I’m sitting here, watching the Red Sox-Seattle game and trying to put all stressful matters out of sight and mind (not that Boston is making that easy, since my team has begun the season erratically, to be kind), and I read about how a the account for “Unplanned,” a new pro-life movie, was taken down by Twitter without explanation or notice on the every day it was beginning its first weekend. There was an outcry from conservative commentators, of course ( Dana Loesch: “If Twitter doesn’t discriminate against ideology, as they attested to during their hearing, then why seemingly do only conservative accounts continue to be suspended for no TOS violations? What did @UnplannedMovie do to warrant such an action? Where is the consistency? I say this because I have seen so many other accounts of different ideological persuasion that DO violate TOS (sending death threats, doxxing, etc) that are allowed to remain up and active even after reporting….”) and Twitter restored the account, citing a “mistake.”
This comes on a day where I am noting how the mainstream media is refusing to acknowledge how blatantly it has hyped, and cheered, and promoted half-baked theories, rumors and misrepresentations to beat into the viewing public’s mind that their President stole his office and is a traitor, a concept that never made any sense no matter how little one thinks of Trump (and I speak from personal experience) and that depends on near hypnotic suggestion-level repetition to be believed, and is in full-Jumbo mode (“Impeachment-hyping? What impeachment-hyping?”). I’ve defended Jake Tapper and have defended Jake Tapper, but no more: he is officially a typical, untrustworthy CNN hack.
“I’m not sure what you’re saying the media got wrong. The media reported the investigation was going on,” Tapper said while interviewing acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney today. “Other than the people in the media on the left, not on this network, I don’t know anybody that got anything wrong. We didn’t say there was a conspiracy. We said Mueller was investigating a conspiracy.”
Ugh. How shameless. The audience assumes that a news source isn’t going to obsess over a non-story day after day, our after hour, show after show, if there is nothing there. Nor was CNN objective, with all of its advocacy and emphasis conveying the belief that all of their self-manufactured smoke proved the existance of a democracy-threatening fire. And CNN got a lot wrong. It was CNN that had to issue a correction to its false story that Donald Trump Jr. had received an email Sept. 4, 2016, that contained undisclosed information from WikiLeaks. The smoking gun! Collusion!
Uh, no. CNN’s sources had provided the wrong date for the email, and CNN—that’s you, Jake—had been so eager to prove collusion that it didn’t bother to ascertain that Junior actually received the email Sept. 14, 2016, a day after the information contained in the email had been made public. CNN was also forced to back down from a June 7, 2017, article co-authored by Tapper that claimed James Comey would dispute President Donald Trump’s claims that Comey had told him he was not under investigation. Comey confirmed Trump’s account in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee..and we now know that Comey was lying to both Trump and the Senate.
Then there was CNN’s breathless report regarding the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, that slime-ball Trump fixer Michael Cohen would tell the special counsel he overheard Donald Trump Jr. tell his father about the Trump Tower meeting, which involved several Russians. That one was disputed by Cohen’s lawyer and slime-ball Clinton fixer Lanny Davis. Meanwhile, my Facebook Borg friends are having orgasms about the prospect of eliminating the Electoral college so every Democrat will begin election night know he or she will have a 3-4 million vote advantage, since California has essentially rejected the core principles of American democracy, and Republicans are as rare as unicorns.
Pack the Supreme Court, they tell me, and nothing will be able to stop them from confiscating guns and strangling the First Amendment, banning “hate speech,” defined as any opinions and ideas that opposes the Almighty Woke, and rejecting whites and Asian-Americans from college so blacks and Hispanics can get their spaces even with lesser credentials because…well, because; and firing Nazi conservative—and moderate?–professors and teachers from faculties because their contrarian ideas are literally violence.
There are more disturbing portents too: I can’t help but notice that an entire political party is rejecting due process and the presumption of innocence, and chants Stalinesque slogans like “if you did nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide” to destroy the public’s understanding of its civil rights, and champions double standards for men and women, blacks and whites, their party and the bad party, and uses epithets and denigrating names for Jews, Catholics, and anyone who opposes their grand plan for social justice; and that the same party wants to tear down statues here, change building names there, and re-write history so that rising generations won’t encounter any of those hurtful, confusing, gray areas to interfere with their indoctrination into the True Way.
