Conservative_Voice's Xanga

Confronting Evil

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 06:31:14 GMT

WASHINGTON -- This week, while the masters of America's mainstream media were probing the carnage perpetrated by a deranged, lone gunman in Blacksburg, Va., Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in Israel, discounting the threat posed by an irrational government intent on acquiring nuclear weapons. Neither act makes any sense.

In the aftermath of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, schoolmates, faculty members and law enforcement officials pointed to the gunman's pattern of unbalanced behavior, menacing anger and self-destructive writings. Numerous reports cited rules and privacy laws that barred authorities from acting to thwart the massacre of 32 innocents. Like the killings at Columbine eight years ago this week, and with the same clarity of 20/20 hindsight, "experts" concur that the killing could have been prevented had action been taken months or even years ago. It's a lesson that should be applied to our dealings with the irrational, threatening, self-destructive regime in Tehran.

On April 18, as the potentates of the press were discovering stories of courage and compassion at Virginia Tech, Gates, standing beside his Israeli counterpart, Amir Peretz, declared that they had decided to "deal with the Iranian nuclear problem through diplomacy, which appears to be working." He went on to note that the international community is "united" in this approach. This sounds eerily like urging deeply disturbed, homicidal students to seek counseling and talk about their problems in lieu of more stringent measures that might deter them from committing mass murder.

Unfortunately, the homicidal Islamic radicals running Iran are arming themselves with weapons far more lethal than handguns, and the mass murder they plan to perpetrate will kill millions. And yet, if the advice being proffered by Messrs. Gates and Peretz is followed, we will continue to ignore all the warning signs and "talk" with Iran until it is too late.

The killers at Columbine and Virginia Tech repeatedly denied that they were potentially destructive to themselves or others -- until they acted. They hid their weapons and their intentions while plotting mayhem. That's the same pattern of behavior that the Ayatollahs in Tehran have followed.

The clandestine Iranian nuclear program was underway for nearly 18 years before being discovered. When International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors finally investigated, the Iranians lied and destroyed evidence. Confronted by their European bankers and trading partners two years ago, the theocrats responded with denials, deceit and defiance. When the United Nations passed a "soft sanctions" resolution last December, the Iranian regime expedited the installation of gas centrifuges at their Nantaz uranium enrichment complex. And last month, after the United Nations passed a second sanctions resolution, Tehran announced new limits on "cooperation" with the IAEA and blocked access to their Arak heavy water reactor -- a facility believed capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons when completed. And that's not all.

In January, U.S. Special Operations units captured five senior operatives of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force in Irbil, Iraq. In Baghdad, weapons and explosives provided by Iran to Iraqi terror cells were put on display. On March 23, the Iranians responded by taking 15 British military personnel hostage, and threatening the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. And there's more.

This week, while the world grieved at the bloodshed in Blacksburg, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced, "We have intercepted weapons in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran." Hours later, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defiantly stated that Iran's military would "cut off the hands off any aggressors." This is the same head of state who has promised that "the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives."

Despite Gates' confidence in diplomacy, it should be clear that talking with deranged despots is more dangerous than encouraging deeply disturbed gunmen to seek counseling. While there is still time, the United States should take the following five initiatives to deter Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons:

-- Reaffirm that the United States is no longer bound by the abysmal Algiers Accord -- negotiated by Jimmy Carter -- proscribing U.S. intervention in "Iran's internal affairs."

-- Strengthen connections with opposition groups, including the National Council of Resistance of Iran, and other organizations devoted to regime change in Tehran.

-- Ignore "diplomatic" complaints about economic sanctions and inform foreign banks and businesses trading with Iran that they cannot do business in the United States.

-- Publicize Tehran's human rights abuses, as we once did with the Soviet Union.

-- Use Voice of America, Radio Farda and Internet broadcasts to inform the people of Iran of our affection for them, and the dangers posed by their radical, unstable leaders.

