It’s true that Barack Obama loves guns. But only for the privileged politician and bureaucrat classes. You see, without guns, the bureaucrats would get a lot less cooperation fighting all the wars they are engaged in. Gun control is not about protecting us from each other. Gun control is about protecting bureaucrats from their subjects.

You don’t have to go back that far to find Obama taking an extreme stance against gun rights. In 2004, while running for the U.S. Senate, he promised to bar citizens nationwide from receiving concealed-carry permits. The Chicago Tribune reported then that Obama “backed federal legislation that would ban citizens from carrying weapons, except for law enforcement.” Obama explained his plan to pre-empt state concealed-carry laws with a federal bill: “National legislation,” Obama said at the time, “will prevent other states’ flawed concealed-weapons laws from threatening the safety of Illinois residents.”

For a man who doesn’t know me to arrogantly make assumptions about my level of competence and tell me I am not allowed to defend myself is morally wrong. Government has lots of guns. Why can’t I have guns?

The assumption is that government is more responsible with guns than regular people. Prove it. How many individuals have declared war on a country and killed millions of its citizens? Take away every gun regulation. The equation would remain exactly the same. People would still go crazy from time to time without thousands of gun regulations. Some of them would still get access to guns. If all the guns were gone, they would use a car, or poison your food and water, or devise some other method. The mentality a society teaches its citizens is much more important than the rules it writes down in books.

Maybe you could care less about guns. Maybe your pet issue is social injustice. Fine. Let’s talk about that.

The basic problem with government is that it doesn’t actually solve problems. It manages them.

Name one of the social injustices that government has declared war and won. War on Poverty? Nope. We’re nowhere near winning that one. War on Drugs? Nope. Drug use is up. Doesn’t matter if you look at illegal substances or prescription abuse. Not winning. That particular boondoggle isn’t going away anytime soon. War on Terror? The term itself is asinine. The program isn’t designed to stop terror. It’s designed to make us all very afraid. Of real and imagined boogeymen, some of whom wear government issued uniforms and lord it over you at the airport, border crossings and increasingly, on your city streets. We’re not winning the War on Terror and we never will because you cannot wage war on something as broad as “terror” - the whole idea is idiotic.

Finally, the most important war the government is fighting. I see the bureaucrats making a great deal of progress in that particular campaign. The War on Intelligence is moving right along. No, they aren’t winning per se. But the federal government has certainly managed to dumb us down since it took over educating us in 1979. No Child Left Behind has to be one of the most intelligence damning pieces of legislation ever written. The Idiocracy is coming. We’re 23rd in math and 16th in science. Under the management of FedGov, those numbers are sure to get bigger.

Let’s get back to our next President Mr. Obama and his worldview for a moment.

He has promised to pick guardians of the Constitution who do not respect gun rights and believe that a comprehensive ban on gun ownership is consistent with the second amendment.

Senator Obama has a history of projecting a misleading moderation in his politics — and he does it very smoothly. According to his biographer, David Mendell, one of Senator Barack Obama’s greatest political virtues is “his ingenious lack of specificity. . . . While talking or writing about a deeply controversial subject, he considers all points of view before cautiously giving his own often risk-averse assessment, an opinion that often appears so universal that people of various viewpoints would consider it their own.”

It is my belief that Barack Obama has no interest in solving my problems. That’s good because I don’t want him to solve my problems either. The tricky part is that I don’t even want him to manage my problems. They are my problems, and I’ll deal with them.

Mr. Obama when you become President all I want you to do is leave me alone to live my life. I have the audacity to hope you’ll end the four unwinnable wars your predecessors have been managing so poorly in direct violation of the Constitution they swore to uphold. Let the states handle social issues. Let me handle my business. You worry about protecting our borders and getting us out of all those ill advised foreign police duties we’ve assigned ourselves over the last 60 years or so. I’ll worry about running my own life, saving for retirement, choosing which medicine and medical treatment is best for me, picking what kind of gun I want to keep for personal defense, educating my kids and living as long and as healthy as I can. I don’t need help managing any of that stuff, please and thanks. The more rules you try to make me follow in my day to day routine the less likely it is I’ll cooperate with you. Hint: the same rule of thumb applies to people in other countries. Most people who didn’t ask to be managed don’t appreciate it when you decide they need managing.

I appreciate your taking a moment to consider this American’s viewpoint.

Thomas Friedman’s Theory of McGlobalization has been proved wrong.

