Freedom

What is more valuable to a free man than his freedom?  Is it safety?  Comfort?  Love?  Whatever treasures one can name, each of them, without freedom, is sooner or later, forfeit. 

Our freedoms are not separate items on a list.  They are all interlocked and interdependent.  Take away any part of freedom, and all of it begins to crumble.  Without freedom of speech, all of freedom suffocates in a soundless vacuum.  Without freedom of worship, the soul of freedom is lost.  Without the freedom to arm oneself, defeat by tyranny is inevitable.  Freedom is a way of life.

Moreover, add to the body of freedom anything that it is not, then there also, freedom is cheapened and eroded.  There is no freedom from being offended, no freedom from want, nor any freedom that guarantees happiness. 

Freedom is not license; it is a heavy responsibility.  Used unwisely, for example to wallow in the excesses of physical pleasure, it is wasted and soon lost.  Its abuse brings misfortune and ruin.  The proper use of freedom is to employ it in the promotion of justice tempered with mercy, to protect the innocent, to educate, to produce the advances in the arts and sciences which give mankind dignity and a sense of worth.  It nourishes both the inward self, and at the same time, guides us outward, toward that which is greater than the self.

Nothing about freedom is simple or easy.  That is why so many men squander it, and cast it as one might pearls before swine.  That is why tyrants arise, armed not only with the sword, but with lies and deception, with promises of riches that are not earned, and of treasures that are stolen from others.

Freedom is not given; it is taken, by force if necessary.  The free man takes his freedom, and then shares its blessings with others who also strive to take their own freedom.  The free man owes his freedom to no one but God, but he readily expresses his gratitude for it to Him, and to those who have bled and suffered and died to protect it.

The free man seeks for his own good first, but does so that he may seek it for others as well.  Indeed, the free man is selfless enough to lay down his life for it.  As with love, freedom is not selfish, nor boastful, nor arrogant.  It seeks not to rule others, nor to take away anyone else’s freedom, but rather to serve freedom’s cause for everyone who will have it.

Pity those who do not value freedom above all else, for to them, all else will soon be lost.

Sorry, Son, You’re Not a Girl

--for American Thinker
--by Robert Arvay

 I recently engaged in a back-and-forth discussion on another website, concerning the issue of GID (Gender Identity Disorder) with a person who supports transgender issues.  More precisely, he (I will presume it’s a he) advocates societal changes and surgical methods to “transition” gender-confused boys into being girls (and vice versa).

My aim was not to persuade the other person, because he seems emotionally invested at a very deep level.  At most, I hoped to soberly present a side of the story that social liberals seem never to encounter, and perhaps to plant the seed of reflection that may take years to mature.

One of the primary arguments that I made, and one to which the other person could not adequately reply, was the comparison of GID, Gender Identity Disorder (he calls it Dysphoria) to a disorder called BIID (Body Integrity Identity Disorder).  They are related, probably very closely.  Those who suffer from BIID have an overwhelming perception that a specific part of their body, say an arm or leg, does not belong there, somewhat the feeling you and I might get if a large, abnormal growth appeared on our face.  We would wish it to be removed.  The BIID sufferer urgently wishes to remove the arm or leg, even though it is fully functional and healthy.

The point of this comparison, as I stated it, is that the problem for the BIID patient is not the arm.  It is something in the brain.

I then pointed out that we do not celebrate BIID.  We do not advocate the amputation of healthy limbs, even though this may relieve the suffering of the BIID patient.  Instead, we do research to find other possible remedies.  We should take the same approach to helping sufferers of GID.

My correspondent in this back-and-forth, seemed to carry into the debate the usual liberal assumption that we conservatives are heartless, cruel and insensitive ideologues who wish to impose our beliefs on others.  I made it clear that I, for one, have great sympathy for sufferers of GID.  It must be just awful to sincerely believe that you are a man trapped in a woman’s body, or vice versa.  It must be terrible for the parents to discover that their son wishes to be surgically altered to become a woman.  I have tried to imagine myself in their place, both the son and the parents.  I cannot, of course, but just trying to do it demonstrates some of the great difficulty that they must experience.

