Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Quote of the Day — Frederick Douglass (April 1865)

Frederick Douglass
(source)
A lot of wisdom in this:
Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, “What shall we do with the Negro?” I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!
I'd say this could apply equally to any group targeted by government legislation:
  • What shall we do with the Jews?
  • What shall we do with the Irish?
  • What shall we do with the LGBTQQ crowd?
  • What shall we do with the conservative Christians?
  • What shall we do with the gun owners?
Sound familiar?

Stay safe.

[Hat tip: Thomas Sowell, writing at Townhall, who also notes that Frederick Douglas "saw the dangers from well-meaning whites" as far back as the 1860s. Little has changed since then.]

Friday, May 22, 2015

Quote of the Day — Capt. David B. Wilsey (WWII-era, exact date unknown)

We're coming up on Memorial Day weekend, so in addition to the sales and barbeques (which have become almost grotesquely ubiquitous, given the day's significance), it's fitting to quote an American hero, Capt. David B. Wilsey, who among other accomplishments and distinguished acts, assisted in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp (freed 70 years ago last month) and the post-liberation medical care of its internees.

Capt. Wilsey's back-story has recently come to light, by way of his children, who discovered a box of letters to his wife, written during his service in the European theater of World War II (warning: graphic images). The detailed recollections illustrate the startling devolution of a man forced to witness first-hand the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi regime on the helpless Jewish population. He came back a changed man; the trauma and memories haunted him until the day he died in 1996.

Only someone who has personally witnessed such depravity can pen this stark a statement:
Truth and totalitarianism just cannot coexist. One of the two has to die. For several hundred millions, totalitarianism did not die — so truth had to.
Such profound clarity of thought is rare, indeed. I'll repeat the warning about graphic images, but encourage you all to read the full account.

May God grant you the peace and rest you deserve, Capt. Wilsey.

The rest of you, stay safe.

(Hat tip: Claire Wolfe, writing at The Zelman Partisans)

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Forty Years Ago Today...

Forty years ago today, Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese.
  

      A sad end to a divisive war.

      Echos of that war reverberate today: the counterculture that arose out of opposition to the war now controls much of our society. Their open disdain for existing society, "The Establishment",  and their appetite for its destruction continues today. Our Secretary of State, who served a few days in Vietnam, made his Progressive bones opposing the war. Likewise, the leading Democrat candidate for President was a radicalized child of the 60s. It's bitter irony that a war fought to oppose socialism and communism resulted in society that now espouses many of the same principles.

      I leave this post with a nod of appreciation to the men and women who shed their blood and their youth half a world away.     








Saturday, April 18, 2015

This Day in History....

... this Sunday, anyway — 240 years ago, as told by the Suburban Sheepdog, Robert Kuntz:
“Stand your ground and do not fire unless fired upon,” Parker ordered. “But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

Faced off across a space no larger than a football field, [American Captain John] Parker and [British Major John] Pitcairn each commanded their respective forces not to fire. Pitcairn had every reason to expect to be obeyed; British regulars did as they were ordered and Pitcairn’s force of elite light infantry were some of the best troops of the best professional army in the world. Parker, commanding farmers, merchants – and a slave named Prince Estabrook – likewise expected to be obeyed, if for no other reason than because his men had families close at hand, some watching from just off the field. Greek governmental theories, philosophical abstractions and offenses such as the Intolerable Acts may have driven rabble-rousers like Sam Adams and his Sons of Liberty. But for the militiamen on Lexington Green, their homes and farms and livelihoods were all too tangible realities, all too close at hand.

So no one was meant to fire a shot, but as it as has time and again throughout the years, the shot nevertheless was fired and then everyone on the field let loose. It was over in minutes and the outcome, with many rebels killed or wounded, and only one of his own men hurt, couldn't have surprised Pitcairn, who couldn't have had much doubt about how the rest of the day would go.

But it was only dawn. And he hadn't heard Parker.
[links and footnotes omitted]
Read the whole thing. All the way to the end.

Stay safe.

(Hat tip and many thanks to Miguel for the reminder.)

