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By Peggy Tartaro, So, too, this issue, themed to reflect a time of year when people are normally at their most carefree and generous, is being put together under the shadow of the terrorism that took lives in New York, Washington and rural Pennsylvania on Sept. 11. As I write these words on Sept. 14-already a few days behind schedule-I cannot know what other trials await individual Americans and the country as a whole. Everyone, whether or not they lost a friend, relative or colleague in the disasters, is affected. Everyone is shell-shocked, appalled, grieving, frightened and angry. Our first reactions are small, personal details. Calls to friends and family who are closest to these scenes of carnage. We work our way outward, remembering to touch bases with friends who may have friends or loved ones in danger, or stranded by events. Even with the appalling toll, most of us are not touched in what before Sept. 11 we would have thought of as a "personal" way; that is, it is not our own nearest and dearest murdered, but events have made it all personal, so that each person is raw with emotion. Americans are caught in the headlights as we go about our work, fretting over delayed packages needed at work, discombobulated by the ominously long lines at border crossings, frightened at the thought of necessary air travel next week. Each of us has daily, hourly reminders of what has happened, however far away we physically are. It is not so much to make sense of events as to place them in context and surround them with comforting familiarity that we hear or read snippets of prayers and poems, and find that they have been given new urgency, new poignancy. I thought particularly of Thomas Paine, in many ways the least successful of what we call the Founding Fathers, but in others, despite his eloquence, one who seems closer to the "average" American in outlook and temperament. Paine, who wrote some of the most electrifying words before and during the American Revolution, in pamphlets and essays with titles such as The Liberty Tree, Common Sense and The American Crisis series, felt and wrote not just of a nascent country's hopes and dreams, but of the anger that preceded it. Paine's stirring, and best-known words-"These are the times that try's men's souls"-echo across the centuries today. But more of Paine's words should be remembered, and I have thought in the last few days that they should be closely read again by American gunowners in particular. We, you and I and our fellow and sister gunowners, have often had occasion to quote the Founders. We have spoken with eloquence, with passion and with conviction, about Freedom, about Rights and about Liberty. We have dared to compare ourselves to the Founders, to claim the mantle as their heirs. Now, in "times that try men's souls," is the time for us to lead, to show that the American spirit, the American way, are more than symbols and rhetoric, inherited, but not quite fully understood or appreciated. "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered," Paine wrote, continuing, "yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." Nowhere, but in the freest place on Earth, the most democratic, the most abundant, will the conflict be harder. Because we have enjoyed our freedom for so long, we have also taken it for granted, blathering about "rights" to this and that-the philosophical, the mundane-but truly not "rights" at all. The fundamental rights, the rights that were self-evident to those who were prepared to break from their homelands and fight bloody war against those who did not see the same evidence, are the ones that matter, the ones that we profess. The "right" to be irritated by inconvenience is no right at all; the "right" to ask others to defend us because we are shaken and frightened, is also no "right." "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, understand the fatigue of supporting it," Paine wrote on-eerily-Sept. 12, 1777, after the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania . We who quote the Founders, including me, should now and forever more be prepared to do more than "talk the talk." What we-you and I-can do, is probably mundane, dull, small, cheap, even, but it is nevertheless important. The little victories, including going about our daily lives with courage and faith, are what win the big wars, even wars against incomprehensible foes. Now is not the time to abandon words we have come to live by, professed to believe and understand. "What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; 'tis dearness only that gives everything its value," Paine wrote in the first of his The American Crisis series. "Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated," he concluded, in this passage that sprang to mind in troubled, trying times. As I looked over this column in preparation for its appearance on the website, I wanted to check that words written in some haste days shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, would not be repent in leisure. But now, nearly two months later, and after having flown four times and made the countless, minute but excruciating adjustments to How Things Are Now, I think Paine's words and intentions are just as critically important. All the folks wearing ribbons and with flag-bedecked cars, were in truth, no less patriotic on Sept. 10 that they were on the 12th. But true patriotism, while it must be lived every day, does not really come to the fore until events force it there. A better measure of the American character is, I think, not the flags, but the unprecedented and staggeringly high donations received in the aftermath of Sept. 11 to funds set up to help the families of the victims, and to rebuild the areas physically affected. To some it may seem odd that a country deliberately born of revolution has all but replaced its national anthem, with its martial theme and "rockets red glare" with Irving Berlin's God Bless America and its almost plaintive "stand beside her and guide her." But that, too, is in keeping with the American character. Part of the genius of the Founding Fathers, including Paine (perhaps the most irreligious of the group), was the realization that faith is important-that "men's souls" matter. We are capable of launching rockets at the same time we ask for guidance. That is not hypocrisy, but the true measure of a continuously free people. The first trip I took after Sept. 11, was a short flight from Buffalo to Cincinnati to attend the Gun Rights Policy Conference on Sept. 20. I lobbied hard for dumping the plane tickets and turning a 40-minute flight into an 8-hour car trip. My arguments were unsuccessful, so I flew, more apprehensively than normal (I've never liked to fly). It was not a patriotic act, but a practical one, and that, too, is part of the American character. Near the end of the three-day Conference, whose theme was "Gun Rights Affirmed," and which attracted a record crowd of nearly 500, Ohio State Rep. Ann Womer-Benjamin addressed the gathering. Womer-Benjamin sits as head of the State House committee that would eventually decide which of two competing concealed carry bills would be reported out for to the full committee, and eventually for a floor vote. A lot of folks from Ohio (and since we were in the Cincinnati area, they made up the majority of the attendees), were "loaded for bear" when it came to Womer-Benjamin, perceiving her as not pro-gun and a stumbling block to any legislation on concealed carry. In fact, we were embarrassed to find that someone had past out handbills all but slandering her, although we had made it clear that, while people might not have fully agreed with her, she was the Conference's guest. Womer-Benjamin knew coming in she was not likely to be a crowd-pleaser, and while she was understandably upset about the handbill, she was professional and practical in her address. She explained the intricacies of the legislative process and affirmed her support for some legislation and detailed her personal experiences with guns. As I sat on the dais as she delivered her remarks, a smile came to my face as I heard her begin the lines, "Those who expect the blessings of freedom" She finished the quote, attributed it to Paine and mentioned the coincidence of the date of Paine's writing with the "American Crisis" we now all faced. Does that mean that everyone in Ohio can now live happily ever after, with a concealed carry bill they all enthusiastically support? No. But, on Oct. 18, Womer-Benjamin's committee did pass out one of the two bills, HB-274 and Womer-Benjamin, as she promised, did vote with the 4-1 majority. The bill probably won't go to the full House Civil and Commercial Law Committee until next year. From there it will go to a House vote and then to a Senate vote. And, after all that, it still faces an uphill fight for the signature of Gov. Bob Taft, despite the fact that Ohio gunowners helped elect him. Ohioians, who live in one of the few states that has no provision at all for concealed carry, except case law which allows an "affirmative defensive" that the gun-user must prove in court, will wait many more months to enjoy rights available in the majority of the United States, But Paine's "Common Sense" prevails and we once
more see history not as some distant past, but as the present
and future as well.
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The Times that
