The Envy of the Rich

I continue to be perplexed by the notion that somehow the "rich" (and I put that in scare quotes because many who have been defined as rich by politicians or nothing of the sort) must "give back" to society in general. The rich, if they got their wealth honestly, have nothing to apologize for, and owe society nothing. In the American Thinker today, an article by Arnon Rosenthal entitled From the Giving Pledge to Totalitarianism makes the point that if the so-called "rich" are not secure in their wealth, then none of us are.

Follow along with me here. You have a right to life, given you by nature and nature's God. A corollary of the right to life is the right to self defense. Because each human has the same rights as every other human, we each have a right to liberty. In order to sustain your life, you have a right to property. Thus you have a right to shelter, clothing, food, and all the things needed to sustain your life. Note here that the fact that every other human being has the same rights as you do, you must defend your life, and acquire property on your own. You may not have the use of another for your own ends.

Now, of course, since you own your life, you also have the right to trade some of your time and skills for money, which can in turn, be traded for property. Money is therefore equal to property. One may also form contracts with others to pool your property, and form corporations. This is an abbreviated statement of how our rights came about, and the limits of them.

Note, that each individual has rights to his own property, and can use it, trade it, buy it or sell it, or give it away as he sees fit. But he does not have a right to the property of others, without justly compensating them for it. Charity is property freely given out of a sense of altruism. In Christian theology, we are admonished to recognize the poor, and to give freely to them, as Christ has freely given of himself. Warren Buffet, if he is giving away have his fortune for the right reasons, is exhibiting a noble tendency in man. But if he is intimidated into believing he must give it away or it will be confiscated, that is a very different thing entirely.  Essentially, if Buffet is being intimidated, or threatened, then his wealth is being stolen from him.

When government taxes you at the point of a gun, and then gives that money to another as welfare, that is theft, and slavery. One person has used the productive capacity of another without just compensation to gain property for himself.

The envy of the rich has been with us since Biblical times, but it must be fought continuously. I had a piece back on November 1, 2008 which you can read here in which Andrew Tallman argued that money in the bank is an IOU from society for excess production of goods and services. Essentially, society owes Warren Buffet, not the other way around. Thought of in this way, rather than envying the rich, we should be thankful that they have made such abundance available to us. In addition, we should all strive to become rich because that makes more available to others. Rather than seeing the existence of the rich as diminishing us, we should see them as building us all up. Their excess productivity makes it possible for each of us to have jobs and earn property for ourselves.

Note too that when politicians incite envy of the rich, they are attempting to manipulate us for their own purposes.  Don't let them do it.  When Obama says that "You didn't build that!" think about this, who does he believe sacrificed, and risked his wealth, to build it.  If that person, or group of persons did not exist, would it have been built?  You have the answer right there.       

The War on Guns: Religious groups divided on gun control, but united against guns in churches

The War on Guns: Religious groups divided on gun control, but united against guns in churches

Am I surprised?  Well, no, I am not, but I am disappointed.  People tend to react with emotion rather than think things through.  David Codrea spells out the problem, which is this:  If the Church is going to disarm people in Church, then the Church has a responsibility to provide for their security.  Failing that, the Church has no business disarming people who attend.  After all, the right of self defense is a corollary to the right to life itself, a right given by God to all people.  His Church should respect the rights He gave us.

Crimes can happen anywhere, at any time, and churches are not immune to having crazies running in and shooting up the place for whatever crazy grievances they think they have against the church.  Indeed, if the Church either sets a no guns policy, or if it is required by law, the church becomes a target rich, gun free empowerment zone for any loony who decides to take advantage of it.  The police, bless their hearts, are at best minutes away.   In that time, the crazy loon can do some serious damage.  Therefore, any establishment where, according to the squeamish among us, people shouldn't go armed "for the children" or whatever other reason, should provide armed security to protect its patrons, whether that establishment is a church, a movie theatre, a school, or what have you.  In North Carolina, the list of places is long, and each of these places should have to maintain armed security.  Realize that I am talking here morally.  That is, if these establishments, or churches wanted to do what is right, they would exert themselves to see to the security of those in attendence.  But because we have a choice to attend or not, I do not propose that there should be a legal cause of action.