Meanwhile,I can’t help but notice that my own, hardly radical, usually objective and informed analysis of the many rights and wrongs in our culture—which frequently focuses on “the resistance” since it is, after all, the most unethical, dangerous and anti-democratic movement in many years, if not decades—somehow is not permitted on Facebook, so whatever warning klaxons I am sounding will be heard by as few people as possible.
I’m sure it’s just a mistake.
I am not conspiratorially inclined. I have also long felt, indeed believed with all my heart, that our traditions, out history, our culture and the Constitution girded this nation, more than any others, against threats against our liberty, creativity, right to self-determination, right to property, and right to the pursuit of happiness. For the first time in my life—and I have to admit I have been around for a long time—I am feeling oppressed. and like I and the values I was raised to revere are under an organized and relentless attack by extreme ideological forces that have the power of the news media illicitly behind them. Saying that, I have watched, read and listened to enough of the agitprop to know that the nascent totalitarians who sure seem to be trying to muzzle me have a scripted, market-tested response: “Yeah, we know. You’re a racist, sexist, privileged white man who is terrified of losing your power.”
I don’t like distrusting my fellow citizens, and wondering if my friends are making plans to restrict my rights to speak, govern myself, make a living, and live in a nation where there are not favored tribes, groups, genders and religious beliefs, and where the government doesn’t pick winners and losers, or selectively enforce the law.
Yet I am. For the first time in my life, I am.
Am I getting paranoid?
_____________________________________
Source: The Daily Caller
Ethics Alarms 
You have to admire and be revulsed by the inroads made by the power hungry Alinskyites. They dominate the media, education, global elites, international organizations and some crucial federal agencies.
Paranoia requires an irrational fear of others being out to get you. Your fear based on experiential knowledge seems rational.
Paranoid? Yes.
Remember two things:
Never attribute to malice what can also be explained by stupidity. (Modified Hanlon’s Razor)
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups (Facebook Mission Statement— uh, no, what? -George Carlin)
Facebook amplifies the echo chamber of stupidity. I practically never post anything political on Facebook, but will respond to political posts, if only to point out which logical fallacy is employed in a post. Even that is met with bewilderment and anger.
-Jut
It’s the tipping point for the media, with the walls closing in. A bombshell.
Someone put together clips from the past two years of the predictions of President Trump immediate downfall. It’s as if they all get the same talking points. (Insert sarcasm font) Borg collective is an apt description.
Am I getting paranoid? –
In a word, no.
Your Facebook issues are just the start of what may happen to you. You’ve been effectively de-platformed there, perhaps by some of your friends? Bear in mind that Facebook can ensure that YOU see all of your posts and no one else does. The same goes for comments you may make. So just because you see it, or your wife and best friend see it, doesn’t mean it’s “there”. On a business page, I remove comments from Facebook posts weekly and choose the option to allow the comment to continue to be seen by the commenter, and their friends (if they don’t have too many!).
You don’t have a YouTube presence that I’m aware of, so you’re OK there. You do have your business to consider, and it’s possible that you may find that there are people are actively attempting to prevent someone with your views continuing to earn a living. It’s possible that your Facebook troubles are a positive there, by denying you larger notoriety. It’s also helpful that you don’t process payments online, as processors are a common leverage point used to shut down non-woke views. My guess is that those who hire you will hear from outsiders about your “flaws”, and may well disregard their complaints as not coming from an interested party. I hope.
In short, no, you’re not safe from those who wish to deprive you of your ability to express your views on most online platforms. I know of YouTubers who have quit simply because of the paperwork involved in fighting a flurry of utterly false copyright claims, made simply to get YouTube to remove a video that was not in keeping with “woke” views.
I wish that EA still had the leftist contingent to tell me that this happens to left-leaning views as well, so I could challenge them to cite an example. But really, I don’t miss them, and like the initial amusement that a flat-earther can bring to a geography discussion, constantly correcting them gets old quick.
No, you’re not.
I’ve spat upon my hands, and it’s almost time to hoist the black flag.
I hope that it stops there and good men are not forced to take the next step.
Adimagejim defined it: not irrational fear, but fear just the same. Fear that needs to be expressed in order to be resolved; expressed, in your case, by taking a deep breath and blowing the klaxon once more and once more again, knowing that as long as you can reboot and spell outs the alarm, someone can harken to the message.
