Many of you know that I have been in a slump when it comes to writing. The current Political situation had me down and I could not get inspired to write. I had an opportunity tonight to watch a History Channel documentary on America’s Forgotten War, the War of 1812. This was one of America’s Darkest hours.

On August 24^th 1814, the British Army under the command of General Robert Ross sacked and burned Washington. The White House and the Capitol building were burned and the city was a firestorm. As the British Army advanced, President James Madison, who was out rallying the troops, sent word to First Lady Dolly Madison to evacuate the White House. Dolly was a spunky lady and would not leave with out saving a portrait of George Washington.

As the British Army was involved with the destruction of the Nations Capitol a strange thing happened. A freak storm came up; a Hurricane! It was so fierce that it put out the fires and drove the British from the Nations Capitol. The Hurricane was so fierce that it killed many of the British troops. When President Madison finally rode back into the city, he rode among the people speaking words of encouragement, though exhausted from four days in the saddle.

The next few days were crucial to America. General Ross marched on Baltimore, Maryland and one solitary man, changed the course of the war. An American Rifleman, whose name has been lost to posterity, (according to Baltimore tradition, two American riflemen, teenagers Daniel Wells and Henry McComas, aged 18 and 19, respectively, were credited with killing Ross.) took careful aim and killed General Ross. The British promptly returned fire and killed this unknown marksman. General Ross was replaced by another officer, a cautious man. A man who’s cautiousness would hurt the British greatly.

The British Army continued on to Baltimore to attack Fort McKinley. Colonel George Armistead, the American Commander at Fort McKinley, felt that he needed something symbolic to rally the people of Baltimore. He commissioned a local seamstress, Mary Pickersgill, to make an oversized American Flag for the sum of $405.90. Meanwhile, an Attorney named Francis Scott Key, who was a prisoner aboard a ship in Baltimore Harbor, witnessed the terrible battle that took place and as the sun rose the next day he penned the following poem.

Originally entitled “The Defense of Fort McKinley” it would be renamed “The Star-spangled Banner”. It inspires us still today. We see how both the Hand of God and the tenacity of the American people won out. Our great country survived these events and we can survive all that are thrown at us now.

Speaker of  the House, Nancy Pelosi declared that, “We have been very effective in terms of passing the full Obama Agenda in 2009.” This begs the question; does she have an inkling of what the Constitutional Separation of Powers is? Has she even read the Constitution? Last time I checked, the three branches of the Federal Government were designed to be separate and somewhat at odds with each other. They stand as checks against one another to prevent one branch growing disproportionately more powerful than the others. So when the Speaker of the House openly admits that her party has just simply been enacting the agenda of the executive branch, I would say that’s a direct violation.

In one breath, Pelosi exclaims,

“This will be the most honest, and transparent Congress in history” and vows to end the “culture of corruption that has thrived under this Republican Congress.”

And later, in front of the White House Press Corps,

“We have been very effective in terms of passing the full Obama Agenda in 2009. So we know that when you’re effective, you’re a target.”

The only thing the Democrats have been successful in doing is expanding the TARP program, quadrupling the deficit and fording scandal after scandal as of late. The Speaker of the House openly declaring that the Democrats are in the tank for Obama should worry the American people on many different levels.

The Founders of this Nation knew how important checks and balances were in government. These checks and balances serve to prevent those who govern from having too much power over those who are being governed. Just as the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution is the biggest single check to prevent tyranny against the people, the Separation of Powers ensures balance.

The nation that our Founders immigrated from actually had a system very similar to ours but it was missing a few key elements which were later built into our founding documents, namely the U.S. Constitution.

In Britain, Parliament was split into two sections, quite similar to our Congress. The House of Commons was comprised of Members of Parliament that were elected by the British People. The House of Lords was comprised of appointed men of nobility who served for life and often gained their seat out of lineage more than ability or political affiliation.

While the House of Commons was democratic in nature and purported to represent the common man, the House of Lords was the right hand of King George and that relationship stymied and limited the power of the people.

A similar situation almost came about in America when Roosevelt tried to stack the Supreme Court. He was elected on the premise of “change” and a chicken in every pot. Sounds familiar, right? His New Deal promised wide spread taxpayer funded entitlement programs and manufactured work for the unemployed on the tail of the most dire economic disaster this Nation has ever seen, the great depression of 1929. Unfortunately for him, the Supreme court didn’t share his sentiments. This court, unlike the Democrat majorities he enjoyed while in office, was mostly Republican appointed.

