Via a retweet from David Whitewolf we have this:
6 x 5 x 2 minutes in an hour
8 x 3 hours in a day
7 days in a weekSo every month has 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x [# of weeks] x 3 x 2 x 1 minutes in it.
So there are 8! minutes in February.
Except, of course, on leap year.
This is incredible. This has to be a coincidence. Right?
As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people. A federal law along the lines of the Florida statute — overriding all contradictory state and local laws and acknowledging that the carrying of firearms by law-abiding citizens is a privilege and immunity of citizenship — is needed to correct the outrageous conduct of state and local officials operating under discretionary licensing systems.
Jeff Snyder
2001
Nation of Cowards page 30
[This essay was originally published in 1993 by The Public Interest.
What he says we needed 25 years ago, while closer than ever before, is still not a reality. Let’s keep pushing and get this item checked off our list.—Joe]
Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons. The possession of a good rifle, as well as the skill to use it well, truly makes a man the monarch of all he surveys. It realizes the ancient dream of the Jovian thunderbolt, and as such it is the embodiment of personal power. For this reason it exercises a curious influence over the minds of most men, and in its best examples it constitutes an object of affection unmatched by any other inanimate object.
Jeff Cooper
1997
The Art of the Rifle Page 1.
[A “monarch of all he surveys” must cause a tremendous amount of anger in the authoritarian and collectivist. The possession of, and skill to use, a rifle makes an individual something much more than a peasant to be controlled. It gives them an opportunity to protect themselves, their loved ones, their property, and to have a say in their own destiny. This is part of Why Boomershoot.
Furthermore, the existence of Boomershoot gives people justification to acquire a rifle and skills to realize “the ancient dream of the Jovian thunderbolt”.—Joe]
My brother Doug told me he recently read D DAY Through German Eyes and really enjoyed it. I am almost finished with the second book now. It’s very good. There were a number of things I learned about the weapons the allies had but what I have enjoyed most was what the German soldiers believed they were fighting for.
I didn’t realize the allies had planes and ships that fired rockets. I thought the planes only had guns and bombs. And I thought the only weapons the ships could use against land based targets were their guns and planes from the aircraft carriers.
Some of the rockets had phosphorous warheads. There were also warheads with explosives and ball bearings which were used for anti-personal as well as anti-material. And amphibious tanks! This surprised the Germans too. Some of the tanks also had flame throwers. The Germans really didn’t like the flame throwers. Some refused to go back into battle facing the phosphorous and flamethrowers even though the alternative was an expedited court marshal and execution the same day.
There were Russians who defected on the Eastern Front and joined the Germany army who assigned them to the western front. When the allies took prisoners the Russians were separated from Germans and handed directly over to the Russians. The Russians executed them. There were thousands of them.
One soldier told of the “Browning Assassination Pistol”. From the description it has to be the FP-45 Liberator. What I found most interesting is that the soldier (a military policeman) who mentioned them said thousands of them were distributed in France and probably hundreds of German soldiers were killed by French civilians with them. This is in direct contrast to what Wikipedia says about them.
The MP was guarding a small group of Germany officers the night before D-Day. As the bombing started they went to a private residence set up as a small hotel for the officers. After dinner one of the waitress suggested to one of the officers that he looked tired and perhaps he would like to go to bed (it was implied the waitress went to bed with him). He did. Later the other officers wanted to speak with the “sleeping” officer and the MP went looking for him. He found him in the bedroom, a hole in his head, blood all over, and a “Browning Assassination Pistol” on the floor. All the hotel staff were gone.
Did you know that Germany was actually protecting France? They needed to be protected from the International Socialists to the East, so there was a partnership between the French and Germany governments. The Germans were National Socialists but that wasn’t a threat to the people of western Europe. Germany united Europe. This was good for people of Europe. Why would the Americans and Canadians have a problem with that? Sure, the British hated the French and wanted a piece of France, but the Germany was protecting France from the British and the secret societies (the Free Masons) to the west who were being manipulated by the international bankers.
At least that is what was believed by many of the German soldiers.
The .50 caliber Desert Eagle has similarly destructive characteristics that distinguish it from other handgun cartridges. It is an enormously powerful, high-velocity, armor-piercing round manufactured for use in tank-mounted machine guns that has been adapted for use in a few foreign made handguns.
