When your state becomes a playground for the rich (and their liberal ideology) and a nightmare for the ‘commoners’ … The Zelman Partisans is quoted in “Your Life; A Playground For Rich Liberals.” Please “Like” it @ WND, tweet and share.
“Tzedek, tzedek tirdof,” we are instructed in Deuteronomy 16, 18-20. Translated this means, “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” The repetition is for emphasis. (The biblical narrators were super hot writers.) This tells me that Jews are enjoined against pacifism.
Do you agree?
“Violence breeds only violence” is a pacifistic plum line one hears a lot. This particular New Age guff equates reasonable punishment with violence. While it can include violent methods, reasonable punishment is not the same as violence. When we follow an unprovoked act of aggression with a proportional act of retribution, and when we punish only the guilty—no collateral damage—then we are doing justice, not violence. We do justice not only for the purpose of vindicating those harmed or killed, but because justice, like liberty, is the foundation of a peaceful and orderly society. To ignore the imperative of justice is to be in revolt against the natural law; the law of reason, which precedes and transcends man-made law.
Besides, if man is said to have been created in the image of God, then refusing to defend this awesome representation of the Almighty on earth would seem somewhat sacrilegious, surely.
David B. Kopel’s deductive leap of logic sanctioning a certain war, which shall not be mentioned or discussed here, is wrong, in my opinion. However, “The Torah and Self-Defense,” in which Kopel “surveys the Torah’s teachings on the right and the duty to defend oneself and others,” is well-worth reading.
The column “A new Jewish pro-gun group: The Zelman Partisans,” by The Gun Writer, Lee Williams of the Herald-Tribune (Sarasota, FL), is a real coup for TZP. As Ali G., aka Sacha Baron Cohen, would have said: “Respek,” Sheila Stokes-Begley.
As someone who is hardly new to liberty (I began writing a weekly newspaper column in 1998, in Canada), but who takes her cues about Aaron’s legacy from individuals who were closely associated with him, forgive me for asking: If The Zelman Partisans is open to any and all—and I like the idea of inclusiveness in this cause—what makes us Jewish? I’m agnostic on the matter, if curious on just how we stay true to the advertized motto of “Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.”
Again, kol hakavod, Sheila.
(Here is our Alexa ranking.)
UPDATE: Very well, Vladka Peltel (see comments below). My own writing and identity are inescapably informed by my Jewishness. I liked that JPFO had a rabbi on call who also reasoned powerfully—even brilliantly, and certainly biblically “against pacifism, and in defense of a ‘righteous killing.’ Rabbi Bendory also demonstrated a command of Hebrew grammar as well as impressive deductive, analytical thinking.” It would be hard to find another American rabbi in his league, and we should avoid recruiting a second-rate mind such as the two clowns mentioned in “American Rabbis For Israel First.”
In any case, you are all more Jewish than most Jews I know. This chat was most illuminating. Thanks.
On his bio, Y.B. ben Avraham claims he cannot write:
“Among Mr. ben Avraham’s panoply of noteworthy skills, writing is, sadly, not included.”
Self-deprecation is refreshing in the Age of the Ego and the Idiot. However, Avraham’s style reminds me of two Yiddish writers whom I studied in Hebrew, of course (I hope Israeli kids still study these remarkable, quintessentially Jewish writers): Sholem Aleichem and Yitskhok Peretz. This is a very good thing indeed. But don’t let what I’ve said go to your head. <grin> And don’t become too aware, or else you’ll lose the gift some older Jews still have.
Myron Pauli, a contributor to Barely A Blog, also has that certain Jewish je ne sais quoi. The younger generation of writers, Jewish and gentile, is like dessicated dust by comparison. Or dry good, which is how Irishman Oscar Wilde referred to American books.
“Make sure it doesn’t happen in your state next,” warns Michelle Malkin, in “Rocky Mountain Heist,” a documentary in which the columnist puts her trademark shoe-leather journalistic sleuthing to work in exposing the Democrat-rigged “democracy” of Colorado, where a “group of wealthy liberals overtook Colorado. They used every scheme possible to impose a backward agenda and they transformed the place [she] love[s] into a testing ground for their liberal ideology.”
