When the Interior Department placed the polar bear on the “threatened” list, it did so on the basis of predictions from computer models. One could easily have guessed as much, since that decision could not have possibly been based on anything that’s actually happened.

Even as he announced this designation, Secretary Dirk Kempthorne noted that the world’s polar bear population has more than doubled since the late 60s, from about 12,000 to 25,000. Yet the melting of the arctic summer sea ice, which is what’s allegedly threatening the bears, has transpired throughout that same time frame. This is not to suggest a causal relation between the melting ice and the growing bear population, but it ought to be enough to cast doubt on Kempthorne’s conclusion, that the shrinking ice may reduce the polar bear population by two-thirds by the year 2050.

Computer models are only as good as the presumptions upon which they are based, or to put it in geek-speak, “garbage in, garbage out.” All you have to do is to start from a ridiculous premise, and the computer will very logically project a ridiculous outcome, like Manhattan sinking underwater in Al Gore’s movie.

False but logically derived conclusions are not new to the computer age, though. Forty years ago, liberals hailed Paul Ehrlich as a visionary, much like they view Gore today. In his book, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich had predicted that overpopulation would cause widespread famine in the decades to follow, shrinking the population of the United States to below 23 million by the turn of the millenium. He was wrong, of course. There was plenty of food to go around, and will continue to be unless we burn it all up to make ethanol, in a banana-brained effort to save the polar bears from the melting ice caps.

In 2000, Texas alone had about the same population that Ehrlich had projected for the entire country, whereas our national population exceeded that figure 11 times over. He cannot have been more wrong, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there was a problem with his methodology. It’s just that he started from false premises, which underestimated people’s ability to adapt and to solve problems. Garbage in, garbage out.

By today’s standard, Ehrlich’s projections would have easily qualified humans as a threatened species, but notice the difference with which the threatened bears and people have been treated. Ehrlich’s proposed solution was to destroy humanity in order to save it. He speculated that the earth could only sustain 500 million people, at a time when the world’s population was already 3.5 billion. To that end, he advocated compulsory sterilization, and worldwide legalization of abortion. Western governments that have been influenced by Ehrlich’s work have spent decades reducing their birthrates through so-called “family planning” initiatives, to the point where they now complain about their aging populations due to low replacement rates.

Nobody today is proposing that we neuter the polar bears and kill their young. That’s because the virtual threat in their case is global warming. Therefore, the culprit must be human activity, including the exercise of our most fundamental rights. Our right to life is a threat to the polar bear because nearly everything we do – from driving cars, to turning on light bulbs, to breathing – produces carbon dioxide. Liberty rights must be curtailed because, if people are allowed too much freedom of movement, this will result in sprawl and deforestation, as well as increased highway and air traffic. The right to property must also be denied, because people are likely to develop their property in ways that are deemed to be “unsustainable.”

That’s the common thread between these two synthetic crises. When the polar bears are perceived to be threatened, the answer is to punish humanity. When it’s the human species that is supposedly threatened, it is nevertheless we who remain the enemy. In fact, it’s not uncommon for environmentalists to muse that the human race is a cancer on the planet. That’s merely the logical extension of their belief that the earth is an organism, and we are the source of all that ails it.

That this philosophy is influencing government policy should strike us as far more alarming than, say, a slight increase in the world’s supply of carbon dioxide, a compound every bit as benign as water vapor. If there’s any pollutant we should be seeking to stamp out, it is the “garbage in” that is the anti-human bias on which today’s “green” movement is based.

President George W. Bush is a good and decent man. That doesn’t count for as much as it used to. Millions of conservatives who voted for him in the last two elections believed he was a man of conservative principles who would make much of the opportunity that he was handed by his election victories. Instead, it is sad to say, President Bush has pursued consensus rather than principle and, in the process, has demoralized his strongest supporters, weakened his party and set the country on the path to elect a socialist.

When President Bush was reelected, there was talk of a realignment whereby the Republican Party would be ascendant for decades to come. So much was possible if the President moved quickly and forcefully to carry out his campaign promises and make government more responsive to the will of the people.

