Posts Tagged → freedom
Happy Memorial Day – and a big Thank You to our service members
Memorial Day is supposed to be about remembering those who served and died for our freedoms.
We all take our American freedoms for granted. I do it, you do it, it’s such a good lifestyle that it is impossible not to enjoy it casually. But we enjoy it because of the sacrifices of those who picked up a weapon to protect us.
Thank you to those who died, and those who continue to serve in harm’s way. We appreciate all you do.
Freedom! Braveheart Arrives in Pennsylvania
What joy to buy beer at Giant. What freedom!
Why shouldn’t a free people be able to buy beer easily, especially for a celebration like SuperBowl Sunday?
Historically, beer and spirits were widely available in early America. Ben Franklin quipped that beer was proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. How could a nation conceived in liberty become so shackled?
Last week Pennsylvania took a step toward more freedom, when governor Tom Corbett proposed to liberate alcohol from the clutches of government stores. America is based on competition and free enterprise, and government has no business doing business, so it’s a good thing to see this issue finally floated in a meaningful and substantive way.
Pennsylvania is one of only two states nationwide to be in the alcohol business. Obviously there’s no strength in those numbers.
Some political observers say this is about a public employee union. Say what? Who with a straight face can argue that the citizens are best served under this current state of state control? All other issues fade away, vanish, under real considerations.
Good luck, Guv.
We who join Ben Franklin in his observation that a beer or tip o’ the cup are part of being human tip our cup to you, Governor.
Three Moves Against Freedom in One Day
Today was an interesting one if you enjoy either your First Amendment or Second Amendment rights.
Facebook deactivated the account of Arab reporter Khaled Abu Toameh, for the simple reason that he writes factual reports about Christians being chased out of Gaza and the West Bank. Facebook is run by a bunch of California L______s, and we all know just how much L______s enjoy suppressing dissent, dialogue, or inconvenient information that might make their policy positions look wrong. Toameh has done nothing wrong himself. No one accuses him of doing anything illegal, unethical, or factually wrong. Instead, he has simply run afoul of the ‘Arab Victim Lobby’.
In other words, Toameh doesn’t believe that Arabs are always victims and that Jews are always bad, and he often writes articles that demonstrate quite the opposite, from sources within the Arab world.
Toameh is a threat to the entire lie being told about Israel and America, and he is also a direct threat to Obama’s policy against Israel. So Facebook steps in to do its part to silence him. So much for the First Amendment at Facebook, which has been deactivating many user accounts for unspecified reasons. It’s never surprising that those users are not L______s.
On the Second Amendment front, today New York governor Cuomo signed into law what must be called a gun-prohibitionist’s dream. And Barack Hussein Obama announced unilateral efforts, known as executive orders, to destroy the Second Amendment. Bypassing Congress has become a favorite trick of this president, and it is sad that the Republicans have no one strong enough to stand up and confront Obama. Oh sure, there are elected officials (“leaders” in title only) who whine about what he is doing. But no one says they are going to tell their constituents to ignore these illegal efforts. I really do believe that the Republican Party is headed to oblivion. It is rotten inside, and it appears to be ready to die, shrivel up, rot, and then slowly grow something else out of its own dirt, many many years from now. A topic for another day, sadly approaching quicker than we know.
So in one day, Obama’s close friends at Facebook take a good hard shot at the First Amendment, while Obama’s chum in New York joins Obama in taking a shot at the Second Amendment.
America is being transformed, no question about it. Not for the better, and enormous gulfs are opening up as a result. Certain states are talking seriously about secession. The Tenth Amendment may come into play as states reassert much of their long-lost authority to an expanding Federal government, but who knows if that will happen in time?
Today was a heavy blow to liberty, and I think I’m going to go read my young son a night-night book, and think about kid things for an hour, take a break, and maybe watch an old movie with my wife. Tomorrow will be filled with more bad news, I am sure, and it will feel nice to take a break from it all.
Have a good night, punkin’.
Militia
Militia
By Josh First
January 3, 2013
[PHOTOS ARE COMING]
Along with other beautiful stained glass windows dedicated to free speech and religion, “Militia” is just another large, elaborate stained glass window in the Pennsylvania State Capitol building (photo above).
