What We Believe Part V: Gun Rights

Bill Whittle's Part V of the explanation of Tea Party/conservative beliefs:



We see natural law revisited here. If it's yours, it's yours - and your property is your right - and your right to defend. No legitimate government can take away the right to property. Indeed, original phrase used by the founders was "life, liberty and pursuit of property". If it's yours, it's yours - be it your home, your house, your car, your labor, your wealth or your body.

Photo by Oleg Volk.

Just today, I stumbled across this essay: Violence Is Golden. It's a very direct assessment of how society works, and how violence works. It's a more elaborate version of Robert Heinlein's explanation in Starship Troopers via Sgt Zim of the application of force.

Photo by Oleg Volk.

It's something that, like Whittle says, most conservative/Tea Party/traditionalist types instinctively understand. It's not something that needs to be elaborated on to be understood - but it's worth it to examine beliefs anyway. For most folks, Oleg Volk's posters are simply direct, visual statements of common sense. Through examining these beliefs, it makes it easier to convey them to those who don't understand - those who fear firearms and place their blind trust unwisely in the monopoly of force that the state controls.

Again, by Oleg Volk.

But for people who live in a bubble, it is not easy to understand. For rich city people who believe that the police are there in an instant, perhaps banning guns makes sense. They don't have to experience violence in their lives. They are never threatened by crime, animals, nor do they feel the boot of oppressive government - the police are invariably subservient, because the super-rich are connected to the county/city/state/federal government.

For the not-super-rich city dweller, the modest suburbanite, or the rural resident of whatever means, physical security is a real concern - even against tyrannical government.

For people who've been victimized on a massive scale - they know what gun control really means firsthand. It isn't a myth, it isn't a "can't happen here", and no amount of "we live in a good neighborhood" or "we have laws against that" means a damn thing. They know that violence exists - sometimes in the form of common thugs, but more often in the form of tyranny.

Volk's work again.

And that line of defense is just part of beauty of the Second Amendment. The Founders knew a way to prevent tyranny, oppression, and crime (which is just tyranny or oppression on the personal scale). And they knew that the more of it we exercise, the fewer rights we have trampled - the freer we are, and the safer we are. The greater that defense, the greater the deterrence against oppressors.

No freeman should ever be disbarred the use of arms.

- Thomas Jefferson

An armed society is a polite society.

- Robert Heinlein

For those unconvinced, I suggest exploring Oleg Volk's site: A Human Right. It's also a good site to explore your own opinions on the Second Amendment, as well as something to show to others who may not have the frame of reference to understand.

Also, since it's fun and informative and persuasive, check out Penn & Teller skewering Gun Control.

She can resist tyranny, oppression, and crime. Sunburn, not so much.

And Oleg Volk has an awesome job.

The Ruling Class vs. The Country Class

Angelo M. Codevilla has written an excellent piece over at American Spectator entitled
America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution. It's an excellent read, though a bit long.

He divides the nation into two classes - a ruling class and a country class. The ruling class, is by and large, blue state-oriented, govt.-oriented, non-producers who believe they know what's best for everyone, and they should rule. The country class, is by and large, red-state oriented, private enterprise-oriented, producers who believe that individuals know what's best for themselves, and that individuals should rule themselves. The ruling class desires authority, the country class desires autonomy.

From Codevilla's piece:
Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters -- speaking the "in" language -- serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct.
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The point is this: though not one in a thousand of today's bipartisan ruling class ever heard of Adorno or McCloskey, much less can explain the Feuerbachian-Marxist notion that human judgments are "epiphenomenal" products of spiritual or material alienation, the notion that the common people's words are, like grunts, mere signs of pain, pleasure, and frustration, is now axiomatic among our ruling class. They absorbed it osmotically, second -- or thirdhand, from their education and from companions. Truly, after Barack Obama described his opponents' clinging to "God and guns" as a characteristic of inferior Americans, he justified himself by pointing out he had said "what everybody knows is true." Confident "knowledge" that "some of us, the ones who matter," have grasped truths that the common herd cannot, truths that direct us, truths the grasping of which entitles us to discount what the ruled say and to presume what they mean, made our Progressives into a class long before they took power.
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2004 - both major candidates for president were members. Was there a conspiracy? No. They're just members of the same ruling class. The secret society is a coincidental symptom, the ruling class is the disease. Unless you're Alex Jones. Then they're all reptilians.

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Caroll Quigley, historian and professor, who had an influence on Bill Clinton and his Rhodes Scholarship:

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies."

