NOVAE MILITIAE

Not normally much of a Steyn fan (or a fan of any neocon), but this was a particularly timely and well-written article  concerning Obama's recent gaffe about Middle America.   Some excerpts:

Sen. Obama's remarks about poor dumb, bitter rural losers "clinging to" guns and God certainly testify to the instinctive snobbery of a big segment of the political class. But we shouldn't let it go by merely deploring coastal condescension toward the knuckledraggers. No, what Michelle Malkin calls Crackerquiddick (quite rightly – it's more than just another dreary "-gate") is not just snobbish nor even merely wrongheaded. It's an attack on two of the critical advantages the United States holds over most of the rest of the Western world. In the other G7 developed nations, nobody clings to God 'n' guns. The guns got taken away, and the Europeans gave up on churchgoing once they embraced Big Government as the new religion.

How's that working out? Compared with America, France and Germany have been more or less economically stagnant for the past quarter-century, living permanently with unemployment rates significantly higher than in the United States. . . .

In my book "America Alone," I note a global survey on optimism: 61 percent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 percent of the French, 15 percent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my experience, Americans are the least "bitter" people in the developed world. Secular, gun-free big-government Europe doesn't seem to have done anything for people's happiness. . . .

Europeans did "vote for their own best interests" – i.e., cradle-to-grave welfare, 35-hour workweeks, six weeks of paid vacation, etc. – and as a result they now face a perfect storm of unsustainable entitlements, economic stagnation and declining human capital that's left them so demographically beholden to unassimilable levels of immigration that they're being remorselessly Islamized with every passing day. . . .

As for "gun-totin'," large numbers of Americans tote guns because they're assertive, self-reliant citizens, not docile subjects of a permanent governing class. The Second Amendment is philosophically consistent with the First Amendment, for which I've become more grateful since the Canadian Islamic Congress decided to sue me for "hate speech" up north. Both amendments embody the American view that liberty is not the gift of the state, and its defense cannot be outsourced exclusively to the government.

I think a healthy society needs both God and guns: It benefits from a belief in some kind of higher purpose to life on Earth, and it requires a self-reliant citizenry. If you lack either of those twin props, you wind up with today's Europe – a present-tense Eutopia mired in fatalism. . . .

God and guns. Maybe one day a viable society will find a magic cure-all that can do without both, but Big Government isn't it. And even complacent liberal Democrats ought to be able to look across the ocean and see that. But, then, Obama did give the speech in San Francisco, a city demographically declining at a rate that qualifies it for EU membership. When it comes to parochial simpletons, you don't need to go to Kansas.

Great stuff.  The Obamanoids and the Eurotrash are such losers.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-02-26-guns-cover_N.htm

As usual, the authors get it wrong about the 1939 Miller case. That case explicitly affirmed neither a collective or individual rights theory, although in its historical analysis, which was pretty good, it did acknowledge the importance of the 2nd Amendment's militia clause in interpreting the amendment. What it went on to further acknowledge, however, is that these arms used in militia service were privately owned arms which "the people" -- the aggregate of individual citizens -- brought to militia service. Why does one privately own arms unless for BOTH self and collective defense? Thus, Miller implied that the right was BOTH individual and collective. What's more, it treated Miller and Layton as individuals who had "standing" to litigate this matter, and those guys weren't members of the National Guard, but "indivduals".  In fact, there was no National Guard back in late 18th century when the federal constitution was drafted and ratified. As the court in Miller clearly acknowledged, the militia was comprised of civilians.

What happened in Miller had to do largely with the question of whether or not a sawed-off shotgun could be considered a firearm suitable for militia use. "In the absence of evidence" tending to show this, the court wrote, it could not say that it was, and it remanded the case back for further finding. However, bootleggers Miller and Layton and their counsel had disappeared into parts unknown, and so that's where the case remained. Had they appeared and had their attorney been savvy enough, they could have shown how short-barreled shotguns were used in both the WBTS and WWI and were therefore firearms with military utility.

Regarding the Heller case now before the Supreme Court, there is much speculation out there in that part of the legal community which devotes itself to gun rights issues that the high court will find some way to achieve a very narrow ruling that will affect only DC and not the rest of the country. Or in the alternative, as the USA Today article indicates, some sort of balancing act where an individual right to arms is affirmed but retaining the government's power to enact broad controls, if necessary. Tough to do, since the standard of judicial review for "fundamental" rights is that of "strict scrutiny", which, if applied, renders broad controls unconstitutional. It'll be interesting to see what this court does. Kennedy will be the guy to watch, as the article indicates.