During his first term the court began to undo his work by ruling his New Deal laws unconstitutional on close votes. This angered FDR to no end and after starting his second term, he made the decision to tackle the “problem” head on. He saw the super majority in Congress as an opportunity and was determined to take advantage of it.

Introducing legislation that forced Supreme Court justices over the age of 70 to retire, he wanted to swing the balance. If they refused to do so, the new law would allow the current President to appoint judges to sit in tandem to them. 6 of the 9 judges where 70 years old or older and FDR knew he could count on the his super majority to approve his appointments to the court. He would have been able to effectively raise the number of judges on the court to 15 and negate any “problems” he was currently dealing with. This would have been the worst abuses of the Separation of Powers in this Nation’s history.

It failed because his supporters in Congress and even his closest friends and political allies saw it for what it was; an unconstitutional play at blurring the lines between the Branches, thereby instilling in the executive branch disproportionate power over the rest. The bill crashed and burned on a 70 – 20 vote, got sent back to committee and was reintroduced with no teeth and all FDR’s language stripped. Back then, even Democrats believed in the sovereignty of our founding documents.

Although the Supreme Court is not “stacked”, I can see strong correlations between What happened during the FDR years and what is going on now in D.C.

Back then it was a possible collusion between the Executive and Judicial branch that was thwarted by Congress. Now we have close the same thing but the branches involved have changed.

The democrats in both houses of Congress are one senator short of a super majority and we also have a Leftist radical President in office. We’ve seen this kind of majority rule in the Government on both sides before. What’s different this time is that we have The Speaker of the House openly declaring that her party is simply enacting the Executive Branch’s agenda. We also have a President who thinks strong-arming stock investors during bankruptcy proceedings for Chrysler to take .29 cents on the dollar but allowing the UAW to receive a 55% return on their money is good governance.

These are just a few examples of many that again begs a few questions.

Where in the constitution does the President get awarded the power to dictate anything being deliberated on by the Judicial branch? Why, for any reason, is it OK for Congress to simply “enact the Obama Agenda” instead of representing the desires and needs of the American People?

Without term limits in Congress, the House and Senate are looking more like the House of Lords every day. Come to think about it, we might as well throw a cape and crown on Mr. Obama as well.

The separation of powers were built into our constitution for a very important reason. I think it’s time we remind them of it.

Contact Congress and let them know how you feel by using the links below.

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Viva La November!

You often see the numbers 419 on patriot types blogs. Heck, I’ve even noticed them on my son’s HALO game. What do these three simple numbers stand for? Is it some secret code? A cryptic message that only Patriots know? Yes and at the same time, a resounding No! 419 refers to April 15, 1775. This is a red letter day in American History and for patriots all over the world. That was the day the shot was fired that was heard around the World. The day that the Battle of Lexington and Concord was fought.

For those of you that slept through your American History class in High School, I’ll give you a refresher.  The Militia in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts had been stockpiling weapons and the British Military didn’t like it. 700 British Army Regulars, under the Command of  Lt. Colonel Francis Smith, were dispatched from Boston to confiscate these weapons.

Yes, gun confiscation has happened before in America, and it can happen again.

The word leaked out and Paul Revere and William Dawes were sent out to warn the local Militias. Just as the sun rose that fateful morning the first shots of the American Revolution rang out. The Lexington Militia, badly outnumbered, fell back toward Concord. Word of the battle spread like wildfire and, by the time the British Army arrived in Concord, they were met by several hundred Colonial Militiamen. They clashed again at the Old North Bridge in Concord. Several Hundred Militiamen defeated three companies of the Kings Troops. Farmers defeated the best Army in the world that day.

In the poem “Concord Hymn” by Ralph Waldo Emerson it describes the battle like this.

Concord Hymn

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

I’ve often wondered who first fired that shot heard ’round the world. Was it fired by a youthful Militiaman nervous at the prospect facing the British Redcoats? Was it an overeager British Infantryman? I have a friend who believes that somebody slammed a door and all hell broke out. I have my own theory and If you don’t like it then tough; its my theory and I like it. I am a Christian and I believe that America is a land ordained by God to be a bastion of Freedom for all faiths where they can worship, How, Where, and What they may!

I have been accused of taking the Bible to literal at times, so bear with me. Do you remember John the Apostle of Jesus who desired to tarry on the earth until Jesus returns again. I can imagine him standing in the background, watching the events unwind. He can see the Militia wavering. He knows that America needs to be free for Christians to worship freely, so he draws a flintlock pistol from his waistband and pointing it skyward…fires. The rest is history. You don’t need to believe my theory; but it is kind of fun.

Remember Lexington and Concord!

419

Political correctness backfires again in the public school system. Continue Reading

Recently came across these lyrics and realized that I don’t think I ever heard verses 3 and 4. All the verses are terrific expressions of love for our nations. Makes me feel patriotic just reading them.

1. My country,’ tis of thee,
sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing;
land where my fathers died,
land of the pilgrims’ pride,
from every mountainside let freedom ring!

2. My native country, thee,
land of the noble free, thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
thy woods and templed hills;
my heart with rapture thrills, like that above.

3. Let music swell the breeze,
and ring from all the trees sweet freedom’s song;
let mortal tongues awake;
let all that breathe partake;
let rocks their silence break, the sound prolong.

4. Our fathers’ God, to thee,
author of liberty, to thee we sing;
long may our land be bright
with freedom’s holy light;
protect us by thy might, great God, our King.

Oh, my! Do the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State,
or the Freedom From Religion Foundation know about verse 4?!!

Jan 18th, 2010

Martin Luther King had a dream but it wasn’t in color. His dream was all about seeing the common shades of humanity. MLK wanted everyone, no matter the color, no matter the creed to have the same opportunity as anyone else and believed in the greatness of this country. He believed in joining together for the common goal of ending this country’s propensity to see people in terms of race instead of free men and sovereign citizens. He had a dream that [...one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."] Quite a few shared that dream: black, white, brown, yellow, but most importantly American. Although his personal experience revolved around the plight of the black community, his movement, his dream was about the equality of the human race, not necessarily just the black man. He envisioned equality  for all races, creeds, religions and sexes.

As the civil rights movement began to gain a footing, there was a group of people who took notice. They took notice of the growing dissent but saw it as insurrection instead. The societal norms of the day were under attack but they were helpless to act because of the growing public support for the movement itself. This group was the Democratic Party. The very same party that fought to keep the south segregated with Jim Crow Laws was starting to change direction. They voted down anti-lynching laws in the 20’s and led the longest filibuster in the history of Congress on the the Civil Rights Act of 1957 but were now starting to realize the status quo was losing them votes and popularity with the American People. The days of Al Gore Sr. and Strom Thurman were numbered.

There were  a few unintended consequences of this shift in the Democratic Party. Because of the change in direction, quite a few segregationists in the south viewed their pandering as treasonous and could no longer support the party they had been member’s of all their lives. Many were upset that their party was subsidizing and pandering to the very class of people they hated and wished to stifle. Because of this, many southern voters started voting Republican. They had two choices: stay with the party that no longer supported their ideology, or move to a republican party that didn’t support their segregationist stances but did support a strong national defense, fiscal responsibility and didn’t look to run the country into the ground by expanding the welfare state.  Because of this power sink, the Democrats revitalized the liberal name and started toting themselves as the party of the minority and the downtrodden. They pandered to minorities looking for King’s Dream with huge entitlement programs like Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. It was FDR’s Black Cabinet all over again. FDR needed to steal the black vote from the Republican Party so he appointed an unofficial cabinet of black individuals to more powerful positions than any had ever seen before, although none were appointed to official cabinets and served in a more advisory role. Democrats in the south wouldn’t allow blacks to vote and most blacks viewed Democrats as having horns. FDR’s appointments coupled with huge entitlements  garnered a large shift in that sentiment. The Democrats were at it again, after votes and an expansion of their power base. Civil rights was the last thing on their minds.

King was grateful for the Emancipation Proclamation and the freedom that Lincoln had given his people but at the same time, saw the new chains that were placed on the ankles of the newly freed slaves. They went from the shackles of slavery to the economic shackles of unjust laws and deep seeded racist vitriol in the south. Blacks were free but lived as second class citizens in the south and in the slums of the northern cities, they lived in squalor. His dream was the unshackling of his people from the socioeconomic chains that bound them through the realization that all men, black or white, were equal in the eyes of our founding documents and in the eyes of God. He pointed to how our founders believed in the equality of men and built that into the charter of this great nation. He didn’t hate America and he didn’t blame our national structure or design for the plight he faced, He embraced it. He wanted everyone to have equal opportunity to shine and succeed. He wanted every person, no matter the race, to be seen as simply a man and an American.

he saw the lack of equality in American society as a check issued to the black community by Lincoln but which was returned NSF by the “bank of justice”. All he asked for was the honoring of the check, not special treatment or further economic bonds through the welfare state. He didn’t ask for preferential treatment because of a perceived unequal ability or opportunity. He asked for our hearts and minds, not political correctness or capital.

