Washington State to gun owners: 'No Fourth Amendment for you'

The original version of Washington State's recent new gun control bill-- Senate Bill 5737-- violated the Constitution... twice. The first violation, obviously, was the gun control. The second was this:

... with respect to the thousands of weapons like that already owned by Washington residents, the bill says this: 

“In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing shall ... safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection.” 

In other words, come into homes without a warrant to poke around. Failure to comply could get you up to a year in jail. 

The Democrat sponsors of the bill jerked the 'police can enter your home without warrant to inspect your guns or you go to jail' provision of the bill, once the issue hit the press.

Of course they insist this was all just a silly mistake. But it wasn't a mistake. They just got caught, and the blowback was more than they expected.

The take home lesson is this: gun controllers don't really give a shit about your Constitutional rights. 

The wrong kind of prayer in school

A group of Arizona legislators have proposed a law that requires Arizona high school students to recite this oath in order to graduate:

I, _______, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge these duties; So help me God.

Bad. Very bad. What were these guys thinking?

One of the reasons I love America and our Constitution is that we don't have to swear loyalty to anything. I will defend the Constitution with my life, and that includes defending the right of my neighbor to not defend it, if he chooses.  I love the Constitution because I'm not required to love it. It's a very beautiful and fragile thing.

An oath to defend the Constitution that is mandatory for graduation is an oxymoron if it includes "I take this obligation freely." Of course you don't take it freely. You take it in order to graduate.

I don't like loyalty oaths for ordinary citizens where there is any legal compulsion involved. I don't like legal compulsion in doctrinal matters period, either positive ('you must say...') or negative ('you must not say...'). Exceptions can and should be made for obscenity, for clearly work-related responsibilities (oaths of office or for professional licensure), etc. I want my lawyers and judges to swear fidelity to the Constitution, because that's what I'm employing them for. If they want to work for me (the public), we insist on some preliminaries.

But I don't want ordinary citizens to be required to swear loyalty to anything.

Freedom of speech means freedom, and being forced by the government to pledge to any doctrine as a condition for government sanction is a gross violation of the Constitution and of basic God-given human rights.

It is wrong to compel speech or silence. Regarding school prayer, community traditions should be respected-- voluntary organized prayer in school, or lack of such, according to the majority vote of each community.

It is not the prayer, or lack of prayer, that is wrong or unconstitutional as such. It is the compulsion that violates rights.

Schools should be free to include or not include voluntary prayer in the school day, and students should be free to pray or not to pray. No prayer in school should be illegal or compulsory.

Government should not be in the business of compelling or forbidding speech. 

"Asteroids are nature's way of asking: 'How's that space program coming along?'"

Glenn Harlan Reynolds:

Asteroids a reminder of space program weakness 

... nobody knows whether a massive asteroid is heading toward Earth next week or next century, the events of Asteroid Friday should serve as a wake-up call to us all. We're at the bottom of a well, and somebody is throwing rocks. Shouldn't we do something about it?

How about this: let's take all the money we waste (tens of billions of $ so far) on the global warming hoax and spend it on our space program, with an emphasis on protecting us from catastrophic meteor strikes.

Let's use our resources to protect us from actual risks, instead of lining the pockets of Al Gore. 

"Why I Raise My Children Without God"

An atheist mom explains herself, with my commentary.

Why I Raise My Children Without God
By TXBlue08 | Posted January 14, 2013 | Texas


(CNN PRODUCER NOTE TXBlue08, a mother of two teenagers in Texas, blogs aboutraising her children without religion. She said she shared this essay on CNN iReport because 'I just felt there is not a voice out there for women/moms like me...)

"Not a voice out there for moms like me?"

:-/

What?

Her children are drowning in a culture without God. Where is God in the news media? Where is God in movies and entertainment? Where is God in school? Where is God in higher education? Where is God in the business world and in government? Heck, many churches are essentially God-free zones.

Nearly all of the voices "out there" are atheist. She's blazing no new trails by raising her boys without God. She's just drifting with the culture.

