December 20, 2012 - 12:34 am
- Are Young Black Men Rejecting Obama? By Walter Hudson. One stat suggests so.
- Gun Crazy II, by Michael Walsh. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
- #MyJihad: CAIR’s New Twitter Campaign to Whitewash Islam, by Robert Spencer. “The Islamic state, whose principal function was to put God’s law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world…” — Majid Khadduri.
- Knowing Chuck Hagel from His Supporters and His Opponents, by Ron Radosh. Getting to know the possible nominee for secretary of Defense by listening to friend and foe.
- Obama’s Middle East Mess, by Jaime Daremblum. He has seriously damaged U.S. credibility and influence.
- Remembering Judge Bork, by Andrew C. McCarthy. Bork was a trailblazer of “originalism,” the theory that judges must construe the Constitution in accordance with what it was understood to mean at the time of its adoption.
- Robert H. Bork, 1927-2012, by Michael Ledeen. He maintained his fabulous intellect to the end. See also Roger Kimball’s tribute.
- Will GOPs Back Jindal’s Push to Put the Pill OTC? By Bridget Johnson. The Louisiana governor’s controversial proposal to banish “birth control politics” has both the left and right a little dizzy.
- Are Banks that Violate Sanctions Getting Off with Slaps on the Wrist? By Rodrigo Sermeño. By the DoJ forging cash settlements instead of prosecuting, the government is still able to do business with the guilty firms.
- Disgraceful: Obama Invokes Newtown Massacre to Pressure Republicans to Go Along with His Tax Hikes, by Bryan Preston. Perspective.
- Saving Souls, the Amazing Musicorps, by Michael Ledeen. Musicorps is a program that gives (often very severely) wounded combat veterans the opportunity to play music.
- 8 Great Last Minute Christmas Gifts for Children, by J. Christian Adams. These classic books belong in every family’s library.
I understand that the great Fareed Zakaria has come out with another brilliant essay denouncing ownership of arms by the people, and I understand that this time he may have in fact actually written it himself, or at least his clerk, or copy-boy, or intern, or whomever he actually has do these things for him did not steal it. We must be thankful for the small things in life.
Now, I understand that Mr. Zakaria, having come from a society still struggling with hierarchical and hereditary caste systems (and, based upon the immediate lack of support he recieved from his fellow pundits during his plagiarism crisis, perhaps being something Mr. Zakaria struggles with himself, for as a universal rule, no one likes snooty, cold, and aloof, and as I said, folks weren’t actually immediately leaping to his defense), well, at any rate, Mr. Zakaria is in fact an immigrant, so it may be that Mr. Zakaria may not yet, despite his years here, it may be that he does not yet understand that in the Anglo-American tradition sovereignty actually resides with the people (though I admit that Great Britain is a little schizophrenic on the symbolism of the issue at times), and not with the government, or with “experts”, such as himself. The Second Amendment is part of this philosophy, for it says the government shall not have a monopoly on violence, but that the people–the yahoos, if you will–get those durn guns too, for sometimes they are needed to ensure sovereignty, both the state’s, and the peope’d.
Or, to put it in simpler terms, the Second Amendment was put there so that the rednecks could be armed. In all their crudity.
I challenge Mr. Fareed Zakaria, genius of our times, to refute that basic understanding. He may not like this protection, and may prefer, say, Austrailia’s way of doing business. Pray tell, then, sir, move there. No shame in the matter, I’ve thought of it myself. But in this, his *current* adopted country, we are the recipients of the beliefs of a Founding Generation who essentially said “as crazy as it may seem, we are going to trust the peope. With votes, free speech, and guns. The whole shebang. And may God have mercy on our souls.”
My guess is that He did.
Fareed Zakaria may not trust the American people in the mass, and if he thinks himself a Brahmin at heart, I can understand that. But I do trust them, in the mass. The people get arms, and they get military grade arms. There is an amendment that says so. The only thing left now is to determine, on a state by state basis, what appropriate safeguards to put into place to allow exercise of these basic rights–I personally think it would be good to reinvigorate the concept of the militia. Certainly liberals are big on community service, and certainly Katrina and Sandy showed the need for the people of a neighborhood and town to be able to look out for themselves in an orderly way. I don’t think it needs to be a big thing or tadoo–certainly not a National Guard tie-requirement. Maybe no more than one day of marksmanship training a year. I would imagine Mr. Zakaria would require formation musters five times a day. There will always be Platonic Guardians like that, ever “looking out” for the people, to prevent them from getting into trouble–easily justified, since you can always count on at least one guy to cause problems, and then some prefer to crack down on the whole, because they are more interested in order than anything else. I don’t follow that philosophy, but then my name is not Mike Bloomberg. I would like to empower the people, as the ultimate arbiters of their own society, to remind them they are the citizen-owners of this Republic. Mr. Zakaria would apparently like to turn them into sheep.
Well, this is not the first time this issue has been faced in American history, and we already know which way the Founders voted. They put in an amendment to make their views clear:
The yahoos get the guns. They get to be men, not sheep.
Apologies for misspellings. The yahoos get the keypads too.