“What kind of person goes in a church and shoots nine people? There’s a sickness in our country. There’s something terribly wrong. But it isn’t going to be fixed by your government. It’s people straying away, it’s people not understanding where salvation comes from.” Kentucky Senator Rand Paul [via washingtonpost.com]
This sickness has been a part of the human condition since the beginning of recorded history. Murderers have always walked amongst us, and they always will. Evil exists today just like it has for thousands of years. Technology changes, but human nature does not.
It is foolish to believe that a fancy new gun law or government program will do anything to stop a madman. The best way to stop a murderer like this is with accurate gunfire. And taxpayers are more accurate shooters than cops.
Agreed – laws don’t prevent anything. They set consequences. It’s up to individuals to determine for themselves whether or not the risk of the consequence (if convicted) merits the perceived benefit of performing the act.
In a righteous good shoot, there is no time to think about it; the choice is clear and the reaction instinctive.
If you must think about it, pulling the trigger, or even deploying the gun in the first place, may not be the best option.
If one’s not willing to pull the trigger on a split-second life-and-death decision to halt a deadly threat and deal with the consequences, one should not carry. Carrying isn’t a status symbol or glamour thing – it’s a responsibility.
I disagree. The best way to stop a murderer is for him to have parents, friends, and others in his life that bring him up to NOT be a murderer. When that fails, your suggestion is a great second choice though.
I don’t always agree with Paul or Carson, but I do here. The problem with our country isn’t guns that are capable of firing dozens of rounds in a few seconds, the problem is that people are raising their children to have very little value for other people’s lives, possessions, or feelings. We’re raising a generation of psychopaths and no gun control law can fix that; only good parenting and community involvement.
In other words, these people need to get their butts to church, yo!
Bodies are not cold, yet politicals envoke “straying away”. If one wants to inject a belief system onto the good people then collectively were back in the dark ages.
The only “straying away” is this government systematiclly encroach on the Bill of Rights” by making them conditional and denying citizens to lawfully protect themselves.
I have no problem with Rand being religious, he’s my top choice candidate for president regardless. But what is this salvation nonsense? That’s implying we’re all living in sin and we must pray to some made up deity or fairy dust in order to be absolved of that sin. No thanks Jose. I live an honest and moral life without the fear of eternal damnation imposed by some space ghost in case I stray away. I’ll never understand why people need to make up some third-party entity that will essentially instill fear and threaten them with hell in order to stay honest and moral. But somehow not believing any of these fairy tales makes me the bad guy? Thanks for the laugh. You want to hold religious beliefs and keep your religion within your congregation? Fine, no problem there. But don’t subject the rest of us to it. I like fiction as much as the next guy, but I don’t treat it as gospel. Now where’s that Slayer CD?
Bingo.
He has as much right to express his beliefs in public as you do to express your distaste for it. And he’s probably the only candidate that will respect your right to express your belief or disbelief as it was intended.
Oh come off your persecution horse. Of course he’s free to express his opinion, but it seems like he’s saying that should guide our actions which would be imminently relevant were he in office. It’s quite troubling to me that he believes that because it seems like it would color actions he would take in a position of power.
Sorry to disappoint you Pseudo, but I don’t feel persecuted, and I don’t see how you read that into my statement. And for the record, he is saying it should guide our actions.
You do realize that your entire complaint is based on the assumption that it is all “made up”, don’t you?
Every religious person assumes all religions but one are “made up”. Non-religious people don’t see a reason to grant an exception.
Clever phrasing, though it doesn’t address the issue of whether the poster understands the assumptions involved in the atheistic worldview.
Additionally, I know of many Christians who would not say that the majority of religions are “made up” completely. Rather, most of them either corrupt the Truth because people thought they had a better idea, or else people actively rejected the Truth and had to come up with a different idea to take its place.
You “don’t treat it as gospel”? Revealing choice of words…
“What kind of person goes in a church and shoots nine people?”
A sick one.
“There’s a sickness in our country.”
Look at this guy, he read my mind!
“There’s something terribly wrong.”
I agree.
“But it isn’t going to be fixed by your government.”