When my son was around 3 years old, he used to ask me a lot of questions about heaven. Where is it? How do people walk without a body? How will I find you? You know the questions that kids ask.

Sounds like her kid asked better questions than she does.

For over a year, I lied to him and made up stories that I didn’t believe about heaven. Like most parents, I love my child so much that I didn’t want him to be scared. I wanted him to feel safe and loved and full of hope. But the trade-off was that I would have to make stuff up, and I would have to brainwash him into believing stories that didn’t make sense, stories that I didn’t believe either.

So she tells him that he's a meat machine destined for extinction evolved by a process red in tooth and claw in a universe without purpose.

Now he feels more safe and loved.

One day he would know this, and he would not trust my judgment. He would know that I built an elaborate tale—not unlike the one we tell children about Santa—to explain the inconsistent and illogical legend of God.

She has a child's understanding of God, which is inconsistent and illogical.

And so I thought it was only right to be honest with my children. I am a non-believer, and for years I’ve been on the fringe in my community.

She'd fit in perfectly in the elite corridors of power and influence in our nation.

If she wants to know what "fringe" is like, she should try being an evangelical in Hollywood, or at MSNBC or CNN, or on the Harvard Law faculty, or on Wall Street.

As a blogger, though, I’ve found that there are many other parents out there like me.

She merely needed to watch network TV or go to a movie theatre to see an endless queue of parents like her.

We are creating the next generation of kids,

She creates nothing. Her children come through her, not from her.

... and there is a wave of young agnostics, atheists, free thinkers and humanists rising up through the ranks who will, hopefully, lower our nation’s religious fever.

They're already here, ma'am. They're not young, and they make your sons' movies and games and television shows and curricula. The cultural wasteland around us is their gift.

Here are a few of the reasons why I am raising my children without God.


God is a bad parent and role model. 

If God is our father, then he is not a good parent. Good parents don’t allow their children to inflict harm on others. Good people don’t stand by and watch horrible acts committed against innocent men, women and children. They don’t condone violence and abuse. “He has given us free will,” you say? Our children have free will, but we still step in and guide them.

God isn't a parent. He is our Creator, and his thoughts and purposes are not ours. We are eternal creatures, and we need to understand that God's plan for us is four our eternity. We do suffer in this world, often seemingly unjustly, but this world is not our home.

And if God does not exist, there is no objective moral law to which to appeal when we condemn injustice. Without God, there is no actual justice. Things just happen-- some we like, some we don't like. So to what moral standard does Atheist Mom appeal when she decries violence and abuse?

She presupposes objective moral law in her argument against the existence of the Creator of objective moral law.

God is not logical. 

How many times have you heard, “Why did God allow this to happen?” And this: “It’s not for us to understand.” Translate: We don’t understand, so we will not think about it or deal with the issue. Take for example the senseless tragedy in Newtown. Rather than address the problem of guns in America, we defer responsibility to God. He had a reason. He wanted more angels. Only he knows why. We write poems saying that we told God to leave our schools. Now he’s making us pay the price. If there is a good, all-knowing, all-powerful God who loves his children, does it make sense that he would allow murders, child abuse, wars, brutal beatings, torture and millions of heinous acts to be committed throughout the history of mankind? Doesn’t this go against everything Christ taught us in the New Testament?

The question we should be asking is this: “Why did we allow this to happen?” How can we fix this? No imaginary person is going to give us the answers or tell us why. Only we have the ability to be logical and to problem solve, and we should not abdicate these responsibilities to “God” just because a topic is tough or uncomfortable to address.

If God does not exist, what standing does she have to declare the Newtown shootings immoral? Her opinion? The shooter's opinion was otherwise. If atheism is true, morality is all opinions, nothing more.

Her questions about God's forbearance of evil are valid, and haunt us all. But only believers in God have a logical basis to ask those questions. Atheists deny objective good and evil, and have no standing to ask any questions about evil.

Atheist Mom is not logical.

God is not fair. 

If God is fair, then why does he answer the silly prayers of some while allowing other, serious requests, to go unanswered? I have known people who pray that they can find money to buy new furniture. (Answered.) I have known people who pray to God to help them win a soccer match. (Answered.) Why are the prayers of parents with dying children not answered?

