America and Firearms (Explained to Overseas Readers)

The other day, I am watching the news on TV5, the international French language network. I am doing this to get away from the spectacle of the impending economic disaster in the US where I live. This is shortly after the massacre of school children in Connecticut. One item draws my attention: The cute, airhead French female announcer (or “anchorette”) states that last year about 28,000 people in the US lost their lives to guns.

Here we go again, I think. More half-assed information that is worse than no information at all. I have witnessed European media disseminating misleading information about the US for more than forty years. This time again, I have to intervene to help overseas of observers of the international scene who want to know about reality and who might happen to read this blog.

I can’t tell you how often I have witnessed the following: European commentators making sarcastic, superior comments about some American event or custom, or some American way of doing things and then, their society adopting uncritically the same American event, or custom, or way of doing things ten years later, or even later. Right now, for example, I would bet you anything that one of the novelties on French radio is 1990s American popular music. That would be especially true on the channel that calls itself without batting an eye-lash, “France culture.”

The tendency of Europeans to copycat the United States is so pronounced that it even affects social pathologies, the last thing you should want to imitate. Accordingly, it seems that the French expression for “serial killer” is: “serial killer.” N.S. ! (Would I make this up?)

So back to guns in America. The French anchorette was just about right about the number of Americans who died of gunshot last year. It’s a little less than 3/30,000 American overall. What the anchorette did not say, quite possibly because she did not know, possibly because she was not curious enough to find out, possibly because she did not really read her source, what she did not say is that 2/3 of these deaths, two thirds, were self-inflicted deaths, suicides, in other words. Only 1/3 were killed by others using a gun or guns. The Frenchanchorette was exaggerating an already pretty dismal situation. Gun homicides by 100,000 people are more than sixteen times higher in the US than in France or in Denmark. The Danish homicide by gun death rate, in turn, appears to be five times higher than that of Romania. Keep that piece of trivia in mind; it may come in handy. (All figures from Wikipedia.) Do I think there is something fishy in the last comparison? You bet! Do you think gun control advocates go to the bottom of it when they observe such suspicious numbers? To ask the question is to answer it.

The European media I know that report on the US tend to be like the Frenchanchorette cited above. They are generally ill-informed, narrow-minded, and willfully ignorant, in addition to malevolent. I am sure there are others that are knowledgeable, open-minded, and benevolent. I just have not come across them often. Perhaps it’s my sampling method that’s at fault. Whatever the case may be, I will make it my job to help those everywhere who are perplexed, understandably, by the US guns situation. Below are basic relevant facts with some opinions attached. I try to differentiate clearly opinions from facts.

The right for citizens to have their own weapons is guaranteed by the US Constitution through its Second Amendment, adopted in 1791. This second amendment has been subjected to attacks from that date and ceaselessly so. The Supreme Court affirmed twice in recent years that the right to bear (carry) arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment belongs to individual citizens. Period. This may come as a surprise to non-Americans. It’s not my opinion, it’s a fact that’s easily verifiable. This may be hard to believe, as seen from afar because a sizable portion of American public opinion keeps arguing against the right to bear arms as if it were not an individual right. It’s more or less the same portion of American public opinion that would like the US to become Denmark. Those are well-meaning people who never ask themselves if Americans would have the ability to become Danes. They take for granted that they would become good Danes if they wanted to. Myself, I think not. Thank you for asking.

Constitutionality matters to Americans. We believe we are a nation of laws. There is not much wiggle space about the lawfulness of a society: It’s lawful – with some accidental departures that must be loudly denounced – or it’s not lawful. Accordingly, we believe further that we face constantly a slippery-slope situation: Start cutting corners with parts of the US Constitution and soon, you will be living in a lawless society. A desire for strict respect of the constitution may be the only attitude shared by large numbers of Americans. This strict respect does allow for authoritative interpretation by the few legitimate authorities, the Supreme Court, mostly. There are also prescribed ways for the American electorate to change the Constitution. If you don’t like some feature of the Constitution, I say, just change it. After all, it was modified 27 times since 1789, including 11 times in the twentieth century. Modifying the US Constitution is intendedly difficult but not impossible.