Agreed, go on…
“It’s people straying away, it’s people not understanding where salvation comes from.”
Damn it, no. Just… No.
+1
+2
+3
Deal-breaker?
Hillary ’16?
Now that’s comedy
Religion?! Oh no!
Better go and vote for one of the anti-gun candidates then.
/epic sarcasm
I’m sure Bernie and Hillary won’t pester you with that annoying religion while they pull this nation even further into a statist catastrophe.
I don’t have a problem with someone choosing to be religious, or practicing religion. Any religion. My problem is when someone chooses to throw religion out there as the solution to real world problems. My problem is when someone says evil comes from believing in the wrong faith, or no faith at all.
I think it is wrong and ignorant to blame these acts on anything other than what really truly happened. A bad person chose to do a disgusting and evil thing. Nothing more, nothing less.
@Accur81
You’re soooo right. Because voting actually makes a difference.
/epic sarcasm
Your comment shows your are like a computer–programmed to think in binary.
If only he’d been a follower of radical Islam…
Actually Bernie and Hitlery pester us daily with their religion, to the progressives their religion is the state.
@Randall
I do everything I can to oppose anti-gun candidates, including my statistically insignificant vote. I truly don’t care if you think I’m an idiot. Doing nothing but sitting on the sidelines does not make you intellectually superior to me. It makes you a weakling.
I also vote with my dollars, financially support pro gun candidates, and write opposition letters to anti gun candidates. Regardless, my willingness to vote makes me a more effective gun rights advocate than you.
I can’t agree more.
“It can only be fixed by people coming together. By learning to respect and honor the lives of others. I beg each of us to look inside ourselves and think about those we fear, hate, or mistrust. And then, we must commit to love, care for, and trust them. This story is not about one fool or the tool he used to harm so many. This is about America and the damage that one animal with an agenda can cause to so many. I only pray that we can be bigger and better.”
“It’s people straying away, it’s people not understanding where salvation comes from.”
Damn it, no. Just… No.
He’s a politician looking for the conservative vote. What do you expect. He is vastly superior to any other candidate in my opinion.
Without question he is the best choice we have right now.
Yep. Rand is the only guy standing up to spying, statism, the American middle class, and a number of other things. I’m not religious, but him being so does not bother me at all.
We really need to start hearing more about the Klinton scandals, Klinton CIA operations, Klinton shadow corporations, Klinton body count, etc, in the media.
Seems like mainstream media is scared to talk about these pretty-well-documented things. Really, as a presidential ca didate, she should be dug into as deep as possible. No stone unturned. She likes to talk about senseless deaths… how many occurred under her watch or to her “associates?”
According to the most recent polls, he’s also the most successful GOP candidate if facing Hillary (which is pretty much a given at this point):
” A recent CNN survey shows Clinton beating Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) by 1 point, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) each by 3 points, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) by 8 points and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) by 9 points.”
And even more interestingly:
“• Against Paul, Clinton wins women by 17 points, nonwhites by 37 points, voters under 35 by 12 points and people with incomes below $50,000 by 6 points. Paul wins men by 16 points, independents by 7 points and Tea Party supporters by 74 points.
• Against Rubio, Clinton wins women by 16 points, nonwhites by 35 points, voters under 35 by 20 points and people with incomes below $50,000 by 13 points. Rubio wins men by 10 points, independents by 3 points and Tea Party supporters by 73 points.
• Against Bush, Clinton wins women by 18 points, nonwhites by 36 points, voters under 35 by 39 points and people with incomes below $50,000 by 17 points. Bush wins men by 3 points, independents by 3 points and Tea Party supporters by 54 points.”
Note that Paul has the smallest lag vs Hillary with young voters, low-income voters, and independents.
I very much doubt he’d win even so, but if you want a running chance, he’s definitely the guy.
Some of you are as terrified of religion as the antis are of guns. Just because he’s openly speaking what he believes it means it’s time to flee to the hills and vote for Hillary.
Funny how you can make such a leap like that. Because of course if I disagree with someone taking a religious standpoint on a topic where religion has no actual application I must obviously operate in fear of it.