That being said, I am burying your idea of paranoia under an overarching cliche inaugurating on March 4, 1932, the Democrat of all Democrats, your friend and mine, FDR:
…[L]et me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
You know the first part; now understand that the results of your efforts, in spite of justifiably growing fear (in all of us), have been achieving the last words of that cry. By identifying the ethical problems (many of which are hidden, unrecognized, denied), the solutions are made clear … thus, you convert retreat into advance even if you have to go over the same steps, the same arguments, as each new alarm rings. Keep talking. We’re listening. All – how many is it today? – 3,188 of us? Not bad for a one-man army.
Welcome to the life of a conservative in the US the past couple of decades. Oh, it has gotten worse, especially since 2012, and you did not move right to join us (and share our richly deserved punishment) but progressives moved left. So far left that, like a ship sailing away toward the horizon, they no longer can tell where the middle used to be: anything not following their grand wisdom is anathema and must be destroyed.
They have truly lost what passes for their minds, and retribution is coming. Something so unhinged cannot stand, and yet they continue sitting on a powder keg and playing with matches.
The mockery will end. The double standards will be reversed. America will once again be the city on the hill, lighting the way for the world. Justice will be served, and the twisted thinking will no longer be tolerated.
The only question is must blood be spilled, and how much, before common Americans put an end to this travesty.
I see no reason why all principled, patriotic, intelligent Americans shouldn’t be equally as concerned as conservatives.
Patriotic seems seems to become a dirty word to liberals thoughout the spectrum. Thank you Obama for reminding us that the USA is no longer an exceptional country.
Why do you assume those concerned are conservatives? I would suggest there are very few conservatives in the US. The right-wing party of the US believes in individual rights, due process, equality under the law, and democracy. Isn’t that liberalism? The left is against all those things. Liberalism is traditional American values.
The Left has hated America since at least the 1960’s. They used to couch it in terms of ‘being fair’, and not being overly patriotic, but they always criticized the US and US society much more vigorously than they criticized any other country or society. They continually made excuses for Communism and other forms of totalitarian socialism. They would rationalize, ‘It is our job to criticize the US, not other people’, which is true, but continually insisting that the US is worse than all other countries while excusing horrible abuses in other countries is what they did instead. People kept giving them the benefit of the doubt. Now, there is no doubt left.
Jack, you aren’t paranoid. You are just opening your eyes to what many of us have been seeing for decades. I became aware of this in college. The censorship of the right was very apparent (left wing opinions are good and valid, criticizing affirmative action policies will get you thrown out of school) . The left’s fight against Christianity was evident (my university’s President once announced to the school that spring break couldn’t be near Easter or it would send the message that Christianity was a valid religion). The Communist control of academia was evident (we had at least 6 different warring Communist student groups). The left’s embrace of Islam and the ‘Palestinian agenda’ was enforced with terror (we had a fees funded student-affiliate of the PLO that firebombed Hillel’s property to show they weren’t terrorists). This was the late ’80’s and early ’90’s. For those of us who saw this then, nothing has really changed. The only actual difference is that they have dropped the pretense. They aren’t trying to hide it anymore. You have been driven to see it because of the weight of evidence and the lack of pretense. You can’t assume it is just coincidence that they act like racist totalitarian socialists bent on destroying all freedom and liberty every single time anymore. It is a frightening world, isn’t it?
You probably think you are paranoid because of the number of people willingly going along with this stuff. You probably know quite a few people you like, that you thought were good people, who are promoting this stuff. You probably can’t believe they would willingly endorse hatred, intolerance, and the end of liberty and freedom. They do, and when the government comes to take you, they will not help you. They will just look away.
“I see no reason why all principled, patriotic, intelligent Americans shouldn’t be equally as concerned as conservatives.”
Of course they should. You are one of those, and YOU are concerned. My point is that conservatives (little ‘c’) have been dealing with this treatment, in incremental stages, for decades now. Traditional values have been under increasing attack, to the point where those who choose to have them are under direct attack, with reputation, employment, and even life threatened.
