Quote of the Day
Americans have always known that ultimately, no matter who you are, now matter where you are, no one is coming to save you. You must possess the means to save yourself, or at least to fight back, to make yourself expensive and dangerous to kill, so you can save the next guy.
This is the reason, the real reason, why Americans love guns.
We let you pretend it was because we were fat stupid belligerent rednecks who like power fantasies, because that lie seemed to make you happy, and it’s not nice to take away the comforting delusions of toddlers and crazy people.
But now that delusion is hurting you, and, contemptuous as you have been of us, you are fellow human beings, fellow civilized humans beings, and we don’t want to see you die, so we have to tell you the truth.
We love guns because they are not only the tool of liberty, they are symbol of our value, not as tools or slaves of regime, but as independent, free human beings of inherent worth.
In America, when I walk past a police officer on the street, he has a badge and a gun. But I have a gun, too. Right there under my shirt. And my works just like his.
And that changes everything. Because now I am not the only one dependent on the rule of law. He is dependent upon the rule of law, too. Because if the rule of law is the only thing that prevents him from killing me under color of authority, then the rule of law is the only thing that prevents me from killing him in the act of resistance.
The deterrents exist on both sides, and we all have to play nice. And mostly, we do. Because those deterrents make sure we really, really want to.
They’re not playing nice any more on your side of the big blue wobbly thing. They have guns. All you have is a mouth and a keyboard.
How that working out for you?
An armed society is a polite society. That’s not just a saying. That’s not just fiction.
Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_
Posted on X, August 14, 2024
Read the whole thing.
No disagreement at all, but he’d have a better response delivering that lecture to my neighbor’s cat.
The Left simply does not care about anything outside their protected bubble.
Does. Not. Care.
At all.
And that’s not going to change.
Prepare accordingly.
Or rather, at least in a portion of the cases: they do care and they hate it, because it keeps them from doing things to us that require us to be made defenseless first.
I’ve observed that the American character is never more steadfast than when it is standing perfectly still in a burning building, arguing over the brand of the fire extinguisher. We possess a singular talent for naming our stubbornness “principle” and our neighbor’s caution “treason.”
The modern gun-owner speaks of Liberty as if she were a private mistress kept under lock and key, rather than a communal lady. They’ll shout themselves hoarse defending the abstract “Right,” yet remain remarkably quiet when that same right is stripped from the man next door.
It appears we have traded the “Brotherhood of Man” for the “Inventory of the Armory.” It is a curious sort of solidarity that ends precisely at the fence line of one’s own property. A “militia” of one is not a protector of freedom; it is merely a man with a very loud hobby.
Then comes the talk of “bubbles.” The Right claims the Left lives in a soapy sphere of delusion, unacquainted with the hard realities of lead and powder. They aren’t entirely wrong—it takes a certain amount of suds to believe a speech can stop a bullet.
But, as the old proverb (or perhaps just common sense) suggests: It takes one to know one. If the Left is in a bubble of idealism, the Right is encased in a vault of iron. One is transparent and fragile; the other is dark and impenetrable. Neither offers a very good view of the horizon.
We are a nation of 330 million people, each convinced they are the only ones holding the compass, while the ship is spinning in circles. We refuse to compromise, not because we fear losing our guns, but because we fear losing the argument. And in America, losing an argument is a fate worse than death.
Man was made at the end of the week’s work, when God was tired. If you doubt the exhaustion of the Creator, look no further than a creature who claims he needs a weapon of war to fetch the morning mail, yet won’t lift a finger when his neighbor’s “liberty” is hauled off in a paddy wagon.
“We refuse to compromise, not because we fear losing our guns, but because we fear losing the argument.”
Speak for yourself. Most of the right fear losing their guns, because they can see what happens in countries where the guns are taken.
And many on “the Right” don’t bother with the argument. Head down, stay quietly prepared, don’t be the nail that gets hammered…
So, while there is certainly a subset of the right that matches what you say, and they are disproportionately loud, the rest is disproportionately quiet, and your description simply doesn’t apply to almost any of them.
“Neither offers a very good view of the horizon.”
That “view of the horizon” comes with being exposed to the tyrants that crush those they don’t like. The ones out enjoying the view, making fun of those sitting in their iron vaults end up dead when their society runs out of vault-sitters.
It’s the vault-sitters that keep society from descending into… well, what we’re seeing in England right now, for instance, or what has been happening to the people of Iran for the last almost 50 years.
You’re welcome. It would be nice if you were more appreciative, but we will carry on either way.
“Man was made at the end of the week’s work, when God was tired. If you doubt the exhaustion of the Creator, look no further than a creature who claims he needs a weapon of war to fetch the morning mail, yet won’t lift a finger when his neighbor’s “liberty” is hauled off in a paddy wagon.”
It says God rested. It didn’t say he was tired and f’ed man.
Jesus later clarifies by telling us the “sabath was made for man, not for God.”
One must also remember the story of the world’s creation was God telling Moses the easiest way to explain advanced biology and physic’s to a bunch of jewish goat herders. So, there is that.
Also, you seem to forget that we are being “socially engineered” away from our tribal instincts. And pushed away from our sense of community.
We don’t care about other’s rights anymore because we’re emotionally driven rather than logic driven.
This was all done on propose.
As Deoxy says. Some of us are still logic driven. The brainwashing just won’t take.
Probably close to a 100 million of us.
And it’s a binary switch. Once we get turned on. Society is going to get very un-social for everyone.
If you’re looking for a timeline. My guess is the next democrat president.
With all that said, are you ready to die for your neighbor?
“And it’s a binary switch. Once we get turned on. Society is going to get very un-social for everyone.”
The difficulty is getting those switches to flip at the same point.
That is why the left creeeeeeeeeps along – trigger this tiny bunch, deal with them, trigger that tiny bunch, deal with them, etc., because the switches aren’t synced up.
I have seen no functional solution to this problem, but keeping the left moving slow enough means that, when we get a good group in power, they can roll back a good chunk of it…. not really a solution, but it helps.
“That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer’s cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.” — George Orwell (quoted by Oleg Volk, image democracy0785.jpg).
I guess that was back a century ago when a labourer could still own a weapon in England. Though, as St. George Tucker pointed out back in 1803, for centuries England limited the right to arms to those “suitable to their condition and degree” — meaning your social class determined what, if any, weapons you could legally own.
The Orwell (Eric Blair) quote is a comment on the arming of the Home Guard during WW2. He compared it to the arming of the Spanish people during the Civil War and to the armed nature of the Swiss people.
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