Category Archives: History

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, December 17, 2018: 

That the essence of freedom is the limitation of government was expressed well by John C. Calhoun: “Governments … must derive their right from the assent … of the governed, and be subject to such limitations as they [the governed] may impose.” The Founders well knew through their study of history the dangers of government slipping its bonds, and sought, as Thomas Jefferson expressed it, to bind the central government down by the chains of the Constitution:

In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but find him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.  

George Washington, the first president of the American republic, knew the dangers of unlimited government: “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

Delegates from the sovereign states weren’t happy with what they had wrought, and ratification would have failed had it not been for the adoption of the first ten amendments to the Constitution in 1791, now called the Bill of Rights. It should perhaps have been called the Bill of Additional Restrictions on the Central Government, just to be sure that people knew that the bonds put in place would be strengthened by naming them instead of just assuming them.

The Second Amendment was put place behind the First so that citizens would know that the ultimate power is in the hands of the citizen, through his right to keep and bear arms. In celebrating Bill of Rights Day, Alan Gottlieb, serving as the Executive Vice President of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and the chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), issued a statement on Saturday pointing to the uniqueness of the Bill of Rights and especially the importance of the Second Amendment in securing them:

Despite the efforts of lobbying groups and some politicians, the Second Amendment has retained its position as the cornerstone of our Bill of Rights. The individual citizen’s right to keep and bear arms protects all of the other rights….

Joining Gottlieb’s groups in the announcement was Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO). Gottlieb added, “Our mission is that of any citizen who values the liberty and freedom our nation symbolizes above all other nations in the world. Our Bill of Rights is the envy of every other citizen of every other country.”

Ironically, as Gottlieb was celebrating the Second Amendment, expat citizens from Venezuela were decrying its lack in their former homeland. On Saturday, Fox News published interviews with several former citizens who were now, belatedly, learning the lessons of history the hard way.

Gottlieb could have been speaking directly to two of them who have escaped the Marxist tyranny first installed by Hugo Chavez in 1999 and then expanded by his protégé, Nicolas Maduro, after Chavez died in 2013. Now living outside the grasp of Maduro’s “collectivos” – motorcycle gangs hired, paid, and armed by him to “keep the peace” in the country’s barrios – Javier Vanegas, a former Venezuelan school teacher now exiled in Ecuador, and Omar Adolfo Zares Sanchez, a former mayor of a municipality in Venezuela had their interviews published by Fox.

Said Vanegas:

Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight. [Maduro’s] government security forces … knew they had no real opposition … it was a clear declaration of war against an unarmed population.

Vanegas added that the people were too trusting of their government back in 2012 when the Chavez-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly enacted its “Control of Arms, Munitions, and Disarmament Law” with the explicit purpose of disarming all of his citizens. Said Vanegas:

Venezuelans didn’t care enough about it. The idea of having the means to protect your home was seen as only needed out in the fields. People never would have believed they needed to defend themselves against the government.

Venezuelans … always hoped that our government would be non-tyrannical, a non-violator of human rights….

[But] if guns had been a stronger part of our culture, if there had been a sense of duty for one to protect their individual rights, and as a show of force against a government power – and had legal carry been a common thing – it would have made a huge difference.

Sanchez agreed: “Without a doubt, if there had been a balance of armed defense, we could have stood up and stopped the oppression at the beginning.”

Without such threat from an armed citizenry, Maduro’s tyranny has turned Venezuela from one of the most prosperous and free countries in South America into a virtual concentration camp run by Maduro’s thugs. The murder rate in the country is almost 100 per 100,000 (in the U.S. it is less than 5), and the poverty rate is nearly 80 percent.

David Kopel, research director of the Independence Institute in Golden, Colorado, stated the obvious: “Venezuela shows the deadly peril when citizens are deprived of the means of resisting the depredations of a criminal government. The Venezuelan rulers … viewed citizen possession of arms as a potential danger to a permanent communist monopoly of power.”

Kopel was likely referring to famous – infamous – statements by two historical tyrants over that “potential danger.” Said Adolph Hitler: “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.”

And from Mao Zedong (aka Mao Tse Tung, aka “Chairman Mao”) who ruled China as Chairman of the Communist Party of China from 1949 to 1976: “All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns. That way, no guns can ever be used to command the party.”

How many Americans knew that Saturday was Bill of Rights Day? How many know how many amendments were made and approved that fateful day in 1791? How many know that the Second Amendment was deliberately put in place as the anchor, the ultimate security, protecting all the others? How many remember that without those first ten amendments we wouldn’t have a Constitution?

