"Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy,
And the dogs that bark revolution.
Drunk with talk, liars and believers.
I believe in my tusks. Long live freedom and damn the ideologies!"
(Robinson Jeffers)
My first thought was for stores to invest in security doors. But storefronts almost all incorporate display windows; thieves that know they won’t be opposed by superior force will smash through them. It’s already been done several times, sometimes with a vehicle. Even armor glass will shatter under that kind of force. So that’s no solution.
My second thought was for stores to close their retail storefronts and go “delivery only.” But a thief can follow a delivery truck, assault its driver wherever he stops to make a delivery, and make free with the truck’s contents. Once again, the absence of a superior opposing force is what matters.
So there must be a superior opposing force. Such a force must possess lethal armament that it can and will use at need. A sufficiently high probability of death will deter most thieves, even those that travel in packs. But where are we to find such a force?
Only the readiness to deal death to attackers has any prospect of success. But even that falls short of perfection. Armored cars with armed guards have been successfully attacked, too. If the thief (or gang of thieves) is heavily armed and willing to risk counterfire, he’ll take his chances.
Amazon’s delivery trucks have been attacked many times. The driver is usually helpless before such an attack. He may even have been instructed not to resist. In a quiet residential neighborhood, most of its residents at their jobs, where would his protection come from?
Perfection cannot be the standard. Even were all of us to go armed at all times, there would be some forcible thievery. Ironically, many states deem the protection of property an inadequate justification for the use of lethal force. In New York, a homeowner is forbidden to shoot a burglar unless he can convince a jury that his own life was in danger. Else he may spend several years in prison as the price for stopping the burglar. Never mind that such legal protection of the thief’s “right to life” practically licenses home invaders to do as they will.
Rose Wilder Lane, in The Discovery of Freedom, noted that what protects most of us is other people’s respect for our rights, rather than the prospect of arrest, trial, and incarceration. But when that respect declines, so does the invisible defense of our persons and property it once provided.
Americans must become a people in arms once again. Yes, there will be consequences. Some people will die – and some of those will be good people. But with the general understanding of and respect for rights of all kinds having declined so sharply, the time has come for Nemesis to return to the stage and teach the villains once again what follows from Hubris.
A couple of days ago, something unusual happened Across the Water: A Briton dared to defend another Briton against the threat of rape by an immigrant.
If you aren’t familiar with the details of the event, the defender was a 14-year-old Scottish girl named Mayah Sommers. The intended victim was her 12-year-old sister. The would-be rapist was from... somewhere else, probably the Middle East or Africa. Mayah protected her sister by brandishing a large knife and a hatchet at the immigrant. Apparently that was enough to daunt him, and thank God for that.
The story is resounding throughout the U.K. I have no idea how much currency it’s achieved here or elsewhere. Young Mayah is drawing comparisons to Boadicea, to Joan of Arc, and to other courageous women known to history. She deserves as much praise as she’s received, and more.
However, her courage has had other consequences, not all of which were easy to foresee.
The one that’s drawn the most cries of outrage was Mayah’s immediate arrest for brandishing a bladed weapon. In emasculated Britain, that’s a criminal offense, and never mind the wherefores. The probability is high that popular sentiment will compel the dismissal of that charge, but as in all such things we must wait and see.
After that comes the dawning recognition that the U.K.’s laws against even the most minimal personal armament – even carrying pepper spray is outlawed, barring specific police permission – are utterly insane. They amount to a license for the would-be predator to do what he likes to less aggressive and weaker prey. Horror at the idea that innocent Britons – men and women both – are forbidden to possess and carry the means of self-defense has taken a long time to ripen, but today it’s fully upon the Sceptered Isle.
Third is the de facto position of The State: protect the predator from the consequences of his deeds, especially if he’s an immigrant, a Muslim, or both. Put baldly, it seems incomprehensible. Yet U.K. governments maintain that posture so consistently that one must infer that it was deliberately chosen. It lends weight to the suggestion that The State values the immigrants above the lives and well-being of native Britons.
Fourth and last is the rising hope that some measure of masculine courage and native pride might be kindled in the larger British populace by Mayah’s actions. I must admit that I hope for that as well. Britain deserves better than to be Islamicized and removed from the brotherhood of Western civilization. But the odds are against it, for a simple reason.
Britons fear weapons more than their invaders.
The technical term for a fear of weapons is hoplophobia. It seems endemic in the U.K. The suggestion, made by Larry Correia among others, that we should mass-produce and air-drop handguns to beleaguered Britons has been met with rejection by Britons themselves. They fear the consequences of mass armament more than what’s being done to them by the invading hordes.
Robert A. Heinlein was adamant that a slave must free himself. What of the slave who prefers slavery to freedom?
This saga may have a few more stanzas to run. Mayah Sommers is being hailed as a symbol of reborn British courage and defiance: a Mockingjay, if you will. Her example may yet galvanize what masculinity and defiance remain buried in the British soul. If it’s simply too ironic that a young teenage girl must teach those things to British men, then so be it. The Sceptered Isle needs her example too badly to quail at the disgrace of it.
ST. LOUIS (KMOV.com) -- A grand jury indicted Mark and Patricia McCloskey Tuesday on charges of exhibiting guns at protesters in a June incident in their neighborhood and added a charge of tampering with evidence for both members of the couple.
Their attorney, Joel Schwartz, said he wasn’t surprised by the indictment, saying the grand jury didn’t have all the facts.
“Once all the facts are out, it will be clear the McCloskeys committed no crime whatsoever,” Schwartz said. “Frankly because the grand jury is not an adversarial process and defense counsel are not allowed in there and I have no idea what was stated to the grand jury and what law was given to the grand jury.”
Just in case you don’t remember how this originally went down:
A bunch of protesters broke down a locked gate that closed off a private road into the private residential compound where the McCloskeys live;
The protesters marched down that road shouting slogans;
The McCloskeys confronted them: him with an AR-15; her with a disabled handgun.
The protesters shouted threats at them, but eventually departed without violence.
So the affair starts with criminal vandalism and trespassing, continues with an attempt to intimidate peaceable residents, is thwarted by two residents, and nothing more occurs. You’d think it a textbook case of the armed citizen defending his rights.
But citizens don’t have any such rights when there’s a leftist district attorney to deal with.
