News from Georgia:

So this report is confusing, and I doubt that anything about the store manager’s reaction was well thought out or deliberate.  It needed to be.  First of all, open carry isn’t the same thing as concealed carry, and the patron was openly carrying.  When he returned without his weapon, the sign in the door referred to firearms not being welcome, as opposed to open carry.

Second, if you do a search of the Cracker Barrel web site, you’ll find nothing there that even hints of a formal corporate policy concerning firearms.  They also don’t seem to me to make it easy to contact them.  Third, if you do a Google search of Cracker Barrel firearms policy, you’ll get everything from all firearms being banned to only open carry being banned.  And of course as I said, there is no formal published policy, and there are never any postings from what I can recall from being in that store.

So here is the deal, Cracker Barrel.  Man up.  Make your decision regarding carry of weapons, concealed and/or open, publish the policy decision on your web site, and post your stores in a manner consistent with your policy.  Don’t play games with patrons – that’s rude and ill mannered.  Tell us what you want, and we can then make our decisions according to our own beliefs in light of your corporate policy.

Is that such a difficult thing to do?

The Trace:

Governor Nathan Deal rejected a bill on Tuesday that would have allowed eligible students in Georgia to carry concealed weapons at public universities. In a lengthy veto statement, Deal said he found “enlightening evidence” for his position in the views of pair of Founding Fathers who, nearly two centuries ago, opened a college where guns would not be allowed.

In October of 1824, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison attended a board meeting of the University of Virginia, which would open the following spring. Jefferson and Madison had spent not a little time thinking about individual liberties. But minutes from the meeting show that their new school would not extend the right to bear arms to its red-brick grounds.

“No student shall, within the precincts of the University, introduce, keep or use any spirituous or vinous liquors, keep or use weapons or arms of any kind …” the board declared. In his veto statement, Deal zeroed in on that passage …

Yea, well those same rules stipulated studies in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Philosophy, forbade visits to taverns, the consumption of “spirits” or wine of any sort, insubordination and contumacy, and a host of other things commonly practiced on the campuses of America.

So let’s see an end to physical education majors for those football players in favor of training in Latin, Greek and Math, and a prohibition of alcohol, shall we?  I’m waiting?  No, in fact, none of these rules will ever obtain, and I don’t think that anyone who cares about property rights wants to force carry of weapons onto private property (of course, for State-owned property that’s a different matter).

I think the Governor is too clever by half, and by saying just a little bit he has said too much.

Report from Columbia:

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCIV) — A bill making its way through the Statehouse could put more guns on the streets of South Carolina.

Rep. Wendell Gilliard said Friday he believes it’s a mistake to pass a bill that would open South Carolina borders to concealed carry permits from other states. He added, it would give almost anyone the ability to walk into South Carolina with a gun.

“Everybody wants the right to carry a gun and that’s dangerous in a free society,” Gilliard said. “We should not allow that.”

Part of this bill also amends current legislation; It no longer requires South Carolinians to get a concealed carry permit to carry in public.

What?  I think I’ve got the issue of reciprocity.  South Carolina has always had an issue with that, but this bill seems to go farther.  Is this bill headed towards constitutional carry?

Can someone who is familiar with the awful machinations of South Carolina politics tell us what is going on?  And why doesn’t this bill include open carry?  My God!  How long is South Carolina going to be the national outlier on this issue?

Is Walnut The New Black?  American Rifleman does the M1 Carbine.  I would never trade or sell my Auto-Ordnance M1 Carbine.  I love mine, and if you don’t have one, you should seriously consider buying one.

The .270 Winchester Cartridge.  What a great article!  This is a comprehensive look at the .270, where it came from, who made it, why it was made, and how it performs.  I’m biased since I own a Tikka .270 bolt action rifle.

We all knew it would happen one day, this final divorce from the political scene.  It’s been building for a long time, but before I get ahead of myself, let me explain how I got into politics.

