A Potentially Productive Citizen Rots in a New York Jail

The New York Post has an article calling for a more common sense approach to New York's gun laws when tourists are involved. The article, entitled Common Sense on Guns makes a point that when so many states now have shall issue concealed carry laws, people who have no criminal intent (mens rea) are likely to show up carrying guns for self defense from time to time. That being the case, perhaps New Yorkers should stop panicking and throwing the book at them, as they appear to be doing to Tennessee medical school student Meredith Graves.  Graves visited the 9/11 memorial over the holidays, noticed the gun free zone sign at the entrance, and asked a security officer where she could check her gun.  Graves is a permit holder in Tennessee.  The security guard promptly called police who arrested her.

I feel sympathy for Ms. Graves, I really do.  New York City gun laws are irredeemably unjust, and as these fine criminal defense attorneys explain, they don't even obey Federal law that protects travelers merely transiting through their airports. New Yorkers seem to take their gun control very seriously, and ignorance of their laws does not let you off the hook.

Fortunately, there are ways to find out about the laws of any state you may be traveling through.  Your first stop should be Handgun Laws US. The keeping of this information is done by volunteers, but the information for my state, North Carolina, seems up to date. Looking at NYC, we see that New York City does not honor any other state permit, including New York State without a NYC endorsement. Then, there are the Attorney Generals of the various states. I have to admit that the New York State Attorney General's web site doesn't seem to mention guns anywhere, but that might just be a clue.

New York's gun control law is called the the Sullivan Act, named after a notorious Irish mobster, New York State Senator, and influence peddler in the corrupt Democrat machine known as Tammany Hall. Around the time of its passage, in 1911, the Italian mafiosi were taking over from the Jewish and Irish mobs. The Italians would shoot first, and ask questions later, if at all. So, to disarm them, Sullivan got his law passed. It didn't work, of course. The criminal element, the Irish and Jewish mobs and the mafiosi, ignored the law. The people who were disarmed were the peaceable citizens. The sordid history of laws like the Sullivan Act, or of laws that sought the disarmament of the black community in the South should cause considerable soul searching for anyone advocating for more of these laws. Gun control laws don't end violence, they merely embolden the criminals among us. And they catch people like Meredith Graves, who wasn't going to shoot anybody.

Update: National Review Online had an opinion piece by Robert VerBruggen. VerBruggans opinion is that Graves should rot in prison. NRO is a New York City publication. What fascinated me, though, were the comments, many of them well argued. Jeff Knox even makes an appearance. Go and take a look.

Liberty and Virtue, Rights and Responsibities

Two excellent think pieces from the American Thinker today are both on the relationship between freedom and liberty on the one hand, and the need to exercise virtue on the other. Liberty without virtue becomes in short order licentiousness. Licentiousness leads inevitably to authoritarian regimes to impose at least the outward appearance of virtue.  Stated another way, our rights have corresponding responsibilities.

The first is an article entitled Timshel, America by Cindy Simpson. Simpson points out that the English translations of the Bible have translated Genesis 4:7 wrongly. The English translation of the verb "timshel" has been "shall" which would indicate that God ordered Cain to overcome his sinful thoughts. But the actual Hebrew text is that Cain "may" overcome his sinful thoughts, or he may not. It is up to Cain.

In point of fact, it is up to each of us, every day. We have free will, as God indicates in this passage. But to exercise our liberty, we must learn to govern ourselves. Indeed, that used to be the main point in raising children; to take barbarians who display all the attributes of a sociopath, and train them up to govern themselves in civil society. Simpson:

Dr. Patrick Deneen, in his presentation "Community AND Liberty OR Individualism AND Statism" for the I.S.I. conference on "The Language of Liberty," explained that in earlier times, liberty was considered "the cultivated ability to exercise self-governance, to limit ourselves in accordance with our nature and the natural world. The various practices by which we exercise self-limitation and self-governance is comprehensively called virtue...the inability or unwillingness to exercise virtue was tantamount to the absence of liberty...Thus, for the ancients, law was not an unnatural imposition of humanity's natural freedom; rather, law (ideally, a self-imposed law) was the necessary and enabling condition for liberty."

The breakdown in the system of virtues which had previously obtained began in the early part of the 20th century. The "flapper" was an open and visible sign of that breakdown. While certainly most of the supposed flappers were merely trying to look like the in-crowd, the in-crowd youth became more licentious, using drugs and having casual sex out of wedlock. The great depression put an end to the age of the flapper. It was the hippie generation that truly overturned the old virtues that they considered outmoded. Too bad they had not studied a little more history. Any time that it is perceived that the people can not, or will not exercise virtue on their own, then the State is eventually called upon to impose these virtues by force, and of course the State is all to happy to oblige. But by imposing virtues by force, the State takes away the very essence being virtuous, and infantilizes the population. Simpson again:

While our personal New Year's resolutions are still fresh on our minds, another kind of resolve for "We the People" must also be contemplated: the vital need to halt the loss of individual freedom -- an eroding movement that has gained in momentum and threatens to ultimately transform our nation into a tyranny that commands of its people, "do thou." We must strive to assert the responsibility found in "thou mayest."

