The Constitution is our weapon against tyranny!

Let me explain something. What we have here in America are two opposing ideologies: one that states that our rights are natural, and one that erroneously believes that our rights are granted by government. I am a proud conservative and a life NRA member because I am an adherent of the former ideology, specifically believing that our rights are God-given. Our rights, which our Founding Fathers recognized and knew from where they were derived, were carefully and clearly spelled out in the first ten amendments to the Constitution a.k.a., the Bill of Rights. These ten essential rights, the rights to which all human beings that exist are entitled, are also the very basis of a free society, one in which every person has equal opportunity to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, but without the guarantee of equal outcome, which cannot be achieved, even by force, because no human is perfectly equal to any other. All that being said, as long as someone does not adhere to and preach the foolish notion of the latter ideology, that only government can grant and revoke rights, then I personally have no problem with that person. It is when, and only when, someone comes along and insists that I relinquish my God-given natural rights in the name of safety or security, or even peace, that I have a problem with that person.

This will be the last post I ever make on this subject: Hillary Clinton, and those like her, are believers that only government can make life better, and that all people should subjugate themselves to the government. They believe that they can improve society and make it perfect by experimenting with ideas and policies that they, themselves, create, many of which have been tried throughout all of human history, and proven ineffective and often deadly. They run our educational system, a system that has failed to teach our children the very essentials of what the United States means in the world and in history and why our government works the way it does, hence, the ignorance of how such things as the Electoral College functions and the intent behind its implementation. They believe that our Constitution is old, outdated, outmoded, and needs to be revoked. They believe in disobedience to our laws and they believe in employing chaos and social upheaval, all the while declaring that they do it in the name of a just and fair "democratic" society, which is all utter hogwash. In other words, these people are the enemy within our borders, and their shrill voices screech louder and louder each day, their protests increasingly violent.

I cannot help but wonder how this all happened, how it all started. When did it become acceptable to believe that any of us are wiser than our Founding Fathers? These were learned men of means. They were well-off enough to receive educations to which many colleges and universities fall short, today. They contemplated. They deliberated. They fought and argued with each other, but they never came to blows about those things which they all understood the most and held dearly in their hearts and minds, which is the principle that God gave man the drive to learn, to try and to err, to learn from his mistakes, and to handle success as humbly as he handles failure. The Founders understood that our freedoms are born with us, and only those with a desire to control us and do us harm can try to take them away.

Folks, we have to recognize the enemies within our midst. They are there, right next to us. Yes, some people are quite ignorant of our Constitution and of our founder's intent, and they may not know God. We have to try to teach them, and if they refuse to believe the evidence, well, we at east tried and, at least, the seeds of knowledge were scattered upon them. Perhaps, some seeds will find purchase and take root. I implore everyone to, please, take time to read the Constitution and learn about it and why it is written as it is. Read some of the letter from Hamilton and Madison and other, both pro and con, and understand the reasoning and the wisdom that our fathers relied so heavily upon. It is with this that we fight the enemy within, and nothing else, lest we all come to disaster.

Safety versus Liberty

Should the United States government monitor mosques on American soil for terrorist activity by using spies and other forms of surveillance without first obtaining a warrant? The backwardness and insanity of Islam, and our desire for stronger national security notwithstanding, the answer is simply, "No." Islam, at least to its adherents, is a religion. In the United States, the First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. This not only includes freedom from government intervention, but also from government observation. If a particular mosque, church, Rotary club breakfast, or any other group of people are suspected of plotting criminal and terrorist acts, and the government finds proof suggesting such, then, as usual, a warrant should be obtained before beginning any type of active monitoring of the group by law enforcement personnel. If we give the government the right to maintain surveillance of one group of people without following the legal process, we will all eventually lose our liberty of peaceable assembly without government interference because a precedent of security before liberty will have already been set! We have to guard our liberties, folks, and we especially have to guard our freedoms against those in power who would gladly undermine them, even if it means guarding the freedoms of those with whom we disagree.

Marijuana: the REAL Conservative View

Conservatives often get accused of trying to boss people around, telling them what to do and what not to do. We get fingers pointed at us, saying that we should be more tolerable of other people, especially those who do not share our views. We are presented as uptight, ultra-religious, snobbish prudes who think we are better than everybody else and look down on all of those who are not like us. Conservatives don't want anybody to be free, to have fun, to enjoy living. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We read it and hear it all of the time. Those of us who are true conservatives, though, know darn well that we are the most freedom-loving and fun-having folks around. Unfortunately, we get lumped in with the right-wing statists and absolutists, people who want absolute power and authority to make others conform to their ideal. True conservatives know for a fact that forcing people to willingly conform without a fight is impossible, and that enforcing laws and regulations that require people to conform to an ideal always leads to the deaths of the nonconformists. True conservatives believe in maximizing personal liberty within the bounds of a strong society. We believe in good government, no more than what is necessary, and we believe that any government must submit itself to the will of the people, not the other way around. Today, we have another case, unfortunately, where the government, via bureaucratic regulations, is trying to force people to submit to its ideal image.

