A Clearer Perspective

When it comes to freedom from government oppression, the First Amendment gets all the credit. When it comes to those liberties we all readily enjoy — speech, religion, assembly, petition and press — there is such a strong and unified understanding in America that these are inalienable rights that they’re hardly ever questioned.
Yet when it comes to the Second Amendment and what should be an inalienable right to bear arms, the concept of personal independence is suddenly lost on half the population.
This Independence Day, let’s re-examine that concept.
The Second Amendment states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Like the rest of the Bill of Rights, these words are clear and their intent is simple: to protect personal liberties. Independence Day doesn’t just celebrate America’s independence from Britain, it also celebrates the liberation of a people. America’s citizens can proudly say they live in a country founded on the principle that each has the right to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In his “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death Speech” Patrick Henry said, “If we would be free, if we mean to hold inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have so long contended, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble cause for which we have so long endured, and to which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest should be obtained, then we must fight! I repeat Sir, we must fight! A call to arms and an appeal to the God of hosts is all that we have left.”
Two centuries after our first Independence Day, America is again in the fight of its life.
On foreign soil, we fight terrorists that would rather see our nation succumb to a fanatical theocratic ideology, and again, the majority of us agree that we have a right to defend our nation from these attacks. But when it comes to each of us individually protecting our own lives, our own homes, our loved ones — our so-called “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” — too many Americans are still confused on what should be a clear-cut answer.
Just as we as a nation have a right to defend our country, so do you as an individual have a right to defend yourself and your property. An unarmed citizenry is an open door to a tyrannical government, and you need look no further than the many nations around the world who have fallen under the rule of dictatorships after giving up their right to bear arms.
The Soviet Union established gun control in 1929 and proceeded to kill 20 million unarmed dissidents over the next 44 years. Hitler did the same in 1938 and exterminated over 13 million unarmed Jews and others until the end of the second world war.
History is rife with these examples, repeated over and over again in nations where guns are forcibly taken from the hands of citizens: China, Turkey, Guatemala, Uganda and Cambodia have collectively killed millions of people after stripping them of their right to bear arms.
In America, gun control proponents have attempted to misconstrue the Second Amendment in an attempt to deny us our constitutional right to bear arms. But there’s no questioning how our founding fathers felt about this inalienable right.
“The advantage of being armed the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation is that the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms,” James Madison noted.
War, violence and murder are atrocities, but guns are merely props for the people who commit them. It’s when those of us who believe in peace and civilized society quietly give up our right to defend ourselves that the criminals and terrorists gain the upper hand. Personal arms keep the government in its proper place: subservient to its citizenry.
“And what country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms,” Thomas Jefferson said.
As you sit back to enjoy the fireworks in Morro Bay or Pismo tomorrow, take a moment to appreciate every facet of what comprises your freedom. The Constitution may well be the most beautiful document every written; it guarantees your right to a fair trial, to speak freely and to own property. Just as importantly, it guarantees your right to defend yourself from any government or mob that may come to take those other freedoms away from you.

A smudge of red lipstick, tussled hair, a rumpled sheet covering all but a bare back. And that coy, come-hither gaze that seems to know so much more than can possibly be known at 15.

That’s the image of teen star Miley Cyrus that’s been thrown on every news talk show on every channel; the image that’s had mothers apparently throwing their hands up in despair, father’s covering their little daughters’ eyes, and talk show pundits lamenting about the sexualization of a child.

“The budget should be balanced; the treasury should be refilled; public debt should be reduced; and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled.” -Cicero. 106-43 B.C.

The saying goes that nothing is certain except death and taxes. In America, it seems nothing is certain except debt and taxes.

Our country is the victim of one of the biggest con games every committed, an epidemic spreading so fast that the chief auditor of the United States calls it a “fiscal cancer.” And it’s a disease that only now – with an economy on the brink of a recession, mounting inflation, rising unemployment, and a devalued dollar – is causing sufficient alarm.

Within the past week, New York Times columnist and former foreign correspondent for the newspaper, Roger Cohen, has written two interesting opinion pieces relating Barack Obama’s family history, and the effect his presidency would have on world foreign relations.
Cohen, now reporting for the Times from Nairobi, Kenya provides an interesting angle on Obama as the next possible world leader by letting us gain a glimpse of the presidential race as seen from Obama’s country of heritage.His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born in the Nyanza Province of Kenya and worked as a domestic servant to the British. Obama, now undoubtedly one of the most well-known faces in the world, was at that point just a little boy helping his father herd goats.

The Fed worked overnight this weekend to exactly what it’s not supposed to do: get its hands dirty to bail out the private sector.The New York Times reported yesterday that in hopes of avoiding a “systemic meltdown in financial markets” the Fed had swooped in to offer a $30 billion credit line to “engineer the takeover” of firm Bear Stearns and at the same time announced an open-ended (so no limits on the amount) lending program for Wall Street’s biggest investment firms.