We Have to Have the Guts

 J. B. Shurk has an article today at the American Thinker entitled How to Tell What the Government Fears Most. Shurk makes a point that I have also made: that the thing we can do to keep our freedom in these times is to tell the loudly tell the truth as a counter to the lies you are being fed. The more of us that can work up the courage to do that revolutionary act, the less power the government will have agaist us.

If government can make you afraid of something — imaginary or not — may it then control your life completely in order to guarantee FDR's "freedom from fear"? Does depending on government to ensure "freedom from fear" not incentivize government to invent new fears that only additional government powers can vanquish? Does this not subsidize fear with taxpayer dollars and guarantee that government will always strive to make citizens afraid? Can it really be true that individual liberty should be "allowed" to exist only when there is nothing that can hurt us? Isn't that what a master might tell his slaves?

If truth exists independently from governmental decree, and science is a process in search of truth, then why are governments working with Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor scientific debates? Is truth so fragile that it will not survive false attacks? Is science so dependent on "official edicts" that it must be regulated and practiced only by a small priestly caste? If scientific consensus depends on government creating a monopoly over information, does this mean that truth is whatever government deems it to be? Since government is incentivized to invest in fear, is it likely that government will ever declare a truth that isn't also scary?

If government power grows by monopolizing information and weaponizing fear, then isn't the greatest threat to government an independent citizen unafraid of thinking for himself? Is it not true, then, that every single person is capable of destroying the illusion of total government control? Is it not true that leaders can rise from anywhere — whether at local school board meetings, in football stadiums, or even from spontaneous testimonials during Red Lobster dinners? Is it difficult to imagine "freedom speakeasies" popping up wherever freedom is outlawed? Is it not true that there are more citizens than jail cells and that when enough people choose to disobey unjust laws, government must choose either to change the laws or lose its powers? Is it not true that every fight for freedom throughout history has started with a spark that catches fire? Is it not also true that sometimes the worst brushfires spread, and things get unbearably hot for a while, but then great growth rebounds after that?

OK, so I didn't say telling the truth would be easy. It requires a lot of reading and research, and using your ability to reason and your common sense. The answers are out there to be found, but it requires searching for them. But as Shurk suggests, if you can find what the social media are censoring, that is a great start toward the truth. And when you find the truth, you must not be disuaded. All attempts to take away your rights and freedoms are ultimately based on lies. The citizen who refuses to repeat the lies is what the government fears most. And keep in mind that unlike many people who have faced such times, we have the Second Amendment, which limits the oppression that can be imposed on us. We just have to have the guts.

At The Federalist, Joy Pullman writes that The Top Reason I Hate Masks Is They Force Me To Live by Lies. Again, the theme is that by acquiesing to the dictates of the regime is to place ourselves in chains. We do the work for them. In this case, by wearing masks even though we know they don't stop the virus, we make it appear to others that the majority of us do infact believe these things.

This is what mask mandates achieve — a false signal that dissenters don’t exist, that everyone buys into the indefinite suspension of our rights “because COVID,” no matter how much it harms people, nor how weak its alleged rationales. This was confirmed for me when my governor finally let his mask mandate lapse. Suddenly, after I had been for months nearly the only person I ever saw without a mask, now almost nobody wore them.

And it wasn’t because everyone was vaccinated, as government statistics show the majority are not. So it was clear that the vast majority of my fellow citizens were obeying the mandate simply because it was a mandate, not because they fully supported it. Yet their compliance communicated the falsehood that the COVID regime had mass support. And that is exactly the point.

Citizens’ assistance to a lying and oppressive regime, Havel says, changes those who corrupt themselves in this way: “they may learn to be comfortable with their involvement, to identify with it as though it were something natural and inevitable and, ultimately, so they may — with no external urging — come to treat any non-involvement as an abnormality, as arrogance, as an attack on themselves, as a form of dropping out of society.”

In other words, falsifying reality brings about more of that falsified reality. It’s the same dynamic as gang initiations requiring initiates to commit crimes. Once people have compromised themselves, they are more likely to identify with their compromise, because it’s embarrassing to admit you were wrong. So instead, people double down. They heap onto their initial cowardice the additional cowardice of refusing to admit they could have been wrong.

Said differently, lying demoralizes people, quite literally, which is the ultimate goal of the regime. What government fears most is people with moral authority. We just have to have guts.

Biden's Ammunition Ban Is Part of the Left's Plot To Ban Guns

 David Kopel, writing at The Federalist that Biden's Ammunition Ban Is Part Of the Left's Plot to Disarm Americans. Kopel notes that gun grabbers have been frustrated in their goal to get rid of guns. But now they have figured out that if they can ban ammunition instead, then the guns suddenly don't matter. Without ammunition, guns are just paper weights.

The Biden administration recently prohibited the import of ammunition from Russia. That’s bad news for American firearms owners, but there may be much worse to come.