‘Principled’ simply groups you with us, the deplorables. So does ‘patriotic,’ ‘intelligent,’ and ‘American.’ Common Americans have great cause to be concerned, if they would pay attention. Too many ignore the ‘noise,’ rocked to sleep by meaningless Hollywood drivel. Most never wake up until THEY become the target, and by then they are far too unprepared to do anything but bow down to the evil attacking them.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you, Jack.
Truly, one of the most epic posts I’ve read. Thank you Mr. Marshall.
A good bromide: Step away from the computer, away from the television. Drive around a little bit. See the trucks of workmen going to or from a job, the trucks hauling stuff, people going to or from work. Go to a hardware store, see people buying door knobs, sprinkler heads, paint. You know, people trying to live their lives, pay their rent or their mortgage, raise their kids. They’re out there with their heads down, getting through the day in a place that’s the best place in the world to be in their position. They’re the ballast in the ship of state. It’s not so bad. I bet it’s not even as bad in Cambridge, MA or Brooklyn (or Vermont?) as we fear it is. Common sense will win out, ultimately.
As John Prine wrote: “Blow up the tv, eat a lot of peaches . . .”
I’m sure I’ve written that advice to others, and here. But I’ve never felt surrounded by hostile people seeking to take my rights away before. If that’s really what’s happening, watching the sunsets and enjoying dogs and babies isn’t a responsible response. The confidence that everything will turn out all right is a trap sometimes, and the bad guys count on that attitude persisting until its too late.
You aren’t paranoid, Jack. The left is gaslighting you, the same as it’s gaslighting many others. It’s a really brilliant strategy, when you think about it. Lull those who can be into a false sense of security by telling them there’s nothing to worry about, tell those a little more suspicious that they need some time off, should not listen to those trying to cause trouble, and should not disturb the peace themselves, and, finally, silence those who won’t be lulled, won’t give the benefit of the doubt, and won’t take the hint. It’s basically bloodless tyranny, where no one gets fined or disappears to the camps, they just get a nebulous warning about community standards or disappear from online
I’m not sure that’s what I’m recommending. I think I’m more saying basic economic reality drives the lives and behaviors of most people in the country and the American capitalist model is the best model available and it will continue to provide the best quality of life for the most people in the country and eventually drown out all the totalitarian baloney. I think very, very few people really want a revolution. The more people see of Rachel Maddow and Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and their ilk, the less people will go for what they’re selling. What have Saul Alinsky or Noam Chomsky or Elizabeth Warren really accomplished despite all their blather? Every kid graduating from an elite school these days wants to get a job at Goldman Sachs or into an elite law school so they can become a partner at a mega firm. They’re not going into the Peace Corps. I just think you’re discounting much of basic underlying reality. Self interest will continue to keep the country moving between the curbs and gutters on both sides. I’m not saying “Go hug a puppy.”
And maybe we can have chuckle over this scene and line:
https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-itm-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=itm&p=jack+nicholson+you+cant+handle+the+truth+youtube#id=4&vid=eb727f02fc5e663d1cc0fe1918aeb3c7&action=click
Paranoid? About huge monopolistic media platforms trying to control the narrative? ….Nahhhhh, not happening, surely.
Perhaps I missed it, but I haven’t seen anyone on this blog make note of Facebook’s decision a few days ago to ban all “white nationalism and white separatist” content from Facebook and Instagram. It will essentially consider them equivalents to ISIS and Al Qaeda (Presumably, their armies have been taking over large swaths of territory in Holland, Belgium, etc., destroying renaissance art, and forcing Dutch middle-school girls to marry their soldiers.) Any users who search for or try to post white nationalism, white separatism, or white supremacist content will begin getting a popup that redirects them to a website where they can be reeducated.
“Facebook said that after three months of talking with civil society and academics, it agrees that ‘white nationalism and separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups.’ ” Essentially, they relied on the likes of “experts” such as the SPLC, et al. to direct their policy. Among other things, they’ll be on the lookout for, and banning, such phrases as “I am a proud white nationalist” and “Immigration is tearing this country apart…”
The same strictures will not be applied to black separatists or other such groups groups, because, well…(gabble, gabble, leftist cant)…reasons.
Even the ACLU, obviously not a fan of the banned groups, finds this action of trying to police the speech of two billion people by the worlds largest social network concerning: “Further, every time Facebook makes the choice to remove content, a single company is exercising an unchecked power to silence individuals and remove them from what has become an indispensable platform.”