I’ve never really been in politics, per se.  I’ve never run for office, I’ve never been an active part of a party, but I have donated, worked hard to persuade others of my views, and diligently voted, as well as followed the political scene very closely.  It all began my final year at Clemson University.  I recall being in Johnston Hall in a small dormitory room (are there any other sizes?), along with about twenty other guys.  We were packed in, and all watching Jimmy Carter debate Ronald Reagan.  Reagan handed him a resounding defeat, and at that time we were all Reagan supporters.  The entire campus, it felt like, thought like we did.  There couldn’t be found a single student on campus who supported Jimmy Carter, or if there could, he didn’t say so out loud.

In addition to studying engineering into the late hours every night, we were carefully and diligently following every particular, every detail, of the political scene, and understood fairly well the theoretical and philosophical basis of the choices the candidates made.  Those were heady days – from Calculus and engineering mechanics to political theory and theology and the Bible and back again to physics and chemistry (Even then, the humanities department was infected with progressives, and if we wanted to learn we had to teach ourselves.  I’m reminded of a friend studying philosophy at another college who had to ignore his classes and read Frederick Copleston to learn philosophy, but that’s another story).  The Reagan revolution was strong at Clemson in those days, and we survived on caffeine and late night snacks.  More than a few pots of coffee were made in that horrible kitchen in Johnston Hall at midnight.

We won, and it wasn’t that we won, so much as our ideas held sway.  I do wish that Reagan had been a little more into the details of things, because I hold these four things against him: (1) the first amnesty, (2) Sandra Day O’Conner and Anthony Kennedy, (3) The Hughes Amendment, and (4) deploying the Marines to the barracks in Beirut, only to withdraw them after attack by Hezbollah.  Every one of these things have been shown to have deleterious effects on America (including the Hughes amendment which has caused a lack of investment and design engineering in weapons for our military).  Those are four big failures, but still, we knew that the unborn had a champion, small government had an advocate, and that the danger of “near peers” wouldn’t be underestimated.

Over the course of time, compromise began to occur.  Deals were made, and the mantra of electing the “conservative” who was most electable replaced principled conservatism.  As the democratic party moved more to the left, republicans moved with them in order to stay “relevant.”  The same disease afflicts the American church, leading to the defenestration of doctrine in favor of relevancy.  Whereas the church used to talk about the vicarious atonement, the sovereignty of God and the Council of Nicea, it now focuses on racial reconciliation, nuclear weapons, and gender identity.

We all knew this would happen one day.  By not stopping the diminution of the party, we fed the monster of big government, largesse, entitlements, debt, money printing, high stakes gambling on Wall Street, corporatism, open borders to feed low wage labor, hospital emergency rooms functioning as primary care clinics all paid for by the middle class (so that those low wage workers can work for the corporate masters), crony capitalism and its attendant involvement in the drafting of millions of pages of law, regulation and federal register notices to ensure that the corporations “get theirs.”

I wasn’t surprised at the revolution of the voters this election cycle.  I suspected that it would occur.  What did surprise me was the popularity of Donald Trump.  South Carolina broke my heart, and I knew it was over for Ted Cruz at that point.  Here was the perfect chance to elect someone who would come as close as possible to taking us back to the Reagan revolution, and perhaps even do better than that, in Ted Cruz.  He is a champion of the unborn, has an even stronger position on work visas than Donald Trump, is against the imperialistic military meddling in the affairs of other states and has said so quite clearly (the effect of this position in alienating him from the likes of George W. Bush, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and the rest of the neocons, has been underestimated and is ripe territory for study), has always been a strong supporter of the right to bear arms, has successfully argued before the Supreme Court and understands its machinations well enough to appoint reliably constitutionalist jurists, favors a flat tax, has tried his best to shut down funding for Obamacare (with no help from his senate colleagues), and has sworn to overthrow the single payer health care system.

