Here’s an interesting video of Ron Paul covering the subject which he is taking heat for right now, with the press already declaring Rudy the winner and beginning to call for the ousting of Paul from the debates.
You may disagree with Dr. Paul on this one overall, but if you’re going to make an argument, argue against his points, please. I believe he’s making strong arguments in this case.
Also, please note that I don’t think this is exactly parallel with the discussion regarding dealing with the growing muslim situation which is making many people nervous. And I don’t necessarily believe that any issues that arise in that discussion will be resolved by what Dr. Paul is proposing. I think that issue will probably need to be dealt with separately and require its own long-term strategy apart from what’s going on in Iraq.
** Supplemental **
We’re in a tough spot right now and I don’t necessarily think it’s as simple as Dr. Paul is making it sound. The enemy is angry at us and growing. Pulling out will likely only incite further violence from them. But I don’t think fighting in Iraq is necessarily synonymous with fighting the terrorist enemy. The difficult thing about our current enemy is that they’re such an amorphous group that it makes it difficult for us to know where to take the fight to.
In short, if this thing can be “won” at all, our military needs to have defined targets and we need to knock those targets out with all the fury we can muster. I think the hardest part of this whole thing is going to be nailing down the correct targets. Once that’s been done, the hardest part of this fight will be over.
If you ever had any hopes that Lizard Queen Rodham won’t be our next president, it’s probably better you let go of that now. Saul Anuzis of the Michigan Republican Party is making it clear that the RNC doesn’t want a candidate like Paul to even be part of the discussion anymore, regardless of his grassroots popularity. (And probably due in large part to that popularity, is my guess.)
Guys like Saul are making moves that basically make it clear that they no longer care about limited government. The RNC has been trying (though not too hard) to gloss over that fact for a long time, but every once in a while they reveal their big-government socialist desires.
This is one of those times.
So, are you a small-government Republican? Don’t think socialism and big government make America better or increase freedom or that those things run contrary in many ways to the U.S. Constitution? Well, it looks like your own party is declaring it’s desire to leave you on the roadside. You just don’t match their demographic anymore.
Just what would you do if one of the biggest small-government proponents was no longer allowed into the debate?
Well, here is a very refreshing piece by a Dr. Caine laying out a solid and understandable explanation about the U.S. Constitution and treaties. For those of you who might think that certain presidents have not committed some kind of impeachable offense, I maintain that violating one’s oath to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution is just that, and this article makes clear exactly what kind of violation some in power are committing.
But, again, the problem remains that our federal government has its tentacles deeply wrapped around the education of our children, and as such, most of our kids will never understand the simple laws written into our constitution that prevent such behavior regarding treaties as is performed regularly by some lawmakers. Which is to say that to do so is illegal. Of course, since so few are educated well enough to be able to bring charges, the criminal behavior continues. The inmates are running the asylum.
Without a proper education how is a child supposed to be able to grow up and understand how important little words like “under” are in these documents (at least in this case)?
Well, either way, here’s a little fun with what Dr. Caine has written:
By Article II, Section 1, paragraph 7, the President is required to swear he will: "...preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Article VI, paragraph 3 requires all Federal and State officers to also swear:"...to support this [U.S.] Constitution..."
Article I, Section 10, paragraph 1 declares: "No State shall enter into any Treaty..."
All civil magistrates are bound by oath to abide by the U.S. Constitution, and nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is any authority given for these United States to be subject to and bound by any earthly piece of paper that abrogates or is alien to the Constitution of the United States. As a matter of fact, Article VI, paragraph 2, the latter half of which is quoted at the outset above, in its first half, says only three (3) pronouncements are "the supreme Law of the Land":
(1) "THIS [the U.S.] Constitution," (2) "the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof" (i.e., as permitted by, in conformity with, and to implement this Constitution), and (3) "all treaties made....under the Authority of the United States" ("under" designates that treaties are not over, not above, and not even equal to the authority of the United States granted to it by the States via the U.S. Constitution - but remain under, inferior to its jurisdiction).
A treaty may not do or exceed what the Congress is charged to do or what it is forbidden to do. Constitutional authority supersedes, overrules, and precludes any contrary treaty authority.
