Log In | Register
I just came from this MSNBC article. Between the usual juvenile nonsenses are several interesting and insightful comments worth reading if you have the time. Just be sure and get back over here.
WE ARE THE WILD WEST AND PROUD OF IT!!
Let me begin by making a very important distinction. In Arizona police departments and Sheriff"s other than both being law enforcement agencies bear very little in common. I am not saying that all of our sheriff departments are free of the shoot first mentality, what I am saying is that they are still the most trustworthy we have. For one very simple reason. Police chiefs are "hired by the government" while "sheriffs are elected by the people".
This is actually a good time to be living in Arizona if you are an American. Okay I'll pause and let many of you wipe off your screens and keyboards now.
We are an exceptionally young state, not just because we didn't sign on until a hundred years ago but also because we didn't get hit with the development of the 20th century until sometime in the 70"s, before that newcomers were primarily comprised of old timers wanting to get away from the snow and the misery of their rheumatism.
Harsh! You bet it's harsh out here. If it wasn't so pretty one might say that this chunk of terrain is the devil's doing. Heck, in the middle of July you can't even land on top of a telephone pole without flapping your wings to cool it off first. You can always tell the newcomers by the way they always say ouch! everytime they open a car door.
It didn't use to matter if you were a city boy or an open-range kind of guy, if you were going to cut it out here you had to have a certain kind of toughness and discipline. This is not a good place for the meek to try and inherit. Why in tarnation we and the Mexicans didn't just let the Indians keep it in the first place I'll never understand. Stupid conquistadors anyway, nothing but a bunch of ultra-right wing terrorists working for the church anyway. Then along came technology, worse day for this state was when they started putting air conditioning in cars. Instead of being confined to their homes now the sissy-folk were able to get out and start meddling with all kinds of things, especially our freedoms.
Now the increase in population hasn't been all bad, since the advent of corporate farming and corporate ranching has had the assistance of the Feds all the old family farms and ranches are disappearing out here just like back in the mid-west and we needed to find knew ways to sustain ourselves. With all of the static that these easterners brought with them we were forced to trade in our stetsons for tin hats.In this climate nobody wants to be a metal-head by choice.
Our age gives us an advantage especially over the east and the south. The biggest advantage is that we haven't had near as many years of being conditioned to blindly believing that if it wears a badge it must be good. Instead of asking how high when when Washington says jump we ask why. Leaping before you look is a great way to end up in an old mineshaft around these parts. Which is why Obama has declared war on the State of Arizona. Oh, I know he hasn't said those exact words, it is just another one of his lies, just this one happens to be by omission.
FASCISM AND SOCIALISM -- TWO PATHS TO THE SAME DESTINATION
The further ones leans to the left and the further one leans to the right the closer they both come to living in a police state. Even though for several years our lifestyles were more libertarian in nature out of need, it is honest to say that we have been an extreme right leaning region for years. We've been working on that, but don't think we are just going to all of a sudden jump as far to the left as the liberals and so-called progressives want us to. We don't mind giving a person a hand up, used to call it a "stake", but we don't cotton to having to feed a bunch of freeloaders and making sure they have a nice comfortable bed to get tucked into every night.
Most of you other states are handicapped by years of slowly letting your freedoms erode. You have gotten used to giving them up one at a time. Out here the last twenty to thirty years have been like a forced abortion of our rights, it is fresh in our minds. We haven't had generations of families to absorb the changes in this country, those of us that saw the beginning of it here in Arizona are still around to see how far it has gone.
-----------------------------------------JUST WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT GUN CONTROL LAWS-----------------------------------
This goes for some of you "Libertarians" too. It is rare, especially here on the Vine that you hear a word of truth as to the real reason the writers of the Constitution had gun rights so high on their list of freedoms.
To begin with, consider the environment they lived in back then, you know the 1700s, especially the poor people. Having one or more guns in the house was commonplace, no big deal, heck not having a gun usually meant you weren't putting any meat on your table either. So what was the big deal?
Well it seems like the Brits had a bit of a habit of knocking on your door or accosting you on the street and at gunpoint inform you that you had just been conscripted into his majesties service. Or, also at gunpoint that certain of your goods were for forfeit to the service of his majesty. Or, again at gunpoint tell you that you would provide living quarters and meals for a member of his majesties court usually military. Colonists didn't like this and complained. With his usual pomp his royal majesty proceeded to have his soldiers collect the rifles of the populace and raid and confiscate any store of arms, powder or shot.
By golly, one of them Danial Boone types slapped himself upside the head. Seems he had one of those epiphany type things. This behavior by the government is exactly why his daddy crossed the ocean in the first place. So he got riled up and vowing that he would never allow another government to push him around at gunpoint again he went out and kicked a whole passel of royal rear-ends.
Crime control was in their thinking, but it was a very small part of the agenda, the main focus of the agenda of the 2nd Amendment was to protect the citizenry from being dis-armed and rendered defenseless against an oppressive government. They did have an eye on the future. They knew that no government ever achieves protection nor is safe from corruption. They also knew, firsthand, that an unarmed citizenry is the most vulnerable. The crime control argument is nothing more than another government ploy to get people to disarm themselves and leave everything to the "government", an entity which has proven itself to be the least trustworthy of all for at least the last fifty years. Jumpin Jehoshaphats, why they would rather sell guns to the Mexican cartels than let an American citizen carry one.
_______________________________SO WHAT MAKES ARIZONA A GOOD PLACE FOR AMERICANS--------------------------
It was a long debate, but one hundred years ago we signed a document that we believed we could live with and have for the last hundred years. We are now engaged in a struggle to be able to live under that same document for a few hundred more years. We are standing up, rising up if you like. This is not an uprising against the government, this is an uprising for the Constitution. The same Constitution of the United States that all of you 49 other states signed also. Don't know about all of you, but ideologies weren't the basis of our decision to join the Union. It was the guaranteed freedoms.
Late Friday afternoon. Great time to post. Really. Gives the night and evening visitors a chance to get first crack at something and the dedicated weekenders some fresh meat.
Just remember, it is technologies fault that Arizona has turned into a thorn in Washington's side. Don't blame Obama. Blame air-conditioning.