I expect that, should these scrofulous charges actually come before a jury, the McCloskeys will be acquitted. But as we’ve heard all too frequently, “the process is the punishment.” What the legal system is doing to the McCloskeys is intended to deter other citizens from exercising their God-given right to defend what’s honestly theirs with legally owned weapons.
Firearms, it seems, are for poking holes in paper targets. Oh, and for occasionally shooting a deer...but only when the Omnipotent State says that’s okay. But never, ever to be used to defend your rights.
I think the Founding Fathers had a different opinion:
“That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United states who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” – Samuel Adams
“Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.” – Elbridge Gerry
“There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet an enemy.” – George Washington
“For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Always remember that an armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics – that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe.” – James Madison
“A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms.” – Richard Henry Lee
“The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone...The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition.” – James Madison
“The great object is, that every man be armed...Every one who is able may have a gun.” – James Madison
“The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals.” – James Monroe
Then there’s this, from many diverse, temporally distributed sources, and also from your humble Curmudgeon:
Rights are those things you can morally acquire or defend by the use of force.
Apropos of which, were you aware that the first state laws restricting gun ownership were passed to keep guns out of the hands of Negroes? To enable vicious mobs to wreak violence upon Negroes’ lives and properties on a “Niggertown Saturday Night?”
I’ve always been a mouthy sort, free with my convictions and opinions. It’s gotten me into a fair number of battles over every subject under the Sun. Moreover, I’ve never been a “respecter of persons;” I didn’t care about the supposedly greater knowledge or credentials of whoever I’d decided to dispute.
The Sixties were a tumultuous time in many ways, including for the inception of a distinctly anti-military current of belief that infected persons from every walk of life. Contrary to what most might imagine, it didn’t start with Vietnam. The tempest over that affair came second to another campaign that was orchestrated by America’s enemies, especially the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA).
The expansion of the Soviet Union’s satellite empire in eastern Europe, formally known as the Warsaw Pact, was checked by NATO, especially America’s “nuclear umbrella” over the NATO nations. Our ground forces in Europe, even at their largest (approximately 330,00 troops), would not have been sufficient to defeat the enormous Red Army. They were there to slow its advance long enough for the U.S. to mobilize and dispatch its nuclear deterrent forces, especially the long-range bomber fleet. At that time Our European containment strategy depended totally on those forces, and on the specter of complete devastation they posed the U.S.S.R.
Naturally, the Communists wanted to see those forces vanish. But the masters of the Soviet Union could make no progress in their “disarmament” initiatives at that time. The Cuban Missile Crisis alerted America’s strategists to the Communists’ intent to expand in the Western Hemisphere. The analysts at RAND, Hudson, and other strategy-oriented think tanks saw the situation too clearly: in the absence of our nuclear deterrent, the Soviets would continue their military advance wherever they had or could establish a beachhead. They had a huge number of men at arms, and were willing to pauperize their subjects to whatever degree was required to provision them.
So the Communists and their fellow travelers attacked America’s nuclear warfighting power “from underneath:” i.e., by striving to turn ordinary Americans against it. Their propaganda campaign emphasized the horror of a worldwide nuclear holocaust. And as has so often been the case with left-wing propaganda efforts, theirs included a strong thrust into the schools. After all, it’s easier to frighten impressionable youngsters than adults with greater knowledge of facts and conditions.
In high school, seldom did a day go by that I failed to hear some sort of anti-nuclear slogan or diatribe. Mostly they came from the teachers. Whenever I had the opportunity, I would argue against them. But of course, a high school student’s views don’t count for much in an argument with a credentialed adult.
Then as now, the most striking aspect of such exchanges was their horror of nuclear weapons themselves. They were “dangerous beyond measure,” “instruments of mass death” that could “poison the whole world.” The prospect was “too terrible even to contemplate.” They simply “had to go,” lest some “warmongers” in the Pentagon decide that there was no point to having them but not using them.
None of the people spouting such drivel ever mentioned the Soviets’ nuclear arsenal, which was growing even faster than America’s. Their focus was always on America’s nuclear forces and the absolute, immediate, imperative necessity of eliminating them.
Perhaps some of them were sincerely afraid of the possibility of a nuclear exchange and what it would do to the United States. Some were definitely pacifists, who opposed the existence of conventional armed forces with equal fervor. But some were enemies of the United States...and not all of them bothered to hide their convictions.
The propaganda campaigns against America’s nuclear forces always focused on the weapons themselves: their massive destructive power and the supposed after-effects of their use. The propagandists strove to inculcate fear of the devices themselves in whoever would listen to them. The mere existence of the weapons, they proclaimed, “puts the whole world at risk.” The weapons’ role in preserving the peace of Europe and checking Soviet expansionism was never mentioned.
Ironically, to this date no one has ever been harmed by an H-Bomb. Even liberal New York Times columnist Russell Baker, himself no great fan of the military, admitted it:
Although I don’t exactly love the H-bomb, it comes close to my idea of what a bomb should be. First, it fulfills the human need to have a bomb. Second, of all the bombs in circulation these days, it is the one you are least likely to be assaulted with.
In the more than thirty years since it became popular, it has never been used against anybody. A person could get fond of a bomb like that. There is no other bomb with a comparable safety record.
[From “Son of H-Bomb,” published on July 31, 1977.]
Compare Baker’s clarity in the above to the hysteria of the anti-nuclear-weapons types and decide which you prefer. I’ve made my choice, and not solely for Baker’s semi-facetious reasons.
The campaign against nuclear weapons foreshadowed the efforts of today’s Left to make young Americans fear guns: not their use but their very existence. That effort moved into high gear only much later. Yet its psychology was exactly the same: Make them fear the inanimate object. Never mention the men who control it.
I could go into all sorts of rhapsodies about the civilizing power of weapons, but there’s no need for that here. What came into sharp focus this morning, as I was contemplating various aspects of our milieu, was this: If you’re focused on A, you’re not looking at B – or anything else.
The propagandists who harped on the unacceptable danger of nuclear weapons knew this. Whether or not they did so consciously, in compelling attention to the weapons themselves they succeeded in deflecting attention away from other important matters. They never addressed the humans who control the weapons, who pondered why and how to use them, and the weapons’ other “merely by existing” effects on international relations.