If God is fair, then why are some babies born with heart defects, autism, missing limbs or conjoined to another baby? Clearly, all men are not created equally. Why is a good man beaten senseless on the street while an evil man finds great wealth taking advantage of others? This is not fair. A game maker who allows luck to rule mankind’s existence has not created a fair game.

If God does not exist, nothing is "fair" or "unfair".  Inference to "fair" presupposes objective morality, which presupposes God.

God does not protect the innocent. 

He does not keep our children safe. As a society, we stand up and speak for those who cannot. We protect our little ones as much as possible. When a child is kidnapped, we work together to find the child. We do not tolerate abuse and neglect. Why can’t God, with all his powers of omnipotence, protect the innocent? 

Why does Ms. Meat Machine give a hoot about innocents? Whence her  benevolence for the carriers of competitors' genes? Atheists consistently fail to understand that the very questions they ask presume objective standards of good and evil which their conclusions deny.

Advocating atheism based on the existence of evil is self-refuting.  

God is not present. 

He is not here. Telling our children to love a person they cannot see, smell, touch or hear does not make sense. It means that we teach children to love an image, an image that lives only in their imaginations. What we teach them, in effect, is to love an idea that we have created, one that is based in our fears and our hopes.

He is always present. He is closer to each of us than we are to ourselves. But His voice is still and small. Godless Mom is immersed in the din of our godless culture and in her ignorance, and cannot hear Him.

God Does Not Teach Children to Be Good 

A child should make moral choices for the right reasons. Telling him that he must behave because God is watching means that his morality will be externally focused rather than internally structured. It’s like telling a child to behave or Santa won’t bring presents. When we take God out of the picture, we place responsibility of doing the right thing onto the shoulders of our children. No, they won’t go to heaven or rule their own planets when they die, but they can sleep better at night. They will make their family proud. They will feel better about who they are. They will be decent people.

Without God there is no standard to which one can practice morality, other than one's own opinions, which are by definition no standard. "Moral" choices presume objective morals to choose. Objective morals presume God.

God Teaches Narcissism 

“God has a plan for you.” Telling kids there is a big guy in the sky who has a special path for them makes children narcissistic; it makes them think the world is at their disposal and that, no matter what happens, it doesn’t really matter because God is in control. That gives kids a sense of false security and creates selfishness. “No matter what I do, God loves me and forgives me. He knows my purpose. I am special.” The irony is that, while we tell this story to our kids, other children are abused and murdered, starved and neglected. All part of God’s plan, right?

Yea. Devout Christians are so selfish, and atheist materialism is such an effective antidote to selfishness.

When we raise kids without God, we tell them the truth—we are no more special than the next creature.

If we are no more special than the next creature, why lament abuses and atrocities? Kill a kid, step on a cockroach. We're no more special than the next creature.

We are just a very, very small part of a big, big machine–whether that machine is nature or society–the influence we have is minuscule. The realization of our insignificance gives us a true sense of humbleness.

And humility has certainly been a big part of atheism's gift to the world.

I understand why people need God. I understand why people need heaven. It is terrifying to think that we are all alone in this universe, that one day we—along with the children we love so much—will cease to exist. The idea of God and an afterlife gives many of us structure, community and hope.

Atheist Mom has been insisting that belief in God is harmful, except for the "structure, community, and hope" part. Atheists have trouble even with simple coherent arguments.

I do not want religion to go away. I only want religion to be kept at home or in church where it belongs.

Stalin agreed.

It’s a personal effect, like a toothbrush or a pair of shoes. It’s not something to be used or worn by strangers.

Atheists always scratch the totalitarian itch.

I want my children to be free not to believe and to know that our schools and our government will make decisions based on what is logical, just and fair—not on what they believe an imaginary God wants.

Schools and governments don't make decisions. People make decisions. And decisions based on the premise of God's non-existence have no logical or historical claim to superiority over decisions premised on God's existence.

I'll defend "endowed by our Creator" against "opiate of the masses" any day.

