Stepping up...

Last week the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence announced that it was filing a lawsuit on behalf of the family of a dead North Philadelphia child.

Anthony Oliver, Jr., 14, was accidentally shot by fourteen-year-old Quamere Durham, a friend, while his friend showed Anthony his gun. How his friend got the gun is unknown, but apparently the gun was purchased originally by someone who intended to illegally sell it on the street.

BCPGV announced that it was suing Lou's Jewelry & Pawn. Lou’s is the shop that originally sold the gun.

The crux of this issue is this:

Does a retailer, selling a legal product, in a legal fashion bear responsibility for the criminal misuse of said product?

The questions at issue are these:

1. Did Lou’s sell the firearm in a legal fashion?

ANSWER: Yes.

2. Did the personnel at Lou’s have any reason to believe that the individual to whom they sold the gun would use it illegally or allow it to be used illegally?

ANSWER: No.

3. Is it the responsibility of a retailer to examine and make judgements about the purchasing habits of a customer?

ANSWER: No.

The laws concerning who can and cannot purchase firearms are quite strict and clear. What the Brady Campaign is trying to do is circumvent the legislature via the courts. The people of Pennsylvania have spoken loudly, saying, “We want no further restrictions on our right to keep and bear arms”. But the Brady people aren’t interested in the will of the people. They seek to coerce firearms dealers and manufacturers into self-imposed restrictions via the threat of potentially ruinous litigation.

Set aside the fact that firearms are involved. Consider what will happen if these suits are successful. The family of a victim of a drunk driver will be encouraged to sue the dealer who sold the car and/or the manufacturer of the vehicle…who, somehow, should have known that their product could be used by a drunk to kill people.

Oh, it’s not just cars either…knife manufacturers, baseball bat manufacturers, pool manufacturers…the list is almost endless…of people who “should have known” that their products could fall into the wrong hands or be misused. This is a recipe for economic meltdown, with only the trial bar winning.

The REAL issue here is why is there no sense of responsibility in the inner city? What is the responsibility of the parents of the child who accidentally shot Anthony? What is the responsibility of the person who purchased the gun initially and then sold it illegally?

What the Brady Campaign is saying is this: The residents of North Philadelphia are so depraved and animalistic that they cannot be trusted with ANYTHING that could be used to harm themselves or others. Therefore, we must take these things away from them. AND because we can’t just take them away from them without appearing racist, we must strip everyone of their right to self-defense...in the hope…HOPE, mind you, that fewer deaths will result.

This is policy as flawed as the logic behind it.

No. We must insist that the inner-city residents of Philadelphia raise themselves up to the same level of civilization as in the rest of the city. It is not acceptable from a civil rights point-of-view to expect everyone to behave like animals and make policy based on that assumption.

The Japanese made a CULTURAL decision to stop using firearms in the opening years of the 17th century. The same sort of decision is what needs to happen in our country.

The idea that we should restrict liberties for the "common good" has historically been a first step down the primrose path to totalitarianism.

I will not allow it on my watch.

The Big Picture...

The “War on Terror” is a war of ideas more than of bombs and bullets.

It is literally staggering to see the type of propaganda that is spread via the organs of mass media in the Islamic world. Imagine a prime-time mini-series called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion billed as “History”. Or, another in which Rabbis ritualistically sacrifice Palestinian children. This is pretty standard fare. The hatred preached is beyond our understanding in the West. We see it and laugh because it is so over-the-top. But it has been soaked up for decades by uneducated and unhappy people looking for a spot to place the blame for their miserable situation.

The people of the Middle East (and increasingly Asia) have been indoctrinated to believe the U.S. and Israel (the tool of the U.S.) are agents of evil and represent the oppression if not the outright destruction - of Islam. So, while they may disagree with bombings of subways and buses, many ordinary Muslims feel that these acts strike a blow against those who persecute Islam. 98+% of these people will never commit acts such as 9/11 but neither will they cooperate with authorities trying to apprehend the perpetrators or infiltrate the groups that foment the ideology necessary to conceive of them.

We in the West are shouting as loudly as we can that we mean no harm to Islam. But we are the only ones hearing it. The average Saudi or Egyptian or Indonesian or Uzbek only hears what his government wants him to…and that ain’t us. Even if they do hear what we’re saying, it’s so incongruous with the 99% of that which they read, hear, see – that our message is largely discarded.

If even 30% of Muslims the world over empathize with those who commit atrocities the likes of 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7, then we are in a world wide religious war that will last for decades.

It took us over THIRTY years to wake up to the fact that we are at war with Islamic extremists. From the Nixon administration and possibly earlier, we have lazily swatted at the threat as if it were a gnat buzzing around our collective head. Well, that gnat has RPGs and is doing all it can to acquire nuclear weapons.

Despite this, it is increasingly apparent that we are fighting this war in a manner that indicates we are more worried what our enemies think of us than we are about winning.

The events in Philadelphia of early July 1776 were a revolution. Having become wealthy and respectable, we’ve distanced ourselves from the messy and “lower” class idea of revolution. We need to remember that ours was - AND IS STILL - a revolution. Governance by the consent of the governed is by no means the standard model in the world…yet.

We need to take a page from the more recent revolutions in Russia and China: We need to export our revolution. We need to be as messianic today as Marx or Lenin or Mao. We need to counter and undermine doctrines that hold America or the West responsible for socio-economic malaise and political repression! We need to get this message to Muslims: You CAN elect your own governments and fix your countries and we’d like to help you do it.

Shiny new autonomous, pluralistic, democratic - and most important – ISLAMIC Republics in Afghanistan and Iraq would be impossible for the Islamic peoples of the world to ignore, no matter how much propaganda is slung at them.