In the end, however, for several reasons it really doesn't matter what the high court says. The American gun culture is generally very familiar with the constitutional history of the right to arms on the one hand and the malfeasance of the American judiciary on the other. That culture knows that there are state constitutional provisions that protect the right as well, nay, that the right itself antedates its enshrinement in state and federal constitutions. Which is to say that it is going to keep and bear arms regardless of what some black-robed philosopher-kings say. And an armed populace is just as much a check on the misuse of political power as is the separation of powers inherent in our system of government.

UPDATE 2:  Auster responds to an e-mailer who doesn't know a cuss word from shinola.  Auster was quite vexed, and for good reason.  The e-mailer is an idiot:

Oleg writes:

In regards to your blog entry on Christians arming themselves, and basically fighting back when they are attacked; does this not go against the essence of Christianity? If one is attacked, wouldn't the proper Christian stand there and accept whatever punishment is dealt to him; not fight back, run away, or go and call the police or file a complaint afterwards.

This woman who shot the shooter did what any normal human being would do. A true Christian however, would not have harmed the shooter. Isn't there some sort of a passage in the New Testament that teaches salvation through suffering, or something along the lines of that? Isn't the fundamental difference between Christians and gentiles, the fact that a Christian only harms and kills during times of war; while for a Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Parsi or Muslim, it is justified to take another mans life if that man is attempting to take yours--regardless if it is a time of peace or a time of war.

BTW, just a quick fun fact, the Torah had different moralities for times of peace and times of war.

LA replies:

Where did you get such absolute crap? Did you land on the planet earth yesterday? Do you know nothing of history? Is all you know about Christianity a couple of passages from the Gospels taken by themselves, not considered in context? Do you have no ability to think? Do you actually believe that the Christian religion has been a suicide cult for the past two thousand years? Are you not aware that Christians have lived in organized Christian societies for the last two thousand years, and that organized societies are not in the habit of commanding their citizens to allow themselves to be mass murdered by criminals and enemies?

And what about letting OTHER people be killed? Do you believe that if Christians' children, neighbors, and wives are threatened by marauders, the Christians are commanded by their religion to stand by passively while their wives, children, and neighbors are killed? Did you THINK before you wrote your e-mail?

LA continues:

Why this comment annoyed me. This guy who knows nothing about Christianity, nothing about Christian civilization, comes along, telling Christians that by HIS non-existent understanding of Christianity they all ought to let themselves be murdered by criminals. Talk about chutzpah!

UPDATE:  Farah and Auster concur.

ORIGINAL POST:

For ongoing coverage of this tragic incident, one now in a long string, see the blog Slapstick Politics.

All of this simply underscores what I've written here about: 1) the increasing anti-Christian fury in this nation and elsewhere; and 2) the resulting need for Christian men (and as this case shows, women as well) to develop a familiarity with small arms and a willingness to use them. Yes, even at church, if necessary.

Regarding the first point, the increasing anti-Christian fury. My previous thoughts have been, I think, distilled in this post. While the motives of the Colorado shooter is not yet known (he apparently came from a Christian family), you can bet that by now the blogosphere is full of comments by leftist moonbats congratulating him. I have stumbled upon two so far, that is, without even going out to the usual haunts looking for such comments. No, they came directly to us.

From a comments box on Slapstick Politics:

So the shooter killed only two and wounded two others. Too bad he didn't have more time to get some more. Religious missionaries are very legitimate targets since they stick their noses into other people's private religious affairs. America needs more shootings like this in the future to put the religious fanatics and loonies in their place.
tanbiker | 12.09.07 - 1:02 pm | #

From the Denver Post:

Churches that teach hatred are hated.

Comment by imogene powell — December 10, 2007 @ 12:20 pm

There they are, ladies and gentlemen: the loons of the anti-Christian left, seething with hatred and full of murderous thoughts.  Evidence of why I say the war is not over. Go into my blog archives and look at the category, "What Is To Be Done (Firearms)". Learn the theology of this thing, i.e., why it is that Christian Americans MAY take up arms to defend themselves from murderous anti-Christians. Understand that pacifist theology finds no real support in the Scriptures or in the mind of the Church throughout most of its history. Understand that dispensationalist eschatology is false to the core, and that we need not therefore simply meet violence with resignation due to the fact that we are in the "end times." Only God knows what "times" we're in, and He expects men to defend the innocent.  And one need not be a policeman or a soldier to participate in the battle to defend them.   As Jeffrey Snyder notes in his bombshell Public Interest article "A Nation of Cowards, according to traditional American moral and political ideology it is the individual, not the state, who assumes primary responsibility for defending his life, the lives of others, and inherited liberties:

Although difficult for modern man to fathom, it was once widely believed that life was a gift from God, that to not defend that life when offered violence was to hold God's gift in contempt, to be a coward and to breach one's duty to one's community. A sermon given in Philadelphia in 1747 unequivocally equated the failure to defend oneself with suicide:

He that suffers his life to be taken from him by one that hath no authority for that purpose, when he might preserve it by defense, incurs the Guilt of self murder since God hath enjoined him to seek the continuance of his life, and Nature itself teaches every creature to defend itself.