This window’s prominent place in the Capitol is no accident, as the free citizen militia were fundamental to being an American citizen, and formative in founding the nation. After all, it was a free citizen militia (photos below) that was so determined to hold on to their liberties (now yours) that they literally faced down the world’s greatest super power, shooting only when they saw the whites of their hardened enemy’s eyes.
Like the other rights in the Bill of Rights, belonging to the militia is an individual right. No central or national army can supplant it. It is the exact purpose of the citizen militia to act as a counterweight to a centralized army or National Guard. As the Second Amendment so clearly states, you can’t belong to a militia unless you are armed with a military-quality arm, that you own and keep in your possession, as the original militia did.
Militia is not the heavily regulated, structured, centralized Army or National Guard of today; well-regulated meant muster rolls were kept. Militia was always a grass roots, citizen-led counterbalance to national governments, whether of Britain or the new United States. Unless the National Guard reports only to the local citizens or state governors, then it is not the heir to or the modern representation of the founding militia. The militia were and must remain separate from the central (national) government and its standing army.
The Bill of Rights does not describe governmental rights. All ten of its amendments describe and reserve citizens’ individual rights and liberties, and set limits on government power. Who creates a “Bill of Rights” that grants the central government the “right” to make an army and disarm the citizens? The fact that Americans have owned firearms since the beginning demonstrates the clear intent of the Bill of Rights. Whether or not some of today’s Americans are aware of, or comfortable with some Constitutional rights and obligations, they exist nonetheless. This is who we are. It’ll take a Constitutional amendment to change the Second Amendment, if you don’t like it. And changing it could lead to a second civil war, because the Second Amendment guarantees all the other amendments, and, like the Revolutionary War militia, free citizens are still willing to fight for their liberties.
Let’s talk more about that supposed potential change to the Constitution.
Gun prohibitionists are now pursuing an orgy of unconstitutional laws that exponentially grow government intrusion and end citizenship as defined since the birth of America. Do gun prohibitionists and anti-gun politicians really believe that freedom-loving Americans will just roll over and “turn them all in,” as US Senator Dianne Feinstein so casually says? I guarantee you a massive, defiant, and probably violent dissenting reaction across the nation in response to such an effort, if not an outright armed rebellion. Political elites like Feinstein and their fellow urbanites have little contact with “fly-over country,” so they do not know, care, understand, or respect the views of their fellow citizens there.
Statists, like Feinstein, whose greatest goal is a big government involved in citizens’ lives from cradle to grave, are deaf and blind to the kind of vehement resistance now brewing among tens of millions of citizens. Many, many Americans feel and see the America they knew and loved being transformed into an unrecognizable juggernaut aimed at controlling citizens’ lives and erasing their liberties. Seething beneath the surface of daily life is an increasing, simmering frustration and mistrust. It’s one thing to beat them at the ballot box. It’s another thing altogether to aim to disarm them.
These citizens know that the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. The more the government does, the less the citizen can do. To them, government is a direct threat, not a solution.
Gun control already exists in overbearing quantity; new laws that would take away guns from law-abiding Americans are exactly the kinds of unconstitutional assaults on individual liberty that the Second Amendment was designed to repel and that the citizen militia was created to address. Using democracy to achieve undemocratic results has been the method of extremists from both Left and Right; with the latest wave of proposals, gun prohibitionists reveal their own extremism.
Draft resistors, anti-government dissenters, and assorted protests have been historic hallmarks of one part of the electorate. Will Second Amendment-rights activists have to carry their God-given guns on a Million Man March to Washington, DC, carrying today’s equivalent of the 1776-era military-grade musket, the AR-15, to get their point across?
Pro-abortion activists have long stated matter-of-factly that legally prohibiting abortion won’t end abortion, and that those who want one will seek it out, legal or not, safe or not. Well, folks, tens of millions of Americans are about to have that equivalent experience with their guns, taking them into the back alleys, yards, and woods, where they will have them, despite whatever the government may say. Such defiance is what created America. Let’s hope it doesn’t end up re-creating it.