The steadfast loyalty of conservatives was rewarded by a Republican president and Republican majorities in Congress who grew the bureaucracy, overspent our tax money on wasteful programs and refused to fight for Social Security reform, tax code reform, enforcement of immigration laws or drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge and offshore. Our tax burden is worse than ever, our energy situation is a disaster and Social Security and Medicare are in desperate shape. When we look at our country today and the prospects for the next four years, is it any wonder that millions are frustrated and heartsick?

A president should lead and a president should engage his political opponents on matters of policy and principle. President Bush had the possibility of continuing the Reagan Revolution and truly changing for the better the relationship between the citizens of this country and their government. To do that required President Bush to effectively communicate his policies and programs and make the country understand the choices and the hazards of not taking action to deal with these issues. The inability to effectively articulate his vision and policies, along with the unwillingness to take on the media and liberal special interests, such as the environmental movement, doomed his second term. We deserved more.

Where is the consistency in a president who nominates a Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court? Where is any true understanding of limited government in a president who says he will veto McCain-Feingold, then signs it? Where is the effective leadership in a president who fails to control the bureaucracies in the CIA, the Justice Department or even his own Press Secretary? A good and decent man is small consolation when the lack of leadership and conservative principles botched the greatest opportunity of the last twenty years.

The Republican Party and the nation will take time to recover from the bumbling mediocrity of Bush’s second term. Seeing what happened these last four years makes one realize what a true giant Ronald Reagan really was. Many of us had hopes that the Bush presidency would build upon Reagan’s foundation and keep the light of freedom and individual liberty burning brightly in the “shining city on the hill.” Instead, we have spent and given away the nation’s treasure, lost control of a bloated and unresponsive bureaucracy, accommodated our enemies, failed to secure our borders, weakened our economy with ill-advised initiatives such as the ethanol mandate and transformed the “bully pulpit” into a dais for dithering.

Now that the heartsick phase is almost over, the anger begins to grow. Anger that we must dig our way out of this hole and retake the Senate and House of Representatives. Anger that the Republican Party has so many weaklings and incompetents in Congress. Anger at the misrepresentations from the Republican Party and the deceit in the words of our representatives in Congress.

In truth, the presidency has become too powerful and too imperial. The Congress needs to exert its power as a co-equal branch if it can be populated with true citizen legislators and not political hacks who use the positions as power bases for their personal interests and financial gain. Conservatives need to concentrate on electing conservative men and women who don’t look at bipartisanship and accommodation as a goal in itself.

No longer can we continue to elect the “lesser of two evils” and expect the direction of the country to change. Government is on its way to making itself our master and President Bush has not stood in the way. And much as I hate to say it, Senator McCain has not stood in the way of more government power either. It is time for a change and conservatives need to understand that they should not expect a change until four years from this coming November.

Just after 8:00 AM Friday morning in New York, a construction crane toppled from its 200 foot tower, crushed a portion of the penthouse across the street, and destroyed about half of the building’s balconies on it’s way to crashing to the ground. New York Mayor, Michael Bloomberg called the accident “unacceptable.” “What has happened is unacceptable and intolerable,” he said.

A New York City councilman is proposing the shut down of all construction cranes in New York City and asking for legislation to deal with the problem. Councilman, Tony Avella stated: “Every crane operation in the city needs to be shut down at this point until it’s fully inspected. We can’t keep putting people in jeopardy. And what has to happen is some real legislation, not just talk about it…”

This statement came less than one hour after I was talking with a work associate and told him to watch and see just how long it takes for some grandstanding politician to propose legislation to address the crane accident. It didn’t take long. The government’s response to every crisis is always the same. Pass more laws to further restrict the freedom and liberty of industry and the citizens.

Perhaps Avella is not aware that the crane was inspected just last weekend as the crew raised it. All cranes are inspected by construction safety inspectors during erection and raising by already existing law. Developers are already highly motivated to do everything they can to avoid such occurrences. They don’t like lawsuits and they don’t like high insurance premiums. You can’t legislate against accidents caused by unanticipated failures such as metal fatigue.

This was the second crane accident in NYC in less than 3 months. City Councilwoman Jessica Lappin, who represented the neighborhood affected by the March collapse, said: “People shouldn’t live in fear walking near a construction site — and certainly shouldn’t feel fear sitting in their living rooms.”

I’m not sure there were many people feeling fear while sitting in their living rooms, but I would respect anyone’s right to feel fear while walking under any construction site. It’s not a safe place to be no matter how much government tries to legislate “safety.” People must already know that, since no one on the ground was hurt other than a couple of construction workers. Anyone who feels safe while walking under a construction crane is a fool, and Lappin’s statement is simply foolish.