This is what we need more than anything. The cost of doing this is mere pennies compared to sealing up America against terrorists for the next 50 or 75 years.

If we cut and run, if we give them the tiniest reason to think we can be intimidated, they'll ratchet up their attacks on us. If we don’t see this through, if we don’t win this war, the use of terrorism will skyrocket. Iran, the World’s #1 or #2 state supporter of terrorism, is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. How long after that until one of these weapons ends up in the hands of someone like Mohammed Atta? Then there will be an attack that’ll make 9/11 look like a campfire sing-along. No, we are in a total war. We need to start fighting like we understand that fact. These people will not go away. They grow stronger every day, whether we fight them or not. They want war...we have nothing to say about it. We can defeat them now and take moderate casualties, or we can go back to the policy of keeping our head in the sand...and suffer hundreds or thousands of times the casualties later.

This is the challenge of our time.

A challenge which I greatly fear we are not up to.

God Save Britain and Her Queen

My passport is blue not red. It says United States of America not Great Britain.

But, I am an Englishman.

Both our flags are red, white and blue...because ours was derived from theirs. And theirs, in turn, was derived from the medieval flags of England and Scotland.

My forebears came from England and Scotland, Ireland and Wales. From the mists of antiquity I am the living continuation of Britannia.

I venerate Great Britain's people as I do America's...because we are the same.

We share the same legacy of liberty because we share the same history. From 1215 and the Magna Carta to 1689 and the Bill Of Rights to 1789 and the Constitution of the United States to the United Nations Charter of 1945, the contributions of the Anglo-Saxon/Celtic peoples to the cause of freedom and individual dignity are incalculable.

We don't like war. But we have had war thrust upon us. Historically, democratic nations are the last to fight, but when we finally decide to, we fight to win.

We in the West have recently witnessed the emergence of a new type of war against us. One in which the enemy seeks not military victories, but emotional ones.

This day saw another battle in that war…and we won’t know for several weeks or months who won. What we do know is that Londoners have been added to the casualty list.

The Islamic-Fascists we face know they cannot defeat us on the battlefield, but that they may in our hearts. They desperately want to weaken our resolve to fight them - so that, unhindered, they can spread their medieval ideology and grow until they are strong enough to challenge us militarily. There can be NO negotiating with these people, because they seek our destruction, not our land…our deaths, not our wealth…our abject submission, not coexistence.

We in the United States have only recently begun to understand the grim reality of the world in which we live. Insulated, or so we thought, by two oceans and the pleasant diversions of wealth - what we suffered on 9/11/01 was all the more terrifying to us because it was the first time a foreign enemy had hit us at home.

Londoners, though, have suffered before. Whether from a 10th century Viking raid, the Nazi blitz of 1940, or the IRA terror campaign in the 70’s, they have borne their fear and grief and gone about their business as they have always. We in the U.S. can only look on in admiration and wonder at their fortitude.

I fervently hope and pray that today’s residents of London will do as their predecessors: Weep and bury their dead, then grit their teeth and stubbornly go back to their business – refusing to be cowed. To do otherwise, to submit to the extortion of terror, to quit the field and simply hope that the Islamists will leave them alone - would be a grave miscalculation and a tragic betrayal of those principles that have allowed us to become the hope of the world. Even if our only security is in the knowledge that our cause is just we must hold tight to it. In every contest between liberal democratic principles and totalitarian hatred, our ideals have triumphed. Victory is assured so long as we maintain the will to see it through.

"Nemo me impune lacessit"

We hold these truths to be self-evident...

The United States of America is the greatest nation on Earth.

Great in at least three senses:

1. The most powerful militarily
2. The most powerful economically
3. The most admired and emulated

These are wonderful achievements.

But it is number three that really matters.

Daily, we are bombarded by various and sundry accounts of the world's disenchantment and growing estrangement from the U.S.A. We are told that we are squandering the goodwill of fellow nations. This is often disconcerting and occasionally discouraging.

But then I remember:

When people around the world decide that they can no longer endure the poverty and/or oppression to which they are subject at home; when they consider places to go where they can enjoy real liberty and a chance for prosperity...what country is almost always #1 on the list? (Hint: It's not France)

This is the truest test of a country's "standing" in the world.

Ours is the greatest country not because of what we do, but because of what we believe.

We still hold fast to the principles that the founders enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

We don’t believe that we are perfect, but that our principles are.

We fail and make mistakes. Injustices occur and problems endure. We fall down again and again. We ALWAYS come up short - but we don't give up. We struggle on to improve all the time. We continually examine our principles and finding them solid and noble - strive to uphold them better than our predecessors did.

We haven’t yet given up on human nature. Many people and nations throughout the world have adopted an attitude toward civil governance, the primary principle of which is to avoid the basest human behaviors rather than inspire each other to the highest of human aspirations.

They say that people cannot be trusted to act wisely in their own self-interests or help their neighbors. Therefore, they ought not be permitted to do as they wish, but must be made to help themselves and do what is best "for all concerned”.

But, who decides what is best? How will they be made to help themselves and others?

Recent history is replete with examples that clearly demonstrate that this “help” cannot be effected without setting up a tiered society in which those who make the rules are rarely themselves accountable to them.

Further, we are told that this is “progressive” and somehow superior to the idea that “…all men are created equal…”. We are lectured to that for the right of “The People” to be upheld, the rights of - people - must be limited.

In no possible sense of the term, can this idea be called "progressive". This is a profoundly pessimistic and cynical view of humanity and its history.

What makes us Americans…what makes ours the greatest nation ever…is that we reject this idea.

Today, July 4th, we ought to look around us to see - not whether - but where we have failed to live up to our principles. Then, it is incumbent upon us as individual citizens to see that necessary corrections are made.

It is always helpful to remember that we retain the ability to do this solely because,

“…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”