Yesterday, first thing, I picked up a copy of John Mayer’s fourth release Battle Studies. I awaited this project with more excitement than any I can remember for many years - what a flop.

I can’t believe this is what took three years to complete.

1) Heartbreak Warfare: The first tune set a nice groove that I hoped would permeate the entire album, but it was the highlight that left me hanging. The only track I ever care to hear again.

2) All We Ever Do Is Say Goodbye: And he says it over and over and over… Nothing special… A Lenny Kravitz feel.

3) Half Of My Heart: Sounds like a Fleetwood Mac demo…

4) Who Says: Who says I can’t celebrate whim-worship? Meaningful lyrics would have made this a good tune.

5) Perfectly Lonely: A decent bluesy track…

6) Assassin: Shoot me. Seal meets Paul Simon…

7) Crossroads: The Nintendo version. After hearing Mayer perform crossroads live, and peeling our faces back with it, I kept waiting on the fisher-price intro to erupt in to a tremendous sonic groove… I kept waiting…

8) War Of My Life: This would’ve been a great worst track…

9) Edge Of Desire: Zzzzzz…

10) Do You Know Me: A great rough draft.

11) Friends, Lovers Or Nothing: Nothing.

Lyrically, the intellectual depth conveyed in Continuum (one of my desert island picks) was nowhere to be found on this project. After the rich contemplation expressed in Belief, Gravity, Heart of Life, and Stop This Train, hearing about his one-night-stands and recreational drug use is of no interest to me - especially if set to bland instrumentation.

Instrumentally, listening to this album is like watching an Indy car drive through the parking lot. Mayer is an absolute stud on the guitar, a fact of which there’s hardly a glimpse on this release.

It almost seems like this album was a product of Mayer going through the motions of creative productivity, but without any genuine form of inspiration.

After this shallow mediocrity from one of the artists of our time, I find myself wanting Mayer to settle down and have children so I’ll be able to relate to his ingenious writing and musicianship once again.

Too bad.

By any objective standard, there’s undoubtedly a growing and determined initiative to disarm American citizens. Restrictions, taxes, regulations, and outright prohibitions continue to form a more strangling grip on the firearms industry. Those of us who value firearms for professional, sporting, enthusiast and defensive purposes naturally see the benefits of rallying to a unified cause whereby strength in numbers means a louder voice and more resources to fuel the message. For more than a century the National Rifle Association has been an effective advocate of the second amendment, but in recent years, their lack of sound, explicit principles has become abundantly clear, and will inevitably undermine their essential purpose - it already has.

Individual Rights and America

America’s founding essence is individual freedom. As correctly and explicitly prescribed in the Declaration of Independence, freedom is achieved by establishing a government that protects individual rights to life, liberty and property.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

Of course, one’s right to life is the bedrock to any political right regardless of context, but without freedom and property, one really doesn’t maintain the means to sustain his life. Without freedom to think and act, one cannot take the steps necessary to gain knowledge or earn a living. Without rightfully possessing the results of such thought and action in the form of property, one cannot survive in a self-sufficient manner.

Maintenance of each of these rights logically necessitates the sovereignty of the others. If you encroach upon one, you encroach upon them all.

Does The NRA Understand Rights?

Last year, I contacted the NRA-ILA challenging their position in the Florida HB 503 decision. This case centered on an Employer in Florida who prohibited the possession of firearms by employees on company grounds. The NRA, in an astonishingly short sighted manner, sided with the employees, and against the employer - the property owner.

According to the NRA, the employer’s property rights - to determine particular policies which pertain to their legal property - were trumped by the employee’s right to life. Not only is their position presented in an anti-business hue ( phrases such as “Big Business”, “corporate giants” ) that Karl Marx would find comforting, such a stance ignores three crucial facts:

1) No individual has the right to be on the private property of others without prior consent and compliance with any predefined, mutually agreed upon terms. Those who violate this principle are trespassing.

2) Employees of a business are subject to contractual terms which may or may not subject their presence to a particular set of stipulations. An individual seeking employment with a particular employer is free to accept such stipulations, negotiate the terms accordingly, or choose to seek employment elsewhere.

3) Most importantly, the right to property is a fundamental prerequisite to the right to bear arms - arms being a specific type of property - and as indicated above, any movement that undermines property rights also erodes the right to life and liberty.

The NRA-ILA politely rejected my arguments, insisting that the employee’s right to life trumps any trespassing, contractual, or property owner restrictions - a tremendous evasion of the voluntary aspect of employment and the sanctity of property rights.

At Least They’re Consistent

I still get NRA notifications and in just a few minutes browsing the NRA-ILA I stumbled on yet another stance by this “defender of rights” which displays ignorance of the concept of rights.

This time the position is that renters should be immune to a landlords restrictions regarding firearms on leased property. From the NRA’s “Outrage Of The Week” notification:

This week’s second outrage (read about the first outrage of the week here) comes to us via Tennessee Attorney General Bob Cooper (D), who recently issued an official opinion that landlords can prohibit law-abiding tenants from possessing their legally-owned firearms within the leased premises of their rented apartments, even if the tenants have a valid carry permit!

…

Denying law-abiding citizens their right to self-defense in their home is simply outrageous, not to mention unfair [to whom?] and possible dangerous. [emphasis and comments added]

The error in this statement should be obvious - it’s not their home. They’re renters… leasing property owned by another individual. As such, just as in the case with employers and employees, renters are subject to mutually agreed upon contractual terms. They can accept those terms, negotiate those terms, or seek housing elsewhere. Concerning fairness, denying a landlord the right to determine their own lease stipulations would be unfair.

