The Liberty Sphere: Perspective on the Growing Outrage in America

The Liberty Sphere: Perspective on the Growing Outrage in America

The Welshman has a great piece summarizing what radio talk show hosts are hearing from their listeners. It would behoove the politicians in Washington to hear this for themselves, and decide on their own that enough is enough.

I know I have said this before, but the country I was born in no longer exists. In the last 5 months, it has disappeared so fast down the rabbit hole that I have wondered if changing the name might be in order, out of respect for what it was, rather as Germany became the Third Reich, or Russia became the USSR. This must stop, somehow, and be reversed wherever possible.

As Paul Valone's great piece "The Gun Debate Explained for Liberals" (which can be found by clicking the Gun Rights Examiners on the sidebar of this blog) says:

Unfortunately, because you are liberal, and because liberalism seems to manifest itself as a pathological obsession to run my life, I can’t reason with you. Therefore, my only choice is to beat you. (Stop cowering: I mean metaphorically, not literally.)

My sole recourse is to marginalize you and reclaim my culture, and that is what I have set about doing. If not me, then my children. If not them, their children. We will make the Thirty Years’ War look like a trifle.

There. We’ve cleared the air. Don’t we all feel just a little
better?

Armed and Safe: When gun bans are not enough--the war on . . . pocket knives?

Armed and Safe: When gun bans are not enough--the war on . . . pocket knives?

Kurt has a fascinating article on, of all things, folding knives. The Citizen's Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has an alert citing the Customs and Border Patrol's efforts to ban even more folding knives.

I keep a pocket knife in my pocket every hour I am awake. It's an Old Timer built in the three bladed configuration of the old stockman's knives. It's a tool I find a use for nearly every day, and I have carried a pocket knife every day since my Dad gave me my first at the age of 7 years old. I also carry a modern folding knife that can be opened one handed. It too is very useful. There are occasions when you have one hand tied up holding something, and realize a need to cut (usually a string or something.) Pulling out the modern folder, deploying the blade, and cutting is another useful item I do not want to give up because some bureaucrat in Washington, who doesn't know me or my needs, decides I don't "need" that kind of knife.

A little history: pocket knives are often also called pen knives. The reason is that every gentleman carried one in order to sharpen and true up the writing tip of a quill pen. Feather quills were used before steel quills were invented in the middle of the 19th century. It is hard to imagine Thomas Jefferson penning the Declaration of Independence without his feather quill pen and ink pot. Not as widely recognized is that he would also have had a pen knife to keep his quill sharp.

Quote of the Day

From Burt Prelutsky's article today at Townhall.com:

However, I also believe that after taking a good look at America today, they’d shake their heads and wonder how, after such a glorious beginning, we’d wound up in this pitiful condition. How did we go from George Washington to Barack Obama in, historically speaking, the blink of an eye; from the man who refused to be king to the man who would be czar?

Go read the whole thing. Burt is by turns sarcastic, sardonic, and has a dry humor that I enjoy reading.

A Time to be Born, A Time to Die

I have had reason, and time lately, to contemplate the death penalty and abortion, and the rightness and wrongness of each of these. The first incident was the killing of abortion doctor George Tiller by Scott Roeder. Mike Vanderboegh has some of the pieces of the story, which indicate that Roeder probably didn't give a damn about abortions. Then there was the killings at the National Holocaust Museum by white supremacist James Von Brunn. Jonah Goldberg has an article up on Von Brunn and what the Left's reaction to him means over at Townhall.com. Once again we have a whack job trying to carry out his fantasies of racial war and general mayhem. I was on the road at the time, visiting family in Ohio, so had only the poor reportage of the MSM to rely on. Never the less, it got me to thinking about abortion, on the one hand, and murder and the death penalty on the other. Both an opposition to abortion, and being in favor of the death penalty are life affirming positions. I know this will come as a shock to those who have not dwelled deeply on the subject, so I will try to distill my thoughts below.

