The Washington Times recently ran the following editorial:
Last week’s slaughter at Fort Hood Army base in Texas was no different - except that one man bears responsibility for the ugly reality that the men and women charged with defending America were deliberately left defenseless when a terrorist opened fire.
Among President Clinton’s first acts upon taking office in 1993 was to disarm U.S. soldiers on military bases. In March 1993, the Army imposed regulations forbidding military personnel from carrying their personal firearms and making it almost impossible for commanders to issue firearms to soldiers in the U.S. for personal protection. For the most part, only military police regularly carry firearms on base, and their presence is stretched thin by high demand for MPs in war zones.
After talking to a veteran and reviewing some forums on such matters, it seemed that the assertions in the article may not bear up under scrutiny. For example:
“I spent 23 years in the military under about 6 presidents and I can’t recall anyone walking around US bases (been through many of them on my way here and there) armed unless they were MPs or DOD cops, or troops about to deploy (in which case they would be on their way somewhere, and ,,, the live ammo would still be in the crates until they reached wherever it was they were going to use it). I don’t recall anyone strutting around with side arms just for the hell of it.”
We have finally located Army Regulation 90-114, the 1993 regulation which limits carrying of weapons for law enforcement and security personnel within military installations. Despite the Clinton administration’s limitations upon MP’s and other LEOs on base, the regulation nevertheless provides for law enforcement personnel to carry weapons to:
(1) Conduct law enforcement activities including cases or investigations of espionage, sabotage, and other serious crimes in which DA programs, personnel, or property are involved and investigations conducted in hazardous areas or under hazardous circumstances.
(2) Protect classified information, systems, or equipment.
(3) Protect the President of the United States, high ranking Government officials, DOD personnel, or foreign dignitaries.
(4) Protect DOD assets and personnel.
(5) Guard prisoners.
d. DA military and civilian personnel may be authorized to carry firearms for personal protection when the responsible intelligence center identifies a credible and specific threat against DA personnel in that regional area. Firearms will not be issued indiscriminately for
that purpose. Before individuals are authorized to carry a firearm for personal protection under this regulation, the authorizing official must evaluate—(1) The probability of the threat in a particular location.
(2) The adequacy of support by DA or DOD protective personnel.
(3) The adequacy of protection by U.S. or host nation authorities.
(4) The effectiveness of other means to avoid personal attacks.
Thus, officers of field grade rank or higher, or civilian equivalent of GS-12 or above may authorize the carrying of firearms and the Secretary of the Army has authority to authorize carrying for personal protection within the continental United States. And yes! It is hard to believe that we don’t trust soldiers with guns on an Army base when we trust these very same men in Iraq and Afghanistan:
“In states where legal concealed carry is an accepted practice, American service members need to be allowed to carry a gun for self-defense – on post and off – because the global war on terror has changed the risk level they live with each and every day.
The global war on terror has changed the way America fights our wars and has changed the risk level our service members are forced to endure. Letting soldiers have the same rights afforded to civilians when it comes to carrying a concealed handgun is a reform that is well past due.”
See also How Many Died Because of Ban?
The Washington Times article refers to research showing that when folks are armed the damage caused in active shooter situations will be more limited. This is because a “major factor in determining how many people are harmed by these killers is the time that elapses between the launch of an attack and when someone - soldier, civilian or law enforcement - arrives on the scene with a gun to end the attack.”
The article goes on to claim that all the public shootings in the United States in which more than three people have been killed have occurred in places where concealed handguns have been banned.
A 23 year old Islamic convert killed one soldier and wounded another outside a recruiting center in a jihad attack in Little Rock, Arkansas:
A 23-year-old man upset about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan opened fire from his truck at two soldiers standing outside a military recruiting station here on Monday morning, killing one private and wounding another, the police said. According to the New York Times (June 1, 2009):
The gunman, identified by the police as Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad of Little Rock, fled the scene and was arrested minutes later a short distance from the recruiting station, in a bustling suburban shopping center. The police confiscated a Russian-made SKS semiautomatic rifle, a .22-caliber rifle and a handgun from his black pickup truck.
