A professor of law at the University of Miami will be giving a lecture at Drake University Law School on September 15 to discuss the alleged similarities between “constitutional extremists” and religious extremists.

According to the press release on the lecture:

In recent years, the Constitution has become an article of faith in the worst possible sense, t is increasingly invoked to justify irrational and destructive agendas in a way that strongly resembles the way religious extremists use the Bible to advance fundamentalist views. This constitutional extremism occurs on both ends of the political spectrum: in the Right’s obsessive focus on the Second Amendment and the Left’s equally obsessive focus on the First. Though their targets are different, constitutional extremism on both the Right and Left is united in the privileging of the powerful.

I am not a law scholar by any means, but I from my experience and study of the world, I believe this professor is mistaken.

As a layman, when I try to understand religious extremists, the basic philosophy seems to be:

Believe that I tell you to believe.  Pray how I tell you to pray.  Say only what I allow you to say.  Do only what I allow you to do.  Live exactly how I tell you to live.   If you don’t, I will kill you, kill your family, kill everyone that doesn’t fall in line with my beliefs.

Religious extremists seek to control a population.  The use whatever god they believe in, and the rules set down in their holy book to justify their control.

When I think about “Constitutional extremists” the basic philosophy seems to be:

Leave me alone.  Don’t tell me what to believe, what I can or cannot say, how I should live, what I can own, or anything else for that matter.  Don’t treat on me and I won’t tread on you.  If you do start to tread on me, you won’t like it, and then shit will get real.  So for you own protection, fuck off.  

Constitutional extremism pushes the limits of small government, almost to the line of anarchy.  It is defined by an almost complete lack of control.

I assume that this professor is going to try and link religious extremism and constitutional extremism by rhetoric of violence.  But even then they are different.  Religious extremism violence is (to coin a word) actionary.  The religious extremist initiates the violence to get what they want.  Constitutional extremists violence is reactionary.  It is used to repel oppression, which generally manifests itself in the form of violence or the threat of violence.

These two philosophies are diametrically opposed to one another.

Keep in mind, I am not defending or justifying Constitutional extremism in all of its forms.  The Bundy Ranch and BLM (Bureau of Land Management) stand-offs were stupid and dangerous.  It is that this professor seems to have a bone to pick with the NRA, which is often considered to be a Constitutional Extremist group since it puts the 2nd Amendment and Constitutional rights over the feelings of anti-gun activists.  I am concerned that her interpretation of Constitutional Extremism means any time someone says “my rights are more important than your feelings.”  Which is not extremism.  It is a foundational principle of our Nation.  Then again, some on the Left go so far as to identify our Founding Fathers as extremist.

I guess what I am doing is defending a philosophy, not a group.  The idea of parading around with AR-15’s in front of some Park Rangers over cattle is extreme for me.  It’s stupid.  If some Progressive president decides to go full Vichy France and try to appease the Iranian government by putting the boot down on the Jews, well… all bets are off.  Extremism is a matter of degree.  I’m not going to wage war over cattle.  I will wage war over children in cattle cars.

I found it funny, however that this professor associates 1st Amendment extremism with the Left.  Maybe once upon a time, that was true.  Today, is the Progressive Left that tries to crush free speech with hate speech laws or diversity initiatives.  We have seen the loss of free speech on college campuses, which are overwhelmingly left of center.

The Progressive Left has waged war on religion, forcing the religious to comply with their whims against religious doctrine.  The desire of religious people to be left alone to practice their religion in peace is considered bigotry by the left.

This has led to the term Regressive Left.  Liberals who fight against freedom.  If this professor wants to talk about extremist political violence, she needs to focus on this area of politics.  The philosophy of the modern Progressive Liberal is:

Believe that I tell you to believe.  Don’t pray if you practice a “privileged” religion.  Say only what I allow you to say.  Do only what I allow you to do.  Live exactly how I tell you to live.   If you don’t, I will kill you, kill your family, kill everyone that doesn’t fall in line with my beliefs.

The modern left is a religious extremist who worships at the Church of Big Government Our Non-Gendered Person of Tyranny.

But i have a feeling that would cause this professor to take too long and too hard a look in a mirror, so she won’t.

We know our opponents hate us and our culture. Some of them go so far as to want us dead. We also know what happened to a disarmed people when those in power want them gone. Just ask the Jews and the Armenians…

Source: No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money: What It Could Come To

If you need an explanation, you are in a sorely need of history.

This comes from a recent Facebook discussion about the George Zimmerman case. The subject still believes that Trayvon martin was murdered/assassinated/whatever even though the evidence in court showed otherwise:

Is your eye twitching yet? It takes about five minutes for the eyelid contractions to stop, just relax.

The gentleman’s ‘likes’ in FB are unsurprising: Hillary, Everytown, National Gun Victims Action Council, Democrats, Wendy Davis…. well yes, he is from Texas.

But that is how zealots respond when the evidence keeps mounting against the cause and are so emotionally invested: they must resort to blind belief and fanatical responses.  I am not joking when I said they rather see bodies pile up as long as their inflexible creed is untouched by criticism and ridicule. Expect no truth, respect or sympathy from them.

Stolen from all over.

Venezuelan police crushed and chopped up nearly 2,000 shotguns and pistols in a Caracas city square on Wednesday, as the new interior minister relaunched a long-stalled gun control campaign in one of the world’s most crime-ridden countries.