If you demand deep changes to the constitutionally guaranteed rights but you are not willing to change the constitution, shut the hell up! If you don’t like this statement, I think you are a fascist, or a crypto-fascist, or a fascist who has not yet realized he is a fascist (I know many of the latter, among political “liberals,” from my long sojourn in Academe.) It would be hard to overstate the depth of this feeling among ordinary Americans. If I, for example, knew someone who did not share this view of the importance of the US Constitution, and if there were a way to expel him from the country, and if the decision were mine, I would be glad to throw him out personally. (Don’t worry, it’s not constitutionally possible to do so.)

Partisan liberal commentators in the media and elsewhere systematically spread falsehoods about current conditions. A favorite is demanding a ban on “automatic weapons” and on “assault weapons.” Assault weapons that are not automatic are not assault weapons so, the second proscription reduces to the first. It turns out that automatic weapons have been prohibited since the late twenties. Asking for their banning is not mere ignorance; it’s deliberately misleading. (It seems to me that if you are going to write anything about regulating or banning any firearms, you owe it to your audience to inform yourself about basic terms. In such charged debates, there is no such thing as innocent ignorance. If I said “welfare cheats” to mean “welfare recipients,” I would be guilty of something other than innocent ignorance.)

It’s interesting to argue about the relationship – if any – between the prevalence of guns in any society and the frequency of homicide and that same society. (I will do some of this myself below.) However, as far as American society is concerned, it’s largely a dead issue. The horse left that barn a long time ago. The reason is that there are about three hundred million privately owned firearms in the US.

That’s nearly as many guns in the US as inhabitants. My own household is typical in this respect, I think. There are two of us. We own two long guns. In addition, and because I am a nice guy, at bottom, I keep a CO2 handgun near me at all times. I am a nice guy because the CO2 gun probably wouldn’t kill anyone but it would hurt like hell at close range.

Now, think of the chaos that would ensue if the government tried to disarm all citizens. Think of the practical difficulties involved. Of course, many, like me, would insist that everyone be disarmed. (I am not afraid of a knife fight except against someone who holds a six-shooter pointed at me.)

American gun laws seem complicated because they are. The reason is that gun regulation is mostly a state function, a state prerogative rather than depending on federal legislation. States vary widely in the degree to which they restrict the exercise of their citizens’ federal Second Amendment. What is perfectly legal on one side of a state boundary may be prohibited one foot away. Firearms restrictions are not even easy to know. Local authorities, such as cities, often ad their own (more or less constitutional) restrictions. So, I have been wondering whether it’s legal in my left-liberal city of Santa Cruz to walk around with a rifle slung across my back. I have not been able to get a clear opinion in five-six years. I suspect the only way to find out its to try it. I am not willing to risk arrest to find out. It makes me bitter that I have no practical way of finding the extent of local restrictions on the exercise of my constitutional right. This bitterness must feed an undercurrent of offensive defensiveness against anyone who says anything in favor of gun control in general. It creates a mood, a negative mood. It’s a burden of proof issue. I think that gun control advocates who are not badly deluded tend to be morally dishonest. They pretty much have to give me some sign that they are not dishonest before I will listen to them.

It’s difficult for others, for Danes, for example, to understand that uses of firearms to which they might not really object are much alive, much current in much of the US, rather than historical curiosities. There are millions of deer in the US (not counting Alaska) against, say twenty or thirty in Denmark, (all in zoos or escaped from zoos). American deer are so plentiful that they kill a significant number of Americans each year, about 200, and that they are involved in hundreds of thousands of vehicle collisions. It’s obvious that, with such bountifulness, some deer will and ought to end up on people’s dinner tables. You need rifles to kill deer. In addition millions of Americans eat rabbits, hares, pheasants, partridges, quails, ducks, geese, and even squirrels. (Compare with the seven Danish rabbits all of which know exactly when the hunting season opens and that cross into Germany when the time comes.) For all these varieties of small game animals to end in the pot, millions of shotguns are required.