In the Bible, in the Book of the Exodus, God dictates to Moses the 10 Commandments, by which covenant God agreed to bless the people of Israel if they agreed to follow them. One of those commandments was "You shall not murder." Now, murder is the intentional taking of an innocent human life. Note that it does not say "you shall not kill," the word is "murder." God had earlier provided for the killing of animals for food (sorry PITA.) God also recognized the killing of someone if that person was trying to kill you or another innocent party in self defense (sorry gun grabbers.) At the same time, He takes a dim view of revenge.

So, in general, abortion is murder. The claim that the fetus is not a person is pure sophistry. In the normal course of events, the fetus of a human mother will eventually emerge as a human baby. There is a zero chance it will emerge as some other creature. Since the definition of murder is the taking of an innocent human life, abortion is therefore murder (usually. The cases where there may be some mitigating circumstance include the rare cases of rape and incest and the rarer chance that carrying the child to term will result in the death of the mother.) The child, for that is what it is, has no choice in the matter, has done nothing wrong in the eyes of the law, and can not defend himself. The fact that he can not even object can not be used against him, since that would allow the killing of any child up to the age of 3 years or so. We instinctively recognize with horror how wrong such thing would be, and recoil from it. But we have a problem. The child is under attack from the very person who should be defending him, namely his mother. The law, if it was operating justly, would step in and defend the child when no one else would.

Feminist groups are always claiming women have to have choice about their reproductive systems, and it is wrong to interpose the law between a mother and her womb. But the mother had a choice, in most cases. She simply made the wrong one. Her choice to have sex with a male partner led directly to her current pregnancy, and in due time will result in a child being born. (The male partner is equally guilty if he pressured her into having sex when she might not have desired it.) Now, there are cases of both rape and incest where the mother had no choice. I am not speaking about such cases here, and to be fair, a small percentage of abortions are actually due to rape or incest. What I am referring to is the use of abortion to end a pregnancy because the mother realizes too late that she doesn't want to have a child at this time. That, as I said earlier, is murder, and the law should deal with such at least as seriously as if an adult had been murdered. I recognize that George Tiller was a willing accomplice, but the primary culprit is the mother of the child. Unfortunately, had Tiller not been willing to perform these abortions, many of the women who sought him out would have found another way. As Christians, we must be merciful and kind to women who find themselves in these predicaments to avoid having them commit the far worse sin of murder.

Now, what should happen to Scott Roeder and to James Von Brunn if convicted? Interestingly, I favor the death penalty for murder. Murder always involves a choice. The killer makes a calculation that whatever he wants is more important to him than the life he takes. It is a cold and evil calculation, that treats humans as objects there to satisfy his desires, with no consideration of the other. When the killer makes that choice, he knows what the penalty is, yet makes the choice anyway. Society must have the death penalty if it wants to maintain the value of human life. If the penalty is say, 5 years, then the criminal can make the calculation that the killing may be worth what he will pay. A human life for 5 years. In setting such a penalty, society has declared that a human life is worth 5 years time if someone is willing to pay it. I don't know about you, but to me justice demands nothing less than a life for a life. The penalty is not a deterrent, nor is it vengeance, though individuals affected may see it that way. No, the purpose of the death penalty to protect civil society by saying that murder is the ultimate crime, because it has the ultimate penalty.

Just as abortion, no matter how gussied up with fancy languages and sophisticated reasoning is still just murder, so murder should be punished with the ultimate penalty. To do less is to cheapen life, and to spit upon God's great gift to us.

Losing private property

Francis Poretto of Eternity Road has an excellent post up about the need to return to the concept of "private property." To quote Poretto:

Today, there's essentially no right of private property left. Consider: activist busybodies can forbid you to fill in a wet trench on your privately owned land. They can forbid you to cut down your own tree. They can demand that the flora on your land be of certain kinds and in certain percentages. They can forbid you to add a wing to your home, or rent out an unused bedroom, or operate a one-person business therein. And of course, given the Kelo decision, politicians can relieve you of all rights to your home at their sole say-so, not for any defensible "public use" but merely because they want someone else to have it.