Quigley may have brought this up as part of his belief in conspiracy theories... or may have brought it up as a model of what an individual political party should do (as in the rapidly evolving idea that Obama's weaknesses are going to be exploited by Hillary Clinton in 2012, to the effect of unelecting Obama's overt radical leftism and electing Hillary's not-as-overt radical leftism). It ties in with the idea that there is a ruling class - a class that rules by patronage and pull.

It also backs up the idea that there isn't a dimes worth of difference between the two parties in the US, much less branches of those parties. With RINOs on one side and democrats on the other, it's a convincing case. With the illegal immigration debate in 2007 - where the ruling class of republicans and democrats were united against the country class - the people - it was made pretty apparent.

It's also why the media selected a RINO candidate for pres in 2008 - by choosing the one the ruling class approved of. McCain was and is a member of the ruling class. Thompson, Tancredo, Hunter, and especially Ron Paul, were not.

It's important to note that the media itself is part of the ruling class. Consider NPR's griping about the "Tyranny Of Constituency".

The NPR poll shows why individual House members wind up being more loyal to their own jigsaw piece of the national puzzle than to the national puzzle itself. Only their own micro-constituency can vote for them (or against them).

NPR considers it terrible when representatives actually represent the people who elected them, rather than go along with the national ruling (leftist) class.

National Public Radio promotional still from a telathon. Seen with sunglasses.

Unless you're Alex Jones, then this is pretty much all you see everywhere. Without the sunglasses.

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But individuals with principles who adhere to them aren't rulers. Originialist judges don't rule on a whim. Constitutionalist legislators don't write things because they feel like it.

And there is a simple way to tell apart the ruling class from the country class.

I use what former Texas State Representative Dr. Suzanna Hupp said:

"How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual... as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of."

It's a litmus test for whether a politician is part of the ruling class. If they don't trust you with your own security, and if they don't trust you with physical power, they're ruling class. If they trust you, they're country class who work for you, the citizen. Even if they harbor some ambitions of the ruling class, they're still someone you can reason with, because at the basic physical level they believe in self-determination and individual autonomy.

World's Smallest Political Alignment Quiz

http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html

I've taken this quiz before, but now having seen the effects of the liberal fascist/statist mode of govt, it appears I've gotten way more hardcore in support of liberty.

My only non-100% libertarian question is one that basically consists of "how the hell you gonna do it?"

There is a problem with the quiz and its results. Statist and liberal are the same thing, as the fundamental basis of modern liberalism is that they have no beliefs beyond pandering to emotion.

Jonah Goldberg rather eloquently illustrates this by pointing out that the basis of modern liberalism begins in the 19-teens with Woodrow Wilson and his cadre, who all believed they knew what was best. HG Wells coined the term "Liberal Fascism" to describe the progressives of the era - and meant it in glowing terms. The left was enamored with fascism and the trappings of ultimate power and still is - as evidenced by the bow to the Saudi king, the hug with Hugo Chavez, etc.

Thus, the modern liberal is a statist, and vice versa, though he'll call himself a progressive or whatever lie he needs to in order to get by. Van Jones was a communist who proclaimed himself a liberal and progressive - but all are the same thing - people who crave power over others and are those who should NEVER have it.

The liberalism of the founding fathers was libertarianism coupled with some degrees of conservatism based on traditional Christian values. It was liberal in opposition to monarchy and despotism - it was revolutionary in contrast to that. It was vehemently not the "revolutionary" of tyrannical dictators like Hugo Chavez or the mass murdering coward Che Guevara or of even greater mass murderer Lenin. That's simply one more tyrannical despot replacing a weaker government.

Nor does any "liberal" policy in the quiz follow true liberal principles - which are libertarian principles, or conservative principles - as conservatives are seeking to CONSERVE the liberties and virtues derived from them that they see as most beneficial to the survival of the American people.

It's flawed on the whole statist dictatorial side. No true liberal should be taking from one group to give to another, as welfare does. That's theft - it starts with money and ends with prima nocta.

Nor does a traditional conservative - based on conserving the principles that made the country great - demand that government interfere in people's home lives.

I suppose the conclusion is that, given liberal-statists identical status and thought, and the opinions of an American conservative versus an American traditionalist (who doesn't adhere to the Constitution so much as their cultural opinions - which may not be a bad thing for culture, but perhaps shouldn't interfere in government and laws) - the test is invalid.

Diatribe over - but consider it no matter your result. Classic liberalism, American conservatism, or just libertarianism, call it what you will - it all adds up to this:

And this:


Liberty looks pretty damn good to me.