Venezuela has also bought laser technology to mark ammunition, Reverol said, in an attempt to keep a registry of the bullets given out to the South American nation’s many state and municipal police forces.

Source: Venezuela crushes 2,000 guns in public, plans registry of bullets | Reuters

Given that ammo imports are tightly controlled by the Government and that most of the ammunition that you can find is manufactured by the military, I expect that they will find troubles with the laser micro-stamping.  You see, Gov ammo is sold in the black market not only to criminals but to guerrilla groups and drug cartels.

By the way, reloading equipment and supplies are strictly verbotten. My crappy Lee single stage press can get you (IIRC) about 8 years in prison and that is not counting primers, bullets, cases and powder. I think I would end up serving something like 25-30 years if all I have for rolling my own ‘boolits’ is added up.

But I want to direct your attention to these “experts” on guns and disarmament:

And they wonder why Gun Control is failing in Venezuela.

From Guns.com

And therein lies a major flaw in the argument that Williams is trying to make.  While SYG laws has been used as a defense by a law enforcement officer regarding a shooting, the primary purpose is to protect ordinary people who use lethal force to counter an attack.  The authority of police to use force or otherwise to carry out their duties comes under a different heading.

Source: Professor of law struggles to miss the point on Stand Your Ground

And I figure Greg Camp was restricted in the number of words because this article in the Nation is chock-full-of lies and distortions, it would make for half a book on corrections alone. Let’s begin with the title:

You kinda lose respect for the author and the editor when you resort to Click-&-Race-Bait. But since we are now living in the era of Black Lives Matter And We Will Lie When We Want To, it is to be expected. I selected a quote about Castle Doctrine from the article because it only takes all of 3 minutes worth of Google search to confirm or deny the statement.

Harvard professor Caroline Light has traced the history of our romance with legalized vigilantism. She dates it to the Reconstruction era, “when post-war political and economic turmoil and the enfranchisement of African American men fed late-19th-century gender panic, and the legal terrain shifted to characterize a man’s ‘castle’ and the dependents residing therein as an extension of the white masculine self.” Light (whose excellent new book Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair With Lethal Self-Defense is forthcoming from Beacon Press next spring) asserts that current policies, including defunding basic public services, have led to a situation in which “the state’s retreat from the protection of its citizens creates a perceived need for (do-it-your)self-defense.” The supposedly race-neutral idea of “reasonable threat” actually encourages a “lethal response to black intrusions into spaces considered white.”

What in the good name of Martin Luther King is this crap about? I looked up Harvard professor Caroline Light and she turns out to be a Lecturer on Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality (Or as we call them in Real Life, a degree in “You want fries with that? I have Student loans to pay”) so not even a Law Professor or even a paralegal. But you don’t need to be a Supreme Court Justice to do a basic Google-Fu and find out that Castle Doctrine comes from English Law and dates back to 1628.

it has been a legal precept in England, since at least the 17th century, that no one may enter a home, which would typically then have been in male ownership, unless by invitation. This was established as common law by the lawyer and politician Sir Edward Coke (pronounced Cook), inThe Institutes of the Laws of England, 1628:

“For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and each man’s home is his safest refuge].”

So basically “Professor” Light missed by just two centuries. That is what passes for accuracy in Harvard nowadays , I guess.  And I am still trying to wrap my head to the idea that Castle Doctrine somehow just applies to white homes and not to every home. Does she have any statistics that proves that statement? Any law in the books that says something remotely similar?

Of course, this is just another attempt to confuse the understanding of Stand Your Ground laws by repeating the lie that it discriminates against Blacks when at least in Florida we know it favors Blacks .

People like Patricia Williams, the author of this “article” and Professor Light firmly believe that Stand Your Ground was a racist NRA/ALEC construct created in 2005 so White People in Florida could shoot Blacks with impunity. I have mentioned ad nauseam  the Supreme Court cases of  Beard v. United States – 158 U.S. 550 (1895) and Brown v. United States, 256 U.S. 335 (1921), but I just want to add another SCOTUS SYG case that I happened to find not too far back. It is Rowe v. US (1896):

(Intro)
The testimony on the part of the government tended to show: That on the evening of the 30th of March, 1895, the defendant, David Cul Rowe, who is a Cherokee Indian, and the deceased, Frank Bozeman, a white man, a citizen of the United States, and not an Indian, met at an hotel at Pryor’s Creek, Ind. T., at the supper table…

(Court’s majority decision by Justice John Marshall Harlan.)
… The accused was entitled, so far as his right to resist the attack was concerned, to remain where he was, and to do whatever was necessary, or what he had reasonable grounds to believe at the time was necessary, to save his life, or to protect himself from great bodily harm. And, under the circumstances, it was error to make the case depend, in whole or in part, upon the inquiry whether the accused could, by stepping aside, have avoided the attack, or could have so carefully aimed his pistol as to paralyze the arm of his assailant, without more seriously wounding him.

Without referring to other errors alleged to have been committed, the judgment below is reversed, and the case is remanded for a new trial.

REVERSED.

So much for evil racist roots of Stand Your Ground.

I did write to The Nation pointing out the error on Castle Doctrine part of the article, but I haven’t and do not expect to hear from them.

If I had kids of almost College age, I would encourage them to go to some sort of Trade School as they would make more money after they graduate than many of these “Professors” and do not have to be infected with their political BS.