Besides, in the US as in Europe, there are few farmers and ranchers left and noxious animals increase in number accordingly. There are many more coyotes in the US, for example, than there were one hundred years ago, posing danger to cattle and sheep. There are now even super-coyote, large versions of the animal, in the East where there used to be no coyotes at all. Animals that threaten livestock are kept in check partly with poison, partly with firearms. Many people, including me, favor the second method as more precise than poison. In recent years, populations of mountain lions (cougars) and of bears have also increased and spread. In a famous California ski resort I used to know well, black bears are a danger to school children because they are so numerous and because they hibernate under vacation cabins. This induces ordinary people, including housewives, to arm themselves, of course. (What would you do if you were afraid a bear was going to eat your child?)

Violent crime – including crime involving firearms – has been in decline in the US for thirty years. Yet, many Americans, I think most Americans, don’t know this fact or they don’t believe it. The aging of the American population taking place at the same time and the ever-greater reach of raw, alarming news contribute to make the population feel vulnerable in spite of the objective facts on the ground. Since police efficacy has not progressed in unison with this feeling of insecurity, the tendency to want to protect oneself may grow although it shouldn’t.

A disproportionate number of guns deaths and a disproportionate number of gun homicide is associated with young men who are members of racial minorities. Thus, there were 500 public shootings in Chicago in the year 2012. I would be glad to bet anyone – without looking- that 400 of those or more involved both black killers and black victims. It goes without saying that the population of Chicago is not 4/5 black, and neither is the population of young men, specifically. In my corner of the US, the America-born children of law-abiding Mexican immigrants routinely shoot one another in the street in broad daylight.

Political correctness in the United States is now so extensive and so deeply entrenched that the paragraph above embodies a nearly forbidden subject. There are very few public figures willing to state the obvious: The primary cause of death among young black men is young black men. Since this kind of gun killing is often at the center of homicide maps, it’s become difficult to discuss the general topic of guns and homicides even in a general way. There is always the fear that the ugly face of the truth will show up even in such a general discussion. The current domination of the American media by candy-assed liberals does not help. (Lexicographic note for speakers of English as a second language: “candy-assed” means what you guessed it means.)

The relationship between the frequency of gun ownership, on the one hand, and the frequency of homicide on the other is not as straightforward as simple-minded comments by simple-minded Europeans would have it. They usually base their reasoning (such as it is) on cross-country comparisons. Such comparisons are pretty much hopeless. As I pointed out earlier, Danes are fifteen times less likely to die from being shot by another person than are Americans. But Danes are probably as many times less likely to write a good popular song than are Americans. And Danes are about one hundred times less likely than the French to prepare a single good meal in a lifetime. (My authority on this is the celebrated all-Danish movie: “Babette’s Feast.”) Plus, there is a good evidence that Kenyans, on the average, run much faster than Indians. In fact, it’s not absurd to imagine that keeping age and sex constant all Kenyans run faster than all Indians. And I would swear that Indians from Mumbai are several times more patient in traffic jams than are New Yorkers (personal observation). And then, of course, there is the mysterious low rate of gun homicides in Romania and in Azerbaijan, and in Mauritius, all countries that, on paper, make ordinary law-abiding Danes look like maniac killers.

Each country is different. Each country is a product of its own idiosyncratic history. Among the many factors that make countries different from one another, there are some that affect the propensity to use guns with criminal intent. Most strikingly, most obviously, different national cultures are differently open to central government interventions in daily life. I often cite Finland in my writings as a virtuous country. This does not mean that Americans should pattern behavior after Finnish behavior. Few Americans would be able to become Finns if they tried, if they wanted to. (They don’t want to, by and large.) The Finnish government is downright intrusive by American standards. I think that each country has its own more or less distantly gun-related history that impedes meaningful international comparisons.

