What gall Everytown has. What hypocrites they are. How dare they wish their people a happy Independence Day – a day won for America by armed citizens. How dare they celebrate the founding of the freest nation on earth, a nation that holds dear that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” while trying to infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
If there is one day that I do not want to hear from people whose common purpose is to strip me of my Constitutionally protected rights, it is the day that this nation was founded.
The 4th of July is a day that belongs to patriots.
These people should spend the day with their heads buried in the sand, unable to breathe the sweet air of freedom, made possible by brave men with guns.
There is an excellent HBO movie about the Wannseekonferenz, called Conspiracy. The Wannseekonferenz was the meeting at which senior Nazi military officers and government officials met to discuss the solution to the Jewish question.
One of the things that stuck with me about the movie was how the discussion about who was Jewish and how the murder the Jews always came back to the law. There is one scene in the movie where the Nazi officers are discussing how they want what they are about to do to be legal, and based on German legal precedent. The conference itself was attended by a number of German lawyers. It is truly amazing that the basis for one of the worst atrocities in human history was grounded in law.
In Shakespeare’s ‘Henry VI, Part II, act IV, Scene II, Dick the Butcher famously says “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” This line has been misinterpreted by history. It needs to be understood in terms of historical context.
“The earlier Peasants’ Revolt under Wat Tyler actually took place during the reign of Richard II. Unlike the Cade revolt, this rebellion was directed against lawyers and against what the revolutionaries considered unjust laws and oppressively harsh legal enforcement of those laws. The peasants revolted against the legal slavery imposed on them by law and their consequent lack of political and legal rights. The peasants viewed lawyers not as defenders of liberty, but as the instruments of slavery and oppression.”
Shakespeare’s line was meant to convey hatred for the class of corrupt and malicious lawyers, who in collusion with the government, used to law as a tool to oppress the people.
It is in this that Henry the VI and the Nazis have something in common. Before the first blood was spilled in war it was the lawyers justified it happening.
I have been absolutely aghast at what I have seen unfold over the last two weeks in House of Representatives and on the TV news.
I watched a sitting United States Senator, a representative of the State of West Virginia, a man who is responsible for crafting the laws of this country say: “The problem we have, and really the firewall we have right now is due process. It’s all due process… But due process is what’s killing us right now.”
Senator Joe Manchin took the single greatest protection of the American people and in one argument, flipped it on its head and made it into a liability.
Due process is been an asset for free people against tyranny since 1215, with the Magna Carta: “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”
In the same vein, sitting United States Senator Chris Murphy, an attorney in the state of Connecticut and a graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Law, described this near millennia old bulwark against abuses by the state as “a red herring”. He was helped along in his debasement of our Constitutionally protected civil rights by a woman, Andrea Mitchell, whose choice of career is guaranteed by that same constitution.
Previously, Senator Murphy had branded due process as a “terror gap.” It is a catchphrase to promote the idea that terrorists can buy guns because some of We the People keep holding onto our right not to have our liberties suspended by bureaucratic fiat.
Senator Elisabeth Warren backed up Senator Murphy’s attack on due process with a depraved contortion of illogic.
According to Senator Warren, due process is how ISIS gets guns. If we protect our citizens from government abuse, the terrorists win.
This is the same position taken by the Democrats who staged a petulant sit-in in on the floor of the US House of Representatives.
These politicians and members of the legal protection say this because they have no respect for the limitations of power granted by the Constitution. Some, in fact, are contemptuous of those limitations. Judge Richard A. Posner, of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote his opinion of our founding document in a piece in Slate. Keep in mind that this judge is also a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.
“I see absolutely no value to a judge of spending decades, years, months, weeks, day, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation (across the centuries—well, just a little more than two centuries, and of course less for many of the amendments). Eighteenth-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21stcentury. Which means that the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the post–Civil War amendments (including the 14th), do not speak to today.”
When you have no respect for the origin of our foundational document or the events that inspired its creation, it is easy to dismiss the rights it guarantees at a whim.
Watch the DHS official, in this video being grilled by Congressman Trey Gowdy, completely disregard, in fact dismiss, the concept of due process.
This attack on due process, treating it as an impediment to justice rather than a instrument of justice is not new. The dismissal of due process has been at the forefront of Liberal politicians’ actions on campus rape. White House guidelines all but remove the idea of innocent until proven guilty from campus rape investigations. The loudest voices in the campus rape debate have framed those who are in favor of due process as “rape apologists.” Rape survivors are to be believed, unquestioningly. This has been allowed to progress because campus disciplinary hearings are not courts of law, and the same Constitutional standards of legal protection that apply in court do not apply on campus.
This undermining of legal protection has not ended at the campus gates, but has led to the creation of a “Yes means yes” law in California, which is about as Orwellian as a piece of legislation regarding interpersonal behavior can be. And that is a feature, not a bug.