No matter how much some may wish it to be, our founding documents do not allow our federal government to go and whore out our sovereignty and resources. Which is why some have worked so hard to circumvent the constitution to be able to pull off what they have, such as membership in the U.N. Of course, “circumvention” of the constitution can not legally be achieved. The way the constitution is written prevents such a thing. It is illegal. To do so is to break the law.
Don’t like it? Get a constitutional convention together and make the change you want via the stipulated process which allows changes to our founding documents. Other than that, any attempts to “circumvent” the constitution that are clear violations of the law as it is written in the constitution require investigations, impeachment hearings and trials. So let’s get busy.
"...and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the [not "this"] Constitution [ of any State] or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. [Emphasis added.]"
So, the Judges in each State must obey a bona fide treaty, even if the treaty is contrary to that state’s Constitution or contrary to any law of that state.
Thus, a properly/legally concluded U.S. treaty overrules any STATE law and any STATE Constitution, but a properly/legally framed U.S. treaty does not, may not, can not, and is forbidden to overrule the U.S. Constitution or abrogate the Sovereignty of the United States. If it does, it is not bona fide. It is a usurpation. It is not "under the Authority of the United States" to make such a treaty.
Ergo, treaties ( "made, or which shall be made" ) that violate the U.S. Constitution by subjugating the United States to an outside power ARE PROHIBITED, of no effect, and thus, null and void.
For a Senator to violate his sworn oath is perjury, a felony, an impeachable offense.
Since treaties are compacts between/among " the powers of the earth" of "separate and equal station" as stipulated in the Declaration of Independence, treaties may not be consummated with other than sovereign nations.
Consequently, for at least these two reasons --- 1) because the U.S. Senate in 1945 ratified the United Nations (UN) Charter as a treaty and the UN is not a sovereign nation, and 2) because membership in the UN makes the U.S. inferior to the UN --- U.S. "membership" in the United
Nations is unconstitutional, FORBIDDEN, and thus declared null and void. Ditto for the World Court and the nebulous entanglements of the New World Order.
Thomas Jefferson was clear on this point: "If the treaty power is unlimited, then we don’t have a Constitution. Surely the President and the Senate cannot do by treaty what the whole government is interdicted from doing in any way." Alexander Hamilton agreed: "a treaty cannot be made which alters the Constitution of the country or which infringes any express exceptions to the power of the Constitution of the United States."(2)
So many would-be usurpers are condemned by the laws they’re so clearly breaking. Time for our generation to educate the coming generations so that they can understand that they need to indict for this behavior. Breaking the law typically has consequences. And at the highest levels it can have consequences once again if first the people can understand which laws have been broken and why breaking those laws is so much worse than breaking some others.
Because, unlike basic crimes like theft or murder which typically affect a very small and limited number of people, breaking constitutional laws, such as these regarding treaties, can and does directly affect the lives of millions of individual citizens. And it affects their freedom… our freedom. And, if I remember correctly, isn’t that what our lawmakers are supposed to be protecting?
We are not giving the children of our country a stable platform. We are instead giving them a soul-shaking sense that life is unsafe, incoherent, full of random dread. And we are doing this, I think, for three reasons.
One is politics--our political views, our cultural views, so need to be expressed and are, God knows, so much more important than the peace of a child. Another is money--there’s money in the sickness that is sold to us. Everyone who works at a TV network knew ratings would go up when the Cho tapes broke.
But another reason is that, for all our protestations about how sensitive we are, how interested in justice, how interested in the children, we are not. We are interested in politics. We are interested in money. We are interested in ourselves.
I’m thinking that one of the greatest causes for this symptom of increased fear is being missed, though. I believe this has more to do with the feminization of our culture than most Americans would be willing to admit.
Masculine men and strong fathers have been demonized and minimized for so many years now, they simply aren’t around anymore to be able to give their children any security. That’s one of the great things that masculine men do. They don’t take away all the scary things in life, but they give children the ability to deal with those things properly and not be so scared by them.
The real man pulls the bogeyman out of the closet, in plain view of the children, and beats him into the ground. The bad guy is decimated, the real man sparing the children none of the intensity or ugliness of the battle. The children need to see that masculine man take care of evil with no holds barred, to watch evil be ground in to dust in the midst of sweat and blood. Because then the kids understand that they have an advocate that will fight for them and do whatever it takes to make their world safe. And that then teaches those kids, in turn, to be fighters and advocates for their children, fighting those ugly and painful battles for them in their defense.