There are those who think that that perhaps banning guns will save them. Attorney Faisal Moghul has an excellent summary of why gun control never has, doesn't now, and never will work to control crimes like the Aurora Colorado shooting, or the Sikh Temple shooting . The article, appearing in the Canada Free Press is entitled Confronting the Myth of Gun Control. For practical examples go to An NC Gun Blog. There, daily, Sean Sorretino points out the utter failure of gun control in island nations such as Australia and the (formerly) Great Britain. If these countries can't keep guns out of criminals hands, what hope do we have?

Paul Ryan the GOP Future

Daren Jonescu took the Republican establishment to task on July 9, 2012 in an article at the American Thinker entitled The Gathering Storm Within the GOP. After debunking the Cosa Notra like claim of "Republican Establishment? What Republican Establishment? There's no such thing," Jonescu then explains why the Republicans constantly ignore Constitutional Conservatives and Libertarians. I have called our Republican friends in Congress "gutless," but Jonescu uses the more temperate description of "milquetoast" They want to maintain the perks of office, and enjoy the invitations to parties, the access to media, and so forth that being one of the in-crowd brings, and so they mostly go along to get along.

Constitutional Conservatives and Libertarians unfortunately don't really have anywhere else to go. We can either vote for the Republican, and hope they won't betray us too badly, or not vote at all. Either way, we often seem to have no one representing our point of view. As for voting for the other party, try receiving a letter from your Congressman that, after proper translating reads "When I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you! Until then, sit down and shut up!" Further, it is Jonescu's opinion that our current situation is so dire that we simply do not have the time to slowly build a third party alternative and let the GOP simply rot away. We must to something now:

Somehow, the current establishment must either accept its failure and seek to make amends through radical change, or be pulled off that hill atop which it has too long presided. What is needed, and immediately, is a new Republican establishment, one comprising people who value George Washington over Washington, D.C., individual liberty over party privilege, and the Framers' conception of America over their own all-too-clever stratagems for an incremental surrender masked as "conservatism." In short, America needs a Republican Party establishment that values the Constitution over cocktail parties.

It took me a little longer warm up to Paul Ryan and to hop onto the Ryan bandwagon, but after hearing an interview with Paul Ryan by Glenn Beck yesterday, I am a believer. Ryan hit all the notes of a true Constitutional Conservative, a believer in the rule of laws over men, a believer in Natural Rights theory, and importantly, is someone who understands the nature of Progressivism, and takes the fight to them. Moreover, it says something about Mitt Romney that he picked a Paul Ryan to be his running mate.

As before, on July 9, I find myself in agreement with Daren Jonescu's piece in the American Thinker yesterday entitled Paul Ryan Naysayers: Whom Were They Hoping For?

The GOP has so damaged its reputation with conservatives that even a rare reasonable decision is met with a measure of cynicism from some quarters. Beneath the inevitable immediate wave of enthusiasm for the choice of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate, one also notices a faction of naysayers, one likely to grow as the initial excitement dies down: constitutionalists who see the Ryan selection as just the same old, same old from the Republican Party establishment. The very fact that the establishment approves of someone is now regarded by many as prima facie grounds for suspicion. Thus it is that the choice of Ryan is garnering extremely cautious kudos from some conservatives, and a resounding "So what?" from others.

Jonescu then goes on to articulate reasons for cautious optimism that this presidency will at least start the undoing of 100 years of progressivism. That Progressivism is on the verge of overwhelming our Constitutional Republic. He then asks:

But my question to those who, as I am, are instinctively inclined to distrust the GOP establishment's decisions is this: whom were you hoping for? Ryan has a good congressional record, and not merely as a principled conservative, but also as a man capable of dragging important and difficult ideas through the legislative process. He has exposed himself in the name of conservative principle with the kind of substantive entitlement reform proposals that constitutionalists always hope someone will make in earnest. He is a devotee of Hayek and Friedman and therefore understands that economic freedom is inseparable from individual liberty in general, and cannot be curtailed without the loss of constitutionally-protected rights. Could anyone have expected more of Romney's VP choice?

I have long suspected that there are powerful people behind the scenes manipulating our choices. I first suspected that when Dole ran as the Republican standard bearer. Dole was a decent enough person, but he wasn't a conservative. McCain cemented my view, since he is someone who has made a career out of publically slapping Conservatives across the face. Someone other than the people I knew was selecting our candidate. When Romney became the last man or woman standing, it only fed my fears that Republican Party was paving the way for four more years of disasterous Progressivism. Paul Ryan looks to be a stroke of genius. I hope to be proven correct.

