Tag Archives: rights

Gun “Control”

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The Wall Street Journal‘s student-written Future View column turned to gun control recently, and Rasmus Haure-Peterson, a philosophy and economics major at the University of Oxford, had a thought in his letter.  He wrote, in part,

Given the spree of mass shootings, some targeted gun-control measures are needed for the sake of a safer America, even if they curb some people’s rights on the margins. But gun-rights advocates won’t make that concession unless they know that giving an inch won’t cost them a mile.

Haure-Peterson was on the right track until he got to the first part of this. It’s wrong, morally and legally, to punish—especially under the insidious guise of “restrictions,” or during the hysteria of “mass shootings”—everyone for the crimes of a few. Go after the few.

He got back on track with the last. As long as the Left and their Progressive-Democratic Party flat refuse to say what their gun control limiting principle is, the only possible conclusion is that they’re after the natural limit: taking all of our weapons.

Standing Tall

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Great Britain has said that it will abide by British law regarding cross-border movement of persons. European Union law will no longer have applicability, with effect from 31 October, Great Britain’s departure date from the EU.  Unless the EU agrees, and begins concretely, to negotiate in good faith a serious departure régime.

Oh, the hoo-raw.  How dare those Brits follow through instead of kowtowing to their betters in Brussels?

Rebecca Staudenmaier, writing at the link, also mischaracterizes the move.

The move is a departure from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, who had said the government would end free movement “as soon as possible” if the UK left the EU without a withdrawal deal, suggesting the rules could be phased out.

This is no departure from May. On the contrary, this is a solidification of her position: it clearly defines what “as soon as possible” means.  Phase out? That phasing has just begun, if Brussels will get serious about negotiating the departure.  Indeed, that transition period has been going on, tacitly, since Great Britain made clear its intention to go out from the EU.  Phasing merely has been formalized with this announcement.

Indeed, here’s what the British Home Office actually has said on this subject [bold face emphasis added]:

EU citizens and their families are welcome to stay and there are no changes to the deadline to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme.
This scheme covers all EU citizens and their families living in the UK by 31 October, and EU citizens have until at least 31 December 2020 to apply.
Here is a short explainer:
What is happening? Is freedom of movement ending on October 31?
We are leaving the EU on 31 October come what may. This will mean that freedom of movement as it currently stands will end on 31 October when the UK leaves the EU.

And

EU citizens will still be able to come to the UK on holiday and for short trips, but what will change is the arrangements for people coming to the UK for longer periods of time and for work and study.

Hmm….

Even though the transition period has begun, it will extend for 15 months after Great Britain leaves, and it’s quite a generous transition, to boot.  Much more so than Brussels’ departure demands and May’s meek acquiescence to.

Of course, there are problems with this.

In a phone call with the EU Settlement Scheme office helpline, activist and former Change UK candidate Nora Mulready said she was told that EU citizens would have difficulty reentering the UK if they hadn’t applied by the Brexit departure date.
Those who hadn’t applied “would no longer be entitled to [freedom of movement] rights to live and work and be in Britain,” she said the office told her.

That’s a very serious problem.  Mulready apparently thinks EU citizens are so grindingly stupid or otherwise incompetent that they can’t figure out that they need to make their applications—in the 71 days that they have.  That just isn’t enough time for an adult continental.  Wow.

Unnamed Liberal Democrats (here’s NLMSM policy again) claim this policy is reckless.

Not at all. What’s been reckless is the EU’s bad faith pretense of negotiation for a smooth exit, instead using the talks and outcome to punish the Brits for their effrontery and to serve as a warning to other nations contemplating the presumption of leaving.

Here’s hoping a Johnson government is good to its word.

Naivete and Hong Kong

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Bill McGurn usually does better than this.  He suggested

If the governments in Beijing and Hong Kong would show an ounce of that humility, the protests might be over tomorrow.

Presumably that would include an apology by Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam, per his piece’s headline.