I have relayed what I heard Louie Gohmert say regarding the meetings between Cruz, Lee, Brat, Gohmert and Duncan, among others, in Cruz’s office, to overturn support for the “gang of eight” bill.  Cruz was hated inside the beltway for very good reason.  While Jeff Sessions was telling us that only Trump would “bust up the Oligarchy” in Washington, Cruz was doing just that.  Busting up the Oligarchy is sure to make the Oligarchs mad.  It doesn’t bother me at all that Cruz was hated by others in Washington.  I would have been even more his supporter if Cruz had advocated an old fashioned lynching of most of the Senators and Representatives, or perhaps tar and feathering.  No one is angrier than I am over the devolution of things in Washington.

And yet the people have chosen Donald Trump.  A man who mocks the handicapped, who considers free speech a disgrace, who triangulated a position so nonsensical on North Carolina’s bathroom law that no one knows what he means, who is a proven hypocrite on foreign workers and immigration, who wants to increase the lands owned by federal government rather than decreasing federal power and turning over the lands to the states, who has never asked anyone for forgiveness, most especially God, who only recently triangulated his position on gun rights when previously supporting an “assault weapons” ban, who supports abortion, who believes that Maryanne Trump Barry (who supports infanticide) would make a fine supreme court justice, who criticizes women for their appearance, who calls people disgusting because of pictures taken of them while they eat, and who believes in a single payer health care system.

It’s like watching an awful reality show or perhaps an interstate wreck at high speed.  Donald Trump is an obscene, narcissistic, self serving, hateful, vengeful, grotesque, moral monster who hates anything that isn’t rewarding him for being him.  He is the post-modern man, evolved past Sartre and Camus and (I suppose, finding emptiness) circling back to the pinnacle of self indulgence, Marquis de Sade.  He is an awful man.  I’ve repeatedly heard that Ted Cruz was born in Canada or wherever, or that he took a loan from such-and-such bank.  The former issue never got any traction with me, and as for the later issue, so taking loans is now illegal or immoral?  I have a loan on my house.  So what?  And as for Trump’s bankruptcies?  That’s okay, because sadism is all about self indulgence at the expense of someone else.

I get the revolutionary flavor of the current political scene.  But instead of supporting the only real revolutionary, the GOP voters have collectively dropped their drawers and mooned God and everyone else in a protest of the preceding years.  It’s a sad thing to watch.  They chose the wrong symbol of protest, and will end up getting what they most loathe, as they become what disgusts and repels them.  The people have raised their fist to God and shouted, “give us a king like all the others.”  And the Lord has said, “very well.”  Suck it up folks, because you’re getting ready to reap the rewards of your choice.

Voting for the least bad candidate is partly what got us here.  Oh, I blame the GOPe, the establishment, 100% for this debacle.  This is a protest vote.  The voters are burning it all down because of your corruption, and the sad, sorry truth is that you still don’t get it.  But it doesn’t stop there for me.  I also blame the voters, 100%.  It isn’t either-or with me, it’s both-and.  No one held a gun to your head and forced you to vote this way in the booth.  You could have chosen to be thinking men and women, but you didn’t.  You became an unthinking mob.  So we are where we are.

And for me, that means that I’ve cast my last vote.  I am bidding farewell to voting.  I am now a disenfranchised conservative Christian, and if a third party opens up for me, I might decide to rejoin in the struggle, but I’ve won’t vote GOP again for the rest of my life.  The GOP has left me – establishment and voters.  It’s no longer my party.  I have no party.  But if I ever vote for an upstart party that is true to my conservative, constitutional ideals, I won’t cast my vote because I think politics will save us.  I don’t.  As John Adams has observed, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

If we are to be saved, no piece of paper or parchment will do it.  Thus, I sympathize with my friend Claire Wolfe on our sad state of affairs.

In part it’s because I see so many angry people putting so much hope in Trump — a man who, should he manage to buy his way into office (or tumble in by default after Hillary gets indicted) will betray them even worse than than the poltroons of 1994 betrayed We the Hopeful Fools.

