The Patriot Post® · A Big Win for 2A
The Foundation
“[T]he people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.” –Zacharia Johnson
Inspiration
“The Second Amendment Foundation [Friday] won a significant victory for concealed carry when the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals let stand a December ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that forces Illinois to adopt a concealed carry law, thus affirming that the right to bear arms exists outside the home. The ruling came in Moore v. Madigan, a case filed by SAF. The December opinion that now stands was written by Judge Richard Posner, who gave the Illinois legislature 180 days to ‘craft a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations, consistent with the public safety and the Second Amendment … on the carrying of guns in public.’ That clock is ticking, noted SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb. ‘Illinois lawmakers need to create some kind of licensing system or face the prospect of not having any regulations at all when Judge Posner’s deadline arrives,’ Gottlieb said. ‘They need to act. They can no longer run and hide from this mandate.’ ‘We were delighted with Judge Posner’s ruling in December … and [Friday’s] decision by the entire circuit to allow his ruling to stand is a major victory, and not just for gun owners in Illinois. Judge Posner’s ruling affirmed that the right to keep and bear arms, itself, extends beyond the boundary of one’s front door.’ … The ruling also affects a similar case filed by the National Rifle Association known as Shepard v. Madigan.” –The Second Amendment Foundation
Insight
“Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers.” –English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704)
Opinion in Brief
“More Americans need to become familiar with the concept of baseline budgeting. In simple terms, if an agency’s budget is $100, and they are expecting an increase of $10.00 next year, but they only get $8.00, politicians characterize that as a $2.00 cut in spending. Concerning the entire $1.2 trillion in ‘cuts’ engendered by the sequester, it must be understood that they are not really cuts at all. They are really a lowering of the projected increase in federal spending going forward. The CBO cuts through the fog. ‘For the 2014-2023 period, deficits in CBO’s baseline projections total $7.0 trillion. With such deficits, federal debt would remain above 73 percent of GDP – far higher than the 39 percent average seen over the past four decades,’ it reports. Thus, over the next decade, we are ‘cutting’ our way to adding another $7 trillion of debt to the $16-plus trillion we have already amassed. As far as the administration, Democrats and their media enablers are concerned, any attempt to mitigate that ‘paying-for problem’ will turn America into a Third World nation of vegetable eaters. Yet the simple truth remains inarguable: absent the genuine entitlement reform critically necessary to get our spending under control, we are headed for national bankruptcy. At that point, even vegetables may be a luxury item.” –columnist Arnold Ahlert
Government
“Obama called for universal preschool funded by the federal government in cooperation with the states. He cited ‘study after study’ showing that investment in pre-K pays for itself several times over by creating better outcomes for children. He said this about two months after the release of a devastating report on the ineffectiveness of the federal government’s already existing $8 billion-a-year pre-K program, Head Start. The study wasn’t published by The Heritage Foundation. The Kochs didn’t fund it. It was conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services, which presumably doesn’t have a right-wing agenda or bristle with hostility toward children. … The HHS study concluded: ‘There were initial positive impacts from having access to Head Start, but by the end of 3rd grade there were very few impacts … in any of the four domains of cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting practices. The few impacts that were found did not show a clear pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts for children.’ … But [Obama] has an ideological commitment to an expansive government and an unshakable faith in its ability, given enough funding and the right rules and regulations, to overcome any obstacle. So impervious is his point of view to the evidence that even his own Department of Health and Human Services can’t penetrate it.” –columnist Rich Lowry
The Gipper
“Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuing revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to dream – to follow your dream or stick to your conscience, even if you’re the only one in a sea of doubters.” –Ronald Reagan
For the Record
“On the eve of the Second World War, the United States had the 16th largest army in the world, right behind Portugal. … American soldiers went on maneuvers using trucks with ‘tank’ painted on their sides, since there were not enough real tanks to go around. American warplanes were not updated to match the latest warplanes of Nazi Germany or imperial Japan. After World War II broke out, American soldiers stationed in the Philippines were fighting for their lives using rifles left over from the Spanish-American war, decades earlier. The hand grenades they threw at the Japanese invaders were so old that they often failed to explode. At the battle of Midway, of 82 Americans who flew into combat in obsolete torpedo planes, only 12 returned alive. In Europe, our best tanks were never as good as the Germans’ best tanks, which destroyed several times as many American tanks as the Germans lost in tank battles. Fortunately, the quality of American warplanes eventually caught up with and surpassed the best that the Germans and Japanese had. But a lot of American pilots lost their lives needlessly in outdated planes before that happened. These were among the many prices paid for skimping on military spending in the years leading up to World War II. But, politically, the path of least resistance is to cut military spending in the short run and let the long run take care of itself. In a nuclear age, we may not have time to recover from our short-sighted policies, as we did in World War II.” –economist Thomas Sowell
Re: The Left