Meanwhile, in California, some consider helium filled, metallic party balloons “unacceptable.” The California legislature is considering a bill to ban the floating air bags on the grounds that they can come in contact with power lines, causing short circuits, which not only provide a very exciting electrical flash, but sometimes can cause circuit breakers on the power lines to trip, dropping power to homes and businesses in the area. Liberals in California want the government to ban them.

The liberals in San Francisco find plastic grocery bags unacceptable. The government passed a law to ban them without regard for the additional trees it‘s going to take to replace them with paper bags.

Some years ago, Tonka Trucks were considered “unacceptable” by politicians because of the threat of cuts from metal edges. They were banned by government and now must be made of soft plastic. Many other products have been banned or made “people proof” out of our government’s tendency to play mommy and daddy to its citizens.

Our politicians have also concluded that light bulbs are now “unacceptable” and we must replace them all with CFLs. But that is only because liberal politicians consider coal fired and nuclear power plants “unacceptable”

Automobiles that get less than 35 mpg are now also considered “unacceptable,” simply because liberal politicians consider mining our own domestic oil resources “unacceptable.” It doesn’t conform to environmentalists’ political correctness or comply with efforts to combat the hoax of global warming.

They want us to turn our heating thermostats down to 68 degrees and our cooling thermostats up to 78 degrees because living in your comfort zone is now considered “unacceptable.” Demanding that our government allow energy producers to provide the energy needed by American citizens is also considered “unacceptable.” They don’t want to hear it.

But all these things are dwarfed by the proposed Lieberman - Warner Cap and Trade Bill. Lieberman-Warner would embark Americans on an unprecedented and large-scale manipulation of the national economy that would depress economic growth and have both short- and long-term unintended consequences.  Lieberman-Warner’s “cap-and-trade” will hamstring Americans for decades and severely restrict their freedom and liberty. This is totally unacceptable to 90% of the American people according to a recent survey conducted by Wilson Research Strategies for the National Center for Public Policy Research.

The crane falling in New York was an accident. The crane that fell 3 months ago was also an accident, in spite of the fact that all safety regulation and inspections were in place. In a perfect world, there would be no accidents. Cars wouldn’t crash into each other; airplanes wouldn’t fall from the skies; trains wouldn’t derail or crash; no one would die in a war; no one would ever get hurt or killed, and construction cranes wouldn‘t topple over.

But we don’t live in a perfect world and no government legislation can change that. But a perfect world is exactly what liberals think they can create by imposing more and more government regulations and laws to restrict our freedom and liberty, including our freedom to take risks and possibly injure ourselves. But isn’t that a politician’s answer to everything? Pass more laws.

Government regulations and law cannot produce a perfect world, but what they can do is infringe on the rights to freedom and liberty of the citizens. Every law enacted by government designed to protect one segment of the population, does so by infringing on the rights and freedom of another segment of the population.

Take, for example, California’s efforts to ban the party balloon. To protect neighborhood residents from the possible inconvenience of a temporary power failure, the government would take away the right of balloon manufacturers to produce that balloon and the right of the party goers to enjoy them.

In New York, some politicians want to deny developers the freedom to complete their projects on schedule and on budget by shutting down their operations while submitting them to more useless inspections and legislation that will do nothing to prevent the kind of crane accident we saw on Friday.

Laws intended to protect people from risk do so by infringing on the freedom of others. This is not to say that we don’t need safety regulations on industry; we do. But this must not lead to excessive legislation and restrictions on industry every time an accident occurs. Before grandstanding politicians start writing new laws to protect one segment of the population, they should consider how their intended legislation will steal freedoms away from other segments of the population.

There is no better example than the laws being passed allegedly to protect the planet from global warming. The freedom of Americans to maintain their standard of living; to drive the cars they want; to control their own thermostats; to use whatever light bulbs they want; and to enjoy all of the freedoms and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution are being seriously infringed upon to satisfy the desires of radical environmentalist groups who oppose industry and affordable energy sources.

Environmentalists have every right and freedom to live the way they want to. They have no right to impose their will and lifestyle on others as they are now doing with the help of a liberal congress and government regulations. The rights and liberty of the majority of Americans are being stolen by government and given to the few to appease their distorted and irrational belief in global warming.