Under the guise of equality and justice, the black community was sold a bill of goods. Instead of changing hearts and creating equal opportunity, the Democrats responded to King’s plea’s with backhanded supplication and placation. If King were alive today, he would be appalled at the current state of affairs in this nation. The shackles of economic perpetuity has gone far beyond the insult of 40 acres and a mule.  If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he eats for life. King wanted a fishing pole and the right to use it, not just a market fresh fish wrapped in a northern newspaper.

I leave you with his fateful speech which he gave in 1963 in front of the Lincoln memorial. It moves me close to tears every time I hear it and I hope we all can take a lesson from his words. This includes Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson. I think they could use it more than most.

“And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.”

- (I Have a Dream – August 28, 1963)

Martin Luther King Jr

January 11th, 2010

Race has always been a hot button topic in America. When race becomes an issue people are placed into groups and as a result, segregated from one another, the individual is forgotten. The Democratic Party is a master at this shell game of discrimination and blame passing. They blur the role of the individual by lumping everyone into groups and then determine which groups they feel are worthy and subjugate the others. History has shown that this elitist strategy has been a staple of the Democratic Party since the early 1800’s. It used to be slavery, then segregation but the bigotry has evolved into a fuzzier paternal form that keeps you warm and quiet. Any student of history can see this, unless you’re a Democrat in Congress.

As most of you are aware of, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) was recently in the news this last week. He made some rather inflammatory and racist remarks about Barak Obama back in 2008 while Obama was running for President of the United States. Reid stated that he felt Obama had a distinct advantage because he was a “light skinned black” and could move in and out of a “negro dialect” with ease, alluding to the fact that a “real” black man would never get elected. This didn’t surprise me as much as some. However, I was surprised to see the lack of outrage and the subsequent meager media coverage. The Senator quickly issued an apology and all was forgiven. The President accepted his apology and the NAACP and Rev. Sharpton even came out in support of the Senator from Nevada. Isn’t that nice. Houdini made a little oopsie but all is better now. More like the Democratic Party just wanted it to go away before the Senate Majority Leader did anymore damage. Hurting as they are right now, they needed to squash any negative publicity they might get over Reid’s comments.

This reminds me of when, while toasting Strom Thurman at his birthday party, Trent Lott made deplorably racist comments in regards to Thurman’s 1948 bid for the White House as a segregationist. All three men deserve their own place in history as idiots and racists. I see no difference in the acts of Lott and Reid. The only difference here is that when Lott screwed up, the Republican Party strongly urged that he resign his position as the then Majority Leader in the Senate which eventually ended with Lott resigning his seat all together. Lott’s ideology was not in line with what the party stood for and they wanted him gone. When revelations about Reid’s comments came to light, he was urged to issue an apology and then to get back to business as usual. The Republicans saw the disease in their own party and had it lanced, the Democrats swept it under the rug as fast as possible and moved the shell with the peanut around a little more in the hopes Americans couldn’t follow it.

The Party of Thomas Jefferson has not always been the party of slavery. Jefferson argued that slavery was bad for both the slave and the slave owner but in the early 1800’s, as Vice President then later as a member of the House of Representatives, John C. Calhoun did a great job of turning that on its head. He argued “…the proposition ’all men are created equal’ as now understood, has become the most false and dangerous of all political errors….We now begin to experience the danger of admitting so great an error to have a place in the declaration of independence.” Calhoun, in essence, turned Jefferson’s party into the party of slavery. After the end of Reconstruction, the Democrats instituted Jim Crow laws which touted segregation with equal rights but led to inferior opportunities, facilities and treatment for blacks. While the Republican party was calling for anti-lynching laws in the 1920’s, the Democrats rejected such laws in their own platform with some even saying the lynching’s of blacks did not present a big enough issue to deserve consideration. Big government democrats like Wilson, FDR and LBJ are credited with “helping” the black communities in America with “assistance” while all three where staunch racists and used the welfare state as a way to subjugate and control the communities they publicly professed to want to help. An indicator of LBJ’s true nature came from his own mouth,

“These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don’t move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there’ll be no way of stopping them, we’ll lose the filibuster and there’ll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It’ll be Reconstruction all over again.” — Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D, TX), 1957

The history of this Nation contains example after example of the racial bigotry within the Democratic Party. On the flip side, history has shown the Republican Party to be the party of racial equality and equal opportunity.

