In Virginia, 91 counties, 14 cities, and 29 towns have declared themselves Second Amendment Sanctuary jurisdictions. However, in Harrisonburg, 50 Second Amendment supporters showed up to a city council meeting to discover their councilors would not even discuss it. In Waynesboro, after a rather lengthy public hearing, the vice-mayor withdrew the resolution, in part, because of the rowdy crowd reaction when council did not appear to share the crowd’s views. In Lynchburg, Mayor Tweedy, to her credit, accommodated applause and cheers to speakers but drew the line at jeers.

Many speakers in both Waynesboro and Lynchburg pleaded not to have their gun rights taken away. Those arguments should be made to the General Assembly not to the local governments. The more appropriate argument is to ask the local government to protect the local citizens from unconstitutional laws passed by the state. The statement I made at the public hearing in Lynchburg went something like this:

“A couple of years ago, Virginia’s Sixth Congressional District Republican Committee sued the state because of an unconstitutional law commonly called the “Incumbent Protection Act.” We won our case in Federal District Court and again in the Federal Appeals Court. It cost the state a lot of money to defend this unconstitutional law. BUT because the case was about a violation of the Constitution the state also had to pay plaintiff’s legal team nearly a quarter million dollars to cover their fees. The gun laws currently before the General Assembly are unconstitutional. They will be taken to court. They will lose. The state will have to pay both the state’s lawyers and the plaintiff’s lawyers, and that will be very expensive.

“If City Council supports these unconstitutional laws by its silence, the City could be financially liable as well. And if City police confiscate weapons, and especially if someone is assaulted or killed in the absence of their personal weapons, the City could face not only legal bills, but also compensatory and punitive damages as well. To save the City a lot of money, you need to pass this ordinance and declare that our City will not enforce unconstitutional laws.

“Can you do that? Contrary to what a few people have told you tonight, you can. Attorney General Herring, after he was first inaugurated in 2014, declined to defend in Federal Court the Marriage Amendment to the Virginia Constitution stating that “irrespective of the action of the People in amending their Constitution, that as ‘an exercise of’ his ‘independent judgement,’ he had concluded that when a provision of the Virginia Constitution or Statute ‘violates the federal constitution, he is not duty bound to defend it.” This established two precedents. One, an elected official who reaches the “independent judgement” that a state statute is in violation of the U.S. Constitution is at liberty to decline to enforce that statute. And, an elected official has the power to take affirmative steps to block enforcement of an unconstitutional statute.

“The General Assembly has established the precedent of governmental non-cooperation with the unconstitutional laws of a superior governmental authority. On February 28, 2012 – with both Attorney General Herring and Governor Northam, then legislators, voting in the affirmative – the General Assembly passed HB 1160, which prohibited Virginia from assisting the federal government in the unlawful detention of U.S. citizens under the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. Thus, the General Assembly established the principle that: “A subordinate level of government has the authority and, indeed, the responsibility to refuse to cooperate with a higher level of government when the higher government enacts a law which violates the Constitution of the United States.” It only follows that this “non-cooperation” applies when local governments are faced with unconstitutional statues enacted by the General Assembly.

“It only follows that City Council not only has the right, but the duty to pass this ordinance to protect the City from legal action and from doing “the wrong thing” in regard to both our state and national constitutions – documents that you swore to uphold when you took office.”

Lynchburg City Council ignored my statement and those of the more than 100 (of the 120 who spoke) others who supported this ordinance and voted against the ordinance by 5-2. I hope that Second Amendment supporters will remember these council actions when election day comes. If you can’t persuade elected officials to vote the way they should, then they need to be replaced by elected officials who will.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

 

 

Republicans have three conventions coming this spring and summer. They each have an important purpose.