But also because, horrible as the prospect of either President Trump or President Clinton the Second is, it’s a relief not to feel hope.

Or despair, for that matter. Horrible as the prospects are, it’s glorious to know how very little it really matters. For freedom. For anything that counts. Oh sure, either pretender to the throne has the potential to make a ghastly mess of things — up to and including World War III (unlikely, but someday somebody’s going to do it). Or building a wall to keep us all in. Or decreeing that all guns must Go Away Now, So There, I Have Spoken. More likely not much happens except the routine bad getting routinely worse. And millions ignoring whatever “the most important leader in the world” says, decrees, promises, etc.

And those poor hopeful fools losing hope. Been there. Done that. It hurts. It burns. It makes you want to go postal. (That was the state of mind I was in from about February 1995, when the betrayal became obvious, to late 1996 when I took my life back, laughed, sat down, and wrote 101 Things to do ‘Til the Revolution.)

Yeah, it hurts. But it hurts like growing up and learning that Santa didn’t really put those presents under the tree.

To be sure, while Cruz called out Senator Mitch McConnell for being the liar he is, I fully expect to see Trump rubbing shoulders with McConnell, Paul Ryan, and so on.  He will cut deals with them.  He said so.  Have you ever heard Trump attack McConnel, Ryan, Eric Cantor, or any of the other creeps that helped to get us here?  No, you’ve only heard him attack fellow candidates.

But unlike Claire, I never expected government to work right any more than I believe presents come from Santa Claus.  I’ve always treated my vote as a precious gift from God whether I effect change with it or not, a power over which I had stewardship and for which I will one day answer to the most high.  I have always voted based on principle rather than pragmatism, or at least I have tried to, and because of principle I am now out of the process until a third party develops that is true to my beliefs.

As for the voters, enjoy what you have created.  When you build you house on sand, don’t be surprised when the first heavy rain knocks it down.  I bid you farewell.  Oh, I’ll poke fun on occasion and remind you of your choices, and I’ll get a good chuckle out of all of this.  But I’m out of the political scene.  I won’t be voting for Donald Trump.  As for my mockery of the situation, I’ll see you over the transom.

NBC10.com:

If you see an armed jogger in Mount Airy, Pennsylvania, these days, it’s not a “run-by” in progress.

He’s trying to make a point.

Mike Vanderboegh:

For those who expected deliverance from national politics that glimmer of light is now extinguished. The GOP will now go the way of the Whigs, clearing the way for the enemies of the Republic both within and without the party. What will be left will merely be different speeds and paths to the next civil war. All meaningful politics are now local, and will depend in the end on the muzzles of our rifles and the wisdom and training of those who point them.

It’s nice to see Mike writing.  And yes, this is the next installment, perhaps a touchstone on the wrong road.

Uh oh.  Matt Vanderboegh is starting a caliber war.  I always got pounded when I did that.

Here’s Matt on kit when crossing the line.  Always been a problem, always will be.  And it’s one reason that women aren’t suited for infantry.

David Codrea:

Such confident Democrat affinity for immigration, both legal and illegal, becomes obvious when you look at the numbers, as Pew research did in a 2012 “Political Party Affiliation among Hispanics” poll. Whether you look at all, at registered voters, at native born, foreign born, unauthorized, legal permanent residents or foreign-born US citizens, that affiliation is overwhelmingly Democrat.

It comes from their culture.

Update on Mike Vanderboegh.  Continue to pray for him.

Christ or a Glock.  Well, it’s not an either-or.  It’s both-and.  Except that I don’t do Glocks.  I would rather have a Springfield Armory, just about any model.

The Washington Post:

When I was in middle and high school, there were spirited public debates about whether the proliferation of grisly movies, gore-glorifying song lyrics and shoot-’em-up video games might desensitize my peers and me to violence.

While I’m reluctant to pin any of this on pop culture, it’s true that my generation appears somewhat inured to violence — at least violence involving firearms.

