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your thoughts on the direction government is headed

jvarnell

Premium Member
The way that you use the word war is powerful but it can also be use in many other way that are wise also in Ecclesiastes 1.8 you will see there is a time for war. [/QUOT

Agreed brother.

That is precisely why we should always carry a big stick. Just not always be so willing to wield it.

A big stick is not scary if never used.

You also have to look at the big picture each spot of contention in the world is not separate they may look like individual trees to use but they are a forest that needs to be managed. If a limb of a tree gets rotten and falls on your head your knee jerk reaction maybe to cut down that tree because it is rotten. But if you look at the trees around it and find the one that has the "tree borer" and is completely dead cut it down and then treat the first tree you will have more live trees.

This analogy is the same as in the mid east. The unstablizing force of one will effect the others. If we would not have put up the big stick in Iraq, Afghanistan could have been more easly fixed and the others would have say mostly dormant. But we pulled most of the collision out of Iraq and trying to treat the infection in Afghanistan. The diseased keeps reinfecting from other sides now because they say you are not going to use that big stick we know.

I also see USA as a forest which can be infected from other forest thousands of miles away by the winds, birds or other methods. We have a pandemic of terrorist. To keep from being infected we have to help the others that are infected to get well.
 

dfreybur

Premium Member
That is precisely why we should always carry a big stick. Just not always be so willing to wield it.

I'll vary that a bit - That is precisely why we should always carry a big stick. We should readily wield it but keep in mind "peace through strength" is its primary goal. We should be very careful about swinging the big stick, especially to avoid being the first to do so.
 

Michael Hatley

Premium Member
I think it is possible shark jumped the trees somewhere along the way :laugh:

But if we are talking about North Korea now (which I'm not entirely sure of, sorry), I'll chime in. I'm taking the last political science class of my degree this semester, Intelligence Analysis. The professor is a brother mason, retired CIA (30 years), and his father in law used to be secretary of state for South Korea. Though cyber warfare is the area of intelligence I've focused on this semester, we discuss NK daily.

The prof is slow to give his views, so as not to stifle discussion - but when pressed on what we should do and what will happen comes down to "who knows". And I think that is the only honest position - we are going to have to wait and see, and adjust daily.

Kim Jong Un appears to be a leader with about as much natural ability as Rick Perry, and a young Rick Perry at that. It just is what it is. He is trying to build cred with the military, who are of course the real leaders of NK - and he is painting himself into a corner with all his saber rattling to the point that if he doesn't take some sort of action now he will lose a tremendous amount of face with the junta.

The logical thing for him to do would be to take the first opportunity that presents himself to say "AHA! There! I have made the West concede!" over event he smallest thing that he can successfully sell to his junta, and defuse the situation.

But the logical thing for Saddam Hussein to do back in 2002 would have been to say he didn't have WMDs and come clean, defuse the situation - if he didn't have them. It was an insane idea to sell it to his own junta and the world that he had them if he did not, and so both our intelligence community and policymakers never really embraced it.

That viewing the mindset of the enemy through what you yourself would do in their situation is what has caused catastrophic intelligence failures for us for a century - from completely missing that the Russians were as close as they were to a nuclear weapon back in the late 40s (at the time our estimates were for a decade or more out, at least, and then BAM, we had a nuclear rival overnight), to the Bay of Pigs, to a whole laundry list of out and out failures to read the enemy.

So it really is important to recognize that Kim Jong Un is not a brilliant statesman. He just isn't. It is entirely possible that some of us right here really are more capable men than he is. And so he very well may not do what makes sense.

And Brethren, he could make a very vital mistake - just as Saddam did. And this could very easily spiral out of control.

What can we do? Prepare for war. Talk to China daily so that if we have to fight that we can hopefully cripple NK before China enters the fray in earnest.

NK has very little in the way of military logistics chains, and so they stand little chance of fighting a protracted war. But if we have to go to war with them, we have to beat them very quickly and with very little civilian casualties and pray to God we can get the job done while China debates internally about what to do.

--edit, and btw - I agree wholeheartedly that we should avoid war at almost all costs. A confrontation between us and China would be beyond catastrophic. But the negotiating partner here is China, it isn't NK. The only real thing we can do about NK is prepare to win if we have to fight. And to engage the Chinese, put any shred of daylight between them and NK that can be found. Even the smallest bit. Reassert every day with the Chinese our desire for peace.

Just my views Brethren!
 
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Brent Heilman

Premium Member
Also, I would think that if this situation does escalate to the point of conflict then I foresee another problem popping up trying to take advantage of the situation. That problem would be Iran. I can see them using this as an opportunity to get back at the "Zionists".
 

jvarnell

Premium Member
I'll vary that a bit - That is precisely why we should always carry a big stick. We should readily wield it but keep in mind "peace through strength" is its primary goal. We should be very careful about swinging the big stick, especially to avoid being the first to do so.

