Category Archives: rights

Two Examples of Gun Control

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In January, a Houston homeowner successfully defended himself and his family against a large, violent home invasion—with a gun.

Authorities say the homeowner defended himself when the suspects entered the home. Following the shooting, the suspects fled from the scene.
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At another scene, a vehicle was found about two blocks from the shooting, where a man was found dead in the backseat.
Authorities say that out of five people shot, three of them died. All were suspects in the alleged home invasion.

In Florida this week, another homeowner successfully defended his property—with a gun.

The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said…a woman called 911 to report a stranger on her property.
When the woman’s husband walked outside [with his pistol] to check the situation out, he told deputies he found the man standing at the door to his garage with his hand on the doorknob.
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Once deputies got to the home located south of Daytona Beach they allegedly found a syringe, tools and gloves on Edwards.
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[The man] was charged with attempted burglary and possession of burglary tools, according to police.

No one was shot this time, either—it was only property at risk.

Imagine the mayhem that would have resulted in the first instance had the homeowner not been armed.  Imagine the theft, and the possible mayhem (because burglars really don’t like witnesses), in the second instance had the homeowner not been armed.

This is the gun control Progressive-Democrats and their accomplices of the Left want to take away from us.

Foreign Meddling

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More European nations have recognized the Guaidó government as the legitimate government of Venezuela following the passing of those nations’ Sunday deadline for Maduro to schedule free elections with no action by Maduro (though left unaddressed is the conundrum of how Maduro could schedule anything if he’s not the legitimate head of government).

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin demurs.

…domestic issues should be solved by Venezuela and its people. “Attempts to legitimize usurped power” constitute[] “interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs….”

Two things make Putin’s position risibly hypocritical.  One is the idea that calling the Guaidó administration a usurped power is itself a blatant interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs.  The Venezuelan legislature—the legitimately elected one, not Maduro’s puppet show—constitutionally asserted its authority and with that authority swore in Juan Guaidó as interim President, pending free elections of a new President and legislature.

Take careful note of that: the legislature swore in a temporary President, not a President-for-life as Maduro’s henchmen have done.

The other thing is the right and duty of a people—acknowledged in so many words in our Declaration of Independence, but entirely applicable to all peoples—when faced with a Government embarked on a long train of abuses and usurpation [that] evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism…to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Again, contra Putin, the Venezuelan people are exercising their right and duty to solve Venezuela’s problem.

It is the right and duty of all other free nations to support the Venezuelan people’s effort.  It is the right and duty of all other free nations to block despotic nations from interfering with these people’s quest for freedom.

Full stop.

All Your Prosperity Belong to Me

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Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT), who caucuses with the Progressive-Democrats, has joined the Progressive-Democratic Party’s race to the bottom.  The President wannabe has proposed his cynically named For the 99.8% Act, which is targeted explicitly against the 588 Americans he hates the most: the 588 most successful of us.  His bill would deny these few Americans their ability to pass on the outcome of their success to their heirs, their families; his bill would overtly punish these most successful—and their families—for their success.

It’s a bill that’s borne of personal animosity and rank envy.  It’s a bill that would

establish a 45% tax on the value of an estate between $3.5 million and $10 million; a 50% tax on the value of an estate between $10 million and $50 million; a 55% tax on the value of an estate in excess of $50 million; and a 77% tax on the value of an estate above $1 billion….

Sanders rationalized his punitively confiscatory tax by claiming that what’s really needed is

stronger investment in skills, higher paying jobs, and a more progressive tax system.

He is ignoring the fact that the more progressive our tax system, the more it and the purveyors of progressivism punish success.  He is ignoring the fact that folks like the Walton family, the Kochs, and Jeff Bezos—from whom alone he would confiscate some $304 billion—have created more jobs and more higher paying jobs and have done more investment in work skills than anything Government has done.

Sanders is ignoring the fact that that money doesn’t sit in some vault as cash or gold bullion.  It’s invested, plowed back into the economy to create innovation, businesses, jobs, philanthropy, educational opportunities—even health coverage plans—all things Government cannot do as well, if at all.

For all Sanders’ and his Progressive-Democrat cronies’ rationalizations to the contrary, this bill and its ilk are nothing but the actualization of their mindless resentment of the achievements of others.

The Party’s Core Philosophy

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And it even attacks its own.  In a Wall Street Journal article centered on Beto O’Rourke’s potential for a Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential campaign, there appeared this giveaway.

[S]ome Democrats have privately groused that he should have shared some of the $80 million he raised in 2018 with fellow candidates in the party.

There is the Progressive-Democratic Party’s core ideology: their demand to redistribute OPM, ideally to their own special interests.

“That’s not the O’Rourke campaign’s money.  He didn’t earn that.  He had help.”

Gimme, gimme, gimme.

Race-Based Admissions at UNC

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The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is under fire and in the courts over its fundamentally racist admissions policy.  Plaintiffs are arguing that UNC violates Supreme Court rulings by giving too much weight to applicants’ race. The problem, though, is that any weight to race is too much, is fundamentally racist.  The Supreme Court’s rulings don’t go far enough to bar this behavior.  As things stand, though, the plaintiffs have a case IMNSHO.

UNC admissions readers frequently highlight the applicant’s race, citing one reader’s comment that even with an ACT score of 26, they should “give these brown babies a shot at these merit $$.” Another reader wrote, “Stellar academics for a Native Amer/African Amer kid,” the plaintiffs said.
Steve Farmer, the university’s vice provost for enrollment and undergraduate admissions, said in response: “Language in this exchange does not reflect Carolina’s values or our admissions process.”

Farmer is being disingenuous. The language clearly reflects both UNC’s values—emphasizing race as they do—and that language equally clearly reflects the fact that UNC does use race emphatically in its admissions process. The notes are right there on the applicants’ forms.

UNC says it has studied race-neutral approaches to admission for many years….

The only race-neutral approach possible for admission—or for any other purpose anywhere—is to not consider race at all. Any inclusion of race (or gender, or…), even as a “plus” factor, necessarily segregates in favor of one group at the direct expense of another.

If UNC truly wanted diversity, it would achieve it by admitting the best students regardless of race, or ethnicity, or gender.  The resulting student population would be a microcosm of the underlying population from which it was drawn.

If that didn’t produce a diversity reflecting the more general population, the correction would not be to play race games with high school graduates, it would be to commit university personnel and resources to improving the K-12 education so those high school grads would more closely reflect the underlying demographics.  And to press other universities and colleges to do the same.

But that would take actual work and dirty hands, not virtue signaling.