by TacticaLogic » Tue Mar 23, 2010 9:23 pm
Put as plainly as I know how to put it: I apologize for nothing - and that includes all rights given to me by God and recognized by the authors of the Constitution. Having said that, I will fight for those rights using any and all tools available to me, including a law (be it federal, state, or local) that eliminates any obstructions or complications. You have to think outside of the box... If you limit yourself to "I won't use anything connected to the federal government" strictly out of principal, you have already "hamstrung" yourself because at this point the federal government is so large as to already have you cornered. A smart warrior uses all tools available to him to reach his goal, adjusting to conditions as he goes. When he reaches his goal, any tools that he had to use in getting there can be discarded, improved upon, or maintained. The same principal applies if we are talking about military hardware or written laws... You use what you have.
At no time have I stated that Embody should be arrested for a law that doesn't exist, or should be convicted without a trial. My only statement was that if he has broken a law, it would serve our cause well for him to be removed from the spotlight by his being convicted.
For anyone that says, "Well Mike believes in the old 'ends justifies the means' methodology that has been used by the communists for so long' - think again, because I am talking about the ends being FREEDOM! The question to ask is "How long would we be able to maintain a law allowing HCPs if everyone with a HCP acted as has Embody?" The answer would be "Not long." The Constituton, the 2nd Amendment... None of that would matter at this point, and may still not matter after the McDonald v Chicago case is adjudicated, because right now the state gets to set the rules. (Not that I agree with it, but it IS reality.) If every HCP holder did do what Embody has been doing, the general public would be ringing the phones off of the hook up in Nashville, telling the members of the G.A. that "they had better get this fixed." It wouldn't matter if everything everyone of us did was legal. Why? As I was once told: a person's perception IS their reality. If we want to maintain our HCP laws, and improve upon them, we have to make sure that the general public's perception of us is one of "they are a responsible group of people", not "they are a bunch of cowboys that need to be reined in."
If using an existing (and at this point purely hypothetical since we do not know of its existance) law (be it local, state, or federal) to get a self-serving "everybody else's rights be damned - all I want to do is get someone to violate mine so I can sue the hell out of someone" person out of the spotlight gets the job done, so be it. He is hurting the cause. I'm not angry at Embody personally - never met him... I don't like his (legal though they may be) actions because they hurt our cause. But, as I have said numerous times, we have to make sure that our dislike of big government doesn't cloud our vision regarding people such as Embody. If you want to deny any recognition to the beast that is big government, that is fine - but to argue that federal government at any size is 100% useless, dangerous, and should be abolished is, in my opinion, absurd. Just as the founding fathers would never have agreed to a federal government the size of what we now have, the complete elimination of federal government is not what the founding fathers had in mind either... It would be the pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction from its current path. Government should exist to do the things that private industry can't, shouldn't or won't do... But it is needed. Without any government we have... anarchy. With too much government we have tyranny. I'm not a fan of either, so I vote for controlled government that truly understands the concept of "my job is always 'only temporary', and my bosses can end my job anytime they please."
Mike, out.
For training beyond the carry permit: