1. BobW said:

References from the Tenakh require armaments.

half my servants did work and and half held lances and shields, bows and armor
NEHEMIAH 4:10

The basket carriers were burdened doing work with one hand while the other held a weapon.
NEHEMIAH 4:11

Some of America's Minutemen, the colonial militia, surely had some of their firearms' resupply of powder and shot, purchased with funds donated by Haym Solomon of New York. He financed much of the war effort.

I do not care about Yoffie's personal political opinions or policy positions. I do have strong concern when he uses the Jewish label to support his views. He causes us more danger than David Duke & Co.

Kol tuv,
BobW

2. daniel horowitz said:

Bob W, I'm glad I introduced you to townhall.com. It is indeed one of the best capitol Hill websites on the internet. Here are some other useful websites: redstate.com, clubforgrowth.com, pollipundit.com.

Kol Tuv

3. Ed D said:

Very well said, Bill. You just expressed perfectly just why I resigned from a very left wing congregation in my town. It is the only congregation here, but I had rather drive 100 miles to Phoenix and pray with those that I trust.

4. fred lapides said:

The level of discourse here is odd. On the one hand, filled with hate and name calling; on the other, citing Henry V and other worthies, to support what, an attack on a Jewish organization that differs from the posters beliefs. Well Sharon gave back lots of land and Bush made Israel give all sorts of concessions, yet a reform group is "scum."? Shame

5. Bill Levinson said:

Fred, Robert A. Heinlein once wrote that a gentleman has to know when to shoot his own dog (e.g. when it becomes a menace to one's family or the neighbors). If I recommend and seek the destruction of so-called Christian organizations like the Presbyterian Church USA and Pax Christi that consort and/or sympathize with terrorists, how can I not apply exactly the same standards to so-called Jewish organizations like URJ and Tikkun.org that behave in the same manner? If I seek to obliterate a so-called Christian entity for joining forces with the enemy while sparing one that calls itself Jewish, doesn't that make me a bigot or a hypocrite? Either I have impartial standards or I don't.

Eric Yoffie cannot rely on our supposedly-common heritage to protect himself or his organization from me for an instant if he attacks the Second Amendment or, more recently, Israel and my country's war efforts in Iraq. If he does not want URJ targeted in return, he should do these things as a private individual or else as a member of the Brady Campaign, ANSWER, or the International Solidarity Movement.

And yes, Sharon was wrong to give the Palestinian locusts even a grain of sand, let alone Gaza. Bush, for whom I voted, was equally wrong to prod Sharon into making these concessions.

6. Laura said:

So campaigning for Al Gore and joining up with the million mom march makes one sympathetic to America's and Israel's enemies? This is how absurd modern day conservatism has become, the idea that any political differences with them now amounts to being a subversive enemy. Even mothers trying to protect their children from gun violence and voting for Al Gore.

Your problem with URJ has more to do with it's stance on guns than on anything to do with Middle East policy. BTW the second ammendment doesn't mean what conservatives claim it does, you ought to read it more carefully and stop leaving out the part where it says "the right to bare arms TO FORM A MILITIA". It refers to state militias, what we know now as the national guard. It has nothing to do with individual gun ownership. That isn't to say I oppose law abiding citizens being allowed to arm themselves for protection, so long as they are registered and licensed. But let's stop pretending guns are a constitutional right, because they are not.

7. kuhnkat said:

Laura,

the original Bill of Rights was primarily based on INDIVIDUAL rights. The only exceptions were the freedom of speech ALSO granted to the press and the protection from gubmint interference of the churches.

There are extensive writings including the Federalist Papers (later explanations by those involved about what they meant in the Constitution and Bill), debates in papers of the time, letters written by the members, transcripts of the debates in Congress over approval of the Bill Of Rights. They do NOT need the current extremely biased perfessers to translate them for you. All of these sources support the idea that these were INDIVIDUAL rights.

Please do some of your own research and brighten your life. Depending on people with agendas to provide your thinking is always a mistake.

As for Al Gore, I think he is still trying to stop that butterfly in the rainforest from fluttering its wings and causing a catastrophic hurricane in the US, or, was he too late and it caused Katrina??????

Just for a quicky since you brought it up, again, research the term Militia in the context of 1776, NOT the context of years after the Bill of Rights was approved. Back then Militias were local groups and typically was NOT supported by the state. Each person provided their own supplies including weapons.

Back then the gubmint didn't even provide heavy weapons. I believe Washington and a few other rich landowners provided the cannons that were used in addition to the ones that were "donated" by the French and captured from the British. Can you encompass that idea?? The most devastating weapon of mass destruction of the time was privately owned??

The mindset was very different then. People generally trusted each other NOT to run around murdering and threatening each other. The idea of NOT trusting other good citizens with weapons was the strange one. If your neighbors didn't have arms, who could you rely on for help outside the larger towns??

Finally why would the Amendment go on to say "the right of the people to keep and bear arms will not be infringed" if the arms were only for militia use and would probably be kept in an armory?? No where in the Constitution and Bill of Rights was tortured, hard to understand English used. It was written for the People, NOT FOR LAWYERS AND SCHOLARS.

8. Bill Levinson said:

Laura, campaigning for Gore and agitating for gun control does not make the UAHC/URJ sympathetic to Israel's enemies or the United States' enemies. It DID make UAHC my enemy with regard to both its attack on the Second Amendment and its support for Albert Gore.

It was the material described in Mona Charen's columns that show UAHC/URJ to be sympathetic to the enemies of the United States and of Israel. This simply adds two MORE reasons to dislike Yoffie and his organization.

The Second Amendment does mean exactly what it says. The Founding Fathers' intention was to have an armed citizenry instead of a standing army, although they soon found they needed to maintain a standing army as well. What kuhnkat said about cannons is accurate; private citizens were indeed allowed to own the most destructive weapons then known to the human race. Private merchant ships often carried several of them for self-defense against pirates. Some privately-owned ships were in fact so heavily-armed that they could be enlisted during wartime, e.g. through letters of marque that allowed them to prey on enemy shipping.

As for the National Guard, neither it nor anything like it would be invented until the 19th century. Prussia introduced the Landwehr during the Napoleonic Wars, decades after the Constitution was written.

If you look at what is happening in countries with the kind of gun laws Gore & Co. wanted, you wouldn't like the idea. Islamofascist rape gangs run around Australia and France with relative impunity because they are not afraid of being shot dead, which could easily happen in the United States. Terrorists don't spray machine guns in our streets and shopping malls because they know that a bystander might be legally armed, but they don't know who he is. An armed society is a safe society. I place UAHC/URJ in the same category as the Judenrat-collaborators who would have been delighted to disarm the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, or in 1947-1948 Israel. (Note that, once the guns are taken away, it is hard to get them back when you realize you need them.)