Likewise, the rights and liberty of Christians to freely speak and demonstrate their religious beliefs in public are being stolen by government and given to Muslims who seem to be offended by anything that does not support Islam.

In education, the rights and liberty of parents to raise their children with proper and moral values are being stolen by government and given to public school educators with quite different sets of values. Government wants to raise your child in their image, not yours, and your only recourse is to remove your child from public schools.

What I find unacceptable are morons like Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and a long list of others being allowed to make laws for the rest of us to live by. The kind of overbearing government we see today was never intended by the founders of our country and framers of our Constitution. They very explicitly wrote into that document guarantees that the American people would remain free of excessive government and restrictive laws. Congress was never intended to become a club house where members could turn every crazy idea they come up with into law without regard for the limits placed on government by the Constitution.

Consider the high price of gas today. Congressional politicians on the left like to point fingers at the oil executives and accuse them of obscene profits but what about the high price of tickets to sporting events or just a movie? What about the obscene profits being made by Hollywood producers and actors as well as athletes who contribute nothing to society beyond entertaining people with nothing better to do than kill time watching others do what they do. Yet they make more money and profit than the oil executives who Congress is badgering over a lousy 4% profit on their production of the life blood of the country. Hollywood invests $100 million in a movie and takes in $800 million. That’s an 800% profit! Where are the calls for excessive profit taxes on Hollywood producers, actors and sports figures whom make millions for simply playing with their balls?

But it’s not just the oil companies that the liberal controlled congress hates. It’s most any corporation or industry that believes in capitalism and profit making. Excessive regulations and taxes on business imposed by government, plus the high cost of labor unions, has driven much of American industry out of the country.

Manufacturing industries must now compete for sales on the global market due to Fair Trade agreements. The problem is that costs imposed by government and labor unions make American made products too expensive to compete in a global market. In order to compete for price, the jobs have to be outsourced to countries like China and India.

The economies of China and India are growing at alarming rates due to the industrialization that we have given them. And because of that industrialization, they require more energy to run their growing manufacturing plants to produce the goods that are then exported to America and being demanded by their own people who now have more money to spend. To power their industries, they require more oil which has now made them strong competitive buyers in the oil market.

This has resulted in demands for oil now exceeding the supply and driving the price up at the gas pump. Essentially, we have given our manufacturing industry to China and India, and we are now paying for it every time we gas up our cars. Liberals in Congress wants to take away what money the oil companies have left and tax them more which will only result in even higher prices at the pump! I find this totally unacceptable. I find this Congress unacceptable, I find this entire growing behemoth of a government unacceptable. But then I’m not a government politician, so it really doesn’t matter. If I were, I would pass legislation against big government and require government to obey the Constitution.

America was never supposed to be about the government. It is supposed to be about the people and their freedom and liberty to build their lives as they see fit without overbearing government supervision and restrictions. By taking away the freedom of industrious and successful Americans to benefit those who prefer a nanny government to take care of them, our government is engaging in the redistribution of liberty along with its socialistic redistribution of wealth.

Our only recourse in putting America back on the right track and restoring our constitutional freedoms and liberties is to remove those politicians from office who do not respect the freedoms and liberties of the American citizens, but instead see themselves as dictators over the American people.

We don’t need more laws to infringe upon our freedom. We need a complete reform of existing laws and proper enforcement of those laws which support the citizens’ right to freedom and liberty according to the Constitution of the United States of America.

I recommend that Congress take a couple of years off from writing new laws, and work instead on the problem of reforming and cleaning out the excessive amounts of existing laws, and restore freedom and liberty to the citizens of this country which they have been stealing away, piece by piece. The redistribution of liberty in America is not what America is about, and never has been, until now.

JR Dieckmann is Editor, Publisher, Writer, and Webmaster of GreatAmericanJournal.com. He also works as an electrician in Los Angeles, Ca. He has been writing and publishing articles on the web since 2000. His articles appear on other publications such as: The Conservative Voice; Real Clear Politics; New Media Journal; Mich News; Daley Times-Post; Renew America, The Reality Check, and other conservative websites. JR can be contacted at http://www.greatamericanjournal.com/contact.htm.

