By contrast, the whole interview process with TWU struck me as a good deal less structured, less formal. I know the main reason I’m even being considered at all is that I have hands-on (albeit limited) experience with the Voyager ILS, and I also have the one EndUser Conference 2006 under my belt as well. It puts me one length ahead of both fresh out of library school candidates and also ahead of more experienced librarians who are familiar with other ILS’s besides Voyager and would have to play catch up to reach where I am with Voyager, at least in theory. I am wary of being once again the only MLS in the Cataloging side of things, though this time if hired I’d have 2 experienced copy catalogers, one of them with many years of experience, including with original cataloging under her belt. I would not be completely alone, the director reassured. Again, my ideal set up in a first library job would be in a larger department with co-equal co-workers I could turn to first, and bosses with a cataloging background. The head of Tech Services does at least have cataloging experience, though her emphasis, career-wise, has been with the acquisitions side of Tech Services operations, which is probably common for Tech Services administrators.
I may get offered the TWU position, I may not; if not it would not be the end of the world; If I was offered it, I’d probably accept, but I’d surely miss metro Houston, and though I find Denton ok, I make no secret of my distinct loathing of the greater DFW metroplex just down the road a ways.
Anyway, to kill time on the long drive up to Dallas, I had the good fortune to read the audio-book version of this book:
That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right (Independent Studies in Political Economy) (Paperback)
by Stephen P. Halbrook (Author)
· Paperback: 275 pages
· Publisher: Independent Institute (March 1, 1994)
· Language: English
· ISBN-10: 0945999380
· ISBN-13: 978-0945999386
The audio-book format I best enjoy when making those long commutes between Houston and Dallas. Halbrook demonstrates a very high level of erudition, especially in his marshaling of historical evidence for the intellectual history of the right to keep and bear arms, which Halbrook irrefutably demonstrates was always understood first and foremost as a natural right of self-defense pre-dating the US Constitution and merely recognized implicitly by the 2nd Amendment. He demonstrates the origin of the term "a well-regulated militia" as denoting the whole of the populace, armed against aggression, tyranny, and usurpation, either against criminal elements seeking to do harm to the individual, or to repel a foreign invasion. Indeed, in earlier drafts of what was to become the 2nd Amendment, it was more explicitly defined "a well regulated militia, consisting of the whole body of the people", which was later (regrettably, I think) deleted from the 2nd Amendment merely for brevity's sake, though in hindsight this was probably a mistake as later generations (and regrettably some ill-informed courts) have misunderstood the truncated version and made much mischief on its account. But in the framer's day there was no mistake about what "a well-regulated militia" (regulated in this sense meaning well-trained/drilled/proficient in the use of arms, incidentally, not ‘regulated’ as we understand that term today in usual political discussions such as EPA regulations, FDA regulations, etc), what this distinct whole phrase, actually meant--it meant the whole populace of the country, as opposed to a standing army; It also emphatically did not mean what the framers identified as a “select militia” like the National Guard, which they described as being staffed by an over-reliance on younger men without property or other gainful employment, e.g. without much else to do but train for military service, even if only part time, and in the process making the shopkeepers, prosperous gentleman farmers, etc, disinclined to military exercise--this probable outcome was also (rightly) regarded by the Framers as really little better than a professional standing army and just as much a threat to Liberty. So these Constitutional Framers, in contradiction to contemporary gun-rights critics and pushers of crackpot “collective rights” theories, most emphatically did NOT mean "something like the National Guard", as the anti-rights crowd would have it; That sort of specialized, select 'militia' was, in fact, explicitly rejected.
Admittedly the writing can tend to be a little bit dry, and it is a tough slog to work your way through this book, even in the audio-book format, but at least it forces you to keep moving forward at an even clip. I had initially started this book in paperback form, but found I had to switch to audio-book if I was ever going to finish it, as a way of forcing myself through the material, thanks to the aforementioned lengthy business trip to the North Texas region. It was ultimately totally worth it, and I'm glad to have the paperback as a reference work to refer back to later. As others have stated, this work is the definitive intellectual history of the origins of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution and its subsequent legal history.