Without Principles, Crusades are Futile

Many people don’t appreciate my criticism of the NRA, either siding explicitly with their position or citing my observations as insignificant tradeoffs in the quest to defend the right to bear arms.

Why abstain supporting 90% of a cause over 10% that you disagree with?

My response is that adherence to fundamental principles is a vital necessity and that these errors cannot be taken lightly. That 10% strikes a root that will utterly annihilate any benefit from the remaining 90%. What good is the right to bear arms if the abolition of property rights leads to a total destruction of the firearms industry and eventually a total economic collapse? At that point, we’ll have neither rights nor guns.

Property rights are under attack from every conceivable angle in America, the two cases above included. This country cannot exist once they are destroyed. To the extent the sanctity of property rights are encroached upon, this country slides immeasurably closer to oppressive tyranny. The essence of any variant of collectivism (Socialism, Fascism, or Communism) is the obliteration of property rights in favor of collective ownership of resources. We must salvage and protect property rights at any opportunity, not toss them aside in a hypnotic “right to bear arms” stupor.

This latest issue reaffirms the NRA’s lack of principles. Without a principled ideology, any movement is destined for inconsistency and failure. I hate to say it, but with friends like the NRA, who needs enemies? They’re unwittingly aiding the cause of the groups seeking to drag America into stagnant misery.

I should be clear - the NRA has promoted and prevailed many just causes, but regardless of their achievements, even monumental ones, negligence in the realm of fundamental principles will absolutely offset and undermine their stated mission.

You can fix every shingle on a roof but if you ignore (and exacerbate) the tremendous crack in the home’s foundation your shingles are irrelevant.

Individual Rights and The Proper Role of Government

Until the NRA adopts a rational and consistent defense of the fundamental rights to life, liberty and property, they cannot be effective defenders of any other implementation of those rights - especially the 2nd amendment which relies on all three.

The purpose of Government is not to force employers or landlords to adopt rational gun policies (which can only be done by effectively communicating a rational philosophy), but to protect our fundamental rights from encroachment by force or fraud. Objective law is based on a standard to punish and preclude forceful encroachment of individual rights (life, liberty, and property); in the above cases, neither employers nor landlords were forcefully violating the rights of others. Until the NRA abstains from promoting legislation that violates this prescription, they are helping to destroy America - regardless of how honest their intentions.

I urge any of you who support the NRA to voice your concern about this blatant and potentially devastating inconsistency in their advocacy. Until they rectify such a tremendous contradiction, they cannot be justly considered as true allies of freedom or Capitalism.

I certainly hope they refine their course; we desperately need a unified voice in defense of our rights - including the second amendment.

My sentiments echo this excerpt from Ayn Rand’s address to the graduating class of The United States Military Academy at West Point — March 6, 1974.

“You have chosen to risk your lives for the defense of this country. I will not insult you by saying that you are dedicated to selfless service — it is not a virtue in my morality. In my morality, the defense of one’s country means that a man is personally unwilling to live as the conquered slave of any enemy, foreign or domestic.

This is an enormous virtue.

Some of you may not be consciously aware of it. I want to help you to realize it. The army of a free country has a great responsibility: the right to use force, but not as an instrument of compulsion and brute conquest — as the armies of other countries have done in their histories — only as an instrument of a free nation’s self-defense, which means: the defense of a man’s individual rights. The principle of using force only in retaliation against those who initiate its use, is the principle of subordinating might to right. The highest integrity and sense of honor are required for such a task.

No other army in the world has achieved it. You have”

I certainly do appreciate the freedom fought and died for by patriots of this country, but I fear we’re coming dangerously close to a total abandonment of that virtuous essence which justified the struggle and maintenance of freedom.

This country was founded on individual rights; when those are gone, so is America. The biggest challenge we face is the endeavor to salvage this once great nation as one still worth defending.

Here’s to those who have and will continue to defend it - both militarily as well as intellectually

I’m on a brief hiatus from writing due to time and energy constraints. Instead of longer posts, I’ve been posting links on Facebook and jotting notes on topics that come to mind for future posts.

My second son Ben was born on October 23rd and, quite honestly, we’ve had our hands full! The mental/physical transition from one child to two is quite different from the transition to your first child - in some aspects easier, in others however, almost inconceivably more difficult.

Once again, the talented Erin Sage adeptly captured these joyous times.

The experience from our first instilled a sense of confidence that made the delivery, first days, and transition home much less stressful. We knew there would be limited sleep, lots of newborn diapers, and the overwhelming joy of new life. We knew how to hold the baby to support his neck, but also that he wasn’t made of fragile glass. We knew we didn’t have to check his breathing every 4 minutes around the clock - short of an abnormal occurrence, he’d be ok.

The biggest adjustment for me has been the mental realignment required to re-prioritize one’s time, dedication and energy to what feels like two priorities which both seem to warrant being first. I’ve become completely dedicated to an intense relationship with my son, now I have to chop up my thoughts and energy to be divided amongst another human whose development and friendship is also a tremendous value. We’ve struggled with the realization that our time will now be allocated towards the development of two humans, which means A) our oldest son cannot continue to receive the dedication he’s enjoyed until now, and B) our new son cannot receive the same level that our first did. Seems like a loss for all parties until you realize the long-term benefits to all. Teaching a child to think is one of the most rewarding and fulfilling things I’ve ever done, but it takes lots of time and patience to be done correctly. The biggest tradeoff with multiple children is the cost that each one will get less parental energy, with the reward being the companionship of a sibling.

I suspect we’ll see some almost synergistic learning between the two when they get older, and that potential offset is comforting. Most importantly, our boys will be separated by only two years so they’ll very likely be close friends - this is the ultimate reward for the current parent sharing reality.