Post-1960s progressivism: a lecture from Hillsdale College

Tom sent me this excellent bird’s eye view of the progressive agenda. It’s very direct, and it does NOT shy away from moral standards and social issues. It squarely hits on feminism and gay rights as it relates to marriage and family. (H/T Tom)

The lecture: (37 minutes)

Here’s a snippet from a summary of the lecture from the Hawaiian Reporter:

The natural man-woman-children family was considered the only way to structure healthy family life by both the Founders and Old Progressives.  The Founders believed strong families arose from the natural law and were an essential building block to a virtuous and productive society.  They expected states to pass laws to support the family structure.  The Old Progressives believed similarly that social science required government support of the natural family.  Part of this “support” included the need for trained experts in “home economics” to assist families in the scientific practice of family life.  From both traditions we had laws that made divorce difficult, usually requiring serious grounds like adultery, and placing children in the custody of the father to further discourage frivolous divorce.  Both traditions stressed sexual activity within the family structure.  Both traditions understood the centrality of the natural family to the strength of the society.  Churches and schools supported this traditional morality.

New Progressives adopted sexual liberation as a main value.  They have been indifferent to the natural family as merely one option of how to live, and, in many cases, with a sneering belief that it is not all that good an option.  Sexual liberation contradicts both the natural law of the Founders and the scientific ethical ideal of the Progressives.  Rather than supporting the natural family, the government of the New Progressive does its best to undermine it.  Welfare goes to unmarried women, reducing motivation to marry, replacing fathers with government.  No fault divorce has exploded the divorce rate, with actions brought overwhelmingly by women who are more likely to benefit from it.  “Self expression” of the New Progressives trumps “self control” of natural law.  57% of college students are now women, and Title 9 (that wrought so much damage to men’s smaller sports in college) is now beginning to be applied to STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) studies in academia.  Hiring preferences for women exist throughout government.  There has been no similar concerns about the status of men.  Exploding out of wedlock births (over 40% of all births now) demonstrate the destruction of the natural family.  Now gay marriage is the new cause, an attempt to place such relationships on the same plane as the natural family.  Social health requires children, and children require a father and mother in the same household.  Gay marriage can lead to no procreation, and anti-family policy ensures an underclass of angry, neglected children.

Justice Douglas had embraced sexual liberation as a form of self-expression that frees us from rigid traditional morality of self-control.  Hence first amendment protection of nude dancing.  In Lawrence v Texas, the 2003 Court decision that found state sodomy laws unconstitutional, Justice Kennedy had this to say:  “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” A libertarian might well find criminalizing such conduct as unwise and unjust, but unconstitutional in a document that celebrates natural law?  And we have gone far beyond decriminalization to government celebration of gay alternative life styles.

Even in our foreign policy.  Secretary Clinton considers gay marriage and other aspects of sexual liberation a priority in our foreign policy:  “The Obama Administration defends the human rights of LGBT people as part of our comprehensive human rights policy….The President has directed all U.S. Government agencies engaged overseas to combat the criminalization of LGBT status and conduct.”  The Founders believed that American foreign policy should be about the protection of unalienable rights of Americans.  The Old Progressives that it should be about spreading Progressive ideas of freedom and the uplift of less advanced peoples.  The New Progressives that its should be about spreading sexual liberation throughout the world.

It does discuss fiscal issues, but it does not ignore moral and social ones, since sexual liberation and the breakdown of the family is what drives a lot of the fiscal issues anyway.

The full index to the “Constitution 201″ series is on Youtube in this channel.

Filed under: Videos, Barack Obama, Divorce, Family, Left, Leftism, Marriage, Progressive, Progressivism, Secularism, Sex, Sexual Liberation, Sexual Revolution, Socialism

Man shoots robbery suspect to protect his 2-year-old son

Here’s a local news story from Columbus, Ohio about gun violence.

Excerpt:

A Columbus man said that he fought back when a man tried to rob him at gunpoint in west Columbus Monday night.

Kelby Smith, 34, told police he was in the driveway of the home on Crescent Drive just before 9 p.m. when he was approached by a robber.

Smith said that he had his 2-month-old in a car carrier and had to shield him from the robber who held a gun at Smith’s head.

The suspect took Smith’s money and started to flee the scene as he pointed the gun back at Smith and his child.

That’s when Smith pulled out his own gun and fired at the robber.

The robber continued to run, but police said that a man fitting his description arrived at Mount Carmel West a short time later with a gunshot wound.

Authorities said Smith does have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, and they believe he was trying to defend himself.

Police are continuing to investigate, but the man at the hospital could face charges if it’s determined he is the robbery suspect.

Smith and his child were uninjured in the robbery.