In his defense of California’s “yes means yes” law, Ezra Klein stated:
To work, “Yes Means Yes” needs to create a world where men are afraid. For that reason, the law is only worth the paper it’s written on if some of the critics’ fears come true. Critics worry that colleges will fill with cases in which campus boards convict young men (and, occasionally, young women) of sexual assault for genuinely ambiguous situations. Sadly, that’s necessary for the law’s success. It’s those cases — particularly the ones that feel genuinely unclear and maybe even unfair, the ones that become lore in frats and cautionary tales that fathers e-mail to their sons — that will convince men that they better Be Pretty Damn Sure.
Let that sink in for a moment. A US citizen is openly advocating for a law, that when applied correctly, convicts the innocent in ambiguous or spurious situations, in order to strike fear into the hearts of an entire demographic of people.
So much so for Blackstone’s formulation, on which America’s judicial system was founded: “All presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously; for the law holds it better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent party suffer.”
With “yes means yes” the law becomes a tool of legal terrorism. Wrongful conviction is desired because of the chilling effect that it will have. Every principle of justice that We the People hold dear as a protection against overbearing government is inverted and turned against itself to justify this law.
It is through this legal convolution, that we end up with wording in the Flake Amendment that says:
No district court of the 23 United States shall have jurisdiction to consider 24 any claim related to or arising out of facts and circumstances that could have been included in a petition filed under paragraph (1), including any constitutional claim.
The legislators who drafted this bill might as well have said the passage of this law hereby overturns Marbury v. Madison and abolishes the exercise of judicial review.
They knew at the time of writing this bill that what they were doing was pure applesauce, to quote the late, great Justice Antonin Scalia.
This is just the latest in a long history of attacks on the rights of man, wherein those whose goal is to increase the power of the state make their grab by twisting and perverting the law, sodomizing all legal precedent of protection, to enslave the people with the chains meant to restrain the power of the state.
What we are seeing is not just the slow erosion of civil liberties by the state. This is a new an horrifying, full-throated attack on our civil liberties by politicians, bureaucrats, and the media where we are being told that the civil liberties that have protected the citizens of this nation for eleven score and ten years are in fact what is killing us. This a detestable perversion of the principles of American jurisprudence.
Our rights are not what endanger us. To be told the opposite is something we cannot abide.
Personally, I take heart in that. If I knew nothing else about Brexit, I would do exactly what Obama told me not to do. He is the Captain Peter “Wrong Way” Peachfuzz of Commanders in Chief. Take all the advice that he as to give, than to exactly the opposite. Watch this clip and replace “Captain” with “POTUS” and “USS Andalusia” with “USA” and tell me it’s not an accurate description of his legacy.
What the British people have done is defy the political elite of the EU.
I believe that this is the ballot box equivalent of the John Brown raid on Harper’s Ferry. It may not be the first shots fired of a European civil war, but it sure as hell pushed it along. The Prime Minister has resigned over the vote. Several other EU nations have been bitten by the bug of secession.
I don’t know what the future holds for the UK and the EU. But right now, I really wish the people the UK had not given up their ability to own guns. I think, very soon, they will need them.
“The assault rifle traces back to Nazi Germany. Did you know that? The Germans were trying to develop a more effective weapon for their soldiers, one that rivaled the firepower of a submachine gun but had better accuracy in more confined spaces. Kill faster, closer in. That was the idea. Adolf Hitler, according to some accounts, even named the weapon: Sturmgewehr. It means “storm rifle.” Tuck that somewhere in the back of your mind. The first people to really utilize this weapon were Nazis. Not our forefathers. Not Thomas Jefferson. Not George Washington.”
Holy shit, no. Nazis!!! Ban them all!!! Ban EVERYTHING!!!
Oh, wait. Nope. Never mind.
Yes, it is true that the term “Assault Rifle” comes from the StG 44, but as a gun nerd, I propose that the StG was not the first assault rifle. If you go by the commonly understood definition: “By U.S. Army definition, a selective-fire rifle chambered for a cartridge of intermediate power. If applied to any semi-automatic firearm regardless of its cosmetic similarity to a true assault rifle, the term is incorrect.” Than the first mass issued assault rife was the U.S. Army issue M1 Carbine. It was select fire (early designs were select fire, this was ditched by the Ordinance Dept, but later put back in as an upgrade with the T4 and then as the M2), used a detachable magazine, and used an intermediate cartridge (the .30 Carbine is ballsitically more similar to the 7.92×33 than to the .45 ACP or 9mm). Paratrooper models came with a pistol grip. It is true it was not issued to front line troops and was considered more of a PDW, but it meets the definition quite well. And that rifle was designed by David Marshall Williams, who was serving time in prison for murder when he developed the M1.
I guess NYC, San Francisco(most of California, really), and the rest of progressive America that bans smoking in public, trans fats, big sodas, and everything else tasty and fun for the good of public heath is run by Nazis and is carrying out the goals of the Third Reich.