"Cowardice" and "self-respect" have largely disappeared from public discourse. In their place we are offered "self-esteem" as the bellwether of success and a proxy for dignity. "Self-respect" implies that one recognizes standards, and judges oneself worthy by the degree to which one lives up to them. "Self-esteem" simply means that one feels good about oneself. "Dignity" used to refer to the self-mastery and fortitude with which a person conducted himself in the face of life's vicissitudes and the boorish behavior of others. Now, judging by campus speech codes, dignity requires that we never encounter a discouraging word and that others be coerced into acting respectfully, evidently on the assumption that we are powerless to prevent our degradation if exposed to the demeaning behavior of others. These are signposts proclaiming the insubstantiality of our character, the hollowness of our souls.

It is impossible to address the problem of rampant crime without talking about the moral responsibility of the intended victim. Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers. . . .

Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? If you believe that it is the police's, not only are you wrong -- since the courts universally rule that they have no legal obligation to do so -- but you face some difficult moral quandaries. How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because that is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay him? If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?

Do you believe that you are forbidden to protect yourself because the police are better qualified to protect you, because they know what they are doing but you're a rank amateur? Put aside that this is equivalent to believing that only concert pianists may play the piano and only professional athletes may play sports. What exactly are these special qualities possessed only by the police and beyond the rest of us mere mortals?

One who values his life and takes seriously his responsibilities to his family and community will possess and cultivate the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or grievous injury to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely solely on others for his safety, or to think he has done all that is possible by being aware of his surroundings and taking measures of avoidance. Let's not mince words: He will be armed, will be trained in the use of his weapon, and will defend himself when faced with lethal violence.

Christian men: the killer was taken out by a FEMALE volunteer security guard while the assailant was being distracted by a Vietnam vet who was unarmed. Here's the account, and note the very last sentence, where the security guard, a Christian and a member of the church, tells us how she remained so calm and collected.  (Quoted in the Slapstick Politics blog entry linked at the beginning of this entry):

A Vietnam veteran is among the survivors, hit by gunfire at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

Larry Bourbannais, 59, was eating a hamburger in the cafeteria on the church campus when he heard gunfire, said his daughter, Sherry Smith.

Bourbannais headed in the direction of the shots as frightened people ran past him looking to escape to safety.

"Where's the shooter, where's the shooter," my dad kept yelling, Smith said.

Smith, 28, and other family members met Bourbannais at a hospital Sunday where he was treated for a gunshot wound in the arm and released.

Bourbannais was alert at the hospital and told Smith in detail about the shooting.

Bourbannais came upon the gunman near an entry way in a building and yelled at him to draw his attention, Smith said.

That's when the shooter pointed a handgun at Bourbannais and fired, she said.

Bourbannais had ducked behind a hollow, decorative pillar and was hit in the arm by the bullet and fragments of the pillar.

At about that moment, a woman with a drawn handgun turned a corner and walked toward the gunman and yelled "Surrender," Smith said.

When the gunman pointed his weapon at the woman, she fired at him and kept walking toward him as she continued firing, Smith said.

"My dad said it was the bravest thing he had ever seen," Smith said.

The woman fired off about 10 to 12 shots as she kept walking toward the shooter.

After the gunman went down, Bourbannais asked the woman, who has only been identified as a volunteer security guard with the church, how she remained so calm and focused.

Smith said the woman told Bourbannais: "She was praying for guidance from the Holy Spirit."

I bet so, since she probably didn't get much guidance from a benighted, mealy-mouthed church, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant, on the question of whether to shoot and when to shoot.  So, the holder of a Colorado concealed carry license, she relied on her training as a former law enforcement officer - and upon the Holy Spirit.  A modern-day Shieldmaiden of Rohan, like Eowyn. 

So, to blue blazes with "Christian" hoplophobia.  To blue blazes with Catholic and Orthodox priests and bishops, and Protestant ministers, who teach their flock that they shouldn't even own guns, much less use one in self-defense or the defense of others.  Long live, rather, the Christian knight.

And shieldmaiden.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071121/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_guns

I knew that SCOTUS was close to a decision on the matter of whether they would hear it or not.