I don’t live my life in fear. The idea that you may have fundamentally different viewpoints than I do isn’t scary to me.
I can accept Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Agnosticism, Atheism and so on. I can accept someone being white, black, latino, gay, straight, transgender, or even purple if they wanted to be purple.
I can accept that some people want to smoke cigarettes, and marijuana, and drink, and do other drugs.
I can accept that a woman might want an abortion, and I can accept that other people might find that morally repulsive.
I can accept that there are people who are inherently good, and people who just do bad things.
What I cannot understand is how people fail to understand that last concept, and what I cannot tolerate is when people want to dismiss this idea altogether because of some personal ideology, whatever that might be.
I can accept, I can accept, I can accept?
What you must accept is that it’s not all about you…except when you stand before your maker to give account for what you accepted.
I do accept that it’s not all about me, that is the ENTIRE point of what I just posted… You’re being willfully ignorant.
Your god sounds like an abusive husband, and if I have to answer to him after seeing how much evil he allows to exist in this world I’m going to tell him to blow it out his ass.
Clarity over agreement. You’ve made your position and spiritual disposition perfectly clear. I trust those statements will weigh on your conscience to a profitable end.
@Chrispy- two comment of the year front runners right there. Well done.
Religion /does/ scare me more than anything else. People can and have justify doing terrible things to other people in the name of religion.
Evil people can convince good people of really terrible things by using the tool of religion.
So? People can convince others to do horrible things in the name of many things. Like communism, equality, money, patriotism, nationalism, race, resources, and imperialism. Many of those things alone have killed far more people than religion. We’re still the same predator that walked out of the jungle 200,000 years ago. We kill. It’s what we do best. Blame religion all you want, or blame guns, or Bush. Or accept what humanity is. It’s funny how quick liberals forget science.
Just from a sociological perspective, there are four major institutions that act as social controls in society that influence our good behavior. 1) Government (I know where alot of us stand on that one); 2) Family, which is very fractured among lower income and impoverished classes, and which progressives have mocked; 3) School: don’t get me started; and 4) Church. And yes we have fallen away from most of these. No wonder our culture is in the state it is.
As a firm Christian who delves into theology, I have to agree, Chrispy. Knowing “where salvation comes from” really isn’t the issue here — it’s knowing what people are worth. Rand should leave the theology to people with a clue.
“It isn’t going to be fixed by your government” Just like everything else.
That any politician would even grasp let alone admit this is amazing.
I think the important take away here is Rand Paul’s statement: “But it isn’t going to be fixed by your government.”
The rest is the candy coating.
Agree on the take away
Whew… I’m sorry – I’ve been MIA lately. Been on the commenting front lines sarge. Where’s the medic?
Consider the number of unsolved homicides in the inner city, then remember that according to modern policing a tiny percentage of offenders are responsible for them. That means there are hundreds, maybe thousands of very real “serial killers” walking the streets. Add to that the rare “mass killers” who do their killing all at once, and I can agree it’s a problem. The kind of problem the second amendment was designed for. Because, for whatever reason, God refuses to side with prey, in times like that WE are “where salvation comes from.”
Every crisis is an opportunity, even if it’s a molehill which has to be made into a crisis.
The truth is that he was a nutjob. It’s not a social failing, or it would be one of hundreds or thousands of such events, and it would lead to revolution of some sort.
And the only thing which *might* have prevented it would be if one of those dozen people had been packing, and if that person had been effective in fighting back.
Government, as usual, stuck its nose into this affair long before it happened by making churches gun-free zones. Government, as usual, used its broad brush to slobber one “solution” over every situation, no matter how inappropriate.
Statists don’t care. There is no other lesson to learn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41eQIO07R4
The sickness isn’t just in this country. It’s in every country in various forms.
There is no such thing as coldness, only the absence of heat. There is no such thing as darkness, only the absence of light. There is no such thing as evil, only the absence of God. You can deny it all you want and think you are smarter than the rest of us because of your “enlightened” way of thinking, but simply wishing or hoping He does not exist does not make it so. THIS is what is causing our country to die and nothing else.
Well said.