Nuclear weapons, I’ve argued in other places and at other times, have “democratized” warfare. For some time before them, national “leaders” felt immunized against the personal consequences of war. The H-Bomb and the intercontinental delivery system ruined that for them; they can no longer be certain of surviving an all-out war. Deep bunkers provide only superficial reassurance, as there’s no theoretical upper limit to how large an H-Bomb can be. If detonated at ground level, the Soviets’ 50 Megaton “Tsar Bomba” could destroy any bunker in existence. Larger H-Bombs can be built without straining the physics involved. If any such superbombs exist, they’re a closely guarded secret.
In a world partitioned into States of varying rapacity, the ability to threaten the inescapable annihilation of any would-be warmaker is precious beyond price.
I could go on, but I think the point has been made. Remember always that he who wants you to obsess over one thing is keeping you from giving serious attention to other things. Keep in mind the possibility that getting you to focus on A isn’t his true aim – that what he really cares about is preventing you from thinking about B. Ask yourself: Is this person’s desire that I should become absorbed with his issue really about keeping me from addressing other things of equal or greater importance?
While gun prohibitionists have been complaining all week about the Trump administration’s memorandum declaring gun stores and their employees “essential”—demanding the gun shops be closed—Reason contributing editor J.D. Tuccille has offered this warning:
“Officials with fever dreams of expanded power thrive on the fear generated by the COVID-19 pandemic…These overreaching public officials are enabled by fear.”
It is fear that anti-gunners appear to be using to advance their agenda. In an email blast earlier this week, anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety had this to say about the Department of Homeland Security’s decision that gun shops are essential.
“This is just one more example of the gun lobby’s penchant for using national crises as an excuse to grow corporate profits and scare people into buying more guns.”
Reuters reported the comments from Everytown President John Feinblatt, who contended, “Adding more guns to more homes during a time of more anxiety could lead to more deaths. And that’s the last thing we need when our hospitals are already bursting at the seams.”
Please read it all. A serious, socially and economically destabilizing crisis is when we most need to be prepared to defend ourselves – and not just from private predators. My upstate neighbors are fearful of what Andrew Cuomo might do to “requisition” supplies from them. After all, he’s already commanded the National Guard to seize ventilators from upstate hospitals, so what could any New York State resident imagine would be beyond him?
This is a time to be armed to the teeth and ready to fight. Myself, I answer the doorbell with a shotgun – a Mossberg recoil-compensated 12-gauge in camo green – held at port arms. I heartily recommend the practice to all my Gentle Readers. Granted, the UPS delivery guy was a bit startled when he dropped off my most recent wine purchases, but there’s a downside to everything, right?
Indian summer...
The shops are shuttered and the crowds are gone,
The souvenir sellers are moving on.
Like summer lovers.
Indian summer...
The earth is cracked beneath the midday sun,
You've dragged your shadow round these streets too long.
There is no cover.
Come stay—
We'll live gazebo lives,
And let the world outside pass us by.
Right here...
In our Arabian Nights,
Until the Northern Lights cross the sky.
There is no other.
Indian summer...
The storm that drove you here is far behind
What keeps you waiting on this beach tonight
It's long been over.
Come stay—
We'll live gazebo lives,
And let the world outside pass us by.
Right here...
In our Arabian Nights,
Until the Northern Lights cross the sky.
There is no other.
Come stay—
Right here...
[Alasdair Ian Stewart]
Play the video. Listen to the song. Immerse yourself in its gentle melancholy. Let the mood of surrender to the passing of summer take hold of you. What emotions does it evoke? What does it make you want to plead for?
Yeah. Me too.
If you’re familiar with software debugging practices, the term breakpoint won’t require explanation. For everyone else: It’s an artificial halt the engineer inserts into a program at a selected point. It allows him to inspect the internal conditions of the program at that point: what’s in its variables and data structures, and therefore what it’s about to do next.
If I were “debugging” the United States of America, I’d insert a breakpoint right about here and now. I’d take a very close look at the conditions that pertain and the attitudes of Americans toward those conditions. And I’d give especial attention to the statements and revealed intentions of those whose highest aspiration is the presidency.
This article provides a backdrop about Americans’ attitudes and overall knowledge of their country. A few citations:
According to an American Bar Association survey, only 38 percent of all Americans know that the U.S. Constitution is the highest law in the land.
According to a new survey that was conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 76 percent of Americans support “red flag” gun laws.
A recent Rasmussen survey discovered that 28 percent of all Democrats actually believe that it should be “illegal” to be a member of the NRA.
Now give your attention – yes, I know it’s painful – to the collection of miscreants vying for the presidential nomination of the Democrat Party. Every one of them regards the Constitution as a mere “paper barrier” to his agenda, something he could rip through with an “executive order.” All of them have said so. You see, they want to take our guns, and they don’t regard the Constitution as an important impediment.
Until recently, they hedged. They qualified their statements to obscure their intentions. But no longer. They’re out in the open now. They don’t regard your right to keep and bear arms as a limitation on them.
A few folks have reacted with the appropriate outrage. A few have openly declared their readiness to resist such an intrusion on our God-given rights to defend ourselves. And the Left is not happy about that:
Last month, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke proposed a modest solution to the relentless tide of mass shootings: a mandatory buyback program for every AR-15 in the country. The View co-host Meghan McCain responded with a dire warning. “The AR-15 is by far the most popular gun in America, by far,” she told her fellow panelists. “I was just in the middle of nowhere Wyoming, if you’re talking about taking people’s guns from them, there’s going to be a lot of violence.”
Tucker Carlson echoed McCain’s blood-soaked sentiment on his Tuesday night broadcast. “So, this is—what you are calling for is civil war,” he said. “What you are calling for is an incitement to violence. It’s something I wouldn’t want to live here when that happened, would you? I’m serious.” Erick Erickson, a prominent conservative columnist, also warned of tragedy. “I know people who keep AR-15’s buried because they’re afraid one day the government might come for them,” he wrote on Twitter. “I know others who are stockpiling them. It is not a stretch to say there’d be violence if the [government] tried to confiscate them.”
“There would be violence” neatly elides what’s actually being claimed: Some gun-rights activists would murder government officials who try to enforce a duly passed law. This isn’t an extreme viewpoint among such gun enthusiasts. If anything, it’s one of their central tenets.
The cited article becomes even more shrill from there, but those first three paragraphs should suffice. Quoth Glenn Reynolds:
[A] law that violates the Constitution — which gun confiscation absolutely would — isn’t a “duly passed law.” It’s a usurpation of authority. Funny that all these people who have been yammering about #Resistance and punching Nazis seem okay with the idea of laws that violate the Constitution, laws that are — of course — themselves enforced with guns and violence.