On the one hand, it makes me nervious, because I know with 100% certainly where SCOTUS should come down. I don't shine in too many areas, but one of the areas I do shine is in the area of the constitutional history of the Second Amendment. I've authored a law review article on the subject, and the decision that is going to be reviewed by SCOTUS took the "individual rights" side of the argument, which I defended. But that's irrelevant, really. SCOTUS will do what it's going to do, and these days we don't know from decision to decision whether what it does will be constitutionally based or politically based.

On the other hand, I and the millions upon millions of firearms owners in America don't give a tinker's damn what SCOTUS will do. As constiutional scholar Stephen Halbrook, writing of a future "definitive" SCOTUS ruling, says at the end of his hallmark study, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right, "Regardless of what the nine justices of the Supreme Court may rule, it seems likely that millions of Americans will continue to exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms."

You damn betcha we will.  Readers should understand that sentence in the context of how anti-gun "progressives"  defend the post-modernist "postivist" notion of law, in which a "living constiution" evolves to meet the needs of modern Americans (which actually means benighted, decadent, dumbed-down and morally compromised *"liberal"* Americans, if you'll excuse the redundancy). In this statement, Halbrook implictly draws a crucial distinction between certain decisions of SCOTUS, on the one hand, and constitutional reality, on the other. Contextually, that statement is made at the end of a masterful presentation outlining why SCOTUS should rule on behalf of the "individual rights" interpretation of the Second Amendment (or more precisely, an individualist/collectivist interpretation as opposed to a purely collectivist one, in which the Second Amendment is viewed as guaranteeing the rights of the states to form and maintain a state militia in the form of the "National Guard"). Note that to the progressives, it doesn't matter what what the Framers of the Constitution meant. It only matters what SCOTUS decisions say, irrespective of whether or not the court departs from the Framers' intent.

But the bottom line is, as Halbrook notes,  that we gun owners will continue to exercise our constitutional right to keep and bear arms, whatever SCOTUS might decide. We still have our state constitutions, most of which guarantee the right to arms and many of which expressly state that the right applies to individuals. We will continue to own our handguns, our shotguns, our bolt-action rifles, and our semiautomatic rifles, both of non-military and military configuration. The vast majority of us will not register them or surrender them. Should the government ever dictate that we are to do so, we will tell them, Molon Labe: Come and Take Them.

Step lightly and do the right thing, SCOTUS.  That's what I and countless other American gun owners say.

A former neocon writes to ask Lawrence Auster what is to be done to combat the seemingly “inexorable slide into liberalism, multiculturalism and domination by our Islamic masters.”

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/008339.html

Auster relplies:

As long as we think that the present liberal order is the only way things can be, then, yes, there is nothing but despair. But at the core of my view of things is the conviction that liberalism is not as strong as it seems. Liberalism is like the Wizard of Oz, seemingly mighty, intimidating, and invincible, but behind the curtains there's just a little man pulling switches. As long as we think of liberalism as mighty and invincible, it remains so, and we remain helpless before it. But if we cease, deep down, to believe in liberalism, if we cease to accept its premises as our own, and challenge it face-on from the point of view of truth, then the shallowness and vulnerability and falseness and utter destructiveness of liberalism will become manifest. Liberalism, at its core, is inconsistent with existence. Liberals do not realize this, because of the unprincipled exceptions they keep constantly making to their liberalism to keep it functioning in the real world, like liberal anti-gun columnist Carl Rowen owning a gun and fending off an intruder with it. As the falsity and destructiveness of liberalism is exposed, both by our arguments and by the actual destruction going on all around us, then there will a chance that the reign of liberalism can be broken and our civilization can be saved.

I do not know that we can win. I do not know that we can turn it around. But I do know that liberalism is false and evil and that we can fight it. At present we are not even trying to fight it in a serious way. So from my point of view the future offers not despair but tremendous hope: the hope of changing from our present state of passive helplessness and surrender to liberalism, to a real fight against liberalism.

If I may adapt, for a good purpose, a phrase from one of the great monsters of history:

Traditional Westerners have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Men of the West, Unite!

Or, as Aragorn implores in the cinematic version of The Return of the King: “ By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!!!”

What is to be done? American and European liberalism is a house of cards. As I imply in the blog entry linked below, all we really need to do is to say “no” them. “No more.” They may rattle their sabers, but if we stand fast and resolve to fight, they will quickly fade away, paving the way for their rightful masters to do what must be done with respect to things like illegal immigration and the Jihad in the West.

http://novaemilitiae.squarespace.com/st-george-brigade/2007/2/18/secession-time.html