The War on Guns: Messin' with Texas

The War on Guns: Messin' with Texas

Contrary to what you may have heard, you can apparently mess with Texas, and get away with it. That once great republic has apparently been wussified as well.

Way up North has a little more on this bill at Feds Threaten Texas No Fly Zone. Apparently someone in Texas has some intestinal fortitude, just not Sen. Patrick, (R Houston).

Why the TSA believes it has the right to do to innocent private citizens what constitutes sexual assault is beyond my understanding. If someone on the street decided to do this to passersby, they would be arrested, and rightly so. So, in asking for a warrant before the Testicular Stroking Agency (TSA) can grope an individual and take nude pictures of them seems quite reasonable.  What am I missing?

He is Risen!

He is risen indeed!

There is an article over at the American Thinker today, entitled Testimony Wrought in Blood. It is not a new argument, but if one is not familiar with Christian Apologetics, he will perhaps not have run across it yet.

Besides the Gospels themselves, and the writings of Paul, several books may interest you:

The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel presents a journalists investigation into the truth of Christianity.

and

What's So Great About Christianity by Dinesh D'Souza.

My take?  As a fallen men and women, we can not look God in the eye (speaking figuratively.  God is not a man after all.)  He will turn his head away from us in shame, not want to see us.  But because his son took our sins upon himself, God now looks through the filter of the Christ, and sees us as his children.  We can look God in the eye, as a child would.  We can become a child of God!  As a first step, all we need to do is confess our belief.

How could anyone not take this great gift of grace?

Happy Easter!

Taking a Break

You may have been wondering where I have been.

I have decided to take a break.  While there are always events I can comment on, the fact is that I have said everything I felt compelled to say.  At the same time, I realize I have been preaching to the already converted.  I have not changed any one's mind, or to my knowledge gotten anyone to even rethink their positions.  Of course, you only see the final product, and not the inner workings, so you could be forgiven for thinking that I am the same.  But I assure you, I have over the years pondered both sides of the argument, and have changed my mind based on better evidence many times.  And while the pundits are paid for this, and do a better job than I can do, I need to see to my family.

I also must confess to a certain melancholy, born of a loss of faith that there is anything that we can do to stop what is going to happen.  The Lord has judged our generation, and found it unworthy, I fear.  It probably isn't fair, but the Republicans have only two years to start fixing things.  So far, they have claimed to have a plan, but they have done precious little to show us what it is.  Everyday they waste is more political capital lost.  Everyday the Democrats can keep socialism alive is that much less ground they need to pick up before they go on another tear against our liberties.  People will not long remember how bad Pelosi was, and soon enough she will be back setting the agenda, and passing legislation with no regard for the Constitution.

The Constitution.  When a Republican (in name only) like Lindsay Graham can say with no apparent irony that "Free speech is a nice idea, but we are at war!" I wonder if it is well and truly a dead letter.

In any case, I need to step back, refresh, and get my bearings.  Oh, and smoke a pipe or two while that remains legal.

Are the Best of the Free Life Behind Us Now?

Do you sometimes get the feeling that nearly everything is illegal? Could be here is the reason why :#links.

Each time the State ratchets up its desire to control people, it makes the penalties stiffer and stiffer.  The seat belt laws are a good example.  First they just put seat belts in the cars, and there were the ubiquitous public service announcements telling you that they might save your life.  Quite a few folks bought that argument, and started to wear seat belts.  That was as far as the insurance industry could go in "nudging" you.  They had no way to monitor your use of seat belts, so couldn't really give people who used them better rates.  People accepted these public service announcements, and generally made up their own minds about whether to wear seat belts, and when. 

But there always seems to be a nanny willing to make a law.  The next phase was seat belt laws, but they promised that these would only be enforced if the officer had another reason to stop you.  More people started using seat belts more consistently, because now the law compelled you to do so.  And Americans have typically been a law abiding people.  But what a cost to freedom.  Does the State really have a right to tell you to wear seat belts, in service to insurance companies?  A liberty minded person might ask what else they think they have the right to tell you, and in service to what industries?  Can the State, like the Pope, tell its citizens to eat fish on Friday because the fishing industry needs a boost?  More importantly, are citizens not adults who can determine for themselves when to wear a seat belt?  But that was not good enough, as it turns out.

