If you guys come up with a plan to dissolve this marriage through an amicable divorce rather than a murder-suicide, I’m all in.
Larry Correia
July 11, 2018
Facebook post regarding the political left advocating for a civil war.
[I’d give serious consideration to a “divorce” but as of now I’m not seeing the amicable path.—Joe]
I-1639 is almost for certain going to be on the Washington State ballot this fall. This draconian initiative defines any semi-auto rifle as an “semi-auto assault rifle”. This includes those with tubular magazines firing .22 LR ammunition.
Furthermore:
Oleg has a blog post and image for us:
Just say no to I-1639 and those who sponsor it.
The ability of people to rationalize their way to slavery is one of the mysteries of psychiatry.
Windy Wilson
July 3, 2018
Comment to Quote of the day—Jim Mastro
[My hypothesis is that it has to do with the failure of socialism/communism to scale up from the tribe level to larger populations. These dysfunctional political systems “feel right” in a lot of ways. This probably was extremely useful in evolution and increased the probability of successful tribes. But when those feelings are acted upon at a level where evil tyrants can retain power bad things happen and many people don’t, or can’t, understand why.—Joe]
Via Reddit:
While this is a certain amount of logic to this line of reasoning I suspect leftists believed they would take over the government in this country without a violent revolution. And, of course, guns in the hands of their political enemies would be a very bad thing when they started the purges.
Now, I suspect they are a bit conflicted.
Read a f****** history book. Read a recent history book. The U.S. had thousands of domestic bombings per year in the early 1970s. This is what happens when citizens decide en masse that their political system is corrupt, racist, and unresponsive.
‘The people out of power have only just begun to flex their dissatisfaction. The day will come, sooner that you all think, when Trump administration officials will look back fondly on the time when all they had to worry about was getting hollered at at a Mexican restaurant.
Hamilton Nolan
June 25, 2018
This Is Just the Beginning
[There may be interesting times ahead. I was asked last Monday if I thought there would be a civil war in our country soon. I told them, “No. At least not one like the previous one with two or more militaries and visible government support on each side.”
However, Jim Goad does point out:
Third of Americans see a new US Civil War likely soon. As it stands currently: North 1, South 0. https://t.co/v8EtMgxgTz
In the following thread Jordenius @Jordenius offered a correction of:
Republicans 1, Democrats 0.
Which, for some reason, in my mind, made it more real and likely to occur.
But when I think about it I still don’t think it will be military v. military. It will be left wing terrorists against the existing governments and hapless individuals caught in the middle. Which means the left wing terrorists will not have broad public support and will for the most part lose. It might play out similar to how it did in the 1970s.—Joe]
Liberals love to talk about diversity.
Churches in Seattle are festooned with “love your Muslim neighbor” signs.
But the real test of diversity isn’t whether you can break bread with someone who worships differently than you.
The real test is if you can be civil, be courteous, be inviting… to gun owners.
Consider this: all gun owners, in the minds of liberals, are responsible for all mass shootings.
Remember, a bombing or knife attack is the responsibility of the person, but attacks with guns are the responsibility of the inanimate object and all people who have those inanimate objects are at risk of engaging in the same criminal behavior.
This is the liberal mentality of, “I wouldn’t trust myself with a gun because I might go shoot someone the first time I got angry!”
To most readers here who concealed carry on a regular basis that sounds absurd, but I promise you it is a devout belief among Seattle liberals.
They believe that having a gun makes you into a crazy person who murders people.
Which book your worship out of, or if you pray with your hands in front of you or on the ground- that is small potatoes compared to having a device that instantly makes you a murderous psychopath.
And so the true diversity test is not whether you would shake a Muslim’s hand, or eat dinner with someone of a different skin color, or even a different sexuality. These kinds of diversity are officially encouraged, condoned, and safe.
The true diversity test is- would you have coffee with a gun owner?
With someone who lives on the responsibility plane of “I keep myself, my family, and my community safe from violence” and relies on police as the second line of defense?
My experience among liberals tells me, mostly not.
And I think it’s not just the gun- it’s the self-reliance that’s to blame.
Apart from my neighbors, I don’t accept that violence just happens randomly and I can do nothing to stop it.
I don’t wait meekly while evil people do evil things.
And in Seattle, that separates me from my community.
That stigmatizes me.
If I ever let it be known.
Check out the Pink Pistols experience in the Pride Parade. Flagrantly gay? Two thumbs up. Want to talk about defending yourself? We’ll follow you around and shout you down so everyone knows you aren’t welcome here.