Taking these actions now against the irrational regime in Tehran could well prevent the mournful refrain we heard after the carnage in Columbine and Virginia Tech: Why didn't we do something to prevent this terrible toll?

Back ONLINE

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 04:28:50 GMT

After a long time in hiding i have decided to come back and re-start this site. I hope you enjoy the postings to come in the future days. Let me begin by expressing my outrage and horror at the events of yesterday. My deepest prayers and sympathies go out to the victims and their families. God be with them. Starting sometime later in the week I will begin my posts of colums hoping to start debates of various issues throughout the nation. Debate is welcome as long as its constructive. Any ideas for a colum may also be suggested. I hope to build up support for this site by people adding me as friends. So invite your friends to add me so hopefully this thing will grow and not die out again like it did in '05. Thats all for now stay tuned for more in the coming days ahead.

Friday, November 18, 2005

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 05:40:39 GMT

Message to Senate and House Republicans

Quit acting like Liberals. You were elected in office to do a few things. Decrease spending in Govt., SECURE OUR BORDERS, and decrease the size of Govt. Things that are traditionally conservative ideas. Since you have been in office, your spending has been like that of little democrats, government has grown not shrank, and illegal immigration has skyrocketed and now a dallas police officer is dead because YOU have not cared at all about our borders. We need 1500 miles of 3 layers razor wire fences on the south border of the US. NOT only to stop illegal hispanics from crossing out border, but Terrorists from sneaking over. WE ARE AT RISK as long as you in congress sit on your elitest seat and refuse to look at the issue because of your relationship with Mr. Fox. I cannot support a government that teaches its people how to illegally cross the border and send money back. Illegal immigration accounts for 30% of Mexico's economy. DEPORT ILLEGALS NOW! Pass tougher illegal immigrant legistlation. For those who are legally in our country Welcome and we are glad you are here. To those who would not abide by our laws and respect our nation, GET OUT! The death of a police officer is now on your hands members of congress because you DO NOT CARE.

Monday, April 04, 2005

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 16:30:08 GMT

The 'Gun Problem'
Mark Alexander (archive)

April 4, 2005 | Print | Send

"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic..." --Justice Joseph Story

In the wake of another school shooting by another sociopathic teenager, Second Amendment opponents are again out in force attempting to convert the blood of innocents into political capital for gun confiscation.

Among the first to demagogue the issue was Brady Campaign gun control advocate Michael Barnes, who condemned the "gun problem" and criticized Congress and President George W. Bush for letting the so-called "assault weapons" ban expire. Million Mom Marcher Kate Havelin howled, "We need to do more to make sure...our young people are safe from gun violence."

In an observation typical of the gun confiscation crowd's Leftmedia trucklings, Washington Post Deputy Editor Colbert King posed this loaded question: "What about the guns that take away the life?"

"Gun problem," "gun violence" and "guns that take away the life"? Like Barnes and Havelin, King insists that the problem is guns and that confiscating guns will solve the problem. But Barnes, Havelin and King, like most Leftists, display a chronic disconnect with reality. The "problem" in Red Lake, Minnesota (nine dead), is similar to that which visited Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado (thirteen dead), back in 1999.

What was the problem? Leftists brace yourself: It was not a gun problem, but a culture problem. Amazingly, Barnes inadvertently touched on this problem, saying, "Our leaders are preaching about the culture of life. They should spend the same amount of energy taking steps to stop our nation's culture of death." Of course, Barnes and his ilk think the culture of death begins and ends with guns. Their silence on the real cultural problems is deafening.

Like the Columbine murderers, the 16-year-old Red Lake sociopath was obsessed with "Goth" culture. Similarly, he played violent video games and was fascinated with the ultra-Leftist Hitlerian Nazi anarchist movement. And, likewise, he asked some of his victims "Do you believe in God?" before gunning them down.