Being attacked by Greenpeace should be considered a badge of honor. In May, the Heartland Institute was the subject of a Greenpeace news release that described the Chicago-based think tank as “a free-market, anti-regulation right wing think tank” funded by leading American corporations and reputable foundations.  

That same month, Heartland Institute sponsored a ground-breaking conference on climate change in New York. More than 500 of the world’s leading climatologists, meteorologists, economists, policy analysts, and others attended. Its keynote speaker was Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic.  Having lived under communist rule, President Klaus understood the true nature of Greenpeace and other environmental organizations. He is an outspoken critic of the global warming hoax. He, along with many others, has identified the real reason for the climate alarmism endemic to the environmental movement.  

Its agenda has always been to drastically reduce the human population, to attack consumption as evil, and its rabid hatred of capitalism. “The climate alarmists believe in their own omnipotence, in knowing better than millions of rationally behaving men and women what is right or wrong,” says Klaus. 

In the early 1990s, an encyclopedic book, “Trashing the Economy”, by Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb, closely examined the many environmental organizations, among which was Greenpeace. It was and is quite revealing, noting that Greenpeace was founded in 1971 by a group of draft dodgers living in Vancouver, Canada. “Confrontation, civil disobedience, inflammatory lies and physical harassment are Greenpeace’s methods…” Greenpeace gained fame protesting the whaling industry and went on to attack the timber industry. It gained further momentum attacking genetically modified seed stocks responsible for increasing the yield of crops that has since been recognized as preventing famines.

The book called Greenpeace “the archetypal ‘Eco-Thug’ organization that behaves as if it were above the law of all nations.” The May Greenpeace news release attacked Heartland’s citation of a petition signed by “more than 500 qualified researchers whose research in professional journals provides historic and/or physical proxy evidence” that debunks the global warming hoax.  

Among signers of the petition attacked by Greenpeace are Dr. Fred S. Singer and Dennis Avery, two scientists with impeccable credentials, but who Greenpeace said were not climate scientists. Dr. Singer, is the former director of the National Weather Satellite Center and a renowned atmospheric scientist from George Mason University. Avery is a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute, a prolific policy analyst, and an author of a book debunking global warming. 

Among the founders of Greenpeace was Peter Bahouth who is on record saying, “I don’t believe in the market approach…When companies have a bottom line of profit you won’t have them thinking about the environment.” Capitalism is about profit and from that comes jobs, dividends for investors, research and development of new technologies, and the opportunity to improve both the individual’s wealth and that of entire nations. 

Another founding member, Dr. Patrick Moore, an ecologist, has long since disowned Greenpeace and the environmental movement. In an interview, Dr. Moore was asked why the movement “got it wrong?” He responded saying that, “The environmental movement abandoned science and logic somewhere in the mid-1980s, just as mainstream society was adopting all the more reasonable items on the environmental agenda.” He went on to note that, “Environmentalism was always anti-establishment,” citing Greenpeace’s opposition to the forestry industry, genetically modified crops, and other example of commerce and modern technology. 

The big difference between Greenpeace and the Heartland Institute is that the former has never been interested in the truth, scientifically or otherwise, while the Institute has been dedicated to both the best that science has to offer and to our nation’s leadership in defending capitalism against authoritarian regimes and the failed communist/socialist economic systems. 

Greenpeace, a multi-million dollar operation with branches around the world, has demonstrated the capacity to manipulate public opinion, but it does so in the fashion that the entire environmental movement has adopted, the unrelenting attack on the motives and credibility of those who step up to present the truth with the belief that it is the best defense against the endless flow of lies with which the environmental movement has become identified. 

Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the website of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. He blogs at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. 

-By Warner Todd Huston

Columnist Tom Eblen of the Lexington, Kentucky Herald-Leader has proven to the world that he doesn’t know what a “right” is. He thinks it is something that you can “compromise” over. He thinks it is something that can be endlessly tinkered with. He seems not to realize that a “right” is something that is supposed to be insoluble, unchangeable, permanent. Worse, he has equated an American right to the horse raising industry as if the business decisions made by a handful of ranchers is somehow comparable to the observance and maintenance of our rights. Ridiculously he says that if we don’t compromise this one right, our 2nd Amendment right, it will be taken away. And hypocritically, after using fear to urge us to compromise, he accuses those of us interested in safeguarding the 2nd Amendment of using “fear” tactics.

