Reason To Stand

Originally posted as a comment on this Louder with Crowder post in regards to whether the right to keep and bear arms applies to individuals. I’m reproducing it here for easier reference in the future. You should add in the Militia Acts of 1792 which basically calls every citizen 18 or older a de-facto citizen of the militia and _requires_ them to be able to furnish a gun and ammo if called on. In other words, what we now understand as selective service has its roots in the “well regulated militia” clause. “A well regulated militia” meant citizens who were equipped and disciplined enough to form a standing army if called on. ...

" The Intern" could have been a great movie. Obligatory spoiler alert here. Ben is the grandfather you never had. He is in his 70s but you would never know it because he is physically fit and his mental faculties are as sharp as ever. He has led a long successful life and is apparently doing well enough financially to afford a nice house in a nice NY neighborhood and wear tailored suits every day. Ben loves learning and doing new things. Ben even learned to speak Chinese. Why? Who cares! Ben is obviously the picture of competence and professional accomplishment. ...

A friend of mine posted the following picture on my Facebook wall recently: The problem with the Christian -> KKK and Muslim -> ISIS analogy lies in how we define what a fundamentalist or radical is. For a Christian that would mean looking like Jesus. For a Muslim that would mean looking like Mohammad. Some Muslims, in their devotion to Muhammad, even enter into the bathroom with the left foot because one of the Hadiths (additional teachings and sayings of Mohammad’s life) teach that he entered with his left foot and left with his right foot. Likewise the term “Christian” literally means “little Christs” and there are many places in the Bible which spell out how followers of “the Way” (another title Jesus applied to himself) should think and act. ...

The other night I found myself watching E.T with the family. And since I can’t watch a movie anymore without also being on my laptop, here are some interesting facts about E.T I bet you didn’t know. First and foremost, E.T. is all about divorce, not aliens. After his success with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Spielberg had instead set out to make a smaller, more personal film. “E.T. was about the divorce of my parents, how I felt after my parents broke up,” Spielberg admitted. “[It was] the first movie I ever made for myself.” The idea for E.T began to form while the director was on location in Tunisia for Raiders. A lonely Spielberg started picturing something of an imaginary friend. “It was like when you were a kid and had grown out of dolls or teddy bears,” he recalled. “You just wanted a little voice in your mind to talk to. I began concocting this imaginary creature, partially from the guys who stepped out of the Mother Ship for ninety seconds in Close Encounters [1977].” He shared the idea with Melissa Mathison, Harrison Ford’s screenwriter girlfriend who had already penned two family films The Black Stallion (1979) and The Escape Artist (1982). Together Spielberg and Mathison fleshed out the story. ...

The image above is making the following argument: Premise 1: Things that look the same should be treated equally Premise 2: Under the skin, we all _look_ the same Conclusion: Therefore we should disregard all of the categories above and treat each other as equals. The first problem is that its not true that we are all the same under the skin. There are numerous differences between us even in our skeletons. These differences are such that archeologists will still know a lot about us even when we are dead and gone. ...

Thus says this ThinkProgress image, anyway: I found this image on a Facebook friend’s wall. Here’s my response interposed with comments from his rather liberal friends: It is sad that they would reject their family rather than learning to control themselves. So it’s safe to assume, Wes Widner, that you also would reject your children if/when they decided they were gay, because you read Leviticus and you choose to ignore all other Leviticus passages, but hold the one about same sex to literal interpretations. ...

From the Forbes’s article which attempts to persuade us that Obamacare really is chock full of puppy dogs and sunshine just as Obama promised: Failure on the part of insurers to meet this requirement will result in the insurers having to send their customers a rebate check representing the amount in which they underspend on actual medical care. That sounds all well and good until you stop and think about it. Who decides what constitutes “underspending”? Ultimately, under Obamacare, prices will be driven up through inflation as outrageous hospital bills are presented as evidence along with insurance companies’s counter-proposals that they are “underspending”. ...

We respond to polished presentations like this: With this: I support traditional marriage but if I had to make a decision based solely on the testimonies above I’d have to side with the person who made an articulate case based on freedom.

Many protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement have roundly denounced any and all forms of capitalism as the source of all our present ills. That’s one of the reasons they chose Wall Street as the place to make their angst known. But while they march and chant and propose lists of endless demands I can’t help but wonder, are those who are so outraged clear on who their enemy really is? ...

I was recently asked on Quora for my thoughts as a social conservative. Being a libertarian my answer was more or less that as long as I am afforded the freedom to disagree and openly criticize actions I consider to be immoral then I don’t mind affording others the ability to live in immoral (and irresponsible) ways. As part of my answer I mentioned the oppression of natural marriage proponents by homosexuals and was subsequently asked to provide evidence to substantiate my claim. ...