As civilization breaks down and looters roam through New York, New Jersey, and other places devastated by hurricane Sandy and made defenseless by unconstitutional laws it is a good time to remember The Gun is Civilization.
Monthly Archives: November 2012
Theory v. reality
There are lots of things that are true enough in general that one is tempted to claim more extensive application is valid. In general this is harmless and the exceptions to the general rule will be handled appropriately. But in the case of enabling government power to enforce what sounds like a good idea you can end up enabling poor law and even evil. Our “war on drugs” is but one example.
Joe Waldron from the WA-CCW email list and long time lobbyist for for CCRKBA gives us the following example and how it was defeated early and decisively:
Several years ago, a City Attorney from a small town north of Seattle tried to interest legislators in a bill that would make possession of a firearm in a public place, while under the influence of alcohol, an offense in itself. He asked the gun lobby for support. We agreed that alcohol and guns do not mix. So we offered to support the bill… provided that the day it took effect, he would accompany us to every cop bar in town and arrest those in violation.
The bill never got introduced.
Fast and Furious ad
Quote of the day—Rox Allen Kerby
#OpenCarry starts on Thursday. This is the equivalent of Rednecks getting to walk around with their dong out! #NotStoked #RedStateBullShit
Rox Allen Kerby
October 29, 2012
A Tweet on Twitter.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
Via email from @linoge_wotc.—Joe]
Psychology is interesting
I took a bunch of psychology classes in college. They were easy and fun for me. In one class I got extra credit for participating in grad student psych experiments. One such experiment required I take some sort of standard psychological test. I tested as pretty normal except for two characteristics. One was something like “logical versus emotional”. I was way out of the normal range in the direction of “logical”. The other characteristic was “psychological mindedness” or some such thing. On that “axis” I again scored way out of the normal range in direction of being very “psychologically minded”. The grad student that went over my test results with me said the logical was consistent with being an engineering major. But the level of psychological mindedness was usually only found in psych grad students or professional psychologists. I guess that explained why I enjoyed the classes and did well.
With that in mind I find some parts of political campaigns extremely interesting and at the same time disturbing.
The disturbing part has nothing to do with the actual policies of the candidates or that they are exploiting, probably intentionally, certain psychological characteristics that have nothing to do with sound policy. And in fact have been exploited by leaders throughout history to lead their people to disaster and massive genocide against innocent people. Of course those same psychological tools have been used for good as well as evil.
In the following two videos one of the more interesting irrational characteristics is being exploited:
That characteristics is that people tend to go along with the crowd. If large numbers of other people are doing something then there is a strong tendency for others to follow along. People attend political events, sporting events, rock concerts, and many religious events and talk about “the energy” of the crowd. Most people crave this mass excitement and want to be a part of it. In politics the words and the intonation of the speeches are specifically designed (intentionally or not) to stimulate this excitement, to encourage you to participate, and for you to “belong”.
If you remember the 2008 election the media made a big deal about the large number of Obama supporters at the Obama political events. I haven’t noticed that this year. And because I donated some money to the Romney campaign this year I get frequent emails from them. Many of them include pictures of large crowds in support of his campaign. The videos above were just a sample.
I find political events boring. I can sense the “energy” people talk about but the “bandwidth” of the communication is so low that I’m bored. I’d much rather read the politicians policy statements than hear vague words expressed with great excitement interrupted by yelling and applause every few seconds. The “energy” is a source of irritation to me. I get excited by seeing things that work rather than things that excite other people.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t “exploit” this psychological characteristic as well. Besides my personal love of explosives and long range shooting Boomershoot is a means of generating excitement to encourage gun ownership and long range rifle skills. When in front of the camera for Boomershoot I try to emote the enthusiasm that will encourage more participants. I’m not interested in the Boomershoot dinner with a crowd of people but I make it happen, attend, talk to people, and usually say a few things to the crowd because that socialization is extremely important to some people.
This psychological characteristic is just one more reason why we need strict limits on governmental powers. It is not the politician with the best policies that necessarily get chosen. There is some component of policy into the final vote tally but to a large extent it is the politician with the best team of psychologists (whether they realize they are psychologists or not) that can exploit weakness in the human mind for votes, money, and volunteers that will win. And there is a high correlation between those with natural ability in this area and the people who should be kept the greatest distance from political power. Limited government is a means of minimizing the damage done by these people. Both because it reduces the ability of them to do damage and because limited power is less attractive to them in the first place.
Security theater exemplified in cartoons
Via email from Kevin:
As I said in email to Kevin, “What isn’t said is that you can do the same thing to a room, building or airplane.” I know people who have taken down a house with a few cups of flour.
And how do you think it would work out if TSA were to test for flour, powdered sugar, and non-dairy creamer? Those powdered donuts you had for a quick snack before running to the security line would get you the full blue glove treatment. And as long as they don’t do those tests testing for conventional explosives and searching for knives, guns, and throwing away your shampoo is nothing but security theater.
