeed conducted the most honest election in history, as they have said, that they would be throwing open the doors so everyone could see. Instead, they have been hiding what they have done, while fighting a rear guard legal action to keep auditors from reporting their findings. 

Then there are two people who have already compiled major reports that should be troubling to everyone. For, if they are correct, we can not trust that ANY election truly represents the will of the actual people, whether left, right or mushy middle. Peter Navarro is the first:

In his report, Peter Navarro provides abundant evidence that the presidential election results resulted from widespread fraud, ballot-stuffing, and other election irregularities. Navarro claims that the Democrat grand strategy was to dramatically increase absentee and mail-in ballots while dramatically decreasing ballot verification in battleground states.

The goal was to tip the election to Biden with a flood of illegal votes. Molly Ball confirms this strategy in her infamous TIME Magazine article.

...snip...

Trump won bellwether Ohio, which no winning president has failed to carry in that state's history, by a more considerable margin than he did in 2016. Pennsylvania was trending the same on Election Night until they mysteriously stopped counting votes late in the evening. Moreover, Philadelphia blocked access to Republican poll-watchers on Election Day — despite a U.S. Supreme Court order — to investigate the irregularity. Similar fraudulent actions occurred in Maricopa County, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Detroit, and Milwaukee.

While Navarro finds enough votes tipped from Trump to Biden through good old fashioned methods, Mike Lindell has been on the trail of cyber-fraud, finding numberous instances of foreign interference in our election by countries such as China.Again, these alone are enough to have swayed the election from Trump to Biden. Together, they offer strong evidence of a stolen election. Lukens thinks that eventually, the truth will come out:

Arizona is nearing the completion of a full forensic audit, and lawmakers from other states are traveling there to see how it is done. The issue is reaching critical mass. Election integrity is finally getting the attention it deserves, and the truth of the 2020 election is going to come out.

Even now, the DOJ under Merrick Garland is gearing up to challenge the states' voter integrity laws. With the Supreme Court being seriously compromised, it is anyone's guess who will win.

The Chinese Communists' War Against the United States

Thomas Lifson has a post at the American Thinker entitled Playing Sherlock Holmes on COVID that is...let's say...interesting. Citing an article by Jennifer Van Laar he then makes a "Sherlock Holmes" style analysis of the article noting that it is a near certainty that COVID was released on purpose by the Chinese Military, at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party. From Van Laar's article:

Pause for a moment and consider this. Our government now has additional evidence that a virus that killed 600,000 Americans, sickened millions more, nearly destroyed our economy, and inflicted untold collateral damage, was a bioweapon created by the Chinese military and deliberately released.

I say “additional” evidence because the FBI has had some of this evidence for more than a year and the person who brought it forward has only been subjected to a thorough smear campaign for her efforts – which is highly relevant when attempting to understand the newest defector’s actions.

'Twas a time when this would have been called what it is: an act of war. But I am not sure we could win a war with the Chinese. Certainly our military leaders seem doubtful. And so it will be swept under the rug. How humiliating. You get the government you voted for. Is this what you thought you were getting?

Reason and its abuse

 Yesterday's post was on reality versus subjectivism.  Ayn Rand was an atheist, who elevated "reason" to a religious level.  But of course, reason can be abused. In today's post, featuring Anthony J. DeBlasi's article at the american Thinker entitled The Age of Reason and the Abuse of Reason, explores the abuse of reason that leads to today's errors. The idea that God intends us to use our powers of reason comes from the belief, purely by faith I might add, that God himself is reasonable. The God of reason in turn created a world that acts predictably. This belief requires faith, but when faith itself is abandoned, then tyrants and dictators, sociopaths and psychopaths can justify pretty much anything, and they have.  

God is described by DeBlasi as the Absolute. By this, he means that God is Truth with a capital 'T.' God is reality. The notion that, for instance, one can change one's gender simply by declaring it so is not reality. It is akin to witches casting spells. One can not change reality by casting a spell. It is what it is. Or, as God declares to Moses from the burning bush, "I Am That I Am." The name of the God of Creation is a statement, I Am. The great Absolute, Reality.  Today's "Progressives" have attacked reality in hopes of so demoralizing the people that they can take power and control away from the legitimate holders of it. 

Entering a college classroom in 1950, I noticed some pre-class graffiti on the chalkboard that read: “Damn the Absolute!” This cry of a soul lashing out at evil in the world struck a sympathetic chord. Alas, it also struck a false note. For how do you turn against that from which you are formed, that is larger than every self and points to the Truth that has confounded scores of souls before and since Pilate came face to face with it? How, indeed, does one separate self from the generative power of creation without condemning that self to a private limbo?