The Republican National Convention will take place from August 24 to August 27, 2020, at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, NC. At that convention, Republicans will nominate Donald Trump for re-election as President of the United States. They will also establish the Party’s platform and make other decisions that could be very important to the Party and to the country. National conventions are exciting and a lot of fun. But because we are a representative form of government, only representatives – called “delegates” – of Republicans in each state can attend.

To become a delegate from Virginia to the National Convention one must be elected at either the State Convention or at a Congressional District Convention. In a change from prior years, the State Central Committee has voted that individuals can run for election as a delegate at either the state convention or at a district convention but not at both.

Virginia’s Republican State Convention will be held on May 1-2, 2020, at Liberty University’s Vines Center in Lynchburg. In addition to electing National Convention delegates and alternates, State Convention delegates will also vote for which Republican presidential candidate our delegates will support during the first round of balloting at the National Convention.

State convention delegates will also elect a chair of the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) as well as a National Committeeman and a National Committeewoman. These three individuals are Virginia’s representatives to the Republican National Committee (RNC) – which is analogous to Virginia’s State Central Committee (SCC). The SCC is like the board of directors for the RPV. The RNC is like the board of directors for the national Party. Convention delegates will also elect two of the presidential electors who will make up Virginia’s Electoral College if we do what is necessary to allow President Trump to win Virginia’s popular vote this year. There may be other relevant business, and delegates will make those decisions as well.

Republicans in each of Virginia’s eleven congressional districts will also hold conventions. These district conventions are held at a time and place determined by each district’s Republican Committee. Delegates to the district conventions will elect District Chairs, representatives to the State Central Committee, and certain other district officers. Each district will also elect a Presidential Elector, to serve in Virginia’s Electoral College if Trump wins Virginia, and they will each elect three delegates and three alternates to the National Convention. (An alternate delegate would serve as a delegate if a regular delegate becomes unable to attend.) A few conventions, the Fifth District comes to mind, will also nominate candidates to run for Congress.

Just like the National Convention, both state and district conventions limit the number of individuals who can attend and vote. The number of delegates that each Republican unit can send to the conventions is determined by a formula that involves how many people voted for Republican candidates in the last elections for Governor and for President. A unit generally consists of all the Republicans in any given city or county. Occasionally some units combine so that more than one political entity is involved. For example, the Rockbridge Area Republican Committee includes Republicans in Rockbridge County plus those in Lexington and Buena Vista cities.

In order to become a delegate to either the state or district committee or both, one must be elected as such by the Republicans of their local area. This is generally done at a Mass Meeting. When a local Republican committee calls a mass meeting, they in reality invite all local Republicans who are able and interested to attend a meeting at which attendees elect a unit chairman and a local committee who, for the next two years, will tend to the business of Republicans in their area. They also elect delegates to represent their unit at both the state and district conventions. Mass meetings are pure democracy. The only person you represent at a Mass Meeting is yourself. There are no delegates. Any Republican-minded individual who is registered to vote in the locality represented by that unit and who wants to be involved may attend and vote for those whom they think will best represent their interests.

If you don’t know how to contact your local Republican committee about getting involved, go to https://virginia.gop/find-your-local-gop/ and look for your unit. I hope that you will involve yourself in the inner workings of the Party so that you can help make the crucial decisions needed to Make America Great Again.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

On December 20, 2019, Attorney General Mark Herring issued a formal legal opinion stating (1) that Second Amendment Sanctuary Resolutions (SASRs) have “no legal effect,” (2) that local government officials “must comply with gun violence prevention measures that the General Assembly (GA) may enact,” and (3) that “neither local governments nor local constitutional officers have the authority to declare state statutes unconstitutional or decline to follow them on that basis.” Mark Herring is not only wrong, but he reverses his own previous opinions.

The Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) and the Gun Owners of America, Inc. (GOA), based in Springfield, VA, issued a joint twelve-page statement pointing out the utter hypocrisy of Herring’s opinion, often using some of Herring’s earlier legal opinions. SASRs indicate the intent of the 94 cities and counties plus 17 incorporated towns that have adopted them, and they do have “legal effect.” The SASRs represent an exercise in the right of the People to petition their government not to abuse their power by doing the evil that they are considering. With the SASRs, 94 of Virginia’s 133 cities and counties are informing the GA that any attempt by the GA to forcibly disarm Virginians, to register their weapons (as a precursor to confiscating them), or otherwise to turn law-abiding Virginians into felons, would be ultra vires acts, void, and thus not law at all. The SASRs are not an effort to create conflict with the GA and the Governor, but rather to avoid it. But should the state government act lawlessly, then local officials and the people they represent will not cooperate and may actively resist that government lawlessness.

Herring’s second point is wrong because no constitutional or statutory provision requires people to comply with an unconstitutional state law. Herring makes too big a stretch when he says that since the GA can create and remove counties then “all local authority is subject to the control of the General Assembly.” That is utter nonsense. The Virginia Constitution overrides the GA, and our Constitution establishes county boards and county sheriffs among other constitutionally mandated offices. In fact, Article I, Section 2 notes that “power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people, that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.” The VCDL/GOA response states that local governments’ enactment of SASRs shows that “county boards, and sheriffs, are acting ‘subject to the control’ of the People as expressed in the Constitution, not the General Assembly.” So even though Herring asserts that “when a statute and an ordinance conflict, the statute must prevail” that does not apply when the statue is in conflict with the Virginia and U.S. Constitutions. County boards and city councils owe no allegiance to unconstitutional state laws, but rather to the Constitution and to the People, who are the authorities from which the GA derive their power.

Herring himself makes a lie of his third point because immediately after he was first inaugurated in 2014, Herring declined to defend in Federal Court the Marriage Amendment to the Virginia Constitution stating that “irrespective of the action of the People in amending their Constitution, that as ‘an exercise of’ his ‘independent judgement,’ he had concluded that when a provision of the Virginia Constitution or Statute ‘violates the federal constitution, he is not duty bound to defend it.” This established two precedents. One, an elected official who reaches the “independent judgement” that a state statute is in violation of the U.S. Constitution is at liberty to decline to enforce that statute. And, an elected official has the power to take affirmative steps to block enforcement of an unconstitutional statute.

The GA has established the precedent of governmental non-cooperation with the unconstitutional laws of a superior governmental authority. On February 28, 2012 – with both Attorney General Herring and Governor Northam, then legislators, voting in the affirmative – the GA passed HB 1160, which prohibited Virginia from assisting the federal government in the unlawful detention of U.S. citizens under the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. Thus, the GA established the principle that: “A subordinate level of government has the authority and, indeed, the responsibility to refuse to cooperate with a higher level of government when the higher government enacts a law which violates the Constitution of the United States.” It only follows that this “non-cooperation” applies when local governments are faced with unconstitutional statues enacted by the GA.

And in 2017, 2018, and 2019 Governor Northam approved Sanctuary Cities by vetoing bills that would have prevented Virginia’s cities and counties from becoming Sanctuary Cities for illegal immigrants.

It is painfully obvious that Herring’s legal opinion – not to mention Northam’s grandiose pronouncements – is based far more on personal opinion than on the laws of the Commonwealth. And that is a terrible way to govern a country or a Commonwealth.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

I’m taking a Christmas break, so I’ll just pass along an article (lightly edited for length) that was first published in June 2018. Marshall Kamena, mayor of Livermore, CA, wrote the original article. Kamena, a conservative, ran for mayor as a Democrat because he knew a Bay Area city would never vote for a Republican. He wrote the following as a follow-up to the article “He Fights,” originally written by Evan Sayet. Enjoy.

. . . . . . .

My Leftist friends (and many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.” Here’s my answer: We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency. We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain? We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney? And the results were always the same. This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party. I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent. Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”

The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ‘60’s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale. It has been a war they’ve fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one – the violent take-over of the universities – till today. The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.

