Memorial Day
They were people were just like you and me. They got up each day and lived their lives as Americans. They went to the same schools, churches, grocery stories and ate at the same restaurants. They smiled and laughed at our jokes. They listened to the same music and watched the same movies we did. They comforted us when we were sad and we looked up to them and admired them. They sat across from us at our dinner tables and living rooms and shared with us their hopes, dreams, secrets and aspirations. We loved them and the world was a little brighter because of them. They were our ancestors, our grandfathers, our parents, our siblings, our children, cousins, or maybe just our best friend. They are now gone. They are all missed.
For the families of lost service men and women nothing can replace the heavy loss felt and the empty chair at the table. These brave few served each other, and their country paying with their lives. Some had no choice and were drafted into their country’s service; some willingly answered the call, but each ended up serving something far greater.
It has been said that only the dead have seen the end of war. The world as it is still requires vigilance against tyranny and evil and some men and women still end up paying the ultimate price to keep the peace, and preserve the nation. The good book tells us that “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” It is good and right then they we have a national holiday to remember them.
Memorial Day is not about the political correctness of the conflicts with which these men and women lost their lives; history is the final judge of that. Today on this day we put aside our correctness; our righteous indignation and protests against war and all its causes. Today we just celebrate our loved ones and their tragic, final sacrifices made… and remember them with heartfelt gratitude.
Gun Control or just plain Control?
When you look throughout the course of human history no law, code, regulation, or decree was ever enacted or imposed upon other human beings without the subtle or not so subtle, implied threat of coercion or actual use of coercion. There were always those willing and able to enforce their will upon others through the use of weapons, and they are the one’s who usually ended up ruling others.
In more modern times its been said that the one in the room with the gun is the one who is really in charge. Today’s debate about gun control really centers around a larger more fundamental issue. Who is to be in charge of it all, the government or we the people?
There can be no doubt the founders of the USA meant for the people to be in charge of the government and that its role was to protect the individual’s rights and property. However when you listen to today’s Democrats or big government progressives and their more crazy offshoots like Sanders and his following, you can easily see who they want in the room with all the weapons. Do they trust you to be armed and use discretion and take responsibility for your own safety and actions? The answer is a resounding emphatic “no” they don’t. Do they fear losing control of you? Every day!
They are however slowly convincing each succeeding generation of Americans that government knows best, and that you can trust government more than even yourself to make just laws that will govern every aspect of your life, to include your ability to defend yourself. Furthermore you should have no capability to oppose the will of Govt with rival force no matter how broken, corrupt, unjust, petty or tyrannical government becomes. They can’t possibly see a future where anyone would have the audacity to oppose the all powerful all seeing State and nothing to them is worth dying for or fighting for. Peace and order they argue, must be maintained at all cost and no person has the right to do commit violence to protect himself or another, that is the license of government only.
I would then argue that when you accept that premise and willingly surrender your arms you cease to have the ability to oppose government in any meaningful or forceful way and you cease to be a citizen in any real sense history has previously described Americans. Instead you become a subject, to be controlled, regulated and managed by the State not unlike chattel or livestock. You become a cog in a vast machine that is faceless, remorseless, and sees you as having no real individual identity, and certainly no inherent natural rights that would precede and/or supersede government’s authority. What real power is left to oppose them or prevent them from doing anything they want…their promises?
Russian Tanks on Red Square
The second amendment and the Constituition as written then is an existential threat to the very premise that it is government’s mission to control its citizens and achieving the aim of being the only one left in the room with the gun.
There are hundreds of millions of firearms in this country in the hands of private citizens currently and I see no reason to change that for the overwhelmingly majority are law abiding and peaceful.
It really does boil down to just one central and very important idea; who is ultimately in charge of it all? Who is to be armed and in charge? We the people or the government?
Will surrendering to the government our arms ever make sense when this same government has used it power and authority to repeatedly disrespect our citizens, our individual rights, our property and circumvent our existing laws as written, all the while we are armed? How much greater the contempt or disregard for us as citizens can we then expect by giving up all hope and means of forcefully resisting government and surrendering all our arms?
Anti-gun movement sculpture
Do you trust the same people who gave us Benghazi, Obamacare, IRS scandals, Corruption, NSA Spying, Assassination of US citizens abroad without trial, and the Iraq War with your lives, property and your natural God given right of self-defense? Can you honestly say the “citizens” will be safer and more secure unarmed?
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