(Whoever may wonder why I bring up something out of the “dead-and-done” past, it’s because it plagues a great many in the present.)

...snip...

A mindset that disdains the real world, that can’t stand a world where justice begins with accepting human nature as is, that is, flawed, is plainly the wrong mindset for any human progress. Such is the mindset that must take down “the Absolute.” Professing an attachment to reason, those who possess a contempt for the very nature of things commonly think, speak, and act unreasonably toward the actual world. Those who remain unaffected by this disorder have, in some productive or creative way, accepted the truth that since “I did not invent me” there is no call for such a bungling creature as the human being to “reinvent me and the world.” This intimation of a Creator and acknowledgment of a transcendent Absolute is at the root of sane and fruitful human progress.

In the second decade of the 21st Century A.D., we can see that “canceling” God by “enlightenment,” however “reasoned,” was a very bad idea. It has helped trash everything held most dear to most people, generation after generation, including human life itself. No one in his or her right mind will ever accept a world that violates the laws of nature, the laws or God, and the fundamental right of people to be free and fairly treated − laws that are currently rejected by progressives infected with Marxist ideology and proud of their “wokeness” – in truth, unawake to the world around them.

I dare say that devotees of the Marxist Left despise the Christian religion because its prescription for the major ills of the world is not the reform of the world but the reform of ourselves. By dismissing “the Absolute” or, as Christians might put it, turning away from God in hope of making the world a better place to live in, they set themselves on a course toward inevitable failure.

My guitar instructor makes a great point, that in order to break the rules, you must first understand them. He is referring to jazz, which often breaks the rules of harmony to create other forms of harmony.  But it is just as true of any discipline.  One must understand in the deepest sense, the rules before one can bend them. I say bend, because one can not break the rules of Reality.  Reality may bend somewhat, but it will not break.  Trying to break it is a fools errand, and those making the attempt are the fools.

Reality vs. Subjectivism

 I have found "Objectivism" by Ayn Rand to be a cold, selfish philosophy.  And it is.  But that was because I was looking at it as a personal philosophy.  But I now realize that she was expounding not a personal philosophy but a philosophy of government.  As such, it is a profoundly libertarian philosophy.  And as a philosophy of how to run a government, it very wisely creates a bright line between the public things and the private things.  As Warren Beatty writes in In defense (against lefists) of an objective view of reality:

A student once asked Barbara Branden: "What will happen to the poor in an Objectivist society?" Her response was, "If you want to help them, you will not be stopped."

Why did I cite that? Because it is a perfect example of a response that refuses to accept the left's premise, its view of reality, as the basis of discussion. Only individuals have the right to decide when or whether they wish to help others. Society, as an organized political system, has no right of decision.

And while Rand was an atheist, the point here is essentially Christian, and moral. A citizen is free to use his own resources to help an another. But he is not free to use other peoples money to help a third party, no matter his motives. And while not specifically in the Constitution, we know from James Madison that redistributive welfare was not what was meant by the "General Welfare" clause:

The words of the Founders make it clear that, by “welfare,” they meant the second definition, i.e., “applied to states.” According to Article III of the Articles of Confederation, “The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.” Note the similarities between the words used in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and Article III of the Articles of Confederation. In fact, in a January 21, 1792 letter to Edmund Pendleton, James Madison, considered the father of the Constitution, noted that the general welfare clause in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution was copied from Article III of the Articles of Confederation. In that same letter, Madison wrote, “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.”

The enumerated powers of Congress are listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. Note that nothing resembling Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, farm subsidies, No Child Left Behind, or Obamacare can be found amongst those powers. There is also nothing in there about the federal government spending money on roads (with the exclusion of “post roads”) and bridges. In fact, the Constitutional Convention rejected an explicit attempt to authorize spending by the federal government for internal improvements. As president, Madison vetoed a bill that authorized funding “for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses

Please go read all of Beatty's article. Fans of Ayn Rand will especially enjoy the article. While the Founders clearly were not Objectivists, as a way to understand the Constitution, Objectivism seems a good start.

The True Meaning Of The Second Amendment

So, some of you may think I read an advance copy of Kurt Schlichter's piece yesterday when I wrote:

Ultimately, it must be realized that Heller was a step on the road back to achieving the fullest meaning of the Second Amendment. If we truly understand the Second Amendment, civilians would be allowed to own and posses, including training with, the personal defensive armaments carried by our soldiers at the time.

