Our founding fathers enshrined religious liberty as our first right because while we should render that which is Caesar’s to Caesar, we must render to God that which is God’s. Caesar will never like this, for it implies that Caesar isn’t God—that there are obligations higher than those to the state; that the state is necessarily limited. When we claim to be one nation under God, we’re saying we’re a nation under God’s judgment. Man is not the measure of all things. -Public Discourse

I’ve come to realize after the Sandy Hook shooting that the reason we can’t have a rational gun debate is because the anti-gun side pre-supposes that their pro-gun opponents must first accept that guns are bad in order to have a discussion about guns in the first place. Before we even start the conversation, we’re the bad guys and we have to admit it. Without accepting that guns are bad and supplicating themselves to the anti-gunner, the pro-gunner can’t get a word in edgewise, and is quickly reduced to being called a murderer, or a low, immoral and horrible human being. -Iowa State Daily

“In all 50 states, two people of the same sex can live with each other and love each other, they can go to a liberal church and have a wedding ceremony performed, they can work for a liberal business and have marriage benefits, if the church wants to and if the business wants to,” he said. “It’s very much live and let live.” But that’s not what those who want to redefine marriage are asking for. “What they’re asking is for the Supreme Court to redefine marriage, and then have government use the coercive power of law to force people like you and me and our religious communities and our businesses to recognize a same-sex relationship as if it’s a marriage,” he said. -Heritage

America prides itself in being “the land of the free.” But as it turns out, liberty is not free itself. It comes at a cost. Part of that cost was paid by the precious lives of Americans who sacrificed everything for their country. But in times of peace, citizens must also foot the bill by being responsible and virtuous. A free society does not just magically work. It requires a people who are willing to cooperate with each other and selflessly care for one another. If we love liberty, we must also love justice, kindness, mercy and charity. Otherwise, the liberty that we dearly love will disappear, and the America that we call exceptional may join the ranks of failed experiments in democracy. -Values & Capitalism

Conservatism opposes universal, outsourced collective responsibility with engaged, personal community responsibility. When a liberal claims that as a society we owe each member access to health care, the conservative responds not that we owe each other nothing, but that we all long to belong to communities where we care for each other. The conservative solution is a community fundraiser put on by a sick man’s friends and family, neither bureaucracy nor autonomy. We are born with responsibilities not only to ourselves, but our families. Our families sustain us selflessly for years before we can even pretend to be self-sustaining individuals. The stable social soil of a family and community create the bounded realm of liberty within which one can attempt to grow into a good person. -Intercollegiate Review

To bring this straw man to light is almost enough to refute it; sunshine is, in this case, the best disinfectant. But which is it? Are gun owners “social darwinists,” who just want to let the fittest survive, or are they really religious freaks who cling to their guns because their religion and their way of life is unable to cope with the real world?

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them,” Obama said in April 2008, before he was elected to the presidency. “It’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” -Barak Obama, quoted by Yahoo News

You can’t have it both ways.