The Stupid Party Miscalculates Again

Jonah Goldberg has an interesting article up at National Review Online entitled Romney's Authenticity Problem. The article makes the point that the "Establishment Republicans" have been pushing Romney as the only one who can beat Obama. But now, they are having second thoughts:

The most persuasive case for Romney has always been that if he’s the nominee, the election will be a referendum on Obama. But that calculation always assumed that rank-and-file Republicans will vote for their nominee in huge numbers no matter what. That may well still be the case, but it feels less guaranteed every day.

We've been trying to tell you for some time. Unless you cough up a true blue, honest to goodness Conservative, a lot of your conservative base is going to sit out the election.  The reasons why should be obvious if you think about them.  We know we embarrass you.  Our insistence on our Second Amendment rights, our professed belief in God and his great gift of grace, Jesus Christ, our sense of being rugged individualists, all seem to strike you as distasteful.  We must seem like a bunch of rubes, hicks, and hayseeds crashing your masquerade ball.  But ever since 1972, the conservatives have had only one place to go.  So we have accepted your abuse, hoping that someday you would see us as a valuable partner in setting the agenda of this great nation.  Yet here we are again, with a liberal, possibly progressive, masquerading as a conservative.

Anthony Martin, the Conservative Examiner explains some of our problems with Mr. Romney in a piece entitled Reality Check: Why Romney is the Likely Nominee. Mr. Martin:

But first it is important to understand Romney from a purely traditional conservative point of view. He is no real conservative in the traditional sense but a Republican from the old eastern liberal establishment cabal in the tradition of Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald Ford, and Henry Kissinger. This is in stark contrast to Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and modern conservatives such as Jim DeMint.

After explaining that choosing such candidates has usually cost the Republicans the White House, he goes on to point out that:

Conservatives have warned essentially since the last Presidential election that if they choose another nominee from the liberal establishment, it will spell disaster in the general election. But so far, Republicans have not heeded the warning. They are poised yet again to make a major mistake by choosing a candidate in the Rockefeller tradition.

So, why would "The Establishment" do that? I have heard theories that, for instance, what they really want is the Senate. But, even if the House stays Republican, and the Senate goes Republican, the chances of making any significant policy changes are next to nil if the Presidency remains in the hands of Barack Obama. There will be no repeal of ObamaCare as long as Obama is in the White House. If it is not repealed soon, it will never be repealed, and the United States will continue its leftward slide into third world irrelevance. So, again, why?

A conversation led by Neil Cavuto of the Fox Business Network the other evening provides the answer. Cavuto had 3 guests on his show to talk about Obama's decline and Romney's rise. Someone mentioned, perhaps Cavuto himself, that as Wall Street has had the opportunity to evaluate Obama from an investment/economic perspective, the financiers have dropped him like a hot potato. They are putting their money on Romney, according to Cavuto, who has significant contact with the movers and shakers among the Wall Street fat cats.

Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying (and I am paraphrasing here) that conservative ideas work every time they are tried. He also says that leftist ideas have failed in every country they have been tried. Don't you think it is time we tried a winning formula for a change?

Finally, More Mainstream People Recognize the Fascist Regime

For three years I have been saying that Obama is setting up a fascist system, and I have wondered if it might not turn into a fascist dictatorship. In fairness to those who have argued that Obama is transforming the nation into a European Socialist State, there were elements of that too.  But to tell the truth, whether it is Communist, Socialist, or Fascist is not really important.  All these systems lead to the same place; a place governed on a collective theory that is foreign to American soil. 

In all fairness, George Bush set some of the precedents that, in the hands of a man like Obama, became weapons used against ordinary Americans. I had forgotten that Naomi Wolff had tried to make the case that Bush was setting us up to live in a fascist dictatorship earlier.  However, I was reminded of it by an article in the American Thinker entitled Obama's Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps by Timothy Birdnow.  Particularly with the Patriot Act, Wolff had some reason to feel unease.  The provisions in that act, if turned on Americans, denied our Constitutionally protected rights.  Also, the TSA was a creation of the Bush administration, and it has only grown more thuggish since its establishment.