A strong argument with face-validity can be made about how widespread gun possession may limit the frequency of gun homicide. It’s in two related but factually separate parts. First, a would-be killer may be intimidated from acting out by the fear that he will himself be gunned down. Second a gun wielding murderer who is not so intimidated may be stopped in action by armed people present on the scene. The largest modern mass murder comes to mind. It took place in a country with severe gun laws, Norway, in the summer of 2011. That massacre took place over more than three hours. No one who has been around armed peaceful citizens believes the number would have been anywhere so high as 77 in a place like, say, Texas. There, ten or more good ole boys and good ole girls would have taken potshots at the killer and a lucky shot would have brought him down or even simply distracted him enough to save some lives.

A reasonable person who cares about freedom but who also cares about safety for himself and for his fellow citizens is left with two kinds of systematic inferences. The first category is inferences from comparisons between entities that are more historically homogenous than nations but where gun control measures differ significantly. The fifty American states provide such a natural laboratory. (There may be others such as the Swiss cantons. I would welcome any information about those.)

As far as I know at the time of this writing, US states with the most restrictive gun laws, such as California and New York, do not stand out for being comparatively free from gun homicide. That’s as far as I know, I am open to good information contrary to this statement. “Good information” may, in this case, conform to standards less stringent that the usual double-blind refereed article in a scholarly journal.

The second source of inferences is “before and after” comparisons of the same entity posing essentially those two questions: When gun control tightens, when gun ownership becomes more restricted in law, does the frequency of homicide decline? When guns become more abundant and when gun control relaxes, does the frequency of homicide increase?

As far as I know, as of this writing, states that tighten gun control measures do not see a significant decrease in gun homicides. Here again, I am open to learning.

As an intellectually honest person who loves both liberty and security, given the absence of clear-cut systematic evidence, I am forced to make up my mind on the basis of anecdotal evidence. There are three anecdotal items that currently contribute to making up my mind against general gun control.

First, in the UK, where gun control is powerful and effective, most burglaries take place with residents in the home. Across the US, where all states have less stringent gun control than the UK, few burglaries take place when residents are present. It seems to me that the burglars’ fear of being gunned down by a resident must play a role in this striking disparity. (This, notwithstanding my warning against cross-national comparisons.)

Second, the last few gun massacres in the US were enacted with legal weapons, some of which had slid from their legal owners to parties that were not legally entitled to possess them. This observation is an argument for a total ban on firearms as it is an illustration of the difficulties involved in enforcing gun laws, it seems to me.

Third, almost all recent mass massacres in the US took place in zones that could reasonably be expected to be gun-free. An elementary school in Connecticut is a case in point. The relevant authorities in such schools tend to be silly do-gooders who intuit that areas occupied by children are by nature innocent spaces (That’s an opinion.) Another recent gun massacre took place in a movie theater the owner of which had pointedly designated as “gun-free.” As I noted in a previous blog ( “Guns,” posted December 17th 2012), we are sill awaiting a mass shooting in a firearms trade-show. ( That’s like a flea-market where non-professionals sell arms to one another and trade with one another.) Firearms trade-shows must boast some of the highest concentrations of guns on earth, of course. Even armies typically have a lower firearm concentration. (The Fort Hood massacre of 2009 took place in an Army base where most military personnel had been pointedly disarmed to limit the risk of accidental shooting.)

These observations suggest to me that, other things being equal, criminal shooters would usually rather not face guns themselves. In spite of the real exception of so-called “suicides by cop,” even mass murderers who end up killing themselves prefer not be interrupted by others with guns. I think the weight of the evidence is that the possible presence of guns in unknown numbers and of unknown nature is a form of dissuasion against criminal gun users. This is, in my book, a powerful argument against most arguments that would rely on massacres of innocents to demand most forms of additional gun control.

The price on pays for relying – as I do – on anecdotal evidence is that one’s convictions must be fragile. It would take no more than one single good study to force me to revise my position and, per chance, to obligates me to a u-turn on gun ownership. A u-turn would force me to confront my abhorrence of despotism with my desire for safety from madmen and from evil people.