Of course, focusing on inanimate objects like guns is far easier than focusing on cultural problems, particularly since many of the problems in question are the result of Leftist doctrines -- like parents (particularly fathers) who have abdicated the responsibility for raising responsible and moral children to government schools. The cultural consequences of renouncing that responsibility are exacerbated by the phony "Wall of Separation" arguments, which Leftjudicial activists have used to eliminate religious (read: "moral") training from those schools, and remove the Ten Commandments in principle and substance.

The best teachers in America are barely holding the high ground in classrooms where half the kids are under-parented (at best). The Left's response is to treat disorderly children and youth for ADD or (as was the case in Red Lake) with more powerful drugs like Prozac.

Not to be overlooked is yet another sacred cow of the Left -- the "entertainment" industry's perverse glorification of murder, mayhem and drug use. Typical of Leftist hypocrisy, it is those Hollywonk "actors" making the biggest bucks on the bloodiest big screen splashes who are advocating for gun confiscation. Even allegedly "moderate" actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, in his worst role yet as Governor of California recently signed a gun-ban, reached his position in life making films featuring wholesale slaughter and/or disembowelment of innocent folks.

Back to reality, Founder John Adams wisely noted, "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." Indeed, the fact is, the Left's assertions about the "gun problem" simply don't hold up under scrutiny.

If the problem of criminal misuse of firearms was dependent on the availability of guns, research would demonstrate that the prevalence of firearms is directly related to violent gun crimes -- that is, the more guns in an area, the more criminal gun use. However, any such relationship has been refuted by multiple and differing analyses. All studies inevitably lead to this conclusion: The crime problem is not about implements but intentions, and intent is inexorably defined by culture. Guns as implements are irrelevant to the criminal mindset that must perforce precede the decision to commit violence. To wit, despite Leftmedia folklore, the most violent attack on a school occurred on 18 May 1927 when Andrew Kehoe, a Bath, Michigan, school board member, murdered 45 people, including 38 elementary students -- with a bomb.

Yale researcher John Lott addressed the relationship between gun possession and crime, and concluded his research with the title of his 1998 book, "More Guns, Less Crime." Notably, Lott's research also determined this corollary to be fact: The countries that ban guns have the highest homicide rates. And why is this true? Intended victims are much easier to murder when their government has already disarmed them through gun control laws.

So, what about internal U.S. murder rates tracked against gun access over time? In 1900, the U.S. homicide rate was estimated at 1 per 100,000. In 2003, FBI statistics put the rate at 5.7 per 100,000. But during the 20th Century, gun availability was inversely related to these numbers; nearly anyone could buy and carry a gun in 1900, whereas there were 23,000 federal, state and local restrictions on firearms purchases by the end of the century.

Consider the comparable murder rates in the adjacent states of Massachusetts (very restrictive gun laws), versus Maine and New Hampshire (unrestrictive gun laws). Rates for crimes committed with guns are lower in Maine and New Hampshire than in Massachusetts. Furthermore, cities with the most restrictive gun laws, like Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, Georgia, have the highest murder rates in the nation.

Similarly, U.S. murder rates have trended downward in the last decade as more states have implemented "right to carry" laws, which make the criminal task of choosing unarmed victims more difficult. To paraphrase Thomas Sowell, "Most criminals aren't that stupid; they tend to go where the guns aren't."

The same correlations are in evidence around the world. Nations with the highest per-capita possession of firearms, such as Switzerland (where most households contain at least one "assault weapon" as part of their "well regulated militia") are among those with the lowest murder rates. Conversely, nations like the UK, with the most restrictive gun laws, are now experiencing escalating crime rates.

The UK's gun restrictions, for example, did not stop a sociopath from slaughtering 16 kindergarteners and their teacher in Dunblane, Scotland, three years before Columbine. As a result of that shooting, all handguns were confiscated (similar to Sen. Diane Feinstein's proposal after Columbine). The result? By 2002, England and Wales had the highest incidence of "very serious" offences (18 crimes per 100 people) among the 17 developed Western nations. Second in line is Australia (16 per 100) where many classes of guns have also been confiscated. The incidence of "violent crime" is 3.6 per 100 in the UK, compared with 1.9 per 100 in the U.S.