Birdnow only hits the highlights. If the full list of lawless infringements of the rights of Americans committed by this regime were cataloged, the article would have become a book. This regime, has engaged in crony capitalism, elimination of the rule of laws, and tearing up the Constitution to a degree never before seen. The property of Americans has been stolen from them to enrich "friends of Barack."  More comes to light every day. His "signing statement" for the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act indicate that Obama no longer sees a need to follow Congressional directives, even though he signs them. If Obama sees no reason to follow Congressional directives, it is a sure bet that the agencies of the Executive Branch, like the EPA, no longer see a need to follow them either.

Then there are the blatant lies, told right to your face, that both he and you know are lies. Most politicians will tell you what you want to hear, if they can convince themselves that such a spin serves some higher purpose. I don't believe that most politicians overtly and intentionally lie. They may spin the truth sometimes, but not intentionally lie. But this administration lies all the time. They lie to Congress about the deals they make, they lie to the people in speeches. Glenn Beck had a piece on GBTV the other day, with the author of the book How Do You Kill 11 Million People, Andy Andrews. The answer is you lie to them. If you lie often enough, and big enough, and with enough sincerity, you can get them to cooperate in their own murders.

The NDAA is one of the scariest Acts passed to date.  That it was supported by those supposedly on our side makes it even more of a betrayal.  True conservatives should know that there is no such thing as a "collective will" that can be expressed by one man.  True conservatives, those we used to call liberals before liberals became leftists, try to persuade, but in the end, huge swaths of life are not touched by government, not because they don't want to, but because to touch them means a loss of a governing majority, and a loss of legitimacy.  The Left, on the other hand, does believe in this "collective will."  They believe it so fervently, that they go to extraordinary lengths when the theory is shown to be false.  They create in their minds the notion of "false consciousness" that blind "the masses" who must be led by a "vanguard" to true consciousness of the collective will.  But they recognize too that some can not be "educated."  They have a solution for that, too.      

Jeff Knox Makes a Christmas Wish. Santa Gives Him Coal Instead

Jeff Knox has a good article over at World Net Daily entitled All I Wanted for Christmas: Fewer Stupid Gun Laws that points out the enormous annual costs of gun control. Hat tip to David Codrea of the War on Guns for pointing me to the article.

Knox firsts points out the personal costs of gun control:

In order to take advantage of the great deal from my friends in Prescott, I had to either drive up there or call and have the gun shipped to a dealer closer to my home in the Phoenix area. Driving up to Prescott takes over 2 hours each way and would burn close to $50 worth of gas. Having the gun shipped down to a local dealer would add a $22 shipping charge plus a $35 transfer fee from my local dealer. Either way, I would have to fill out paperwork and get approved through the NICS “instant” background check system.

My sister, who lives in Prescott, could have gone down to J&G and picked up the gun for me, except that’s illegal. If she were buying the gun for me as a gift, that would be OK, but if she were to buy it on my behalf or with the intention of selling it to me, that would be considered a “straw purchase” and she could face 5 years and $50,000 in penalties.

But that's not all. If you wish to carry your gun legally, you must also get a Concealed Handgun License. In some States, that can be as much as $100 dollars every five years, plus training requirements. Altogether, it can cost you quite a bit to exercise your right to keep and bear arms. Remember too that a lot of gun control laws grew out of the war on so-called "Saturday Night Specials," those cheap guns supposedly used by poor people to defend themselves against those who would prey on them. We may now have a higher quality class of firearms, but at what price?

But there is another message which could get lost in Mr. Knox's article:

There were some 16 million NICS checks conducted in 2011 at a direct cost of more than a billion dollars. That billion dollars comes out of your paycheck, and the value received for it is highly questionable. There has never been a single study indicating that the background check system has reduced violent crime. Still, a NICS check is required every time I buy a gun from a dealer. It doesn’t matter how many guns I already own or how many I have recently purchased. Each time I wish to add to my collection, I am placed under suspicion and investigated anew. Couldn’t those billions have been used to fund proven, effective crime-fighting programs or to keep serious criminals behind bars longer?