Right now, the Democrats are going to be pushing for restrictions on guns, but it’s important to understand what guns are most commonly used for. For every one school shooting, there are hundreds of thousands of cases where guns are used for self-defense. If you are a leftist who believes in banning guns, ask yourself what would have happened if that legally-owned gun had not been there in this story. What should the victim do when confronted with a criminal? What I hear from leftists when I ask that question is that they think that criminals have more rights to commit crimes than law-abiding people have to defend themselves. That’s their view, although they usually don’t come out and say it. For people on the left, those who have property and wealth didn’t get it by working, and so it can be stolen from them. Law-abiding people have no right to upset the poor criminals by defending themselves.

Filed under: News, 2nd Amendment, Ban, Constitution, Constitutional, Crime, Family, Feminism, Firearm, Freedom, Gun, Gun Control, Gun-Free Zone, Handgun, Liberal, Liberty, Male Nature, Man, Men, Misandry, Nanny State, Progressive, Protector, School Shooting, Self-Defense, Shooting, Victim, Violent

Woman uses gun to defend herself and her children from home intruder

From WSB-TV in Georgia. (H/T Pro-Existence)

Excerpt:

A woman hiding in her attic with children shot an intruder multiple times before fleeing to safety Friday.

The incident happened at a home on Henderson Ridge Lane in Loganville around 1 p.m. The woman was working in an upstairs office when she spotted a strange man outside a window, according to Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman. He said she took her 9-year-old twins to a crawlspace before the man broke in using a crowbar.

But the man eventually found the family.

“The perpetrator opens that door. Of course, at that time he’s staring at her, her two children and a .38 revolver,” Chapman told Channel 2’s Kerry Kavanaugh.

The woman then shot him five times, but he survived, Chapman said. He said the woman ran out of bullets but threatened to shoot the intruder if he moved.

“She’s standing over him, and she realizes she’s fired all six rounds. And the guy’s telling her to quit shooting,” Chapman said.

[...]In February, Slater was arrested on simple battery charges, according to the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office. He has been arrested six other times in the county since 2008.

And here’s what makes this story interesting to me:

Kavanaugh was the first reporter at the scene as deputies investigated. The victim’s husband told Kavanaugh he’s proud of his wife. He was on the phone with her as the intruder broke in.

“My wife is a hero. She protected her kids. She did what she was supposed to do as responsible, prepared gun owner,” Donnie Herman said.

He said he’s thankful for his family’s safety.

“Her life is saved, and her kids’ life is saved, and that’s all I’d like to say,” Herman said.

I think that this last part is important. I have many reasons for being cautious about marriage in a time like this. Marriage is a particular thing and there are certain jobs that men and women need to perform in the marriage. Society can either support them or hinder them in those roles. Married men are supposed to be protectors, providers and moral/spiritual leaders in the home, but some laws and policies can hinder their ability to do those roles. For example, high tax rates prevent men from providing, by decreasing economic growth and decreasing take-home pay. Similarly, laws that regulate, ban and criminalize self-defense deter marriage-minded men from marrying. In the UK, homeowners are regularly arrested, tried and convicted for defending their property and family from criminals.

If I were to get married, I need to be able to defend my family. That means owning weapons and being legally protected to use them. Although gun regulations and bans are very popular with single women, I think that this is just another areas where single women need to change their view. Single women have to understand that marriage is a lot more complicated than “happily ever after”. There are specific tasks to perform in marriage. Each parent is suited to different tasks. Single women need to change their views to support policies that are marriage-friendly.

Filed under: News, 2nd Amendment, Anti-Male, Ban, Cinemark, Connecticut, Constitution, Constitutional, Crime, Family, Feminism, Feminized, Firearm, Freedom, Gun, Gun Control, Gun-Free Zone, Handgun, Liberal, Liberty, Marriage, Misandry, Multiple, Nanny State, Ownership, Principal, Progressive, Public, Rate, Right, School, School Shooting, Self-Defense, Shooting, Socialism, Teacher, Victim, Violent

John Fund: the facts about mass shootings

From National Review. This article was being shared a lot on Facebook.

Excerpt:

Mass shootings are no more common than they have been in past decades, despite the impression given by the media.

In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.

The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.

Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.

[...]First, the mental-health issue. A lengthy study by Mother Jones magazine found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.”New York Times columnist David Brooks and Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson have both suggested that the ACLU-inspired laws that make it so difficult to intervene and identify potentially dangerous people should be loosened. “Will we address mental-health and educational-privacy laws, which instill fear of legal liability for reporting potentially violent mentally ill people to law enforcement?” asks Professor Jacobson. “I doubt it.”

[...]Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools.

I spoke with Lott after the Newtown shooting, and he confirmed that nothing has changed to alter his findings. He noted that the Aurora shooter, who killed twelve people earlier this year, had a choice of seven movie theaters that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. All were within a 20-minute drive of his home. The Cinemark Theater the killer ultimately chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned concealed handguns carried by law-abiding individuals. All of the other theaters allowed the approximately 4 percent of Colorado adults who have a concealed-handgun permit to enter with their weapons.

