‘Is’ vs. ‘should be’

The Democrats’ behavior in the wake of the Orlando atrocity requires comment. This is indeed a transformative administration. The problem is it continues to attempt to transform reality by ignoring the actual causes of and ability to prevent such events.

First, this is not a Second Amendment rant. Unless you live in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ fiefdom, the regulations currently in place are appropriate and constitutional. First this morning came Florida State Senator Geraldine Thompson, who briefly lamented the loss of a feeling of safety and then decried the ability of “violent and unstable” people to get their hands on military weapons, magazines and bullets. On the heels of her remark we learned the murderer was actually a duly licensed and FBI cleared security guard. President Obama follows later in the day stating that the “massacre [shows] how easy it is . . . to get . . . a weapon . . . that shoots people in schools [psychotic young people], or in a church [psychotic racist], or in a movie theater [psychotic young person], or in a nightclub [while making a 911 call to ISIS].” Ft. Hood, San Bernardino, Residents of Chicago and police officers are not mentioned.

Pulse was in fact a gun free zone, as were the theater, the schools, the church, etc. It is not the equipment. Instead, the reality is there are psychotics, racists, criminals, along with a small minority of Muslims still living in the 13th century (and throwing LGBTs off buildings). As Lenny Bruce once said, “There is only what is and that’s it. What should be is a dirty rotten lie.” We need to combat the “what is”: criminal, psychotic and terrorist violence. The “what should be,” as espoused by many, obscures the reality and in turn, our security.

Face of America?

Attention Republicans — a capricious Mussolini impersonator is resonating with a blue-collar, uneducated white majority, pitting them against the combined minorities. Comfort with the KKK, race baiting, heritage bashing, advocating violence and mocking the disabled should have made the Party of Lincoln run to another candidate.

Advocating nuclear proliferation, leaving NATO, torture, tariffs and resultant recession, setting up warehouses for families to be deported — really? In America?

Affirmative action backlash and welfare fraud reaction has legs. The 2012 Republican Autopsy Report is now a dangerous game plan to win at all costs.

Yes, Clinton didn't protect Chris Stevens. But don't forget, he went native as a foreign service officer, compromising his judgment. He went to Benghazi without permission, where he died, cost the lives of others and compromised the nearby mission. She is a hawk without the courage to criticize Stevens. She had her own server. Yes, she sold access to our government with foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation.

They all worship mammon.

Who has policies that will unite the nation more? Who has the background knowledge to understand policy? Who can be trusted most to steadfastly and calmly make good decisions to defend the nation?

More overreach

A federal appeals court in San Francisco has ruled that individuals do not have the right to carry concealed weapons. California requires gun owners to justify why they want to conceal weapons in order to be granted that right. Well, let me think … high crime rates, sanctuary cities in a state with a large number of illegal aliens, gangs … I suppose that isn’t good enough.

Just as Thomas Paine published his Common Sense philosophy from governmental tyranny in 1776, here we have a similar overreach from the judicial branch. I have come to the conclusion that a law degree serves as an impediment to one’s ability to interpret common sense. Just why is the judicial branch making so many decisions for the American people anyway? One does not need a law degree to interpret the Constitution, for it was written so that every person could do so.

That’s what the Enlightenment Era was all about. The period that inspired Locke, Kant, Rousseau, and Smith was initiated by Martin Luther when he hung his 95 Theses on the Wittenberg Church in 1517. The 95 Theses served as the catalyst for independent perspectives and removed the human authority from the relationship between man and God.

In modern day America, the Papacy has been replaced by the judicial branch. The 2nd Amendment does not imply that the militia keep or bear the arms. The right to keep and bear arms is bestowed to the people, and shall not be infringed. This is not a complicated algorithm taught to law students; it is a simple sentence and a right that even the layperson could understand in 1791, and yet here we are surrendering those hard fought rights to the same tyrannical machine. Only this time the tyranny is metastasizing within our own borders.

This story was originally published June 16, 2016 at 4:56 PM with the headline "‘Is’ vs. ‘should be’."