One of the principles under girding our legal system is that we are innocent until the State proves us guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. We often take that for granted, but there are many places where you are automatically guilty until you prove yourself innocent.  But our system is supposed to assume we are innocent. The background check turns that principle on its head. Now you are guilty until the State satisfies itself that there is no evidence of your guilt. Further, by imposing a background check before you purchase your gun, the State is creating a prior restraint. Imagine if I had to get permission from the State prior to publishing this blog. Do you think they would let me? Do you think most of the articles that are linked to in the blog would have been published. "Shall not be infringed" means that no prior restraint should be placed on the keeping and bearing of arms.

Of course, I can hear you now saying "but we don't want criminals to have guns! What's to keep the criminal from just going in and buying a gun from Walmart, if we didn't have this background check?" My answer is that criminals don't get their guns through legal means. They steal them, of purchase them through the black market. Criminals don't get a background check, only the law abiding individual submits to it. So, what is the real purpose? Who is inconvenienced by it?

The answer to these questions becomes obvious with a little thought.  By some counts, there are 20,000 gun laws on the books at the Federal, State, and local level.  Nobody can be aware of all of them, much less observe them all.  Because of background checks, concealed carry laws, and a stunning array of other laws that you might not know about until you break one, most people no longer carry a gun as a matter of routine.  That is, of course, the purpose of all those laws.   

The Perfect Murder

I had a conversation with our Pastor, in which he mentioned that he was personally against the death penalty.  He pointed out that the death penalty did not serve as a deterrent, therefore it should be dropped. I admit that I had not given a whole lot of thought to it, but I felt it should be available as a prosecutorial option, rarely used to be sure, but an option.  If we acknowledge that man has free will; that man is in fact a moral agent, then we have to allow the death penalty for the taking of a life.  The criminal who decides to kill another had a choice.  He was not forced to kill, a gun was not held to his head. And clearly, the law does not sanction killing other people. He could have avoided committing the crime.  I am aware of the studies that claim to show that the death penalty is not a deterrent to committing murder.  But if the same methods were used for other crimes, I doubt they would show that the penalty for robbery deters robberies either.  Thus we would have no penalties for any crime.  I don't know about you, gentle reader, but I am not ready to face the Hobbesian world that would result.

My thinking about the death penalty took a slightly different turn today when I read an article in the American Thinker entitled Crime Without Punishment by Lester Jackson. Jackson presents the practical side of eliminating the death penalty, and it is not pretty.

Out of thin air, a right has been officially and surreptitiously created exclusively for select previously convictedmurderers: the right to commit, cost-free, further violence, and even further murders. When judges, legislators, and governors make capital punishment impossible in willful defiance of great public support, they liberate those already serving life sentences to fearlessly perpetrate as many additional vicious crimes as they can because they face no greater penalty.

This sounds ominous, but aren't these guys already in prison? How can they commit more murders? Jackson tells us in gory detail:

A recent vivid illustration occurred when a lone Oregon elected officeholder joined elected officeholders from other states (e.g., New Mexico, New Jersey, Illinois, and potentially Connecticut) in defying the public. (Last July, the Supreme Court fell one vote short of saving a brutal murderer based on a never-enacted law proposed by a solitary legislator.) On November 22, Gov. John Kitzhaber declared a death penalty "moratorium" during his term in office, expressly barring Gary Haugen's scheduled December 6 execution for a barbarous slaughter while serving a life sentence. In 1981, Haugen raped Mary Archer and beat her to death with repeated blows from his fist, a hammer, and a baseball bat. In 2003, together with another inmate, Haugen murdered a third inmate, David Polin, by stabbing him 84 times and crushing his skull. After humbly seeking expert consultation with "mostly myself," Kitzhaber found all this insufficient to warrant execution.