The gun prohibition lobbies, having mostly failed in their campaigns to convince legislatures to ban guns, have intensified their efforts to disarm Americans by other means. The Biden ammunition ban is one step in the process.

Please go read Kopel's article. Also please support ammunition manufacturers and your local gun shop whenever possible.

Maybe We Should Break More Rules

 I have two articles today on the new Texas law that allows people to sue abortion providers for the act of providing abortions.  The serious one is by Fletch Daniels at the American Thinker entitled Abortion: The Animating Sacrament of the Left. The other, by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall.com talks about the "new rules" that the Left installed in our society, but that they are not happy with now they are being used against them.

First, let us understand that the act of deliberately killing a child in the womb is evil. You can put scientific sounding words around it to make it sound antiseptic, but make no mistake: once a sperm and an egg get together, a child is conceived. Given time, and assuming nothing interferes, that child will grow into person, like you. It can not be anything else. And also note, in case this wasn't obvious to everyone, but getting pregnant doesn't happen by accident.  Usually, a woman voluntarily has sex with a man.  A bit of discipline could have prevented it.

Fletch Daniels notes that the fervor with which the Left celebrates abortion is Satanic, and abortion is their central sacrament.

The Texas abortion law and the reaction to it has shone a spotlight on the fact that abortion is the primary animating force for the left, a sacrament of a sort that drives both their priorities and energy.

...snip...

It is always interesting to watch the conversion of a “conservative” to the leftist religion, which seems to happen somewhat regularly when weak principles collide with the cultural power and temptations of the left.

A key moment in the conversion of a former “conservative” involves showing fealty to the sacrament that binds together their new tribe, and they usually do it as loudly as possible to ensure that their new friends embrace them. This is why these “conservative” converts, ala Jennifer Rubin, usually sound even crazier than the long-time denizens of the left.

In what read like a parody, the Satantic Temple joined the fight. They apparently established an abortion ritual which the Texas law threatens. These Satanists see abortion as a form of worship that needs protecting.

In the letter they sent to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, they wrote, “The battle for abortion rights is largely a battle of competing religious viewpoints, and our viewpoint is that the nonviable fetus is part of the impregnated host is fortunately protected under Religious Liberty laws.”

That “nonviable fetus” has a heartbeat at a bare minimum and is often fully viable at the time of abortion, suffering only from a mere few inches of geography that allows the baby’s life to be taken. One of the challenges the abortion movement has is that technology has advanced since 1973, making it nearly impossible to maintain the fiction that the choice they champion does not consist of the taking of a life. But, for the Satanists, this is a feature.

On one point, I would agree with them. There is very much a spiritual component to this discussion, which is why there is so much fervor on the left, a religious fervor that cannot be understood apart from the demonic influence that drives it.

Since we are talking about religion, Daniels doesn't make it explicit, but I will. That abortion is the central animating sacrament of the Left means they stand in direct opposition to Christ and the God of Abraham, the God of Israel, the God of Creation. One of the appellations of Jesus Christ is Lord of Life. You can not be a true Christian, and be in favor of abortion. Indeed, it was Christians who began outlawing abortion wherever they became the majority. But it also makes sense in that what species can survive that kills its own offspring? Yet the killing of children was the norm until Jesus entered history and changed the World.

Kurt Schlichter, who is always happy to irritate a Leftist, and the more irritating the better, writes:

You know, there was a time when I might have thought that the Texas legislature’s creative lawmaking that lets random people sue those facilitating abortions was against my principles. But that was before “principles” became nothing more than a cynical codeword designed to tie our hands as the libs pillaged through our society like a bunch of hopped-up Visigoths who just got into Hunter’s secret stash.

The new rule is that you use your power ruthlessly to defeat your opponent. And so, I’m totally comfortable with it. The Dems, not so much – this legislative suppository is shaped like a starfish and it ain’t going in easy.

Now, the best part about this whole imbroglio, besides that it might well close down the open season on babies that is a central sacrament of the pagan religion that is modern America liberalism, is how the Texas Solons shamelessly snagged it from the arsenal of anti-democratic tactics pioneered by the left. Here’s how governing should go, in the world that no longer exists that you learned about on Saturday morning TV’s Schoolhouse Rock. One of our elected legislators proposes a bill to do something, it gets debated, passed, signed by the chief executive and then challenged in court, where it should almost always be held constitutional. But that’s kind of a hassle, since a lot of the things Democrats want can’t get enough votes to pass. So, the democracy-loving Democrats eschewed democracy and decided they would sub-contract the dirty work to the courts. You know how people liked smoking, which they knew might well kill them? Why not use lawsuits to do indirectly what could not be done directly, i.e., properly? They kept at it until they found enough gullible jurors in gullible venues to shakedown the tobacco companies, mostly by pretending that puffers were shocked – shocked! – that smoking was sub-optimally healthy.

Again, note that Schlichter too recognizes that abortion seems to be a sacrament in a religion of evil.  But he also makes a great point that whenever conservatives take a page out of the Lefts playbook, they become apoplectic.  It is as if they were the only ones who could break the rules that we all originally agreed upon.  But if it makes them actually think instead of just "feel," then maybe we should try breaking some other rules. 