My feeling is, this ought not be a partisan, left-versus-right issue; I agree wholeheartedly with Halbrook here and yet I'm a libertarian Socialist and anti-capitalist Green. Halbrook agrees, incidentally, in the last chapter, citing, among others, the Black Panther Party (for that matter, he could have also cited the Weather Underground. Moreover, some hippies living in poorer urban areas did in fact carry guns for self-defense, their opposition to the Vietnam War notwithstanding)
No, it's a human rights issue that was clearly understood and accepted until roughly the late 1960s and 1970s, when a few poorly reasoned court decisions were made, and some very bad public policy, such as DC's gun ban; The reason the DC gun-ban was shot down recently by the DC Circuit Court is because the anti-gun argument is built on a house of cards and ought to be struck down, and I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will agree with the lower court ruling in this matter. A good ruling there will lay the groundwork for overturning the most restrictive bans in Chicago, Illinois, and then later the only slightly less ridiculous regulatory environment of New York City and San Francisco and Baltimore. Once we move onward from the DC case, future arguments will be able to push for “incorporation”, via the 14th Amendment, and make the Second Amendment the law of the land, keeping our self-defense gun rights safe not only from Federal Infringement but also from more local tyrants in our State capitals and behind the walls of City Hall.
The most interesting part of Halbrook's work is the ambivalence he highlights about the legal opinion of the status of concealed weaponry.
It has something to do with the nature and mindset of 19th Century society, I think, where open carry was preferred to concealed carry...Open carry was "manly" while concealed carry was "dastardly", "underhanded", etc. As a Modern, I do not share these opinions, and some courts have not either, but others have. I think Concealed Carry has been a boon for reducing crime everywhere it's been enacted into law in our day, and it actually serves as a better deterrent than open carry, since anyone, even women and the elderly, could potentially be carrying concealed. Halbrook seems to conclude that more and more courts are viewing concealed carry as protected by the 2nd Amendment. Concealed carry licensing should in point of fact not even be necessary--the 2nd Amendment (via “incorporation” through the 14th Amendment) should suffice country-wide--but we're sadly a long way away from that state of affairs, though the upcoming DC case is the proverbial crack in the gun-ban dam.
Honestly, what’s refreshing about this book is that it becomes plainly clear that you don't have to be a right-wing ideologue to be pro-RKBA. You don't have to accept our sucky for-profit health care system to be pro-RKBA. You don't have to be an asinine global warming skeptic to be pro-RKBA. You don't have to be anti-union or anti-abortion to be pro-RKBA. You just have to have a respect for the American legal tradition, understand what the lessons of history actually say, and understand that the right of self-defense pre-exists any constitution, as it is a fundamental human right that is merely recognized by the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.
My fellow Leftists who ARE anti-RKBA ought to read a little more history, because it should make them ashamed of the very racist roots of nearly all gun-control legislation, both in the 19th century--and in the 20th. As recently as the JFK administration, JFK, a northern liberal Democrat, would’ve most closely associated gun control proposals with Jim Crow laws.
There are Democrats, Greens, even Anarcho-Syndicalist Socialists who are quite proud to be pro-RKBA.
My recommendation is to read this book, learn the history, and if you find it compelling, learn to just say no to anti-gun policies and those who would disarm us. As a once and future Academic Librarian, do I support Concealed Carry on Campus? You bet I do. For students as well as faculty and staff. Including the Library itself, including on the job, whether working reference, or at one’s cubicle in tech services, or managing circulation.
Recently I’ve been doing a good bit of browsing on right-to-keep-and-bear-arms (hereafter rkba) issues. Superficial in depth, perhaps, but, I hope, respectably broad in scope. I am an internationalist at heart; I can’t not be. It’s in my blood.
most US gun-rights advocates (and, I would argue, their detractors, too) tend to keep narrowly focused on the issues in the USA, to argue about the original intent of the 2nd Amendment, etc This is completely understandable, as the most immediate fight is here on our own soil. The anti-gun/pro-control crowd likes to pride itself on being more worldly, more “international”, citing firearms restrictions in other countries. But in fact, as with the facts domestically, they do so dishonestly. In fact, crime in the United Kindom and Australia have gone up since the imposition of their draconian gun control laws. An honest examination of the true international RBKA struggle puts things in a much different light.