Or this:

In 1981, while serving multiple life sentences for multiple murders, Lemuel Smith beat, strangled, bit off the nipples of, and murdered Donna Payant, a 31-year-old prison guard and mother of three, finally throwing her body into the garbage to be compacted. (This was not the first time he sank his teeth into his murder victim's nipples.) A 4-3 majority of the New York State Court of Appeals used this case to foist their unpopular moral values upon an unwilling public by declaring unconstitutional the state's death penalty law. Despite legal window dressing which the minority found specious, Smith himself left no doubt that, at bottom, the bare majority valued his life, but not the lives of the guard or Smith's previous torture-murder victims, to say nothing of possible future ones.

What is driving this seems to be yet another Leftist "do-gooder" idea that somehow we may be executing huge numbers of innocent people. Cases like the case of 57 year old Michael Morton who spent 25 years in prison, but was exonerated due to DNA evidence lend credibility to the argument. And one has to applaud the work of people such as the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence (NCCAI) who are looking into, and finding, people wrongly convicted of crimes and freeing them. At the same time, they should be going after overly zealous prosecutors who may have stepped over the line in their efforts to make a conviction. The defense should always be given more latitude than the prosecutor, and any exculpatory evidence should be turned over to the defense. Prosecutors should always be trying to find the truth, and not merely try to get convictions.

While the work of the NCCAI is important, what is the actual percentage of people convicted of a capital crime are actually innocent? Do our courts actually convict a large percentage of innocent people, while we know that they let many dangerous and violent people go free?

Frankly, I suspect it is part of the Leftists plan to create as much chaos and havoc in society as they can. Removing the death penalty, and at the same time advocating for a system that lets repeat offenders back out to commit more crimes undermines peoples confidence in the law.  A panicked public will not always make the best decisions, allowing a politician to come riding to the rescue and offer to "fix" it for them.    

A Potentially Productive Citizen Rots in a New York Jail

The New York Post has an article calling for a more common sense approach to New York's gun laws when tourists are involved. The article, entitled Common Sense on Guns makes a point that when so many states now have shall issue concealed carry laws, people who have no criminal intent (mens rea) are likely to show up carrying guns for self defense from time to time. That being the case, perhaps New Yorkers should stop panicking and throwing the book at them, as they appear to be doing to Tennessee medical school student Meredith Graves.  Graves visited the 9/11 memorial over the holidays, noticed the gun free zone sign at the entrance, and asked a security officer where she could check her gun.  Graves is a permit holder in Tennessee.  The security guard promptly called police who arrested her.

I feel sympathy for Ms. Graves, I really do.  New York City gun laws are irredeemably unjust, and as these fine criminal defense attorneys explain, they don't even obey Federal law that protects travelers merely transiting through their airports. New Yorkers seem to take their gun control very seriously, and ignorance of their laws does not let you off the hook.

Fortunately, there are ways to find out about the laws of any state you may be traveling through.  Your first stop should be Handgun Laws US. The keeping of this information is done by volunteers, but the information for my state, North Carolina, seems up to date. Looking at NYC, we see that New York City does not honor any other state permit, including New York State without a NYC endorsement. Then, there are the Attorney Generals of the various states. I have to admit that the New York State Attorney General's web site doesn't seem to mention guns anywhere, but that might just be a clue.

New York's gun control law is called the the Sullivan Act, named after a notorious Irish mobster, New York State Senator, and influence peddler in the corrupt Democrat machine known as Tammany Hall. Around the time of its passage, in 1911, the Italian mafiosi were taking over from the Jewish and Irish mobs. The Italians would shoot first, and ask questions later, if at all. So, to disarm them, Sullivan got his law passed. It didn't work, of course. The criminal element, the Irish and Jewish mobs and the mafiosi, ignored the law. The people who were disarmed were the peaceable citizens. The sordid history of laws like the Sullivan Act, or of laws that sought the disarmament of the black community in the South should cause considerable soul searching for anyone advocating for more of these laws. Gun control laws don't end violence, they merely embolden the criminals among us. And they catch people like Meredith Graves, who wasn't going to shoot anybody.