The Drug Enforcement Agency, one of the many bureaucratic arms of the federal executive branch, announced today that it will not change the classification of marijuana from its current classification. The DEA classifies marijuana as one the most dangerous drugs out there, as bad as cocaine and heroin. For decades, it has been said that marijuana is nothing but a dangerous “gateway drug,” a drug that people start using to get “high,” but eventually loses its effect on them. When marijuana loses its desired affect, marijuana users supposedly go and seek other more powerful illegal drugs and take them, instead, in order to get their “fix.” The feds insist that there is no medicinal benefit to any Schedule I drug, of which marijuana is one, and that these drugs have a high potential for abuse. Whether this is true or not is debatable. What are not debatable, however, are the deleterious effects of tobacco and alcohol consumption and the impact that these two legal drugs have had on our society.

Two states, Colorado and Washington, have “legalized” the use and sale of recreational marijuana, and each state collects taxes on the sale of the prepared weed. Several states have legalized the medicinal use of marijuana and have strict guidelines for its production, prescription, and use by patients. Legislation to legalize medical marijuana is pending in several other states. Is this a good thing? According to the tenets of true conservatism, it is. Conservatism demands that government not only be limited, but that it be assembled and conducted at the lowest and most effective level reasonably possible. This means, that if a people form a sovereign state, the majority of decisions affecting the lives and well-being of the people within that state should be made and enforced at the level of that state's government. In the United States, our Constitution calls for state sovereignty in matters such as the production and use of marijuana, but by claiming jurisdiction under the so-called “commerce clause” in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8), and through the exercise of enforcement via agencies such as the DEA, the United States federal government has literally taken that right away from the states. A real conservative must be happy to see that some states have, at least in the matter of marijuana, started to assert their rightful jurisdiction and submit to the authority of their citizens. How long this holds up, however, remains to be seen.

What can be done, at the state level, to once and for all end federal government interference in the affairs of the sovereign states and their citizens? What can Americans do to reassert themselves and make the government work for them, once again? Simply put, the best solution is to have what is called an Article 5 Convention of States, as called for in the Constitution. Medical and recreational marijuana are but two small areas where the federal government has overstepped its lawful bounds and imposed the will of unelected bureaucrats and special interests on the people of the United States. Let us just hope and pray that if God so wills, that the individual states reclaim and reassert their legal authority in other matters of state, as well.

What True Conservatives Want: The Five Basics

Here's a good question: why do conservatives and conservatism have such a poor reputation with so many people? Well, the answer is quite simple. Many people, namely politicians, who claim to be conservatives, are not conservatives. They are the proverbial wolves that put on sheep's clothing and fool us into electing them every few years. We too often discover, sadly to say, many Republicans who claim the mantle of conservatism are not really conservatives, but are actually progressives, globalists, and populists. When they go out and campaign, they appeal to the conservative voter, frankly because, well, they are not Democrats, whom we know to be big government progressives and liberals. Heck, let's just say what we really mean. Conservatives tend to not vote for Democrats because most modern Democrats are actually socialists that, despite their protests against the rich and against business, actually are fairly well off (read “rich”) and involve themselves in business all of the time, doing pretty darn well, I might add. Conservatives know that Democrats want a big, powerful centralized government that can manipulate and control every aspect of Americans' lives. At one time, Republicans were the alternative to the Democrats. Republicans were supposed to be the limited government, more personal freedom crowd, but not anymore. To say that the United States government did not get significantly larger, more bureaucratic, and more involved in the daily lives of American citizens under the George Bush administration would be a lie. The Republican Party has become just as greedy and manipulative (can anybody say, Mitch McConnell?) as the Democrat Party, and they, too, realize that they can become even more powerful by concentrating all of their political power in Washington. If we cannot trust the Republicans, and we sure as heck cannot trust the Democrats, who can we trust? The Libertarians? All that I can understand about Libertarians is that they are totally about individual freedom and individual rights, but they refuse to stand up for the inherent personal freedom and God-given rights of the babies in their mothers' wombs. That is an astounding contradiction that my mind and heart cannot reconcile.

It is really simple to express in a few words what conservatives, that is, true conservatives, want in government:

1) A return to the Declaration of Independence and the United States' Constitution as the law of the land;

2) Power that is currently vested in the federal bureaucracy, not enumerated by the Constitution, must be returned to the states and to the citizens. This includes repealing the Seventeenth Amendment, which would return the power to appoint U.S. senators back to the state legislatures where it belongs. I'll write more about the Seventeenth Amendment later;

3) Amendments to the Constitution that place term limits on members of the United States Congress and on federal judges;

4) Amendments that allow Congress and the states to remedy unlawful decisions made by the United States Supreme Court;

5) Fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, a balanced budget, and a reduction in the size of the federal government by attrition.