But where do we think society is going to go if we minimize the masculine and promote the feminine? There is a place for both these things, but too much of either one has its pitfalls. And right now, we are at a point where we have abdicated our right to self defense to others and don’t know what to do when faced with an armed lunatic.
This country need to get its backbone back. The men need to stop putting up with the feminized attacks on them and their role in the family and society. All our kids need strong fathers back in their lives. They need strong men all around them who can teach them how to defend themselves in life, on all levels. They need masculine men who teach them the value of being prepared to deal with ugly situations and crazy and evil people, and even preparing those kids to kill these evil people in defense of self and family if necessary.
Bring back the alpha males, bring back the wild man, bring back the true masculinity as C.S. Lewis wrote about and I guarantee that our kids won’t be nearly so afraid anymore. And then the bad guys might just be a little more nervous. And our world could use that right now.
I ran across this one on YouTube and had to share.
This has got to be the best way I’ve seen yet to deal with bad office equipment - a la Office Space. If you have the ability to pick up some of the hardware used here, I highly recommend it. And I’m not referring to the printer.
Well, folks, it looks like it’s time to add a ‘contributors’ list to this blog. I would like to welcome huckleberry as a new contributing member here, marking the first time that this is officially a group blog. If you’ve been reading my blog here for a while, you will probably recognize huckleberry from some of his comments. He also visits and comments on some of the blogs in the blogroll and you may have read some of his musings there as well.
Huckleberry is an extremely sharp thinker with a razor-like wit, so watch out. I’m glad to have him here and I hope you enjoy his points of view as much as I do.
Also, keep your eyes open regarding the addition of another contributing member as well.
An interesting quote from Herodotus: The Histories…
Send a message that they are forbidden to own weapons of war, that they are to wear tunics under their coats and slippers on their feet, that they are to take up the cithara and the harp and that they are to raise their sons to be retailers. Before long, my lord, you will see them become women instead of men, and so there will be no danger of them rising up against you.
When it comes to standing up for what’s right, especially if it meant violence must be done in the process, would you consider most American men lean toward the masculine or the feminine point of view on such choices?
Clearly, the Virginia Tech shooting is a hot topic lately, and last night was no exception. I found myself in a discussion with a guy who was clearly on the anti-gun side of the argument. In talking to this guy, I realized something that also became apparent to my wife later when I was recounting the discussion. People who argue for making more laws and further restricting gun availability somehow tend to make their arguments based on emotion. Those who argue for minimization of violence through increased armament of law-abiding citizens tend to make arguments for their points based on reason and evidence.
All the points that I heard last night regarding further restricting guns were directly in the face of the evidence that I kept putting forth about what studies have proven, what historically has been true and what we can learn from cities who allow their citizens to own and carry weapons versus those that prevent such ownership and carrying.
Like I told the guy last night, I’m following the evidence. I’m interested in my wife and family ACTUALLY being safer, not just FEELING safer. If he could have provided and evidential argument as to why I should prefer restricting or banning gun ownership and how that would lead to my family being safer, I would have listened. But there is no such thing.
For instance, there are some studies out there that have tried to link the Brady Law with a decrease in crime. But if you delve deeper, or at least look at some different sources, you will also see something conspicuously absent from the pro-Brady studies. That is that in the same time period, many states have made it legal and easy for their law abiding citizens to begin carrying concealed guns for self defense.
Every place this is made possible for the citizenry, crime drops. Period. And every time guns are banned, crime increases. Such as in the case of Australia, where they all but banned gun ownership. Within a couple years of that legislation, they saw greater than a 300% increase in crime. Would that make you feel safer? Would you want your kids growing up in a city with that kind of an increase in crime? There is a much more evidence out there that helps make this same point, too.
The problem is that most of these anti-gun people simply don’t like guns and it scares the crap out of them to think that the people around them might be carrying them. That’s it. That’s the emotional basis for why they want to ban guns. They don’t like them.
Last night, I heard the standard argument about “Well, we could at least make it a bit harder for guys like that [guy at Virginia Tech] to get them.” You mean ban them outright like in England and Australia? Even in the old soviet Russia, criminals could still get guns, and they had some of the worst mass-murderers ever to walk the planet, even while they had one of the most tyrannical and restrictive governments around. There were soldiers and spies every few feet and everyone was petrified of the state. And yet criminals could still get away with with murder, literally.