[...]Lott offers a final damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

There is no evidence that private holders of concealed-carry permits (which are either easy to obtain or not even required in more than 40 states) are any more irresponsible with firearms than the police. According to a 2005 to 2007 study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Bowling Green State University, police nationwide were convicted of firearms violations at least at a 0.002 percent annual rate. That’s about the same rate as holders of carry permits in the states with “shall issue” laws.

Please read it. It’s good to have the facts when deciding what to make of individual tragic occurrences.

Filed under: News, 2nd Amendment, Ban, Cinemark, Connecticut, Constitution, Constitutional, Crime, Firearm, Freedom, Gun, Gun Control, Gun-Free Zone, Handgun, James Holmes, John Lott, Liberal, Liberty, Multiple, Nanny State, Ownership, Principal, Progressive, Public, Rate, Right, School, School Shooting, Self-Defense, Shooting, Socialism, Teacher, Victim, Violent

Connecticut shooting shows why we need to ban gun-free zones

Do criminals about to do a mass shooting care about signs?

(Thanks to TM for the image)

USA Today has an editorial about the recent shooting in Connecticut and gun-free zones.

Excerpt:

“After a shooting spree,” author William Burroughs once said, “they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.” Burroughs continued: “I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”

Plenty of people — especially among America’s political and journalistic classes — feel differently. They’d be much more comfortable seeing ordinary Americans disarmed. And whenever there is a mass shooting, or other gun incident that snags the headlines, they do their best to exploit the tragedy and push for laws that would, well, take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.

There are a lot of problems with this approach, but one of the most significant is this one: It doesn’t work. One of the interesting characteristics of mass shootings is that they generally occur in places where firearms are banned: malls, schools, etc. That was the finding of a famous 1999 study by John Lott of the University of Maryland and William Landes of the University of Chicago, and it appears to have been borne out by experience since then as well.

In a way, this is no surprise. If there’s someone present with a gun when a mass shooting begins, the shooter is likely to be shot himself. And, in fact, many mass shootings — from the high school shooting by Luke Woodham in Pearl, Miss., to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo., where an armed volunteer shot the attacker — have been terminated when someone retrieved a gun from a car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.

Policies making areas “gun free” provide a sense of safety to those who engage in magical thinking, but in practice, of course, killers aren’t stopped by gun-free zones. As always, it’s the honest people — the very ones you want to be armed — who tend to obey the law.

Here’s Dr. John R. Lott to make the case.

Excerpt:

It wasn’t supposed to happen in England, with its very strict gun-control laws. And yet last week, Derrick Bird shot twelve people to death and wounded eleven others in the northwestern county of Cumbria. A headline in the London Times read: “Toughest laws in the world could not stop Cumbria tragedy.”

But surely this was an aberration. Because America has the most guns, multiple-victim public shootings are an American thing, right? No, not at all. Contrary to public perception, Western Europe, most of whose countries have much tougher gun laws than the United States, has experienced many of the worst multiple-victim public shootings. Particularly telling, all the multiple-victim public shootings in Western Europe have occurred in places where civilians are not permitted to carry guns. The same is true in the United States: All the public shootings in which more than three people have been killed have occurred in places where civilians may not legally bring guns.

Look at recent history. Where have the worst K–12 school shootings occurred? Nearly all of them in Europe. The very worst one occurred in a high school in Erfurt, Germany, in 2002, where 18 were killed. The second-worst took place in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996, where 16 kindergartners and their teacher were killed. The third-worst, with 15 dead, happened in Winnenden, Germany. The fourth-worst was in the U.S. — Columbine High School in 1999, leaving 13 dead. The fifth-worst, with eleven murdered, occurred in Emsdetten, Germany.

It may be a surprise to those who believe in gun control that Germany was home to three of the five worst attacks. Though not quite as tight as the U.K.’s regulations, Germany’s gun-control laws are some of the most restrictive in Europe. German gun licenses are valid for only three years, and to obtain one, the person must demonstrate such hard-to-define characteristics as trustworthiness, and must also convince authorities that he needs a gun. This is on top of prohibitions on gun ownership for those with mental disorders, drug or alcohol addictions, violent or aggressive tendencies, or felony convictions.

The phenomenon is not limited to school attacks. Multiple-victim public shootings in general appear to be at least as common in Western Europe as they are here. The following is a partial list of attacks since 2001. As mentioned, all of them occurred in gun-free zones — places where guns in the hands of civilians are outlawed.

He then lists about two dozen incidents – all occurring in gun free zones.

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Filed under: Commentary, 2nd Amendment, Ban, Cinemark, Connecticut, Constitution, Constitutional, Crime, Firearm, Freedom, Gun, Gun Control, Gun-Free Zone, Handgun, James Holmes, John Lott, Liberal, Liberty, Multiple, Nanny State, Ownership, Principal, Progressive, Public, Rate, Right, School, School Shooting, Self-Defense, Shooting, Socialism, Teacher, Victim, Violent