This country is not dying or straying away from God.
This country is fine, the people are fine…this government feels the need to inject a social & business construct that is beyond the scope of its charge. Open borders, shuttling people to welfare, assault on small business & corporations, lack of meaniful regulation on Wall Street, the 10-15 year cycle of citizen investments losing 30%. Businesses shipping manufacturing overseas to escape mindless regulations. And finally the slow assault on our Liberties.
Legislators and buracrats keep pressing their foot on the necks of the people and we will respond. The best way is to vote them out and send in replacements.
” The best way is to vote them out and send in replacements.” Ha, thanks for the Friday morning laugh, that was a good one.
*SNAP* back to reality
The problem is that the election that matters excludes the vast majority of us, and it always chooses people who will keep things going the way you rightly lament. It’s the election by the people who write checks for candidates, and only about 0.2% of the population matter in that election.
And simply wishing that He does exist is not sufficient to make Him exist.
You, like so many others, read too much into one loon doing one stupid thing. He is responsible for those deaths, not God, not the government, not society, not the victims.
This shooting is not a sign of society falling apart, imminent doom, or the need for government intervention in society. It is just one loon off his rocker.
It is what it is, completely independent of all the moral outrage and pontificating.
Thinking that performing ancient rituals to appease a deity to fix all the things does not make it so.
Thinking that there is no God does not make it so.
See how that works?
I could do with less arrogance from Atheists. Science fails to answer some of the most interesting questions in life, such as:
Do we have a soul?
If so, what happens to it when we die?
It takes faith to believe in an ancient deity. It also takes faith to believe that there is no God. You deserve to make your own choice, I’d just appreciate it if you didn’t mock mine.
>> I could do with less arrogance from Atheists. Science fails to answer some of the most interesting questions in life, such as: Do we have a soul?
Science can absolutely answer that question, so long as you can coherently define what “soul” is. Since the foundation of science is empiricism, it can only deal with objective, rational things; but I’ve yet to see a non-handwavy description of “soul” that would fall into that category. Most definitions, if you dig down to the very bottom of them, boil down something along the lines of, “soul is that thing that’s very important but which is immaterial and cannot be observed in any way, shape or form”. Which invites the question: if it cannot be observed, what difference does it make if it’s there or not? I could as well assert that we have not one, but a dozen souls each, and then what?
“Since the foundation of science is empiricism, it can only deal with objective, [let me add material] rational things;”
Having said that, you’ve nothing more to say about non-material [ideas] from a scientific perspective. Science by definition is limited to the material world. Beyond that, it must sit down and listen. But what is “rational” is not necessarily material. Consider…logic?
The thing about logic is, you cannot prove if it’s true or not, because you need logic to prove things in the first place. More generically, with any kind of idea (including math, logic etc), you can only ultimately reduce it to some core set of axioms that you have to accept for granted.
You can test the predictive power of those axioms by applying them (or, usually, something derived from them) in real world scenarios and verifying the results to the extent that you can measure, but that does not constitute proof. We have built some fairly accurate models of the surrounding world based on some axioms like law of identity and law of non-contradiction, and those models are obviously quite useful, as evidenced by e.g. the computer that you’re reading this on. But we don’t actually know whether they hold universally true or not. We assume that they do because we haven’t seen any evidence to the contrary, and it is a simpler assumption to make.
And yes, science (or rather, empiricism, that underlines the scientific method) is by definition limited to the material world. But the material world, by definition, is that which is observable. Thus, non-material things are by definition the ones that do not affect us – whether they exist or not makes no difference, because we cannot tell either way. If we could tell somehow, then that would make them observable and measurable, and hence possible to study empirically. And if we are not, and cannot be, affected by them in any way, then why would we care about them?
“non-material things are by definition the ones that do not affect us – whether they exist or not makes no difference, because we cannot tell either way. If we could tell somehow, then that would make them observable and measurable, and hence possible to study empirically. ”
You may want to re-think this. Have not considered the experience of love?…the loss of someone close to you?…the inspiration of the majestic?…our smallness and complexity in the scope of a seemingly infinite creation? The question of our ultimate origin? Surely you’re not one of those who tries to explain the depth and enormity and dignity of the human experience by asserting that sophomoric view that they are nothing more than biochemical manifestations? Surely not.