I imagine inviting my more liberal friends to coffee and letting them know I’ll be armed. Or revealing during coffee that I’m carrying.
I don’t have the courage.
I don’t want the scene.
I can’t bear to lose yet more friends because I believe life is worth defending and I actually prepare to live that belief.
But you, dear reader of Joe’s blog- perhaps your liberal friends are different?
Perhaps you could invite them to a social situation where they explicitly know you’ll be armed?
I’ll love to hear the results of your True Diversity Test in the comments below.
Brian Keith
June 25, 2018
Via email. Slightly edited with permission.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
One: I really wish my pro-gun friends would stop calling people “libtards.” Two: I really wish my gun-averse friends would stop calling people “Nazis.” #NotHelping. That is all.
Tiffany Johnson
June 24, 2018
Please Just Stop
[I have a strong inclination to agree with this. I used to call certain groups derogatory names and probably still do at times. But I try to avoid the name calling and talk about factual stuff and tendency instead. I still use insulting terms, such as having “crap for brains” for individuals if I think they deserve it on a particular issue or point.
The reason I think it doesn’t help is because it alienates people who might be aligned with you on one or more topics. For example, someone might identify as a liberal because of their strong support for equal rights and access to legal abortion. They might also think gun ownership is important but is not what they mostly identify with. Getting them to help teach an introductory gun class is going to be a lot easier if you haven’t, even indirectly, called them a “libtard”.—Joe]
The ACLU generally will not represent protesters who seek to march while armed. It is important that this content-neutral rule be applied without regard to a speaker’s political views. It should also apply whether or not state law permits or prohibits the carrying of weapons in a protest. To this end, and consistent with time and resource constraints (including assistance from the national office to affiliates and vice versa), we should exercise due diligence in assessing whether the potential client seeks to march while armed. If there is reason to believe that the clients do so intend, and we are unable to satisfy ourselves that they will not do so, we should be reluctant to accept representation.
ACLU Case Selection Guidelines: Conflicts Between Competing Values or Priorities
2018
[H/T to Chet in the comments.
See also: Memo: ACLU Will Weigh ‘Effect on Marginalized Communities’ in Free-Speech Cases
Apparently some speakers are more protected than others. Neo Nazis marching down the streets of Jewish residents should be protected. Gun owners advocating for the right of Jewish residents to have the ability to defend themselves should not be protected.
Okay, that makes things perfectly clear for me. Whatever “principles” the ACLU claims to have do not have a significant overlap with mine.—Joe]
After further examining and scrutiny of printed text on an official I-1639 petition it is apparent that language designated to be changed or removed is not “lined out,” nor are proposed new statutory additions underlined as they appear in the version submitted to the state and published on the Secretary of State’s website.
If petitions being circulated are not “true and correct” it is agreed that we must challenge these petitions and have them legally invalidated.
Since the outset of I-1639, our campaign has raised questions about not just the unethical nature of the initiative and its backers, but also the unethical gamesmanship of the public policy process.
Phil Watson
Committee Chairman
Save Our Security | NO on I-1639
https://saveoursecurity.net
[Regarding a petition intended to be put before Washington State voters this fall.
Via email June 22, 2018.
And from here:
They have to lie to win. Lying has become a part of their nature. I suspect they literally cannot resist the urge to lie. These are evil people committing evil against the people of this state. The signature gathers, the signers of the initiative, and especially the people financing this fraud are conspiring to infringe the rights of Washington State citizens and should be prosecuted.
And via email from Brian Keith:
Keith also said:
The sign on the right says “protect kids from guns.”
This is at Trader Joe’s in Seattle.
So we have a few lies here:
A 20 year old is a “kid”
A law can protect a kid from violence
A 18 year old would only be hurt by owning a gun, and wouldn’t be defending themselves
18-20 year olds are actually attacked with “assault weapons” to a significantly significant degree
People who serve in the military aren’t competent to possess firearms in their daily life
The list goes on…
So, crap for brains, or knows they are lying and just wants power at any cost?
Does it matter?
Brian Keith
Don’t sign this petition.—Joe]
Facebook and Google seem very powerful, but they live about a week from total ruin all the time. They know the cost of leaving social networks individually is high, but en masse, becomes next to nothing. Windows could be replaced with something better written. The US government would fall to a general revolt in a matter of days. It wouldn’t take a total defection or a general revolt to change everything, because corporations and governments would rather bend to demands than die. These entities do everything they can get away with — but we’ve forgotten that we’re the ones that are letting them get away with things.