Update: National Review Online had an opinion piece by Robert VerBruggen. VerBruggans opinion is that Graves should rot in prison. NRO is a New York City publication. What fascinated me, though, were the comments, many of them well argued. Jeff Knox even makes an appearance. Go and take a look.

Liberty and Virtue, Rights and Responsibities

Two excellent think pieces from the American Thinker today are both on the relationship between freedom and liberty on the one hand, and the need to exercise virtue on the other. Liberty without virtue becomes in short order licentiousness. Licentiousness leads inevitably to authoritarian regimes to impose at least the outward appearance of virtue.  Stated another way, our rights have corresponding responsibilities.

The first is an article entitled Timshel, America by Cindy Simpson. Simpson points out that the English translations of the Bible have translated Genesis 4:7 wrongly. The English translation of the verb "timshel" has been "shall" which would indicate that God ordered Cain to overcome his sinful thoughts. But the actual Hebrew text is that Cain "may" overcome his sinful thoughts, or he may not. It is up to Cain.

In point of fact, it is up to each of us, every day. We have free will, as God indicates in this passage. But to exercise our liberty, we must learn to govern ourselves. Indeed, that used to be the main point in raising children; to take barbarians who display all the attributes of a sociopath, and train them up to govern themselves in civil society. Simpson:

Dr. Patrick Deneen, in his presentation "Community AND Liberty OR Individualism AND Statism" for the I.S.I. conference on "The Language of Liberty," explained that in earlier times, liberty was considered "the cultivated ability to exercise self-governance, to limit ourselves in accordance with our nature and the natural world. The various practices by which we exercise self-limitation and self-governance is comprehensively called virtue...the inability or unwillingness to exercise virtue was tantamount to the absence of liberty...Thus, for the ancients, law was not an unnatural imposition of humanity's natural freedom; rather, law (ideally, a self-imposed law) was the necessary and enabling condition for liberty."

The breakdown in the system of virtues which had previously obtained began in the early part of the 20th century. The "flapper" was an open and visible sign of that breakdown. While certainly most of the supposed flappers were merely trying to look like the in-crowd, the in-crowd youth became more licentious, using drugs and having casual sex out of wedlock. The great depression put an end to the age of the flapper. It was the hippie generation that truly overturned the old virtues that they considered outmoded. Too bad they had not studied a little more history. Any time that it is perceived that the people can not, or will not exercise virtue on their own, then the State is eventually called upon to impose these virtues by force, and of course the State is all to happy to oblige. But by imposing virtues by force, the State takes away the very essence being virtuous, and infantilizes the population. Simpson again:

While our personal New Year's resolutions are still fresh on our minds, another kind of resolve for "We the People" must also be contemplated: the vital need to halt the loss of individual freedom -- an eroding movement that has gained in momentum and threatens to ultimately transform our nation into a tyranny that commands of its people, "do thou." We must strive to assert the responsibility found in "thou mayest."

The second article at the American Thinker, on the same theme, is America: The Living Portrait of Dorian Gray by John Griffing. After going through a litany of liberties lost, and Constitutionally protected rights ignored, Griffing writes this:

At the root of all these changes is not merely one political deviant, or even some organized conspiracy to overthrow freedom and decency in America. It is the collective abandonment of God and associated moral virtue by a once-God-fearing people.

He goes on to sound the alarm, not unlike an Old Testament Prophet:

More recently, a gang of about fifty teenage girls is reported to have camped outside a classmate's home with guns and knives, shouting death threats at the intended victim. Two police who intervened were beaten within inches of their lives by this lawless teenage mob. Teenagers no longer fit the Americana Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello mold.

Few can deny that a substantial shift in community instincts has occurred. Remember when the injury of a fellow citizen would bring the help of others, and maybe the police? Now it brings phone-cameras and crowds of entertained observers. Something is terribly wrong in America.

Yes, something is terribly wrong in America. What is wrong is that we no longer value or practice traditional virtues. Please understand that true religious faith is not required to practice virtue, but it does help if more people trust in Divine Providence. How else can we hope to change a generation of people who seem to have embarked on a nihilistic path without a firm reliance on God.