A decade or two post-adolescence — as our own preschool-age children now practice “active shooter” drills in which they’re coached to cower in the closet or throw toys at a tactical-gear-outfitted maniac — millennials seem to have neither the desire nor the willpower to pressure our political leaders to do much to prevent such tragedies. If anything, we may be slightly more blasé about them than our elders.

Which does not bode well for liberals hoping that the arc of history will eventually bend toward greater gun control.

Poll data about views of gun control and specific gun-control measures are mixed, and responses vary depending how questions are asked. But statements about protecting gun rights generally elicit at least as much support from younger Americans as from older ones.

Well, that’s a strange visit down memory lane for the author, Ms. Catherine Rampell, and I say strange because it would never occur to me to connect gun control laws with active shooter events, except in that so-called “gun free” zones are never really that, and instead are open invitations for such nefarious miscreants to do their wickedness.

Inured to violence is how the author chose to set this up, with her appeal to blood and gore, but she slips and accidentally paints a word picture of what can happen when her restrictive gun laws are enacted – idiotic things like strategies to run, hide, fight, and throwing potted plants at shooters, or perhaps toys.  You see dear, your restrictive gun laws never stop criminals because they don’t care about your laws.  They only disarm law abiding and peaceable citizens.

Millennials are generally smart enough to figure that out.  We’re winning, the progressives know it, and I suggest that you learn to live with it.  We know how to evangelize and proselytize.  Perhaps you should even purchase a gun and learn to use it, in case of an attempted rape or an active shooter event.  The police will show up to fill out paperwork, but the event will be over by the time they arrive.  You are responsible to defend yourself.  No one else will.

Chicago Tribune:

When a Portage couple heard a knock on their door a year ago, they were shocked to see 20 armed police officers standing outside, yelling an expletive at them to open their door.

Portage SWAT then searched their home as they were forced to watch before someone realized they were at the wrong address, according to a lawsuit filed by Jon Groski and Stacey McFadden against the city, the Portage Police Department and a number of officers.

Mayor Jim Snyder could not be reached for comment.

According to the lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Hammond, the couple and their 4-year-old daughter were at home in the 3300 block of Oakwood Street on the morning of April 13, 2015, when they heard loud banging on their door.

Groski looked through a window and saw 20 officers all wearing black with assault rifles on his doorstep, the lawsuit says, and one of them yelled at him “Open the (expletive) door, right (expletive) now.”

When he asked what was going on, another officer told him “It doesn’t (expletive) matter,” the lawsuit says.

It adds that when Groski did open the door, they rushed in with their weapons drawn at everyone in the house.

The lawsuit says that police never actually identified themselves as officers and never produced a warrant. After searching the house for some time, one officer made a comment about being at the wrong house, according to the suit.

The suit says that Groski and McFadden later learned police were trying to serve a warrant on someone who did not live at the house and that that person was not wanted for a violent crime.

It argues police used excessive force against the family and would not let them leave during the search. They are suing for unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

This is the troupe of goobers responsible for this.

They think it’s acceptable to force their way into another man’s home, property not their own, point guns at his family, and tell him it’s none of his business why they’re doing it.  To boot, this is yet another wrong-home raid, and making this even richer, the man they “wanted” wasn’t even wanted for a violent crime.

Hey folks, put the carbines down, get out of the monkey costumes, take the shades off (no, they don’t make you look cool), take some classes in scientific forensics (perhaps even including – gasp! – Calculus and physics), and be useful to your community.  As it is, you’re doing no one any good.  You’re collective drains on society, loads on the turbine.  You’re not earning your keep.

Do your investigative work, go door to door, knock on the doors, be friends of the community, ask questions, and so on, and for heaven’s sake, dress up in a formal uniform, shirt and tie and try to at least look like you’re a professional.  Defenestrate the tactical gear and jump suits and lose the bellies.  You look stupid.  But before you do any of that, read the constitution for what you can and can’t do, and don’t even think about deferring to a rubber stamp judge to prove that it’s okay for you to be abusive to citizens.  God won’t care what that judge said.