The voting record on civil rights speaks for itself. The Republican Party has history on its side and yet is always the first to be called racist by those on the left. The party of slavery seems to have cornered the market on recognizing bigotry.  I suppose when you have to look at yourself in the mirror every day, it’s easy to recognize. You’re a bigot if you disagree with the President. You’re a racist if you dare to suggest that the welfare state has done more bad than good for the black community. You’re intolerant if you dare to look beyond the cultural groupings forced on us by the Left and choose to see people for what they really are, individuals.

The Left needs race. The Democratic Party needs to see people in groups, cultural or racial. Without promoting this collective ideology, they would have to recognize people as individuals and therefore equal. With equality comes the destruction of their entire platform as a party and the end of their status as elites. It’s all a big shell game. They attempt to control minorities by using huge entitlement programs and pandering to race baiters like Sharpton and Jackson; denying the entire time that they were the people who created the problems in the first place. Their crimes are under the shell being whooshed around; move the shell to the middle by calling Republicans “old white men” and then to the right by pointing at Trent Lott and saying, “See I told you! THEY are the racists here!”  This is precisely why the free market scares the hell out of them and they attempt to destroy it on a daily basis. The market is economic freedom for those who want to go after it. It breaks everything down to the fruits of the labor of the individual, metered and rewarded by their individual effort. Success and failure falls on the back of one man, one woman. This kind of personal accountability doesn’t jive with their base ideology.  They would prefer us fat, stupid and placated; happy to be told how to live and what’s best for us and our families. They have kept the black community under their thumb through economic slavery for over 140 years. They saw how effective it was and now they are moving to place everyone else in the same position.

In the end, history is always the best witness and it has not been kind to the some. One only has to look as far as Senator Robert Byrd (D, VA), the oldest and longest serving Democrat in congress and a previous KKK member and recruiter. Because of the rise of the civil rights movement in the 1950’s, the Democrats moved from seeing blacks as a hindrance to seeing them as a controllable base of voters, but this was out of necessity. Many on the Left were predicting a race war and to appease those who they thought would wage war, LBJ created his Great Society, the largest single expansion of the welfare state in history.

There will always be racist individuals on both sides of the political spectrum and the Democrats are not the only party with problems. The key here is how the problems are dealt with. Sweeping the “ugly stuff” under the rug and then passing the blame only works for so long. Eventually their chickens will come home to roost.

It seems to me that there was much more to Harry Reid’s comments than a simple observation. This is just one man’s opinion but I think he was saying, “No matter what you do, you will never be one of us. You’re just another black man working in the House”.

If you think I’m wrong, feel free to enlighten me.

December 27, 2009

Quite often these days I find that I am grateful for the .45 ACP sitting on my nightstand. Not because it’s reliable, easy to shoot or acurate. I am indeed thankful for those things but more so I am grateful for the people who created the environment where I am  legally able to posses and carry my pistol. I was afforded this ability through the sacrifices of many a man, family and life. If not for the moral courage of free men, this nation would be a different place altogether. If not for the ability of the citizens of this great country to obtain, posses and utilize firearms over the last few centuries, would we even be here? Would this nation have earned it’s independence from the Crown of Briton through supplication? Even if the answer to that last question was yes, would our republic have lasted this long without the peoples ability to check the Government and combat tyranny?

The right to bear arms in this nation has been under constant attack since the British set out to disarm us right before the Revolutionary War. Many a people have fallen to the tyrannical whims of evil ideology. Many a populous has been reduced  to cowering in fear of their rulers and foreign invaders, helpless and defenseless against rape, pillage and murder. The men depicted below are but a few of the ruthless and genocidal murders who have used gun control in their favor to commit unfathomable atrocities against men, women and children.

