Articles by Herschel Smith

Opposed to communism, he is.

And they’ll all ignore his main points – what happened to America?  Because they’re godless communists.

Source.

In response, David Codrea links Thomas Massie.

What’s the easiest way to disprove the lie that the 1994-2004 “assault weapons ban” worked? Point out that after a couple of cosmetic changes, sales actually went up during the ban. Clearly those who have been duped were never in a gun store in the late 1990’s/early 2000’s. pic.twitter.com/AQxy7P9ErE

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) June 2, 2022

A friend over an email thread says this.  “The practical effect of the “AW ban” was that AK manufacturers had to remove the bayonet lug, and Ar manufacturers had to do that and remove the flash suppressor. In either event, they kept on making the same gun. How could that affect mass killings?”

Rational question to be sure.  From my perspective, I do calculations all day every day.  I see nothing even approaching a good statistical analysis of the data, and in my judgment the data is statistically insignificant.  Nothing whatsoever can be proven with it.

Anyway, I don’t care.  No one gets to tell me that because someone else misuses a product or tool, that means my perfectly legitimate use of it will be banned.

No one actually needs an AR-15.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 3, 2022

Says the woman who strung out good men to die in Benghazi because it was inconvenient to admit to America why there were there in the first place.

By the way, I guess these men didn’t get Hillary’s message about AR-15s.

Speaking of AR-15s, I also guess this woman was glad to have hers around when she needed it.

The Washington Stand.

On Pentecost Sunday in Abuja, Nigeria, four gunmen stormed a Catholic Church during mass, massacring at least 50 worshippers in one of the most brutal rampages of the year. As word of the attack spread, so too did outrage that the violence in this African nation continues on.

While Christians have been routinely targeted by Nigeria’s Islamic extremists, this latest slaughter — in the country’s relatively peaceful southwest — is sounding new alarms. “It is a black Sunday in Owo,” Ondo’s governor, Arakunrin Akeredolu, said, condemning a “vile and satanic attack” against people “who have enjoyed relative peace over the years.”

Just a handful of days earlier, black-clad extremists wielding AK-47s reportedly opened fire as believers left an evening service in Nigeria’s Adu Village, leaving three — including a young girl — “seriously injured,” locals confirmed. Islamic extremists are “hunting and killing us on a daily basis,” often “intimidating us by displacing us through burning of our houses and properties, and destroying our farms,” one individual told International Christian Concern.

News of both shootings coincided with the publication of the 2021 Report on International Religious Freedom.

“I’m still upset about last year’s removal of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern,” said Sam Brownback, former ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom under President Donald Trump, before Sunday’s tragedy. “That was not called for. The situation continues to be terrible, and that’s shown forth, as well, in the report.”

The State Department records 1,112 conflict-related deaths in Nigeria in 2021, many of them clashes between religious groups. “In May, criminals shot and killed eight Christians and burned down a church and several homes in Kaduna State,” the report states. On September 26-27, “Muslim herders killed at least 49 persons and abducted 27, most of whom were Christian, in several attacks on communities in religiously mixed southern Kaduna State.” The report also cites “several cases” of “Muslim men kidnapping young Christian girls and forcing them into marriage and conversion to Islam.”

Many familiar with the situation expressed disbelief that the Biden administration had removed the 211-million-strong nation from its circle of concern. Family Research Council’s Lela Gilbert, senior fellow for International Religious Freedom, has been appalled at the lack of urgency from Nigeria’s president and other world leaders.

Oh stop it.  Just stop it once and for all.

Stop this notion that there is such a thing as the world police.  This entire awful situation is due to Christians misunderstanding the Scriptures and ascribing to Christ things He didn’t say and positions He doesn’t hold.

The answer is to pick up a gun and go to war against the Muslims.  Don’t ask for outside help.  There will be none forthcoming.

Christian men are responsible for themselves, their families, and their communities.  Provide for your own protection.  Kill the intruders and terrorists.  Protect your own.

Source.

Source.

So I would like to see experiments with age-based impediments rather than full restrictions — allowing would-be gun purchasers 25 and under the same rights of ownership as 40- or 60-year-olds, but with more substantial screenings before a purchase. Not just a criminal-background check, in other words, but some kind of basic social or psychological screening, combining a mental-health check, a social-media audit and testimonials from two competent adults — all subject to the same appeals process as a well-designed red-flag law.

Yes.  I see.

So the doctors would throw chicken bones, or read tarot cards, or look at the stars, or something.  To see into the future, of course, and ascertain what mother earth would want us to do – or something.  What the Scriptures call divination, and forbid against.

He further says,

I am not interested in the liberal desire to fold the problem of Uvalde-style mass shootings, of nihilistic terrorism with a misogynist or racist edge, into a larger problem called “gun violence.”

At the same time, I also have no interest in the apparent conservative desire — or least Ted Cruz’s desire — to turn America’s schools into a zone of overpolicing, duck-and-cover fearfulness and military-level vigilance.

And I’m not interested in futility, any more than I’m interested in the forms of right-wing overreaction or left-wing fantasy politics criticized above.

Who told him this is all about what interests him?  Why does he think he is important?

Well, to all of this I say, “I’m not interested in your ideas.”  Go pound sand.

Source.

“I never thought I had a need for that type of hyper-high-capacity automatic weapon. I like to shoot, I like to go out and hunt. I like to go out sport shooting. I do all that. But I’ve never felt I needed something of that magnitude,” he said.

[ … ]

Manchin said that red flag laws “do work as long as there is due process.”

That’s the whole point, Joe.

Red flag laws are themselves a violation of due process.  You can’t pick up the broken glass and make it okay.

Source.

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.

That’s a promise.

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.

(2/2)

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) June 3, 2022