It’s hard to believe, though, that McGurn would be this naive. Lam’s apology, and PRC and Hong Kong government “humility” would be nothing more than empty, unbelievable words. Lam needs to fully withdraw and cancel, as though it had never existed, the extradition bill that her PRC masters instructed her to put forward, not merely HIA it.

Then she and her deputies and cabinet need to resign and repair to the mainland.

Then Xi needs to withdraw his PLA units from the city’s front porch.

All of that would still leave the PRC government wholly untrustworthy and its Hong Kong branch mostly so, but at least the threat would be pushed back a little bit.

Never forget: the Hong Kong people are in the streets because they can trust neither the PRC’s government nor its Hong Kong branch.

People Power

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Hong Kong style.

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrators braved torrential rain to hold their largest rally in weeks [last Sunday], a show of strength led by more moderate protest leaders who advocated peaceful resistance to Beijing’s tightening grip on the city and sought to ramp up pressure on officials to respond to their demands.
Hundreds of thousands of mainly black-clad protesters of all ages rallied in Victoria Park, the starting point of some of the biggest demonstrations through 11 weekends of unrest, with crowds overflowing into the streets. The organizers said more than 1.7 million people attended the rally.

On that rally, here’s Leung Kwok-hung, a veteran of Hong Kong’s years-long campaign for just the simple respect for the terms of semi-autonomy to which the People’s Republic of China agreed when Great Britain handed the city over to the PRC:

If we have to break the law to exercise our constitutional rights, it means the government is exploiting our constitutional rights.

Can I get an Amen, brothers and sisters?

 

A major question, though—apart from whether Xi, or his subordinate, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam, will even pretend to listen to the demonstrators—is this: does PRC President Xi Jinping have the same respect for human life as did Republic of the Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos when the canonical People Power Revolution went in?

That’s an open question.  Marcos, even in the depths of his reign, never ran “reeducation” camps.  Xi is doing precisely that, that interring millions in Xinjiang Province, and so did his hero and early predecessor Mao Tse-tung.

Marcos—indeed, no Philippine President, including the current Duterte—ever ran anything like Tiananmen Square with hundreds to thousands butchered by the nation’s army.  Xi’s predecessor, Yang Shangkun and that one’s second, PLA CinC Deng Xiaoping, have, and Xi has shown no regret over that atrocity.  Presently, Xi has elements of the PLA—of which he also has been CinC since 2012—massing and drilling just outside Hong Kong.  (Yes, I’m aware those units officially are paramilitary. It’s a distinction without a difference.)

The Hong Kong people are showing great courage, and they deserve our overt support.

Democracy is Terrorism

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That’s the openly stated position of the People’s Republic of China.  PRC President Xi Jinping now has said, through his government’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs of the State Council spokeswoman Xu Luying, that he

condemned what [the State Council] described as “terrorist-like” attacks on its citizens by pro-democracy protesters.
“We express the strongest condemnation of these terrorist-like actions[.]”

Because pro-democracy demonstrators—who are the citizens of Hong Kong—in objecting to Xi’s weeks-long attempt to take complete control of the erstwhile semi-autonomous city, are terrorists.

And this from Xu:

Hong Kong’s radical violent elements have completely broken through the bottom line of the law, the bottom line of morality, and the bottom line of human nature.

Never mind that the Hong Kong police have done precisely that: using strong-arm tactics—truncheons and beatings, on top of tear gas—to quell nearly universally peaceful protests.

Never mind Xi’s attempts to intimidate the people of Hong Kong by massing PLA units just outside the city and threatening to inflict a Tiananmen Square assault on the city.

Here, too, is the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam, with her crocodile tears:

Take a minute to think, look at our city, our home; do you all really want to see it pushed into an abyss?

No, they don’t. That’s why they’re in the streets, trying to protect Hong Kong from the power grab and threatened occupation of Lam’s bosses in Beijing.

On the other hand, the thought of democracy does truly terrify Xi.