>> Surely you’re not one of those who tries to explain the depth and enormity and dignity of the human experience by asserting that sophomoric view that they are nothing more than biochemical manifestations? Surely not.
Why not, exactly? And how does that diminish them in any way? Is the birth of your child less important to you because it is largely a mechanical process? Or how about sex?
But the funny thing is, the precise mechanism doesn’t really matter. All of the examples that you’ve listed, whatever their nature is, are observable – and hence can be studied empirically.
Again, I prefer clarity over agreement. You’ve made your views clear enough. This is not an intellectual discussion but a spiritual and volitional one. May the emptiness of your ideology weigh heavily enough upon you to compel you to see their sterility and convict you of your need to reassess them.
As I was once told, “It’s easy to save someone; the hard part is getting them lost.” No one wants a savior if they don’t think they need one.
Goodnight
Two of those three things are measurable and verifiable. Mathematics demonstrates them perfectly. The third is a belief, and has absolutely nothing to do with actual physics. I’d say nice try, but it wasn’t.
That’s the problem. Leftist statists think salvation does come from government. Leftists are just as much religious zealots as far right religious conservatives, except their god is in Washington.
As a nonreligious neutral party, I find the parallels between the blind, dogmatic, fanatical faith in government and the blind, dogmatic, fanatical faith in religion to be frighteningly similar.
And don’t get your panties in a bunch, I’m not talking about people of faith, but rather ISIS types.
Why do righty statists get a free pass?
Righty statists use government as a tool and God as the justification. For leftist statists, government is the religion.
This statement holds so much truth.
Has it occurred to you that for some of the “statists”, the government is a tool, a mean to an end – not an end in and of itself?
Christian theology doesn’t apply only to the Christian. When Rand Paul or I say “the world is fallen” and “Christ is the resurrection,” that applies to everyone whether you believe it or not.
Criticize him all you want. That’s your right. He’s not asking you to agree with him or accept his thesis. But don’t expect the religious to hide our beliefs, either. It’s the lens through which we view the world.
Yet you think it proper to criticize those who you condemn for criticizing.
Where am I criticizing?
I don’t see any condemnation in that statement. It’s all in your perception. Can’t we even talk about it here without playing the victim card.
Bottom line, those of us who believe in God have nothing to lose if we are wrong. Those of you who don’t believe have everything to lose if your wrong…..playing poker with your soul…..your choice. Just like the victims in this tragedy, they played poker with their safety, and lost….
>> Bottom line, those of us who believe in God have nothing to lose if we are wrong.
Oh, you do. It may happen that you believe in the wrong God. Given the sheer number of them, I would say that the probability is decidedly non-zero.
19th, u just kinda proved my point..I have nothing to lose…
I think he is the best candidate and the most genuine person running. I think his faith probably has a lot to do with it. I think he was strategically toeing a line with his salvation remark, appealing to those who mourn for the loss and those worried about the dems not wasting this opportunity. He didn’t actually inject his religion into the comment but implied that government is not the answer and not going to save everyone from themselves.
From just my perspective, my experiences, my years alive, I thought the racial divide was really closing and becoming more and more of a non-issue (other than it’s historic relevance and impact).. I find it hard to believe that many feel race makes one iota of difference on the quality of one human being or another. That was until the leader of our country started hustling the idea that racism is rampant and still looms large on we the people. Again, just my perspective, but that whole racist rant thing he stands for kind of gins up the off hand license for craziness in opposition….the racist killer maniac that was yesterday.
Plenty of people flock to where they believe salvation comes from out of hate.
One persons god tells them to love and forgive and anothers even within the same religion tells them to kill and destroy.
Religion is just another excuse people use to justify their behaviors and attitudes toward others. Not unlike pigment, gender, geographic location, music preference, clothing preference, etc…
Humans have never had a difficult time finding reasons to hate or love one another.