Tying the three parts of this blog post together, I want to illustrate what it means to be helpless to combat those who would subjugate and exploit or kill you. This post is a long one but so is the litany of evil which first was sowed by the disarming of citizenry over the last 90 years. The 2nd Amendment to our Constitution is ultimately the single most important check in our Government, our sovereignty and natural right to remain a free people. Be sure to scroll down and read the first 2 parts if you missed them before.

Here we go.

Hitler’s rise to power and subsequent brutality is one of the most well known cases of genocide today. He slaughtered over 6,000,000 million Jews and another 5,000,000 who were of “undesirable” ethnicity or religion, infirm, elderly, mentally unfit or terminally ill. What most don’t know is that prior to 1933, when Hitler took control, Germany instituted the worlds first mandatory gun registration law. By the time Hitler started rolling his machine, he knew who owned them and where they resided. November 9th and 10th, 1938, became the Kristallnacht, roughly translated as the Night of Broken Glass. Nazi party members first confiscated Jewish owned firearms and then rounded up over 25,000 Jews and placed them into concentration camps, ransacked and destroyed 267 synagogues and thousands of homes and businesses. This was only the beginning of the horrors of the Third Reich.

In Turkey, before 1915, there were 2,500,000 Armenians living under the Ottoman Empire. Within a year, only 50,000 remained. The start of the First World War was a mechanism that the Turkish Government used to enact a systematic and ruthless murdering and displacement of an entire people.  They knew the worlds eyes were directed elsewhere and they used that as a smoke screen for genocide. The first steps taken involved drafting all Armenian men into the military and declaring all weapons privately owned as needed for the war effort. Then they systematically rounded up all religious leaders and clergy, all public leaders in the communities and effectively removed all possibility of the Armenian people to unite or defend themselves. After going house to house confiscating belongings and rounding up remaining firearms, they killed all the men and marched all the elderly, infirm, women and children into the Syrian desert, refusing them water, food or shelter. as few as one in ten made it to the end of the march and only to be killed. 1,500,000 men, women and children were murdered in cold blood.

Vladimir Lenin once said, “One man with a gun can control 100 men without one.” The 1917 Russian Revolution gave Lenin a great opportunity to prove that statement true. After taking power of the Russian government by force, he proceeded to disarm the citizenry. This always seems the first logical step to take when looking for absolute power over a people. By the time the 30’s rolled around, the Russian people were ripe for the complete take over of the real driving force behind Communism.The Central Executive Committee and the Sovnarkom issued the Decree about the Protection of Socialist Property, under which any theft of public property was punishable by death. Virtually all property was declared public and owned for the “greater good” of the Russian people. Farmers were kicked off their farms and crops were either destroyed or confiscated, all the while 10,000,000 people died from starvation.

What transpired in China after the rise to power of Chairman Mao Zedong  in 1949 was much more catastrophic. Through systematic terror and public execution squads that were charged with daily quotas, he has been credited with the direct deaths of over 20,000,000 political dissidents and indirectly with another 50,000,000 deaths through famine, disease  and suicide. The suicide rate in Beijing was so bad in the 50’s that people would avoid walking on the sidewalks in fear of being hit by random people jumping to their deaths. Murder was a way of life for Mao and he had no issue with millions of people dying so he could build the Communist utopia he envisioned. All personal firearms ownership was banned in China in 1935.

Below is an expanded list of Nations and leaders who have used gun control as a tool for subjugation and the resulting aftermath.

Germany – Adolf Hitler

• All firearms registered with the German Government in 1920
• In 1938 all firearms are confiscated from Jews
• by 1944, 6,000,000 Jews and 5,000,000 other “undesirables” have been exterminated

Turkey (Ottoman Empire) – Muhamed Talat Pasha

• In 1915 all Armenian men and their firearms “drafted” into the military
• within a year those “drafted” are executed. 1,500,000 Armenians were murdered

Russia – Vladimir Lenin

• In 1917, after Lenin took control of the Russian Government, he disarmed the public and began seizing private property, including farms.
• By the early 1930’s, 10,000,000 people had died from famine alone.
• After Stalin took over he was attributed with tens of millions of more deaths.

China – Mao Zedong

• After the disarmament of the Chinese public, upwards of 70,000,000 people were executed, disappeared, died from famine, disease or foreign invaders.

Rwanda – Juvénal Habyarimana

• Starting with the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana, then the President of the Republic of Rwanda and Hutu Party Leader, The Hutu political party sparked off what was to be known as the Rwanda Genocide, causing an estimated 750,000 deaths by gun, machete and bulldozer.

