In Bellingham Washington yesterday:
I keep waiting and wondering what the Federal government is going to do about the enforcement of the Federal laws against marijuana. And I wonder how that resolution will be reconciled with the states which have passed Firearms Freedom Acts.
These are two “elephants in the room” which the politicians appear unable to see.
If we are unlucky, we won’t see meaningful change and this existential crisis will drive us into authoritarianism. The form of this authoritarianism depends on which network wins. If the bad boy network dominates, we could see a dictator like Putin (or much worse) climb the ladder of chaos by scapegoating and purging enemies of the state. If the mean girl network gains control, we could see intersectional identity (all identities are in a perpetual struggle for dominance akin to Communist class warfare) mutate into an ideology that violently purges groups of people who become obstacles to progress. In their extreme forms, both of these outcomes could create big piles of bodies.
John Robb
August 23, 2017
American Politics: Bad Boys vs. Mean Girls
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
I believe it is no longer hyperbole to say the United States may very well be on the road to a Second Civil War. This time it won’t be North vs. South, but Left vs. Right, Marxism vs. American Nationalism, Lunacy vs. Sanity, Tyranny vs. Liberty.
…
Sadly, there will be more violence, more vandalism and more bloodshed on both sides. There will be more confrontations for one reason and one reason only, the left wants it.
The left wants a Civil War. They very well may get it.
Ray Starman
August 15, 2017
The Left is Marching the Nation Towards Civil War
[While I’m about 90% certain they want a civil war I’m not convinced they will get it.
The pattern I see follows that of Germany in the 1930’s. The Nazi party gained political power legally until it almost had control. Then as its grasp on power started to fade it dramatically stepped up the violence and seized power. Had the government been better about stopping the street thugs the Nazi’s would not have been able to up the violence and seize power.
There have been many recent cases, including Portland, Berkley, and Charlottesville where the police did essentially nothing. This only encourages the political left. If the police in this country do there jobs and the thugs end up in jail, seriously injured, or dead the violence will decrease and we will avoid a civil war.
The police have been militarizing for decades now. It’s time for them to use some of that equipment and training and prevent another civil war. It is far better to risk injuring and/or killing a few hundred thugs now than to go through a civil war in the following years.—Joe]
It’s now got a name: Trump Sleep, the opposite of what President Trump’s election has done to former political liberals: Trump Psychosis. The left is literally sawing holes in reality, inventing collusions where they don’t exist, setting things on fire, displaying an inability to let go of past events…too many are literally losing their grip on reality, and acting out.
On the right we are seeing almost the opposite. Instead of forging ahead with all deliberate speed, and accomplishing what’s possible, with such a tantalizing array of low-hanging fruit, former conservatives are withstanding outrageous assaults and refusing to fight back, file charges, sue, damn the torpedoes, forge ahead and enact legislation. It’s a deadly combination for survival of the nation, let alone preservation of firearms ownership.
JPFO Bill of Rights Sentinel
Vol 1, No 9, page 2
July 2017
Trump Psychosis vs. Trump Sleep Now is NOT the Time for Gunowners to RELAX!
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
We’re done arguing about gun safety – and we’re going to fight for the common-sense reforms the overwhelming majority of Americans want.
Elizabeth Warren
U.S. Senator
August 12, 2017
Read the massive speech Elizabeth Warren gave ripping moderate Democrats at Netroots Nation
[We’ve been done arguing for years. I’ve been voting, training new shooters, buying guns and ammo, getting training, practicing, and competing. Your move Senator.—Joe]
The left is agitating for a fight. They don’t care how bad it gets. Keep poking the bear long enough and you will get a fight. They want the fight to serve as the catalyst for the destruction of all civil rights expressed in the Constitution, and granted by God under Natural Law. Sickening how ignorant they are, mere “useful idiots”. They will be the ones screaming the loudest about their “rights”when they are being walked out to the execution wall.