Liberal Authoritarianism: Independence Day, the Sequel

This is Part Two of a report on my American Independence Day (Part one is “An Eventful American Independence Night.” It was posted on July 5^th 2012.)

The best beach in Santa Cruz was cordoned off for the evening with plastic netting, and illuminated by powerful projectors. There were only a small number of narrow entry points where beach-goers were inspected individually for contraband. I don’t know if anyone was frisked but younger people were intimidated into answering questions they should not have to answer routinely according to my understanding of the Constitution. (I think law enforcement officers may not stop you at all without cause or probable cause.)

There were two kinds of contraband, possibly three. The first was obviously alcohol. Alcohol is outlawed on that beach at all times. I regret to admit that I think it’s a good policy. In the days before the prohibition, I had the feeling that the same beach was more dangerous to children. The “maybe” contraband would be weapons although I don’t understand by what authority a quasi-municipality, the harbor, and a county could jointly or separately restrict the citizens’ right to bear arms. Incredibly, it being the Fourth of July, Independence Day, the second kind of contraband was… fireworks.

Local government entities routinely ban fireworks for the Fourth of July. They ban fireworks in the towns were many houses are made of wood. They ban fireworks in brush and forest areas, reasonably enough. They also ban fireworks in the sand and on the water. Public safety specialists in the Santa Cruz area apparently believe that sand can burn and that the sea can go up in flames. Note that even the most fanatical local greenie will no affirm that the local seawater is so polluted that it will catch fire. (In fact, it ‘s not polluted at all, except very segmentally and only by concentrations of seabird shit. Bird dropping being natural, greenies should love them and not fear breathing them while swimming or swallowing them accidentally. But I digress in the most disgustingly self-indulgent manner!)

The local prohibition of fireworks makes me wonder how thousands of French villages, many quite a bit smaller than Santa Cruz, manage to offer a beautiful, complex fireworks to their citizens on Bastille Day, year after year. It makes me wonder why France has not yet been burned down to the tree roots and French beaches sand melted into glass. Of course, the French often have their fire department take charge of fireworks, even volunteer fire department. The system seems to work for everyone.

Someone will object that involving fire departments would cost money and that this is not a good time given that so many local entities are in dire financial straights. I don’t know about that. They did not rely on that obvious situation when they thought, and we thought, they were rich. And I don’t believe paying locally employed law enforcement officers time and half or more is economical. That’s not counting the private security employees hired for the occasion of this every labor-intensive endeavor. Why does the uncharitable thought cross my mind that providing overtime for public employees is one of the motivation behind the fireworks ban, possibly not a conscious one?

Later in the evening, leaving the scene in my truck was like moving across a city under martial law. There were law enforcement officers in the fog under the street lights at every crossroad directing traffic into unnatural patterns. One sent me into an eternal loop I could only escape by cheating. The police occupation continued much after the crowds had left the area.

A harbor guy I won’t name because it would be bad for this career confided to me that the real issue occasioning this vast deployment of armed force was concerns with possible mass rioting. I know a little the guy who said this. He strikes me as a reasonable person. He was not putting me on. This raises the question: Who would riot?

Santa Cruz is Silicone Valley’s beach town. Directly as my informer stopped talking I conceive visions of hordes of rowdy India-born hoodlums descending on my city, their pocket protectors bristling with non-pens pens of unknown usage. I could just see them in my mind’s eye sowing wy-fy havoc on our rudimentary 2010 !phones.

Or, maybe, just maybe, political correctness being what it is in this left-liberal region, this bastion of 1970s political culture, another fear underlaid the ban and the security measures. I don’t know that what came to my mind is true. It may just be speculation. Is it possible that the local authorities are afraid that the gangs from nearby towns such as Watsonville and Salinas would seize the opportunity of lose revelry to transform the beaches into battlefield where to continue their deadly wars ? Is it possible the same local authorities don’t have the internal fortitude to name the object of their fears? The problem is that upward of 99% of violent gang members seem to have Spanish surnames. Could it be that stating that they, the authorities close the beaches to contain gangs would be considered the sin of sins, racial profiling?