Scott D. Dailard
1994
The Role of Ammunition in a Balanced Program of Gun Control: A Critique of Moynihan Bullet Bills
Journal of Legislation: Vol. 20: Iss. 1, Article 3.
[And this is just one of many reason why we despise anti-gun people doing “research”. They only have a vague idea of what they are talking about and/or deliberately lie. And, note the date, this has been going on for decades.—Joe]
A state that deprives its law-abiding citizens of the means to effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous, becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists, and thugs and revealing its totalitarian nature by its tacit admission that the disorganized, random havoc created by criminals is far less a threat than are men and women who believe themselves free and independent, and act accordingly.
Jeff Snyder
2001
Nation of Cowards page 29
[This essay was originally published in 1993 by The Public Interest.—Joe]
Alien, in the comments to today’s QOTD asks :
I’m curious … at what point do you think this boils over into real activity which must be accommodated?
For all practical purposes we know the answer to this.
In September 1994 with a Democrat controlled congress, senate, and presidency they passed the “Assault Weapon Ban”. Even though they knew it would do little or nothing for public safety it was important for reasons they “dare not enunciate”. There was much rejoicing and they almost immediately boldly announced the next step and began to push their bill (actual bill is here for safekeeping) which had actually been written months earlier.
It included “arsenal” licensing, licensing of all handgun buyers, registration of all handguns, oppressive taxes on handguns and ammunition, maximum magazine capacity of six rounds, and more.
David Kopel explained the handgun licensing scheme:
Every handgun buyer would be required to obtain a state handgun license. The license would be good for no more than two years. No-one could obtain a license without passing a state-controlled “safety” course. The fees for the license and the safety course would have no limits. The fees could be set far in excess of the state cost of providing the license and the course; instead, the fees could a source of general revenue.
Nothing would prevent licensing authorities from taking months or years to issue a license. And nothing would prevent the authorities from making the “safety” test so rigorous that almost no-one except an expert shooter could pass.
That an applicant had been shooting handguns for 50 years, or was an NRA certified safety instructor, or a proficient competitive target shooter would not exempt him from the requirement to pay for the government “safety” class.
Every handgun transfer (including one’s adult son an old revolver) would be subject to these restrictions. In addition, every handgun transferred would have to be registered by make and serial number.
Of course the point of the registration was for the confiscation which was to follow (see Pete Shields, chair of Handgun Control International—now The Brady Campaign, in 1976).
An “arsenal” was 20 “guns” or 1000 rounds of ammunition. But a “gun” was defined as any part of the gun, such as a magazine, spare springs, and screws. So your handgun with three magazines, two spare recoil springs, two spare magazine springs, and the original set of grip panels would count as 10 “guns”. Your two bricks of .22 ammo, alone, would require an “arsenal” license. An arsenal license would require:
a person would need to be fingerprinted, obtain permission of local zoning authorities, and pay a $300 tax every three years. Her home would be subjected to unannounced, warrantless inspection by the government up to three times a year. “Arsenal” owners would also have to obtain a $100,000 dollar insurance policy.
So, the answer to the question is, it “boils over into real activity” the instant they have the political power.
The battle for gun rights is one fought predominantly by the common man. The beliefs of both our liberal and conservative elites are in fact abetting the criminal rampage through our society.
Jeff Snyder
2001
Nation of Cowards page 20
[This essay was originally published in 1993 by The Public Interest.
They don’t fear me. They fear you.
Chris Cox
NRA-ILA Executive Director
The NRA represents the common man and woman.—Joe]
It may take years, but make no mistake, the time will come when the United States will adopt laws similar to those in European nations—laws which virtually ban handguns altogether and which place the most stringent restrictions on ownership of any kind of firearm. There is no other answer.
Baltimore Evening Sun
January 4, 1991
Page A8
[Reading the history of the Evening Sun results in enough schadenfreude to cause me to sleep with a smile on my face tonight:
In 1959, the afternoon edition’s circulation was 220,174, compared to 196,675 for the A.M. edition.[18] However, by the 1980s, cultural, technological and economic shifts in America were eating away at afternoon newspapers’ market share, with readers flocking to morning papers or switching to nightly television news broadcasts.[19] In 1992, the afternoon paper’s circulation was 133,800.[20] By mid-1995, The Evening Sun’s readership — 86,360 — had been eclipsed by The Sun — 264,583.[21] The Evening Sun ceased publication on September 15, 1995.
