I had earlier point out that the progressives weren't giving up without a fight. Their hard-fought victory over the military establishment and the consequent loss of it, even if partial, cuts deeply. They have so weakened the edifice that it is crumbling. The department cannot meet recruitment goals, needs warfighters for the national defense and cannot find them, wastes increasingly precious dollars on failed programs, and celebrates transgenders and LGBTQ. This crumbling of the edifice meets…… [read more]
Via WRSA, this discussion was seen. A few quotes from it, and then some remarks.
he’s yet another member of team “let’s create a state powerful enough to give me everything i want without realizing that such a state is also powerful enough to take everything i have.”
(or worse, knows this full well but presumes that it is he and his who will be wielding the whip hand and doing the taking and determining “the collective good.”)
but his argument is far more revelatory than i suspect he realizes and in it we may see both his incomprehension and the nasty shark smile of a desire to dominate by violence.
note that he cites “society” and “democracy” but not the rights that prevent democracy from devolving into that most vicious and inescapable of tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority.
and one sees glimmers of how chris sees the exercise of political power’s manifestation: to threaten violence to demand that the state do things for you. and this is telling. for the true reason for an armed populace has nothing to do with that. it is, in fact, the precise obverse.
the purpose of an armed populace is to PREVENT the state from doing things to the people against their will.
So far so good, and we can’t find anything with which to disagree.
where chris and many others like him go awry is that they do not understand rights. rights established under free contract may be positive, but just societal rights are always negative.
they state: i possess agency and so long as i am peaceful and do not violate the rights of others to such agency and property i am to be left alone to do as i will. nothing more. (but certainly nothing less)
chris and other big statists like him seek to enshrine into society some set of “positive rights” such as a right to education or to healthcare or to housing.
such rights are always and inevitably antithetical to the actual liberty of a republic because a positive right demands that others perform services or cede property to you whether they wish to or not.
this violates their basic (negative) rights to personal agency.
[ … ]
so here is the thought experiment:
if the rights of the individual are paramount, so must be the individual’s right to protect them.
to argue otherwise is to place the prerogatives of the state above the rights of the people.
and that is tyranny.
try to imagine a situation in which we the people fully cede a monopoly on the capability of effective defense against the state and still retain the ability to exercise our “right and duty” to “throw off such government and provide new guards for their future security.”
what real fundamental argument can one make that the state must have the power to subdue its people by violence and that the citizenry must be prevented from possessing the power to resist such predation?
try to imagine what such a state would look like and how you as a citizen could possibly trust it.
I take him to be a classic libertarian. He says, “where chris and many others like him go awry is that they do not understand rights. rights established under free contract …” And neither does the writer, I claim.
The contract is between the people. Rights are not established in that contract. Rights are recognized in the covenant, along with stipulations, blessings and curses. Those curses (setting up a new system of government) are outlined in the very founding document of the country.
The writer makes some legitimate logical points when he observes that we should try to imagine what an all-powerful state would look like and why we should trust it. However, he goes badly wrong when he says “what real fundamental argument can one make that the state must have the power to subdue its people by violence and that the citizenry must be prevented from possessing the power to resist such predation?”
That’s an easy answer. The philosophical question of ‘The One and the Many” has been debated for as long as mankind has existed. Recall the discussions of Parmenides, Socrates and Plato on the state, nature of reality, philosophers as kings, and other related topics.
The writer has no answer except to say that individual liberties are paramount. We’re left with one side singing “nah nah nah nah boo boo, I’m right and your wrong, and this is my view.” The other side repeats the song, and we’re back where we started. Competing world and life views.
I am not a libertarian. I am a Christian. I honor the Lordship of Jesus, who is The Christ, the only sovereign of heaven and earth. Individual liberties are not paramount. The collective is not paramount. Only the law-word of God is paramount.
Rights and duties come from the Almighty, and from nowhere else. They come from God, and God alone. He is the only sovereign and potentate.
I strongly recommend R. J. Rushdoony’s book “The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy.” But in lieu of having this at your fingertips (you should order it), here he gives a very brief primer on his views of government. Sphere authority. Vocation, family, church, neighbors, etc., etc., with the state being only one of a number of governments over mankind, and not the ultimate authority.
He points out that the word sovereign is nowhere located in the founding documents, a statement that surprises the judges before whom he has testified as an expert witness in defense of home schooling, as the founders were studious to avoid it.
Two sovereigns cannot coexist. If you want to listen to a 30 minute summary of Hegel, the roots of statism, the notion of the state as sovereign, the failure of the church, and proper government of man, you can do no better than this audio. It will be the best 30 minutes you’ll spend this week.
Karl Rove is one, but did you really expect otherwise? Say, why is anyone still talking to him anyway?
Here’s another. Maybe after hearing this the voters in South Carolina will have finally had enough and primary this jerk. It’s as if he really doesn’t understand what state he’s from.
I also stand ready to work across the aisle to find common ground – something that was absent from President Biden’s address to the nation.
