Category: defense & war

Up from Demoktesis

Last week was Independence Day, but I was still celebrating Juneteenth.

The June 19th date hasn’t quite kicked in as a holiday for many Americans, despite a bipartisan House and unanimous Senate effort — along with President Biden’s signature — making it the “Juneteenth National Independence Day” and giving federal workers the day off.

It marks the day in 1865 when federal troops landed in Galveston, Texas, a rebel state, to announce that slavery had ended and the enslaved must be freed.

The day is about freedom. Other days could have been chosen, but for years it has served as an apt enough marker for the end of chattel slavery in America.

And slavery’s cessation is worth celebrating!

Americans are used to big July 4th celebrations, having reveled for nearly 250 years in our wonderful Declaration, announcing our separationfrom the British Empire on that day!

Actually, it was two days earlier that the Continental Congress voted to secede — and August 2, 1776, that the Declaration was finally signed. There was no sure separateness until Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781, and it took nearly two years for the official peace treaty to be signed.

There are many dates we could have chosen to honor. We settled on July 4.

We liked the words of the document.

Similarly with Juneteenth. We need a holiday commemorating the end of slavery and I like the play on words in the very name.

Arguably, the 15 days from the 19th of June to the Fourth of July should be a celebratory period for liberty more generally, starting with slavery’s abolition and ending with the creation of an independent America dedicated to equal liberty. (Backwards, of course.)

Maybe somewhere in the middle we can find a date to push the necessary third step, the cessation of “demoktesis,” the institutional philosophy of our time where “everyone owns everyone else.”*

Until personal freedom is generally respected — where nobody, not even the government, owns pieces of others — the American experiment in independence is incomplete.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The term was coined by Robert Nozick (1974, p. 290), who defined it as “ownership of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

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crime and punishment defense & war Second Amendment rights

Brace Yourself & Your Gun

gun, gun brace, 2nd Amendment, gun rights, gun control

Many foes of Second Amendment rights want to outlaw guns for everybody except military, police, Secret Service, sundry federal agencies, and bodyguards for left-leaning celebrities.

Since this isn’t politically feasible given at least intermittent legislative and judicial support for the right to bear arms, anti-gunners often pursue various piecemeal bans. The hope is that these will add up to an overall prohibition. Or at least provide an excuse to go after any particular gun owner for neglecting to comply with some subsidiary prohibition.

The anti-gun forces seemed to have been having some success with an outlawing of “stabilizing braces” on short-barreled rifles. A voluminous ATF rule sought to partially or wholly ban these braces — basically an added pistol grip — even though the same agency had earlier said such braces were okay.

And why wouldn’t it be okay to have a pistol brace if it’s okay to have a thing that shoots bullets?

Maybe the idea is that if you’re in a situation where you have to fight for your life using a gun, and a brace would help, trying to survive is okay, sure, but you shouldn’t have too much of a chance to survive. A stabilizing brace might give you an unfair edge? I’m guessing.

In mid-June, the Northern District of Texas tossed this ATF gun-brace-ban rule. Which, according to Judge Reed O’Connor’s decision in the case, Mock v. Garland, is “arbitrary and capricious.” As Shooting News Weekly puts it, “Oof.”

Unlike the similar looking (at least to me) “bump stock,” braces do not change the mechanism of firing. And bump stocks were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court about the same time. While stabilizing braces seem here to stay, a decision by the Supreme Court may still be required.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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defense & war general freedom international affairs

Xi Excuses, Demands, Assaults

Post author By Redactor
Post date June 21, 2024
1 Comment on Xi Excuses, Demands, Assaults

The good news — to hear Xi Jinping, chief Butcher of Beijing, tell it — is that Mr. Xi will “not take the bait.”

You see, China’s authoritarian leader complained (in a conversation last year with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen) that the U.S. had been “goading” him, trying “to trick” his Chinese Communist Party (CCP) into a military invasion of Taiwan.

How difficult it must be for this totalitarian titan to restrain himself from launching a murderous assault against a neighboring country … and all triggered because the bad ole USA talks to the ROC (Republic of China/Taiwan) and provides the weapons it needs to defend itself.

One constantly reads that China claims Taiwan as its own province, of course, though the actual history behind that assertion tells a much different story.

History regardless, Taiwan today ought to belong to today’s Taiwanese.