In the 1990s and 2000s, The Sun began cutting back its foreign coverage. In 1995 and 1996, closed its Tokyo, Mexico City and Berlin bureaus. Two more — Beijing and London — fell victim to cost-cutting in 2005.[7] The final three bureaus — Moscow, Jerusalem, and Johannesburg, South Africa — fell a couple years later.[8] All were closed by 2008, as the Tribune Co. streamlined and downsized the newspaper chain’s foreign reporting. Some material from The Sun’s foreign correspondents is archived at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.[9]
So, it turns out the prediction made by The Evening Sun of the disappearance of gun ownership in the United States more accurately reflects the disappearance of The Evening Sun and it’s sibling paper The Sun.
But the biggest take away from this is that you should never let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
The availability of specific classes of firearms where the evidence clearly demonstrates that such weapons present an unreasonable risk of death and injury should be severely restricted.
Weapons regulated under the National Firearms Act–including silencers, “destructive devices” such as missiles used in grenade and rocket launchers and land mines–should be banned from future sale.
Weapons that fall within the definition of assault weapons should be banned in the same manner as were machine guns in 1986, and no new versions of assault weapons should be made.
Handguns should be banned from future sale except for military and law- enforcement personnel.
Violence Policy Center
Cease Fire: A Comprehensive Strategy to Reduce Firearms Violence from the section A More Comprehensive Strategy
1998
[Those were dark days for defenders of freedom.
Don’t ever let someone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
Anti-gun organizations and spokesman position themselves rhetorically so as inevitability to cement millions of gun owners into opposition to any sort of gun control with claims that common citizens who want a handgun to protect home and family are sexually aberrant, paranoid, trigger-happy rednecks whom it is imperative to disarm. Handgun ban advocates also support denying permits to those who most require handguns for safety, such as inner-city small business owners or elderly welfare recipients trapped in deteriorating welfare neighborhood even though research shows that handgun-armed citizens actually thwart about as many crimes annually as handgun-armed criminals succeed in committing. Yet, such advocates systematically avoid the key criminological issue of enforceability which leads to the conclusion that the goal is not to change human behavior but to legally enshrine one morality over another.
Don B. Kates
April 1, 1986
The Battle Over Gun Control
[The face of evil and the lies they tell have changed little in the last 30+ years.—Joe]
I was poking around in one of my old directories on my network hard drive and found a file from 1994. Yeah, I’m a bit of a packrat.
It was a Usenet post from talk.politics.guns and talk.politics.misc which I had saved. Yes, I’ve been doing this for a long, long time.
Here is the header with the “bang paths”:
From owl.csrv.uidaho.edu!netnews.nwnet.net!news.clark.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsserver.jvnc.net!synapse.bms.com!sis.bms.com!HAMBIDGE Thu Jul 14 12:25:08 1994
Path: owl.csrv.uidaho.edu!netnews.nwnet.net!news.clark.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsserver.jvnc.net!synapse.bms.com!sis.bms.com!HAMBIDGE
From: hambidge@sis.bms.com
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,talk.politics.misc
Subject: A Canadian’s Letter to Americans
Date: 8 Jul 1994 13:34:30 GMT
Organization: Bristol-Myers Squibb
Lines: 164
Message-ID: 2vjkl6$hp@synapse.bms.com
Reply-To: hambidge@sis.bms.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: watson.bms.com
Xref: owl.csrv.uidaho.edu talk.politics.guns:79300
talk.politics.misc:79280
It was a rather disturbing post which I suppose is why I had saved it. I decided to look on the Internet and see if I could find it via another source. Maybe it was just something someone made up for the Usenet tinfoil brigade. Nope:
CENSORSHIP: IT COULDN’T HAPPEN IN CANADA – OR COULD IT?
Posted: Saturday, July 9, 1994 8:00 pm
BY SUSAN RIGGS Knight-Ridder Newspapers greensboro.comGovernment can get too powerful before you know it.