Time to bring the regulatory hammer down, or do we have to wait and see who gets to be the next disfavored target?
What I have come to — 4-5 years of participation here and lots of reading, is the following:
If the object is to arrive at understanding one has to examine causation. What is going on in the present and why?
You are concerned for your ‘rights to speak and govern yourself’ and so you should. And it there is a danger posed to you in that regard it is not from mere persons who do not like what you say and block you on FB (hello there Chris! how are things going?). It is a state-apparatus and its political police that should concern you. That points of course to the National Security State. But what is that? It is the State when it serves business and economic interests, larger national and geopolitical interests to which, in comparison, the individual and his rights are not comparable, or not compatible.
Causation. The political and economic policy of the US in its external affairs has been anti-democratic, anti-‘right to speak and govern yourself’. The political manifestation of American power abroad and in it foreign policies, has tended to favor and strengthen ‘strong-arm rule’. It is ignorant folly and really a form of arrogance to assert differently. America in this sense is an Empire and as such it has interests, and these must be defended. The tools of defense tend to operate against the enshrined Constitutional values of the US itself. As it happens, the actions that the US takes to undermine ‘rights’ and ‘self-determination’ through military actions, invasions, operations, clandestine military police operations: now, today, these have all back-fired and these same operations — it is really a method of management and these operations are management tools — now show themselves as operating at the very core of government. Or perhaps the better term is ‘Deep State’. What is ‘deep state’? Actual power, real power, effective power. And on what is that power based? Control over massive and global business interests.
It is simply an inevitability that things wind up where they are. Democratic forms become just that: shells, forms that are emptied of real content. The reality of stone-cold, hard power manifest themselves.
But there is more, much more. The nature of the democracy we have is one that encourages factionalism. When the homogeneity of the country was deliberately sacrificed, this opened the door for the factionalism and the warring between groups that we now see. At a civic level, independent of the ‘globalist’ interests, the factionalism has gone to extremes. ‘Common sense’ will prevail? That is an absurd, head-in-the-sand — a narcotic — statement.
So, there are different levels of crisis. One level is that in the larger, global game, the rights of sovereign citizens are not needed and they are not wanted. One’s ‘rights’ are to be a subject to a given economic and political system: a management system. Sure, you have rights as long as they remain in their place. In truth, you do not have ‘rights’ as they were (technically) understood by the Founders of the US. And additionally usurping factions within the US had long ago subverted these rights, found ways around them, certainly acted against them in the international sphere, and then — necessarily — had to oppose such rights on the domestic plane. These are ‘systemic inevitabilities’.
The other factor is the civic factor. Very bad decisions were made. The original demographic was undermined because some lunatics got bitten by absurd idealisms. The business class ‘agreed’ to this because, well, there was money to be made from the model that had been chosen. Now, the underclasses are in revolt and they are rising up to slay the ‘masters’. Some of the ‘master class’ align themselves with the rebellion for purposes of expedience. Together, and we can hold South Africa in our mind’s eye, they will take the Nation down into the pit. That is what is happening. It doesn’t matter if someone ‘likes’ or ‘does not like’ my bold description: yet it describes the realities of human social power-struggles. It removes though the aesthetic, idealistic gloss.
I have been reading Carl Schmitt who observed that in certain forms of liberal democracy — or extremes of it perhaps — it is inevitable that those tribes, groups, genders and religions become antagonistic in their competition. The, the State intervenes as the arbiter between them. So, in an advanced and a perverted ‘democracy’ there is a tendency, yes, toward the socialized State, but the State will extend its rights and powers over people in the process. And there you see the State asserting that no one will be allowed to say anything the state deems is ‘negative’ or ‘harmful’ against anyone else. You are to be a subject — you are a subject! — and you will sit down and shut up. If you don’t, well, all the resources of the State can and likely will be brought to bear against you. God Forbid if you organize yourself into a group in opposition!
If I am not mistaken . . . many people . . . tend to recall Waco, Texas . . . and in that terrifying image see where the State will take things when it recognizes the need.
