The Left's Rejection Of God

I have been reading Dennis Prager's book The Rational Bible: Genesis lately. Genesis introduces us to God, who God is, what his character is, what our relationship to Him, to other humans, and to His natural world should be.  ( As an aside, Prager points out that a part of God's character is that he doesn't mind, indeed he wants us to struggle with him.  The idea that we should blindly believe is not a correct notion.  This, by the way, is one way I know Islam is wrong.  For Islam rejects the struggle with God that Judaism and Christianity involve.  Islam means "submission," and every good Muslim submits to the will of Allah, who brooks nobody asking questions.  Prager doesn't say this, but I think God also has a sense of humor, and expects us to have one as well.)

If you have never read Genesis itself, I recommend you do so. But you will never see all that the book has to say without reading Prager's commentary. The Jew's have been thinking about and discussing the Torah (Hebrew word for the first 5 books of the Bible) for some 3,000 years.  Their thinking is contained in the Talmud.  So all this thought and pondering can certainly help when we Christians read the Bible.  In addition, having grown up with the Bible, and without much understanding of ancient history, I did not realize all the innovations in religious thinking that Genesis introduced. Now, I have made the point myself that the God of Creation has to stand outside of time and space, because he created time and space. But I did not realize how revolutionary the Genesis story actually was, and is again.

Thus it was that I was drawn today to a piece by Trevor Thomas over at The American Thinker today entitled Rejection of Moral Absolutes Plaques the Modern Left. Whether it is abortion (Genesis states that all human life is sacred because God breathed a soul into the man, Adam, that he did not breathe into any other creature), or gender (male and female he created them), or countless other issues, the Left recognizes no power higher than themselves. Whether they realize it or not, they claim the power of God. They claim the right to tell everyone else what is right and wrong based solely on their feelings. But God created the universe, and only He can tell us whether our actions will be good or evil. And their truly is no other choice: either something is good, or it is evil. There is no category called "white lies," or "being naughty." It is with this understanding that Martin Luther declared that all of a Christian's life is repentance. I see this daily in my own life.

Thomas writes:

If death — anyone's death — brings you joy, you should intently re-examine your worldview. Even the just execution of a mass murderer — which I support in every case — should not bring anyone joy. As a Christian, I often find myself opposed — spiritually, politically, and otherwise — to those outside my faith. However, I take no joy in anyone's death, especially those outside of my faith. Christianity teaches that "each one of us will give an account of himself to God." Any death that results in eternal separation from God is always particularly tragic.

However, for those who have put their faith in the things of this world, who are determined to rule their own world, death usually has no such significance. Thus, for such people, like the death of an "inconvenient" child, the death of an enemy is often something to celebrate. The most recent case in point is the death of the wealthy philanthropist David Koch. After Mr. Koch died, many on the Left again found themselves in a celebratory mood. We shouldn't be surprised that those who engage in or promote the evil "shout your abortion!" movement would celebrate the death of a political enemy.

Thomas concludes his list of the sins of the Left with this:

I hope there is soon a political reckoning. There will certainly be a spiritual one.

I too hope for a political reckoning, but I suspect there will not be one. And I agree that there will eventually be a spiritual reckoning, which I do not wish on anyone. But at the same time, a spiritual reckoning is a natural consequence of the actions that are being taken. God is merciful to those to whom he grants mercy, but he is also a terrible judge to those on whom he passes judgement. Hope for mercy, but fear the judgement. For we all deserve to be punished!

We All Need To Be The Grey Man

Today at the American Partisan, the Gray Man has a post entitled Are The New "Red Flag" Laws The Gun Grab We've Been Warned About? Please read the entire post, as it is not a long one, but in a nut shell, the answer is "yes."

RFL allow the advance confiscation of firearms from a person’s property based on little more (or in some cases, nothing more) than someone, ANYONE, reporting to “authorities” that the person may have said, done or otherwise indicated at some point in time that they might be a danger to themselves or someone else at some point in time in the future. The law enforcement is able to obtain an extreme risk protection order (ERPO) and forcibly confiscate all firearms from that person.

Due process comes later. That’s the problem with the laws. You can have your guns taken away and be forced to undertake a lengthy and costly legal journey in order to get them back, all because someone accused you of being dangerous. They don’t have to have hard proof. They just need the “authorities” to believe them enough to do it.

Obviously the legal process of getting your guns back is the punishment in itself. That’s the whole point.

Also, obviously, your accuser could be anybody you have ever met, even briefly. Have an argument with your neighbor? He could "Red Flag" you in revenge. And of course, the woman scorned, or just imagining herself scorned, could use these laws as a further way to take revenge on a man. But even people living miles away from you, and whom you have never met may "Red Flag" you based on reading your name and address in a newspaper list. Remember when newspapers were publishing the names of people with concealed carry permits?