I wanted to know for myself if there were Europeans who take a pro-RKBA stance, or are the all hopelessly anti-gun zombies who will always ridicule “American gun culture”. If I may indulge in a long aside that is slightly off-topic, I remember once, for example, how shocked I was indeed to meet a pro-death penalty Canadian (Canada doesn’t have a death penalty anymore). I’ve gone back and forth on this issue myself over the years. I’ve argued against the death penalty on moral grounds, then more narrowly on more conservative, financial, cost-prohibitive grounds, and there is still a lot to give one pause when one considers whether or not American juries generally are really fair with equal application of the penalty regardless of the race of the defendant. I would agree that the evidence suggests they’re not able to apply the penalty fairly and impartially, and it’s an ongoing problem in our society. But just when I’ve about made up my mind to be opposed to the death penalty completely, some ultra-violent scumbag will lower the bar yet again and commit a string of crimes so heinous, with such wanton disregard for his fellow human beings that I want justice done, and that state execution of such a heinous individual is the only way to adequately serve justice. Vengeance wrong, you say? I don’t give a shit. The Canadian I met had gone through much the same thought processes and arrived at the same conclusion I did. She felt Canada needed to restore the death penalty, at least for the most heinous crimes.
Returning to the gun-rights issue again, there are fortunately other Canadians, too, who know full well what draconian gun laws like the UK have done for the UK, and would do for Canada if they adopted that course, and they don’t like it one bit. They already chafe at what successive Liberal governments in Ottowa have done to wreck gun-rights in the Dominion of Canada. Many are, as you would probably expect, from Western Canada, where the National Firearms Association (www.nfa.ca) is headquartered, in Edmonton, Alberta. Alberta is widely regarded as the “Texas” of Canada, for those who don’t know. What even Western Canadians (who can be a bit too francophobic, for my tastes) also possibly don’t know is that they have an ally in a fiercely independent minded Quebecois professor who is pro-RKBA named Pierre Lemieux who hosts a personal/political website at http://www.pierrelemieux.org/index.html . Professor Lemieux (not to be confused with conservative MP Pierre Lemieux, btw) has rather anarchist/libertarian views and is quite vehemently pro-RKBA.
He’s even written some provocative books on the subject in French:
Le droit de porter des armes (Broché)
de Pierre Lemieux (Auteur)
· Broché: 244 pages
· Editeur : Belles Lettres (8 octobre 1993)
· Collection : Iconoclastes
· Langue : Français
· ISBN-10: 2251390200
· ISBN-13: 978-2251390208
This book tackles RKBA head on and argues for gun rights and provides a philosophical defense for the right of self-defense.
His later book is a more generalized political rant, from a proud Quebecois viewpoint, but it also looks quite fun to read:
Confessions d un Coureur des Bois Hors la Loi (Broché)
by Pierre Lemieux (Author)
· Paperback: 160 pages
· Publisher: Varia (2001)
· Language: French
· ISBN-10: 2922245616
· ISBN-13: 978-2922245615
Canadian awareness is growing and there is also an activist site of note to be found at www.rkba.ca
The Germans are becoming slowly aware of the RKBA issue, too. I am reading on German blogs and internet forums a growing dissatisfaction with strict gun control and a realization that it does not reduce criminal activity but merely disarms law-abiding citizens. There are and always have been various shooting clubs and shooting societies in Germany and Austria, but none seem to be quite so directly politically engaged as the new Forum Waffenrecht, which tackles the issue head on. They are on the web at http://www.fwr.de ; I joined their discussion board to learn, to meet Germans who care about RKBA as much as I do, and, of course, to practice my German reading comprehension.
The Austrians, too, are becoming aware of RKBA and have even created their own pro-RKBA political organization dedicated to a liberalization of Austria’s gun laws. It is called the Interessengemeinschaft Liberales Waffenrecht in Österreich (ILWÖ for short), or the “Special Interest Group for Liberalized Gun Rights in Austria”, which is quite a mouthful but at least their URL is short and sweet and and can be found on the web here: http://www.iwoe.at/
They have the right idea:
The Swiss, by contrast, have always been way ahead of both Germany and Austria when it comes to gun rights, are widely admired by RBKA advocates worldwide, so I need not talk of the Swiss very much, other than to note in passing that Stephen Halbrook has written a few books about them:
SWISS AND THE NAZIS: How the Alpine Republic Survived in the Shadow of the Third Reich (Hardcover)
by Stephen Halbrook (Author)
· Hardcover: 256 pages
· Publisher: Casemate (May 2006)
· Language: English
· ISBN-10: 1932033424
· ISBN-13: 978-1932033427
· Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
Target Switzerland (Paperback)
by Stephen P. Halbrook (Author), Alex Van Buren (Editor)
· Paperback: 352 pages
· Publisher: Da Capo (December 1, 2003)
· Language: English
· ISBN-10: 0306813254
· ISBN-13: 978-0306813252
· Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
Have not read either work, though browsing the critiques on Amazon.com, I’d hazard to guess that in his emphasis to stress Swiss armed citizenry as a deterrent to the Nazi war machine, he possibly downplays other relevant factors like Swiss geography and its difficult mountainous terrain (something the USSR mostly lacked, but proved quite a stumbling block in Greece and Yugoslavia for the Nazi Wehrmacht) and their lack of abundant strategic natural resources. The conquest of Switzerland simply wasn’t worth it. Also, there was some Swiss complicity with the Third Reich, at least in the early stages of the war, and they were less than welcoming to all who fled the rising Nazi tyranny.
