How to Get Gaddafi - Newsweek

Why should the United States intervene into the affairs of Libya when both sides to the conflict may be equally bad, or even as the case unfolds, the so-called "rebels" may actually be worse than the tyranny under challenge?

Is it to the interests of the United States to have Al Qaeda run Libya rather than the Colonel?  The choice strikes me as not terribly dissimilar than the question during the thirties, do we support Stalin or do we support Hitler?  In that conflict we ultimately chose to ally with Stalin, as unsavory as that prospect was, on the proposition that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Such a calculus in the present case would seem to argue in favor of supporting the dictator, or, at minimum, of not supporting the rebels, since we know Qaddafi is a coward and can be brought to heel; such cannot be said of Al Qaeda.  It may be that Obama's dithering and Hamlet-like indisposition to exert leadership may actually serve our national self-interest, just as Bush's otherwise admirable assertiveness lead us into the Second Iraq War and its questionable results, its enormous cost in treasure, and the profound divisions in our own country with the further weakening of national self-regard internal division always encourages.

It may be that the rebels will fail without our material support.  But do we want them to succeed?  How do we advance our national self-interest by supporting them?  Are they champions of individual rights?  Do they support religious freedom?  Are they in favor of free speech, limited government, some form of democracy in which the rights of women, queer folk and other despised minorities are respected, or, at the minimum, where such minorities are not automatically consigned to cultural slavery, torture, or even death?  In brief, do the rebels promise a decent, civilized government, or merely promise the triumph of Sharia Law?

 

The reality is that very few revolutions, good or bad, succeed without some foreign assistance. Lenin had German money; Mao had Soviet arms. Revolutions that don't get some help from outside aren't so much inorganic as unsuccessful. Indeed, they generally don't go down in history as revolutions at all. More than one revolt has been brutally crushed by an Arab dictator—think of the Marsh Arabs' fate at the hands of Saddam Hussein. Such events tend to be remembered as massacres. We must hope that someone gives President Obama a history lesson before thousands of Libyans share their fate. It will be tragic indeed if America concludes from the experience of overthrowing murderous tyrannies in Afghanistan and Iraq that the correct policy is to turn a blind eye to murder in Libya. That, remember, was the policy pursued by the last Democrat to occupy the White House, in Rwanda as well as, for much too long, in Bosnia.

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/13/how-to-get-gaddafi.html

Art of the American Soldier

The Tea Party & Illegal Immigration

Those wishing to defend the premise that the only legitimate function of government is the protection of individual rights may defend laws against illegal immigration on very simple, straight-forward national security grounds.

Does the man next door to your apartment have an indefeasible right to keep a nuclear weapon on the premises? Some might argue he has; I would argue for a rule of reason and common sense. Clearly we have a right to keep ourselves safe from a potential terrorist, and a man with a nuclear bomb is not likely to be acting from the self-defense motive of a man keeping a Sig-Sauer 9 mm at the ready.

We must look to intent to decide questions of this sort. All abstract propositions become conditional propositions when applied to matters of fact. Some facts are these: that illegal immigration into the USA permits terrorists into the country. It therefore follows a rational country needs an ordered procedure to determine such questions as whether to permit a foreign national from crossing our national borders. By what principle would one argue that he had a "right" to enter the United States?

Therefore I see no rational, factual, or moral basis for the belief that the US is violating that man's rights. Until we know who the man is, what his background is, what his beliefs are--indeed, everything about him--we have no moral obligation to permit his entry into our country. The first order of business for the federal government is the protection of our individual rights from threats or potential threats created by those who wish to make war on the US. Until we can determine whether he is an enemy of the US, he has no right to be here.

On that basis I am completely with the Tea Party people and others who oppose illegal immigration. That our immigration laws may need reform is another conversation. I think it is to our interest to have guest worker programs, on the principle that we do honor individual rights of those who wish only to trade values on a non-coercive basis, but that is an important condition and one that is not met by Mexicans crossing our borders at night in the desert, murdering, kidnapping, or otherwise endangering the lives of Americans.

It is true there is a collectivist premise in the thinking of those who oppose illegal immigration on the grounds that illegals are abusing the welfare system we have established in this country. Actually, they have a point. Illegals are abusing the welfare system, in the sense they are obtaining benefits at the expense of taxpayers. But then so are those Americans who avail themselves of those same benefits.

What is overlooked in this argument is that the primary abuse is of the taxpayers. But their emotional hostility is completely understandable as the present American regime has just enacted legislation that will vastly intensify the abuse by indirectly extending taxpayer-funded benefits to millions of illegals. The Regime understands its actions will further divide Americans and wishes to exploit such divisions for partisan advantage, as has been demonstrated in its cynical--and shamefully ignorant--handling of the recent law passed in Arizona to protect its citizens from threats to their lives and property.

Americans, by and large, do not oppose legal immigration, nor do they oppose a rational, liberal immigration policy, but the laws as imperfect as they may be should be followed, they should be enforced by constituted authority and at present and for many years have not been enforced. Presently the people of Arizona are facing a catastrophe. We already have parts of California becoming a wasteland of socialist and open-borders sentiment, such as the school district of Los Angeles, electing to teach the students in public schools that Arizona's laws are the moral equivalent of Nazi Germany's concentration camps and urging an economic boycott of the state and of the people.

