The Enemies of Freedom
The shooting in Las Vegas was an incomprehensible tragedy the
reason for which was known only to the dead gunman. Little or nothing more can be said on the
subject, but that has not stopped the media from commenting. They all had much the same thing to say, at
least in this country, and almost all of them elsewhere too, certainly the
mainstream media, notably the supposedly impartial BBC. What they had to say was, as we have so often
heard from them before, that America should introduce the same kind of gun
control that we have suffered here. They present a situation in which the
population at large has been disarmed by the State as if it were a norm from
which America has deviated when the precise opposite is the case.
The first ten amendments to the US Constitution, known as the
Bill of Rights, did not arise by chance and were not written as the result of
some strange whim on somebody's part.
They, rather, represent the Constitutional Convention's considered
opinion as to what are the most basic rights necessary if a nation is to
constitute itself as a free country.
That the right to bear arms was among those rights is testament to its
importance as a cornerstone of freedom.
In a very real sense the right to bear arms is the necessary guarantee
of any other rights anybody might have. It is, in any case, not so much a right
granted by the US Constitution, but simply the normal state of affairs, which
is to say that it is a right grounded in natural law as an inseparable corollary
of such other rights as the right to establish a family, to hold property, to
practise the one true Faith without hindrance and, above all, the right and
duty to establish and maintain a system of law and government consonant with
divine law.
In the absence of an acknowledged right to bear arms the
State has a monopoly of force. It may do
as it pleases to whomsoever it pleases without fear of effective
resistance. Gun control is, therefore,
the hallmark of tyranny. It is what
governments do to those whom it neither likes nor trusts, so what can universal
gun control mean if not that those in power dislike and mistrust those they
govern, and what kind of government treats the entire populace as its at least
potential enemies if not a tyranny? The
history of gun control in the British Isles is that Catholics were its first
victims after the overthrow of King James II & VII, then Scotsmen after the
rising of 1715, after that universal gun control was introduced for a six year
period in one of the universally hated Six Acts passed after the Peterloo
massacre by an administration that thought it might well have provoked a
revolution. It was then reimposed in 1968, some twenty years into 'the post-War
settlement', by which time people had become accustomed to dependence upon the
State, and servility in dealing with its various branches. It is not in any sense natural or normal that
the State should confiscate weaponry, it was a parliamentary abuse of power
half a century ago that would have been unthinkable twenty or thirty years
earlier, much like legalised sodomy and abortion.
If gun control means that the relationship between State and
citizenry has gone radically wrong and turned toxic why do the media love it so
much? The mainstream media are not a
disparate group of intellectually independent, freethinking news outlets;
rather, they exhibit a lemming-like herd mentality on all possible
occasions. Yes, in Britain there are
tribal differences in the political allegiances of newspapers; but the opinions
advanced by them all are similar on both sides, and where they disagree they do
agree on the terms of permissible debate.
The people in the media have a certain view of themselves, both
collectively and as individuals; they regard themselves as having a right to
run the country, and see the State as being theirs for the taking. For that to be a reasonable prospect, they
need a State that is not simply, as it should be, the political expression of
the nation or the people organised for action, but a governmental
superstructure run by a political caste to which the media types belong, or see
themselves as belonging. The more
powerful the State, the better for those who control or hope to control it. The greater the separation between the
political class and the people, them and us, again the better for these media
types who either hope to pull the levers, exercising 'power without
responsibility', or else plan a move into the front line of Party
politics. Look how many media people
there are in Parliament – and see what low-grade politicians so many of them
make, especially the ones “off the telly”!
There are exceptions to that amongst those from the more
internationally-minded media groups; but BBC people all, by definition, believe
in large, publicly-funded organisations and support them instinctively as well
as from self-interest.
Statism is the result of a megalomaniacal hatred of popular
freedoms. The right to bear arms is the
ultimate guarantor of freedom, hence the statist media types who aspire to
capturing the State and holding it as their private plaything with the entire
populace helpless as marionettes forced to dance to their tune hate the right
to bear arms with a passion. They want
to make its restoration unthinkable just as they have made abolishing
socialised medicine, State-controlled education and planning control or the
recriminalisation of abortion and sodomy unthinkable. They are the enemies of freedom. They are the enemies of us all. Reject them and reject the politics of us and
them, the politics of exclusion, dividing the political rulers from those they
govern. Demand the restoration of our
ancient liberties and, above all, demand a renewal of political life that
eliminates the baleful influence of the media so that all the options and
opportunities can be explored properly, free from the trivia, gossip,
propaganda and outright untruths in which they obscure what should be the terms
of our national debate.
 |
Films and TV are the problem not
gun control or the lack of it is the problem. |
That debate needs to include cutting the media, as
well as the State, down to size. Without
saying anything specific about Las Vegas, there can be no doubt that the reason
very many spree killers, especially young people, 'go postal' (if that phrase
is still current) is that killing sprees, and shooting in general, are a staple
of popular entertainment, in the cinema, on TV and in video games. A similar link might be made between the
growth in sexual assaults, again especially amongst the young, and the
prevalence of casual coupling on screen.
Shooting people is everywhere.
That is the problem the media do not address because the news and
entertainment media are closely intertwined, more closely even than politics
and the media are. I am not, at this
stage, advocating censorship, but I am advocating a voluntary self-restraint on
the part of broadcasters and games-writers, and I would strongly suggest that
that restraint would be promoted if the news media were to create a climate in
which broadcasting such material was regarded as irresponsible and antisocial. I would certainly support a move into
politics by journalists favouring a responsible and wholesome media
environment. Advertisers should be
pushed to avoid having their products promoted alongside sex and violence; that
would send broadcasters a powerful message.
Use the power in your pockets to boycott the products of companies that
support socially damaging television.
Now who in the media fancies repeating that message instead of demanding
that people be denied the ability to reap the harvest of nature, and to defend themselves and their
property?
By Prayer Crusader St Philip Howard.
Goodbye, Mr. Hefner.
Our world is the world you made; the media landscape we know today was
really your creation. You opened a world
of porn to everyone; now pornography has been completely normalised and is
'free at the point of use' or available on subscription or ready to buy – all
options open. Not just explicit porn, in
pornographic publications like your own, but titillating images across the
media – the entire landscape has been pornified and bunnified. TV presenters, newsreaders and weathergirls
go on screen in what would be bunny costumes if they only had their ears on –
sleeveless, low-cut or skin-tight and short in the skirt. Newspapers too, even the supposedly serious
ones, like to lead with a pretty girl in as little as possible; who cares who
she is – politician, actress, spy, criminal, murder victim, estate agent of the
year – what are her vital statistics?
Your influence, of course, goes beyond the media. Wherever there were settled social norms and
mores, you fought to bring them down, hence your support for 'civil rights'
against everything anyone had ever known as normal. Then there was the womens' movement, you made
it what it is today. How did you do it? 