In any case, “Waffenrecht ist Meschenrecht”, to paraphrase somewhat Oleg Volk’s favorite slogan into proper German. Germans and Austrians are beginning to become somewhat aware of this. Gun control laws in Germany also have racist roots in so far as Jews were the target of disarmament legislation.
RKBA has a much longer way to go in the Spanish-speaking world, I think, but I did discover a few blogs out there that strike a pro-RKBA note; Most notably was this Argentine blog:
En Defensa Propia : Contra Las Armas Illegales y el Desarme Civil (In Self Defense: Against Illegal Arms and Against Civilian Disarmament)
http://endefensapropia.blogspot.com/
This Venezuelan blog, El Liberal Venezolano, also has an archived post directly addressing a pro-RKBA position, “Sobre el derecho a portar armas” :
http://liberal-venezolano.net/blog/index/2005/11/22/sobre_el_derecho_a_portar_armas
One individual has even put together a website containing an international directory of pro-RKBA groups, which is quite impressive and can be found here: http://www.afn.org/~afn18566/
What’s interesting for me in all of these blogs, forums, and websites of these individuals and social organizations is how these people in other countries, who don’t have the good fortune that we do to simply make direct reference to the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, have to go about defending the pro-RKBA position based on fundamental concepts of human rights and a right to self-defense. All of which exist in every human being prior to the US Constitution as a natural right, which the US Constitution merely affirms and guarantees. It also has a basis in English common law, and some Englishmen today are once again becoming aware of this and speaking out; see the website of The Great British Gun Ban Con, for example: http://members.aol.com/gunbancon/Main.html
The English experience was also tainted by sectarian prejudices against its minority Catholic population whom it only reluctantly, over time, came to trust with the possession of firearms. Similarly, the roots of modern gun control in the United States have very racist roots in the post-Civil War period of Jim Crow and the rise of the KKK. It took awhile for both societies to come to their better natures and recognize this fundamental human right as applying to all, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, etc, which is why RKBA is too important to be left only to the traditional Conservative base which foams at the mouth when “God, Guns and Gays” is invoked.
No, like it or not, my US Republican friends, you NEED folks like Pink Pistols (http://www.pinkpistols.org/ ), LiberalsWithGuns ( http://liberalswithguns.com/index.html ), and ProGun Progressive (http://progunprogressive.com/ ) on your side in the RKBA fight. This fight is bigger than your parochial conservative movement. Shit, I’m unabashedly an anarcho-socialist, and a ecological anti-capitalist Green and yet I’m pro-RKBA to the hilt.
Why? How can I maintain that? Because it’s about freedom, it’s about standing up for the common man. The wealthy will always have guns, regardless what the law says, just as women of wealth will always have access to abortion, even if it’s outlawed in the USA. RKBA is completely consistent with Left/Populist value systems if you analyze deeply enough and accept the facts and what is reasonable to conclude from the facts rather than engaging in wishful thinking. One statement made recently by “Lenin” of the UK blog Lenin’s Tomb I must say I especially love…basically to the effect that the Socialist struggle is the unflinching, gritty Realpolitik of the poor. And an unflinching, gritty Realpolitik of the poor and dispossessed must of necessity be pro-RKBA. Anyone remember the Ludlow Massacre? Anyone?
It’s inadequate, as libertarians and American conservatives to rail wholesale against “big gubmint” as an undifferentiated bogey-man. Rather, we ought to worry, truly, about the shadowy National Security State pulling the strings and serving higher interests, the real ruling classes, just behind the elected, visible government and its agencies and bureaucracies. It’s not enough for the people to seize the reigns of the visible, elected government. Former Chilean president Salvador Allende had done that; it wasn’t enough—and he learned that lesson a little too late to save his life.