“The latest from ‘moderate’ Libya: Four foreign Christians, including an American with dual Swedish citizenship, have been arrested on suspicion of being missionaries who have been distributing Christian literature. They were apprehended in Benghazi, the jihadist hotbed where U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were murdered in September. The missionaries could face the death penalty under Islam’s sharia law, which forbids the proselytizing of creeds other than Islam, imposes capital punishment on Muslims who convert to Christianity, and similarly discourages any speech that might sow discord among Muslims. … Of course, it bears observing that it was not just President Obama who backed Libya’s Islamists in the cashiering of Qaddafi, who was then an American ally supplying what our government had described as vital intelligence about Libya’s legions of anti-American terrorists. The Republican Beltway establishment also enthusiastically supported Obama’s war, led by Senator John McCain, who called Benghazi’s jihadists ‘my heroes.’ Oh well, like the president said at the U.N., ‘The future must not belong to these who suppress the Gospel’ – oh, no, wait … looks like I may have that wrong.” –Andrew C. McCarthy
Political Futures
“Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government denied the U.S. access to a Benghazi terror suspect in Egyptian custody. This, of course, is the same government that, among other things, is led by a man who called Jews the ‘descendants of apes and pigs’ and declared that Egyptian kids should be ‘nursed on hatred’ for Jews. This is the same government that stood aside as an angry mob stormed our embassy, tore down the American flag, and hoisted the black flag of jihad in its place. This is the same government that is violently persecuting Christians, enacted a repressive shariah-based constitution, and has moved tanks into the Sinai in violation of the Camp David Accords. The list could go on – support for Hamas, terror attacks launched against Israel from Egyptian soil, a senior presidential aide denying the Holocaust – and the list will continue to go on while the Muslim Brotherhood rules. So what is our response to these many provocations and violations of human rights? We give the Muslim Brotherhood advanced weapons, and only 19 senators vote to stop the transfer. We are, quite simply, foolish.” –David French
Culture
“The Left is confused about how to resurrect America’s old racial paradigms. Absurdity follows, as that Trayvon Martin must have been shot down ‘like a dog’ by a ‘white Hispanic’ vigilante. Christopher Dorner must be a modern-day Toussaint Louverture driven to understandable murder of the white oppressor, who turns out to be Asian. Instead of To Kill a Mockingbird, our generation is left with the flat psychodrama of Skip Gates donating the plastic handcuffs he wore for a few minutes to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Amid all this chaos, we look for guidance to the president who promised that his own mixed heritage and long toil on the front lines of racial tension would temper passions. Instead, from Skip Gates to Trayvon Martin to ‘punish our enemies,’ Barack Obama so far has proven a reactionary of the first order.” –historian Victor Davis Hanson
Reader Comments
“Mark: Your commentary, The Next Sunrise – The Light of Liberty, is absolutely the ray of light so many of us need. George Washington especially is an amazing person in our history. Educators everywhere should post this and read about him to their students. Keep up the good work.” –Sunflowermom in Kansas
“Thank you for all these reminders to look for that which is honorable and true, for those attributes that have united us in the past and continue to speak to our hearts and minds and wills today! The storm may be raging, but with each challenge that we face, we move closer to a New Dawn of His giving!” –Julia in Dallas, Texas
“Mr. Alexander I have not enough words to thank you for this article. I’m glad that we have people like you in darkest days like the present ones. Liberty is a priceless jewel and once lost would take an unparalleled martyrdom of patriots to seek its return. Your article is an outstanding beacon of liberty.” –Manny in Keizer, Oregon
“Regarding the Friday Digest’s first photograph: Vice President Biden should be arrested or expelled from the Capitol for his possession of and display of a ‘simulated firearm.’ After all, a child in a public school who points his finger like a gun is promptly expelled by law without recourse. Why is Jolly Joe more privileged than the average citizen?” –Honest Abe in North Carolina
“There is an omission in Friday’s ‘There Oughta Be a Law’. You listed 10 states with pending legislation that would preempt federal gun laws, but Texas was left off the list – and we were actually one of the first to submit such legislation.” –Michael in Texas
Editor’s Reply: We regret the error, and it has been fixed. Thank you!
“I am a retired law enforcement officer with 31+ years of service. I am also a Marine Corps veteran. Your opinion that ‘if a seven-round mag is good enough for a civilian, it’s good enough for a police officer’ is extremely misguided. A police officer is putting his life on the line, doing his job, protecting the public, and their weapons are tools used in their trade. Absolutely no one has any right to limit their tools. I wholeheartedly disagree with any attempt to diminish the Second Amendment but your statement that police officers should not be treated any different than a citizen is illogical and wrong.” –Sgt. Rich in Chicago, Illinois
Editor’s Reply: Our point wasn’t at all that seven rounds is good enough for anyone, but that politicos at any level of government shouldn’t be limiting magazine capacity with carved out exemptions. Police are citizens just like the rest of us.
The Last Word
“I believe I have noticed a problem with President Obama’s declaring that he can blow up Americans with drone strikes without due process. … Now, like most people, I celebrate every time Obama obtains more power. … But I had a terrible thought: What if one day we get a bad president? For instance, take this power to kill Americans with drones. No one worries that Obama will abuse such a power – I mean, we’re talking about a man who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize just for existing. … But just imagine if that power wound up in the hands of a president like George W. Bush. … Or worse yet, think of handing Dick Cheney that power. … [W]e are setting a lot of precedents during Obama’s presidency that will give us something to fear if we elect a bad president someday. … So the only option left is to consider curtailing a bit of the power we’re allowing Obama, because someday we might have a president who is completely detached from average Americans, doesn’t care about our problems, and ruins everything he touches – someone completely unlike Obama. I mean, just imagine all that power Obama has in the hands of someone who completely sucks at being president. The economy would be ruined, we’d have disastrous situations abroad, and our liberties would be threatened. It would be a lot like now, but instead of it being Bush’s fault, it would be the fault of the current president. So to keep that from happening, we’ll have to do the hard thing and put more limitations on Obama’s power. I’m sure he’ll understand and not drone-strike us.” –humorist Frank J. Fleming
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team