I doubt any of that was also what our founders had in their heads when they created this country. I don’t remember the government telling me what I can and can’t eat being in the Constitution. Actually, I’m pretty sure the 10th Amendment says the opposite.
American is to go around with a Marlboro Red in one hand and a batter dipped, deep fried, Snickers in the other, alternating between the two, taking a break only to wet your whistle from the 2 liter Jack and Coke in the Camelbak you are wearing, all while permitless open carrying a pair of Colt 45s.
See, we can play this “the Nazis did it so it must be bad” game all day if you want. By the time we’re done, I think I can effectively destroy every single DNC policy on this years platform.
I caught a trailer for a third movie in the Purge franchise, The Purge: Election Year.
At first, the Purge series seems to be following the SAW series of movies, the first one was novel and interesting, if only because of the new concept and the rest are murder porn.
Watching the trailer for the third movie, it seems that the powers at be in Hollywood have tried to spice up the plot with some political intrigue.
At this point, I can’t ignore the obvious anymore. The Purge series is the ultimate liberal/progressive fantasy projection. The overall plot of the three movies is:
There is a crisis of some sort, and a group of people known as the “New Founding Fathers” decide the best way to fix everything is with one night – 12 hours – once a year, in which everyone can go murder happy and “release” their anger and aggression. Middle class and rich (and predominately white) people use the purge to kill the poor, working class, and minorities, which magically fixes the economy and social strife.
Of course, economically, this wouldn’t work. If you kill all the working class people, who will fix the pluming, keep the lights on, drive the trucks that carry goods cross country, and so on, who will do it? How does killing all the unemployed allow for any room for economic growth? Who will all the upper middle class middle managers manage? It is a ludicrous position. But there are better economists than I to deconstruct the economics of the Purge for you.
My issue with the movie is the psychological projection inherent in the movies. The writers would have you believe that American conservatives believe that the best way to fix this country is to kill everyone that liberals believe that conservatives don’t like – namely the poor and minorities.
I minored in military history in college. Thinking back to my history of warfare of the 20th century, I can’t think of one mass murder committed by a conservative/classical liberal political party or group. What does come to mind is:
The concentration camps of Nazi Germany
The Soviet Red Terror, Holomodor, Gulags, and Great Purge.
The Chinese Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and Great Leap Forward
The Killing Fields of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge
The concentration camps and mass starvation in North Korea
The political left always comes up with a case of convenient amnesia when it comes to the mass murder and atrocities committed by regimes they are sympathetic to.
The central theme to conservatism/classical liberalism is individual rights and freedom. We want our rights to private property and to express ourselves freely and then to be left alone to compete in the free market.
It is progressivism/neo-liberalism that is compelled to control what people say, own, and do in order to impose top-down “fixes” for societal problems.
But never mind history and reality, progressive Hollywood has to foist the motivations of the most murderous regimes of the 20th century onto conservatives, because…
Gersh Kuntzman, the vile scum puddle who lied about his experience at a gun range to be hyperbolic about suffering temporary mental disorder after shooting an AR15, to make America’s most popular rifle seem like a horrifying weapon of mass destruction, has just elevated his status as a complete piece of shit, exponentially.
I guess being the most made fun of reporter in America was not enough.
This soulless stack of bipedal excrement actually celebrated the death of a 2 year old boy in Orlando who was killed by an alligator.
“No disrespect to the suffering family, but let me get this straight: We built a man-made ecosystem in the natural environment of a known predator, stocked it with fish for our amusement, built a hotel with a beach on its banks, let kids wade into the water, express shock when one gets eaten — and then we kill the animal for doing exactly what animals do?
…
We’re better than this, people. If you love nature, you have to love it when it does something natural.”
I am at a loss for words. There is not enough profanity in all the languages in all the world to express the amount of derision I have for for this man.
But to his point. Human beings are animals. We are. I have made the point many times before, that we have a tendency to forget that we are part of the food chain. Usually we are on top, but sometimes we’re not. It is the hubris of the suburbs that makes of forget this. As such, if that alligator was doing what it is natural for it to do in attacking that poor boy. Than it is equally natural, as a territorial animal, for us to drive the predators out of our territory.
It is natural for the lion to attach the Cape buffalo calf, and it is equally natural for the cape buffalo to gore the lion. We as humans may not have horns, so a 12 gauge will have to suffice.
We are the apex predator. We allow the alligator to live in our domain. If it poses a threat, we are within our natural right to kill it.
That is the point of gun ownership. It is what humans have created using the brains we have evolved to make up for the claws and fangs that evolution took from us. Our right to defend ourselves comes not from the law but from nature itself, and applies regardless of the species that threatens us.
Also
After reading this article, if the family of Lane Graves kidnapped Gersh Kuntzman and fed him to an alligator, I might just look the other way on that.