Gun confiscation has never protected anyone. Gun restrictions have not protected citizens in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., New York or Boston, much less anyone in Columbine or Red Lake. Nor did such laws protect Jews from Hitler or Stalin or Chinese peasants from Mao, etc., ad infinitum.

In his Commonplace Book, Thomas Jefferson quotes Cesare Beccaria from his seminal work, "On Crimes and Punishment": "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." Again, no less true today than it has been throughout history.

The next time some Chardonnay-sipping Leftists pontificates about the "gun problem," reminded them that far more Americans, particularly children, die as a result of alcohol abuse, than at the hands of criminals using guns. Would a five-day waiting period on the purchase of good bottle of wine prevent those injuries and deaths?

As for the Marching Moms, it's worth noting that women are the fastest-growing demographic group of gun owners. And for good reason. It's now estimated that guns are used defensively more that 2.5 million times annually -- four times more often than the estimated use of a gun in commission of a crime.

In short, culture trumps firearm access in determining murder rates, and if our murder rates are going to be further reduced, Americans of all political feathers would be well advised to take a sobering look at the cultural components which breed such violence, not the instruments used to commit violence.

Any efforts by the government to further regulate firearms should be met head-on by the clear language of our Constitution's Second Amendment: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." In fact, broad reduction of current gun regulations is consistent both with the letter of our Constitution, and the historical reality of self-defense and criminal restraint. Political folly such as the Feinstein/Schumer gun control act -- which was, fortunately, defeated by Congress last year -- serves only to weaken this "palladium of the liberties of our republic," as Justice Joseph Story called the Second Amendment. For your neighbors who don't see it that way, tell them to put one of these on their front door: http://PatriotShop.US/GunFreeHousehold.

Quote of the week...

"The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths of that heroic teacher and the other eleven children who died must not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers. ... In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA -- because I don't believe that they are responsible for my daughter's death. ... I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy -- it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies! ... Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, soul, and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc. Spiritual influences were present within our educational systems for most of our nation's history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historical fact. What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the doors to hatred and violence. And when something as terrible as Columbine's tragedy occurs -- politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that contribute to erode away our personal and private liberties. We do not need more restrictive laws. ... We do need a change of heart and a humble acknowledgment that this nation was founded on the principle of simple trust in God!"
--Congressional testimony of Darrell Scott, whose daughter Rachel Scott was murdered at Columbine

Mark Alexander is Executive Editor and Publisher of The Federalist Patriot, a Townhall.com member group.

Sunday, April 03, 2005

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 23:45:10 GMT

Alright guys, sorry, I know I said April 1st would be the first day but I got sidetracked a little. Sorry about that. But today we officially kick off this website trying to spread the conservative movement in this county. Please please please, tell your friends, parents and all you know to come to this site, register with xanga to post comments. The comments feature will work like a message board to discuss various topics of the week. We will try to have one big issue per week and as the news changes maybe update more often during a week. Email me at mmsportsman@yahoo.com to bring up issues you would like to see discussed.

My first article will go online tonight at midnight and from then on will try to be updated on the first of the week. Let freedom ring, may God Bless our troubled and distracted land, and may His grace be with us all.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Sun, 20 Mar 2005 19:38:43 GMT

Starting April 1, 2005 a xanga totally devoted to bringing conservative issues to the table and allowing people to discuss them. Columnists such as Ann Coulter, Cal Thomas, Walter Williams, and several other big name conservatives. I hope you will join us and comment and discuss the issue talked about by whoever our columnist of the day is. We need people to read this site, so i am hoping you will subscribe to our site and tell others about it.

Thanks