This, then, is the single-minded focus of the liberal advocate.  He adequately senses the suffering of the patient, but fails to see any issue beyond that.  His attitude seems to be, and I speak metaphorically here, just cut off the offending part, and everything else will be okay—well, that is, it will be okay, after we reeducate society to accept the liberal position.

But reeducation would be at the expense of the First Amendment, and other basic rights.  If GID is a correctly understood condition, and if the recommended alterations to the body are medically proper, then anyone who opposes the agenda, including laws with civil and criminal penalties for dissidents—is a bigot, and should be neutralized.  That is the liberal position.

One problem with all that, is that GID is poorly understood, and the supposed remedies are not only superficial, they risk grave harm to the patients, especially to little boys and girls who oftentimes pass through a temporary phase of what we might call, gender experimentation, such as for example, cross dressing for play.  Giving these children hormone injections and other drugs, could cause irreparable damage.

At present, there seems to be no cure for GID, but that does not mean that we should embark on harmful therapies, not even if they make the patient more comfortable.  There is great harm in accepting the liberal position, not only harm for some of the patients, but harm for society at large.

For example, there are now laws on the books, in some jurisdictions, which give men a right to walk into gymnasium showers for women, including showers for high school girls.  In California, when parents objected to this rule, they were horrified to be told, by the government, that their daughter should become comfortable showering with boys.  There was no mention of the transgender student becoming comfortable showering with members of his own biological sex.  They have rights, and you do not.

There are also other complications that arise.  Murders have been committed when a man discovered that his “girlfriend” was born as a boy.  Would liberals ever countenance a law requiring full disclosure about one’s transgenderism?  Or would that be a privacy right that outweighs those of high school girls?

It’s not so simple as amputating the offending part.  At present, many liberals even denounce referring to GID as a disorder.  They demand that it be accepted as simply an uncomfortable feeling, one which can be remedied with surgery, and with draconian laws to punish dissidents.

Therefore, at the risk of sounding brutal and cruel, here is my message to transgender people, as if I were speaking to my son.

I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, my son, but you are not a girl.  It pains me to say so, but you are a boy who thinks you are a girl.  It’s not your fault, no more so than it is the fault of sufferers of BIID or other uncured disorders.  But you have never been a girl, and will never become one, no matter how extreme is the pretense.  Not even surgery will change that fact.

If simple surgery would solve the issue, without creating a greater harm, then perhaps I might reconsider.  But that is not the case.  What good is the surgery if society does not accept you as a woman?  Or is it that, you think you can force society to accept your pretense—and it would be just that, a pretense. 

There are already laws that punish people for refusing to accept as normal, abnormal gender roles.  You already know that courts have ruled against bakers, photographers and others who decline to participate in same-sex wedding ceremonies.  They did not discriminate against gays, but they do discriminate against a celebration of something that violates their deeply held moral beliefs.

If you would reorder society according to your desires, then why not advocate for research that would heal the brain?  That, after all, is where the disorder is.

Your suffering is my suffering.  I am inadequate to cure that.  All I can do is to steadfastly love you, and to refrain from doing more harm to you on top of the malady you already have.

I love you, my son.  You will always be my son.

 

Supreme Court Declines to Affirm Second Amendment Rights

--For American Thinker
--by Robert Arvay

The United States Supreme Court has declined to affirm the constitutional, Second Amendment rights which are guaranteed to citizens.  They did so by rejecting an appeal from a lower court.  That court had ruled that the state of California can impose severe restrictions on issuing permits to carry firearms.

 In refusing to hear the appeal, the lower court ruling remains in effect.

Only two justices, Clarence Thomas and the newly seated Neil Gorsuch, dissented.  Quoting them from Fox News, “The Court’s decision … reflects a distressing trend: the treatment of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right,” they wrote.