People ask the wrong questions all the time. It absolutely does not matter one bit that Captain Bowl Cut killed black people or people in a church. All that matters is he killed people. The justification he used or the excuses he made up are wholly irrelevant to understanding why he killed people. But that’s too hard to figure out so we’ll just reduce it to race-based pablum and call it a day. Maybe toss in a little churchy crap for good measure.
But there is money and power to be made from race baiting, so it does matter, unfortunately..
I accuse the President and the former Attorney General of whipping up racial hatred. This crime may have been committed in more racially placid times but the overt racism preached by this administration has set race relations back 50 years and has made this kind of incident more likely. Had the races been reversed the President would have blamed social conditions and “white privilege.” Had some Muslim terrorist done it he would babbling about the religion of peace.
This is what “community organizers do. They stir the pot. People die and they walk away.
I also note that his statement that this doesn’t happen in peer countries is false. Charlie Hebdo anyone?
2011 – Norway – Anders Breivik – 77 dead, mostly children.
Gun laws ‘tightened’ – Zip, Zero, Nada, Nope.
Truer words have never been spoken.
The fact of the matter is that personal integrity is what prevents people from attacking others, not government. And another fact of the matter: government does not instill personal integrity in people. That comes from faith and a healthy, stable family instilling integrity. Regardless of whatever objections people may hold against Judeo-Christian faith, the final fact of the matter is that Judeo-Christian faith instills personal integrity — an honest-to-goodness measure that yields radically fewer spree killers than people raised outside of Judeo-Christian values.
Regardless of whatever objections people may hold against Judeo-Christian faith, the final fact of the matter is that Judeo-Christian faith instills personal integrity
Utter horsecrap. I knew plenty of Jjudaeo-Christians who have no integrity and plenty of non Judaeo-Christians who have it by the bucketful.
If you are inclined to respond to the effect that those integrity-less Judaeo-Christians aren’t really Judaeo-Christians, then allow me to refer you (before you waste my time and yours, though I don’t care if you waste yours) to the “no true Scotsman” fallacy.
I have to agree. “Evangelicals” today include a vast number of people who firmly believe that some are more equal than others, and that the ends justify the means. I lived among quite a batch of them at university, and had I not already been a Christian their example would certainly have guaranteed that I never became one.
It’s called being human. No where does it say that Christians are perfect…. Not all people who proffess to be christains are…are there decent righteous people who don’t believe, of course. You judging all christains on the behavior of a few is the very thing we are fighting against isn’t it? Stereotyping at its finest….after all, isn’t that why this tragedy came about in the first place?
Reading many of these replies, the hatred for Jesus is wide-spread among Rand’s supporters. I’m not sure why there is such a strong strain of atheism among libertarians. Rand Paul’s very real chances to become president lie in the fact that his version of libertarianism still embraces Christ as salvation.
I don’t hate Jesus. He was just a man, and I believe there is some scientific evidence he existed. There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that he did exist, and that he died for what he believed in. Kudos to him, but that does not make him worthy of my praise.
Modern faux Libertarians have an antipathy to religion because it provides the ultimate constraint on personal autonomy. If God exists, them obviously if you want do something contrary to the wishes og God you are in a lot more trouble than if you do something the government doesn’t want you to. It fars easier to assume the problem away.
The real difference between real Libertarians and the faux variety is the latter accepts the Rousseauian premise of the inate goodness of man. While real Libertarians think man is innately corrupt. The Founding Fathers held this view which is why they built a system of checks and balances. They distrusted government because of human nature. They accepted St. Augustine’s premise that the purpose of government was to consraint the effects of original sin.
That falls flat on its face once you realize people cannot be forced to believe.
The people who believe will believe regardless the people who don’t won’t regardless thereby making any attempt to contain “original sin” a pointless exercise. The only difference between a force attempting to constrain said sin and one not attempting to do so is that the force attempting to so gets to wag their fingers in an official status rather than just a judgmental busy-body status.
Where did I say anything about forcing people to believe anything? Real Libertarians are skeptics and skeptics tend toward agnosticism not atheism. An atheist is as much a fanatic, particularly the modern type, as a radical Muslim. The agnostic knows that the existence or non existence of God is indeterminate and acts accordingly. Both the Progressive and faux Libertarian atheist sees God as an impediment to their behavior and therefore dismiss the concept.
