Tag Archives: freedom

Christianity is a Threat

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The Chinese Communist Party, through its provincial organ in Henan Province, says so.

The Hebi Municipal Radio Administrative Bureau [hosted] a presentation titled “Christianity’s Enormous Harm on China’s Security,” to party members in the city of Hebi….

Instructive title, that.  The seminarists insisted that the “correct view” is that Christianity (and, I suppose, religion generally), are bent on undermining the Communists’ rule.  Never mind that “render unto Caesar” bit.

Of course, Christianity’s central tenets of conscience, free will, individual responsibility do work out to threats to tyrannical societies like the PRC’s because these fundamental positions are threats to the power of the tyrants that reign over those societies.  Hence the need for the CCP to work so zealously to suppress Christianity and along the way to lock Muslims up in concentration camps and jail Falun Gong followers.

Keep in mind, too, that this is the People’s Republic of China that Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden says is no threat to us.

A Misunderstanding

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Senator Cory “Spartacus” Booker (D, NJ) has one in spades. The article at the link was centered on Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Robert Francis O’Rourke’s mild disagreement with Booker’s position on gun control, but one of the false premises that inform Booker’s misunderstanding was exposed.

Booker argued that just as a driver’s license demonstrates a person’s eligibility and proficiency to drive a car, “a gun license demonstrates that a person is eligible and can meet certain safety and training standards necessary to own a gun.”

First, Booker’s analogy is badly flawed.  A drivers license does not at all demonstrate a person’s eligibility to drive a car. Eligibility to drive comes from the person being a US citizen (or, according to many Progressive-Democrats, from their presence in the US and in a State, whether that presence is legal or not) of a State-determined minimum age, and from no other criteria.  The drivers license then demonstrates a minimum level of proficiency and knowledge of State driving laws. Other restrictions on driving then impact whether the person will be allowed to retain that license; they do not change his eligibility criteria to drive, for getting a license.  Indeed, that license must be granted on a will-issue basis on satisfactory completion of training; licensing courses cannot be used to restrict driving.

On the larger issue, a person is eligible to own a gun and to bear it solely from his status as a citizen of the United States.  Here’s what the 2nd Amendment says:

…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

There’s nothing in there about eligibility criteria. The only addenda to that are State-mandated criteria related to whether the person has a violent felony history.  All a gun license demonstrates is that State-mandated levels of safety and training standards, which include knowledge of State laws, have been met.  And that license must be granted on a will-issue basis on satisfactory completion of training; licensing courses cannot be used to restrict owning and bearing.

Disarmament

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The Progressive-Democratic Party wants to disarm us. That’s made clear by Party Presidential candidate and Senator Cory “Spartacus” Booker’s (NJ) gun control plan.  Senator Spartacus wants, among other requirements [emphasis added]:

  • prospective gun owners must prove to the FBI that they’ve completed a gun-safety course to obtain a federal gun license
  • that federal license would be required to purchase a firearm
  • a federal background check on virtually all sales
  • the federal license would be good for only five years
  • current firearm owners would have to get this federal license, also
  • limit handgun purchases limited to one per person per month

This can only be taken as an assault on the federal republican nature of our nation and a backdoor assault on our 2nd Amendment.

Background checks already are required by the feds in order to purchase a firearm.  States already require licenses—which themselves carry safety courses as part of the licensing procedure—in order to carry firearms on public property (a couple of States have Constitutional Carry capabilities, instead).

No, this expansion of background checks and federalizing the licensing requirement can only be for building a Federal database of who has weapons.

Background checks to screen prospective owners and buyers for felony records can be useful—at the State level—but when the checks are used to build a database of weapons owners, which is the only purpose for requiring existing firearms owners with their proven track records, to get federally licensed, those checks become a lethal danger to individual liberty. Such databases are too easily used by governments at all levels of jurisdictions (the Federal level is only the most powerful) to seize legally owned weapons under any guise that seems convenient—whether an “emergency” or a claimed domestic violence threat.

Even the domestic violence bit might seem legitimate, but for the process for the accused to get his weapons back and government’s demonstrated intransigence in returning other seized property after the seizure has been deemed erroneous.  One has only to look at the lengthy nature of the proceedings for getting weapons back.  One has only to look at the outright refusal of jurisdictions to return confiscated vehicles, even cash, seized under drug or money laundering claims proven erroneous.

Avoid Debate

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It might make some folks uncomfortable.  That seems to be the position of Lance Morrow, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, in his Wall Street Journal piece.  After all, goes the subhead on his piece:

It would push the country to angrier extremes on either side, stimulating fresh antagonisms.

Morrow urged us all to “stop and think” about the implications of having a debate, here on the matter of reparations for past slavery-related transgressions.

The notion may be too volatile to indulge in a presidential-campaign year.

Leaving aside Morrow’s other major concern—

By pressing the issue they may ensure the re-election of Donald Trump….

—the question remains: if not now, when?  Apparently, “later.”

Better to keep monsters, old and new, locked in the basement, and to let the conversation upstairs in the living room be as genteel as possible—even hypocritical. In matters of race hate, candor is overrated. Hypocrisy may be the moral way to go—until, as time passes, people become more civilized.

Yeah, it’s better just to let the matter fester, building to a later, vaster explosion.

Sure.

Socialism and Good Intentions

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Carol Roth, in her op-ed for FOXBusiness, said that Socialism begins with good intentions.

No, socialism does not.  Perhaps the first attempts did, but with its unbroken history of wealth concentration, power concentration, and utter failure—even for those in the concentrated top—before us and well known, that much is clear.  On the contrary, those proselytizing for and instigating socialist regimes have as their sole goal the accretion of wealth and power to themselves—and this time it’ll be different, this time they’ll pull it off.

Roth’s piece had a number of internal contradictions that illustrate the origins of socialist regimes, even though she seems to have missed them.

The first is her quote from Margaret Thatcher:

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

Those pushing socialism know this a priori, though.  They have no concern for the future, just the current seizure of all that OPM.  They’ll get theirs, and to hell with anyone else.

Then she wrote,

Socialism is quite like robbing Peter to pay Paul….

That’s not starting out with good intentions.  Unless it’s a Good Thing to rob someone, especially if it’s someone you don’t like.

And this bit:

Socialism starts out with noble intentions, preying on the envy of the population….

It’s noble to “prey on” the base instincts of the poor?  It’s noble to take advantage of others’ envy, to encourage the weak immorally to act out that envy?  How does that “logic” work, exactly?

Socialism, in each of its iterations over the last 100 years has not started with good intentions.  It has started with the greed of the few with the skill to peddle snake oil.  Socialism accelerates downhill from there.