Copyright © 1996, Michael T. Bradshaw
From Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
From what we hear word-of-mouth from academia, it would appear that our modern academics cannot ride, cannot shoot, and are afraid to speak the truth. Presumably they have never heard of either Herodotus or Theodore Roosevelt - a couple of dead white males.
We learn from Soldier of Fortune magazine that when Senator Arlen Specter issued a request last summer for the names of all known militia members at least one citizen did what he could do to help. He sent Specter a copy of the local phone book. According to the Founding Fathers, almost everybody not in the military is in the militia.
Following the demise of the Colonial Era, a considerable number of miscreants have discovered that the post-colonial gentry in their midst have been disinclined by generations of law and order to fight back. In New Guinea, for example, the bad guys - who are referred to as "raskols" - have taken to pillaging the innocent in large numbers, assuming their victims will offer no resistance. As you might suppose, times have a way of changing. Recently at Port Moresby one Mr. Cragnolini, an Australian businessman, simply refused to go along with a band of raskols who burst into a restaurant in which he and his wife were dining. The news report says that there were eleven goblins, and Cragnolini cleaned up on the lot, decking four, killing two, and scattering the rest.
This was a fine performance and hailed as heroism downunder, but it simply corroborates the fact that the human hyenas of the world are astonished and dismayed when their intended victims fight back. The answer to street violence is counterattack rather than more jails.
I do not think I mentioned the name of the BATgirl who stomped the kitten to death in the course of the Lamplugh raid. Her name is Donna Slusser. That is one to remember along with Lon Horiuchi. We are treated to inquiries and investigations, but it seems very difficult to ask a straight question of a perpetrator. "Mr. Horiuchi, why did you shoot Vicki Weaver in the face? Ms. Slusser, why did you stomp on that kitten?" "Self defense" will not do.
We hear that one of the men shot at Tiananmen Square was able to speak out as follows before he died:
"Tell the American people never to lose their guns. As long as they keep their guns in their hands what's happened here will never happen there."
To which I would add:
Remember Dachau.
Remember Manzanar (Concentration camp north of Lancaster on U.S.
highway 395).
Remember Tiananmen Square.
Remember Waco.
And keep your powder dry!
M. T. B.
"Fix Reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason than of blindfolded fear. ... Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it end in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others which it will procure for you". (Jefferson's Works, Vol. II., p. 217).
Jefferson's historical background
The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Inc.
On the nature, causes, evils and remedies of
faction in civil and political life.
with commentary by Michael T. Bradshaw, AKA Publius Jr.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peacably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
"The founding fathers of this great democracy were unalterably opposed to any exception in this nation's guarantees of the freedoms of speech and press because of the supposed immoral, licentious, obscene or otherwise objectionable ideas that might be expressed, for they were convinced that no man, or group of men, or any government had the right to curtail the opinions of any other man or their free expression.
"Nothing in the intervening years has given us any reason to disagree with the wisdom of those first American patriots."
Hugh M. Hefner
To which I would add "unalterable oposition to any exception to
the other liberties that the people have guaranteed for
themselves."
M. T. B.
Patrick Henry:
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun."
James Madison
"Concerning the Militia," 29 Federalist in the Daily Advertiser, January 10, 1788:
"There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of danger to liberty from the militia that one is at a loss whether to treat it with gravity or raillery. Where, in the name of common sense, are our fears to end if we may not trust our sons, our brothers, our neighbors, our fellow citizens?
Arthur B. Robinson, Ph.D.
Access to Energy, July 1994, Vol. 21, no. 11
"The gun controllers are not deterred by the facts about guns and crime, because their primary fear is not of criminals. They fear ordinary Americans whose lives and freedom their policies are destroying. In this fear and in their world, they are on target."
Death and Taxes
The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.
Balanced Budget
Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing -- and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.
"Things in our country run in spite of government. Not by aid of it!"
"Our Foreign dealings are an Open Book, generally a Check Book."
"There is nothing as stupid as an educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in."
from Ellen's "Will Rogers" page
"If you are the kind of reader who knows that for 1084 pages he has lived in the atmosphere of John Galt's world--if you now feel regret at the necessity of returning to the gray hopelessness of a culture that is truly bankrupt--if you have understood that it is ideas which create or destroy a world, a culture or a man--if you have understood that the rejection of reason by the neo-mystics of our age is responsible for the present state of the world--then you know why only a philosophy of reason can lead to an intellectual Renaissance."
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