At WRSA there is an interesting discussion on the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.  Here is a snippet.

I recognized that, despite the cries of today’s Constitutionalists about the Divine inspiration of the US Constitution and the accompanying Bill of Rights (USC/BoR), both of the foundational documents of American governance were drafted by mere humans based on the political accommodations necessary at the time (e.g., chattel slavery) and had no effective provisions for enforcement when violated.

I realized that, even if one does not fully accept the “intentionally fraudulent from the beginning” premise of Royce’s Hologram of Liberty, the institutions established by the USC/BoR have failed in preserving individual freedom and American sovereignty.

It should be remembered what John Adams said to us.  “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  The only perfect text is the Holy Writ because it has both human and divine authorship – no text that is exclusively human can be free of flaw.  But that isn’t the problem with failure to preserve our liberties.  The problem comes from the heart of man.

It’s called federal headship [of Adam] and original sin, and it extends to every man, woman and child, to every corner of the globe, and to every part of the moral and physical constitution of mankind.  Take for example the second amendment.  We’ve discussed before how “The second amendment discusses the right to bear arms and be free of federal interference in the context of the states’ desire to keep that interference from happening.  That is the historical milieu in which it was written.  The founders only needed one excuse to prevent federal government interference with the states on firearms, and they chose the most likely and obvious choice, i.e., the militia.  The second amendment is not a treatise on the foundation of liberty.

It’s an illogical jump to cast that as the only reason for the right to own and bear arms.  If you had discussed regulation on the right to own and use a tool of their trade to protect their families, hunt, and ameliorate tyranny with a colonial man, he would have buried you under the remotest prison.  God gave us our rights based on man being created in His image and the expected duty to work and subdue the earth to His glory.  The militia was a convenient excuse for a certain clause in one part of the constitution.  Limiting our rights to our understanding of that clause is a mistake.”

As elaborated by one commenter, “All the rights in the BoR are subsidiary, or appurtenant, rights. That is, appurtenant to the fundamental rights of Life, Liberty, and Property. The 2d Amdt is an agreement as to the practical, real-world way in which a people protects its fundamental rights, and which any just government must guarantee if the citizenry’s fundamental rights are to be protected.

It could be worded a thousand different ways (and the 2d always seemed poorly worded), but the underlying fundamental rights — and the necessity of a practical means of ensuring them — does not depend on the wording, nor upon whether there is any wording at all.  The rights exist. They cannot be overridden, taken, bargained away, or lost … especially not by appeal to legal or linguistic “precedent.”

Yes, but why?  I no longer appeal to anything in the constitution for my rights, as readers might be able to tell (or if I do, the appeal is short and for the purpose of connection with my readers).  I see the constitution as a covenant, with attendant rights, responsibilities and punishments.  Surely, if all parties are in collusion with the wickedness, there is no punishment for violation of the provisions of the constitution.

But the furniture is there to effect such punishments, e.g., impeachment, withholding of funding, and corporal punishments up to and including imprisonment and death.  The college of gargoyles, demons and pit vipers inside the beltway won’t hold anyone accountable because many of them are part of the problem.  The neutered politicians at the state and county level won’t because they have rendered themselves eunuchs by choice.

So the furniture is there, the volition is absent.  Our constitution is intended only for a moral and religious people.  It cannot function for any other.  And if you are one of those individuals who wants to find moral absolutes, framework for society, and rules upon which you can entrust your future in any document written by mankind, or any system of ethics absent God, your project is doomed to abject failure, just as Bertrand Russell couldn’t establish morality without God in his debate with Frederick Coppleston, or Gordon Stein in his debate with Greg Bahnsen.