Freedom itself is the result of a nation with laws. And nations with laws are the product of cultures grounded in religious morality. The two items are inseparable. Legal boundaries are based on moral boundaries. For example, why is it wrong to kill if there is no God, or alternatively, no universal source of morality?

In the same way, what is done in private cannot be separated from what is done in public. At some point, worlds collide, and lawlessness is unleashed. Warped minds in private will always yield warped behavior in public. This claim is substantiated in numerous psychological studies.

We are often at pains to assert our natural rights, but those rights have corresponding responsibilities. Our right to bear arms presupposes that we will not use those arms to murder our fellow man. The right to a free press presupposes that we will not commit libel. Once we no longer recognize our responsibilities, our rights disappear as well.

Winston Salem Journal Gets It Wrong on Guns in Parks

"Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we are denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we are always "against" things, never "for" anything. Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so... "  Ronald Reagan, A Time for Choosing October 27, 1964.

The Winston Salem Journal is at it again, compounding ignorance with an anti-gun agenda to create an editorial more notable for lies and half truths than for useful information.  The first thing the Journal should do is its own research.  You see, concealed carriers are actually 5 times LESS likely to shoot somebody than the average person in North Carolina. Indeed, as the NYT inadvertently proved, people with concealed carry permits are far more responsible than the average person when it comes to murder, violent crimes, or drunk driving. That is not to say that those who have a permit to carry are perfect but it does point to this group being far safer than the norm.  If I had a group of concealed carry permit holders around me, I would feel pretty safe.  Go and check out The Truth About Guns website for all the facts.

Next, the editorialists seem to take a great leap of logic off the page and into the great blue sky with this closing statement:

On this page, we recently praised the Winston-Salem City Council for exempting most city parks from the new state law allowing those with concealed-carry permits to strap on their handguns in public parks. We support the Second Amendment, but it has to be applied with common sense.

We realize that there are plenty of responsible permit holders out there, but most have never had to fire at a human being in the midst of an emotional situation. And while troublemakers may be relatively few, the damage and tragedy they can inflict is large. Expanding concealed-gun rules is not worth the danger to the rest of us — and to our children.

Now the great leap occurs here because they assume, apparently that if concealed carry permit holders did not have guns, nobody would. Right? How else to explain the thinking going on here. It is rather like the You Tube Video seen here. But if dissuading people who mean to do you harm was so easy, I doubt guns would have been invented in the first place. So which would you rather have when your children are playing on the teeter-totter and some bad guy tries to abduct them: a cell phone, or a cell phone and a gun. It has become cliche, but when seconds count, the police are minutes away.  And if there is you, with your gun, and someone else has a gun too, chances are your bad guy is going to run away.

The editorialists close with a typical tag line that conjures up the notion of "for the children." It has become so well worn that it should be a trademarked term.  In any case, two can play at that. I take my grand children to the park when it is nice out. Mrs. PolyKahr is convinced that sending the kids to the park helps to wear them down when it comes time to go to bed. I am not so sure, but that's a story for another day. Having been permitted to carry, believe me I want that advantage if someone tries to abduct my grand kids. You take a fat old out of shape fart like me facing a fit 20 year old armed with at least a knife, possibly a gun? Hell, yes I want to equalize the odds if I can.

But there is moral argument to be made in favor of the idea that the peaceful armed citizen should be allowed to carry anywhere he chooses.  The State, be it the city or the county, ultimately can not prevent someone who means harm to others from carrying pretty much anywhere that person chooses, short of setting up an oppressive police state.  Perhaps this is what the Winston Salem Journal wants, but it is not what we have now.  Laws on the books only allow prosecution after the peaceful armed citizen is dead, and signs only warn that the bad guy is about to incur another charge.  That being the case, the defense of our lives, and the lives of our young, depend on us alone.  Shouldn't we then be able to make our own determination about where and when we are going to carry a weapon?  Why should I let others, who will not be there if the gravest extreme should rear its ugly head, make those decisions for me.