PS I like Santa Cruz Harbor a great deal. It’s this extreme rarity: a public entity with quasi-municipal powers that does not rely on taxes. It’s long overdue for my complimentary essay.

An Illegal, Unconstitutional War? Reality Check (Amended 5/25/12)

Some libertarians, misguided by Ron Paul, among several false leaders and several bad leaders, habitually, even frequently denounce the war in Afghanistan and the war of liberation of Iraq as “illegal”and “unconstitutional.” Such statements meet with little overt contradiction because the public has grown tired of both wars, the one that we left behind in Iraq and the one that’s more or less continuing in Afghanistan. These wars lasted too long for the American national ADD. In addition much of public opinion considers the charges of illegality and of unconstitutionality thoroughly irrelevant. Many more don’t even understand such charges. I think I understand well the charge of unconstitutionality and I consider it important. I care only a little about the charge of illegality. It’s too vague to be important and too absurd on its face to merit much consideration. Yet, it may be a conceptual step to the charge of unconstitutionality, the one that merits attention.

Right now, I cannot perform the research “lite” but nevertheless time consuming required to deal with the constitutionality of the former war against Saddam Hussein. I can however try to throw some light on the constitutionality of the on-going war in Afghanistan against the Taliban barbarians and against their allies.

Note on 5/25/12:  My Ron Paul devoted follower- in- residence, Brandon Christensen, insisted several times in comments to this essay that Congressman Paul never called the Afghan war illegal or unconstitutional. Rather than review several tedious hours of the presidential debates where I heard Paul say that, I insert this warning here. If you believe Christensen, you may want to read what follows as a free-floating essay on the constitutionality of that war. Incidentally, Christensen himself, the loyal Paulista, has not responded to my invitation to declare whether he, Christensen, thinks the war is legal and constitutional. What he thinks is a secret.

Before I begin, let me say that I recognize that the war in Afghanistan is winding down. It will end almost irrespective of anything anyone does except in the unlikely case another massive attack against us originates there. I am sorry that war is ending the way it’s ending. I mean, with the democratic world displaying its lack of resolve for all believers in mass murder to see. I also think there is a fair chance that the Taliban savages will take over the country anew after we leave. Accordingly, it’s possible that again and again Afghanistan will serve as a haven for violent jihadists who have wet-dreams about assassinating large numbers of infidels. Incidentally, if you study the issue even a little you will soon discover – or re-discover – that “infidels” deserving of assassination by the violent jihadist include many more Muslims than non-Muslims of any kind. On May 19^th 2012, the victims were 90+ members of the Yemenite armed forces. Periodically, the victims are the subdued Shiite Muslims in Pakistan; earlier they were even Iraqi Shiite Muslims who were themselves busy trying to kill Americans.

My wife’s share and my share of the cost of the ten-year war, together, averaged $400 annually so far. That’s about as much as I spent on tobacco when I was still smoking. It’s less than we currently spend on wine, and we have humble tastes and my wife hardly drinks any. It’s not much money to keep reminding the many mean, America-hating people in the world that we area a tough nut to crack.

Yes, of course, I don’t forget the 3,000 brave Americans who died in Afghanistan, nor the hundreds of NATO allies. The Americans died for a noble and valuable cause, to establish the notion that killing Americans and protecting those who kill Americans bring pain and suffering. Of course, every death is one too many but, if you believe this literally you have to surrender to the worst barbarity. It’s a kind of moral blackmail for those who use it. And, of course, I find despicable the crocodile tears of secret pacifists who call the Afghan war illegal. That just war has cost a ten times fewer American lives in ten years than traffic accidents cost in a single year. Yet, anti-war types never never go after traffic mortality although it’s obvious to any thinking person that many traffic deaths are avoidable. ( Driver’s license canceled on first DUI conviction; five years in jail on the second.) Anti-war persons of all feathers believe that it it’s no big deal if Americans kill Americans in a drunken stupor as long as the killers are at the wheel of an automobile. Some moral compass!