Of course they’re comfortable with that! They’re the good guys, don’t y’know. The rules don’t apply to them because their hearts are pure! They get to do what they please to us knuckle-draggers. It’s all in pursuit of the “greater good.”
They can get away with that posture, without being tarred, feathered, and run out of the country on a rail, because “only 38 percent of all Americans know that the U.S. Constitution is the highest law in the land.”
That’s what November 2020 will be about, Gentle Reader.
“States, like men, have their growth, their manhood, their decrepitude and their decay.” – Walter S. Landor
The season of America’s manhood might be drawing to its end. Unlike the summer of the year, there’s no way to know that for certain. The calendar gives no indications thereof. But attitudes, trends, and events might. One harbinger might be the paucity of Americans willing to fight for their rights. Another, stronger one might be the paucity of Americans who know what their rights are, and how they differ from a permission granted by the State.
A man – not a generic, sex-unspecified homo sapiens this time, but a man — whose rights are threatened does the same thing he’d do if his loved ones were threatened: he gets the lead out. He shoulders his rifle, aims as carefully as circumstances permit, and fires at his attackers. He keeps firing until the issue is settled. If he must go down, he’ll go down fighting.
We really don’t want a problem with you, believe me. And there is no reason for us to have a problem, because we both can read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and neither of us requires a team of black-robed mystics to translate its plain English into Newspeak for improved comprehension. You and I both understand what “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” means, without requiring five out of nine politically appointed Supremes to tell us that it does not mean what it very plainly states in black and white.
Now, as long as Mr. Security Agent remembers that he swore the same oath that millions of Americans swore, to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, he will certainly not permit himself to take part in gun confiscation raids. But if he does, well, let’s be frank: tens of millions of Americans would then consider him to be the very domestic enemy that they swore to defend the Constitution against.
That’s from retired SEAL and current novelist Matt Bracken. I have no doubt that he’d be firing (and yelling obscenities) at the confiscators to his very last breath. I hope his belief is correct that tens of millions of us, his countrymen, would be beside him, firing our own weapons at the traducers of the Constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms. But there’s only one way to find out – and I don’t want to go there.
Do you?
The election in November 2020 won’t settle the matter. Here are a few thoughts from William Gensert of American Thinker. First, should Trump win a second term:
Those on the left will not allow a Trump victory, even should he win the popular vote and the Electoral College. They are used to getting what they want and like spoiled brats, have learned that tantrums work.
Should Donald Trump prevail in his bid for a second term, the left will go insane, deploying every “insurance policy” weapon at their disposal to negate four more years of the Orange Man. What Obama, Comey, and Brennan et al. did to Trump in his first term will seem mild in comparison to what the left is planning should he win.
Antifa, the military arm of the Democratic Party, has not spent the last three years practicing and organizing merely to sit on the sidelines. They have used the interregnum to mobilize and learn tactics, while probing to find what government will allow, media will trumpet, and the public will endure.
But what if Trump should lose to the Democrat nominee?
The right will never believe the Democrats didn’t cheat their way to victory; in addition to understanding that a Democratic President will undemocratically implement policies by executive order that are inimical to their interests and desires....
Tone-deaf to this silent majority and emboldened by victory, the new president will borrow Barry’s “pen and phone” and start issuing executive orders throwing open our borders, banning fossil fuels, and of course, implementing “common sense” gun control. Buoyed by media, the new president will start with universal background checks and a gun registry.
Eventually, the president will overreach, signing an order for gun confiscation, euphemistically called, “mandatory buybacks.” Antifa and their ilk will flood the streets in support of seizing these “weapons of war.” Media will declare, “It’s the will of the people.”
And for the right, that will be the last straw (plastic or paper).
And Trump, be it remembered, isn’t all that solid a defender of the right to keep and bear arms. He’s flirted with endorsing “red flag” laws that violate both the Fourth Amendment’s guarantees of personal security and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process of law. He might sign one that’s brought to his desk. Only time will tell.
Gensert says, in effect, that a civil war is inevitable. What’s the likelihood that he’s correct? Are there any imaginable actions, other than complete surrender to the Left, that could avert those courses? And if the answer is “no, there are none,” are you prepared for what Gensert predicts above?
Who can protest and does not is an accomplice in the act. – the Talmud
I’ve long held that gun confiscation would indeed be the straw that finally breaks the American camel’s back; these days, though, I’m less certain of that than I once was. Already we’ve seen at least one gun owner killed by police in a red-flag-law confiscation attempt, without much more than a murmur from anyone. It will happen again; count on it. So what happens next time? The time after that? The time after that?
As I’ve said again and again: no sane, normal person wants to have to kill anybody, and will put up with one hell of a lot in order to avoid it. And the overwhelming majority of gun owners are more sane, normal, and above all responsible than most. Their perfectly justifiable reluctance to pull the trigger, especially on a cop, is one of the factors that make me doubt my previous blanket assumption that gun confiscation would amount to putting the match to the American powder keg.
If Mike is correct, then a Democrat victory come Election Day 2020 would guarantee the decline of the U.S. into just another elite-managed oligarchy. The Roberts Supreme Court could not be relied upon to impede it. (Besides, it lacks an enforcement arm with which to impose its judgment on the rest of the federal government.) The Indian summer of our Republic would have begun. Its descent into winter would be swift, for once disarmed, our populace would have no means of resisting the tyranny to come.
“This isn’t some Outfit wiseguy who’s about to torture you in the middle of a rape. This is premeditated murder of people with families, and lovers, and kids in nursery school, and worries about the future, just like us. And on top of that, these are people who champion the democratic process. You are going to be killing a man because he voted the wrong way.”
“No,” Cindy said without hesitation. “I am going to be killing a man because he voted away something that wasn’t his to vote on in the first place. The people making the laws think that anything is okay if they can get 51% of the legislators or the people to go along with it. One hundred percent of the people making the rules in the Vegas outfit thought it was just fine for me to be locked in a room and taken out when it suited them. I’ve had enough of that.”
Today, there is a Last Graf. It’s no more than this:
Tell the legislators who represent your district and state that should they vote to infringe your Second Amendment rights, you will hold them personally responsible.
Is it guaranteed to prevent the grim scenarios presented above? No. There are no guarantees in politics. Legislators have often chosen to believe what they preferred over the evidence before them. But it has a chance of turning them aside from their disarmament schemes...perhaps the only chance.