An open letter to my American neighbors:
Like you, I woke up today, got dressed and settled down to a steaming brew and the morning newspaper before heading out to work. Unlike you, I read that dozens of my fellow citizens were arrested for carrying copies of The Buffalo News. The newspaper contained information about a trial here that the powers-that-be did not want us to read. It is that simple.It is now 11:15 p.m. Minutes ago, I turned on the Buffalo television station, hoping to see on my TV what could not reach us through the newspapers. I am now looking at a blank screen. We received about 10 seconds of the trial controversy, and suddenly my screen went blank. A message appeared on the screen explaining that because of the contravention of a ban, the station was prohibiting broadcast of the news. Along with the sign was a high-pitched whistle that sounded like the air-raid sirens the Britons used during World War II.
As I sit here alone, I realize that my blood is running cold at the sound of that whistle.
This could never happen here.
Not in Canada.
You must wonder about a country that would deny its own citizens the freedom to read. As a Canadian, I have done a lot of hard thinking about it. I guess the powers
Susan Riggs is a Canadian citizen living in Ontario. She wrote this article for the Detroit Free Press.
have their reasons for the ban. Censorship always has its reasons, but, believe me, when you are on the receiving end of government censorship, no reason amounts to a hill of beans – and that is why I am writing to you.
It is my hope that you will read the Canadian story and, as your famous columnist Ann Landers says, “wake up and smell the coffee’ – while you still have a newspaper to read along with it.
I have always loved the United States of America, and I know that you are now making critical decisions about the role of government in your lives. Many years ago, we in Canada were at a crossroads in our decision making that is similar to the one you are at now. I wish our decisions back then had been very different. Then maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here staring at a blank screen.
Some two decades ago, Canadians were concerned with how government could best help its citizens. We looked around at countries with a comprehensive social welfare system and envied them their cushions of comfort for everything from universal medical care to national day care.
We were a country that held individual freedom in high esteem. Surely, we thought, it was possible to take the best aspects of socialism and weave them into the fabric of a free society. After all, this was democratic Canada and not the Soviet Union.
Over the next 20 years, we developed an extensive social support network at both the federal and provincial levels of government. The government spent money on every conceivable program. We spent and spent. Still, no one was ever really satisfied.
The spending even now continues unabated, and our national deficit today stands at more than $45 billion. (We are now looking to New Zealand for pointers on how to control our deficit.)
When you adopt an extensive government agenda, you soon discover that all the entrenched programs and layers of bureaucracy become impossible to budge. Much of the population works for the government; about 1 of every 4 Canadians now draws a government paycheck.
People learn to depend on government, and all governments, even those whose leaders warn against this dependency, learn to love the power that flows from it.
As for the threat to individual liberty, newspaper censorship is, frankly, the tip of the iceberg. Government intervenes in our lives constantly, and individual liberties are abrogated in new and ever more imaginative ways each day.
Recently, while on vacation, I rented a car in Seattle and tried to drive into British Columbia. My car was confiscated at the border. When I asked for an explanation, I was told that I had not paid taxes on it – a rental car. Had I been an American, there would have been no problem, but, as a Canadian, I had to pay $200 more for a Canadian rental car in order to continue my trip.
Canadians who dare to get a haircut or a car tune-up across the border are being photographed and prosecuted upon their return to Canada. Why? Because they have secured these services without having to incur the 7 percent goods and services tax slapped onto our ever-burgeoning provincial taxes. Even insurance plans are now taxed.
A black market has sprung up, mainly in liquor and cigarettes, which carry the heaviest taxes. Don’t think that the taxes will end there, though.
Once it takes hold, monopolization by government soon spreads to nearly every aspect of your life; in the Toronto area alone, we have six separate municipal governments and one super-municipal government (the “mother’ of all local governments) called Metro, which exists to oversee the others.
You will find that after a time, your state and federal governments – even those of a different political stripe – will join forces to make their task of tax collection easier.
Our entire education system, up to university level, is governed by a centralized bureaucracy called the Ministry of Education, which dictates what can and cannot be taught in the schools and how it is to be taught. Universities are mainly government-funded.
I realize that the issue of government-run programs is particularly important to you now because of the state of your health-care system. I sympathize with you completely. I cannot imagine a world where one could be left bankrupt because of illness. I also think that you are on the right track with your solutions. If anyone can devise a workable system for medical care, it is you.