Paul Ryan a Friend of Gun Owners?

Paul Ryan, Romney's Vice Presidential pick, appears to be a solid on the Second Amendment according to Hot Air. Of course, an NRA A rating doesn't really mean much. I think anyone who wants one can get a vote or two where he knows the bill will go down, and get that precious "friends of gun owners" rating. We'll just have to see what turns up from a thorough review of his record.

Why we can't have "reasonable" gun control

Bruce Bialosky had a good article up at Townhall.com Monday explaining why we can't make "progress" on keeping guns out of the hands of people like the shooter at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin. The article is entitled Gridlock and Gun Control, and I urge you to read it. I tend to get somewhat emotional, and rant a bit, but this is a factual report of why so many have adopted a no compromise attitude toward guns (and other issues, quite frankly.) A hat tip to David Codrea for pointing me to this.

Some time ago, I remember responding to a young man who asked the question "Why can't we compromise on reasonable gun control?" I think my first thought was to laugh the guy off, but then I thought better of it. After all, he sounded like a earnest and sincere young man, who hadn't yet been through 40 years of this stuff, and he might not know that we had compromised many many times already, only to have the gun grabbers come back for another bite. Furthermore, he sounded like someone open to reasons, and so I responded.  What follows is a moreextensive response to that young commenter. 

First of all, our young man must understand that we started out with no gun laws, period. The Constitution says that Congress may not make a law infringing our rights to keep and bear arms, and for a while that restriction on government was honored. But, as always happens, someone wants to build a better place to live, a Utopia*, and the first handgun ban was passed. Fortunately, it was ruled Unconstitutional. And so, we continued along until the Civil War with virtually no gun laws of any kind, and none at the Federal level.

Note that each time a new gun law is passed, the noose around a law abiding citizen's neck tightens ever more tightly, but there is no proof that the laws that have gone before have done anything to stop a determined criminal from getting guns if he wants them. We now learn that Jared Laughner, the shooter in the Phoenix shooting that injured Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was in fact schizophrenic. He had had many run ins with the law, and that Sheriff Dupnik knew about him as well, but he was allowed to buy guns anyway. We learn that the Psychiatrist of James Holmes in the Aurora Colorado shooting warned University police, but they did nothing. He was allowed to buy his guns "legally."   Now in the Sikh Temple shooting case, we learn  that the shooter was a white supremacist who may also have been prohibited from buying guns.   But the press reports he bought his handgun "legally."  These are just a few of the high profile cases where background checks, waiting periods, filling out paperwork that eventually winds up in Federal hands, and restrictive concealed carry laws did not stop the shooting.

The gun grabbers in and out of Congress have shown themselves to be extremely incurious about the effects of all these laws, some 20,000 altogether, on the commission of crimes.  Instead, they seem to believe that one more law, one more set of magic incantations written on a piece of paper will somehow stop the bleeding; that candlelight vigils will keep the bogeyman away. Look at the Brady Campaign Wish List of things to do next, yet there is no curiosity to find out how effective their previous policy prescriptions have been in stopping criminals from obtaining guns. Simply saying that xx number of people have been turned away by the NICS doesn't answer the question. Having been denied by an FFL doesn't say that the determined criminal might not have gone out and gotten the gun on the black market.

Up through the 1994 Assault Weapon ban, the NRA was often an active participant in restricting our gun rights, in the misguided belief that a worse bill would have resulted without their participation.  However you analyse these things, the NRA has finally figured out that each new restriction is only a good first step to the gun grabbers.  The gun grabbers are not negotiating in good faith, but instead using the one bite at a time technique of the Progressives.  Soon enough, they will come back for another slice of the baloney, as the Brady Campaign Wish List shows.  The National Rifle Association, the Gun Owners of America, the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, and countless State organizations like Grass Roots North Carolina have come to realize that the only thing the gun grabbers will accept as "reasonable" and "common sense" is taking guns away from every law abiding citizen, leaving guns in the hands of the State, and criminals (but I repeat myself.)