Adam Lanza’s insane massacre of school children in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, is so painful, so emotionally scarring that I will never be the same person I was the day before it occurred. My three children are as gentle, innocent, defenseless, and precious to me as those children were to their parents, and the thought of losing mine or theirs in such a cruelly violent way is too much to contemplate. My heart aches for the Sandy Hook parents. My fury rises at the incompetent parole board that unleashed murderer William Spengler to murder again, this time the brave firefighters who rushed to douse his arsonist blaze in Webster, NY. Blame enough to go around, but the actual problem-solving is hard.
Let me try: Does Hollywood really have an unfettered, unaccountable right to use its power of suggestion to continually encourage cruel, unchecked violence across America? During the recent Benghazi debacle, weren’t we told that the First Amendment doesn’t necessarily confer a right to make a movie that might incite violence? Thus, if Hollywood wants to continue marketing sadistically happy murder carnage from Django Unchained and the equally moronic Gangster Squad, why don’t all movies and video games with a modern gun in them have to pay a 50% ‘violence mitigation fee’ on each ticket sold? Use that money to put armed guards in schools, gratis Quentin Tarantino and Sean Penn.
In sum, disarming innocent citizens will not succeed, at least not without forcing millions into long-neglected, perhaps forgotten, well-regulated militias to defend their rights. Using emotional crises to immediately demand sweeping new laws is irresponsible. Can cooler heads prevail? Let us hope and pray so.
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The Militia:
You, the citizen, are still the militia. America is yours.
Militia
“Militia” is an oval stained glass window in the Pennsylvania Capitol. Its prominent place is no accident. The militia were formative and fundamental to being American.
Anyone with an interest in the US Constitution and the Pennsylvania Constitution can look up what ‘militia’ means. All citizens are members of the various militias that have existed since our founding. All militias were mustered with the requirement that each member of the militia provide his own personally owned military grade long arm. The militia provided sufficient shot and powder for the coming engagement.
Whether or not Americans are aware or comfortable with the Constitutional requirements, they exist nonetheless. This is who we are.
Mr Obama, Mrs Feinstein, are you mustering us up?
Wisconsin Sikh Temple Murders: What The…?
If you have not had the opportunity to meet a Sikh, you should go out of your way to do so.
I have yet to meet a mean, unpleasant, surly, or disrespectful Sikh.
In my experience, Sikhs are like all other Indians: Universally pleasant, friendly, gracious. They work hard, contribute enormously to American culture, our economy, to family life, and small business. Sikhs are exactly the kind of immigrants Americans want, because they are both religious and tolerant of others. They have great values that are 100% congruent with traditional American values, culture, and lifestyle.
Sikhs are a net gain for America, not a threat.
And please, spare us any debate on Sikh or Hindu theology. Not one of us has a theology that someone cannot poke some holes in. Sikh theology is not mine, but it is very American in terms of its values.
My heart goes out to the poor Sikhs in Wisconsin, those who have experienced the downside of American freedom and liberty. Our Second Amendment requires citizens to be responsible, mature, and free of psychosis. It also requires other citizens to be on the lookout, so that they might defend themselves, if need be.
Sikhs are fine citizens, and I wish we had more of them here in Central Pennsylvania. Hopefully, the damaged temple in Milwaukee will be fixed, enlarged, and visited by people of all other faiths as a demonstration of solidarity with fellow good citizens.
What amazes me is that white supremacists believe they are superior, and yet they always behave in such obviously inferior ways. If you are so superior, start a business, make money, run a solid family, and pass on your values, whatever they may be, to your children. The thing is, racial and religious supremacy of all sorts is so deficient, so broken, that its practitioners almost always blow themselves up or run afoul of the law long before they can act civilized and healthily participate in a free democracy, thereby passing on their values.
Is Islam Compatible with American Freedoms?
Watch this interview with Imam Rauf, the best known advocate for Islam in America, and you’ll come to the same conclusion all other freedom-loving Americans have reached. http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/07/michael-coren-exposes-ground-zero-mosque-imam-rauf-robert-spencer-gives-postgame-analysis.html