How restrictive do we have to make things before criminals finally have a hard time getting their hands on weapons so they can do evil deeds? I don’t think we could ever make it restrictive enough to make the dent that anti-gunners are imagining. And they certainly can’t imagine that banning guns and making ownership and carrying by law-abiding citizens illegal would actually HELP criminals. But it does. And it’s been proven many times over.
But they don’t want to hear it. It’s just too scary to them. So these people, unfortunately, will continue to work to legislate away the right to self defense of us law-abiding folks, putting us in the potential position of having to choose to die or live by breaking the laws on the books.
As for me, if it comes down to my family being threatened, but laws making it illegal for us to defend ourselves… you can just imagine our position on that.
Defend yourselves. No one else will do it for you. Defend yourselves or die.
One of the things that drives me nuts in discussions surrounding terrible actions by evil people like what happened at VA Tech is that, at least in our contemporary mis-educated society, what some pragmatists dole out as real actual thought and argument for one side of the discussion is actually not rooted in anything factual.
I was listening to a talk radio program, based out of Los Angeles, which I used to listen to regularly when we lived out there. The show is hosted by two guys who, if you listen even for a short amount of time, clearly identify themselves as pragmatic thinkers. And, ironically, I think it’s a bit amazing that these guys get many of their arguments right considering how low-grade their thinking is. In an interview last Tuesday, the day of the massacre, they managed to completely dismiss any value in arming law-abiding citizens as a possible answer to the slaughter at VA Tech.
But the issue I have is not necessarily these hosts in general, or even their guest speaker, who was obviously in total agreement with their conclusions. My problem is that so many people who are against the idea of the general populace being armed as a solution to situations like the one at VA Tech don’t actually use any logic or evidence to back their conclusions. These guys base their conclusions purely out of their own subjective world views. And the fact that they have so many others who will support their conclusions based on the exact same subjective and emotional processes doesn’t help. In fact, I would say that there are WAY too many people like this in America today that muddy up discussions that could otherwise be helpful to guide people to understand what they can do to stop terrible events like the VA Tech slaughter from happening, or at least minimize the body count.
Here is a very small transcript of what was said on the John and Ken Show yesterday afternoon on KFI AM 640 in the first hour:
John: I’m also seeing a lot of knee-jerk commentary media coverage and commentary about what could be done to make the campuses safe. There’s really nothing you can do to stop a crazy guy with a gun from barging in and shooting people.
Ken: On a college campus? Probably not.
John: It’s just a matter of how quickly can you get to him to stop the shooting, but… but… anybody can walk in with a concealed weapon and do what they wish.
Guest: Oh yeah, exactly. Alright, here’s, uh, you know I’ve been talking to various hosts all over the country for the last three hours, and more than one of them says, “Well we ought’a let everybody have guns on campus.”
John: *laughter*
Ken: Yeah, we know what kind of hosts you’re talking to.
Guest: Ohhh, man. And, I just… I wanna slap them, but, you know…
Ken: Well, if one guy had a gun in that engineering hall, they might have shot back and…
John: But the thing is that…
Guest: It’s like an Archie Bunker line, “Well I could have returned fire before I went down.” Oh well.
John: Yeah. But, I mean, you know, I guess short of weapons detectors at every entrance to every campus, there’s nothing you can do.
Guest: Not at a college. Not at a college of 25,000 people, all, you know, 18 and older.
Ken: No, no, no. Oh, there’s a lot of buildings that would… it’s, it’s a lot to take control of.
Guest: And you know, colleges are about, you know, freedom, too, and expressing ideas and coming and going, and it’s just, uh… I don’t think it can be done.
John: 25,000 people is its own city. That’s like saying that any random suburban city ought to be able to shut down all crime. It’s, it’s, it’s impossible.
Guest: Exactly. It ain’t gonna happen.
Remember, the whole concept of people carrying guns in self defense was laughed off in this interview with NO evidence supporting such a position whatsoever. So first we get this:
Guest: Alright, here’s, uh, you know I’ve been talking to various hosts all over the country for the last three hours, and more than one of them says, “Well we ought’a let everybody have guns on campus.”