One minor casualty of the recent conflict in Georgia was the doctrine of peace through McGlobalization — a belief first elaborated by Thomas Friedman in 1999, and left in ruins on August 8, when Russian troops moved into South Ossetia. “No two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald’s,” wrote Friedman in The Lexus and the Olive Tree (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux).

Not that the fast-food chain itself had a soothing effect, of course. The argument was that international trade and modernization — and the processes of liberalization and democratization created in their wakes — would knit countries together in an international civil society that made war unnecessary. There would still be conflict. But it could be contained — made rational, and even profitable, like competition between Ronald and his competitors over at Burger King. (Thomas Friedman does not seem like a big reader of Kant, but his thinking here bears some passing resemblance to the philosopher’s “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective,” an essay from 1784.)

Is this the emergence of a New Cold War as author Scott McLemee seems to speculate? I’m dubious. I think Vladimir Putin is a cult of personality just as powerful as Barack Obama, except with a wider license to steal and write new rule books on a whim.

With former KGB man Vladimir Putin as head of state (able to move back and forth between the offices of the president and of the prime minister, as term limits require) and the once-shellshocked economy now growing at a healthy rate thanks to international oil prices, Russia has entered a period of relative stability and prosperity — if by no means one of liberal democracy. The regime can best be described as authoritarian-populist. There have been years of frustration at seeing former Soviet republics and erstwhile Warsaw Pact allies become members of NATO. Georgia (like Ukraine) has recently been invited to do so as well. So the invasion of South Ossetia represents a forceful reassertion of authority within Russia’s former sphere of influence.

The 21st century will be full of new paradigms, including the end of single world superpower. Whether or not we recognize it, the nation-state itself is dying, and the United States is leading the slow decline.

“It is difficult,” writes Furedi in a recent essay, “to discover clear patterns in the working of twenty-first-century global affairs….The U.S. in particular (but also other powers) is uncertain of its place in the world. Wars are being fought in faraway places against enemies with no name. In a world where governments find it difficult to put forward a coherent security strategy or to formulate their geo-political interests, a re-run of the Cold War seems like an attractive proposition. Compared to the messy world we live in, the Cold War appears to some to have been a stable and at least comprehensible interlude.”

Follow the fortunes of private mercenary army and megacorporation Blackwater, which despite its tarnished public reputation continues to thrive. The New Cold War will be a very different animal. The United States has been overextended for five years and the Georgian conflict is an exclamation point on the sentence that tells us where we’re headed.

The Duck of Minerva – an academic group blog devoted to political science – has hosted a running discussion of the news from South Ossetia. In a post there, Peter Howard, an assistant professor of international service at American University, noted that the most salient lesson of the invasion was that it exposed the limits of U.S. influence.

“Russia had a relatively free hand to do what it did in Georgia,” he writes, “and there was nothing that the U.S. (or anyone else for that matter) was going to do about it…. In a unipolar world, there is only one sphere of influence — the whole world is the U.S.’s sphere of influence. Russia’s ability to carve any sphere of influence effectively ends unipolarity, if there ever was such a moment.”

What if, instead of Russia invading Georgia in response to a stupid move by a politician, it had been China invading Taiwan in response to a stupid move by a politician? The conflict between Russia and Georgia is far from being over, and there are at least ten other flash points in the world that could blow up in the face of the world’s self-appointed policeman at any moment.

Government, by its very nature, engenders some pretty idiotic news stories. This is one of the dumbest I’ve read in years. Intent is no longer an issue in the giant plantation of subjects we called the United States of America. Nancy Pelosi, being one of the overseers, must be protected, even when no one is trying to harm her.

Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley said 29-year-old Joseph Calanchini of Pinedale, Wyo., faces a charge of unlawful carrying of a weapon after police officers at the Grand Hyatt hotel noticed him carrying a rifle-type case while checking in. Calanchini did not have a concealed weapons permit, said Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Safety.

Wiley said authorities were not releasing information about whether the weapons were loaded because the case remained under investigation. Wiley said the charge is the same whether the weapons were loaded or unloaded.

Pelosi and other guests briefly evacuated the hotel but were never in danger, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said.

The charge of unlawful carrying of a weapon is ridiculous. Carrying a rifle in a rifle case is perfectly reasonable by anyone’s definition, unless you’re dealing with the government. Since government makes up the rules as they go they don’t have to be reasonable.

Authorities were investigating a report that Calanchini was in town on business and had had the weapons worked upon to prepare for the trip.

“The speaker was never in any danger and she appreciates the quick and professional response of the police,” said Daly.