Compromise means that each side gets something, but also has to give up something.  The history of gun control shows that the gun rights community gives something up each time there are new restrictions, and the gun grabbers get something, but I don't see what they are giving up.  What did the gun rights community get in return for all those gun restrictions?  Presumably, they make us all safer, but that proposition has been shown to be dubious at best.  So, in light of the above, why give up any more ground?  In the formulation of Mike Vanderboegh, "not one more inch."

* The meaning of Utopia is Nowhere.

The Long War

I have read Ann Barnhardt's piece on Cowardice, as memorialized at the Western Rifle Shooters Association. You might want to check it out as well. To me, it seems that Ann is calling on the American people to rise up in armed rebellion, or rather, calling the American public cowards for not rising up in armed rebellion. I too have been where Ann appears to be, looking around for someone who shares our values to lead us. But that fire has been quenched by others, and I can name them, but I won't here.

We are not ready for armed rebellion. There is no public consensus that we have exhausted all other means at our disposal to satisfy our grievances, though the passage of ObamaCare is surely the intolerable act that, should the November elections fail, we can get folks to rally around. There is no public declaration of our grievances that justify armed rebellion, and we will need one. The world will have to see that we are just and righteous to go to war with our fellow citizens. Moreover, once an armed rebellion starts, the final outcome is unknowable. You lose the ability to control the outcome, which is why the Left has taken the approach they have. Oh, sure, there have been some impatient souls on the Left who have taken up arms-the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers come to mind, but their efforts had little effect. So, Ann, would you have people shattering their lives for no effect? Would you, Ann, give up your life for zero gain? I know you are courageous, that is not in question. The real question is how to we restore the Constitution, and restore a culture that could declare that men have certain unalienable rights that no government can either grant, or take away. How do we restore liberty to these United States.

Daren Jonescu yesterday had a piece in the American Thinker that deserves a fair reading entitled Conservatives Have a Secret. Go and read it. Now read it again. General George Washington did not have to win battles, he only had to not lose. Indeed, that was his strategy; to keep the army together and not lose it. There we times when the army sought a battle, but many more times when it tried to avoid them, and to force the enemy into exhausting its supplies. Gen. Washington had some other things going for him too. The enemy, the British, were in another protracted war with the French. Had they resolved their differences, the outcome in America would have been quite different. He also had the backing of the Continental Congress.

Mr. Jonescu:

Despite all of Barack Obama's hoopla about "fundamentally transforming" America, the truth of the matter is even scarier than Obama's threatening promise: the fundamental transformation has, to a large extent, already happened. Contemporary society has been gradually undermined, in the strict sense of having had its terrain booby-trapped with moral explosives, over many decades. Obama's promised transformation is merely the paperwork, writing into law what has already been accomplished in culture.

What Jonescu is saying is that we must first take back the culture. As the recent Chick-fil-a appreciation day and its counter "kiss in" shows, they are not the majority. We must determine, therefore, to enforce our standards, not by suppression of speech that may offend us, but by example. We must take back our schools, or we must opt out of our schools. We must take back the press, the institutions of higher learning, and our churches. Some of the stuff coming out of our mainstream churches today can only be described as politically correct poppycock. In order to change the culture, we must engage the culture. We must be willing to speak out, and be willing to be called horrible names. We know we are not racist, or homophobic, or islamaphobic, or xenophobic, or any other name the may call us. We have legitimate issues. The minute they begin calling names, we know that they have no way to counter our arguments. It make take time, but we know we have won.

Mr. Jonescu again:

The result of this resistance, increasingly apparent for decades, has become palpable: whereas the European left presents itself, and even sees itself, as a friend of Europe, the American left has been antagonized into presenting itself more and more openly as the enemy of America.

As many have noted, the declared goal of "fundamentally transforming" America clearly implies a basic distaste for America and Americans. Obama's "You didn't build that" is an open spit in the face to the most time-honored notion of national self-identity, the American Dream; Nancy Pelosi's "Are you serious?" when asked where Congress gets the constitutional authority to force citizens to purchase health insurance displays an open disregard for the principle of limited government; the media's knee-jerk search for law-abiding Tea Partiers behind every act of mass murder reveals the left's hatred of people who care about their freedom.