John: *laughter*
Shortly followed by:
John: But, I mean, you know, I guess short of weapons detectors at every entrance to every campus, there’s nothing you can do.
Any support for either of these points of view in this discussion? None. And the worst part is that the one possible solution that is never tried, having ordinary law-abiding citizens carry weapons for self defense, is immediately dismissed without a second thought. (You would think that Florida allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons had NO effect on crime in that state whatsoever.)
Following the dismissal, these pragmatists have NOTHING left as a solution. If it were left up to them, you or your children would die. Because there’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing that could be done to help this situation and no matter what we tried (but certainly not allowing people to carry weapons), 32 students would have died. Oh well.
And that’s where pragmatists and anti-gun zealots have to end up in the shadow of the murders at VA Tech. This one incident has single-handedly defeated just about every argument pragmatists and anti-gun fanatics have used to rob law-abiding Americans of their right to self defense. After analyzing all the different failures of the anti-gunners’ nicely constructed little system “for the students’ safety” at VA Tech, it’s very obvious those students were (and still are) all just sitting ducks. The cops never had a chance to help and the students could only run or play dead. Great options. Would you trust YOUR childrens’ lives to such options?
If I were the sort of evil scum who would be inclined to run off and commit such a heinous act as the lunatic did the other day, I guarantee the policies at schools like VA Tech would be music to my ears. NO ONE could defend themselves, and I could take them all out at will with just about no resistance. And if I could evade the cops for a while, that would continue to be true for a decent amount of time.
So, if you want more mass slaughters on school campuses, keep making it impossible for the students to defend themselves. But just remember whose fault it is when they die. Here’s a little hint: it’s not the murderer’s.
Much condemning evidence is surfacing regarding the VA Tech shooting that reveals that parents and students allowed the university to turn the students into sitting ducks when they could have done otherwise:
In the spring of 2005, a Virginia Tech student who had a concealed handgun permit was disciplined for bringing a handgun to class, the Roanoke paper reported. Second Amendment groups questioned the university’s authority, but the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police argued against guns on campus.
In June 2006, Virginia Tech’s governing board approved a violence prevention policy that reaffirmed the school’s ban.
And over on Vox Day’s blog, he makes an interesting and strong point:
Hypothesis: banning legal guns from campus will make the campus safer
Observed Evidence: 60 shooting victims, 32 fatal
Conclusion: hypothesis fails
...You know what to do to stop it. And you don’t.
If the answer is right there in front of us, is this as tragic an occurrance as some are making it out to be, or is it something different as Andrew Longman writes in an article today - an act of evil and infamy? If the solution to the problem is right there in front of us, and we choose not to use it, if we’re going to be intellectually honest, whose fault are events like these?
There have always been evil and crazed lunatics who will do great harm to those around them. The problem is that we have allowed ourselves to be incapable of defending ourselves.
When we Americans are now faced with criminals, terrorists, thugs, and evil and malicious individuals, we have no way to stop them, save throwing our cell phones at them. We can’t defend ourselves on the street, in a store, in school, on a bus, on a train, on a plane, in our cars, often on our own property, and we completely lay our trust in the police to do this for us.
In light of yesterday’s terrible events, who is crazier? The evil lunatic with the two handguns or the sheep standing around him who could have blown his head off as soon as he brandished them, but opted not to be able to do so in order that they might feel safer?
“But the answer to violence is not more violence.” Right. And if someone - anyone - standing near the guy when he went to shoot his first victims instead shot him in the head or chest and put him down preventing all the other deaths, would that have not been a better solution than 32 dead? Would you seriously argue that it’s better to let him kill all those people so that we can say that “we’re not going to resort to violence, or else we’ll be just like him.” Anyone who believes such a thing is a huge danger to society and needs serious therapy.
And the proof is in the pudding. Anyone who thinks that we shouldn’t answer violence with violence or that oridinary law-abiding citizens carrying guns isn’t the solution… well, I challenge you to NOT call the police, the ones with guns, the next time you have to deal with a bad situation which clearly requires force to deal with one of the bad guys. And many people in this country know this, but they’re not allowed to defend themselves, lest they be turned into criminals themselves by the American legal system.
Practice what you preach. Anyone pushing gun bans in the name of our “safety” should never ever be allowed to call the police, or anyone else who could brandish a weapon, to come to their defense.