George Santayana wasn’t the only individual warning of the dangers of ignoring or forgetting the lessons of history where governments are concerned. He wrote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Edmund Burke said “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” Steve Berry, writing in his The Charlemagne Pursuit (2008), has his protagonist remark to his antagonist, Admiral Ramsey Langford: “It’s been my experience, Langford, that the past always has a way of returning. Those who don’t learn, or can’t remember it, are doomed to repeat it.”

A few informed Americans celebrated Bill of Rights Day on Saturday. A few now-informed Venezuelans lamented its lack in their former country on the same day.

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Sources:

John C. Calhoun quote

FoxNews.com: Venezuelans regret gun ban, ‘a declaration of war against an unarmed population’

WesternJournal.com: As Country Crashes and Burns, Venezuelans Offer Chilling Warning About Gun Grabbers

‘BILL OF RIGHTS STILL INCLUDES SECOND AMENDMENT,’ SAY SAF, CCRKBA, JPFO

FDR declared December 15 as BOR rights day in 1941.

Background on Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

Background on the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Background on David Kopel

Background on Mao Zedong (Mao Tse Tung)

Quotes on those ignorant of history are bound to repeat it

Washington quote: “Government Is Not Reason, It Is Not Eloquence — It Is Force”

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, December 14, 2018: 

The announcement on Wednesday that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), which has changed its name to Scouts BSA (SBSA),is about to declare bankruptcy should surprise few. The Scouts’ “perversion files,” which first surfaced back in 2012 during a lawsuit, cost the formerly respected organization and its insurers nearly $20 million. Following its decision in 2013 to allow openly homosexual boys to join, and then in 2015 to allow openly homosexual leaders to lead them, the group’s legal fees paid tojust one of its law firms have increased by a factor of 10. In 2015, fees paid to Ogletree Deakins were $859,347; in 2016 they jumped to $3.5 million; in 2017 they totaled $7.6 million; for 2018 the numbers aren’t yet available. And those are fees paid to just a single law firm defending the group.

The decline in morality began decades ago, but has accelerated as homosexuals have flowed into the morally corrupt organization.

The organization claims that it has put in place various rules and provisions to keep sexual predators from preying opon young boys joining what they thought was a moral and upstanding organization.

However, so numerous are the lawsuits that BSA’s insurers are being sued by the BSA itself for not paying the increasing number of claims. Hence the announcement it was “considering”bankruptcy.

Membership in the group that used to honor “God, Family and Country” in its oath (A Scout is to be “trustworthy,loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave,clean and reverent”) now includes not only homosexual scouts and leaders, but also girls, in a failing effort to save itself from extinction by being“inclusive.”

Instead the organization is fading away into insignificance and irrelevance. In 1979, there were five million active Boy Scouts in the United States. Today there are 2.3 million, and that number is about to get even smaller. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints(Mormons) parted ways with the Scouts in May of this year, officially ending its affiliation and support by December 31, 2019. Its 400,000 members will be invited to be active in a Mormon group supporting the values that the Scouts have left behind. As The New American noted at the time, while the statement from the LDS church said nothing about the decline in morality being inflicted by progressives at the top of the BSA, it left no doubt that that was one of the primary causes. Said the LDS leadership: “While the Church will no longer be a chartered partner of BSA or sponsor Scouting units after December 31,2019, it continues to support the goals and values reflected in the Scout Oath and Scout Law.” To which we added: “While there was no indication from the statement of ideological or moral differences between the two organizations,one suspects this might have been a factor. In recent years the Boy Scouts have made major decisions at odds with Mormon religious convictions.”

Indeed they have. And the chickens have come home to roost. In 2012, a Portland judge discovered that Scout headquarters had been hiding a stash of what became known as the ”perversion files,” which detailed the expulsion of 1,247 Scout leaders from 1965 to 1985.Even after the court order, the Scouts continued to hide new files from public view. “One thing we’ve found, when we look at all the Boy Scouts’ cases, is a constant fight against releasing any of the documents,” said Emma Hetherington, director of the University of Georgia Law School’s Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic, founded to assist the survivors of child sexual abuse. She added: “If you really want to protect more boys, you release the names of the offenders. It’s about holding them accountable and holding the Scouts accountable. This is an organization that led the public to believe their child would be in one of the safest places they could be if they were in Boy Scouts.”

That, unfortunately, is no longer the case, which grieves this writer, the holder of the Eagle Scout designation.That award is earned by fewer than four percent of boys in the program, and only after earning at least 21 merit badges. But by trying to cater — some would save cave — to the world’s values of political correctness, (im)morality,and inclusiveness, the Scouts organization has successfully emasculated itself and is succeeding in making itself irrelevant.