The next phase was that the police could set up road blocks and give you a ticket if you weren't wearing your seat belt.  Oh, and while you were stopped, they could ticket you for any other violations they might find.  Many people felt as if they were living in a police state.  Frankly, I think they are right.  In making laws compelling seat belt use, the State infantilized the entire population, essentially assuming that everyone was like a child who had to be nagged to eat his vegetables, and had to be kept away from the sweets until he had eaten all on his plate.

The same ideas seem to apply with regards to the serious, and strictly adult decisions regarding weapons.  In the nanny State of North Carolina, you can not practically take your weapon off your property without a permission slip from the State.  North Carolina is an open carry State, nominally.  But if you do open carry, you will be arrested, your weapon confiscated, and you charged with something.  Going about to the terror of the pubic is always a good one.  Then there are the numerous "gun free zones" meaning "criminal empowerment zones," where crossing an invisible line makes you no longer a law abiding citizen, but a criminal.  If you walk into a restaurant that happens to serve alcohol while carrying a gun for which you have a concealed handgun license, suddenly you become a criminal.  What has changed?  Were you a responsible person before, but inside this building you suddenly become a crazed killer?  Does the restaurant have mind control rays?  The State, having finger printed you, run a background check on you, and ensured that you knew the law, can't seem to trust you to know where and when you might need to carry your weapon.  You must be told each of the seemingly thousands of places where you must disarm, for reasons that make no logical sense.  Guns don't belong in classrooms.  Why?  Guns and alcohol don't mix, even if the one carrying the gun doesn't drink.  Guns in banks are a bad idea because they are afraid you might try to rob the bank?  And why don't guns and theaters mix?  Oh, its because the sell sugar laden products that might get you on a sugar high and drive you crazy, right?  But then why are grocery stores not a "criminal empowerment zone?"  Enough, already.  New York has some very strict laws, and getting a permit to carry is not an easy process.  But once you have a permit, you can carry pretty much everywhere.

Yesterday, on the radio, I heard an old song by Merle Haggard, and had to wonder the same thing:

Is the best of the free life behind us now,
Are the good times really over for good.
                        -Merle Haggard

Porretto Nails The One

Francis W. Porretto has been running a series of posts over at Eternity Road, the latest of which is The Shape of Things to Come, Part 5: The Worse the Better. I highly recommend you go over and read all of them, but especially this one. You may have noticed that the lies, half truths, the dissimulations, and the obscurations have been coming faster and faster. To take one example, his proposed budget for FY 2012 is not a balanced budget in the real world. How can the claims made by The One, and supported by the Democrat Party be squared with reality? Porretto explains how in this chapter of The Shape of Things to Come. It also explains why arguing with Marxists is futile. The only value in it is to highlight for those willing to listen the utter irrationality of the thinking on the Left.

Your not Paranoid if Someone is Really Trying to Get You

When a person speaks out against abuses and stupidity, like TSA's daily gropathons, as one example, it is expected that one will not earn friends in high places. When a person speaks out against the "religion of peace" as I have, it should surprise no one that I might have ruffled a few feathers here and there. I have been writing this blog for two and a half years now, and I note that my readership includes people from countries like Iran, Japan, South Korea, Great Britain (welcome), Germany (??) and a few others. But most of you are here in the USA. So, for my USA readers, the Survival Blog has an interesting piece by law enforcement officer warning to Beware of Homeland Security Training. This is what our local police are being trained in by our government. In other words, your and my tax dollars are being used to turn you and me into criminals.  Are you as offended by this as I am?

So how does a person qualify as a potential domestic terrorist? Based on the training I have attended, here are characteristics that qualify:

He goes on the list of number of items such as expressions of libertarian philosophies, Second Amendment oriented views and membership in the (gasp) NRA, stockpiling food, water, medical supplies and purchasing gold or silver, religious views concerning Revelations, fear of Big Government, and insistance on the Constitution as the basis for Government action. Now, while I am not a Libertarian, I do side with the libertarians on a number of issues. Of course, my Second Amendment advocacy is out there. Isn't preparation always considered a good idea? I thought FEMA encouraged people to stockpile stuff like food and water.  Do DHS and FEMA talk to each other?  Finally, any Christian who hasn't at least read Revelations and wondered what this apocolyptic book means, and doesn't want to make sure when the music stops that he is standing with God....just sayin's all.