But, no, I did not read an advanced copy, and Mr. Schlichter and we do not know each other. But, I really like where he is coming from in the article entitled Don't Ban Assault Weapons-Make Them Mandatory!  Schlichter writes:

I was gravely disappointed with Judge Robert Benitez’s California federal court ruling that the Golden State’s ban on “assault weapons” like AR-15s is unconstitutional. It manifestly is unconstitutional, but the judge’s ruling does not go far enough. He should have found that our Constitution requires every healthy, law-abiding adult citizen to have a real assault rifle like an M16 – or, because diversity is important, an M4 – to defend his community and his country from all enemies both foreign and domestic.

That’s my modest proposal du jour – make our peaceful and secure society’s free riders carry their own rucks for once. We need to stop outsourcing the dirty and dangerous work of protecting society to the LEOs and soldiers who make up maybe 5 percent of the population. The other 95 percent need to get with it. It is people with guns who built and maintain a society so peaceful and prosperous that ridiculous twits can babble about “privilege” and engage in similarly frivolous nonsense without a care in the world. You can’t in most places – you’re either too busy trying not to starve, or the local tough guy would squash you like a bug for running your fool mouth. Somebody has to defend the freedom of idiots to explore the outer limits of their own idiocy, and for too long only a small percentage of citizens have picked up a rifle to do it.

As usual, Schlichter makes me feel a little too timid, but I agree with him 100%. This has already been done, by the way. Switzerland had a very similar system, in which every young man entered the army, was trained, then took his rifle home with him. The reason? So at a moments notice he could be called out to defend his country. The intent of the Second Amendment is so that each of us would be minute men, capable of being called up at a moments notice to defend out community and our country.

But there are other reasons for a return to the true meaning of the Second Amendment, which do not have to do directly with the common defense.  Rather, it has to do with our seriousness of purpose.  I fear we as a nation have become frivolous.  How else to explain President * and his incredibly light weight of a vice president?  How to explain Congressional leaders, who seem to be working very hard to destroy this country?  How to explain people like Eric Swalwell, or Adam Schiff, and there are others, even being elected?  Or that our universities no longer train young people to have the knowledge and skills necessary to be capable citizens, instead indoctrinating them in "studies" and "activism."

There are other salubrious effects of requiring every citizen to take personal responsibility for the protection of his family, his community, his state, and his Constitution. When every citizen owns a weapon, with the expectation that they will join together with other citizens in times of strife and chaos, that focuses their minds wonderfully. They are engaged, and cognizant that American citizenship is not a spectator sport. Because it shouldn’t be.

Outsourcing the tough stuff has made us weak and timid. Adults blubber that mean tweets have them literally shaking. Grown men wear masks while jogging. Grown women read Fifty Shades of Grey on purpose.

This unbefitting a great people, a warrior people.

We must demand of ourselves rigor and risk. We must demand that everyone step up. We must stop being a nation of sheep and one of, well, mostly not sheep. There will still be some sheep, but they should be shamed and scorned. Possessing your automatic weapon would be both a privilege and an obligation. We can exclude people who are physically, mentally, or emotionally unable to do it. We can bar felons. We can have conscientious objectors too, if they actually have a real religious objection as opposed to just not wanting to do their fair share. They can be medics and serve as citizens with honor. But otherwise, do your duty, fellow American.

The Founders had just fought the superpower of their day, so being serious, rigorous, and taking the biggest risks of all was recent memory. We haven't faced such a threat in 76 years, but a serious people would realize that such threats are always a possibility. An ancient Roman adage was that "If you want peace, prepare for war." It was true then, and it is true today. And the best way to prepare for war is to have every man, and woman for that matter, be armed.  But it is also true, as Heinlein said, that an armed society is a polite society.  And we could use a little politeness, couldn't we?

Grass Roots North Carolina Announces Passage of Church Carry Bill. Heads to Governors Desk

 Grass Roots North Carolina announced that the Church Carry bill, SB 43, passed both chambers of the legislature, and is heading to Governor Roy Cooper's desk.  The press release can be found here. Governor Cooper is expected to veto it.

Carry in churches is legal in North Carolina except if the church has a school on its property. In that case, the property is classified as "educational" which under the law prevents the carrying of guns, even if the school is not in session. This bill would correct that error in the law.

Heller was not the definitive Second Amendment ruling.

 Today, again at The Federalist Mark Overstreet has a very good article entitled Ruling Against California's 'Assault Weapon' Ban Offers Supreme Court A Chance To Fix Heller, that describes the state of play in the continuing fight to preserve the Second Amendment.