Quote of the day—Margaret Thatcher
And what a policy!
Yes! He would rather have the poor be poorer provided the rich were less rich. That is the liberal policy!
Yes it came out! He didn’t intend it to but it did.
Margaret Thatcher
November 22, 1990
From 1:15 in this video:
[H/T to Phssthpok from this comment.
As pointed out at the end of the video as soon as someone talks about “the gap” between the rich and the poor they have revealed themselves and their true nature.
It was over 20 years a friend of mine, Susan K., told me essentially the same thing as part of a pitch about her love of Ayn Rand’s work. I read Atlas Shrugged years earlier when I was in my late teens. I really liked it but I hadn’t really followed up with her other works. Susan got me started again. Susan’s explanation of the preference of the left for poorer people as long as the gap was less was effective on me but it wasn’t as simple and as forceful as the way Ms. Thatcher expressed it.
For a different and more rigorous approach read Thomas Sowell’s book Black Rednecks and White Liberals or one of his many of his other works. The gist is that a critical item overlooked by those that complain about “the gap” is that different people are in the category of “poor” and “rich” over time. Of course someone in their first job is going to be earning far less than someone who has been working and learning about their area of expertise for 40 years. And over larger time spans it is pointed out there used to be complaints about the “railroad barons” and the super rich oil tycoons and others in steel and automobile industries. Those have been replaced by people in new industries and many of those older industries are essentially dead in this country. And even within an industry those with a seemingly invincible grip in one decade can be struggling or gone the next.
Economics is about the optimal allocation of scarce recourses. Optimal allocation obviously increases the total wealth of society. But what the statists don’t realize, or perhaps don’t want you to know so they can obtain personal power or wealth, is that something much closer to optimal allocation occurs when markets and minds are free rather than when dictated by the central committee with their decisions backed up by guns.
Don’t ever be at a loss for words when someone whines about the rich getting richer. Don’t try to explain that it doesn’t or shouldn’t matter if some people get rich or that it means there is opportunity for others to get rich. Handle it as Ms. Thatcher did. Follow it up by forcefully making the case that if the gap between the rich and the poor is a valid cause for government and/or social action then they will never be satisfied until full equality is achieved. And there are those that admit what they demand is full equality in just those words. But what they cannot seem to comprehend is that full equality can only be approximated by everyone being in extreme poverty. Full equality comes with death. And it should come as no surprise the political left is well acquainted with death on a very large scale.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Rivrdog
What happened since the 1960s is that capitalism morphed towards socialism by accepting all those rules on enterprise which the gov’t wrote, and socialist governments got used to the capitalist bribes, and learned to relax the rules at the right times to promote “welfare capitalism”.
A third political force, libertarianism, sprang up to replace pure capitalism with it’s property rights-driven theory, and a fourth force, Marxism, arose to inject pure collectivism back into what used to be socialism.
The entire process is like watching clouds form and dissipate over the mountains.
Rivrdog
November 2, 2012
Comment to Capitalism v. Socialism
[I really like the metaphor.—Joe]
The world’s best gun salesman
If you own stock in a gun manufacturer you might want thank President Obama:
From Chart Of The Day: Sturm, Ruger’s Revenues.
Some people just don’t understand unintended consequences (from October 13, 2008):
Sarah and Jim Brady and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence with its network of Million Mom March Chapters endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President and Senator Joseph Biden for Vice President today, and urged Americans to vote for them.
From looking at the chart and the date of the Brady Campaign endorsement announcement it’s clear the Brady Campaign causes gun sales.* Lots of gun sales.
*I’m just mocking them. Of course I know correlation does not necessarily mean causation.
Nice
NRA has now recovered fees in excess of 1.3 million dollars. So for losing the cases, Chicago and the other cities involved paid a total of over 1.7 million dollars to firearms civil rights groups.
In September 2012, the NRA filed another Motion for Supplemental Attorneys’ Fees. By that motion, the NRA is now seeking attorneys’ fees and expenses incurred in litigating its original motion for attorneys’ fees. Because these fees and expenses were not included in the amount of the August fee award, Chicago and Oak Park will most likely be writing more checks to the NRA!
The wages of the sins of Chicago and other cities are to pay those that represent their victims. I would prefer the individuals that made the stupid decisions to use the power of government to infringe upon specific enumerated rights had to compensate the victims directly and then spend time in prison as per 18 USC 242. But it is a huge improvement over the situation of 15 years ago.
Interesting
I’ve been getting a few quasi-random hits on my post “Why are liberals so violent?” It turns out that if you do a search for “why are liberals so violent” (without the quotes) Google gives my post the number two ranking. Bing gives it number four.
Quote of the day—Mark Alger
I wish we In the Right could/would stop using the term “capitalism”. It’s a Marxian canard, founded in the notion that what we’re about is a system of belief, rather than free markets, and free commerce, which are the natural, self-organizing systems that arise spontaneously when individuals are left in liberty, each to pursue his own enlightened self interest.
