2ND AMENDMENT
"In any case, the idea that the existence of police officers in some way negates the right to bear arms has always been a ridiculous one. Police are an auxiliary force that we hire to do a particular job — there to supplement, not to replace, my rights and responsibilities. Every time we debate gun control in the United States, I am informed that the Sheriff of Whatever County is opposed to liberalization. To which I always think, “So what?” My right to keep and bear arms is merely the practical expression of my underlying right to self-defense. That, as a polity, we have decided to hire certain people to take the first shot at keeping the peace is fine. But it has no bearing on my liberties.
"And how could it, given that I do not live in a police station? The old saw that “when seconds count, the police are minutes away” is trotted out as often as it is because it is unquestionably true. Whether the average police department is virtuous or evil is irrelevant here. What matters is that no government has the right — and in America, mercifully, no government has the legal power — to farm out, and then to abolish, my elementary rights. It would not fly if the government hired people to speak for me and then shut down my speech; if would not fly if the government hired people to worship for me and then restricted my right to exercise my religion; and it will not fly for the government to hire a security agency and then to remove, or limit, my access to weaponry. This is a personal question, not an aggregate question: I have one life, and I am entitled to defend it in any way I see fit against those who would do me harm. If there is a single principle that has animated this realm since the time of the Emperor Justinian, it is that." Charles Cooke, National Review Online 6/4
CIVIL UNREST
"Riots may excite the keyboard revolutionary, but they won’t bring racial equality. The opposite, in fact. Not only are the anarchists who burn and loot stores subjecting many of their neighbors to a dehumanizing experience, they are destroying poor and minority neighborhoods.
222
"Big businesses might be able to afford to fix the smashed windows and ransacked supply room, but family-owned ones are going to struggle. Chain stores have insurance, but the individuals and smaller manufacturers who depend on them for their livelihoods also are threatened. The big stores themselves will be paying higher insurance rates, and some of them may decide to never come back to these poorer neighborhoods." David Harsanyi, NRO 6/4
"Over the past two weeks, we’ve witnessed an ongoing battle in the streets, with cops and National Guardsmen working to restore order before more livelihoods and lives are heedlessly destroyed.
"All honor to them. And yes, sometimes they will make mistakes and even commit crimes, for which they should be held to account — justice demands no less. But there is another dimension of the fight for peace and order that falls to us who write and argue for a living.
"We must resist the corruption of our moral and intellectual culture from a strain of radicalism not seen since the rise of the New Left in the 1960s, a radicalism that was accommodated by a timorous liberal establishment." Rich Lowry, NRO 6/5
"Now, it’s obviously true that what happened to George Floyd is sickening, and that harming a person is much worse than damaging property. But that doesn’t mean that both aren’t acts of violence, and both aren’t wrong.
"Property is not an abstraction. It gives people shelter and a sense of protection and stability. If the property is a business, it often represents years of sweat, tears, and dreams. For someone to come and destroy it in a spasm of rage or gleeful looting is felt as a profound violation, and understandably so." Ditto
"Everyone you know has a “good reason” to break quarantine. Some wish to bury a relative, while others want to visit a lonely elder in a nursing home. Parents want to baptize their children to save their souls, and first-generation college students want to attend graduation. All of them were told to abstain from these things in the name of public health. Following those orders had human costs — rates of domestic violence increased during the lockdowns. Calls to suicide hotlines skyrocketed. Millions were thrown out of work. Businesses built over generations filed for bankruptcy, Some will never recover." John Hirschauer, NRO, 6/4
CHANGED HEARTS
"And while we recognize that force must be used to stop the lawbreakers, we know that this will not address the boiling anger and lawlessness. Only the gospel can transform lives. In short, the greatest thing we can do is point people to the cross. There, the ultimate act of injustice was carried out, as the perfect Son died for the sins of the world. And from that bloodied place, redemption flows for the entire human race.
"Let’s step back from the news for a moment and lift our hearts in prayer, asking God to give us His perspective on the protests and riots and to enable us to be part of a lasting, transformative solution. Isn’t that what He desires?" Michael Brown, Townhall, 6/4
THE AMERICAN IDEAL
But I have faith. I believe in the American ideal -- that we are all equal -- even if it is not lived out today. I believe that everyone is a child of God, that they have infinite worth and that, even through anger, we can eventually achieve peace and solidarity. But first, we must begin to breathe again.
If we want to address the fracturing of America, we must do so together, and we must start by listening. In researching for my book, "Our Broken America: Why Both Sides Need to Stop Ranting and Start Listening," I discovered that 55% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats say they have few or no friends in the other political party. This isn't something that members of either side of the aisle can improve on their own. It is only through honest conversations with your neighbors, your friends and the new people you bring into your life that we can begin to really hear one another again.
RACISM
"The most dangerous threat to the African-American community in America is not cops. It is liberals. The United States is not institutionally racist. The political system, the criminal-justice system, and academe overflow with political progressives. The notion that they would tolerate racism in their institutions would be laughable if sensible people were encouraged to think about it rather than mindlessly accept it. Nor could we conceivably be “unconsciously” racist. Let’s put aside that to discriminate is to choose, and that, where it exists, racial discrimination is a conscious state of mind. The reality is that our institutions of opinion are so obsessively racialist, no one in America has the luxury of being unconscious about racism.
"The African-American community is not a monolith. Like other segments of the American population, it is diverse and dynamic. The policies pushed by progressives damage the parts of it that need the most help. And the false narrative of racist police, which pressures law enforcement to back off from the communities most victimized by crime, is now destroying entire cities." Andrew McCarthy, NRO 6/5