This latest op ed, “NRA’s slippery slope full of holes,” was the result of some flack he took for touting the existence of a small gun owner’s organization that many NRA members claim is a front group for an anti-gun group. He wrote admiringly about this small group and was assailed by emails and messages informing him that he was giving support to a stealth gun grabbing group and, instead of checking out the group more thoroughly, these emails seemed to set Eblen off. Typical of a self-righteous denizen of the media, instead of finding out if the complaint letters were right and reassessing his original support, Eblen merely lashed out at 2nd Amendment supporters who alerted him to his mistake. (In fact, Eblen doesn’t even bother to try to find out more about the small gun group he wrote about before merely blowing off his obligation to be informed about what he writes.)

So, off Eblen goes wagging his finger at 2nd Amendment supporters telling them that their “hard-line views” and their use of “fear” to sell gun rights is the wrong track to take. He particularly focuses on the fear aspect, claiming that this is an illegitimate way to advocate for our rights. But, even as he claims the NRA illegitimately uses “fear” he uses fear himself to claim that if we don’t compromise our rights away we will lose all of them.

If Second Amendment absolutists keep standing up and daring others to pry their guns from their “cold, dead fingers,” eventually somebody’s going to do it.

If that isn’t using fear to sell his own point, what is?

Eblen tells us that we just have to understand, guns are dangerous, so we must “compromise.”

But gun violence and crime are serious problems. The no-compromise crowd has kept law enforcement agencies from having some tools they need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and crazy people. And that has led to some over-reaching, such as when police in New Orleans illegally seized hundreds of guns after Hurricane Katrina.

Without some intelligent compromises, each new tragedy, like the Virginia Tech or Columbine massacres, will prompt more emotional calls for banning guns. All guns. There are zealots on both sides.

And he has found the perfect example, he thinks, to show us the way: the “horse industry.”

The NRA and other gun groups could learn something from the horse industry.

High-profile deaths of horses in Thoroughbred racing and eventing have created some public backlash against those sports. Rather than stonewall, though, horse industry leaders are aggressively working to make their sports safer. They love horses, sure, but they also realize that their sports could live or die with public opinion.

Have you ever heard anything so ignorant as this? Imagine, to compare the maintenance of a Constitutional right to raising horses? Would Eblen think that comparing abortion to gardening would be an apt comparison? How about if we compare a discussion of the death penalty to punishment for small time retail theft? Would these have any sensible relation one to the other? I’ll answer for you, Mr. Eblen… NO is your answer.

The discussion of our Constitutional rights is in such a different class of import that comparing the “horse industry” to the policies concerning the 2nd Amendment is as absurd, simple-minded, and just off track as can be imagined.

So, to wrap up his bad analysis and his casual treatment of our rights, Eblen assures us that all will be well if only we just forget about all this standing up for our principles business.

As society becomes more diverse, we must regain the lost art of compromise. Otherwise, we’ll never be able to deal with complex problems in ways that protect everyone’s rights. Polarization may be good for special-interest groups and political parties, but it’s bad for America.

But there is a great flaw in Eblen’s little argument, here. You see, the 2nd Amendment isn’t just a law that we can change at will, compromise over repeatedly, and do away with if it is inconvenient.

You see, the 2nd Amendment is a Constitutional right, not just an average, everyday law.

Let me put it this way: should we compromise on who should be allowed to vote? How about property rights, should we easily give away our rights to be secure in our property? Maybe the right to a speedy trial isn’t so important? How about all that “pursuit of happiness” stuff? Is that all fluff and nonsense, too, Mr. Eblen? What other rights do you think we should so easily disregard as insoluble? What other rights do you think aren’t important enough to maintain as unbreakable?

One does not negotiate away one’s rights, Mr. Eblen. Rights are given to us by our creator and the 2nd Amendment is just as much a right as any. You need, Mr. Eblen, to learn what the right to self protection means before you so casually cast it aside to achieve that supposed safety you desire. When Ben Franklin was heard to tell his fellow Americans that we had a republic if we could keep it, he was talking to you, Mr. Eblen. He was telling you not to throw away your rights to achieve just a little safety.

In fact, Ben Franklin also addressed the “safety” question.

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

You are obviously not listening, Mr. Eblen. Let us hope no one is listening to you, as well.