The second article at the American Thinker, on the same theme, is America: The Living Portrait of Dorian Gray by John Griffing. After going through a litany of liberties lost, and Constitutionally protected rights ignored, Griffing writes this:

At the root of all these changes is not merely one political deviant, or even some organized conspiracy to overthrow freedom and decency in America. It is the collective abandonment of God and associated moral virtue by a once-God-fearing people.

He goes on to sound the alarm, not unlike an Old Testament Prophet:

More recently, a gang of about fifty teenage girls is reported to have camped outside a classmate's home with guns and knives, shouting death threats at the intended victim. Two police who intervened were beaten within inches of their lives by this lawless teenage mob. Teenagers no longer fit the Americana Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello mold.

Few can deny that a substantial shift in community instincts has occurred. Remember when the injury of a fellow citizen would bring the help of others, and maybe the police? Now it brings phone-cameras and crowds of entertained observers. Something is terribly wrong in America.

Yes, something is terribly wrong in America. What is wrong is that we no longer value or practice traditional virtues. Please understand that true religious faith is not required to practice virtue, but it does help if more people trust in Divine Providence. How else can we hope to change a generation of people who seem to have embarked on a nihilistic path without a firm reliance on God.

Freedom itself is the result of a nation with laws. And nations with laws are the product of cultures grounded in religious morality. The two items are inseparable. Legal boundaries are based on moral boundaries. For example, why is it wrong to kill if there is no God, or alternatively, no universal source of morality?

In the same way, what is done in private cannot be separated from what is done in public. At some point, worlds collide, and lawlessness is unleashed. Warped minds in private will always yield warped behavior in public. This claim is substantiated in numerous psychological studies.

We are often at pains to assert our natural rights, but those rights have corresponding responsibilities. Our right to bear arms presupposes that we will not use those arms to murder our fellow man. The right to a free press presupposes that we will not commit libel. Once we no longer recognize our responsibilities, our rights disappear as well.

Winston Salem Journal Gets It Wrong on Guns in Parks

"Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we are denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we are always "against" things, never "for" anything. Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so... "  Ronald Reagan, A Time for Choosing October 27, 1964.

The Winston Salem Journal is at it again, compounding ignorance with an anti-gun agenda to create an editorial more notable for lies and half truths than for useful information.  The first thing the Journal should do is its own research.  You see, concealed carriers are actually 5 times LESS likely to shoot somebody than the average person in North Carolina. Indeed, as the NYT inadvertently proved, people with concealed carry permits are far more responsible than the average person when it comes to murder, violent crimes, or drunk driving. That is not to say that those who have a permit to carry are perfect but it does point to this group being far safer than the norm.  If I had a group of concealed carry permit holders around me, I would feel pretty safe.  Go and check out The Truth About Guns website for all the facts.

Next, the editorialists seem to take a great leap of logic off the page and into the great blue sky with this closing statement:

On this page, we recently praised the Winston-Salem City Council for exempting most city parks from the new state law allowing those with concealed-carry permits to strap on their handguns in public parks. We support the Second Amendment, but it has to be applied with common sense.

We realize that there are plenty of responsible permit holders out there, but most have never had to fire at a human being in the midst of an emotional situation. And while troublemakers may be relatively few, the damage and tragedy they can inflict is large. Expanding concealed-gun rules is not worth the danger to the rest of us — and to our children.

Now the great leap occurs here because they assume, apparently that if concealed carry permit holders did not have guns, nobody would. Right? How else to explain the thinking going on here. It is rather like the You Tube Video seen here. But if dissuading people who mean to do you harm was so easy, I doubt guns would have been invented in the first place. So which would you rather have when your children are playing on the teeter-totter and some bad guy tries to abduct them: a cell phone, or a cell phone and a gun. It has become cliche, but when seconds count, the police are minutes away.  And if there is you, with your gun, and someone else has a gun too, chances are your bad guy is going to run away.

The editorialists close with a typical tag line that conjures up the notion of "for the children." It has become so well worn that it should be a trademarked term.  In any case, two can play at that. I take my grand children to the park when it is nice out. Mrs. PolyKahr is convinced that sending the kids to the park helps to wear them down when it comes time to go to bed. I am not so sure, but that's a story for another day. Having been permitted to carry, believe me I want that advantage if someone tries to abduct my grand kids. You take a fat old out of shape fart like me facing a fit 20 year old armed with at least a knife, possibly a gun? Hell, yes I want to equalize the odds if I can.