Really, when we get down to it, that is all that conservatives want. We're realistic, probably more so than anybody. We know that the damage done to this country is so great, that it cannot be fixed in just a few years. It might take decades, even a century for the ship to right itself. We have to fight. We have to kindly explain to people why conservatism works, why it is the best route to take. We have to let people know that nobody wants to enslave anyone, or hurt anybody in any way. We have to fight against the derision and the lying from progressives and ultra-liberals. It has been proven over and over throughout history that their ideas do not work, and repeating the efforts will not have different results. People have to be shown that conservatism and capitalism and fiscal responsibility and free trade are the best policies that we can follow in order to make America free and prosperous, again. We can do this! We might be bruised, and we might be battered, but there is still a lot of fight left in each of us. Let's go out there and show the world what true conservatism is all about.

Where to go from here?

When I started this blog, I wanted to use it as a means of explaining to people the true nature of conservatism. Since 'conservatism' constantly gets a bad rap from the press and from progressives and liberals, I also intended to help explain what true conservatism is not, but that is hard to do, since the opponents of conservatism have really been the ones who have defined it all of these years. Despite the best efforts of conservative talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, etc., the voices of the anti-conservative crowd seem to have gotten louder and louder. Why is that? Is it because we're not trying to scream over them? Is it because we aren't pushing back enough? Do we have to reduce ourselves to the level of our opponents in order to make our voices heard? I don't know. I wish I had an answer. All I know is that we have to adhere to our principles, if not to save the American republic and the Constitution, to at least leave a record for future generations to discover and study. If we give up now, the true ideals of conservatism will be lost to posterity.

We know history, so we own guns.

Why are so many American conservatives, libertarians, and even a few liberals against what progressives call “common-sense gun control”? The reason is very simple: we paid attention in history class. We know about the human tendency to repeat history, especially the horrible, terrible parts. We lawful gun owners know that Hitler disarmed the Jewish people before he packed them into boxcars and sent them to die in crematoriums and gas chambers. We know that communist leaders like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong confiscated weapons from their nation's citizens, which made it much easier for the two of them to slaughter tens of millions of people in peacetime. Gun confiscation often starts with simple, reasonable sounding policies such as gun registration, owner registration, and owner licensing. Yes, it is a horrible thing that so many people die at the hand of those holding a gun, but we also know that the majority of such crimes occur in cities where gun-ownership is heavily discouraged. Many large cities like New York, San Francisco, and the possible murder-capital of the United States, Chicago, place onerous requirements on their citizens, such as exorbitant taxes and fees and additional licensing requirements that are intended to deter and prevent people from legally purchasing firearms. And, then, when people cannot defend themselves against criminals, the anti-gun crowd screams for even more gun control. They even go as far as to say that our Second Amendment doesn't even guarantee a citizen's right to own a gun. They loathe the Second Amendment, and they want it gone.

I'll end this brief rant with a word from Mr. James Madison, Founding Father, author of our Constitution, and fourth President of the United States.

“Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.”- Federalist No. 46. January 29, 1778.

The progressives in government don't want us to have guns, because we gun owners stand in their way. They hate us because we won't let them have their try at repeating history.

Are You Sick of Being Blamed? I am!

When I started this blog, I made myself a promise not to go off into any rants or diatribes about all of the sociopolitical subjects that we are all bombarded with day in and day out. No, sir! I swore that this blog would be nothing but a calm, well-reasoned means of conveying my opinion of why conservatism in government is the best choice for any country or people to pursue. Well, I'm breaking that promise, because I am tired of being blamed for crap I have nothing to do with.

Maybe you have heard or read that a young up-and-coming female singer, Christina Grimmie, was shot and killed this Friday night in Orlando, Florida. She had just performed a concert and was outside greeting fans and signing autographs when some damn lunatic with two handguns came barrelling out of the crowd and shot her, right in front of her brother and many, many fans. Her brother wrestled the shooter to the ground, but the gunman somehow shot himself, which proved fatal. Within hours, nay minutes, perhaps, of the news making the rounds on social media, several people started the crap that they always start: blaming the gun, or guns, for the death of Christina Grimmie.

Now, I don't know about any of you, but I am a life NRA member, and damn proud of it. I own guns, I use guns, and I believe that every sane, able-bodied American that is old enough should know how to safely handle and shoot firearms. Every one of those people I mentioned should be allowed to own the same weapons that the military and police are allowed to own. Sounds crazy as hell, but the Founding Fathers firmly believed that. It's the only way proven to keep a tyrannical government in check. So, all that aside, yes, I take it damn personally when some twinkle-toed little citified pansy starts blaming the NRA and its members for the deaths of people like Christina Grimmie. Let me ask some questions, like, where was security? Were there no security guards or police officers working this event? Why was somebody not armed in order to protect her? Has she had problems with stalkers or crazed fans before last night? Why don't people take it upon themselves to protect themselves? I'll never understand why anyone would allow themselves the slightest chance of becoming a victim of crime. Never will I understand it.

So, instead of crying and screaming for more gun laws and the abolishing of groups like the NRA, why not stop expecting Big Daddy government and his police and military to come careening around the corner in haste every time something bad happens? Why not take on some responsibility and arm yourself and train yourself, take a handgun class and get a carry permit? Why do the rest of us have to give up our rights because some dumbass decided we can't lock the loonies up anymore, that we have to let them run the streets? I'm not sorry that I broke my promise. Rant over.