Big Picture Time

Inauguration Day is behind us now, and President Obama has begun his second term with a number of goals in mind. Obviously one of those is to enact several new gun control measures, but there are others that should concern us as well. Immigration reform is one of them, as well as more tax increases and a host of new regulations and environmental initiatives. One can’t help but fear that, with all of these new priorities he might lose his “laser like focus” on job creation.

There is a tendency to view his agenda as nothing more than collection of genuinely bad ideas, but you can be sure that is not the case. In order to see how all of these pieces fit into the puzzle, you must first get an understanding of what the big picture will look like.

There was a time when the Left would bristle at the term ‘socialist’ and deny their true agenda, but for the most part they now try to pretend that their brand of socialism is a milder, full flavor version that will go down much easier than those of the past. “A little socialism is necessary” they say, and they point to things like Social Security and Medicare as examples of ‘good’ socialism as reasons why we should want more.

Make no mistake, “a little socialism” isn’t the end goal, it is just the beginning. The major difference between a Socialist and a Communist is the path they choose to take to reach the same place. Communists are radicals, seeking to overthrow capitalism preferably through violent revolution. Socialists however, are content to work the system and reach the same goal through gradual, less violent means, hence the name Progressive.

The problem is that our Constitution is not compatible with the socialist agenda. So far they have just nibbled around the edges of unconstitutional programs and have been fairly successful at sliding them by the Supreme Court, but soon they will be forced to take bigger bites. In order to be successful, it will one day become necessary to either ignore or suspend the Constitution altogether. It is with this in mind that they often claim that the Constitution is a ‘living, breathing document that must be interpreted from a more modern viewpoint’.

One of their first concerns then is the fact that Americans are pretty heavily armed, but they know it would be foolish to attempt an outright gun ban all at once. Their tactic is to progressively nibble away at our 2nd Amendment rights until we grow used to the idea. “I support the 2nd Amendment,” they will say, “but we all agree that we need some common sense restrictions on these military style weapons.” You can be sure that a sentence that begins with “I support the 2nd Amendment but” is a lie being told for the purpose of destroying your freedom.

Please understand, these attacks on our freedom are just the beginning, and they will not end with the 2nd Amendment. Once they succeed in taking our guns (or perhaps even before), the same arguments will be used to justify limits on free speech, freedom of religion, and in the long run most if not all of our other rights. “I support the 1st Amendment,” they will say, “but we all agree that we need some common sense restrictions on this inflammatory type of language.”

To reach their ultimate goals, they know that private ownership of land will have to be abolished, and that individual rights will have to be subordinated to the rights of the collective. History has made it clear that Socialism and individual freedom cannot co-exist for any length of time, thus it becomes necessary to establish a more powerful government that is capable of controlling its citizens. The ever increasing regulations are designed to establish these types of controls without having to obtain the power legislatively. Rather than overtly seizing privately owned land, they simply put into place regulations which deny the owners its free use. High property taxes are another way that individuals are dissuaded from owning large tracts of land, and are herded instead into apartments and other type of high density housing.

There are those for whom all of this sounds perfectly acceptable. As hard as it is to believe, there are among us those naive individuals who believe in the Socialist pipe dream of a Utopia where everyone is equal and we all share our resources. They believe that by redistributing the wealth in this country, we can all achieve a standard of living that will at least be comfortable. What they fail to realize however, is that Obama and his cohorts are approaching this from a global perspective, and that the redistribution of wealth will not stop at our own boarders.

By global standards, even our poor are considered wealthy. The rest of the world sees the U.S. as a pot of gold waiting to be plundered. Those who believe that we achieved our status at the expense of the undeveloped nations, Obama among them, see Socialism as a means to siphon off the wealth of this country into the pockets of those who would never be able to create the wealth by their own efforts.

Something Is Wrong

Something is wrong in America, and it has permeated the very soul of our nation. We see things happening in our government and we wonder how this can happen; but we go on with our lives and shake our heads about the next thing that happens, again wondering why. “Why doesn't someone do something?” we ask, and then we change the channel and watch something not as depressing as the news.

The “something” that is wrong has a name: Progressivism, and this is the day that Conservatives have warned was coming. You can see the signs of it everywhere you look because they have never tried to hide what they do; instead they use a variety of tactics to distort and distract. Sometimes they even just ignore the facts and go on as if they've done nothing, knowing they will not be challenged.

Yes, there is a Constitution which forbids some of the things they do, and there are laws in place to govern their actions; but laws only apply to those who obey them, and are only enforced by those with the courage to do so. Checks and balances exist in the government which are designed to prevent abuses of power, but those only work if the will exists in one branch to control the other. We have a free press given the responsibility to report what is going in our government objectively and fearlessly, but that only works if the press is interested in reporting the truth and is not acting in collusion with those they are tasked with overseeing. We the people are the ultimate authority over our government, responsible to each other to ensure that we uphold and defend the Constitution, the document that ensures our freedom; but that will only work if we are diligent in our duty, and have the knowledge, wisdom, and courage to stand up to our servants when they seek to become our masters.

