by Bob Barr | Jun 15, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. –Edmund Burke, 1757 Fear may serve as an effective motivator for individuals facing danger, but as a basis for law-making, it consistently leads to poorly crafted legislation and even dangerous public laws. So it is with gun control, a path on which a bipartisan group of Senators appears now committed. Fear of domestic terrorist attacks following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and of further foreign terrorist attacks after 9-11, led directly to laws that demonstrably were far broader than necessary to address whatever shortcomings those incidents revealed, and which have seriously eroded individual liberty in the years since. In the current frenzy to guard against tragic mass shootings such as occurred last month at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, federal lawmakers appear ready once again to use “fear” as a motivating force for legislative action. This week a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, led by Texas Republican John Cornyn and New York’s perennial gun control orchestrator Chuck Schumer, announced a framework for a gun control package aimed at easing the minds of “families [who] are scared.” Details beyond the initial framework are sparse, but we do know the bill seeks to tackle mass shooting violence by recycling many of the familiar policies of gun control past – red flag laws, “boyfriend” loopholes, and deeper background checks. There does appear to be some attention being afforded to mental health and school safety programs, but initial information indicates these will not be among the legislation’s main priorities. Begin with the enhanced background checks for gun...
by Bob Barr | Jun 8, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Remember when the Atlanta Braves’ “tomahawk chop,” a long-established stadium rallying cry, came under attack for allegedly perpetuating racist stereotypes? That controversy, which flared up in the 1990s and resurfaced last year during the World Series, drew a mixed response from Indian tribes; some linked it to improper cultural appropriation, while others saw it as a distraction from serious issues facing Native Americans. The debate over the tomahawk chop generated a significant amount of media coverage at the time. However, if considered a matter of “cultural appropriation,” it pales in comparison to an issue currently working its way through the United States Congress. This ill-advised legislation would facilitate creation of brand new tribes out of thin air, and grant them the same rights as existing tribes. Typically, groups seeking to be recognized by the federal government as sovereign nations must go through a process at the Department of Interior during which their histories are reviewed and carefully examined. This process was established to ensure that legitimate tribes receive the proper recognition they deserve and are protected against groups making false claims. Several bills currently before Congress would upend this system and create a fast lane for groups who don’t want to — or just can’t — demonstrate their legitimacy; criteria many are unable to meet. For example, one of the groups seeking recognition through Congress has claimed descendancy from several different tribes over the years but has never been able to get its own story straight. The consequences of creating tribes without any factual or historic verification are significant for real tribal nations. When a group latches onto the identity of one...
by Bob Barr | Jun 1, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Many, perhaps most Americans are familiar with the Second Amendment to our Constitution — if not the precise phrasing, at least the key operative language confirming the “right to keep and bear arms.” Debates rage over the extent of that individual “right,” especially in the wake of a mass murder involving a firearm. These debates will continue, regardless of their relevance to particular situations, and usually obscuring rather than revealing solutions to the actual criminal activities. What little substantive consideration of the Second Amendment may arise in debates about whether its language “allows” an individual to possess a particular firearm or caliber of ammunition, may even touch on the history of the Amendment. An historic defense of the Second Amendment might even note that one of the very first armed confrontations between the American Colonies and British “Red Coats,” at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, transpired because the British were attempting to prevent the colonial citizens from accessing their stores of rifles and gunpowder. As presented in depth by noted firearms experts such as David Kopel, denying access to these tools for resistance to British rule became a primary goal of the Crown in the two years leading to the Declaration of Independence. All this is important in constructing an historically sound argument in defense of why the Second Amendment’s language appears in the Bill of Rights. But the critical factor, which reveals why the Amendment is as relevant and important today as in 1791 when it was ratified, comes in answer to the following inquiry: “Where does responsibility ultimately lie for protection of an individual’s life and their...
by Bob Barr | May 25, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Since my days as a student at USC (the real USC – the University of Southern California), I have been a die-hard fan of college football. I love to watch the competition, skill, and heart that players, teams, and coaches put into this truly all-American sport. But the sport I love is changing, and not for the better. In this, I agree with Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, who recently levelled a modest criticism of those changes, saying, “I’m not against NIL at all, what I am against is anything that devalues education — that’s what I’m against.” For this and similar comments, the coach was pilloried as regressive, racist, and hypocritical, and attacked personally for his strong Christian faith and trademark Southern drawl. In fact, his recent statement merely clarified remarks made a month before, in which he warned against “tampering . . . and manipulating young people” as a part of the NCAA’s “name/image/likeness” (NIL) endorsement program, which allows collegiate athletes to make money from their on-field talents. Once again, it was a modest critique, and in hindsight, Swinney’s comments were clearly prescient. Thus is the vindication of Dabo Swinney, and all the collegiate sports fans who are witnessing their beloved sports crumble away. To say college athletics have gone off the rails is an understatement. Even supporters of the NIL system would be hard-pressed to disagree with the “Wild West” scenario predicted by coaches like Swinney. Education? Only in-between meetings with the agent, and only if the athlete cannot go pro in three years. Some schools do better than others with graduating players, but education, at least in the...
by Bob Barr | May 18, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Why would an 18-year-old, with a full life ahead of him, feel so broken and jaded by the world that he feels his only option is to pick up a gun and kill people? This is a question few Democrats, including President Joe Biden, will ask. After all, issuing statements denouncing “weapons of war” (which has nothing to do with anything) and calling for yet more “gun control,” are far easier than seriously probing why so many young men are turning to internet-fueled hate mongers as a way to fill the emptiness in their lives. Still the Left stubbornly clings to the notion that gun-control and other federal legislative efforts will solve the deep-rooted cultural problems giving rise to the rash of mass shootings in recent years. Their willful blindness will force all of us to likely endure repeats of last Saturday’s tragic event at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. It is not as if there are no clues in plain sight to help us unravel the factors predicating many of these mass murders. One common theme, for example, at least as among recent mass shootings, including that in Buffalo, and in Charleston (2015), San Diego (2019), and Christchurch (2019), is that the killers were denizens of the dark corners of the online world. This begs the question, “why?” Why does the hateful violence in online commentary fill a void left empty by social institutions that in years past provided moral anchors to young people? Probing a bit deeper reveals more clues. In today’s risk-averse culture, children and their parents are warned, in some cases actually punished,...
by Bob Barr | May 11, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Plato is the most well-known student of Greek philosopher Socrates, who lived and taught in the fourth century B.C. In his famous treatise The Republic, Plato presents the concept of a “noble lie” as a myth that “would have a good effect, making [the people] more inclined to care for the state and one another.” In other words, the “noble lie” was one that served the purpose of the “greater good.” It still was a lie, but considered acceptable because the intentions of its purveyor were noble. Socrates and Plato were philosophers, not scientists, but their notion of the “noble lie” continues today as a predicate for myriad public policy pronouncements. Our contemporary chieftain of the “noble lie” is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the oft self-proclaimed “scientist” who has led our country into the COVID-19 pandemic morass for more than two years based on repeated noble lies. Sadly, the “noble” Dr. Fauci presents more as the Emperor With No Clothes than a noble philosopher-scientist. When Fauci first laid his foundational noble lie before the public – that masks were ineffective against COVID and that citizens were fools for wearing them – there was nary a hint of nobility; just a lie to preserve the N95 mask supply for hospitals. It did, however, mark the start of a series of lies, omissions, and half-truths that would come to define how “science” was seen by the public. This will be Fauci’s lasting legacy: a man who undercut science in his quest for personal glory. The reason we can be so confident about this legacy is that the data already is showing clearly the negative effects...