Friday, April 17, 2015

Quote of the Day — Sheila Stokes-Begley (April 15, 2015)

Writing, as she often does, at The Zelman Partisans:
For people to live in freedom, freedom from slavery, from poverty, from annihilation, the first thing we need to do is to quit committing suicide.
She's referring to the Jewish people, in honor of Yom HaShoah — the Holocaust Remembrance Day* — and how Jews and others likely voted for the very politicians and laws that would eventually be used in an attempt to destroy them.

In the modern era, American Jews overwhelmingly vote Democrat and support the same "common sense gun laws" that disarmed their forebears and enabled the lawfully-elected government of the time to exterminate them. The relevant German laws were the 1928 Law on Firearms and Ammunition, which did relax prior restrictions but created a mandatory licensing and registry scheme for all firearms; the March 1938 German Weapons Act, which further relaxed some regulations for some people (mostly government workers), but tightly controlled handguns and completely prohibited issuing firearm manufacturing licenses to Jews; and the November 1938 Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons, which removed all gun rights from all German Jews.

Do I need to say that, because of the 1928 law requiring full licensing and registration, the government workers charged with collecting Jewish-owned firearms knew exactly where to find them?

Or that America's Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA'68) was rooted in the German example and copied nearly verbatim from their March 1938 law?

At this point, I don't think it's hyperbole to say that the Jews of the time (or now, for that matter) were/are assisting in their own suicide.

American conservatives and gun owners, generally, aren't any better. As a group, we're so easy to divide into warring factions too busy fighting each other to mount an effective resistance to lock-step "Progressives" and their collectivist agenda. Libertarians don't trust Republicans, and vice versa, and refuse to work together consistently. "Gun Culture 1.0" (generally older folks, mainly hunters and "sport shooters", shotguns and bolt-action rifles) doesn't stand up to help "Gun Culture 2.0" (generally younger crowd, focused on self-defense, prefer semi-auto pistols and modern rifles) when the gun-grabbers go after "assault weapons". The "concealed carry all the time" crowd doesn't tend to support the "open carry all the time" crowd.

Here's the reality, as stated by Benjamin Franklin: "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." We are here to defend our rights. How we choose to exercise our rights is not anywhere near as important as protecting our rights. All of our rights. We must cease the in-fighting; it only serves the "gun control" and "Progressive" agendas by making us easier to defeat politically.

In short, in order to continue to live in freedom, we must quit committing suicide.

Stay safe.
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* - I'll be reminding my pastor about this day, too. We're not Jewish, but we do support Israel, and the historical parallels are numerous. As they say, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

Monday, December 15, 2014

Happy Bill of Rights Day!

In case many of our dear readers are unaware, December 15 is "Bill of Rights Day", established in 1941 by then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to commemorate the formal adoption of the first 10 Constitutional Amendments 150 years earlier.

Not that they teach this part in public schools anymore, but the anti-Federalists of the day were concerned that the newly-enacted government — despite Constitutionally-limited powers — would expand its grasp beyond the Framers' intentions, and insisted on additional restrictions. This is directly spelled out in the Preamble to the Bill of Rights:
The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.
Ratified on this day, December 15, in the year 1791, the Bill of Rights was extraordinary in that it described what are now known as "negative rights" — it does not define what the people must be allowed to do; rather, it defines what the government may not do:
  • Congress shall make no law....
  • ... the right of the People ... shall not be infringed.
  • No Soldier shall ... be quartered in any house....
  • The right of the people ... shall not be violated....
  • No person shall be held to answer for a ... crime....

The Bill of Rights, especially the first five Amendments, are a big "No" to the government. It's not even a "you may not"; it's a gigantic "you shall not" — a difference those living under "may-issue" CCW permitting processes rather than "shall-issue" ones can appreciate. The Framers used the word "shall" for a reason.

Happy Bill of Rights Day, everyone!

Stay safe.

(H/T: David Codrea who also notes that no American media outlet or newspaper is acknowledging the significance of this day in history, nor are either of the major political parties. There is, however, an article about it on the Russian news site, Sputnik News. Go figure.)