The NYT article goes on to explain that bomb threats and vandalism against recruiting offices are not uncommon. For example, in 2008, a bomb exploded at a military recruitment center in Times Square. Thus, our troops are in as much risk at home as they are on foreign battlefields. Rather than blame it on President Clinton, we should focus on enabling soldiers and sailors to carry weapons openly on base (and openly or concealed off base as permitted by local and state laws; i.e., with a Concealed Pistol License where and when required. It even makes sense to provide some special training that will qualify personnel to carry on base. By arming more qualified personnel on and off base, the military will advance the objective of keeping our men and women safe while they protect us from our nation’s enemies.
Where are your loyalties- to the UN? To the religion of humanism? Or are you looking toward traditional values of individual freedom, U.S. sovereignty and inalienable rights that are founded on Biblical principles? The Scripture speaks of covenant responsibilities that God requires of people that would be free (like the duty to defend life, liberty and property as set forth in the U.S. Constitution)- not “rights” bestowed by the State!
Do you know that the concept of a written Constitution itself was a development that grew out of the practices of the early American religious colonies? The Pilgrim fathers (and mothers) consciously entered into covenants (compacts, mutual promises or contracts) that imitated the Old and New Covenants (i.e., Old and New Testaments). The Old Testament abounds in examples of covenants between God and man and between people within the ancient social framework of Israel. The fact remains that a people that are covenant keepers will be strong and prosperous.
The Pilgrims were dissenting religious believers that were originally from England. These Separatists first attempted to create a community of believers in Nottinghamshire village of Scrooby around 1606.
The west side of St. Wilfrid’s Church in Scrooby showing the spire at the north end. This is the parish church where William Brewster attended services until he separated from the Church of England. Photo by Alice C. Teal.
Their objective was to practice their faith without being contaminated by the elitist and worldly culture that surrounded them in England. In order to avoid the reality of being imprisoned for worshipping in their homes, the Scrooby Separatists fled to Amsterdam.
The Netherlands was a Calvinistic stronghold that had struggled for years against Spanish invasions launched on behalf of the Catholic Church. Amsterdam was very tolerant toward various religious groups. In fact, Amsterdam had already become very commercialized and prostitution, alcoholism and other vices were on display as much as the religious freedom that the Pilgrims sought. The Ancient Brethren, another group of English Separatists that had immigrated to Amsterdam earlier, lost many of their children to the worldly atmosphere of Amsterdam.
The realization that Amsterdam could easily corrupt their own community, the Pilgrims moved to Leiden:
After a brief stay in Amsterdam, where they were dismayed by the discord within other immigrant English congregations, the Pilgrims were granted permission to settle in the cloth manufacturing city of Leiden. They lived there under the religious leadership of Pastor John Robinson for twelve years gathered openly as a church. However, life in a foreign country was not without problems. The only occupations open to most immigrants were poorly paid, and they found themselves growing old in poverty. The twelve-year truce between Holland and Spain was to end in 1621, threatening a resumption of hostilities. Also troublesome to the Separatists were the hardships endured by their young people, who were forced by circumstance to work at exceptionally hard jobs. Others were assimilated into the Dutch culture, leaving their parents and their community profoundly disturbed.
The impovershed community began looking to Virginia (the whole Eastern seaboard of the North American continent) as a place of refuge where they could carve out a Scriptural way of life free of the commercial culture and vice with which they struggled in Holland and England. They approached the Virginia Company that had funded Jamestown.
They informed prospective investors that they hwere industrious, frugal and “knit otogether in a sacred bond’ by their hardships in Amsterdam. Apparently the investors agreed that the Pilgrim experience inured to thir “mutual good” and funds were provided for the tiny band to set sail for what became the Plymouth Colony:
A group of English investors known as the “merchant adventurers” financed the voyage and settlement. They formed a joint-stock company with the colonists in which the merchants agreed to “adventure” (risk) their money, and the settlers to invest their personal labor, for a period of seven years. During that time, all land and livestock were to be owned in partnership; afterwards the company would be dissolved and the assets divided.
In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the first major case involving the important issue of whether the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. The landmark case originated in Washington, DC where, like Chicago and other cities, law abiding citizens were not allowed to defend themselves against lawless criminals! Since Heller v DC was decided, cities all over the land are changing their laws ro conform to the Second Amendment.
The Washington, DC case has provided the legal basis for a series of cases to percolate through the courts. The United Nations and domestic gun ban advocates will be seeking a worldwide treaty banning small arms (firearms are already prohibited to private citizens in all but a few nations). Will the U.S. join the consensus of dictators all over the world by bending our Constitution to “international norms“?