I suggest that you look upon it as you do your police protection: a guard in place for the physical and mental well-being of your citizens. The real danger in socialized medicine is the attitude of entitlement it engenders.
The stories you have heard about us are largely true. It is not uncommon to pick up a newspaper and read about “The Frightening Wait for Cancer Therapy’ here in Ontario, and the situation is no better in the other provinces. There is a shortage of the most advanced diagnostic technology. Thousands of the health cards that ensure access to medical care have have been issued erroneously.
We do wait two hours for an appointment booked weeks in advance. Despite our world-class doctors, many patients can’t get treatment in time because of overcrowding. When you are faced with a life-and-death medical situation, you don’t mind paying whatever it costs. Under the government-dominated medical system, however, you can’t even buy your way in – unless, of course, you go to the United States.
The sound of the air-raid siren on my TV has stopped, at least for now. As the politicians love to say, this is my “defining moment.’
Writing is my great love, the part of me that can never be censored. This letter was difficult to write, and no one up here knows that I have written it. All these issues are not just personal; they are professional, too.
I am employed in administration at a prominent Ontario university that has historically enjoyed a high degree of autonomy. Last summer, my president wrote a letter to the staff explaining that the government had expressed an intention to take a more active role in the management of university affairs. He described this as an enormous threat to our autonomy as a free-thinking institution, and in the end the government retreated – for now.
As I sit here tonight, it is simply beyond my comprehension that such a well-intentioned and beloved country as my own could go so far astray so quickly. And it is all the more remarkable that it has taken place without grand conspiracies or intricate plots.
Indeed, most Canadians are as offended by the images of totalitarian government as you are. We shared your joy at the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of the Soviet bloc; we value freedom. And yet we have fallen into a trap where we are not free.
As with that other well-known road, we traveled this one with the best of intentions.
To those who would dismiss me as an alarmist, I issue this invitation: Read our newspapers, watch our news broadcasts (what is left of them) and see for yourselves. Prove me wrong. I wish you could.
When you make critical decisions about the role of government in your life, please think about me, about this letter and about Canada.
Really think about what it could mean when you hear about a government initiative that sounds too good to be true. Thank God for a free press, even when you find yourself criticizing the media for broadcasting stories that you would rather not hear about. The recent publication ban is not the first one. There are others, and their numbers are growing.
Listen and learn, America. Cup your ear to the wind and hear the blood-chilling wail of the siren whistle as it drifts down across your border.
If just one of you reads this letter and pauses, even for a moment, to think about what unchecked government can do, then it has been worth the writing.
I have faith in you, America. Your road is tough and not perfect. Nothing is. Your road will keep leading you to freedom – the freedom to read and think and be exactly who and what you are – if you only let it. Treasure that freedom, love it and resolve never, ever to let it go.
Via Bill Davis:
We could also add in Jim Crow laws, Women’s suffrage, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (read about the filibuster by the Democrats which lasted two months). But who’s counting?
Gun control laws are dangerous because they don’t do a very good job of taking guns away from people who shouldn’t have them. They’re more effective at taking guns out of the hands of people who can and should use them, if they chose to, for lawful protection. And gun control laws are most dangerous because they provide such political distraction from much more important issues on reducing crime, particularly reducing the illegitimacy rate. And as long as the president is up there yakking about the Brady bill and assault weapons, that’s all the less time he’s going to be putting into welfare reform and other things to rebuild the family, and that’s the heart of any real solution to crime.
David Kopel
1995
Does Gun Control Work?
[Don’t ever let anyone tell you we haven’t been having a conversation on gun control or that we haven’t been saying for decades it doesn’t work and in fact it is counter productive. We have also been saying it is also a violation of specific enumerated and natural rights. It’s time for those people to grow up, accept the facts and stop wasting their, and our, money, time, and human resources.—Joe]
Roberta just posted about telegraph keys and coincidently I ran across this as I was continuing to unpack boxes that hadn’t been touched in 20 or 30 years:
The battery is new and that is all it took to make it functional. It’s a code practice oscillator that Brother Doug and/or I built back in the late 60’s or early 70’s. Once upon a time we put in a half-hearted effort to learn Morse Code but neither of us succeeded at learning the skill.