Environmental law in particular, is rife with the notion that the government can do pretty much anything, based on the flimsiest of environmental notions, and the private property "owner" has to comply. Usually, this involves the "owner" losing control of some aspect of his formerly private property, while having to bear often onerous costs for the "benefit" of the public at large. I await the community I live in insisting that I treat the yard to rid it of the "wild flowers" that grow in my lawn. At that point I will raise the specter of putting all these pounds of toxic chemicals into the storm water system and let the environmentalist fight it out with the yard proud. But how did we come to this? Francis Poretto again:

The rights of private property have been under assault for as long as the concept has existed, but the first serious blow against them in America arrived with the notion of a "public accommodation."

In the early Sixties, the majority of federal legislators were eager to do something about vestigial race-based discrimination by retail businesses. It was the politically hot topic of the day, second only to the campaign against "separate but equal" in public schools. But given the First Amendment's recognition of freedom of association and the Fifth Amendment's concession of private property rights, a rationale was required from which to argue that a retail business wasn't fully protected by those rights.

The rationale was that, since a retail business implicitly solicits the trade of the general public, it straddles the boundary between private property and a public facility: it must be required to "accommodate" anyone who walks through its door. Accordingly, legislation that compels such accommodation was deemed Constitutionally licit, even though no power granted Congress by Article I, Section 8 would appear to cover the undertaking. And so we got the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and all that's followed from it as the notion of a "public accommodation" has been expanded to cover ever more organizations, institutions, and facilities.

You see, formerly a tavern owner, for instance, had the right to refuse service to anyone. He could allow or disallow pretty much any (legal) behavior. Tavern owners often still claim that right, but it is questionable how enforceable that claim may be if a person of the correct minority status pushes it. In any case, with the concept of "public accommodation" we now find that the pettiest of behaviors are decided not by the tavern owner, but by laws. Thus, for instance, no smoking laws, even in "private" offices.

Conservatives appalled by the luxuriance and infinite scope of law in our time must attack the problem at its root: the destruction of the rights of private property.

But how to do it? This is an illustration, yet again, that whenever lawmakers try to take a shortcut to doing something, even something good, like ending discrimination, there are unintended consequences. Unfortunately, according to the race hustlers, they didn't solve the problem of discrimination either. How typical.

California: Initiative Bad, Republicanism Good

NOW they tell us. It seems that the initiative process, famously used by Californians to amend the laws of that State is under seige. According to an article on Townhall.com by Meredith Turney, the California legislature is contemplating laws to make the initiative process more difficult, or too expensive for the average citizen of that State.

California’s initiative process is officially passé, at least according to the media and those who have recently lost critical battles at the ballot box. Since last week’s California Supreme Court ruling upholding the people’s ability to amend the state’s constitution via the initiative process, there has been a steady drumbeat—which will certainly increase in its intensity—that the initiative process makes it “too easy” to amend such an important governing document.

The initiative process was born of the "Progressive" "good government" movement during the late 19th Century. It introduced direct democracy into a republican representative governing process. It was, therefore, derided by conservatives at the time for this very flaw. Interesting that now that the tables are turned, and it is the radicals in power, and the conservatives have learned to use the intiative process, that suddenly direct democracy doesn't look like such a keen idea. What utter hypocracy.

If you want to understand Statist principles, just look at what gives them an advantage. As soon as that stops working, they will abandon their "long held principles" and pick up another. 1984, here we come.

Switching topics, there will be light blogging during the next week, as I will be out of town. But I ask that my readers continue to check in, read the blogs in the sidebar, and click on Digg, when it will allow you to.

Judge Dredd and the "Only Ones"

While reading the Atlanta Gun Rights Examiner article here, I came across this post in the Georgia Carry website which offers some more explanation of what has happened in this case. Of special interest is the comment by "Black Prince":

I am a former Navy Boatswains Mate. I served on shore patrol duty many times while in the Navy. I was PROUD to wear that uniform and salute the ensign every time I came aboard. I am also a former deputy sheriff. There was no one in this country more supportive of law enforcement than I once was, BUT it is cases like this one that has caused me to change my mind about law enforcement over the last 20 or so years. I have thought about how that has happened.