It all sounds good on the surface. Any good con artist knows that to be successful, his sales pitch must be convincing. “We must help the poor and the disadvantaged” they say, and since no one wants to be accused of not having compassion we turn a blind eye to the Constitutional violations. In doing so we have to make ourselves forget the reality that charity taken from someone else's pocket is theft, and charity paid on demand is tribute. Our legislators create problems for which we demand a government program to fix, so we allow them to create debts to be paid by our children. In doing so we have to make ourselves forget the reality that borrowing from those who have not given their consent, and doing so with no ability to repay is theft. We are even unwilling to acknowledge that we are stealing from those who depend on us to protect them.

A new crisis arises and our legislators rush to the nearest television camera to explain to us how, at a cost of just a little bit of our freedom they will make sure this never happens again. Those in the press dutifully tell us the stories and show us the pictures designed to enlist our assistance in the theft of our own freedom, and we willingly sell ourselves into slavery on the installment plan. When that crisis arises the second time, they rush back to the cameras to explain that they just didn't go far enough last time, and that for our own safety they will need to have just a little more of our freedom to fix it, and of course we willingly hand it over 'for the children'.

This process has been going on for generations, and none are without blame. We are trillions of dollars in debt, yet our President asserts that we don't have a spending problem. Instead he unashamedly makes the case that all will be better if he picks the pockets of those who produce and lines the pockets of those who do not. They condemn those who achieve in order to curry the favor of those who will not. When anyone objects, they are denounced as being out of the mainstream and only interested in making money by those who are only interested in taking money. When Constitutional issues are raised, they point to past violations that were allowed to stand as evidence of their authority to continue down the same path. “You don't want to end that program, do you?” they ask, and like any addict would do we back down to protect our addiction.

The largest, most powerful government in the world has been illegally operating for more than three years without a budget yet there is no demand from its overseers that the situation be righted because we already know the budgets were only an illusion in the first place. As soon as our legislators agreed to raise taxes on the producers, our President immediately informed us that he was only just getting started. With his re-election behind him, he unleashed a new round of regulations designed to tell those who built successful businesses how to run them, despite the fact that those regulations were written by those who were incapable of building businesses of their own. As those new taxes and regulations destroy the wealth building capacity of our economy, they tell us that the path to prosperity lies in their ability to impose more taxes and even more regulations.

A tragedy occurs and again they rush to take our freedoms in the name of our own safety, telling us law abiding citizens that by taking away our means of defense we will be protected from those who have no respect for their laws. They do so because they know it is impossible to enslave an armed man, and we allow it because we fail to understand how easy it is to enslave an unarmed man. They are afraid that one day we will wake up to the fact that it is they who do not respect our laws, and it is they who are robbing us of our wealth and our freedom.

The question is, will we wake up? Will we come to our senses before we are disarmed and enslaved on the plantation of Progressivism forced to work under the whip of a government master to produce the wealth intended for the pockets of those who will not work? Will we wake up to the fact that our servants seek to become our masters?

Are You Ready?

The time has come to decide. President Obama has made it clear that he has no intention of allowing the Constitution to get in the way of his radical leftist political agenda. As we learned during his first term in office, Obama has no respect for our First Amendment rights, and it has now become clear that he has even less respect for those protected by the Second Amendment.

Much has been said about what Obama should do regarding the issues of safety for our school children, and gun control, but at this point it is clear that a more important discussion is what we should do in response to what he has already made up his mind to do. Such conversations have taken place countless times over the years, and until now were mainly academic exercises. We have reached that day however, that the time for academic exercises has ended, and the need to genuinely consider our options is upon us. We must decide as a society and as individuals, what our response will be when our government, created and intended for the purpose of protecting our freedom, decides to take that freedom away from us.

Some would say that I am jumping the gun, or perhaps exaggerating the threat that we face. Many would even argue that there is no real threat to our freedom. David Green, owner and CEO of Hobby Lobby, would disagree. His privately owned company is facing a $1.3 million dollar per day fine for refusing to comply with an Obamacare mandate that would force him to pay for abortion causing drugs, which violate his religious beliefs. Several years ago, standing in the pulpit of a rural Georgia church, I delivered a sermon in which I predicted that, in our lifetime, Christians would go to jail for obedience to their faith. I am there were many in that congregation that thought I was wrong, but that day is now upon us.