The roots of our American Constitutional order are buried in ancient Israel’s covenant with Yahweh! We need to be careful today what kind of laws, covenants and treaties we make as a people.
A people that recognize their heritage in God and that are grateful for blessings every day (not just on Thanksgiving) will prosper and remain free.
Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.
Proverbs 22:28 (King James Version)
Suzerain- Main Entry: su·zer·ain
Pronunciation: \ˈsü-zə-rən, -ˌrân; ˈsüz-rən\Function: noun
1 : a superior feudal lord to whom fealty is due: overlord;
2 : a dominant state controlling the foreign relations of a vassal state but allowing it sovereign authority in its internal affairs.
Jeremy Rabkin, a professor of law at George Mason University School of Law, recently authored an article published in Imprimis called “The Constitution and American Sovereignty”. In the article, Rabkin explains how the concept of national sovereignty, as we understand it today, developed during the Seventeenth century along with nationalism.
Abraham Lincoln defined sovereignty as “a political community without a political superior”. Thus, sovereignty isn’t so much about power as it is about authority and legitimacy. Rabkin notes that:
“… in medieval Europe… the defining character of that period was overlapping authority and a lot of confusion about which authority had primary claims. No one had to think about defining national boundaries. This became an issue only in the modern era, when interaction between different peoples increased.”
In the course of arguing that the King of France did not owe allegiance to the Holy Roman Empire, Jean Bodin, a French jurist of the late 16th century, also advocated religious toleration, protection for personal property, rule of law and representative government. According to Rabkin, Bodin was in favor of free trade and his natural law theories recognized God as the source of legal authority.
Not coincidentally, the law of nations (i.e., international law) also began to develop at this time as a result of expanded commercial activities, maritime pursuits and the pursuit of war by European monarchs and princes.
Rabkin discusses how the U.S. Constitution provides that treaties will be “the supreme Law of the Land”. Treaties are binding on the states; nevertheless, to be valid, a treaty must be consistent with the Constitution. Thus, the Constitution preempts and supersedes treaties. As Alexander Hamilton explained, “A treaty cannot change the frame of the government” because it is the Constitution that authorizes the government to make treaties in the first place. The historical consensus, now under attack, has been that a treaty violating the Constitution violates the authority which provides legitimacy for the treaty in the first place:
Today there is no longer a consensus regarding the principle that legislative and legal authority cannot be delegated to international tribunals or commissions and this has become a contentious issue. There is strong legal precedent, however, prohibiting Congress from delegating its power to legislate to an international body.
Delegation of judicial power is also a point of contention. Can the rights of American citizens in the U.S. be determined by foreign courts? Such delegation of the judicial power violates Article 3 of the Constitution. Judicial power “shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”
In the case of Medellin v. Texas, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court considered an International Court of Justice ruling. A Mexican national that violently raped and murdered two girls in Texas had the right to receive counsel from the Mexican consulate under the 1963 Vienna Convention. Despite a ruling that Texas could not execute a convicted murderer, the U.S. Supreme Court held that treaty provisions were diplomatic in nature and did not bind the sovereign State of Texas.
Rabkin points to the European Union and its European Court of Justice, originally established to interpret disputes about treaty provisions between sovereign European nations, in order to illustrate how rapidly loyalties can shift to supra-national bodies. Wasn’t the dissension about the war in Iraq largely a national schism over whether the Bush Administration or the United Nations was to decide international policy relating to Iraq? In the 1970s, the Court of Justice held that conflicts between treaty provisions and national constitutions would be resolved in favor of the treaty provisions and EU members accepted the idea that a treaty takes precedence over national constitutions.
A proposed UN Climate Change Treaty waiting in Copenhagen for the President to sign in December may soon test whether the Court will hold to its previous ruling in favor of non-delegation of legislative power.
This week the NRA, Second Amendment Foundation and others filed suit against the City of Seattle for violating the Washington state firearms preemption law. Dave Workman describes how this local gun battle is a part of a larger war looming, as the campaign to subject the American people to a UN gun treaty gets under way:
“As former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr writes today on his blog, there is an international battle over gun rights unfolding in the United Nations, and one in Seattle that has been well-covered….
International gun prohibitionists have been pushing the United States to sign an arms trade agreement for several years. With Barack Obama in the White House and Hilary Clinton at State, this could happen. Barr’s column is a “must read” for anyone interested in that controversy. He calls it the “Perfect Storm” for the UN gun control agenda.”
