Conservative politics – The Optimistic Conservative

Migrant influx has Europeans arming up

Arms and the civilization.

The workshop of Austrian gunmaker Steyr-Mannlicher. (Image via gunsforsale.com)

The urge to self-preservation may not be entirely dead among native Europeans. According to European news sources, cited in this article at WND, Europeans who have the realistic option of purchasing firearms have started doing so, at a dramatically increased rate.

Although the citizens of several key countries (e.g., Germany, the Netherlands) are basically prohibited from buying guns — by the very high obstacles their governments set for such purchases — those who can are flocking to gun vendors. Women are reportedly the customer base showing the biggest increase.

Austria is one of the nations where guns are selling fast. Continue reading “Migrant influx has Europeans arming up”

America facing the truth II: The dialogue

A republic — if you can define it.

This post is a follow-on to the earlier post at Liberty Unyielding, “A time for facing the truth.” The link is in the text below.

I realized after posting the lengthy comment copied below that I had basically written another blog post. I’m not going to bother cleaning it up or adding points to make it more comprehensive. Spurring the dialogue on this topic is the most important thing. So this post will be a summary of the counterpoint created by much-appreciated reader comments from NaCly Dog, Stephanie O’Leary, and teejk, at my original post “A time for facing the truth.”

Disclaimer on my extended comment below: there are of course other points to make about the vision we need for government and what has to happen to get there. I haven’t tried to make all of those points, or even give a complete list of what the most important ones are. Feel free to add your ideas; I’m not neglecting things that may be important, just keeping this going, because we’ve got to stay engaged. Continue reading “America facing the truth II: The dialogue”

Dumbing debate down on the Mohammed cartoon contest and Jade Helm 15

Dumb and dumber.

The ticket price for joining the mainstream debates on many topics these days seems to be ritual ad hominem attacks. Besides being unhelpful, this is evidence of profound societal illness.

The phenomenon isn’t confined to the left. We see it more and more frequently from the right-that-ought-to-know-better – or, perhaps, the right-that-ought-to-have-more-backbone. I wrote about one major instance of it last year during the crisis at the Bundy ranch, when conservative pundits whom we have counted on to bring logic and intellectual courage to public issues suffered “CLIF”: complete loss of intellectual function. They went from being able to talk about things like government limits and property rights to being unable to do anything except rail against Cliven Bundy. Continue reading “Dumbing debate down on the Mohammed cartoon contest and Jade Helm 15”