One writer editorialized about the second amendment (in Heller) that “there was never any risk of the court adopting the gun movement’s more exotic premises, such as the notion that gun rights are “God-given,” a view handed down by National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre in his colorful sermons.”  I don’t know anything about sermons by Wayne, or NRA position papers on this topic, nor do I really need to know any of that.  The interesting thing about this writer is that he considers the notion that our rights are God-given to be exotic.

To the post-modern pawn, the constitution is as good as anything else given that appeal to the masses based on the emotion of the moment will certainly bring random ethics to bear.  They may as well twist the words of the agreement (constitution) to mean what they want them to mean – that way, at least they have a chance of winning.  But to those whose God is the Lord, it’s much clearer given that the only sovereign has declared beforehand the boundaries, times and epochs of His creatures.

Men must decide how they will live together.  If their eyes are firmly fixed on God, they will endeavor to live together in peace and liberty.  To the degree to which they worship themselves, no paper or parchment can save man, regardless of the provisions contained therein.

Self defense isn’t just a responsibility, it’s a duty based on the image of God in man.  This self defense doesn’t stop with personal safety, but extends to family safety and even further.  There is nothing natural about rights, and the foundation of liberty itself is based on the God of the bible.

The reference to “natural laws” and what nature may teach us is quaint and amusing, but philosophically outdated and meaningless.  Nature confers upon us nothing, and certainly not rights of any sort.  What may be obvious to us is contrary to the pronouncements of others who look at the same “nature.”  To John Dewey, John Stuart Mill and in more drastic form the communists, whatever works the best and achieves the greatest good for the greatest number is “good” (whatever that means).

But under this rubric many men and women have perished, a fact that is acceptable to the communists.  Under this rubric many millions of unborn infants in America have also perished, a fact that is wholly acceptable to the pragmatists and utilitarians.  The tribes in Ethiopia engaged in the practice of killing healthy baby boys whose top teeth came in before his bottom teeth.

America has for a long time found acceptable the idea of theft through taxation and inflation (both of which steal wealth), because that’s what the majority say.  If one turns to “nature” for values, whatever that means, perhaps the best source for ethics and morality would be watching male lions kill the cubs of females so that they come into estrus, or watching other animals as they steal kills.  Again to emphasize the point, nature cannot reveal a system of laws and turning to natural law means that you haven’t thought things through.

For those who have taken courses in apologetics or philosophy (and also for those who haven’t), a world view requires a system of categories working together, including metaphysics, ontology, ethics, epistemology, and so forth.  All of it is usually seen to be based on epistemology, as that category of philosophy describes and explains your source of truth.

It also requires that you posit your presuppositions beforehand.  Arguing that you want “reason” instead of “faith” belies ignorance (and the failure to take courses in math and philosophy).  Recalling the advice of Gordon H. Clark, you need to take a class in geometry.  All logic is governed by rules of deduction, but based on presupposition, axiomatic irreducibles.  If it can be demonstrated it is a pronouncement of your syllogism, not a presupposition.

With the right presuppositions you can demonstrate that the moon is made of green cheese.  You must state yours, and we get to examine them, along with your syllogisms.  What is your source of truth?  You see, these things are necessary before your system can amount to anything.  Otherwise, you’re an infant trying to read a calculus textbook.

Politics is ethics.  It is part of a larger system of philosophy, and it cannot be posited in a vacuum without being void of compelling argument.  You must explain how you know what you know in order for us to judge it, and all of your system must show itself to be consistent with the rest.  This is what philosopher Gordon H. Clark shows so well in “Religion, Reason and Revelation.”

I’m not disappointed in the founders, and I don’t think they intended failure of the republic.  I know that mankind is fallen, and that covenants must be enforced at points in history, that is, the punishments of the covenant.  The founders knew it too, and in fact if you read them carefully, they used their covenants with the King to justify their actions, legally speaking, but philosophically they appealed elsewhere.

If your appeal for liberty is to the constitution, you’re robbing yourself of the surety and certainty that comes from knowing the truth, denuding yourself of the very cloak of righteousness you will need to move forward in uncertain times.