THE ANCIENT ROOTS OF PLATONIST STATISM

"I see pieces of men marching, trying to take heaven by force;
I can see the unknown rider, I can see the pale white horse"
—Bob Dylan

The fight in this country is not between left and right, but between liberty and tyranny. Big government Hamiltonian progressivism vs small-government Jeffersonian democratic-republicanism.

It's nothing new. It's as old as the Nimrod vs Abrahamic styles of government.

—Ron Jones, The Jones Family

I remember early fall 2000, sitting in a fast food joint eating my burger when I overheard two old men chatting about the upcoming election. Neither were rock solid in their decision yet, although they seemed poised to split their vote between Bush and Gore. However, I heard one of them say that he didn't think he could vote for Bush because he didn't think that Americans should elect dynasties, pointing out the Kennedy family example with the presumption America would have been better off without that particular dynasty. They begin to act like kings, he added.

I left amused and enlightened by their conversation but voted Bush the younger that year. Will political truth always remain so compromised I wonder...
—Gabriel Thy

CONSIDERING THE SECOND AMENDMENT

As breaking news that an illegal gun ring has been snared in a sting by the Feds hits the media wires as I write this with the knowledge that the Supreme Court will soon address the right to bear arms issue again in a case from Chicago, it is more important than ever to remember why the Second Amendment is important, even precious to Americans who understand the consequences of ignoring the much maligned US Constitution.

We who appreciate the wisdom of our learned and conceptual founders have no choice but to oppose those in favor of touchy feely gun eradication laws, which leaves us helpless to defend ourselves and our families from intruders of every stripe, and worse, creating an environment where the rise of an oppressive fascist government intent on enslaving or abandoning its citizenry is inevitable.

Mari Thompson of Second Amendment Sisters offers a sterling remembrance.

A COMMON ERROR in Constitutional interpretation is the failure to examine the document in the context of its original meaning. In fact, Thomas Jefferson once wrote to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson, suggesting to him that when examining and interpreting the Constitution, he should study the time in which the document was written, and “carry himself back to that time.”

This would seem to be good advice for today. The recent Heller vs. DC case might have gotten more votes in favor of Heller had the Supreme Court of today done just that.

We certainly know that during the time of the writing of the Constitution, every male citizen above the age of 16 was counted as a member of the militia. All males were assumed to own weapons (which most of them paid for), and be ready to muster when the call came. Of course, the first call for the militia was to fight the British in what has become known as the American Revolution.

Today, as during the early days of this country, the people are still the militia, in the usage of the word at the time of our founding. The actual purpose of having armed citizens was to guard against an overbearing government. In the inimitable words of our National Spokesperson, Suzanna Gratia-Hupp, when speaking to Senator Chuck Schumer and other members of a Senate committee: “The purpose of the Second Amendment is to protect all of us (the people) from all of you (the politicians).”

We now live in a country that has been promised “Hope and Change” by our new president. Since we have no details of what “hope” and what “change” he was speaking about during the election, the Second Amendment is more important than ever. We must be ever more alert to signs of any government entity trying to erode the God-given and constitutionally enumerated right to keep and bear arms and all other constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Mari Thompson is President of SAS, and is also one of its founding members.

THE TOM JEFFERSON QU'RAN

MUCH HAS BEEN MADE OF LATE to the existence of a Qu'ran that was owned by America's third president and one of its more profound scholars, Thomas Jefferson. When the Barbary pirates were attacking this young nation's merchant ships in the Mediterranean Sea, killing, pillaging, and enslaving its sailors, as current president, Jefferson inquired of his friends in Europe to brief him about these ruthless scalawags. After learning that these "Musselman" pirates followed a strange and conquering religion, he inquired further, and eventually came into possession of the now infamous Qu'ran that Minnesota Congressman Larry Ellison, Democrat and Islamic convert, was sworn into office upon.

This was little more than a cheap PR tactic, especially if Ellison had known the full story of what was contained within the pages of the book that he wanted to replace the traditional Bible many others, Jew and Gentile, have used in the ceremony over the ages. Once again, Islamicists prove they do not wish to integrate but to subordinate...

The Qu'ran he was describing was a translation by George Sale, first published in 1734. Jefferson’s was a two volume edition published in London in 1764. By chance, I was able to buy later edition of this Qu'ran which included the 145 page “Preliminary Discourse” found in all editions. Had Keith Ellison or President Obama read this introduction, they would have never cited this particular Quran as evidence of our Founding Fathers’ respect for Islam. Here is one excerpt:

As the Arabs have their excellencies [such as hospitality], so have they, like other nations their defects and vices. Their own writers acknowledge that they have a natural disposition to war, bloodshed, cruelty, and rapine, being so much addicted to bear malice that they scarce ever forget an old grudge… The frequent robberies committed by these people on merchants and travelers have rendered the name of an Arab almost infamous in Europe; this they are sensible of, and endeavour to excuse themselves by alleging the hard usage of their father Ishmael, who, being turned out of doors by Abraham, had the open plains and deserts given to him by God for his patrimony, with permission to take whatever he could find there; and on this account they think they may, with safe conscience, indemnify themselves as well as they can, not only on the posterity of Isaac, but also on anybody else, always supposing a sort of kindred between themselves and those they plunder. And in relating their adventures of this kind, they think it sufficient to change the expressions, and instead of “I robbed a man of such or such a thing,” to say, “I gained it.” We must not, however, imagine that they are the less honest for this among themselves, or towards those whom they receive as friends; on the contrary, the strictest probity is observed in their camp, where everything is open and nothing ever known to be stolen.

Now more recently, President Barack Obama, in his June 4 speech in Cairo to the Muslim nations, has seemingly drawn a false conclusion in referencing the Jefferson Qu'ran by saying that Islam has made a long and lasting contribution to the United States. Jefferson was so moved by the barbarity of what he read in the book that he called on Congress for the funds to build a navy. Neither John Adams nor George Washington before him thought they had a need for a naval force, given the vast isolation of the western hemisphere, but the Islamic pirates in this case, so effective were they in disturbing the shipping lanes of American commerce that they did indeed contribute a long and lasting impact on the United States...

Jefferson's navy soon cleaned up the shipping lanes, and the rest is history. From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. A great lyric, thanks in part to those pesky Muslims. Perhaps this is what our current president meant. A little bit of Obama-style taqiyya, eh?

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