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 Overton Window

I didn't know there was a name for this political tactic beyond being a shameless asshole of unparalleled magnitude, but it's called The Overton Window.

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Let's say you're a loud spoiled brat, and you want a $10/week allowance. Right now you get $5. So you scream and cry and rant and rave and throw a tantrum while demanding $100/week allowance. Your dad starts to entertain your tantrum and tells you you'll have to do more chores if you want $100/week.

You scream and rant some more and your mom tells your dad to be reasonable, and finally they give you a $20/week allowance, even though you do no more chores. They compromise their principles in order to be moderate and civil and compromise with you. You, as the shamelessly aggressive greedy brat, get what you want by pushing things to a ludicrous extreme, and you take advantage of their natural human desire to want to get along and avoid conflict.

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Let's say you're a wacky insane radical, and you want $1000. So you scream and rant like a lunatic and push for $1,000,000,000. You've pushed so far past the fringe that you've reset the location of the fringe. The other side compromises based on where the edge of rational discourse now exists.

When you get $1,000,000, you've received a thousand times what you initially asked for; but the other side sees the compromise and thinks they've beaten you by only giving you 1/1000th of what you really wanted.

But now next time, when you push for $5,000,000,000, and they compromise again, you get another $5,000,000. Which is five thousand times what you initially wanted. You just keep pushing so hard that the new voice of "moderation" is one that's past the fringe.
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Now, if you're reading The Patriot Perspective, you're probably not a wacky insane radical. Unless we've hit the big time, in which case you're reading through our past articles looking for discrepancies, and if so, feel free to call me or JBH when we're on Mark Levin's show just so we can hear him yell "get off the phone, you big dope!" But I digress.

Let's say some wacky radicals want to push for total government control of health care. And it's rejected. So they push harder. And they push harder.

So eventually the other side gives in and gives the ranting, screaming-child irrational radical a little bit of what it wants.

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This is also apparent in a more immediately lethal extreme throughout Islamic nations, where killing gays, abusing women, and calling for the extermination of the Jews, the murder of apostates, and execution of missionaries or those who even question Mohammed is considered normal discourse and action, not some insane fringe. In fact, it's the accepted policy and laws of many nations that are represented at the UN. The discussion isn't how to save or convert groups they dislike, as in other religions, or even how to coerce, as in the more extreme, but to destroy.

The result of the use of the Overton Window as a tactic is that this:


results in death, rather than discussion. Murder, riots, and violence are viewed as a normal consequence, rather than as a lunatic aberration. Rejection of free speech is viewed as a good, moderate response, rather than a contemptible assault on individual rights.

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The huge new taxes linked above proposed for US govt control of health care are the new extreme, and the simple US govt control and big new taxes are viewed as the good, moderate response, rather than a contemptible assault on individual rights.

Radicals force their extremism further and further through force and intimidation, and they gradually get what they want every time principles are compromised, no matter the type of radical. The tactic of The Overton Window is used by those with no reason to their argument, but who use coercion against the civility of those they wish to force.

Bullying, screaming, and violence beat reason in their world. Threatening a greater extreme doesn't lessen their initial exteme goal.

All we have to do to stop it is refuse to acknowledge any argument but reason.

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Disclaimer: If you're offended by Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, reason away with your argument. The cartoonist's argument of Islam as violent stands. If you accept reason and fact, you have to acknowledge that. Though we detest jihadis as a general rule here at TPP; consider it noted that not all Muslims are violent. I've known several over the years who were really nice folks who I'd like to have as neighbors. But a comparison of the murderously intolerant side of Islam in contrast to the benevolent side is another discussion.

The New Colossus

Today is the first time I can recall hearing this in its entirety, which amazes me in several ways.

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The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

—Emma Lazarus, 1883

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We usually only hear the last few lines. The comparison is made in an excellent speech here, around the 3 minute mark.

Or watch the entire speech here.

The Sum of it All

I recently read The 5000 Year Leap, and was surprised that there was nothing earth shattering or some great conservative (or libertarian) secret waiting to be learned. What I did learn was that our country is in trouble and without some type of paradigm shift America will be lost to us as we know.

The overarching theme I have seemed to discover through my reading of book on politics, philosophy, religion etc. I have finally recognized that we, as Americans, as a general rule are missing something so simple, so obvious that we should slap ourselves for missing it.

Our nation was founded as a society of virtue, children were instructed how to be virtuous from their parents and from the elementary schools they attended. America was a place were religion was encouraged and was proliferated throughout society as a whole. Children were taught to be industrious and generous, as their parents practiced it in everything they did.

Alexis de Tocqueville said this about America during the time he visited:

"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there. In the fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there. In her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits, aflame with righteousness, did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

So where does that statement leave us? This is the point where Ayn Rand and I diverge, man needs to fill his spiritual hole in his heart to be complete. It can be argued that the founding fathers thought it important for Christian men and women to be involved in government. The founding fathers dictated freedom of religion for all, not the absence of Judeo-Christian principles being instilled into our government through its elected representatives.

I have thought on this for a long while, I believe that the word that comes to mind is balance. Balance in everything spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical balance. It is well and good to excel at making a living, but at the same time if you emotionally or spiritually deficient chances are you will not be happy or you may not be generous to your neighbor when he or she is in need. Is it your responsibility to help you neighbor? In America it isn't, but if you wish to and you feel led to help your neighbor then by all means do so.

An example of the virtue vacuum: Why does everyone get angry when corporate greed is exposed?

It is because greed in itself is wrong (it should not be construed as making a profit). When an example like corporate greed comes to mind, people scream for more government regulations and therefore more restrictions on the market. This in turn hampers the economy and so on and so forth. People have not realized what they have done to themselves. In asking for government protection they erode the very system that sustains them. If that corporate greed, in whatever form it manifested itself, had not occurred, the extra regulations would not have been levied and the free market system would have been left alone and allowed to function as it should. In a virtuous society (in America that usually means one espouses some type of Christian beliefs) greed is frowned upon, hard work is encouraged. Helping a neighbor in need is honorable whether it be giving aid yourself or directing them to a church with more resources than yourself.

Balance and personal responsibility are the answer to America's problems. America's churches and other not for profit organizations, no matter the religious affiliation, are the answer to solving the poverty question, not by giving the poor everything they need but giving the poor what they need to become productive members in society. Business on all levels would be cleaned up because business men and women would be concerned providing good and services for their customers while exhibiting honesty and integrity while making a profit. Government would be less involved in regulation and in taxing the citizenry and business. Government would be more fiscally responsible and accountable to its citizens.

As of now there is rampant spending by the government when there is no money in the treasury, massive entitlement programs that do not work or about to be bankrupt with more programs on the way to help the "poor" in our country, the continuous attempts by a socialist congress to cause the complete abdication of personal responsibility to the federal government, government officials involved in criminal and morally irresponsible scandals among other things.

Alexis de Tocqueville also said this:

"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

I say, "Liberty and Freedom through Virtue instead of Restraint and Servitude through Socialism!"

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