The court’s ruling seems to be in conflict with two earlier Supreme Court Rulings, in 2008 and 2010, that Second Amendment rights apply to individuals, not to the government alone—as in police and military.

Of course, you and I know that the Bill of Rights is entirely for protection of the individual from government excess.  Few on the left understand the individual empowerment theme of the first ten amendments, or if they do, they disagree with it.

There may, however, be a bright side to this.  First, it is now clear that we need more justices like Thomas and Gorsuch.  It would have taken only two more to grant certiorari, requiring the court to hear the appeal.  Pressure on President Trump, to appoint such justices, will now increase

However, as the leftist liberals discovered to their horror in 2008 and 2010, taking a case to the court might backfire.  The court can always rule against those who feel assured they will prevail.  Therefore, it is important not to file an appeal until all the pieces are in place.  Failure to do so can result in a precedent that might take a lifetime to overcome.

Therefore, it behooves us to tread carefully.

That said, it remains amazing that basic Constitutional rights could possibly be so easy to suppress.  While some rights that are not even in the Constitution are enforced, there seems to be significant antipathy regarding the right to keep and bear arms—a right that “shall not be infringed.”

A common argument used by the misinformed is that the Second Amendment applies only to muskets, the firearm commonly in use at the time.  However, there is no mention of firearms.  In fact, a very common weapon in the 1700s was the sword.  If the misinformed opponents of firearms were honest in their claim that only flintlock muskets are permitted, then why are there so many jurisdictions where six-inch knife blades are prohibited?  Surely, the Second Amendment authorizes them as carry weapons.

A more reasonable argument, but not a truly reasonable one, is that if everyone is allowed unrestricted access to guns, that one could never feel safe in public.  Indeed, even in the Wild West of yore, Dodge City required cowboys to hand over their weapons before patronizing the local drinking establishments.

However, subsequent American history lays that fear to rest.  In the 1920s, my father carried his gun to school each day.  So did all the boys in his rural community.  After school, on the way home, they hunted for food.  Interestingly, although there were numerous fights with bullies, no one ever used, nor even brandished, a weapon.  Black eyes, bloody noses, and the humiliation of having to say, “uncle,” were the worst of it.

True, today in certain inner cities, there is an abundance of violent gun crimes.  But a number of factors, not individual rights, is the culprit.  Those cities are run by liberal Democrats who are far too lenient with brutal criminals.  There is a sick joke in which a judge releases a murderer because it was only his first offense.  A degenerate culture that makes excuses for recalcitrants, and considers as normal all manner of perversion, has undermined respect for others, and for the law.

Perhaps the most fearsome clause in the Second Amendment is not the phrase, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”  The phrase just before that is the one that terrifies big government advocates.  It says, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State . . .”

This phrase, using the definitions of the 1700s, does not refer to a government-regulated militia, but rather, to a well-trained organization of citizens, able at a “minute’s notice” to take up arms against any force that threatens liberty, which in 1776, included the ruling government.

Combining this with the Declaration of Independence, which says, “… it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,” and, “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government,” it is easy to see why progressive liberals despise the right of people to be free, and to be empowered to defend liberty.

For those who say that only right wing loons today believe in the Second Amendment, here is a quote from one of their icons, John F. Kennedy:

"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."

It should greatly concern us, then, that , “The Court’s decision … reflects a distressing trend: the treatment of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right.”

It is somewhat ironic that it is the people who threaten to blow up the White House, who depict the beheading of the President, who celebrate gun violence directed against Republicans—and who riot to prevent speakers from speaking against rioters—that it is they who oppose your right to defend yourself.

We must also bear in mind how thinly the government itself supports that right.  Thank God for Donald Trump, but we are going to need more.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/06/26/justices-thomas-gorsuch-blast-court-decision-to-reject-gun-rights-appeal.html

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/28/AR2010062802134.html