Remind them that the armed men who surround them can’t keep them from being targeted. They can only provide a measure of deterrence. In the event of an assassination attempt, they can counter-target the assassin. But they can’t keep their man alive if enough Americans are determined enough to kill him.
If we can get enough Congressvermin – of both parties; none of them are trustworthy on this subject – to imagine themselves with crosshairs over their hearts, we have a chance of averting a tyrannical future. Otherwise?
Come stay—
We'll live gazebo lives,
And let the world outside pass us by.
Right here...
In our Arabian Nights,
Until the Northern Lights cross the sky.
There is no other.
As the school year meanders to a close, now is a good time for education departments across the land to make policy changes for the next year. One urgent step should be ending the insane lockdown drills our kids have to practice in their schools and tightening school security instead.
In New York City, the Department of Education implemented General Response Protocols that mandate that all public schools have four lockdown drills, in addition to fire drills, per year.
These “soft-lockdown” drills, ostensibly to prepare kids for a potential school shooter, require kids to hide in their classroom, sometimes in a closet, and remain quiet and out of view.
It would be one thing to prepare teachers and school staff for this kind of rare emergency. But having children hide in a closet and practice being quiet is at best a waste of time and at worst a way to emotionally scar the children we’re trying to shield.
Karol Markowitz, who wrote the above, has a very good point. Children are impressionable, and the younger they are, the more deeply the impression strikes home. The drills contribute nothing to their safety, yet terrify them that their lives could be ended at any moment – and possibly by a classmate, at that.
BUILDING SUPPORT FOR ELIMINATING OUR 2ND AMENDMENT IS THE POINT.
Why, yes. How did we miss that? You can’t get a job in the New York City schools if you’re known to be a gun owner or shooting enthusiast. The propaganda about “gun violence,” as if guns roam the streets on their own seeking helpless targets, is unending. And of course New York City’s laws make it impossible to own a gun of any sort unless you’re both wealthy and politically connected. Never mind that those laws have had no perceptible effect on the rate of criminal violence perpetrated with a firearm.
But there’s a lot of pressure on American municipalities to honor the right to keep and bear arms. It started with the Heller decision and has mounted ever since. Rational minds have grasped that there’s a negative correlation between the frequency of handgun ownership and the murder rate. There’s even a case pending before the Supreme Court that specifically addresses the Big Apple’s draconian anti-firearms laws. So the anti-gunners are panicked.
But if they could just inculcate their prejudice against personal weapons ownership in the impressionable young…and perhaps by propagandizing them, sway their parents!
I’ve said before that sending your child to a “public” school has become an act of child abuse. This is only one aspect of the thing. Think it over, and make your decisions accordingly.
The leader of [Oklahoma’s] largest police department on Friday denounced the new “constitutional carry” law as a step in the wrong direction.
“Saying that it makes communities safer, that’s (a) pretty tired and old statement, as far as I’m concerned,” said Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty. “That’s not the case. We should be going the other direction and be more responsible about who we have carrying guns in this country.”
But Herschel begs to differ – and he has the citations to back his position:
You jackass. Assume that everyone is carrying a gun and act appropriately and respectfully.
But I agree. We should be more responsible about who we have carrying guns in this country. Most LEOs, it appears to me, aren’t responsible. Let me know when you’ve disarmed your cops and we can all feel a little safer.
To me, the most significant part of the news announced above is that Eric Swalwell (D, Lunatic), as brash as he seems, is the tip of an iceberg. He has backers in both Houses of Congress. They are unconcerned with the Constitution or anything else. They want our guns, and they’re willing to make us criminals to get them. Neither are they under any illusions that a nationwide gun confiscation would “reduce crime.” That’s no part of their concerns.
Rope. Lamppost. Congressvermin. Some assembly required – and the time has come to begin it.
(Applause to CM Blake for finding the video above.)
It amazes me how anti-gunners have gotten away with so much legislative skullduggery. Consider the following piddling little quote from a hoary old document:
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. [Article VI, second paragraph]
There are only two possibilities for interpreting this passage:
It means what it says;
It means nothing.
The meaning of the passage is plain. The supreme law of the land is the standard against which every other enactment made by any legislature at any level of government must be judged. If such an enactment contradicts the explicit text of the Constitution of the United States, it’s null and void, the opinions of black-robed self-deified gods notwithstanding.
Have another little slice of text:
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.
That phrase shall not be infringed is rather absolute. Note how it contrasts with the wording of the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The First Amendment restrains Congress, no other legislative body. Moreover, that’s the way it was intended; the drafters wanted to permit the states to maintain established churches, and to impose local laws regulating what may and may not be said in public. The Second Amendment restrains everyone. No government would be allowed to reduce the rights of Americans to their weapons in any way however slight. To allow that was considered the fatal step on the road to tyranny.
The drafters of those two Amendments knew exactly what they were proposing. People who argue over punctuation are unlikely to be less scrupulous about their phrasings. So it was intended, and so it was written.
Anti-gunners are determined to efface the plain meaning of the Constitution’s text. That’s been obvious for a while now. What’s truly amazing is how they strain to impose meanings on its text that were never even remotely intended.
The word militia had a specific meaning in the Constitutional era. A militia was the citizenry in arms, whether to oppose an invasion or a lawless domestic force. Every able-bodied man was considered a member of the militia. If the militia were to mass, he was expected to provide his own firepower. A well regulated militia was merely one that exhibited internal organization: the discipline of a command structure appropriate to its size and mission.
The militia was in no way a creation of any level of government. Indeed, its most important function was to keep government within its proper sphere, mainly by existing. Clearly the citizen’s possession of weapons of war was indispensable to that function.
That function is exactly what the anti-gunners want to obscure.
Note how regularly the anti-gunners protest that “we don’t want to take your guns”...in the same breath as their calls to take our guns. Their codicil is that “you don’t need a military weapon for hunting.” Such attempts to reduce the function of privately owned firearms to shooting at the occasional deer, duck, or pheasant have an unmistakable end in mind.
Consider Britain, which has no written constitution and therefore no firm protections for individuals’ rights. A Briton may “own” a firearm, if it conforms to the laws about privately owned firearms, but he has no “right to keep and bear” it. It cannot reside in his home; it must be stored at a government-approved “shooting club” and used only on the club’s premises, subject to approved supervision. In this fashion Her Majesty’s government has disarmed the British people de facto. They can claim to “own” firearms in the sense of having legally registered titles to them, but they are barred access to them except when, where, and as the Omnipotent State shall permit.