The other day I was cleaning out a box of old stuff and I found this:
It’s some very old primers. I’m pretty sure I bought these in Moscow Idaho about 1975. This was long before I was into guns or had ever reloaded ammunition. I think I was going to use them to make an Estes rocket into some sort of missile with a “warhead” for the 4th of July. I never got around to it and all the primers are still in the package.
Herman’s World of Sporting Goods closed their last store in 1996, but I’m pretty sure the one in Moscow was closed many years prior to that.
Today a box of 1000 Small Rifle Magnum Primers cost about $35.00, if they were packaged and sold in 100 piece quantity, as in the picture above, the price would be just about double what they were when I bought mine.
I was rearranging some things and came across this brick of .22 LR with only four boxes left in it. I decided to throw the bigger box away and just stack the four boxes (of 50 rounds each) on the shelf rather than taking up all the space with the bigger box they were in:
I don’t recall when I purchased this. It could have been 15 or more years ago. But the point is the price. $11.99 for 500 rounds. That’s $0.024 per round. These days I think it’s great deal if I can find any brand of .22LR for under $0.10 per round.
I think we can blame the high price of exercising our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms on the Democrats.
No one wants to touch the legitimate hunter. But we’ve got to protect society from nuts with guns.
Bay Area Official
1967
[Via Friday A/V Club: What the Gun Debate Looked Like in 1967.
After nearly 50 years of increasingly strict laws, now with some of the most repressive gu laws in the nation, the words they use are nearly the same. California has banned the most commonly sold rifles, used by hunters, sold in the U.S. and yet they never stop pushing for more.
It stops here. It stops now. And we are reversing the trend.—Joe]
All the Britons dye their bodies with woad, which produces a blue colour, and this give them a more terrifying appearance in battle. They wear their hair long, and shave the whole of their bodies except the head and the upper lip. Wives are shared between groups of ten or twelve men, especially between brothers and between fathers and sons; but the offspring of these unions are counted as the children of the man with whom a particular woman cohabitated first.
Polybius
About 140 B.C.
As told by Winston Churchill in A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: The Birth of Britain
[I’m not certain I believe this. I mean, why would all the people shave their entire bodies except the head and upper lip? That’s a lot of shaving.
Interesting about the group marriage thing though.
—Joe]
Here was another trading centre, to which high civic rank had been accorded. A like total slaughter and obliteration was inflicted. “No less”, according to Tacitus, “than seventy thousand citizens and allies were slain” in these three cities. “For the barbarians would have no capturing, no selling, nor any kind of traffic usual in war; they would have nothing but killing, by sword, cross, gibbet, or fire.” These grim words show us an inexpiable war like that waged between Carthage and her revolted mercenaries two centuries before. Some high modern authorities think these numbers are exaggerated; but there is no reason why London should not have contained thirty or forty thousand inhabitants, and Cochester and St Albans between them about an equal number. If the butcheries in the countryside are added the estimate of Tacitus may well stand. This is probably the most horrible episode which our Island has known. We see the crude and corrupt beginnings of a higher civilisation blotted out by the ferocious uprising of the native tribes. Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land the live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.
Winston Churchill
1956
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: The Birth of Britain
[People like to believe the human race has been “civilized” for some time and mass killings and incredible cruelty are an aberration or an artifact of a particular race or religion. I don’t see it that way. I see “civilization” as a thin veneer which barely contains the true nature of people. I’ve heard people claim the atrocities of the 20th century with many tens of millions of murdered by their government will not happen again because “we have learned better”. I call B.S. on that.
Here we have Winston Churchill claiming, “It is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.”
This should serve as a stern warning to those who would invade a land and the natives who would aid the invaders. I’m not sure where I read it, it might have been The Good Earth, but it went something to the effect of “If you kill a man’s father he will hate you. If you take his land he will kill you.”
Invaders from whatever distant land, be it another continent or the out of touch politicians in Washington D.C. who view the property of others as plunder should study history. They should not count upon the permanence of the good nature of a society when they plunder their property. There is a threshold beyond which the thin veneer of “civilization” is removed and a terrible, bloodthirsty, barbarian emerges.—Joe]