Quinn Norton
May 20, 2014
Everything Is Broken
[This appears to be true. I suspect part of it is because most people want to belong to a social group. They want to be “normal” and liked and “supported”. If you take someone out of their social support group they loose their confidence. Making someone an outcast, for many people, is a terrible punishment. “Public opinion” matters because we evolved in an environment where shared values and group support gave us an advantage. Those shared values could contain some great falsities—a rain dance doesn’t change the weather, sacrificing a young girl to a “volcano god” doesn’t appease it, and the Final Solution to the “Jewish problem” didn’t make the world a better place. But a common belief that they could change the unchangeable and improve society by murdering millions probably improved morale, gave them a sense of accomplishment, and increased the productivity of the group.
Belonging to “the tribe” is important at a very deep level. This knowledge gives us power to take down powerful forces. But to be effective you can’t just make large numbers of people outcasts. You have to replace their existing “tribe” with another tribe. Religious cults recruit social outcasts and fulfill this basic need and they will believe the craziest things. Democrats recruit a groups of that believe such crazy things as a people can tax their way to prosperity, the government can control prices with no ill effects, or people and even states cannot afford health insurance but taxing people and filtering the money through the federal government will result in plenty of money. This coalition works and is powerful despite the crazy beliefs for the same reason the rain dancing and sacrificing to the volcano gods work. We have can’t just mock them and make them outcasts. They will further insolate themselves from the truth.
I appears to me that all political parties have their share of crazy beliefs and do their share of rain dancing, appeasing non-existent gods, and murdering innocent people. Don’t align yourself with political parties and leaders any more than you have to. Align yourself with the truth and work to make social outcasts of those who promote falsity. Yes, I know truth is very hard to discern but as long as you don’t get emotionally involved with the answers you find along the way you can work your way closer with very little backsliding.—Joe]
In going after rifles, prohibitionists are more concerned about politically significant firepower than they are about crime. The authoritarians aren’t comfortable with constituents who don’t need state services, however unwanted those “services” may be. This is why shotguns with short effective range remained legal in many countries where rifles were banned from private ownership.
Oleg Volk
February 26, 2018
Rifles as canaries in the coal mine.
[I interpret “politically significant firepower” as meaning significant firepower to affect the balance of power between the state and the people.
This is a profound point. By attacking the ownership of rifles, involved in a such a small portion of the violent crime, anti-gun people are admitting it is not crime they are interested in reducing. It must be something else which motivates this action. The obvious answer is they want people less able to resist a powerful government.
Let that sink in for a while and then take the appropriate action.—Joe]
These networks don’t rely on government bureaucracies to coerce people. They coerce bureaucracies.
Moreover, they are more effective than bureaucracies in the elements of power that matter.
They are capable of spying on more people than the East German secret police and they can stifle free speech without recourse to a gulag.
They don’t have any need for state produced propaganda or the media to control the narrative. They can produce a blinding blizzard of spin that can overwhelm official narratives.
John Robb
May 24, 2018
21st Century Authoritarianism
[There seems to be a fair amount of support for this hypothesis.—Joe]
Interesting perspective:
Democrats looking to make good in November have a hard row to hoe, what with a booming economy, low unemployment, rising paychecks, and President Trump’s increasing foreign policy successes. They might get a foothold with the far left if they could talk about free college tuition, gun control, or opening U.S. borders, but they cannot get a word in edgewise with the media. They are only talking about on one thing: Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia.
It’s true that I have heard even less substance than usual from the Democrats. And what does come out seems to be random crazy talk.
After the November 2016 election the media cranked the crazy up to 11 and it still hasn’t come back down a year and a half later. But is the media really preventing a Democrat message getting through? Or is it that the entire political left is, in some sort of late stage insanity, frothing at the mouth and howling at the moon with Trump poking them with a virtual stick?
Liberal feminists pick and choose which types of violence against women are worthy of this studiously nonpartisan approach. For example, female genital mutilation, forced marriage and honor violence seem not to be considered egregious enough to be taken up by the broader women’s movement. Instead, these barbaric violations of human rights don’t make it onto progressives’ radar. Rather, they’re excused or ignored by feminists because the perpetrators inflicting the violence tend to have brown skin.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
May 24, 2018
The anti-woman violence feminists are afraid to confront
[I don’t think it is fear.
Progressive feminists also are very anti-gun. A woman who owns and knows how to shoot a gun has become empowered to such a level that in a physical confrontation she is virtually equal to thugs twice her size.