Make an angry, politically-charged Facebook post? A RFL can be used to confiscate your guns. It has happened.

Make a Twitter post that “authorities” interpret as being Islamophohic? A RFL can be used to confiscate your guns. It has happened.

You get in an argument with your woman and piss her off? A RFL can be used to confiscate your guns. It has happened.

Spare me the talking points on the legal limits of RFL at the present time. All they needed to do for now is get the laws into place. Rest assured they will be administratively and bureaucratically tweaked and adjusted so that it gets EASIER for the boys wearing the Oakleys to kick your door in, and those bureaucratic and administrative tweaks will make it harder and more expensive for you to get your guns back. Assuming that you ever get them back at all.

So, what is a gun owner to do?

All the talk that’s been had in your group about being quiet about your guns… Put that into action now. Ditch the NRA stickers, stop the good old boys gun discussions down at the local watering hole, remove the vanity pics from Facebook (why do you still have FB?). No one needs to know about your guns if they don’t live in your house. It won’t be easy to change those habits, but it’s time now. The legal framework for taking your guns away simply for being a wrong-thinker is in place. The local Kommissar has his eyes open and the police will follow their orders to knock on your door when they get the order.

Shhhh...we all need to be the grey man.

Why Are Republicans So Willing To Give Up Our Rights For A Mess of Pottage?

It has been some years since I have broached this topic, and now is as good a time as any to remind my dear readers that the gun grabbers have never negotiated in good faith..  It is why so much of the gun community says "not one more inch!"  Today, at The Federalist Max McGuire has an article entitled Why Does "Compromise" Always Mean Gun Control Wins? In particular, since the American people are being asked to give up a Constitutionally protected right, at least in part, shouldn't the other side have to give up a Constitutionally protected right as well? It seems to be properly symmetrical to me, but what do I know?

 McGuire makes several good points.

Gun rights supporters are so unwilling to compromise because we know we are getting nothing in return. The left’s idea of a “compromise” is that gun owners get to keep some of their guns instead of having to give up all of them. But even if that were palatable — and it’s not — we know any deal we agree to now will not be honored in the future.

McGuire then goes on to illustrate an example where the gun rights side did indeed compromise, by allowing the Fed to run background checks, but of course, those could only be a maximum of 72 hours. Otherwise, the government could simply ignore background checks and essentially keep anyone from obtaining a gun. But now, of course, the compromise reached then is being re-litigated by gun grabbers who now want so called "universal" background checks.

Herein is the problem, then. The Left would never agree to give up a Constitutionally protected right, such as freedom of the press for itself.  But it works tirelessly to force the law abiding gun owners to give up a slice of their rights here, another slice there.  Meanwhile is the Socialist Rifle Association on board with giving up gun rights? See for yourself. And what about the various John Brown Gun Clubs, this one in North Carolina. You think they are going to give up their guns? Why do I not think so?

Now, McGuire mostly concentrates on the current round of background check laws, which, quite frankly, are a form of security theater, as I have posted on this site before. Law abiding gun buyers will abide by the law, while criminals will evade it. They will steal a gun, or obtain a stolen gun from the black market. Of course, law abiding people do not need a background check, which is why I refer to these as security theater. They are feel good legislation for symbolic purposes only.

But what about "Red Flag" laws? These violate the 2nd, 4th, and 6th Amendments all at once. Are the gun grabbers giving up anything; anything at all? Why are so many Republicans willing to give up our rights for a mess of pottage?

The Mediocrity Of Our "Elites"

So, I am an old man, but not so old that I do not remember how it was, back when.  So it is that the piece by Kurt Schlichter today resonates with me.  Kurt Schlichter writes that All the People who Think They Are Better Than You Are Much, Much Worse.

Never before have so many snobs had so little to be snobbish about. It’s not like the ruling caste that turns up its collective snout at the people who actually make this country work has a CV full of achievements to back up its arrogance. Our elite is anything but. It’s a collection of pedestrian mediocrities who inherited our civilization from the people who actually created it and fought for it, and like every spoiled child who was handed free stuff by his doting mommy and daddy, our elite is resentful and obnoxious.

We’re ruled by a bunch of Veruca Salts.

...snip...

We know what America achieved under the old ruling class. It beat the Nazis – the real Nazis, not the fake bugaboo “Nazis” that the left labels everyone to the right of Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit. It fought through the Depression. It trashed the Democrat’s Jim Crow regime. It designed the ’65 Mustang, created the Big Mac and put a man on the moon. It crushed the dirty commies in the Cold War.

The old elite was not perfect, but at least you can point to some tics in the “WIN” column. Not so with the coterie of half-wits running our institutions today. It’s all check marks under “LOSS.” Iraq. The Wall Street Meltdown. Obamacare. Obama himself.