Cambodia – Pol Pot

• From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge leftist, Communist Party killed over 2,000,000 people through political executions, starvation and forced labor. The deaths comprised approximately 1/5th of the population of Cambodia. Anyone considered an “intellectual” or people who practiced “free market activities” were the first to be executed and tortured. Children where taken from their parents and trained in torture techniques using animals and became the party’s murderous right hand.

Uganda – Idi Amin

• Seizing power through military coup in 1971, Idi Amin took power from Milton Obote and declared himself Supreme Commander of the Military and President for Life of Uganda. Within 8 years, through murderous executions and starvation, 500,000 Ugandans had lost their lives.

These are some of the most heinous examples of genocide in recent history but not an all encompassing account. When totaled, this list accounts for the deaths of almost 100,000,000 people as a direct result of tyranny and despotism. There are common denominators in these terrible tales that would be beneficial for all to recognize. Most of these nations were thrown into the grips of genocide after a Communist take over and the first thing most of these regimes did was eliminate the educated class. Most of these nations were in the throws of economic depression and were prime for take over by someone who “had all the answers”. Not all nations shared every denominator mentioned above but there is one that was shared by all.

Every nation mentioned above had either extremely limited and carefully monitored personal firearms ownership or none at all. The developed nations, for the most part, had previously disarmed it’s citizenry. The third world nations in Africa and Asia were poor and the average citizen could not afford or obtain firearms because of a lack of availability. None of the people living in these nations had the ability to protect themselves from their own governments or the governments of invading neighbors, making them ripe for being subjected to the whims and desires of evil men and their ideologies.

There is one nation, however, that is not ripe for tyranny and despotism. Because of the natural rights afforded to us by the greatest document ever written by man, we have stayed secure and safe from foreign invaders on our own soil. Isoroku Yamamoto, the Commander in Chief of the Japanese Imperial Navy once said, “You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.”

Because of our ability to stand up and make good on the Declaration of Independence a second time, our government has been kept in check. Benjamin Franklin once said, “When the government fears the people, there is liberty.  When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”

I am not proposing that the 2nd Amendment actively prevents genocide here in America but it is helpful to remember that there are steps which lead to tyranny and steps which lead to a free man and people.

Our Founders gave us this gift. The Fathers of our fathers knew personally what it meant to be subjected to the tyranny of a non-representative regime only interested in it’s own gain over the needs and desires of the people whom it governed.  Nothing contained within our Constitution means anything without the 2nd Amendment. It means nothing to have a right without the ability of enforcement. We can say we are a nation of free individuals but a free man has to ask no one to loosen his bonds. Without the individual’s ability to prevent future bonds, he was never free to begin with.

Because freedom had to be won with the blood of patriots and tyrants so shall it have to be protected, in the event it is threatened. We MUST remember the faces of our Fathers and why they gave us such an amazing and cherished gift. If we lose sight of this, we are no longer free.

Do not forget.

December 6th, 2009

Before this nation was founded, there was no security. Individuals lived hand to mouth and the overbearing taxes and confiscation of their toil didn’t make it any better. Our Founding Fathers saw first hand the evils of a tyrannical government, the entitlement of nobility and the evils of sacrificing ones liberty for the security provided by a government big enough to “give you everything”. They saw it first hand and that is precisely why they revolted.

Our Founders gave up what little security they still had left for the uncertain possibility that liberty would be the end result of their crimes against the crown. They chose to gamble everything they had; their children’s futures, their land, their way of life. The freedom to live ones life the way one saw fit and the ability to keep what they produced was ultimately more paramount than their own safety. What they gave us with that great gamble and sacrifice was our liberty and freedom. All too many people today think being born was enough. There is a lesson to be learned here that I think most of this country could benefit from.