With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America ’s first wartime president in the Culture War. During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming. Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that, “I cannot spare this man. He fights.” George Patton was a vulgar loudmouth who under normal rules of decorum would have been stripped of rank, but had Franklin Roosevelt done so, Patton would not have driven his Third Army into the heart of Germany to end World War II in Europe.

Trump is fighting. And what’s particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel’s, he’s shouting, “You magnificent b******s, I read your book!” …It’s wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he’s defeating the Left using their own tactics. That book is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals – a book so essential to the Liberals’ war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis. It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.

Trump’s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky had his followers do. First, instead of going after “the fake media” — and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened in Ferguson, Missouri — Trump isolated CNN. He made it personal. Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all.” Most importantly, Trump’s tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. The problem for CNN (et al.) is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve. It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive.

Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers & Bernardine Dohrn), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s church. Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration’s cover-up.

So, to my friends on the Left — and the #NeverTrumpers as well — do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be “collegial” and “dignified” and “proper”? Of course I do. These aren’t those times. This is war. And it’s a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years.

So, say anything you want about this president – I get it – he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times. I don’t care. I can’t spare this man. He fights for America!

I’ve been thinking lately about how people celebrate Christmas. Some don’t celebrate it at all and don’t think anyone else should either. That’s why they get offended if someone says, “Merry Christmas,” instead of the politically correct “Happy Holidays.” I make it a distinct point to say “Merry Christmas,” and if someone can’t handle it, they can go sit in their safe space. Freedom of speech is one of my constitutional rights.

Some people prefer Xmas to Christmas. They want to take Christ out of everything. A lot of socialists want to hide Christianity from public view because part of their strategy to take over the country is to destroy the Judeo-Christian values on which our country and our morality were founded, and which, to the huge extent they made up the soul of our forebears, made this country great. Additionally, too many Christians do a poor job of passing Christian values, beliefs, and heritage on to their children, friends, and neighbors – even though that’s what Jesus Himself told Christians to do.

People – Christian or non-Christian – tell you much about themselves by the choices they make. For example, some gravitate more toward “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” while others prefer “O Holy Night.” For some it’s more important that “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” while others seek to know “What Child Is This?”

Some people are much more interested in Clement Moore’s “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

“As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound….
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack….”

Other people are more focused on Doctor Luke’s story of what caused Christmas in the first place.

“And [Mary] brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” (2:7)

I can understand people being more excited about gifts under their own tree than about a gift given thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away. Yet the prophet Isaiah (9:6) declares just how important the gift of that baby boy really is. He says,

“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon His shoulder.
And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Note the phrase “unto us a son is given.” Given. Jesus is a gift. From God. One would think a gift from God is more significant than any gift one could get from Santa Claus. In fact, Jesus Himself said, “God loves the world so much that he gave [there’s that word again] His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” (John 3:16-17)

I suppose some people would have you believe that Jesus is no more real than Santa Claus. That’s okay. A third century monk named Nicholas, became the patron saint of children. Saint Nicholas’ tradition of giving gifts to the good children in his town was carried on long after his death. The Dutch Sinterklaas was Americanized to Santa Claus in New Amsterdam (now New York City) and other Dutch heritage communities in the New World. The name spread into use across the country. So, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And yes, skeptic, there is a Jesus, Who is everything He claims to be whether or not we choose to believe Him.

Gifts under the tree don’t do any good if the one to whom the gift is given refuses to open the package or accept the gift. In the same way, the Gift that God gave us doesn’t do us much good if we don’t accept it.

I am writing this not “the night before Christmas” but the weekend before Christmas. And while I do have a round tummy, I am not an elf nor do I fit through a typical chimney. But I will give you two gifts. One is a reminder of the child born in a manger who is the real reason behind Christmas, and the other is a prayer that you will, in this season and into the new year, find and know the peace and joy that can only come through the Wonderful Prince of Peace .

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.