Look, if a police officer buys into this stuff, he will be seeing Domestic Terrorists all over the place.  And, sure enough, they provide some helpful tips on how to make a criminal out of someone lawfully going about his business:

Methods of developing evidence of terrorist activity from virtually any search have also been discussed. Various common materials which may be associated with homemade explosives are listed, such as lengths of pipe, gunpowder, matches, flammable liquids and fireworks. Officers are told when these items are found, they can be listed as “bomb making materials”. The training even goes so far as to instruct officers that the items are cleverly disguised as legitimate, such as gasoline stored near a lawn mower, pipes stored in a shop building or gunpowder stored with reloading materials.

One course I attended used the example of a person employed as a plumber being the target of a search warrant. In this example, the officers were told how to use his employment as a plumber as further evidence of terrorism. The suspect’s employment would be described as an elaborate scheme to justify possessing pipes and chemicals so as to have bomb making materials readily available. Based on this example, all plumbers are potential pipe bomb makers. All gun dealers are plotting to provide arms to gangs or terrorists. All pest control companies are preparing mass poisonings. By using this logic, simply having the ability to do something criminal automatically makes the person guilty of plotting the crime. With all the various methods of manufacturing methamphetamine, it would also be easy to claim that a disassembled clandestine drug lab was located during the search. In other words, it is easy to frame anyone for possessing bomb making materials (or other crimes) if the officer knows what items to list in the report and how to link these items to terrorism.

So, the DHS wants to be able to turn virtually anyone they desire into a criminal. Once upon a time in the country, to insist that the Government follow Constitutional procedures, and that each person recieved those natural rights protected by that Constitution was considered a patriot. When I was a young man, such a person would have been considered simply a crank. To now be considered a domestic terrorist flips the system on its head.  Can anyone look at this and not think we are heading towards a Fascist dictatorship?

So simple even a Progluddite can understand

In an earlier post, I pointed out that what the people who are creating the chaos, and the Islamists, who are doing the same thing, want to do is stampede the average American into capitulating to an old idea, the Strong Man, with them as the Strong Men, of course. It's all about power and control. In today's American Thinker, John Pechette has an article that looks at the issue from a slightly different angle, but ends up coming to the same conclusions. In Our New Age Saboteurs, Pechette takes the Leftists apart by creating a new word Progluddite Just as the original Luddites were afraid of the new industrial revolution that would make lives better, so the Progluddites keep screaming "Stop, go back! It used to be better."

Really? For whom?

Today's Progluddites have irrational technological taboos and preferences: they hate nuclear power and the internal combustion engine and love 'clean, sustainable' and inefficient energy sources. The taboo technologies are clearly more productive, and the so-called sustainable technologies are nothing but updated versions of the Medieval energy sources our ancestors discarded.

Progluddites, however, are not interested in productivity or efficiency. High productivity is conducive to individual liberty and free choice, whereas low productivity is more conducive to collectivism. Progluddites believe that individual liberty and free choice are dangerous. Progluddites believe that, if only our political and economic culture became collectivist, the modern consumerist society would cease to exist, all excesses and inequities would be eliminated, and humanity would save itself from a technologically-induced disaster.

The Collectivist Utopia envisioned by Progluddites is not modern in concept: it is purely feudalistic. In their Perfect State, a Progluddite Oligopoly, a cadre of Leftist experts, would have dictatorial powers and the vast majority would be vassals serving the interests of their self-anointed rulers. Our future under the thumb of the Progluddite Elites would be identical to the past in which our Dark Age ancestors suffered. Once again, the mass of mankind would be born with a saddle on its back, to be ridden by a favored few who are booted and spurred; once again mankind's lot would be one of tyranny, stagnation, poverty, drudgery, cold, and hunger. But Progluddites, because they exist on a higher moral plane, and rule by virtue of a New Age Divine Right, would be exempt from the rules that they force upon their inferiors.

If you didn't get it when I wrote about Mordor awakening, perhaps the Progluddite analogy will make more sense.  But make no mistake that these people mean to rule over you and me.