Were the Second Amendment to be altered thus:
The right of the people to keep and bear Arms for hunting purposes shall not be infringed.
...the federal government could effectuate a similar citizen disarmament:
It could promulgate laws for the licensure and regulation of “hunting clubs,” where all citizen-owned firearms must be stored;
It could promulgate laws for the determination of “hunting regions,” outside which no hunting would be permitted;
It could delegate to the state and county governments all further powers to legislate about hunting licenses, seasons, and other qualifications.
And Americans, the best armed citizens in the world, would be unable to object except by an immediate, bloody revolution. Have no doubt, Gentle Reader, that that is the end in view – the consummation the anti-gunners so devoutly wish. Have no doubt that the anti-gunners have exactly that goal in mind whenever they oh-so-ingenuously say “You don’t need an assault rifle for hunting, do you?”
Far too many Americans who seek to defend the rights the Second Amendment guarantees have fallen into that trap. Far too many are unwilling to say, candidly and truculently, “No, I need one to kill you and others like you, should your sort ever get it into your heads to try to infringe my God-given, Constitutionally protected rights.”
Someone should have said it to Andrew Cuomo when he screamed that “You don’t need ten bullets to kill a deer.” Someone should say it to Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer. And someone should bellow it directly into the face of that greasy reptile David Hogg, with the mikes live and the cameras rolling.
History teaches. History reminds. And history is falling into desuetude.
I think of World War I as “my” war – not because I fought in it (I’m not that old), but because I put more than twenty years’ free time into studying it. Its fascination for me is of several kinds, but above all, this: the generals of all the combatants were absolute idiots.
Of course, it’s easy to play Monday-morning quarterback about a war that ended a century ago. But other students of World War I have come to approximately the same conclusion, though they tend to state it in gentler terms.
Thing is, we of the Year of Our Lord 2018 should strive to learn from their mistakes. Some of them have application to contemporary political battles. Take this brief snippet from Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August, concerning the early failures of the French forces:
[General] Ruffey blamed his defeat in the Ardennes on the last-minute removal of the two reserve divisions that [Supreme Commander] Joffre had transferred to the Army of Lorraine. If he had had those 40,000 fresh men and the 7th Cavalry Division, Ruffey said, he could have rolled up the enemy’s left and “what a success for our arms we might have won!” In one of his terse and mysterious remarks, Joffre replied, “Chut, il ne faut pas le dire.” [“Hush, don’t say that.” -- FWP] His tone of voice has been lost, and it will never be known whether he meant “You are wrong, you must not say that,” or “You are right but we must not admit it.”
It’s the latter interpretation I have in mind this morning. It’s the sort of thing politicians and activists say to one another when one of their number has expressed a wee bit too much truth.
A Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch will likely already have read about retired Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens statement that the Second Amendment to the Constitution should be repealed. Stevens, an appointee of President Gerald Ford, was believed to be a conservative at the time of his elevation. It appears that, as has been the case with so many other politicos and office-holders, he’s decided to seek a little more publicity in his dotage (he’s 97). Of course, the easiest way for such a person to get media attention is to say something outrageous. It helps if the statement is radically at odds with some widely shared belief, especially if the speaker could reasonably have been assumed to share that belief.
Stevens is not the only person saying it, of course. A considerable number of activists have done so before a live camera or microphone. And of course we have this example of cheerful villainy to remind us that the anti-gunners deem themselves so morally superior to us that they need not respect our rights to our lives.
What’s significant is the chorus of “Chut, il ne faut pas le dire” from other major Leftist mouthpieces in reply to Stevens’s blunt admission of their ultimate aim. How often have we heard such figures say “Of course no one is talking about repealing the Second Amendment,” or alternately, “No one is going to take away your guns” these past few weeks? Just a bit too quick and too earnest, aren’t they? Especially while Stevens’s remarks (and the conformant statements made by others) are still in the news. Anyone who has a passing knowledge of the history of gun prohibition exercises will know it at once.
Stevens and the other vocal anti-Second Amendment types are doing great damage to the Left’s “salami tactics” assault on the right to keep and bear arms. The strategists and major luminaries of the Left are frantic over it. You can practically read it from their faces.
Deciding whom to believe isn’t much of a challenge.
Generally speaking, conservative Americans don’t particularly care to hear Europeans weigh in with their opinions on our Second Amendment and gun laws, but an Italian woman recently stated something so simple yet profound that it simply must be shared.
“Americans, I’m watching the #GunControl protests from Italy,” tweeted a user by the name of Redeemed Goddaughter.
“Take a European’s advice: Last century our governments disarmed us. Now, in Germany & the UK they arrest you for Twitter & FB posts. Lesson?
“If the gov’t takes your 2nd Amendment, one day it’ll take your 1st,” she concluded.
Stunning: concise, arrow-straight to the point, and absolutely irrefutable. Words and statements being quasi-censored today via “political correctness” and “anti-hate speech” crusades will become baldly illegal, and prosecutable in a court of law.
Needless to say, the Left would prefer that we pay “Redeemed Goddaughter” no attention.
Why worry? What the hell, it’s only the last vestiges of Americans’ freedom that are at stake, right? Right?
[W]e are told that there is no need to fear the concentration of power in government so long as that power is checked by the electoral process. We are urged to believe that so long as we can express our disagreement in words, we have our full rights to disagree. Now both freedom of speech and the electoral process are important to liberty, but alone they are only the desiccated remains of liberty. However vigorously we may argue against foreign aid, our substance is still drained away in never-to-be-repaid loans. Quite often, there is not even a candidate to vote for who holds views remotely like my own. To vent one's spleen against the graduated income tax may be healthy for the psyche, but one must still yield up his freedom of choice as to how his money will be spent when he pays it to the government. The voice of electors in government is not even proportioned to the tax contribution of individuals; thus, those who contribute more lose rather than gain by the "democratic process." A majority of voters may decide that property cannot be used in such and such ways, but the liberty of the individual is diminished just as much as in that regard as if a dictator had decreed it. Those who believe in the redistribution of wealth should be free to redistribute their own, but they are undoubtedly limiting the freedom of others when they vote to redistribute theirs.