                                                                        ***

One last question for Ms. Freethinker: where's dad?

Belgium offers a two-for-one sale on lethal injection...

From Wesley Smith:

Twins Euthanized in Belgium

 

In just ten years, Belgium has trumped the culture of death in the Netherlands that took some thirty years to poisonously flower. For example, there has been a joint euthanasia of an elderly couple, which was celebrated by a Belgian bioethicist in a news report. Belgian doctors also brag about coupling voluntary euthanasia with consensual organ harvesting–particularly targeted at the disable who want to die because they have “good organs.” And now, twins have been killed in a joint euthanasia. From the Telegraph story: Identical twins were killed by Belgian doctors last month in a unique mercy killing under Belgium’s euthanasia laws. The two men, 45, from the Antwerp region were both born deaf and sought euthanasia after finding that they would also soon go blind. The pair told doctors that they were unable to bear the thought of not being able to see each other again. The twin brothers had spent their entire lives together, sharing a flat and both working as cobblers. Doctors at Brussels University Hospital in Jette “euthanized” the two men by lethal injection on 14 December last year.

 

In a morally sane society, the death doctors would lose their licenses and be tried for homicide. But Belgium no longer fits that description. But, I must say, after fighting against this issue for twenty years, I am not surprised. This is the simple logic of euthanasia consciousness. Once killing is seen as an answer to human suffering, the meaning of the term becomes very elastic and the killable caste, like the universe, never stops expanding. "Doctors... euthanized the two men by lethal injection...". Doctors? No. Doctors killers euthanized murdered the men by lethal injection. I used to wonder: what ever happened to the Nazis? After all, there were millions of them in WWII, and Patton didn't get 'em all. We tried most of the big ones, but what happened to the millions of admirers, the quislings? How could such a malevolently vibrant ideology simply vanish? They didn't vanish. Now, a couple of generations later, the spiritual heirs of the Nazi doctors are rising in Europe. They are even killing twins, one of Mengele's favorites. This is happening faster than I had imagined, and I'm a real Cassandra about this stuff.

CNN anchor: 'Are asteroids caused by global warming?'

CNN anchor Deb Feyerick:

“Every time we see a storm like this lately, the first question to pop into a lot of people’s minds is whether or not global warming is to blame? I’ll talk to Bill Nye, ‘the science guy,’ about devastating storms and climate change... Talk about something else that’s falling from the sky and that is an asteroid. What’s coming our way? Is this an effect of, perhaps, of global warming or is this just some meteoric occasion?”

The video:




You can't make this up.

Pope Benedict's successor won't change Catholic doctrine

From Ashley McGuire:

What the church’s critics, especially those now giddily wondering if Pope Benedict’s successor will shake things up, just don’t seem to understand, is that church teachings on these issues are unchangeable. 

Even if we entertain the human possibility of a rogue pope, the reality is such a thing is currently sociologically impossible. About half of the current College of Cardinals (the men who will select the next pope) were appointed by Blessed Pope John Paul II. The other half were put there by Pope Benedict XVI. As you can imagine, they are all orthodox, or faithful to church teaching. On everything. 

While most editorial pages have spent the last eight years harping on Catholic social teaching and running hit pieces on bishops and the pope, Benedict has been filling the ranks with shepherds who will continue the church’s 2,000-plus year tradition of holding firm on the most important social issues. 

And not only will the church remain orthodox with Pope Benedict’s successor, it should. 

Our call to live counter-culturally is as old as the church itself. We believe in a God who lived among us, died for us, and showed us the way to live lives of courage and conviction–whatever our culture. Catholics are called, yes, to engage with the society around them, but not to adapt ourselves to the popular sentiments of our time. Instead, Catholics are called to live in radical service to our God. This includes loving our neighbor as ourselves. This also includes letting go of pleasure as the path to happiness (spoiler: it’s not). There’s nothing modern –or moderate –about that.

Beautifully said. The Church teaches eternal truth, not the tyrannical fads of modernity. The Church is the foundation of Western culture-- the best of it-- and at the same time it is profoundly counter-cultural, a redoubt of resistance.