If you’re going to talk like Mao, you better be willing to fight like Mao. The working class can’t resist counter-revolutionary, fascist backlash if it is disarmed. QED,
No, these are the kind of Dark Alliances that can bring about a Waco massacre, or lend the high yield stuff that really made OKC go “bang” in 1994. BATFE and the IRS are merely pawns…JBTs to be sure, but lower order terrors compared to false flag black ops that have no name. No Such Agency. Area 51. FEMA not being quite all it seems. REX 84. Central Intelligence Agency, Drugs, that “Mena airport thing” with related “train deaths”, the Bilderberg Group, Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, et. al. This is why I read activist Stan Goff’s books and blog, why I subscribed to Michael Ruppert’s From the Wilderness newsletter for over a year, and why I also keep and maintain a couple of SKS rifles, and a WASR-10. It makes you consider that IANSA ( http://www.iansa.org/ ) is not just some UN-based example of muddle-headed political correctness run amok, but rather more probably a politically correct sugar coating hiding a darker counter-insurgency / neocolonialist / neoimperialist disarmament agenda of trans-national elites.
Maybe you’ve heard of the book about Black Box voting. Good start but you don’t know the half of it until you see Daniel Hopsicker’s investigations—uncovering mob/organized crime connections to these shadowy corporations and their holding companies literally controlling our vote.
When you understand just how despotic the National Security State is, what it’s capable of, get the collusion between organized crime and the Intelligence community, and take to heart Ike’s warning about the military industrial complex, and the writings of Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, and use all that as a touchstone for understanding what really happened in Dallas on 22 NOV 1963, and on the morning of 09/11/01, it makes you pro RKBA to the hilt.
Incidentally, the mob loves gun control and many former gangsters have penned rather sardonic commentary on their opinion of gun control legislation. Makes their own work—preying on the innocent—so much easier.
My contention remains that you don’t have to swallow a lot of right-wing crap to support RKBA. You can be a genuine progressive, against the war, for national health care, pro women’s right to choose abortion, pro civil rights for homosexuals to marry, etc, and *still* be pro-RKBA. Being pro-RKBA doesn’t entail supporting a lot of unrelated, odious crap you might strongly object to.
I say again this isn’t a Right versus Left issue (though it may be a Top [anti] versus Bottom [pro-RKBA] one). It’s most profoundly a human rights issue, as Oleg Volk contends and I agree.
Not that it’s necessarily easy to maintain a pro-RKBA stance in more mainstream Leftwing circles, even in Library circles, but it is necessary. Sometimes maybe I’m in the closet on this issue among fellow Left-leaning Library friends, but I’m working on the “coming out pro-RBKA” part. It’s also necessary for traditional libertarian & conservative RKBA advocates to acknowledge they do have allies across the aisle on this one issue of vital importance, because facts and reason bear out the pro-RKBA position.
Granted, most of the foreign sources I have quoted here are of a Libertarian or traditional Conservative bent. Most pro-RBKA voices in the United States are from those political persuasions also.
Keeping RKBA confined to those circles is one of the most effective elements of political control used by the powers that be today.
Thus it’s my view is that this issue rises above petty politics. You don’t have vote in any old GOP fool who’ll let moneyed elites loot the treasury and send countless young men from poor families off to die on some godforsaken patch of hell untold miles away from American soil just to affirm the RKBA. Or at least you ought not to have to feel you must.
Most Green party members are quite probably anti-gun, but actually it makes more sense to be pro-RKBA to pull in hunters, who have tended to be more and more sympathetic to environmental issues and are necessary allies in the struggle for ecological conservation. Probably a good many self-described socialists are also anti-gun, but this is sheer stupidity. Regardless what Lenin did once he came to power, he and the Bolsheviks would’ve gotten nowhere without the arms of enough deserting Tsarist soldiers coming over to their ranks, and bringing their Mosin-Nagant rifles and Nagant revolvers over with them. Socialists of anti-gun persuasion are just as much suffering from an infantile disorder as Lenin described in excoriating his Left-of-Center rivals back in his day. Mao Tse Tung moreover recognized that “political power flows from the barrel of a gun”.
As Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell, who died a convinced Socialist, once stated "That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or laborer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
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