Oh, and then there’s Jeffrey Epstein.

I know there have always been scandals, but truly the record of achievements of the cast of clowns that pretend to know better than I how to live my life and spend my money is appallingly small.

The first small scale circuits were designed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I remember seeing people walking around with the earliest transistor radios.  (Indeed, I got one for Christmas one year, and it was a cherished item for many years after.  For those too young to remember, the transistor replaced the older vacuum tubes that had powered electronics for a generation. I can remember the television repair man coming to our house to replace worn out tubes in our black and white television set.)

Thus were born the first solid state electronics. Then came the early integrated circuits, when I was in college. I acquired, at considerable expense to me at the time, an early example of the new integrated circuitry in the form of a Hewlett Packard 45 calculator. It cost some $400 back in 1974. That was a lot of money for a college student to spend. I used the new calculator to study civil and structural engineering, things that are now not even spoken of as "technology," though of course without that technology, the so called "tech" stuff would not be possible. Imagine if you didn't have clean running water in your home, or paved roads, or if your home was a yurt built from sticks and animal skins. Amazon would be useless because there would be no trucks to deliver goods.  Yes, truck trailers are designed to carry the loads they do by engineers.  And we in turn stand on the shoulders of giants as well.

Young people today have little sense of history, or science and technology building upon itself.  As late as the early 1990s Mrs. PolyKahr and I ran around all over the place with no way to communicate with the other.  We didn't have cell phones, though mobile phones had been available for at least a decade by then.  What would the modern child do without a cell phone?

What the cast of clowns trying to run our lives do not realize is that the average man and woman doing things like plumbing, heavy equipment operating, working in a factory building goods for sale, and more have more in the way of useful accomplishments than Filonia Van Pantsuit or Pocahontas.   All they have really done is lie and cheat their way to wealth and power.  But an excessive desire for wealth and power is not a good look.  For better to have actually earned your wealth and power by...you know...serving real people with things they really want. 

Florida Man Denied Second Amendment Rights By Red Flag Law

Beth Baumann has a piece over at Townhall.com entitled Florida Man Lost His 2A Rights, Thanks To Red Flag Laws And Mistaken Identity. Baumann in turn refers to an Ammoland article which can be found here. Please read both articles.

Baumann's point in writing her piece is that here is the exact thing many of us feared, and have warned about.  A law abiding Concealed Carry permit holder has been disarmed because a court made a mistake.  Now he must prove to the courts satisfaction that he is not the guy they are looking to disarm.  And of course, disarming a person who has gone to the trouble of going though all of the hoops to obtain a Concealed Carry permit, and probably obeys all the places where one can not legally carry (thus requiring constant taking off and putting back on the gun, and risking an accidental discharge each time), is much easier than taking away a drug dealer's guns.  That drug dealer might well shoot back.

Meanwhile, nobody except Carpenter, of course, seemed shocked that in the United States his due process rights could be so easily violated.  Carpenter will have to prove his innocence after the fact.  I wonder if the complainant will show up in court?  And how much will it cost to go to court with competent counsel?  No requirement apparently for the State to pay even though they had a description of both the drug dealer and this Carpenter, and they could have seen immediately that the individual they were targeting was not the correct individual.

But then, this is the plan.  The Democrats don't plan to disarm us all at once, sending people into neighborhoods to collect all the guns.  No, instead they intend to take  them one by one, under color of law.  And apparently our Congress is unconcerned that all of this is entirely Unconstitutional.  It is as if they are saying "Constitution?  We don't need no stinking Constitution!"  And they will depend on the average gun owner not making a fuss because the few reports they hear about will be couched in the language of this person or that was a danger to himself or others.

Of course, I am not a lawyer, and I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I seem to remember that there is a crime with which people can be charged for violating rights. Perhaps Mr. Carpenter could swear out a warrant against the people who denied him his rights? Or does a Federal prosecutor have to decide to take up the matter. I know where that would be heading.

How to Nullify the Second Amendment

David Codrea at the blog The War On Guns pointed me to a piece at Conservative Review entitled The same people who pushed for early release of gun felons now want to take guns without due process by Daniel Horowitz.

For every person who fits the profile of the El Paso shooter, there are likely thousands who fit the profile of Maurice Hill, the man arrested for shooting six cops in north Philadelphia yesterday. Based on a quick look at court documents from Philadelphia and Delaware Counties, Hill has a rap sheet dating back to 2001 that includes charges for illegal gun possession, drugs, driving offenses, assault, burglary, theft, robbery, kidnapping, and attempted murder. However, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he was only “convicted six times on charges that involved illegal possession of guns, drug dealing, and aggravated assault.”