But there is moral argument to be made in favor of the idea that the peaceful armed citizen should be allowed to carry anywhere he chooses.  The State, be it the city or the county, ultimately can not prevent someone who means harm to others from carrying pretty much anywhere that person chooses, short of setting up an oppressive police state.  Perhaps this is what the Winston Salem Journal wants, but it is not what we have now.  Laws on the books only allow prosecution after the peaceful armed citizen is dead, and signs only warn that the bad guy is about to incur another charge.  That being the case, the defense of our lives, and the lives of our young, depend on us alone.  Shouldn't we then be able to make our own determination about where and when we are going to carry a weapon?  Why should I let others, who will not be there if the gravest extreme should rear its ugly head, make those decisions for me.

The Republican Establishment Speaks

I have been reading Jonah Goldberg's articles since the mid 1990s, when I discovered him at National Review Online, along with his couch, which seemed to star in some of his pieces as a character in its own right. Goldberg has matured into a father, husband, and a thoughtful conservative voice. So the article appearing at Townhall.com today entitled Conservative Establishment Divided Against Itself somewhat surprised me. Goldberg has become a part of the "Republican Establishment." Goldberg claims that he has not moved from the principles he so eloquently spoke about a decade and a half ago, but rather it is we, the conservative base, who has moved further to the right.

Long pause, staring out the window of the office overlooking the PolyKahr estates....

He is correct. I cannot speak for everyone else, but I can relate my own journey to come to this point in my life. I suspect others have followed similar pathways that have led them to a place close to mine. Conservatism, in the mind of Goldberg, is not an ideology. There are no unifying principles to Goldbergs conservatism except that the conservative is the one standing athwart history yelling "stop." The conservative says "think about the unintended consequences," or "think how this could be used by your worst enemy." Unfortunately, the Left usually thinks it has thought of the unintended consequences. Also, unfortunately, the conservatives have been too polite to use what the Left has given us against them.

You can see the problem with this state of affairs already. The Left constantly frames the issues we are all talking about. Slowly they marshal their forces until it appears they have the majority opinion. The conservative press makes arguments against the proposal, but since these are often based on tradition, religion, and the nature of man, all things the Left rejects, the arguments are dismissed out of hand. Out of desperation, the conservative offers up a "compromise" which is less destructive, but in fact the Left has just won yet again. We conservatives find ourselves in the ridiculous position of trying to defend programs that before we were against. It is disconcerting to see so called "conservative" politicians trying to figure out how to save Social Security and Medicare, for example. Today the Left starts out as if what is has always been, and keeps pushing the nation ever leftward. For example, taking the gun control scheme currently in place, they run around asking why we in the gun rights community can't compromise on "reasonable, common sense" gun control. But if the truth be actually told, most of the 20,000 laws currently on the books are illegal and unconstitutional, and should be stricken.

Then I thought of the word, "conservative." A "conservative" conserves. But what is it he is trying to conserve? In Europe, conservatives try to conserve the monarchy. For the most part they have failed miserably. In America, conservatives have been trying to maintain the gains made in the Revolution and subsequent writing of the Constitution. Being a Constitutionalist solves many of the problems we have had with the Leftward movement of our national politics over time. The Constitution offers a set of fixed principles, that none the less can be changed if enough of us can be convinced to change it. If it were adhered to by everybody, most of our nation's problems would be manageable.

Not to be thwarted by anything so minor as a dusty 200 year old document written by men who couldn't possibly survive in today's fast paced hustle and bustle world, the Left has turned the Constitution into a "living, breathing" document that can be bent, folded, stapled and mutilated as needed to sanction the latest most up to date fad. PETA is suing to grant some killer whales human rights. How avant guarde!  How very Left, the idea that rights are granted by men.  How stupid.  Yet unless we assert some fixed principle why this is a stupid idea, it too will become the law of the land.

So, I come, at last, to where I am. The Constitution meant what it said when it said it, and it means the same things today that it meant when it was written. The original intent of the Constitution can be researched and understood, and this is the method that should be used. By these standards, a huge number of subsidies, entitlements, transfer payments, and laws should be stricken from the books. Does that sound radical to you Mr. Goldberg? Maybe it is, but I can look myself in the mirror each day knowing that I can argue from principle, rather that just saying to the Left "slow down."  We need to have rock solid and unchanging principles if we are ever to turn back the current slide into fascism and a police state.  

I, the Journalist

The First Amendment to the Constitution states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people to peacefully assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The emphasis in the above is mine.