Over the history of this great Nation, America has vehemently protected liberty domestically and internationally. Some say we have a history of nation building and empirical conquest, I say we knew what we had in this Republic and we went about spreading the wealth. It didn’t always fair well but on a whole, this Nation has done the world 1000 times over more good and has left nations we have touched in better shape than we had found them in. Because of this determination to keep this Republic strong, the people of America have never had to feel the tyranny of communism first hand. We never had to watch the output of regimes like Mau in China, who said power flowed from the barrel of a gun and then proceeded to kill millions of political dissidents. We never saw the lines and the people who waited in them for hour after hour just to get a loaf a bread in Russia. The people of this free and great nation soon forgot what our Founders fought for to create and what our fathers fought for to protect in the Great Wars. We, as a people, have forgotten the face of our fathers and now we find ourselves in the most pivotal and polarizing time this nation has seen since the revolution that set our future in motion. Long have we forgotten what it was like not to have the freedom and liberty we take for granted everyday when we wake up in the morning in our warm carpeted houses. When we walk into our kitchens full of food and offhandedly decide to make a sandwich and drink a glass of milk, do we think about the fact that we are lucky to have it in the first place or do we complain about the price we paid at the market. When we post to a blog or share our political beliefs with a friend at work, do we wonder if that individual is going to report us and have us arrested for our beliefs or do we think about that vacation to Cabo coming up next month?

In the end, this nation has provided us a great amount of security for the sacrifices people have made in the name of liberty. So much security, I’m afraid, people have forgotten what it was like to have none. People today in America have no idea what it was like in the days of the craftsman that hued our Constitution out of a rough and knotty block of wood. If they had even an inkling of an idea of what it was like, this would be a drastically different country than it is today and people would not be so quick to sell their liberty away at the slightest sign of insecurity. When a man says he has all the answers, he also tends to represent all the problems. When someone asks of you to surrender even an ounce of liberty for the sake of security, remember that liberty lost will never again be liberty gained.

“They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” — Benjamin Franklin

The American Revolution

What if we didn’t have people like Patrick Henry and Benjamin Franklin. What if we didn’t actually win the Revolutionary War? What would this world have been like if America never existed? If it wasn’t for the resolve, dedication and commitment by men like Patrick Henry and the fact that there was a rifle in every house, sometimes three or four, we would not have won our independence and you would have no day off on the 4th of July. We would have nothing to celebrate as Americans because there would be NO AMERICA. There would be no freedom of speech, no right to a fair and speedy trial, no equal rights under the law. The slaves would not have been freed and the history of this planet would have been changed drastically. Imagine the World Wars without America to save the day. Imagine how many people would have died. Do you think Hitler would have stopped at 11 million people? There are a million different scenarios covering a myriad of different areas of our history where, without America’s touch, things would have been drastically different. One more time, lets visit where it all started.

As the war ships started rolling in from the ocean, flying the Flag of Briton, people started to realize that they were not there help. The French-American war had been over for over 10 years and there was no other enemy for the British to fight. No other enemy but colonists. It was the largest military build up in the history of this new continent and the looming nature of it was what forced the colonists hands. Patrick Henry said,

“Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlement assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other.”
Here in lies where our Founding Fathers got their inspiration from to craft the 2nd Amendment. If it was not for personal firearms ownership, we would not have had the necessary means to defend against an aggressor the size of the British Army. If they had antisipated this situation before hand and confiscated the colonists weapons before things got out of hand, America would NEVER have happened. In the same spirit, The Second Amendment stands as the last, final and largest check to balance out government.

“If the people fear their government, there is tyranny, if the government fears it’s people, there is liberty.” — Thomas Jefferson
So where would we be today if we did not have the Second Amendment?

“I would never invade the United States on the ground. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.” — Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (Japanese Navy)

Defenseless and easy to dominate. How could we ensure our liberty and freedom if we had no recompense against a Government that is constantly trying to push through and go around our Constitution? Without the same means that the colonists had when challenging British tyranny, we would have no defense and, therefore, NO FREEDOM. It is not the act of revolution which insures our freedom. It is the ability to revolt, if needed, that defines our relative safety. I do not, in anyway what so ever, endorse revolution or armed insurrection in this country. The suffering would be great and you can never tell what may rise from the ashes of something as extreme as that. I do, however, strongly support our right as individuals to bare arms in our own defense and the defense of our freedom from threats, foreign and domestic. No one supports the act of nuclear war but I would be damned if most would want us to be nuke-less with the Russian Bear right across the Bearing Strait with 1000 warheads pointed at our cities. Well at least no one but the Bear. Abraham Lincoln once said that America would never fall at the hands of foreign invaders but would collapse from the inside out.

The really interesting stuff is coming up in my next and final post of the series. This is where we take a look at the statistics and raw data of how gun control and gun bans have affected other nations in the last 50 years. I think you will be surprised at what you read.