The Knox Update
From the Firearms Coalition
Early Returns
By Chris Knox
(Phoenix, AZ, November 4, 2009) It’s a Republican sweep in Virginia. Bob McDonnell has the election locked up along with fellow Republicans winning the Lt. Governor and Attorney General offices. The Republican victory in Virginia was overwhelming, with the GOP netting a combined 60 percent of the vote over Democrats in the three races.
In New Jersey, an unpopular (and Brady Bunch-endorsed) Democrat lost to what passes for a conservative Republican in that part of the world. Meanwhile in New York’s 23rd District, the Republican leadership had an opportunity to learn something about party discipline when their anointed candidate Dede Scozzafava, a genuinely liberal Republican, was pushed out of the race by an upstart conservative candidate who claimed Glenn Beck as his mentor. Early returns show the Democrat with a solid lead, but with the upstart Hoffman making a splash. The chin-stroking started immediately that the results are the harbinger of a gathering storm within the Republican Party. Maybe.
The really good news is that this election may be the first green shoots of a renaissance of republican (lower-case R) politics. By a “republican renaissance” I mean that classical republican ideas like the rule of law, limited government with checks and balances, as laid out in the U.S. Constitution, may be gaining a new currency in the political marketplace.
It was actually Gerald Ford who accurately stated that, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.” Smaller government is less of a threat to individual liberty, but small government is not something that will happen overnight – frankly I doubt that I’ll see much smaller government in my lifetime. Even the “cuts” of the Reagan Revolution were only modest decreases in the rate of growth. The key questions moving forward are whether the Republican Party can field candidates to satisfy the growing demand for limited government, and whether the Democrats are willing to support candidates who will rein in government expansion, reversing the trend toward federal control? Are they even inclined to try? So far few impressive candidates have appeared from either party, but demand eventually generates supply.
To make sure that yesterday’s election results become an ongoing trend in the right direction, GunVoters must get involved now. The first place to start is www.GunVoter.org. See what information is there for your state and what is missing and then start trying to fill the gaps. Talk to your club or state association’s lobbyist. Find out who’s running, who deserves help, and whose balloon needs popping. Get involved with your local political party of choice so you can participate in selecting candidates from the ground floor. When you find answers, the next step is to go back to GunVoter.og and build the knowledgebase so others can be more effective. Remember that, while federal elections are important, it’s in state legislatures and city councils that tomorrow’s senators and representatives are groomed and you can have much more influence in those races and with those candidates than you can in federal campaigns. As my brother Jeff likes to say, little politicians grow up to be big politicians – catch them while they’re small.
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“The Belgian Corporal,” the story I chose as the prologue to the recently released compilation of Neal Knox’s writing, Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War, is a wrenching story of a Nazi atrocity in Belgium and a cautionary tale regarding the dangers of gun registration. The story was told to Dad by a Belgian-American corporal who was with him in the Texas National Guard. We released the story on the Internet (www.NealKnox.com) when the book came out and it has gained a gratifying amount of circulation.
While the praise was overwhelming, there were some dissenting voices suggesting that the massacre in the story never happened – at least not in Belgium. We have no way of knowing for sure, though I continue to research into it, but what we do know is the impression that the story made on a young Neal Knox. For him, the Belgian Corporal’s story rang true. He believed it in his bones and it changed his life.
If you haven’t ordered your copy of Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War, I hope you will. It’s raw history written as it happened by someone who was often a key participant. I can’t promise you’ll read a story that changes your life, but I’ll bet you’ll learn something. To order a copy, go to www.NealKnox.com or www.FirearmsCoalition.org.
Permission to reprint or post this article in its entirety is hereby granted provided this credit is included. Text is available at www.FirearmsCoalition.org. To receive The Firearms Coalition’s bi-monthly newsletter, The Knox Hard Corps Report, write to PO Box 3313, Manassas, VA 20108.
©Copyright 2009 Neal Knox Associates – The most trusted name in the rights movement.