Virginia Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli recently said on a syndicated radio show that going to jail might be an effective way to protest such mandates in Obamacare. Certainly, these mandates mean that many Catholics in this country are facing a decision to either obey God or obey the government.

Several states are now considering enactment of additional gun control measures, and some politicians have openly discussed the possibility of outright confiscation. In states with gun registration the means to effect confiscation is in place. (Remember when the liberals made fun of us for opposing registration because it could be used by the government to find your guns when it was ready to take them away?) In states without registration the task will be a bit more difficult, but sales records kept by gun dealers and records of concealed carry permit holders and hunting licenses will give the government some clues as to where to look.

The question then, is how do we respond when they come knocking on your door? Are you prepared to do what is necessary to stand up for your rights, or will you acquiesce and hand over your weapons? The answer you would give out loud in front of your friends isn't hard to guess, but the real answer is one that you need to consider privately after giving serious consideration to the consequences of your actions.

I am not in a position to tell anyone what they should do because every situation is different. I will however, discuss my thoughts on the subject.

The knee-jerk response to this question is “They might take my guns, but when they do I won't have any ammo left”, and while that help me to sound and feel defiant, the truth is that such a response would not necessarily be effective and would most likely play into the hands of those we wish to oppose. A more reasoned and level headed response is more likely to achieve a better result.
A better response, I believe, is to simply refuse to comply. No, I will not voluntarily give up my guns, and no, I won't tell you where they are. Obviously by taking this approach there is every likelihood of being arrested and jailed, a prospect which is less frightening than going down in a hail of bullets, but one that we have to be mentally prepared to accept. Are you willing?

Given the number of gun owners in this country, the government would be hard pressed to incarcerate even a small percentage of them. What would happen however, is that as the jail cells began to be filled with otherwise law abiding citizens, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, and brothers, public perception of a government round-up of good people would create such a fury that the government would be faced with more problems than it counted on.

I have no more desire to be thrown in jail than anyone else, but throughout this nation's history many men and women have sacrificed their very lives to protect our freedom, so what is a little time behind bars? In 1979 I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution from all enemies both foreign and domestic; I have not been released from that obligation. I may suffer, but I am willing for the sake of my children. My family might suffer as well, but a life of servitude to the state would be even worse.

Are you ready for what you may have to do?

The Concept of Freedom

Most Americans have grown up knowing nothing but freedom, and naturally assume that the rest of the world would want to have the same type of freedoms that we all enjoy. It has long been my belief that when people are given an option, they would choose to rid themselves of tyrannical dictatorships and flourish under the same conditions that we now take for granted. Certainly the end of the Soviet Union gave us a chance to see this in action to some degree in Eastern Europe, so it was not totally unreasonable to hope for a similar outcome in the Middle East.

After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, President Bush put into place a plan to restore the physical infrastructure of the nation and to lay out the political infrastructure to support free democratic elections. The resulting government has been somewhat less than the one for which we had hoped. When the Egyptians overthrew President Mubarak in 2011, many expected that free elections in that country would lead to a better government and freedom for people who had long lived under an oppressive dictatorship, and many of those were surprised when the Egyptian people elected a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization, to lead the country.

The truth, as we are beginning to learn, is that free elections are not enough to guarantee freedom. It is a fact of human nature that left to our own devices we are quite capable of making bad decisions. It is not enough for someone to simply have choices, they must have the tools necessary to make good choices. Here in America we have a rich history of hard won freedom and people understand the idea of freedom so well that it is almost instinctive for us. We fail to realize however, that people in other countries and other cultures do not share the same history, and that not everyone in the world shares our understanding of the concept.

Nelson Mandela said “For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others". We have now seen that those who find themselves free without the requisite sense of responsibility that comes with being free often use their new-found freedom to exact revenge on their enemies rather than to concentrate on building a better life for their families and their fellow citizens. Instead of seizing the opportunity to better their society, they confuse power with freedom and give into their baser instincts to take upon themselves the role of oppressor.

When I was a child I was taught that I must answer to a higher power, and we learned about our founding fathers, the valiant effort they made to secure our freedom from England, and the provisions they made to protect those freedoms from those who would seek to take them. I learned to see these men as heroes and to have a profound respect for their sacrifices and their wisdom. Patriotism was presented to me as being a virtue, and American exceptionalism was something to take pride in. My parents taught me to be responsible for myself and my own actions, to help those in need, and to respect others. I learned early on that I had a future that was open to endless possibility, and that it would be up to me to make something of it.

Somewhere along the line, our society changed and the things we were taught went out of style. Once considered to be a servant of the people, government has become that higher power to which we must answer. Instead of teaching our children about the heroic actions of our founding fathers, we have begun to highlight instead their human flaws and failures and they are relegated to the status insignificant “old white men”. Rather than teach our children to be patriotic, we are teaching them to be 'good citizens of the global community', and American exceptionalism is treated as a worn out relic from the past. Independence and self-reliance are archaic notions that have been replaced with passive dependence and the 'rugged individualism' we used to find admirable has lost favor to obedient conformity.