I think he does a very good job of saying the very things I’ve been saying over these pages. He does a good job with two of the precedents. He leaves out a third. I’ve always linked three important ones.
Dimensions (L x W x H) w/o Mount: 4.0 x 1.6 x 2.1 in. (102 x 42 x 53mm)
Weight w/ Mount: 5.1 oz. (144.5g)
Illumination Source: Fiber Optics & Tritium
Reticle(s): Circle Dot, RTR .223 Reticle, RTR 9mm PCC Reticle
MSRP: $1,357
I put the MSRP in bold. Yes, you read that right. They’ve released an ACOG that doesn’t have the magnification of the classic ACOG, and increased the price.
Ha! And I had the audacity to recommend to Trijicon that they consider their pricing and whether they really want a share of the American market!
Why on earth would anyone buy this for $1357? It isn’t a 1X so both eyes open downrange will see some oddball things, and it isn’t powerful enough to really be an LPVO or legitimate prism scope.
Good. It’s nice to see someone has come out with a .22 magnum pistol that’s reliable. I dumped my KelTec because I couldn’t make it go more than a magazine without a FTF/FTE. I wrote them and suggested that they reengineer the magazine to be aluminum rather than polymer, and they ignored me.
This one is polymer coated on the outside, but aluminum in the inside. Also, I had found one link which suggested that the pistol was striker fired in spite of what he said in the video. But TFB confirms with confidence that it’s a hammer fired gun. The hammer is a bit hidden but the pictures are good.
That checks the other box for me. I don’t shoot striker fired guns.
Finally, I like the availability. I hate to read about a new firearm and then find that nothing is available and no one knows when there will be.
Democrat Representative David Cicilline explains his party’s position on Second Amendment rights: “Spare me the bullshit about constitutional rights.” pic.twitter.com/u6tzPLsyAz
He seems like a highly objectionable and horrible person, cantankerous, awful to be around, haughty and loud-mouthed. And use of obscenity in a place like the Congress proves that he isn’t a thinking man, but rather, a person controlled by his emotions.
But okay, I’ll spare him any discussion of the constitution. The constitution isn’t the source of my rights.
The source of my rights is the Almighty maker of heaven and earth, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the one to Whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess (that Jesus Christ is Lord).
Congressman Mondaire Jones (D-NY) warned law-abiding gun owners that Democrats will do everything in their power to ensure AR-15s and similar types of firearms are confiscated during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday.
The hearing was to consider H.R. 7910, the “Protecting Our Kids Act,” which would raise the legal age to purchase “certain semiautomatic centerfire rifles or semiautomatic centerfire shotguns” from 18 to 21 with “exceptions.” The bill will also “modernize the prohibition on untraceable firearms [and] encourage the safe storage of firearms.”
Jones said Congress will pass gun control legislation and nothing, not the fillibuster in the Senate or the Supreme Court, will stop them.
“Enough is enough. Enough of you telling us that school shootings are effective life when every other country like ours has virtually ended. Enough of you blaming mental illness then defunding mental health care in this country. Enough of your thoughts and prayers. Enough. Enough. You will not stop us from advancing the ‘Protecting Our Kids’ Act today,” Jones said. “You will not stop us from passing it in the House next week and you will not stop us. If the filibuster obstructs us, we will abolish it. If the Supreme Court objects, we will expand it. We will not rest until we have taken weapons of war out of circulation in our communities.”
Yeah, yeah. Bluster much, yes?
You go right ahead and queue that one up. You find yourself 10 senators who don’t want to be reelected next cycle and pass something like that.
And by assault weapons we know you’re going after pistols too. So let’s make a low estimate of a 400,000,000 such guns in America, 20,000,000 of which are AR-15s.
Then you go and convince 300,000 cops in America, the average age of which is 40 years old, to forcibly confiscate 400,000,000 weapons.
That sort of telegraphing of intentions is common among mass shooters, said David French, an editor with the conservative publication The Dispatch who recentlywrote in support of red flag laws.
French, who toldMorning Edition he keeps an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle at home, said that red flag laws would be more effective than a ban on such weapons.
Such a ban wouldn’t work, French says, because “it’s a virtual impossibility — there’s tens of millions, 20 million maybe or more of them in circulation right now.” Such a ban has little support among conservatives, he said, unlike red flag laws.
Does it surprise anyone that sellout and collectivist David French supports red flag laws? French claims himself to be a Christian – I have seen no evidence.
If he is, why wouldn’t he speak to the main issue of the day, i.e., the weakness, tepidness and lethargy of the churches, of the rejection of the Almighty in the public square, failures in parenting (because of the above), government failure at proper parenting (because that’s not in the province of the state), and the moral wickedness of the society? Perhaps because of cowardice?
A law cannot possibly make up for the lack of a moral rudder. Guns have always been ubiquitous in America. School shootings have not. You do the math.
3-legged dog rescues a baby Otter. In my neighborhood there lives a 3-legged dog who sometimes goes for walks with his owner. He has the most spunk and spirit of any dog in the neighborhood.