The charge of unconstitutionality of the Afghanistan war must depend on what the US Constitution has to say about war. Here it is, below in its entirety. It’s amazingly brief:

ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8The Congress shall have Power:To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; To provide and maintain a Navy; To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress…. ARTICLE II, SECTION 2 The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States when called into actual service of the United State

In addition, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 limits the ability of the President to wage war without Congressional assent. By doing so, of course, the resolution recognizes de facto the right of the President to wage war of his own accord to some extent. This ordinary act of Congress obviously does not modify any part of the Constitution.

There are several precedents of presidential autonomy in matters of war. Here is one: In 1801, President Thomas Jefferson attacked the Barbary Pirates (of Libya!) and kicked their asses. What happened is that after the United States separated from the UK, the pirates figured the US as a state was too far away and too small to do anything about attacks against its merchantmen and looting and slaving taking place in the Med. Pres. Jefferson became annoyed.

“Jefferson sent a small force to the area to protect American ships and citizens against potential aggression, but insisted that he was ‘unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense.’” He told Congress: “I communicate [to you] all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight.”^[14] Although Congress never voted on a formal declaration of war, they did authorize the President to instruct the commanders of armed American vessels to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli “and also to cause to be done all such other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war will justify.” (Wikipedia)

Pres. Jefferson thus struck the pirate states without benefit of a formal declaration of war by Congress. He must have thought that when other people shoot at you, you shoot back, that you don’t need permission to do so. Congress did nothing to stop Jefferson. It seems Congress thought that Jefferson knew pretty well what the Constitution meant. I am wondering if Congressman Ron Paul, or any of his followers, would call the war against the Barbary pirates “unconstitutional.” I am not just asking for the sake of asking. I would like to see any of Paul’s followers answer this question here in writing.

The fact that the War Powers Act and the actions of several respected presidents show that the American executive may wage war with the passive acquiescence of Congress however does not mean that the War of Afghanistan was started that way

What happened is that President Clinton several time threatened the Taliban regime militarily if it did not stop hosting and helping Al Qaida. The fact is that President Clinton acted on his military threat. The feeble Clintonian military actions in Afghanistan however proved insufficient to motivate the Taliban regime to interfere with Al Qaida while it was preparing the 9/11 massacre. Thus, the American response to 9/11 was not written on a blank page. It was not a kind of Pearl Harbor in reverse. (I think libertarian commentaries imply something like that.) Even the semi-literate Taliban rulers had all the information at their disposal to know that a state of war existed between them and the US. That was several years before 9/11/2001.

Seven days after the 9/11 attack, a joint resolution of Congress gave the President the power to use all necessary force against those he determined planned, authorized or aided the 9/11 attack as well as those who harbored those who committed the attack. (This wording is paraphrased from Public Law 107-40, 107^th Congress of the United States, first session; September 18^th 2001. If you don’t like it, give your own wording right here, please.)

The joint resolution that begun the present war in Afghanistan passed by 420 to 1 in the House of Representatives. It passed by 98 to 0 (zero) in the Senate.

I don’t know how any war could be more legal than this.

Now, if you want to argue that the omission of the sacred words, “declare” and “war” is enough to make the war unconstitutional, go ahead, do it openly.

Libertarian leaders who say the Afghan war is unconstitutional or illegal, and first and foremost Congressman Ron Paul, don’t seem to know what they are talking about. Or else, they are closet pacifists who don’t wish to pay the political price of their moral convictions, ethical cowards, if you will.

If there is some sophisticated constitutional argument to the contrary that escapes me, I would be glad to publish it on this blog integrally and repeatedly. I will not treat especially well however attempts to change the subject under the pretext of picking up this challenge.

American Fascism or Treading Water?