Nor is “socialism” the only evil of the Left. Together, the lot of them all bear a single earmark: they are collectivist in nature and deny the sovereignty of the individual. The rest is just persiflage, allowing leftists to pettifog minor distinctions of no matter or moment, rather than getting to the basic point.
Mark Alger
November 2, 2012
Comment to Capitalism v. Socialism
[A very good point. The problem is, of course, that “free markets and free commerce” is not as succinct. And “Liberty” and “Freedom” are too vague. On the other side I think “collectivist”, “collectivism”, and probably even “statist” and “statism” work adequately.
See also his blog post on this same topic here where he says, “Joe is brilliant”. He forgot to mention that I admire myself for my modesty as well.—Joe]
Capitalism v. Socialism
There are at least two ways to interpret Americans Aged 18-29 Have A More Favorable Response To Socialism Than To Capitalism. One is that the young are inclined toward socialism and as they age they will become more capitalist. The other is that capitalism is on it’s way out and as the current capitalist age out socialism is inevitable.
I’m inclined to believe the first hypothesis is more likely to be true than the latter. One of the reasons is that young socialists have been predicting the imminent collapse of capitalism for decades if not longer. Here is one example:
In the last week of May 1968, a rallying call to the working class to take political power into their hands would have tolled the death knell of capitalism on a world scale.
In rural Idaho at the time, and a bit too young, I was too far removed from ground zero of the socialist movements of the 1960s. But I know people who were near the center of those times and places. They too believed within a few decades capitalism would be dead and buried.
I won’t deny that capitalism is weaker and is more likely to be crushed now than at any other time in the last 50 years but it is far stronger than it’s detracts of the 1960s thought it would be at this time. Many of those sympathetic to socialism at that time became more capitalist as they grew older.
Perhaps socialism will temporarily bury capitalism in the next few years or perhaps decades. But I believe the young will continue to mature and become more capitalist as they age. Socialism will succeed only because we grant them power based on their stated intention rather than based on the fruit they bring. And results versus stated intentions are becoming more and more clear with each victory the socialists make.
It is those stated intentions that are so seductive we can almost taste the sweetness of the candy. The candy that is laced, by it’s very socialist nature, with carcinogens. What the socialists don’t really understand, and why I say any burial of capitalism is temporary, is that as the cancer takes hold and destroys a society it destroys the great mass of the socialist advocates at a faster rate than it does the capitalists. The capitalists will move to protect their “capital” whether it is their tangible wealth or the intellectual and physical skills that made them more productive than the socialists to begin with. As the socialists rot from the cancer of their own making the capitalists will be the ones to recover and rise from the ashes of the civilization the socialists destroyed.
I don’t know the time scale. There are just too many variables. The elections next week, as important as they are, are probably a minor player in the big picture. The economic collapse of Western Europe and perhaps Japan and China will play a major role. Add in the price and availability of oil and the possibility of glass pockmarks replacing the cities of Iran and/or Israel and you have such huge variables that making such predictions is impossible.
But I believe that even if it has to be resurrected from the ashes capitalism, particularly the right to property and all that derives from that, will rise because it is a natural law recognized and defended by nearly all animals and even our very young. I’ve talked to avowed Marxists and others who looked me directly in the eyes and said, “What’s wrong with socialism?” Their logic is non-existent, their data is cherry-picked, and their arguments are both fragile and brittle.
They can only succeed through deception and force. And at some level they know that too. This is why they have such violent tendencies. This is why they are genocidal. They can only succeed if they can kill off their intellectual competition. But as they run out of places to loot there is a “little problem” waiting for them. Their final, intended, victims are armed.
It is only as we humans go through the process of maturing in the teenage years that our brains turn to mush and advocate for socialism. Most recover but some do not. It is my belief that socialism is now making it’s final push to kill capitalism and although those with mush for brains might actually succeed in the end mush for brains will always lose to superior firepower.
Contrast
This is the doormat of the nearest neighbor to my clock tower home in the Seattle area:
This is the doormat to my clock tower:
I was a little concerned the first time Barb L. saw it but without any prompting from me she has twice mentioned how much she likes it.
Son James and his wife Kelsey gave it to me for my birthday. Thanks again James and Kelsey.
Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb
Mayor Emanuel, like his former boss in the White House, doesn’t have a plan that works. Since he seems unwilling to follow the court’s wishes, and appears unable to lead his city out of despair, perhaps he should just get out of the way and give his citizens a level playing field against violent criminals.
Alan Gottlieb
October 30, 2012
CHICAGO MAYOR SHOULD SHARE BLAME FOR MAYHEM, SAYS CCRKBA
[I take a minor exception to the word “give.” I think it should have been “let.”
And if I were to have my way I would go further than Gottlieb and demand Mayor Emanuel be prosecuted under 18 USC 242. But I’m an extremist who believes those who violate rights protected by the Bill of Rights should be punished.—Joe]