Gun Control Should Be Run Through the Nancy Lanza Test

Ranjit Singh over at Bearing Arms has an interesting test for Gun control proposals called The Nancy Lanza Test For Gun Control Proposals

This Tuesday, former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) published an op-ed at The Philadelphia Inquirer touting universal background checks as a means to saving lives. Tom Knighton has already taken on her misleading op-ed and I recommend that you read his article.

The 800 lb. gorilla in the room that’s missing in Giffords’ article is that the man who shot her passed a background check when he bought the pistol he used in his crime. That alone undermines Giffords’ claim in a big way. And it’s not just him; most perpetrators in highly publicized mass attacks that I can think of – Sutherland Springs, Orlando, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Charleston – you name it, all of them passed background checks and in some cases, with glaring governmental incompetence. (Others got their guns through theft and straw purchases.)

Nancy Lanza was the mother of Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook killer. Rather than subject himself to a background check, which he couldn't pass, he killed his mother and stole her gun. Of course, his mother had passed a background check. So, what is the Nancy Lanza test?

Insurance mandates such as the ones demanded by the San Jose mayor? Nancy Lanza was financially comfortable enough to afford the insurance and would have bought it.

Special taxes on guns and/or ammo? Same as the insurance policy; financially comfortable citizen Nancy Lanza would have been able to afford the special taxes.

Training demands such as the ones proposed by New York Democrats? Nancy Lanza was a firearms enthusiast who made regular trips to the gun range. She would have passed every marksmanship test that the Gun Grab Lobby demands we take.

Registration laws? Model Citizen Nancy Lanza would have complied with those too, and registration wouldn’t have made any difference anyway.

Raising the minimum age to buy guns? Nancy Lanza would have been old enough to buy a gun even with the minimum age raised to 21.

Red flag laws? Nancy Lanza never posed a threat to anyone and would not have been subject to red flag confiscation.

There were no indications that the actual perpetrator who stole her guns and committed the crime posed a threat to anyone either. Not one of the above unconstitutional gun control proposals would have stopped Sandy Hook because all those proposals, if enacted into law, would have applied to Nancy Lanza, not the perpetrator who murdered his own mother because she was in the way of his perverse plan.

I do believe that some people sincerely believe that gun control would work, but as you can see, it never really does. And that is why the Constitution states rather clearly that the peoples right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. All of the laws proposed to limit gun ownership or tho register guns are infringements. Moreover, they would not ahve prevented Sandy Hook, or indeed, any other shooting.

Governor Cooper Proves Himself To Be A Racist

This is old news by now. I expected that Cooper would veto this bill, and yes, I am angry that when Republicans had a veto proof majority, they did not act. The story is by Larry Keane at The Truth About Guns entitled Governor Roy Cooper Likes North Carolina's Jim Crwo Gun Control Law Just Fine.

North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper had an opportunity to end his state’s discriminatory Jim Crow-era law. Legislation to repeal the state’s requirement for citizens to obtain a pistol purchase permit from their local sheriff was passed by state lawmakers and sent to his desk for signature, in what would have ended a practice known to discriminate against African-American gun buyers. Instead, he vetoed the measure.

...snip...

It was a lost opportunity to stand up for his citizens’ Second Amendment rights and put an end to abuses of permit system that unlawfully denied North Carolinians the ability to protect themselves. NSSF backed the legislation that would have repealed the 102-year-old relic of the Jim Crow-era and brought North Carolina into the 21st Century.

Of course you should read the entire article. It goes into much detail about the use of the law to discriminate against minorities, especially blacks. Funny thing is, it is still used to do so today. Funnier thing: Wake County Sheriff Baker is black. Go figure.

Democrats, who were the party of slavery, and Jim Crow, are always calling other people racist. But with CRT and other Democrat policies, they prove themselves to be the actual racists. By vetoing this bill, Cooper, a Democrat, proves himself to be a racists.  No surprises there.

Did The Supreme Court Just Overturn Roe v. Wade?

 Rebecca Downs at Townhall.com reports that the U. S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 Decision Lets 6 Week Abortion Law Stand In Defiance Of Roe v. Wade. I say, it's about time.

After Kabul, Biden Needs To Shut Up About Guns

 At Bearing Arms today, Tom Knighton quotes Tucker Carlson from Monday night in a post entitled Tucker Carlson: Biden Needs To Shut Up About Gun Control After Kabul. Tucker Carlson is exactly right. While he wants to take away our semiautomatic AR 15s and even 9mm pistols, he literally gave the Taliban fully automatic weapons. Peaceful Americans versus brutal terrorists. Joe at the very least has is grossly hypocritical. But I suspect it is worse than that. Biden really sees peaceful Americans who have guns as the true enemy, whereas he sees the Taliban as "frenemies," people who he can do business with. Either way, it is sick and must stop.