The freedom of the press spoken about above is the freedom to publish, be it "news," opinions, stories, advertisements, open letters to the editor, or anything else that someone else might wish to read. The content was prepared by authors, called variously reporters, correspondents, copy writers, or more generally journalists. A journal is any daily account of events, whether those accounts be financial, a record of what you did with your time, a record of your travels on a day by day basis, or just your opinions about how events affect you.  In my career with the Navy, I used a product from Franklin Covey to record my daily plan, as well as how that plan turned out.  I did not publish it however. But, an interesting time can be had by exploring The National Diary Archive. A diary is another name for a journal.

Now, "blog" is short for "web log."  A log is yet another name for a journal.  Sailors kept logs of their travels with positions, weather, cargo, personnel, and anything else that might interest the owner of the vessel at a later time.  So, if a blog is a journal, and publishing on the web is a form of publishing, then I am a journalist. I have thought of myself as a journalist ever since I started writing this blog.

What got me thinking about it today was an article at The American Thinker entitled Who is the 'Free Press' in the First Amendment? by Dan Smyth. In the article, Smyth makes the point that it is not journalists, per se, but rather the technology of the printing press that is protected. Smith makes liberal use of an article published by Eugene Volokh (blog: The Volokh Conspiracy) to back up his claim. The "press" therefore was not intended to denote an industry, a class of mandarins with special esoteric knowledge, or the "Fourth Estate," but rather to give anyone who has the means of publishing his content the ability to do so without prior restraint.

All of this seems straight forward enough. But, you would be wrong. Apparently, in a case involving liable, one Judge Marco Hernandez has declared that since one Chrystal Cox, the blogger involved, did not attend Journalism school, and since she doesn't have a boss, in the form of an editor looking over her shoulders, nor is she an "authorized journalist" from an established media company, she is not a journalist. Never underestimate the ignorance that comes out of the mouth of highly educated Judges. Of course, if Judge Hernandez had pondered on the history of journalism just a little bit, he would have discovered that most of the great journalists learned their craft through something called "on the job training," not going to elite Journalism Schools. Our early journalists were often a hard bitten, sometimes hard drinking lot with up close and personal experience with the human condition. Couple that with a healthy sense of irony and a particularly interesting turn of phrase and you have your instant journalist. Indeed, having lived a life worth writing about used to be seen as a plus in a journalist's resume.

I can not speak to the issue in the Chrystal Cox case of whether she committed liable or not, nor can I speak to the Oregon Shield Law, but I can say that I, and others like me, are indeed journalists.  I don't make a dime from doing this, and my circulation is relatively small, but I am a journalist none the less.   

A Missed Christmas Gift

Christmas was quite busy for me. The grand kids were anxious to open their presents, so I didn't spend much time on the reading list. As a result, I missed a great gift of my own, this powerful Rumination from Francis Porretto of Eternity Road.

I have had similar discussions with various people. Indeed, the question "How could a loving god allow children to suffer so?" is a familiar refrain. My answer is usually briefer than Mr. Porretto's, and suffers by comparison. Go and read the whole thing, as it is worth it to anyone who contemplates the Great Questions of the Universe. But a quote may get your juices flowing:

The heart of the thing is the nature of free will under the veil of Time. We are temporal creatures. Alone among the living species, we experience the passage of time, in which we sequence the events of our lives and concoct theories about why this happened instead of that. Because our wills are free, we are capable of taking many paths forward from any point in time and circumstance. The scope of our decision making is limited only by our nature.

Our nature is defined by the laws of the universe that gave rise to us. God decreed those laws and made them self-enforcing. But they don't constrain our wills. We are free to choose what ends we will pursue: pleasure or pain; profit or loss; stasis or dynamism; good or evil. Freedom of the will is God's original gift to Mankind: the one that distinguishes us from all the lower orders...and perhaps from some of the higher ones, as well.

He goes on to point out that if you think about God, as opposed to relating to him, you are not thinking big enough. The fact of God's omniscience and our free will can only be understood by acknowledging that God stand outside of time and space. Thus God must know how we will use the great gift he has given us, and yet it is up to us to choose.  We alone can not alleviate all the evil in the world, but wouldn't it be great if more of us worked harder at it?  Choose wisely,

And may God bless and keep you, Francis Porretto. 

More Evidence Against the Global Warming Scare

Speaking of indoctrinating children in the cult of Goofball Wormening, The Daily Bayonet has Everything you ever needed to know about man-made global warming in one sentence and a graph.

This was the question I asked all those years ago, and never got an answer:

If the earth was warmer during prehistoric periods, and no one was about driving SUVs, what caused the warming then?

The obvious answer was the Sun. But if the Sun caused the earth to warm then, couldn't the Sun be causing the earth to warm now?  Shouldn't the possibility be at least contemplated? 

Mustn't ask these questions. It is not PC.