It started with the FBI and their attack on the Branch Dividians at Waco. One man in that compound was charged with a firearms misdemeanor crime. David Coresh said that if the sheriff had come out and asked him to come in to discuss it that he would have cooperated. And even if he had been found guilty of the crime, all he would have faced was a fine. But 86 men, women , and children were burned alive because of the way it was handled. It was the begining of my disenchantment with law enforcement today. There is NO WAY the crime Coresh was charged with merited that kind of response. It was waaaaay out of porportion to the crime. It was excessive and it was CRIMINAL and it was directly approved by the attorney general of the United States, our chief law enforcement official, Janet Reno.

Then there was Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge. He was minulipulated into committing a crime of cutting the barrel off a shotgun so the feds could blackmail him into becoming an informant on a group they had under survailance. When Weaver refused, they killed his wife, who had not been charged with any crime, as she was standing in the door of her home unarmed with her infant daughter in her arms. She was shot right between the eyes by an FBI sniper. Her 15 year old son was then shot in the back and murdered and he too, had not been charged with any crime. They also killed the family dog , and as far as anyone can determine, it had not committed any crime either.

Randy Weaver later won a milti million dollar award against the FBI for violating his rights and all charges against him were dropped. If a foreign nation had done that against an American citizen, the country would have wanted to declare war on them, but when our own government does it, we just pay off the victims and give the sniper a raise and promote him. That CRIMINAL raid was also approved by the chief law enforcement official in America, Janet Reno. It was waaaaay out of porportion to what should have been done. It was excessive,it was illegal, and it was CRIMINAL.

The federal government has been pouring money into police and sheriff departments all across the country since those incidents because they had violated the possee comatitas law. Look how many times you now see police and sheriff’s dept. people dressed in black with military weapons. They all think they are Rambo and they all act like that. That kind of training makes people AGGRESSIVE because their training teaches them to be AGGRESSIVE. They are training and equiping local police to act like the military and the local law enforcement people are doing exactly that. They have forgotten they are there to serve the public and not the other way around. Now we are GUILTY until they decide that we are not.

They have become the enemy. I don’t trust them any more and I dispise them for what they have become. They are DANGEROUS! I do not cooperate with them at all any more on anything and I am NOT GOING TO COOPERATE with them. I am learning to shoot for places that are not protected by a vest. It is a shame that our nation has come to this state, but it has.

A person’s moral compass can be determined by how he references free men the right to defend themselves. It can be determined by how they value life. The Second Amendment is so obvious to me that it is insane that there is any argument against it. That there is an argument in America from a whole gaggle of politicians, or police, or sheriff deputies that they will tell me where, when, how, and if I can defend myself and my family is preposterous. It is unacceptable and I will not accept it. As a free man living in America, the Second Amendment is my weapons permit. PERIOD!

Back when I was a deputy, we were required to know and follow the law, the Constitution, and to have some common sense when dealing with the public. OBVIOUSLY, those are no longer qualifications for being a deputy.

I have thought privately that the police seem more militarized than they did in my youth. I have noted that even small towns now often have a "SWAT" team. What do they need a SWAT team for? I have read with alarm sites where police officers, thinking that they might not be read by the public, call themselves "warriors." Do they mean soldiers, or do they mean that they are somehow professional paladins, guns for hire. It seems quite often it is the latter. It seems in their minds, they have become Judge Dredd, dispensing instant "justice" according to their own internal standards. This is not right. As David Codrea's "Only Ones" files clearly demonstrate, the police must be as constrained by the law as any member of the public (who pays them, by the way.) We can not have a group running around above the law, acting like Samurai with guns. More to the point, the police can not have access to any weapon to which any member of the general public does not have access. That merely sets up a Samurai class, above the rest of us.

The commenter also points to a way out of this mess. The Fed is the one who has been equipping and training these terrible examples. Perhaps we need to cut of funding for this. A government starved for cash has to start cutting somewhere. Don't they always start with the troops?

When I was young, it was well known that the average police officer was unlikely to ever draw his weapon while on duty. Indeed, a detective's need for his weapon was so rare, that most felt carrying a 2 inch Colt or Smith and Wesson revolver was enough. Makes you wonder how we got on the wrong track.