Now, here is the other side of this. The State will have to intervene in this explosive social and also economic situation. The State’s survival actually does depend on this. So, this means that those activists, thinkers, proposers, conceivers who are operating at what the System determines are the ‘extremes’, will need to be neutralized. The object being to protect the interests of the State, and that means the business and economic class: the governing, managerial class. The System cannot allow, and will do all in its power I’d imagine, to avoid very disruptive social struggles that are bad for business. Therefore, one one side it will introduce ‘the narcotic’ — the drunk, false, contrived ‘patriotic vision of America’ which is now a newsreel not a national belief or sentiment — as it simultaneously send in its Political Police. That means: the para-democratic agents and agencies that have to power and the interest to mold events.
And obviously part of this effort is now manifesting: to limit the flow of ideas. Or rather of certain ideas and those who have them.
This is why I say that the entire ‘causal chain’ must be examined. This requires a profound will to be honest and truthful. The solutions are going to b difficult and also radical. This is ‘meta-politics’ and, in the end, has to do with the conservation and recovery of pan-European culture and ‘our traditions’. Therefore, the thinking and the writing of the New European Right is not only recommended, it is demanded. The larger issues has to be defined.
I don’t actually follow Project Veritas. I found this out through a YouTube channel I follow. I found it very interesting to hear and see the facts about this.
https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/02/27/facebook-insider-leaks-docs/
Jack wrote, “For the first time in my life—and I have to admit I have been around for a long time—I am feeling oppressed and like I and the values I was raised to revere are under an organized and relentless attack by extreme ideological forces that have the power of the news media illicitly behind them.”
The Collins Dictionary says oppressed means: people who are oppressed are treated cruelly or are prevented from having the same opportunities, freedom, and benefits as others. Seeing what is happening in the United States of America these days I can see how you would be feeling oppressed. Just to be clear; since you are not “woke”, your feelings are not relevant to totalitarians and social justice warriors.
Jack asks, “Am I getting paranoid?”
Paranoia is a mental condition characterized by delusions of persecution, unwarranted jealousy, or exaggerated self-importance, typically elaborated into an organized system.
Persecution is hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of race or political or religious beliefs
You’re not having delusions of persecution, you are becoming acutely aware of what’s actually happening. It’s not paranoia if the totalitarian fools are really out to get you, and to be sure, the consequences of the actions of totalitarian fools and social justice warriors show us that they ARE out to get you whether they want to acknowledge it or not. I’m not talking about consequentialism, I’m talking about the fact that what the totalitarian fools and social justice warriors are doing is as clear as 2+2=4.
But 2 + 2 = 5 doesn’t it?
Only for sufficiently large values of “2”.
–Dwayne
Update on Jared Taylor’s ban from Europe, deportation back to US.
A Canadian perspective. Students for Western Civilization.
[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSlW_5abucg&feature=push-u-sub&attr_tag=PT0whqdBrKtRK8sU%3A6 ]
Truthfully, no, you are NOT getting paranoid. You see clearly the lack of ethics in journalism. We have devolved to the yellow journalism of the 1920s and 1930s. The left claims to hold the high moral ground in politics. They claim to care more than the right. However, they are most often wrong and lie about it.
People who are moral don’t lie to get their way. MSM media has been caught lying outright, or by omission on many occasions. Democrats make up lies about Trump to push their “impeach Trump” narrative.
Instead of truth telling, MSM twists and bends stories to fit a leftist political agenda. The Founding Fathers intended for the press to keep the government in check, not spread agenda driven propaganda.
“Pack the Supreme Court, they tell me, and nothing will be able to stop them from confiscating guns…”
Well, perhaps the “they” who advocate gun confiscation should talk with the “them” who would have to carry out gun confiscation. There would indeed be “nothing” to stop “them,” except the bloody impossibility of achieving such an end because of “we” who would oppose confiscation with force. Whether or not “they” know it, “we” includes may of “them.” On the second amendment generally, I find it puzzling that there are people who do not realize that a right may be neither granted nor withdrawn by the State. If the Second Amendment or the entire Bill of Rights were repealed, the right to keep and bear arms would still exist, since it was to defend that right, not create it, that the Constitution was established. (See the Declaration of Independence.) So, the state may try to kill me, but it may not rescind my natural right to self-defense. This all seems pretty clear to me, and at least used to be understood by most people, but these days I frequently find people who obviously do not understand it.
The weatherman who sees a storm brewing and sounds the alarm is not being paranoid.