But it is another Chinese “claim” that may first lead to a full-fledged world war: Xi and Company demand virtually an entire ocean, the 90 percent of the South China Sea captured within their nine-dash-net.

Now, back in 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, an international tribunal at The Hague, heard a case brought by the Philippines, in which it ruled that China lacked any reasonable basis for its nine-dash-line demands.

Last week, reported VOA News, “China announced its coast guard will be empowered to investigate and detain for up to 60 days ‘foreigners who endanger China’s national security and interests’ in the disputed waters.”

Yesterday, Foreign Policy informed us that China is “sharply increasing its violent attacks against Philippine vessels and sailors in disputed waters off the Philippine coast,” and that on “Monday, China Coast Guard ships intercepted Philippine vessels attempting to resupply their own sailors grounded on a shoal inside the Philippines’s own exclusive economic zone (EEZ), barely 100 miles off the western coast of the archipelago.

“The Philippine Armed Forces chief of staff likened the Chinese assault” — perpetrated by “ax- and knife-wielding Chinese crewmen” — to “a pirate attack.”

China has a long rap sheet in its treatment of the Philippines, and with everyone in the region save for North Korea.

War rages in Europe. And the Middle East. Now the world’s worst regime, the CCP, inches ever closer to World War III.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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defense & war general freedom Second Amendment rights

Of 15s and the Man

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1787 regarding Shays’ Rebellion, “with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Earlier this week, “in a mocking tone,” reports The New York Post, President Joe Biden asked, “How much have you heard this phrase, ‘the blood of liberty … washes those’” — before exclaiming, “Give me a break!”

Biden continued, “No, I mean it. Seriously. And, by the way, if they want to think they can take out government if we get out of line, which they are talking again about, well guess what, they need F‑15s.”

Hmmm. Our commander-in-chief has obviously contemplated whether or not ‘We, the People’ are capable of replacing or “tak[ing] out” the current regime, should Mr. Biden and his administration “get out of line.”

He doesn’t think we can do it.

Because Joe has F‑15s at his disposal and … well, we do not.

As with many issues, however, our president is sorely mistaken. You see, unlike the citizenry of most countries, Americans united have a firepower advantage over our government. That is the way it should be — how, with the Second Amendment, our founders designed the system.

The truth is, the president’s F‑15s cannot strafe us into submission. Nor will his bombers and nuclear weapons. Provided modern-day patriots have the AR-15 — today’s musket — and sufficient numerical support among 300-million-plus American citizens, the people could and would defeat any president’s high-tech weaponry.

Without a fight if the president has any sense, citizen control of government prevails.

And there is also November. It’s an imperfect world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Memorial Day, 2024

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defense & war general freedom international affairs

Panic at Sea

“The passengers later told local media they feared for their lives,” Newsweek reported.

Those 23 tourists, along with 11 crew members, were traveling from Taiwan’s Kinmen islands, located just six miles off the Chinese mainland, back to the big island of Taiwan, when a Chinese Coast Guard vessel stopped and boarded their boat … and for 30 minutes “reviewed their travel documents.”

The Chinese regime, “in response to the recent deaths of two Chinese fisherman, whose speedboat … capsized while being pursued by Taiwanese authorities for allegedly trespassing in restricted waters,” has threatened to “step up maritime law enforcement around Taiwan’s outlying Kinmen islands,” explains the magazine.

Kuan Bi-ling, head of Taiwan’s Ocean Affairs Council, said the incident “caused unnecessary ‘public panic.’”

A bit dramatic for just checking people’s IDs.

But context is everything.

After all, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has repeatedly threatened a military invasion that would inevitably kill thousands upon thousands of Taiwanese. And China’s ever-growing military constantly stalks Taiwan, regularly encircling the island with its warships and planes.

The concern of Taiwanese officials is that China’s stepping up its harassment campaign. For 30 years there has been peace around Kinmen, which has become a tourist attraction memorializing Cold War times.

We don’t want to re-live that frosty period, just remember it.

“We urge the PRC [People’s Republic of China] to engage in meaningful dialogue with Taiwan to reduce the risk of miscalculation,” declared a U.S. State Department spokesperson.

But the problem isn’t miscalculation. The Chinese calculate that they can get their way by threatening, bullying, and intimidating Taiwan, their neighbors, the U.S., and the rest of the world.

Panic? Try not to … when Chinazis are checking your papers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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