We are in serious trouble when we have political districts in our own country thinking and talking as if they were citizens of another country, and one that clearly has an interest in solving the problems of its own socialist economy by encouraging its people to "migrate" to the US illegally and then to lecture us on our responsibility to protect the individual rights of Mexicans!

I have a further point to make. Our culture has been so degraded--intellectually, morally, culturally--that intelligent political discourse is all but made impossible both by the lack of intellectual ammunition on the Right and the militantly anti-intellectual political tactics of the Left. It is true that Illegal Immigration may become a hugely symbolic issue that will "carry the emotional freight" of the public's gut-level antagonism to the Regime's heavy-handed collectivism on many fronts. Illegal immigration, tax increases, irrational spending--these are issues Americans can all understand and relate to, and therefore, it is to be expected in such an emotionally toxic political environment that nativist sentiments will also become part of the mix, as I am also certain racism will too.

But such sentiments must not be allowed to dominate the discourse and the political campaigns, for the Left will attempt to make these legitimate issues seem to be nothing but illegitimate racist and nativist anger. They are already following this tactic, as we have seen in the campaign the Left has conducted against Arizona. Expect much more of that sort of thing.

The tactic, however, is a lie and a cheat, and if we can keep the focus on protection of individual rights, and the right of the American people to be secure in their lives and property from those who would make war on us, then we should be able to defeat the Left.

I have not mentioned the recent oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. Probably the biggest issue now will be the Regime's gross incompetence. If I believed in God I would definitely find the guiding hand of providence in these events, and while the pain in the short term is very great, I am tempted to believe that the election of Obama will prove to be America's Great Secular Awakening to both the evil and the inherent incompetence of Big Government.

Invitation to Defend Rights Now

Defend Rights Now supports individual rights in all areas of society, from defense of Americans on the national and international level, to the individual right to self-defense, not only against government, but against criminals.

The two areas are, of course, intimately connected. When Americans speak out about their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, they speak both of the people's check on the power of the federal, state, and local governments, and the people's right to defend their lives and their property against local thugs and criminals who attempt to prey upon them.

The Founders wrote the Constitution to protect the people from government, to create a political system where government became the servant of the people, not their ruler.  That effort resulted in a pattern of civilized society in which--for the brief span of some hundred and fifty years--physical force was banned from human relationships. 

The concept of individual rights gave birth to a free society, so it is with the destruction of individual rights modern enemies of freedom must begin, and they have been working hard to accomplish just this goal since the beginning of the New Deal in the 1930s.

Defend Rights Now defends and promotes individual rights within this larger political context of national politics and culture.

To violate an individual's rights means to compel him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values, and basically there is only one way to do it:  by using physical force.  Potentially there are only two violators of individual rights:  the criminals and the government.  The great achievement of the United States was to distinguish between the two--by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the first.

The enemies of freedom work daily in the news media, in the political parties, in colleges and universities--in government--to corrupt this distinction ideologically and politically.  Defend Rights Now investigates this corruption and helps provide the ideological tools required to combat it.

Defend Rights Now, in guarding the individual's right to act on his or her own judgment, seeks to help people not only to protect themselves from government, but to suggest situations and techniques in which women, in particular, can protect themselves against personal assault from criminals.

Psychological studies suggest people tend to believe they are less responsible for events that occur in their lives when those events happen outside their immediate control.  Yet a person letting "things just happen" may through such bias indirectly cause those events as if she took active steps to put herself in danger.

For example, when a women pulls into a parking garage, parks, then gathers up her purse, perhaps a briefcase, her cell phone, her keys, probably the very last thing she is thinking about is the possibility of a man just hidden out of her sight, waiting for the opportunity to knock her down, steal her pocket book, her personal computer, or, even worse, assault her sexually.

When a woman trains herself to become more aware of her immediate surroundings as she goes about her daily activities, she acts to protect herself in the most effective way she can.  

If she carries with her at all times some form of non-lethal self-defense weapon, such as a Pepper Spray or Stun Gun, she greatly enhances her ability to protect herself and any children who may accompany her.

Time and time again, the use of such non-lethal devices has proven to be an effective means of self-defense against personal assault, and in the hands of police, an effective, non-lethal alternative to deadly force in many situations.

That these self-defense weapons do not use deadly force means a person doesn't face the possibility that she could actually kill another human being.

For those who wish to enhance their ability to defend themselves from criminal assault, Defend Rights Now provides links to JustStunGuns, an internet store offering the widest range of effective, but non-lethal, self-defense tools currently available, as well as information about their safe and legal use.

To help people become more aware of common situations in which they would enhance their ability to defend themselves from personal or criminal assault, Defend Rights Now links to news stories where those situations arise and explores how people might use such self-defense weapons most effectively.

Defend Rights Now welcomes reader comments, suggestions, and questions.

Tom Anderson
January 2010