California will appeal Judge Benitez’s decision to the activist Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has often issued adverse Second Amendment rulings, and might be expected to do so in this instance. Already, however, an earlier decision overturning the gun ban, by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, in Rupp v. Becerra, is pending at the Ninth Circuit. Yet another decision from Judge Benitez, Duncan v. Becerra, overturning California’s ban on standard-capacity ammunition magazines common to AR-15s, comparable rifles, and countless semi-automatic pistols, has been upheld by a three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit and is pending en banc review.

Of course, all of these cases could end up being appealed to the Supreme Court, but the court has already refused to take several cases challenging “assault weapon” bans in other states. Assuming the court took one or more of the California cases, however, it would have the opportunity to correct errors it made in Heller, which otherwise could be the basis for prohibiting defensive arms of the future.

...snip...

On the other hand, Heller mischaracterized the Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Miller (1939), to say that the right to arms is limited to arms that are already “in common use,” a notion that Justice Stephen Breyer correctly ridiculed in his dissent.

It is true that U.S. v. Miller observed that “when called for service [militia members] were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.” But far more importantly, it recognized that the right to arms includes arms that “have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia,” such as those that are “part of the ordinary military equipment” and any others the use of which “could contribute to the common defense.”

In support of that, the court cited the decision of the Tennessee Supreme Court in Aymette v. State (1840), that the right includes arms “such as are usually employed in civilized warfare, and that constitute the ordinary military equipment. If the citizens have these arms in their hands, they are prepared in the best possible manner to repel any encroachments upon their rights by those in authority.”

But, of course, the real question is why the Supreme Court adopted the "in common use" test? Because, the the idea that only those weapons in common use are protected under the Second Amendment, then this ruling could be used as a way to prevent improvements to arms. Imagine that Heller had been in place say when Colt invented the revolver. Might we still be using single shot muzzle loading pistols?  For that matter, would we still be using muskets?

You need to read all of Overstreet's article.  Ultimately, it must be realized that Heller was a step on the road back to achieving the fullest meaning of the Second Amendment. If we truly understand the Second Amendment, civilians would be allowed to own and posses, including training with, the personal defensive armaments carried by our soldiers at the time.  Too many people view Heller as THE definitive ruling.  It is not.

Good news for California gun owners

 Good news for gun owners.  A Federal judge has struck down California's so called "assault weapon ban." Margot Cleveland at the The Federalist has the story entitled Don't Believe Leftist Lies About Federal Judge's End to California's Gun Ban. But the good news, as Cleveland points out, is that this Judge has demolished the State's arguments. If, as is likely, this gets to the Supreme Court, much of the work will already be done.

Go read the whole article. It is long, and it is detailed, so pick a time when you can study it for half an hour or so.

Western Civilization Deserves To Be Preserved

 While the conservative media is in a tizzy over the fact that (surprise!) Fauci lied, I thought it might be interesting to go a different direction.  Today, at Townhall.com Rob Jenkins has a piece entitled No, Western Civilization Is Not About 'White Supremacy'. The thesis of his piece is that, contrary to what you hear practically everywhere, Western Civilization is about the melding of the best of a other civilizations. But it is not cultural appropriation, it is rather cultural appreciation. After all, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

Western civilization is not specifically Christian, but it is heavily influenced by Christianity and Christian thought, and could not exist without it. Like everything else man does, there are plenty of acts throughout the history of Western civilization that are not pretty. And we acknowledge these things. Interesting that no other civilization acknowledges its own wrongdoing. Stop and think about it. Do the Muslims, the Chinese?  What does this say about these other cultures with which people wish to replace Western civilization?

Before we go on, perhaps we should define “Western culture.” It is essentially the marriage of Judeo-Christian morality with classical (that is, Greek and Roman) intellectualism. It privileges reason over emotion and the individual over the state. Its central tenet is that, through their own efforts, a person can rise above their circumstances.

Western culture is not now nor has it ever been perfect. But it has given us a wealth of great ideas: that all men (and women) are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with natural rights, that we can learn much (if not everything) about our world through careful observation and experimentation, and that we must love our neighbor as ourselves.

It has produced the technological advances that have made modern life so relatively carefree and comfortable--such that, in the West, our “poor” now live better (and longer) than the royalty of years past. Western culture has also given us much beauty, in the form of art, music literature, and architecture, as well as an appreciation for the even greater beauties of nature. For those reasons, Western culture represents the best that humanity has yet produced.