We have now raised a couple of generations of Americans who no longer understand the concept of freedom that people of previous generations took for granted. These younger generations do not share the same sense of responsibility that we grew up with, nor do they see as much value in individual freedoms. As the older generations die off and the younger generations come of age, those of us who truly grasp the importance of these concepts are becoming outnumbered by those who would trade their freedom for security and popularity.

The events in Egypt have painted a vivid picture of wasted opportunity and squandered freedom, but we are on a course to squander our freedom on a scale that dwarfs anything the world has ever seen. John Adams said “Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”. Generations of Americans have respected those principles and have done their best to preserve freedom for their progeny, but we have neglected to teach that respect to our kids.

The fault is ours, not theirs. To be fair, my grandparents didn't have to worry so much about the outside influences that come into our homes via television and now the internet. We have accepted these influences as benign entertainment and allowed pop culture to supplant the values we sought to pass on to our children. We were often warned of these influences, but those warnings were mostly ignored, and we now find ourselves living in a time when our politicians openly challenge our religious freedom, seek to limit our freedom of speech, publicly call for banning and confiscating our guns, and continue to serve in Congress after stating “I don't care about the Constitution”.

In recent days an op-ed in the New York Times written by constitutional scholar Michael Seidman advocates abandonment of our Constitution decrying our “obsession” with it, calling many provisions “archaic, idiosyncratic, and downright evil”. Views such as his are not normally espoused in such clear terms, but he is certainly not alone in this way of thinking. A fact that should not be overlooked is that he is a Professor of Law at Georgetown University, working in a position that shapes the minds and views of some of our brightest young people; those who will be among the future leaders of this country.

The Beauty of the Second Amendment...

The New Year is upon us and with it comes a fresh round of political fights to keep us all busy. Many people are focused on the “fiscal cliff” debacle, but I haven’t spent a lot of time on it because there is little to no chance that anything will improve on that front in the next four years. Government spending will continue to grow uncontrollably, the Democrats (with plenty of help from the GOP) will continue to take the money we earn, and the economy will continue to wallow in cesspool of Socialism.

To me, the more important issue is the Democrat effort to further erode our right to keep and bear arms. As I fully expected, even before the Sandy Hook shooting, the left has begun an all out effort to take away our guns. Emboldened by Obama’s re-election, they have even openly admitted they ultimately want to confiscate guns from law abiding citizens.

Some would assume that the renewed push for a gun ban is a result of the recent school shooting, but that simply isn’t the case. In a press release dated December 17, 2012, Sen. Diane Feinstein said “I have been working with my staff for over a year on this legislation”. Isn’t it funny how conveniently she had it ready to submit just as Obama begins his second term? According to the press release, here is are the key provisions of her bill (my comments are in {} ):

• Stops the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of more than 100 specifically-named firearms as well as certain semiautomatic rifles, handguns and shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and semiautomatic rifles and handguns with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds. {This will ban many very common handguns that most of us don’t consider to be “assault weapons”}.

• Stops the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of large-capacity ammunition feeding devices (magazines, strips and drums) capable of accepting more than 10 rounds. {This would include every magazine I have for my favorite 9mm handgun, hardly an “assault weapon”.}

• Protects legitimate hunters and the rights of existing gun owners by:

> grandfathering weapons legally possessed on the date of enactment;

> exempting more than 900 specifically-named weapons used for hunting and sporting purposes; and

> exempting antique, manually-operated, and permanently disabled weapons.
{She conveniently ignores the fact that every single provision of this bill tramples on the rights of every American citizen to keep and bear arms for the purposes expressed by the authors of the Constitution (you know, the document that is supposed to define her authority as a member of the Senate?), namely to be able to overthrow the government if it begins to act in the way Sen. Feinstein is suggesting.}

While it is true that any such legislation that made it through the Democrat controlled Senate would then have to be passed by the Republican House, please don’t make the mistake of getting a false sense of security. Already I have heard rumors that some members of the Republican leadership are entertaining the idea of adopting some provisions of the bill so that they can say they are “doing something”.

We must also not forget that we are just one election away from possibly giving Barack Obama a second chance at Democrat control of both Houses of Congress. Given the Republicans’ track record in the past few election cycles, I’d have to say the chances of that happening are much better than I would feel comfortable with. If that happens, our next stop is the Supreme Court, and my memory is long enough to know we can’t count on them. At that point, we are left with the words of Thomas Jefferson a very wise person Matt Carson:

"The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."