These revelations -- the progressives showing their true colors -- are the direct result of decades of conservative resistance. The statist left, having won the day everywhere else, has become flustered and furious at its inability to seal the deal in America. Thanks to conservative dams, the progressive current has, as Nietzsche whispered, gathered strength and become more "vehement." This strength and this vehemence have manifested themselves in angry, careless lurches, wild punches that expose progressives and their real agenda more fully than they would ever have wished to expose themselves.

Glenn Beck yesterday mocked the Senate Majority Leader for his transparent lies on the Senate floor about Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Glenn had anonymous callers telling him various lies about Senator Reed, then telling them to Pat and Stu, who of course were primed to play along. They called for Senator Reed to prove the allegations weren't true. Now, I have no love of Mitt Romney's policies, feeling that he has more in common with the Left than with conservative Americans, but they are creating a sympathy vote for the guy. In desperately trying to smear him, rather than honestly debating his policy prescriptions, they are pushing the American public his way. In attacking the Catholic Church, as HHS has done with their ruling on abortaficients and contraceptives, in attacking Chick-fil-a as the gay left has done, in saying to small business owners "you didn't build that!" the Left keeps ripping away at its mask, rather like the Terminator ripping away its skin, and letting the public see the ugly machine beneath.

It has taken the Left 100 years to get to this point. But people are finally waking up.  We must now go on the march to retake the institutions, and replace the people manning the foundations, the government bureaucracies, and our elected officials with people that understand, and respect the relationship Americans have traditionally had with their government.  This is the long war, the culture war, and probably will remain a cold war.  Get used to it, and engage.

Update: In today's American Thinker there is an article on Glenn Beck's Restoring Love event. Beck is another who has advocated that if we want to change the trajectory of our country, we first need to change our culture. To change our culture, we need to change ourselves.  Go check it out.

Barack Obama Agrees with Communist Chinese

You know, sometimes I can't believe that a journalist can make statements like the following with no sense of irony:

The Second Amendment, however, consists of one 26-word sentence, which includes the words "well-regulated." Furthermore, it was written to protect a citizen's right to own a single-shot, muzzle-loading musket with an effective range of fewer than 50 yards.

But that is exactly what Gene Lyons did in the Hattiesburg American in an opinion piece entitled The Threadbare Gun Debate. See, by that standard, the First Amendment only protects hand presses capable of printing one side of one sheet of paper at a time, after painstakingly assembling the material to be printed from a kit of capital and lowercase letters, then proofed, before rolling ink on the assembled printing block and "pressing" the paper to it. Think of Benjamin Franklin.  The process, while state of the art for its day, could only produce a few pages at a time.  So, since technology has advanced, I guess the Constitution no longer protects Mr. Lyons, and the government is no free to impose prior restraints on what he says.

And it appears Mr. Lyons needs a little prior restraint for publishing falsehoods as if they were fact:

As for military assault rifles, I'd put it this way: As much as I like cats, I've sometimes thought it'd be cool to have a pet lion. However, I realize it'd be anti-social and borderline crazy. So is letting anybody with a driver's license own an AR-15 or AK-47.

The facts are that "military assault rifles" have been restricted from American citizens since 1986. We can not own an M 16 or AK 47, or any other fully automatic weapon manufactured after that date. The fact is that the Aurora, Colorado shooter used semiautomatic weapons that function just as any other semiautomatic rifle. As for power, the AR-15 shoots a .223 Rem cartridge, which is not a large round, or a particularly powerful cartridge. The civilian version of the AK 47 fires a somewhat more substantial round, but is confined to relatively low power by the fact that its full auto cousin would be uncontrollable if the round were as powerful as, say the .30-06.  The facts are that AR 15s are scary looking, but if  dressed instead like  the Ruger Mini 14 Ranch Rifle they would deliver the same destructive power on the target.  It is the target, rather than the weapon, that needs to concern us.

So, why the rush to reimpose the so-called "assault weapon ban?"  The original had no impact on crime,  But it was symbolic as a marker.  If they could demonize this group of semiautomatic weapons, then ban them, the gun grabbers would immediately start demonizing another group.  Slowly, but surely they would whittle away our gun rights a slice at a time.  Eventually, they would have banned handguns and anything more powerful than that musket, and those would probably be locked up in an armory.  You see, Leftists, and most of those calling for gun control in the wake of Aurora are Leftists, want to disarm you and me.  If you want to know why,  check the Western Rifle Shooters Association.