Effective disagreement means not doing what one does not want to do as well as saying what he wants to say. What is from one angle the welfare state is from another the compulsory state. Let me submit a bill of particulars. Children are forced to go to school. Americans are forced to pay taxes to support foreign aid, forced to support the Peace Corps, forced to make loans to the United Nations, forced to contribute to the building of hospitals, forced to serve in the armed forces. Employers are forced to submit to arbitration with labor leaders. Laborers are forced to accept the majority decision. Employers are forced to pay minimum wages, or go out of business. But it is not even certain that they will be permitted by the courts to go out of business. Railroads are forced to charge established rates and to continue services which may have become uneconomical. Many Americans are forced to pay Social Security. Farmers are forced to operate according to the restrictions voted by a majority of those involved. The list could be extended, but surely the point has been made.
It’s possible that no more scathing indictment of omnipotent government has ever been written. Only one item of consequence need be added:
The Omnipotent State can force a disarmed people to suffer anything it pleases.
And isn’t it funny, now that the sole remains of our once-majestic freedom are freedom of expression and the “right” to vote, how the Left is determined to destroy those things as well – the former through the canard that “hate speech is not free speech,” and the latter through the steady corruption of the electoral process?
In closing: Pay your best and fullest attention to those on the Left who openly speak against the right to keep and bear arms. The desire of their “moderate” colleagues to shush them and hustle them offstage is highly significant. Speaking too candidly will queer the pitch. As C. S. Lewis told us in a different context, “the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
“The more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers.” – a character in some obscure movie or other
Certain instances of repression have the perverse consequence – perverse from the standpoint of the repressors, that is – of causing the thing targeted for repression to increase.
Perhaps the best known example of this phenomenon is religious repression. Historically, this has had consequences entirely opposite to what the repressors intended. Christianity, for example, benefited hugely from the Roman Empire’s attempts to stamp it out. Indeed, Christianity’s growth rate after Emperor Constantine legitimized it actually declined slightly. History does not record whether Constantine intended any such thing.
We also have the examples of alcohol Prohibition and the War on Drugs. Neither of those nominally public-spirited campaigns had the consequences promised for them. Indeed, there is some evidence that the most significant backer of each of those measures was organized crime, whose masters intuited – correctly – that products for which there’s so large a demand cannot be kept out of the demanders’ hands for long.
Another example, not as well known, is the attempt to repress weapons ownership by law. This is something Americans have seen at first hand, though the anti-gun flacksters and organizers would prefer not to admit to it.
When New York State’s legislature passed the Sullivan Act, it was estimated that no more than 5% of New Yorkers went about their daily business with a firearm to hand. Today, a considerably greater percentage of New Yorkers go armed through their days. Most of them aren’t legally armed...but they’re armed. The police know it. Moreover, the police aren’t all that unhappy about it; it gives them a reason to harass anyone whom they can be reasonably sure is carrying a weapon.
(Is it necessary to mention Chicago in this context?)
From the above examples, I predict that the recent eruption of yet another spate of anti-gun “protests,” this time the vanguard being composed of children, will not have the effects for which the anti-gun forces hope. Americans are too widely aware that taking the means of self-defense away from the law-abiding citizen will not dampen crime rates in the slightest. Indeed, in some cases we might see the expansion of firearms rights, as the counteractions to the “protests” gain steam and hard information about the uses of privately owned firearms in defense of life and property is publicized.
Are the funders and organizers of the anti-gun “protests” aware of that possible result? Perhaps. Should it materialize, would they change their strategy? Probably not – but not because they’d be happy about it.
It would be just one more demonstration of the total failure – theoretical and practical – of the totalitarian Left.
Perhaps the most thoroughly frustrated persons involved in anti-gun activism are its drum-beaters in the media professions. Courtesy of the esteemed Bookworm, we have the following example:
Bookworm provides the following observation:
Bevin also very politely lets those viewing the video know that, in response to his calm, organized, factual response, the woman who asked the question, who is off-camera, is smirking and rolling her eyes. The video therefore encapsulates not just the strong moral and intellectual argument behind simultaneously supporting the Second Amendment and child welfare, but also the lack of good faith and good grace coming even from those Leftists who purport to be temperate and reasoned.
Indeed. Media types are roughly 90% politically on the Left, and are as violently opposed to private firearms ownership as anyone among its non-media “activists.” Why? Good question, especially considering how many of them live in closely secured buildings and compounds guarded by men with guns. But there it is.
One can vent about the hypocrisy of it as much as one pleases, just as one can vent about the hypocrisy of anti-gun politicians who go everywhere accompanied by armed bodyguards. No amount of hypocrisy-shouting has made a difference to this point. I doubt it will make one any time soon.
I keep coming back to the disclosure of Dr. Floyd Ferris:
"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against -- then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can be neither observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted -- and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with." [Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged]
To make private citizens feel both guilty and vulnerable is the ultimate prize for the power-monger. Whether or not the power-mongers are conscious of it doesn’t matter, for the laws of political dynamics will automatically elevate those whose actions best conform to them.
The grand champions of the political game have always known this...and they’ve always meant it.
Food for thought, especially as you prepare to enter a voting booth.
[Sheriff candidate R. Daryl Fisher] would enthusiastically enforce forbidding citizens old enough to serve in the military or the “unorganized militia” of U.S. Code from purchasing guns. He would ban standard capacity magazines for everyone (except the “Only Ones”), along with any firearm that has “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia [or] is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”
How far would he go?...
“What about people that already had weapons? Well, I’m gonna tell you now, don’t buy into the scare tactics, don’t believe the scare tactics, because you’ve heard people say ‘You’ll have to pry my guns from my cold dead hands,’” Fischer admonished.
“OK, he grinned and shrugged to delighted laughter and applause of the Bloomberg Moms.
So don’t believe your lying eyes and ears?
Fisher goes on to trivialize that “joke” by saying taking guns “would be unconstitutional because that would constitute what is called an ex post facto law” and that “responsible gun owners have nothing to worry about.”
We’ve been hearing the “responsible gun owners have nothing to worry about” BS for long enough that no serious firearms owner is willing to believe it. We only hear it as part of a gun-grabbers’ tranquilization effort:
“Just let us cut off this little bit of your God-given rights. It won’t hurt and you’ll never miss it. We promise! And you’ll get to keep all the rest. You can trust us.”
I am put in mind of something the late, great C. Northcote Parkinson said:
“Do not say ‘Trust me. Rely on my word.’ Only politicians say that.”
Mr. Fisher is, by his own choice, a politician: a member of the least trustworthy category of persons to be found anywhere in America. Draw the moral for yourselves.