Here we have two very clear examples of where progressive feminists have deliberately made choices to increase the number and severity of the female victims. There can only be one conclusion. For whatever sick reason or messed up emotional decision making process they want more victims.
I think it is some sort of mental illness in which victimhood equates, in their sick minds, to status and/or power.
Give them the gateway drug to freedom, healthy minds, and true equality. Teach them to shoot.—Joe]
When it comes to gun policy, the political left is harming America, delaying rational programs, and flatly denying the public’s rights. Denying civil rights always has bad consequences, as we saw here.
Alan Korwin
May 21, 2018
Liberals Must Step Back for School Safety
[School shootings are one of the most effective tools in the political left’s toolkit for denying people their right to keep and bear arms. They will not let us put a stop to them no matter how many children’s lives it costs.—Joe]
Via a tweet from Far Left Watch @FarLeftWatch
I find it very telling the left resorts to lies of such a grand scale in hopes of achieving their agenda. The truth is not only insufficient. It is counterproductive to their goals.
From US Office of Strategic Services in describing Hitler’s psychological profile:
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
Hitler would be proud of the lessons our political left have learned from him.
On the left, victimhood is a prime source of authority, and discourse revolves around establishing one’s intersectional credentials and detailing stories of mistreatment that reinforce them. Within the ecosystem of the left, demonstrating that you have suffered harassment or microaggressions is a big win. But among the country as a whole, the dynamic is very different.
Jonathan Chait
April 22, 2018
Democrats Have Great Female Presidential Candidates. They Need to Avoid the Victim Trap.
[The Brady Campaign and other anti-gun organizations repeatedly make this error. Apparently they don’t seem to understand that when they use someone who was shot in a mass shooting as their spokesperson they are not presenting someone who is an authority on solutions regarding those type of events. The truth is they are being represented by someone who is an expert victim with no experience as a victor.—Joe]
One might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income, and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met. As with income inequality, most folks concerned about sex inequality might explicitly reject violence as a method, at least for now, and yet still be encouraged privately when the possibility of violence helps move others to support their policies. (Sex could be directly redistributed, or cash might be redistributed in compensation.)
Robin Hanson
April 26, 2018
Two Types of Envy
[Interesting. Read the article to get background about “incels” if you aren’t familiar with the term.
Some people see “incels” as about male supremacy. See, for example, What Are ‘Incels’? The Anti-Woman Online Community Behind the Toronto Van Attack. I think it is more about envy and inability to find a partner which results in the symptoms of a somewhat male supremacist attitude. The author doesn’t even mention this as a component. I suspect counseling, social skills training (not pickup artist type stuff), and attending social events to practice their training would provide the “cure” for “incels”.
I knew the scum bag loser who shot some people then drove his car through groups of people in Isla Vista California in 2014 had problems with his relationships with women. But I didn’t know there were online communities of these type of people and that the April 23rd terrorist attack in Toronto was perpetrated by someone who identified as an “incel”.
Getting back to the QOTD by Hanson. In the quote above, Hanson may appear to advocate for the forced redistribution of sexual access. In an addendum they clarify:
Let me also clarify that personally I’m not very attracted to non-insurance-based redistribution policies of any sort, though I do like to study what causes others to be so attracted.
…
Apparently many people can’t imagine any other way to reduce or moderate sex inequality. (“Redistribution” literally means “changing the distribution.”) In the post I mentioned cash compensation; more cash can make people more attractive and better able to afford legalized prostitution. Others have mentioned promoting monogamy and discouraging promiscuity. Surely there are dozens of other possibilities; sex choices are influenced by a great many factors and each such factor offers a possible lever for influencing sex inequality. Rape and slavery are far from the only possible levers!
What I find interesting about this whole thing in that the political left has some components which would appear to make them likely to take this on as an issue. Consider the following:
Hence, one could make the case that taking up the cause of “incel”s will soon be part of their political platform. It appears to be a good fit.—Joe]
They seem to be legitimate illegal activity.
Devin M.
May 3, 2018
[This was from work.
Devin was researching a business that, essentially, sold stolen goods and had a good reputation with their customers.
This is sort of like an “honest politician” is one which, once bought, stays bought.—Joe]
Today is International Workers’ Day. Don’t forget there never seems to be an end to the number of positions available at either end of the guns needed to implement utopia. It’s job security for the rest of your life. What more could you want? Freedom from want, that’s one of the rights guaranteed by the socialists and communists, right?
