Americans Must Draw a Blood-Red Line in the Sand

~ Foreword ~
People had better think once, twice and even three or four times more before they jump off the cliff like so many lemmings crying to the feds, “Oh please save us, save us“. If life has taught me anything, it is that whenever I was in real need of any defense for any reason, I am my own best defender in most instances, not some government official, not law enforcement, and certainly not any damned anti-Liberty anti-American Congressman or Senator.

Whether anyone realizes the true danger we are playing with, America surely is marching rapidly and lockstep towards tyranny. Some may acknowledge this, but the time to act in defense of freedom and liberty is not after these laws pass Congress, rather the time is now. Let’s hope and pray that our children won’t be looking back decades from now and asking, “Why did they give up so much? Why did they let freedom and liberty wither and die on the vine?” We’re in trouble, and it’s largely because we no longer have any true leaders with firm convictions and any strong, unbending, incorruptible moral code. ~ J.O.S. Continue reading →

“Heaven is purpose, principle, and people. Purgatory is paper and procedure. Hell is rules and regulations.” ~ Dee Hock, founder and CEO of VISA Credit Card

“As government regulations grow slowly, we become used to the harness. Habit is a powerful force, and we no longer feel as intensely as we once would did about the constriction of our liberties. Those same constrictions would have been utterly intolerable a mere half century ago.” ~ Judge Robert Bork

Row after row, shelf after shelf and volume after volume, of law, after law, after law, fills the libraries in Washington DC and in major libraries across America. We are a country under the rule of law all right, but we have taken law and rule making to the extreme edge of absurdity, if not insanity.

The Federal Register represents 82 volumes and 61,949 pages, as of 2017, or so we are told. The United States Code is perched on multiple shelves in 51 volumes and supposedly contains 16,845 pages. It changes by the day as lawmakers add more laws. This doesn’t include the Code of Federal Regulations, or CFR’s. Title 26 of the IRS Tax Code allegedly consists of 73,954 pages as of 2016. But some say it is really only a little over 4,000 pages. We have no idea who is right. Continue reading →

Lowering the voting age while forcing these same teens to spend additional years in mandatory schooling environments, cut-off from authentic, inter-generational community interactions, is nothing more than a political ploy.

Image Credit: Pixabay-Giovannacco | Pixabay License (https://pixabay.com/service/license/)

Newly-elected US Rep. Ayanna Pressley caused a stir this month when she filed an amendment to lower the legal federal voting age from 18 to 16. While Pressley’s amendment failed to pass, the action brought attention to the place of teenagers in society. Regardless of how we may feel about the role of the voter, many of us would argue that teenagers should have more autonomy and agency and be more active, productive members of their communities. The irony, however, is that at the same time legislators seek to empower teens by expanding voting rights, they are increasingly infantilizing them in other pernicious ways. Continue reading →

When 22 people were killed in El Paso, Texas, and nine more were killed in Dayton, Ohio, roughly 12 hours later, responses to the tragedy included many of the same myths and stereotypes Americans have grown used to hearing in the wake of a mass shooting.

As part of my work as a psychology researcher, I study mass homicides, as well as society’s reaction to them. A lot of bad information can follow in the wake of such emotional events; clear, data-based discussions of mass homicides can get lost among political narratives. Continue reading →

Conveniently, communists can always detach themselves from the horrors of the past.

If someone were to ask you to think of either extreme of the political spectrum, odds are you would immediately picture a swastika at one end, and a hammer and sickle at the other. Regardless of your views of the left-right paradigm, or whether you subscribe to horseshoe theory or not, we (rightfully) tend to perceive fascism and communism as the standard ideologies of the extreme. Continue reading →

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The Associated Press reports Congress is seriously considering red flag gun laws.

These laws, also called “extreme risk protection orders,” allow courts to issue orders allowing law enforcement to seize firearms from people who’ve committed no crime but are believed to be a danger to themselves or others.

President Trump has signaled his backing of bipartisan Senate legislation sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

We must make sure that those judged to pose a grave risk to public safety do not have access to firearms and that if they do those firearms can be taken through rapid due process,

Trump said in a White House speech.

Red flag laws have garnered support from several conservative intellectuals, as well, including David French of National Review and Ben Shapiro. Continue reading →