Frankly, if R. Daryl Fisher were to become the sheriff in my district and were to turn up at my door, he wouldn’t get two words out. I would shoot first and fuss over the paperwork later, and I’m a very good shot.
On Wednesday, Ted Cruz was on Morning Joe to debate gun control and what Cruz did to Scarborough is a felony in at least twenty-three states and two territories. Before we go any further, let’s recall that Joe Scarborough, back when he was trying to get elected to Congress, touted his 100% NRA rating. It is only in his new life as MSNBC’s “house” conservative that he’s become just another anti-gun Nazi.
SCARBOROUGH: It actually, the studies, even the Pentagon studies show that weapons like the AR-15 actually are designed to be more lethal, and there were actually — and I’ve talked about the article a good bit. There’s an article in the Atlantic in 1981, where actually, they did an after-action report, and there was criticism that a gun much like the AR-15 wasn’t used in Vietnam because it was lighter, it was more lethal, and it was more of a killing machine than the guns that our soldiers were using in Vietnam. So, it is designed to kill more effectively, more efficiently.
Upon which “streiff” jumps in:
Anyone vaguely familiar with the history of the M-16 know this is absolute bullsh**.
Unfortunately for “streiff,” Scarborough is correct:
Rep. ICHORD: One Army boy told me he had shot a Vietcong near the eye with an M-14, and the bullet did not make too large a hole on exit, but he shot a Vietcong under similar circumstances in the same place with an M-16 [the militarized version of the AR-15] and his whole head was reduced to pulp. This would not appear to make sense. You have greater velocity but the bullet is lighter.
Gene STONER [designer of the AR-15]: That is the advantage that a small or light bullet has over a heavy one when it comes to wound ballistics....What it amounts to is that bullets are stabilized to fly through the air, and not through water or a body, which is approximately the same density as water. And they are stable as long as they are in the air. When they hit something, they immediately go unstable....If you are talking about a .30 caliber bullet [the M-14’s bullet caliber], that might remain stable through a human body....While a little bullet, being that it has a low mass, it senses an instability situation and reacts much faster. This is what makes a little bullet pay off so much in wound ballistics.
[Hearings, Special Subcommittee on the M-16 Rifle Program, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. House of Representatives, 90th Congress, 1st session. Quoted in James Fallows’s book National Defense.]
Indeed, the whole point of the AR-15 / M-16 program was to produce a rifle whose ammunition weighs less and spins less rapidly than that of the M-14, specifically to improve three things:
The lethality of the wounds it causes;
The controllability of the rifle on full automatic;
The amount of ammunition the rifleman could carry.
“Streiff” has not done his homework. His error must be noted here and elsewhere. No matter one’s position on the right to keep and bear arms, it does no good to spread inaccuracies about a gun, its properties, or the intentions behind its design.
The following brief speech, made by Delegate Nick Freitas on the floor of the Virginia House of Delegates, has drawn a lot of attention:
It’s a fine bit of rhetoric to be sure, every word of it well grounded in the facts, and I applaud it heartily – but the most striking thing about it was the reaction of the Democrats in the Assembly: they walked out.
Here’s a tweet of one Democrat’s reaction:
Del Joseph Lindsey, D-Norfolk, says Freitas's speech may be the most offensive thing he's heard in his time in the House.
"I have seen many of my colleagues emotionally shaken and bothered by either a lack of concern for facts. Or just simply playing to the cameras."
Delegate Lindsey will soon learn – if he hasn’t already – that claiming to be “offended” no longer causes all of us in the Right to abase ourselves and beg forgiveness. The Democrats have offended us far too often and too deeply.
The defining characteristic of an aristocracy, a.k.a. “the elite” or “the Establishment,” is the arrogation of one or more privileges that persons outside that group are legally forbidden to exercise. For example, for many decades the legal privilege of owning real estate was reserved to members of the English nobility. In medieval Europe, only a noble or a knight in service to a noble was permitted to own a sword. Aristocracies have often been favored by sumptuary laws. In societies with a legally defined aristocracy, a commoner who attempts to exercise a privilege reserved to the aristocracy will be punished for it. Sometimes the penalty has been execution.
In societies without a recognized aristocracy, a group whose members seek to be thought of as “superior,” in whatever sense, will often behave like an aristocracy. The symptom is often verbal: “talking down” to the rest of us, or arguing for positions that would imply a privilege reserved to them.
There’s no ideological dividing line that separates aristocrats, legally recognized or not, from us of the Great Unwashed.
Just now, a number of “conservatives” – I remember when what they were striving to conserve was freedom — are arguing strenuously against a Constitutionally protected right:
I’m not personally acquainted with any of these...persons. I know them only as three commentators deemed right-of-center. I have no idea whether any of them own a weapon of any sort. But I’m perfectly willing to call them aspiring aristocrats. And I’d bet you the mortgage money that they’d have no qualms about hiring armed bodyguards were they to feel threatened.
(Hm. A quick Googling reveals that all three are NeverTrumpers. More than coincidence? Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.)
I wrote, back at Eternity Road, about the phenomenon of eminent conservative figures who find abridgements of Americans’ right to keep and bear arms perfectly acceptable. Such persons tend to share quite a few “cultural markers” with left-liberal enemies of Americans’ Second Amendment rights. They live along the coasts, usually in or near large cities. They’re well to do if not wealthy. They work in one of the communications trades, often as writers or opinion-mongers. And their social circles overlap heavily with their supposed ideological opponents.
Such persons tend to be conservative in the original sense: i.e., the sense expressed by this lapel-button joke:
Conservative: Someone who thinks nothing should be done For the first time.
Such “conservatives” are hardly of the classical-liberal / Constitutionalist / Americanist bent. They’re concerned with preserving the status quo, most particularly their piece of the status quo. Their sort largely goes unarmed. If there are firearms near to them, they’re in the possession of the hired security guards at the apartment tower doors or the villa’s wrought-iron gates. Their left-liberal friends and party guests are quite all right with those. They’re less a means of defense or security than a token of having been accepted into America’s aristocracy: the “opinion leaders,” the “people who matter.” They have nothing in common with the guns of the hoi polloi.
When a Max Boot, a David Frum, or a Tom Nichols “comes out” as those persons did in the tweets reproduced above, they’re telling you a great deal more than they might realize. It’s valuable information – and it should be factored into everything else they say, on any topic in the national discourse.
