Category Politics

Mar 31 2018

Guilty

 

Read all the child rearing books and they will tell you that most often when you have children, one will be the strong-willed child and another will be the compliant one. No such luck for me! I have been blessed with three variations of the strong-willed, defiant child.

Two boys, whom I have tagged my “two knuckleheads”, (A term of affection that I can assure you did not start out that way) that have proven to have a strength of will that can try the most stalwart of heart. Their sister, well, for example, after watching “The Sound of Music” with her mother, she was dancing in the living room doing her best imitation of Julie Andrews atop the Alps, when the “two knuckleheads” entered, engaged in fierce light-saber battle, and disrupted her idyllic “the hills are alive” moment by tumbling over the top of her and falling to the floor in a heap. She promptly retaliated by shouting at them, “Brothers, can’t you see I’m dancing here?!” and threw herself on top of the heap of “knuckleheads” putting her knuckles to their heads; in other words, she’s just a female version of her brothers.

Welcome to my world. I should have known this would happen when a man, who does not shy from stating his opinion, married a strong powerful woman, who is no wallflower. It stands to reason that three little images of us would from time to time be staring back defiantly, testing boundaries, and causing us to scramble to the phone, calling their grandparents to ask the proverbial “How did you do it?”, and desperately flipping through the pages of child rearing books.

It was in those moments that I learned something in the desperate conversations and frustrated reading of book pages from those wiser than me. Stop honoring the tantrums with your attention. Amazingly, when my wife and I started putting the children out of our presence when they were throwing the tantrums, they began to stop.

This is in no wise eliminates discipline; in fact, separating them from our presence was a source a discipline. I was guilty of allowing myself to hover over every tantrum or outburst trying to correct it. This is not a child rearing lesson for I am far from qualified in that regard, but I am drawing a parallel from knowledge gained from those who are.

With the poor behavior of the Parkland High students on full display for the nation to see, we have been guilty of the same mistake that is so easy for adults to make. In our haste to address the tantrums, either to correct and confront, or placate and pacify, we have given attention to the narcissism of a spoiled child. Children may be the greatest narcissists that have ever walked God’s green earth!

A narcissist thrives on attention, positive and negative. A child narcissist has even more power to control attention because adults feel they are required to pay attention to the outbursts. These children have been given a national spotlight by the press and a license to attack their fellow adult citizens by wealthy celebrities.

But the constant negative attention they are receiving from those us who feel compelled to combat their poor behavior simply feeds their power. So let’s stop! Stop feeding the egos of tiny little despots!

Let’s focus on the many teenagers who still have respect for the 2A rights of their fellow adult citizens. Let’s focus on getting out the votes for those candidates who truly support the 2nd Amendment. Let’s take back our power and keep it!

-Andy Torbett

Mar 28 2018

Wednesday’s Wisdom

Here is my thought for today, and it is a follow-up to my Blue Wave comment yesterday: If Republicans campaign on defending the 2nd Amendment and call out the Left for seeking to repeal the 2nd Amendment, we just might see a Red Wave in the Mid-Terms. But Republicans have a consistent history of self-destruction and capitulation…time will tell. The 2nd Amendment is a winning issue, but too often the GOP get their campaign strategy from the Legacy Media.

Mar 16 2018

Culpable

 

Prosecutors in Florida will seek the death penalty against the killer in the Parkland Florida shooting. It remains to be seen whether a conviction can be reached in a society and legal system that prefers to convict on emotion rather than fact and evidence. That the killer in Florida is worthy of death is without question, but what of those who are culpable in the crime and, if history serves, will escape unscathed and ignored for their dereliction which aided and abetted this horror.

Justice must be served. Much of the anarchy we see in our society has been exacerbated by the Lady Justice’s new modern look, sans blindfold, and her new found eyesight finds her constantly redrawing the lines and administering new guidelines to whom, what , when, and to what severity punitive redress should meted out. Still, as the cold law of a civil society demands this sickness be purged from our land, the warm heart of it’s people grieve that a young boy, so troubled, would have never had the opportunity to take so many young innocent lives had the adults in positions of responsibility, in direct contact with this boy, done their job, their due diligence, and how that this boy alone will face the justice he deserves, while those who are culpable in his infamy will walk this land alive with no check to their destructive behavior.

The Parkland shooting will go down as the most preventable mass shooting in history. Layers upon layers of our criminal justice system failed to do their job even when the boy contacted them directly to essentially say, “I’ve got a problem. I want to kill people.” From the FBI right down to the deputy on duty at the school campus, no one did their job.

Those who celebrate the demise of this great Republic and the encroachment on Natural Born Liberties have engaged in the age old tradition of inflaming angry mobs against the innocent to keep the glaring light of public scrutiny off those political leaders who are guilty. Politicians whose insidious agenda waits for these moments have pounced quickly to capitalize and others who are cowards have hurriedly moved forward with short-sighted, foolish, and reactionary legislation. The media orchestrates the children, marionette game pieces in a lurid, shameless game.

Illinois, in an effort to keep 18 to 21 year olds from becoming criminals, has passed a law making any 18 to 21 year old who owns an AR rifle a criminal, and then authorizing the government to engage in the criminal activity of gun confiscation. Florida, in an effort to show the Nation what true clumsy cowardice looks like, has banned 18 to 21 year olds from purchasing guns, ignoring the fact the a large number in that age bracket who purchase guns for personal protection are young females. With all the forethought, perception and intellectual dexterity of a bad remake of the Keystone Kops, Florida has just stripped the young ladies of their state from purchasing the protection of the great equalizer in the gender divide, a gun.