...snip...

Nope. Instead, they very people who have created the drive in the criminal justice system to let these people out of jail are pushing a war on guns for law-abiding people. Meanwhile, the criminals who illegally get guns every day in places like Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Chicago are never punished!

Most Americans understand that bad criminals do the most harm to public safety, not any single weapon or object. Yet the very people pushing a war on guns are the ones who support letting out dangerous criminal from prison. That begins with Lindsey Graham, who, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is now teaming up with Richard Blumenthal to push a “red flag” bill stripping guns from people without due process, without addressing the issue of locking up the actual dangerous people with criminal records. This is the “lock up the guns and let the criminals out” approach.

As Codrea rightly notes in the title to this posting, So It Can't Be About Crime Control... No, it can't. Which begs the question, what is it about?

Lindsay Grahamnesty may have been the hero of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, but just as a leopard can not change his spots, Graham has not changed his either. He has always been a Democrat disguised as a Republican doing the Democrats bidding. In other words, a RINO.  While Senator McCain was alive, of course, he palled around with John McCain because these two shared much in common. But neither would miss a chance to stab conservatives in the back if the opportunity presented itself. Now he wants to release gun felons while making as many normal Americans felons as possible. What a guy.

But then, you ask, what is it the Democrats want?  They want to create as much hate, discontent, and chaos as possible.  When society is at peace, and peaceful, nobody is seeking someone to "do something."  The Democrats want to create the conditions to have a majority of people crying for someone, anyone, to "do something," anything.  And of course here come the Democrats with their gun control bills, their Universal background checks, their Red Flag laws, their Ammunition restrictions, and every other thing they have dreamed up to limit the Second Amendment.

And why is that so important to Democrats?  In case you haven't notice, most Democrats, and I am sorry to say a lot of Republicans, hold a dim view of you and me.  They feel sure they know better how to live our lives than we do, and they are prepared to shove their ideas down our throats if they can just get us to give up our guns.

NFA 1934: A Massive Infringement Of Our Rights

William Sullivan explains How The Federal Government Nullified The Second Amendment To 'Ban' Automatic Firearms. Remember that the Second Amendment says that “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” What the Federal Government did was to use a subterfuge, a ruse that they were only taxing automatic weapons, not really banning them. In 1934, to attempt an outright ban might have roused the natives with pitch forks tar and feathers. Now, why the supreme court didn't squawk can perhaps be chalked up to the same type of events that seems to have upheld Obamacare.

Both Daniel Webster, and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall said that "The power to tax is the power to destroy."  Most of the legislators who passed the law, the President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the Justices of the Supreme Court would have been very aware of the truth of the quote.

This is the progressives’ magic trick, and some Americans fall for it due to a simple deficiency in human nature. For example, Chris Cuomo of CNN recently tweeted that “[t]here was no individual right” in the Second Amendment even “contemplated” until Antonin Scalia inferred the “individual right” in the Heller v. District of Columbia decision.

...snip...

This was a roundabout infringement upon Second Amendment rights that is somehow still championed by conservatives looking to score sensibility points with the left, and aligning with Cuomo’s position.

“Machine guns were outlawed because there was no need that justified the risk. Was that wrong, too?” Cuomo asks.

The short answer is, yes, that was wrong, too -- if the Second Amendment is the measure. And to be clear, the Second Amendment is the only sentence in the Constitution where an individual right to firearms is addressed.

I have made the point before that any time the government does not trust us, we should not trust the government. It means the government is doing something that will, as cited above, cause the natives to break out the pitchforks, tar and feathers.  I can not see how any intelligent person could not see through that ruse, and I suspect that the NRA at the time could see it too.  But the NRA actually thought that machine guns were too much for the average gun owner too.  The NRA had come a long way from its founding by Northern Civil War officers concerned about the lack of marksmanship by Americans.  But that is the state of the NRA:  they often compromise our rights because they lack the guts to stand up for them.

I believe the National Firearms Act of 1934 is a massive infringement of our right to bear arms, and should have been challenged at the time.  One of the things that make it difficult to challenge today is the fact that it has been on the books so long.  This will end up affecting the thinking of the Supremes.  And then there is the John Roberts factor to consider.  Roberts has become the new "swing" voter on the court, rendering Trump's picks for the court somewhat moot.

Now, I don't "need" a Thompson submachine gun, nor do I "need" a fully automatic M16.  Both would be relatively expensive weapons for which I would have little use.  But I should be able to legally purchase either if I wanted to.  Remember, it is called the Bill of Rights, not the Bill of Needs.  Anyone who starts of with "Nobody needs a ______ (you name whatever weapon of part) ,,, is setting you up for a utilitarian argument.  Don't go there.  Stick to discussion of your rights.