Rabkin asks whether being an American will mean just being part of some abstract humanity. Should we put our faith in words? “What about the idea that as long as we say nice things about humanity, everyone will feel better and we’ll all be safe?” Many states, anticipating the UN push to ban our guns, are already enacting firearms sovereignty provisions in order to erect a fence between a new federal-internationalist tyranny and the people’s right to keep and bear firepower. Meanwhile, Mayor Nickels defies state law and acts like a soon to be deposed satrap in his own feudal principality of Seattle.
In February, 2007, before most of us thought candidate Obama would be the next President, J.R. Dunn suggested in an American Thinker article that a global religious creed may be the only chance for world governance to overcome U.S. resistance to any variety of global suzerainty. The key to promoting such schemes (floating around since before the founding of the ill-fated League of Nations) is a messianic figure that can usher such a secular religious crusade into institutional existence:
In the Fifties and Sixties, Huxley and the CIA were experimenting with LSD, while Aldous’ uncle, Julian Huxley, was busy promulgating a social agenda that sounded vaguely like the utopian, mushroom-eating societies favored by his nephew, Aldous. Julian’s counter-intelligence, propaganda apparatus was headquartered at UNESCO, where he was head of the UN religious mission. In “Religion Without Revelation”, Julian Huxley identified the sense of the numinous (feelings of awe and religiosity) and announced that a universal world religion was needed in order to incorporate such profound feelings….
He advocated enlistment of the media outlets as the best method for converting masses of humanity in every nation to the new secular religion. Thus, by making spiritual feelings (i.e., numinosity) available to everyone without the need to look to higher authority (i.e., Biblical revelation) the world can dispense with feelings of guilt or other negative reactions resulting from moral degradation, loss of human life and diminished expectations of human dignity that have been washing to shore since Huxley began his mission in the 1940s. Now we see all this along with an evangelical-style face in a neo-Progressive wave being financed by George Soros, a billionaire intelligence operative who works at levels that are apparently deeper than most folks realize.
According to one description of Rudolf Otto’s thinking (the German scholar who popularized the concept of numinosity):
Otto describes the numinous as an awe-filled encounter with ultimate reality (UR). UR is designated by Otto as a mysterium tremendum and a majestus as it is experienced as a powerful sentient force, worthy of utmost respect. It inspires not only awe, but also fear. While the subject is urgently attracted to this ineffable source of creation, it may in some instances frighten, humble and ‘purify.’ Otto also notes subjects may perceive some sense of creaturely wretchedness and unworthiness, standing naked, as it were, in the face of a great and powerful, “wholly other”(16) UR-Creator-God.
This definition of numinosity is fairly close to the way in which C. G. Jung defined it and the context in which Julian Huxley used the term in “Religion Without Revelation". Huxley, the founder of UNESCO, envisioned a future synthesis of Communism with Capitalism.
Finally, notwithstanding our digressions into the semantics of numinosity we are back to Rabkin’s most startling thesis:
Where does this trend away from the sovereignty of national constitutions lead? I do not think the danger is a world tyranny. I think that idea is fantastical. Rather what it will lead to, I think, is an undermining of the idea that national governments can protect people, with the result that people will start looking for defense elsewhere. We saw this in an extreme way in Iraq when it collapsed into chaos before the surge, and people looked for protection to various ethnic or sectarian militias. A similar phenomenon can be seen today in Europe with the formation of various separatist movements. We’re even hearing loud claims for Scottish independence. And it’s not surprising, because to the extent that Britain has surrendered its sovereignty, Britain doesn’t count for as much as it used to. So why not have your own Scotland? Why not have your own Wales? Why not have your own Catalonia in Spain? And of course the greatest example of this devolution in Europe is the movement toward Muslim separatism. While this is certainly driven to a large extent by trends in Islam, it also reflects the fact that it doesn’t mean as much to be British or to be French any more. These governments are cheerfully giving away their authority to the EU. So why should immigrants or children of immigrants take them seriously?
If the world ever looks to supra-national insitutions for protection, I am convinced there will be a recognizable world religious movement with new religious symbolism representing the power and authority of the new “majestus“. Some Bible teachers have predicted a synthesis of Catholicism and Islam may occur. As events in the religious world shift before your eyes, ask yourself- in what will your grandchildren grow up believing and whom will they serve?
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