Restraining the effects of original sin does not mean eliminating it. Only fool of a Progressive or a faux Libertarian believes you can do that.
I hold no hatred for Jesus (or was it Yeshua?). It’s his follows who I have a problem with.
>> I’m not sure why there is such a strong strain of atheism among libertarians.
Libertarians tend to be more educated, on average. Education has a well-known negative correlation with religiosity.
The other reason is that this whole monotheistic God thing is basically just meta-government (or, if you prefer, a condensed archetype of government) – and a very restrictive and oppressive one at that. It’s even pretty blatant about it, what with terminology like “Our Lord” and “Kingdom of God”. Libertarians generally doesn’t like the notion of lords and kings, and there’s no good reason why some supernatural entity should be exempt from that rule even if it were real. Tyranny is tyranny, whether the tyrant in question is your equal or a “higher being”.
I don’t see how a kingdom whose ruler explicitly said it is not of this world can in any way, shape, or form suggest anything at all about government in/on this world. In fact, the tendency is in the other direction: since the real “government” is other-worldly, it behooves us to have as little as possible here.
I am a libertarian partly because Jesus plainly was: the only time He engaged in force was when His Dad’s house was invaded, specifically, when the guest rooms had been taken over by squatters who kept out invited guests (that’s what the business with the money-changers was about; they’d set up in the space reserved for non-Jews). And Yahweh only backed a monarchy when the people rejected the extremely minimal government He’d provided and demanded a real state.
An honest reading of the Bible points toward minimal government. It most definitely does not point toward the theocracy to which many, many “evangelicals” today are inclined.
Thank Goodness For Guns
Guns are simple. They let you poke holes in things that you can’t reach. That’s the long and short of it. Sometimes, you’re doing it for fun, i.e. “Look how accurately I can poke a hole in this piece of paper!” Sometimes, you’re doing it for food, i.e. “If I poke a hole in this animal’s heart, it’ll die and my family can eat.” There are times when you’re doing it for safety, since certain things need holes poked in them from far away for safety reasons. Then there are times you’re doing it to defend yourself and your family from dangerous humans. Unfortunately, guns are currently being used to commit multiple homicide. Fortunately, guns are being used to commit multiple homicide. Confused yet?
We have to admit that guns are pretty terrible at killing humans by poking holes in them. (Some would argue that swinging a Mosin by the barrel would result in a circle of death and destruction.) Guns often rely on exsanguination and tissue damage to cause death, which is unfortunate because humans possess abundances of both blood and tissue. Guns also possess other negative characteristics: they are heavy, they possess limited ammunition and must be reloaded, they are difficult to effectively use even when they’re perfectly reliable (they aren’t always), they require you to actually remain in the area of your intended victim(s) until they’re dead, and they’re easily recognizable by your intended victim(s).
As an example, the Aurora Theater Murderer used an AR-15 with an aftermarket extended magazine for the first part of his rampage; he soon switched to a shotgun because the magazine failed and produced a jam in his rifle. He ended his massacre having wounded many times more people than he killed. This author is very thankful he was so unimaginative in his method of murder; if he had spent 20 minutes at a hardware store and 5 minutes at a gas station, he could have killed literally every person in that theater. Why? Because for all its resilience, the human body still relies on oxygen, which is in short supply.
If we were to list the deadliest multiple homicides in the history of the United States, shooting deaths wouldn’t make it onto the list at all. Vehicle-based attacks and explosions would dominate. And those scare us all. At least if someone is using a gun, then we get to fight back. That is to say, we get to fight back with our own guns as opposed to gun control.
Even if gun control rounds up every firearm in the world, it won’t regulate diesel fuel and fertilizer.
Superb!
+10^12
No Rand, there is not a “sickness” in America, there’s a sickness in that one man. Just like the mentally ill man in Connecticut, the mentally ill man in Colorado, and the mentally ill man that shot Gabby Giffords and company. Why does Rand Paul keep saying the dumbest things? It’s like he’s channeling his father.