So what we have is a situation where Speaker Pelosi appreciates “the professional response” of armed thugs. If these police were professional they wouldn’t be charging Joseph Calanchini with anything. They would have simply determined that he was a hunter passing through the area and let him go about his business. Unfortunately we are being treated as subjects instead of citizens by our government. That’s why Calanchini had to be charged with something. He needed to be reminded that he isn’t really free, and America isn’t really the home of the brave.

Alabama is about to begin charging state employees $25 a month for being overweight.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Alabama, pushed to second in national obesity rankings by deep-fried Southern favorites, is cracking down on state workers who are too fat.

The state has given its 37,527 employees a year to start getting fit — or they’ll pay $25 a month for insurance that otherwise is free.

Alabama will be the first state to charge overweight state workers who don’t work on slimming down, while a handful of other states reward employees who adopt healthy behaviors.

Alabama already charges workers who smoke — and has seen some success in getting them to quit — but now has turned its attention to a problem that plagues many in the Deep South: obesity.

While I like the idea of providing incentives to be healthy, I am uncomfortable with the idea of charging penalties for being unhealthy. From a libertarian perspective, I want the most choices possible. On the other hand, insurance companies who have to treat fat people are either going to charge the fat people or spread the cost of the treatments around. That means I might have to pay for someone else to be fat. I’m not that interested in paying for the health care of others, particularly when the health issues are self-induced.

It is not my job to pay for you to be fat, anymore than it should be my job to pay for your children’s upbringing.

Incentives are much more appealing than penalities though. My company recently paid for me to enter a triathlon. For $48, the company motivated me to train heavily for three months. I dropped an inch off my waist and nine pounds off my frame. Long-term I’ve signed up for another triathlon and I’ve joined a gym near work. If the company had instead threatened me with wage garnishment I would have fought tooth and nail against them. My personal productivity would have declined and I would have been likely to complain and spread dissension.

Mac McArthur, executive director of Alabama State Employees Association, said the plan is not designed to punish employees.

“It’s a positive,” he said.

Taking money away from someone is a positive? This guy has been smoking some government ganja.

Bureaucrats are always good at using penalties to try and force people to make good choices, but they hardly ever choose positive incentives as a motivator. Why is that?

David Olofson is sitting in jail. Like many non-violent citizens who represent no threat to anyone, Olofson is a victim of paper pushers and their endless rule books.

There are several ways for a person to unintentionally commit a felony, but most of them are looked at by prosecutors, judges, and juries as the accidents they are and dealt with accordingly. Such is not always the case however, especially when firearms are involved; for the past 2 years David Olofson has been learning that the hard way. Olofson is a regular guy who happens to be fond of AR15 style sport-utility rifles. He loaned a rifle to a friend. While the friend was shooting it he moved the safety switch to a point beyond the Fire position. The rifle fired a couple of short bursts and jammed. Someone at or near the club called the police to complain about machinegun fire. The police notified the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and David Olofson was subsequently charged and convicted of illegally transferring a machinegun.

You may not be a weapons collector, as Olofoson was, and as I am. You should still be worried. If the government can arbitrarily make up its intrepretation of its own unconstitutional rules as it goes to the point where the intrepretation doesn’t match the reality of the situation then it isn’t just people who collect guns that are in trouble - we’re all subject to the whims of dishonest bureaucrats who believe they are demigods.

As the years pass I find myself having a harder and harder time respecting the rule of law. That is because the rule of law is increasingly corrupt. Intent used to matter. That is no longer the case.

The cornerstone of this charge is the government’s contention that it doesn’t matter whether a gun fires multiple shots as a result of malfunction or modification because the law defines a machinegun as; “… any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” While on the witness stand, firearms expert Len Savage asked the Assistant US Attorney prosecuting the case if that would make his grandfather’s old double-gun a machinegun if it malfunctioned and fired both barrels with one pull of the trigger. The AUSA responded by paraphrasing the legal definition of a machinegun with emphasis placed on “any weapon which shoots… more than one shot… by a single function of the trigger.”

What I or any reasonable person would call a weapons malfunction is being used by our federal government to put a non-violent citizen who represented no threat to anyone in a cage and hold him there for a period of years. That is unconscionable.

These people intend to control us all one day, from the moment we are born until the moment we stop breathing. By these people I mean petty bureaucrats. I mean the enemies of freedom. I mean the faceless men and women who, by typing something on a keyboard thousands of miles away are able to turn you into a criminal in the eyes of the law without you even knowing anything just happened. These are the modern evil wizards of our time, and they are plotting to take over the kingdom.

If you care at all about freedom in America, I encourage you to donate whatever you can to David Olofoson.