The President threatened the Supreme Court today. The carrion stink of fascism never wafts far from the Obama kitchen. It was already there during his campaign (and I wrote about it). So, he may be laying the groundwork for a constitutional coup:

“This constitution is too old. We need something better suited to our times. Anyone who does not see this is a racist.”   That’s on the one hand.

On the other hand, this speculation is not in line with most of what I have been saying on this blog: This is a man out of his depth.

It’s difficult to reconcile the cold cynicism required for a coup with Mr Obama’s practice of telling big lies that he has no chance of getting away with. This is a man who declared recently in stentorian tones that a vote of 219 to 214 is a “big” margin (or a ‘wide” margin, same thing). He does not realize that if five Democrats had had the flu that day and stayed home, Obamacare would have failed in the House. Or that if three Representatives had switched sides, the same thing would have happened.

I don’t see how that could have been a lie, I mean a deliberate distortion of the facts. I am guessing he is just treading water.What do you think?

Liberal Terrorism and Even More on the Mosque

A young man stabs a taxi driver in NYC after questioning him on his religion. The victim is a Muslim. The attacker practicing this private form of terrorism belongs to a group that supports the Near Ground Zero mosque project. No, this is not a mistake: supports. Here is the report from rabid right-wing newspaper The New York Times, dated 8/26/10: :

“ Mr. Enright is a volunteer with Intersections International, a nonprofit that works to promote cross-cultural understanding and has spoken out in favor of the proposed Islamic cultural center near ground zero.”

Several blogs and others blame Fox News! (Deuh!)

Another Muslim intellectual talks about the Near Ground Zero mosque in the Wall Street Journal of 8/26/10 (See my posting about his predecessors: “ Declaration by Muslim Intellectuals on Ground Zero Mosque, posted 8/16/10.) She says pretty much what I posted a couple of days ago (“ The ‘Ground Zero’ Mosque Issue Clarified,” posted 8/20/10.”) Yet, she says it better because she is better informed. Her name is: Irshad Manji.

She makes several proposals to ferret out malice and disingenuity in the mosque developers. Here are excerpts from her column in the Wall Street Journal today and my explanatory comments in parentheses:

“Where will be the men’s side to the mosque?” (To find out if the congregation will be segregated according to sex during prayer.)

“ Will the swimming pool (at the proposed multicultural center) be segregated between women and men…?”

“ May women lead congregation prayers any day of the week?”

“ Will Christians and Jews, fellow People of the Book, be able to use the prayer sanctuary for their services…?”

“ What will be taught about homosexuals?About agnostics? About atheists? About apostasy?” (In some Muslim countries, renouncing Islam, apostasy, is punishable by death.)

Professor Manji is a brave woman. I wish she were an American.

Note: In an earlier draft, I identified this brave person as a man and as an American. A reader kindly corrected me: Wrong on both counts. Shame on me because I had read about her a year ago; I just forgot her name.

In the meantime, I am having face-to-face bits and pieces of conversations with Muslims I know about the Near-Ground Zero mosque controversy. That would include devout Muslims who are currently observing Ramadan, and fallen Muslims heading for Hell. I encounter the same problems with both kinds:

First, they are slippery. They want to respond without answering my simple questions.

Second, I can’t seem to get across my position which I think is simple. Here it is, again:

The Constitution gives the Near-Ground Zero developers the right to build their multicultural center. As a conservative, I think private property is private property. No level of government should interfere with their right to do whatever they want with it, including build a mosque.

Here is what my Muslim acquaintances don’t seem to understand: The Constitution forbids the government from interfering with freedom of religion or with the freedom to enjoy one’s property. The Constitution does not obligate me to be nice according to the rules of multiculturalism I think of as brain paralysis. The Constitution does not enjoin me to show “tolerance” toward what I abhor. Neither the Constitution nor my belief in private property gives the near-Ground Zero mosque developers the right to be free from my thinking they are hypocritical ass-holes. It’s my constitutional right to think it and to say it. And also to draw cartoons disrespectful of Prophet Muhammad.
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