Western culture and the civilization that arose because of it has been under attack for decades. In the 1960s, students, egged on by their professors chanted things like "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go." But it was fairly clear to all that this was youthful rebellion for most. Time, family, and earning a pay check would cure most of them. But the professors didn't seem to grow out of this childish phase. For them, it was ego. After all, shouldn't they, the super educated ones, be the rulers of society? Were they not the inheritors of Plato? Were they not his 'philosopher kings'?  But people saw through that ploy too.

But give them props for the "never say die" attitude. It must be the messaging.

Still, we are told that Western culture is racist because Western nations once practiced slavery. Yes, they did. But what that indictment ignores is that virtually every culture in the history of the world practiced slavery, including in Africa and North America long before Europeans showed up. For most of recorded human history, slavery was the status quo. One group of people conquered another, and those that weren’t killed were captured and enslaved.

It was Western culture, in Europe and North America, that eventually put an end to that abominable practice (although it still exists in some parts of the world). And the reason the West was motivated to do so was that slavery is ultimately incompatible with our core belief in the worth of the individual. It took us a few hundred years to get to that point, true, and many thousands perished in the effort. But we did finally get there—precisely because of our cultural heritage, not in spite of it.

Furthermore, contrary to the popular narrative, Western culture has never been tied exclusively to “whiteness.” Its roots can be traced back to North Africa and the great library at Alexandria, as well as to the Middle East and the Mediterranean. It has also absorbed and incorporated, over the centuries, the best that other cultures have to offer, as is readily apparent in today’s music, literature, and fashion.

Once upon a time, through the miracle of the printing press (and it is a miracle) a middle class American family could order and receive a collection of "Great Books" that spanned from Plato and Aristotle to Marx and Engles. Yes, I read the Communist Manifesto from these Great Books. Not all the ideas presented here were necessarily "good," but it was up to each individual to read, think, criticize, understand, and eventually form his or her own set of ideas. Shakespeare, Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, but also Miles Davis, Thomas Sowell, Tennyson, but also Langston Hughes and Richard Wright are all part of Western civilization.  And there's more, so much more: great art, powerful science and mathematics.

Science specifically arose in Western culture and no where else.  True science is based on the idea that at any moment, what you think you know may be falsified.  It is never settled, and everything is always just a theory; something penciled in that we treat as fact for now, but that may be erased later.  The theory of gravity has not been falsified yet, but if it can be, our understanding of the universe would be completely upended.  That is REAL science.  So saying that, for instance, Climate science is settled says to me that there is precious little science involved.

Western civilization is made up of bits and pieces brought here from elsewhere, like souvenirs brought home from a trip abroad, but then nurtured, expanded upon, until something else emerges. That bulwark of ideas and principles, literature, music and art, so hard won, deserves to be preserved.

I have a particular fondness for Renaissance music. But the history of the Renaissance era is that it was a period of rediscovery of things lost. Perspective in art, for instance. The writings of the Greek and Roman philosophers, which had been preserved by the Arabs. The discovery of the number zero, which also came from the Arabs, as well as al gebra or algebra. The Chinese, under Mao, destroyed much of their culture, and one hopes they will one day rediscover it, preserved by Western Civilization. It is a favor perhaps paid forward.

The Fauci Flu?

 Following on yesterday's post, which as the blog goes, is below, Brian Joondeph, MD, asks Should Covid now be called the 'Fauci Flu'? As Joondeph points out, we have traditionally named virus diseases for their point of origin. It is only now that it is from China that we can not say where it is from, because racism or something. As it turns out, there's a reason for that, and the nexus seems to be Dr. Fauci.

You need to read the whole article. But the question begging to be asked is why Fauci lied about everything. He didn't believe anything he advocated for the public. Small businesses were destroyed. Schools were closed. An election was stolen. We may never return to normal. And as the Lab escape theory gains evidence and credibility, it is Fauci who knew the origin from the start. Who, indeed, does Fauci serve? It certainly is not the people paying him, the American taxpayer.

Fauci says you should not be wearing a mask

The Epoch Times in a report titled Fauci in 2020: Masks From Drug Stores 'Not Really Effect' Against CCP Virus has revealed that Anthony Fauci himself told a woman in an email that:

“The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the woman in an email dated Feb. 5, 2020.

COVID-19 is a disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Fauci also told the woman, Sylvia Burwell, that masks “are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infections.”

“I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a ve[r]y low risk location. Your instincts are correct, money is best spent on medical countermeasures such as diagnostics and vaccines,” he added.

And the reason Fauci gave is the same one I gave, that the virus is so small that they just pass through the pores in the mask. We also now realize that if you don't have the symptoms of Covid, you are not passing the virus. So, if you are healthy, you should not wear a mask. It just doesn't work to protect you.