But in the midst of this haze and stupor of manipulation and hysteria, no one is looking at the true culprits, the law enforcement agencies who had direct access to the killer and neglected to do their job. The FBI was contacted by family, warning them of his threats to kill people. Perhaps the most culpable, the Broward County Sheriff, was contacted nearly thirty times about his behavior and knew of his posts on social media threatening to kill his fellow students while brandishing weapons.

One arrest for those posts with a weapon would have resulted in a felony and prevented the boy from purchasing a weapon. Why no arrest? The school district, in conjunction with the Sheriff’s Dept., had implemented a new system, borrowed from the State of Illinois, (Yes, the state that just made young adults criminals to keep them from being criminals.) to lower the high crime in juveniles by…not…arresting…them.

The boy had been suspended six times from Parkland School then reintegrated. This is failure of school leadership. Then finally the deputy who was on duty recognized the boy when he exited the Uber vehicle, knew he was under suspension and barred from the campus, and never executed his duty to engage the boy and ask, “Why are you here and what are you carrying?” Later that deputy is seen on security cams cowering outside while children inside were being slaughtered.

If the killer is convicted and receives the just penalty of death for his crime, there stands a whole line of accomplices in his shadow of horror. Adults who lacked the courage and integrity to act like adults and stand in the way to block his path toward destruction. Parkland would not have happened if those who swore an oath to protect and to serve had not been derelict in their duty to do both.

 

Written by Andy Torbett

Mar 13 2018

Reprehensible

The announcement that former Speaker of the House, Mark Eves, was slated to speak at an event arranged for children to speak out, irony aside, has reminded Maine residents what is most reprehensible about the agenda first politics of our day. The decency that once decried and prohibited the manipulation of minors as shameless leverage to achieve political victory is all but gone. Mark Eves has since announced that he will not speak at the student March Out, coming to the realization that the disinformation needed to convince the public that he is student may be more than even the ethically challenged former Speaker can muster.

Shamefully, Mainers along with their fellow Americans have come to expect this from our leadership. Our children are nothing more than pieces in a political game. Shuffled here and there, fed the proper terms and words to speak, and then relocated or discarded once the effect has been produced.

No, it’s nothing new. History is branded with it’s insidious pattern. One would think our leaders, so learned, could recognize the sear of it’s damage across the ages and guard against the scarring of our society.

But no, the exploitation of children is too easy and historically effective for those callous enough to utilize it’s darkness. For our society, which is replete with weak leadership, those who still have enough decency left to recoil from the manipulation of children are too feckless to hold to the tenets of this free society. Common Sense demands leaders evaluate these situations dispassionately before decisions and Freedom demands leaders defend the ideals of liberty above all, but Common Sense and Freedom is not so Common anymore.

It is a testament to the weakness of our political leaders that so many have succumbed to the emotions, cry, and hue of the moment to “do something” and, as decisions made in the passion of the moment usually are, these “do something” solutions are in the majority weak, poorly thought out, and outdated:

Universal Background Checks: This ambiguous legislation was implemented then repealed on the Federal level after research showed that it had no impact on the decline of violent crime. It’s very ambiguity has led many to believe it was just a gateway legislation for the eventual confiscation of all firearms.

Assault Weapons Ban: In the time of the outdated UBC, it was thought that handguns should be banned, as they were the weapon of choice for madmen of the day. Today the focus is the AR Rifle. Any weapon, including an Armalite Rifle (AR), is capable of assault in the hands of a human bent on assault. An AR rifle is a Semi-Automatic rifle. To ban Semi-Automatic weapons is to ban nearly all firearms which smacks of another gateway legislation and also unenforceable due to the staggering amount of Semi-Automatic weapons in the populace, without confiscation by force.

Change the Age of Purchase to 21: Not only is this a poorly thought out regulation, but it is the flaming epitome of weak and reactionary leadership. There are many reasons why this is true but most poignant are those that it leaves vulnerable. Studies show that a growing number of those taking gun training courses in this age bracket are single mothers and college age women. Guns are the great equalizer in an increasingly predatory culture, yet, shortsighted and reactionary “do something” politicians would deny young women of this protection, not to mention, that the provision in the Florida regulation grants a waiver for police and military, which flies directly in the face of the very ideal of the 2nd Amendment.

Strengthen Mental Health Laws: This would seem a good approach. It is, if done with dignity and focus. In a world where media personalities and political leaders flippantly call Christians and those that disagree with them “mentally ill”, an abundance of caution must be employed to make sure any regulation is limited to prevent the unscrupulous from using their interpretation of “mental illness” to disarm those whom they disagree with and despise.

But there is something we can do now: After the Columbine shooting, in the age of the UBC, experts admonished political leadership that schools were soft targets and vulnerable. They needed to be hardened. They were ignored and schools were made “gun-free” zones. After 9-11, we hardened our airports immediately, armed pilots, and implemented the Air Marshall system. In contrast, Gun-Free Zones have made our schools killing fields. It’s time to guard our greatest treasure, our children. Let’s implement a School Marshall system, allow teachers to arm themselves if they wish, and place guards at the doors.

Written by Andy Torbett