Well, there is a sickness in America — a spreading desire to have government take care of us.
Rand is not my first choice for president but I do agree with his statement to include where salvation comes from, it will never be found in government but in Christ alone.
Down With the Sickness…
Now that’s just Disturbed.
I can’t figure out if I should laugh or groan.
Good one.
I do love a bad pun.
I get it. No Republican can really survive in the party without toeing the religious line at least a little bit. I think Rand Paul is religious, but definitely not full-Huckabee. Never go full-Huckabee.
There is a distinct difference between a religious person and a follower of Christ and I’ll take a follower of Christ any day. This statement is not intended to suggest that Rand or Mike falls into one or the other.
I don’t actually care much if they’re religious (even openly) or not; the question is to what extent it will guide their policies. Someone like Bush, who said that Jesus told him to start his little Crusade? Fvck that. Or Huckabee and Santorum, who would push for morality legislation on federal level on things like abortion and homosexuality if they could. Or that crazy Constitution Party guy a while ago, who said that, if elected to be president, he’d ban abortions unilaterally by executive order (despite opposition to EOs being in the party platform!).
OTOH, if someone like Paul says that he’s personally anti-abortion for religious reasons, but believes that the federal government should not be in the business of regulating it at all, I’m fine with that (on federal level, which we’re talking about here). Ditto his stance on same-sex marriage.
Your comments couldn’t better represent my personal feelings on this if I had written them myself.
Thanks Chrispy , we are not alone , common sense is ebbing away from mainstream as we breath but we are not alone . Truth will free us and set us on the our coarse of destiny . God bless .
There are nasty people in the world who will not respect the persons or property of others unless forced to do so against their wills. Whether he is mentally ill or just bigoted, Dylann Roof is an example. A firearm in the hands of a prospective victim is the most effective tool to apply the requisite force.
I am a Christian 1st, a husband,father and grandfather second and an American gun owner 3rd or fourth or fifth. And I thought all you libertarians(or “faux”) loved Rand. That pesky Jesus…
LOL
As a libertarian, my problem with Rand is that he seems blithely unaware that government is not the only entity capable of applying coercion to run society. Corporations have too much power, but he appears to just love them.
We’ve gone through periods when it was a church that applied coercion to run society, and periods when it was government. We have to be careful lest we hand ourselves into a period when corporations are the tyrants (something Thomas Jefferson was concerned about). Right now the issue is corporations entangled with government, but it is a real risk that they will just make government a puppet — so we need to sever the power of corporations over government, as well as strangle government somewhat.
Well done Rand , I actually wish you would have gone farther but I too understand politics . Too many Christian haters in the world today . I am well aware of how some people think they can be good enough to stand before the one true God and say I was a good person and God will say good job . These people will always reject the universal need for a soul redeemer so you can’t even lead these folks to the water , much less get them to drink it . It’s OK people , God does allow for their folly in his plan . They will have all things revealed to them and be given a chance at redemption . They are not necessarily destined for eternal separation from God , but the road they choose is slippery and they walk a path of deception that could have a perilous end . Those who choose not to recognize that they are flawed internally from those who do experience this epiphany of realization is the great divide . The Christians and the non Christians . The knowledge of our own flaws is how we truly accept the flaws of others and show real love of others and then receive our atonement through the redeemer of mankind . The fact that a young man would use a weapon of any kind to inflict injury and death on another is as old as humanity , whether a stone or a firearm , the only difference is the reasons why . A can of gasoline and a match could have done more damage . It isn’t the tool that we use but the hand that uses it .
There are several commentators who are going after Rand for him using the word “Salvation” and the religious connotation he brought with it, but I think they missed the point that he is talking about this specific incident where an obviously deranged man sits in a church meeting/group/service for an hour before opening fire on the unarmed parishioners he was had been forming a relationship with. If this was another situation, let’s say this same man goes into a supermarket and kills nine people, than I doubt Rand would have said the word Salvation.
Interesting point — I hadn’t thought of it that way.
This was the right response to this tragedy.
Is this a result of original sin? Dang women, always causing trouble since the dawn of creation.
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