If you look at the message from Bro. jwhuff you will see that is what he said. I think it needs to be used every so often so it is usefull. It should not be sabor ratling.
 

JJones

Moderator
I thought some of you might enjoy this, seems pretty relevant.

[video=youtube;2K4pfiYK2IQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K4pfiYK2IQ&feature=related[/video]
 

BryanMaloney

Premium Member
The Monsanto protection act is no different from all the other forms of legislative end-run that lots of large corporations get. Texas figures out all kinds of end-runs and exemptions for oil companies, after all. Where's the outrage for that?
 

Michael Neumann

Premium Member
We have a bunch of career politicians in the government that are out of touch with reality. Bill Clinton stated that the United States was founded to give freedom to the individual but we abused it so they have to take it away. Look, you were not elected to chastise us what a holier than thou attitude when you cannot even keep your pants up. Here is something I recently emailed to another gentleman I was in a debate with in regards to my second amendment rights. I am but a simple Army brat from an enlisted family that attended the lowest performing schools the military and states had to offer. It wasn't until later in life that I understood the importance of education, thus most of my counterpoints will be made by others.
Since our current leadership spent 2 years and had to form a special committee in order to figure out a way to save 600,000,000, or .015% from an at the time 4,000,000,000,000 budget, I will not pull any of their remarks. They are obviously the dumber than I am... and that says a lot.

Instead I am going to draw heavily from our founding fathers and the Federalist Papers which were issued during the time our constitution was first in effect with the intent of clarifying the meaning of various sections within our documents. In addition I am going to draw from major world events and what transpired shortly before the action began.

I will lead off with a statement from one of my favorite founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson "On every question of the construction (of the constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning might be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." (The Complete Jefferson, p.322)

In the 2008 Maryland case removed the requirement for participation in a standing militia but the founding fathers seem to think that is a mistake "What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins." (Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment [ I Annals of Congress at 750 {August 17, 1789}])

This early statement by Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts rings true is you consider the US Army Military Police training manual for “Civil Disturbance Operations†and there is already legislation that sees the National Guard taken from Governors. You stated above that the National Guard was our militia right? So if the Military AND our Militia are under federal control who might I ask protects us?

"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." (Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-8)

"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" (Patrick Henry, 3 J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions 45, 2d ed. Philadelphia, 1836)

"This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty.... The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction."
- St. George Tucker


Fall of countries -

History has seen a number of countries fall from grace and become a dictatorship. Marxism sounds great on paper but due to human nature is proven invalid in practice. First we visit Hitler's Germany who see the Weimar Republic disarm them and Hitler pass more stringent laws in 1938. If you look at Stalin, who actually killed more people than Hitler, you will see his government instituted Art. 182 of the Penal Code.

Janet Reno stated "Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal."



Chimpanzees & the Frontier-

In your first email you mention Chimpanzees displaying the same aggression as humans. This is great because it goes along with the speakers very point, humans are capable of greater evil and any animal could imagine, even a chimp. There have been a number of daylight rapes of women and children in areas where guns have been taken from the hands of citizens, "Muslim Gang Rapes a Coptic Christian Girl in Broad Daylight While Chanting..." . A quick search pulls "brutal March 2004 attack that left the woman in a coma for about five days." and a 73 year old woman raped in broad daylight in "safe" New York. Would it not have been nice if these people were armed?


Cannons, Jets, and Tanks -

"...the ancient Carthaginians had consented to “deliver up all their Arms to the Romans†and were decimated by the Romans soon after. "..." The Massachusetts Provincial Congress offered to purchase as many arms and bayonets as could be delivered to the next session of the Congress. Massachusetts also urged American gunsmiths “diligently to apply themselves†to making guns for everyone who did not already have a gun. A few weeks earlier, the Congress had resolved: “That it be strongly recommended, to all the inhabitants of this colony, to be diligently attentive to learning the use of arms . . . .â€

You and I both know that when our founding fathers said "firearms" they meant just that so this was a silly remark. What is not silly though is first understanding that American Revolutionary Troops were initially armed with the same weaponry as the British. Shortly before war began we began using rifles, a comparison of Revolutionary Hunting Rifles compared to British Muskets of war.


Revolutionary rifle - .45 caliber and a range of up to 500 Yards
British smooth bore Brown - .75 caliber and a range of 50-100 Yards

The soon to be BANNED JR Arms 9mm Carbine that converts to a .40 and .45 is a beautiful weapon - gives you about 230fps more velocity than a hand gun and is useless after 150 Yards.
The NOT BANNED Winchester .308 is a great hunting and sniping rifles - gives you 2860fps, almost double the carbine, and has a range of 800 Yards with the USMC preaching 1000+ Yards

The ban is not about the weapons, it is not about the kids, it is about the first step.

Michael
 
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