Malkin, who once resided in our state, might already know that the dice are loaded against decent people in Washington State too. I-594 is, by Rachel Alexander’s telling, “the only gun-control measure on the ballot this fall anywhere across the country.” It “is being bankrolled by billionaires on the left in favor of gun control, including anti-gun activist and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as former wealthy Microsoft execs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.”
Let us not forget Paul Allen, also a billionaire and also of Microsoft. He and the other bastards—who no doubt have security details guarding their abodes—“have raised more than $6 million” to make it more difficult for ordinary folks to defend life and property.
In 2011, another unfathomably wealthy individual got behind an effort to bilk businessmen and women of modest means. The Service Employees International Union (state and national locals), the National Education Association, and Washington teachers union locals all united to champion a new income tax, the poster boy for which was William H. Gates Sr., father of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
UPDATE (11/2): Vladka Peltel writes:
Since you’re reading gunblogs I suppose you already know that I-594 is the anti-gunners’ dream this year. Under the pretense of being ‘only’ a universal background check bill (common sense, you know!), it would criminalize nearly all transfers of firearms, including the most helpful, innocent, and momentary. Loan a gun to a friend in need? Felony. Instructor hands a gun to student and student hands it back? TWO felonies. So on so on so on.
“The Ghetto Mentality” by Y.B. ben Avraham of Zelman Partisans is provocative and worthy of further debate (pilpul). For now, I offer a comment about tikkun olam:
Those with messianic complexes, especially neoconservatives, should reconsider what is meant by tikkun olam. Starting with the barefaced Thomas Friedman, Jews and non-Jews alike have bastardized this beautiful, but modest, Jewish obligation. In an attempt to lend spiritual credibility to hubristic insolence, Friedman once praised Tony Blair for “always [leaving] you with the impression that for him the Iraq war is just one hammer and one nail in an effort to do tikkun olam, to repair the world.”
Developed by the scholars and sages of a dispersed people, tikkun olam was intended as a humble and modest thing – it is the duty of the Jewish individual to help, bit-by-bit, to bring about a better world in unassuming, day-to-day righteous acts.
As much as I love Canada—I’m a citizen—I could not live in a place that practically outlaws the right to defend life and property. Ordinary Canadian citizens are de facto barred from owning firearms. Read Second-Amendment scholar David Kopel’s account of Canada’s draconian gun laws:
… it is virtually impossible for an ordinary citizen to obtain a permit to carry a loaded handgun for self-defense. Handgun carry permits for self-protection are issued “only in exceptional cases” where the issuing officer is “satisfied” of the applicant’s need. A 600 page National Firearms Manual, prepared by the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, provides ample reasons for an officer to accept or deny a self-protection application as he sees fit. In contrast, permits to carry unloaded, locked handguns to target ranges are readily obtainable.
… How strict the police departments are in issuing handgun target licenses varies from region to region. In some jurisdictions, a person might legally buy a handgun, but the police would hold the gun for several months, while the central government in Ottawa completed its paperwork. Only then would the police allow the gun to be taken to a target range.
Notice how law-enforcement are first to champion gun control against the populace, by using the pretext that it’ll stop criminals from arming themselves. This is the case in the US too. Currently, in Washington State, one is treated to TV footage of weepy “vaginas” (not my coinage; I’m innocent here) plumping for a ballot initiative that would, as these simpletons promise, stop violence against women. Explains Rachel Alexander:
I-594 has been cleverly drafted to sound like it merely makes small changes to gun laws, not a flat-out ban or gun registration scheme. This is why it is so dangerous. People are less likely to oppose it; in fact, polls show that even a majority of gun owners – 54 percent of the 35 percent of Washington residents who own a gun – are in favor of it.
The initiative, or so the professional criers claims, is backed by thousands of policemen.
But I digress. Gun restrictions impact the law-abiding citizen; criminals by definition are outlaws. The criminal who “ambushed the Parliament building in Ottawa” had no qualms about violating Canada’s pernicious anti-gun laws to carry out an attack on the Canadian parliament.
Still, the moron media stateside pushes more gun control in … Canada.