God And Guns

Mark Steyn has a tremendous article in the Orange County Register. I changed the word order of the title to God and Guns rather Guns and God because without the protection of God, guns alone wouldn't be enough.

Mark Steyn: Guns and God?

Hell, yes. Obama attacks two of the things that elevate the U.S. above places like Europe

[...]Indeed. Sen. Obama's remarks about poor dumb, bitter rural losers "clinging to" guns and God certainly testify to the instinctive snobbery of a big segment of the political class. But we shouldn't let it go by merely deploring coastal condescension toward the knuckledraggers. No, what Michelle Malkin calls Crackerquiddick (quite rightly – it's more than just another dreary "-gate") is not just snobbish nor even merely wrongheaded. It's an attack on two of the critical advantages the United States holds over most of the rest of the Western world. In the other G7 developed nations, nobody clings to God 'n' guns. The guns got taken away, and the Europeans gave up on churchgoing once they embraced Big Government as the new religion.

How's that working out? Compared with America, France and Germany
have been more or less economically stagnant for the past quarter-century,
living permanently with unemployment rates significantly higher than in the
United States.

Security and prosperity are gifts from God. In the Old Testament, Israel always got into big trouble whenever they pursued idols. In America today, our idols are not Baal or Set or Zeus. Our idols are materialism, entertainment and sex. We worship ourselves. Does this make us happy?

[...] In my book "America Alone," I note a global survey on optimism: 61 percent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 percent of the French, 15 percent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my experience, Americans are the least "bitter" people in the developed world. Secular, gun-free big-government Europe doesn't seem to have done anything for people's happiness.

Well, we're a lot happier than the Europeans. But you'd never know it from the media. Or the Democrats. If you listen to either of the Democratic candidates and their cheerleaders in the media, we're all just one paycheck away from utter financial ruin because of the grasping, greedy BushHitlerCheneyEnronMilitaryIndustrialComplex.

I just went five months without a paycheck (my contract got all screwed up by people who don't care). I did it by careful fiscal management, self control and prayer. And I did it with a minimum of carping. That's the price I pay for the kind of work I do.

And I am not saying that there aren't greedy capitalists out there. There are a ton of them and it is getting worse. The FBI has twice the number of financial crimes under investigation than in the past five years. There are white collar crooks bilking citizens and businesses out of billions of dollars every year. What I am saying is that we are living in evil times - we always are. Plan for it and act accordingly.

As for "gun-totin'," large numbers of Americans tote guns because they're assertive, self-reliant citizens, not docile subjects of a permanent governing class. The Second Amendment is philosophically consistent with the First Amendment, for which I've become more grateful since the Canadian Islamic Congress decided to sue me for "hate speech" up north. Both amendments embody the American view that liberty is not the gift of the state, and its defense cannot be outsourced exclusively to the government.

I think a healthy society needs both God and guns: It benefits from a belief in some kind of higher purpose to life on Earth, and it requires a self-reliant citizenry. If you lack either of those twin props, you wind up with today's Europe – a present-tense Eutopia mired in fatalism.

Assertive and self reliant - words definitively not in the liberal lexicon. I own firearms not because I want to use them, but because I might have to use them. Every massacre perpetuated by government in the past century only occurred after the citizenry was disarmed.

In the 20th Century:
Governments murdered four times as many civilians as were killed in all the international and domestic wars combined.
Governments murdered millions more people than were killed by common criminals.
How could governments kill so many people? The governments had the power - and the people, the victims, were unable to resist. The victims were unarmed.

Every member of my family knows how to operate a firearm. God protect us all from ever needing to use them in a crisis situation. But God help us if we are not prepared.