Wil Radford
August 17, 2017
Comment to NJ Dems Have 20 Gun Control Bills Lined Up If Murphy Becomes Governor
[The USSR, Italy, Germany, China, and Cambodia all come to mind. When the “intellectuals” who pushed for the political change realized things weren’t turning out as they planned and started complaining the tyrants in power sent them to the gulags, firing squads, camps, and killing fields. This was because these people had some level of influence and hence were a threat to the tyrant’s power.
Those that advocate for the elimination of individual rights believe the conditions they bring about will only be hostile to their political foes and are often surprised when those very conditions they imagined are imposed upon them.
The proper role of government is to protect human rights. The further it strays from that domain the higher the risk of enabling extreme evil.
Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.—Joe]
Such a massive punishment of decent arms holders is unacceptable, because banning legally-held weapons has no connection with the fight against terrorism.
This is not only a nonsensical decision once again undermining people’s trust in the EU, but implementing the directive could also have a negative impact on the internal security of the Czech Republic, because a large number of weapons could move to the black market.
Milan Chovanec
Interior Minister of The Czech Republic
Czechs take legal action over EU rules on gun control
[It’s also unacceptable because it infringes upon a natural right, but that line of reasoning has no weight on those the message was intended for. If you want to persuade someone you need to be able to speak in a language they understand. Individual rights are an alien concept to socialist politicians.—Joe]
NRA is a nonpartisan organization and we continue to endorse members of any party who work to defend American gun owners. As the current marginalized national Democratic Party grapples with its agenda moving forward, it would do well to learn from its past and curtail their attacks on the Second Amendment. Wise Democratic leaders will recognize that they have been here before and that abandoning their anti-gun ambitions is an important component of their path back to power. However, with Democratic House members still offering microstamping and gun turn-in bills, there is little evidence of such wisdom.
NRA-ILA
August 11, 2017
Repudiated at the Polls, National Democrats Continue to Push Gun Control
[I believe it is beyond the capacity of the majority of Democrats to do this. There are too many socialists and communists who know their path to power and tyranny would be blocked by firearms in the hands of individual citizens.—Joe]
First and foremost, the Second Amendment says that the “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” I believe that the “and bear arms” part means the right to carry in public, and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in Moore v. Maidgan.
The Ninth Circuit came to the opposite conclusion, but keep in mind that the Ninth Circuit is the Captain Peter “Wrongway” Peachfuzz of the judiciary. If you want to know what the constitution really means when it comes to civil liberties, take any decision by the Ninth and do exactly the opposite.
J. KB
August 9, 2017
CCW Appeal to Authority
[Via email from Mike B.
I have heard it said that the Ninth is the most overturned circuit in the country. That the Ninth is in California should come as no surprise.—Joe]
I’ve long thought that we’d get a lot more bang for our buck by building that thick, high wall around D.C. rather than along the Rio Grande.
Predator
August 8, 2017
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Gun control has always been a weapon of the elite ruling classes to keep the masses in a state of subjugation. When all you have is the vote, you don’t really have much. Elites can manipulate the masses into voting the way elites want them to vote, or can outright manipulate the system (see Venezuela). An armed population will always have an actual say in how things are run.
Sebastian
August 8, 2017
You Don’t Say: Gun Control Disarms Poor
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
I’ll speculate it was largely due to an intellectual factor, the invention of the printing press; and a physical factor, the widespread use of gunpowder. The printing press destroyed the monopoly the elites had on knowledge; the average man could now see that they were no smarter or “better” than he was. If he was going to fight them (conflict is, after all, what politics is all about), it didn’t have to be just because he was told to, but because he was motivated by an idea. And now, with gunpowder, he was on an equal footing with the ruler’s knights and professional soldiers.
Right now I believe we’re at the cusp of another change, at least as important as the ones that took place around 12,000 years ago and several hundred years ago. Even though things are starting to look truly grim for the individual, with collapsing economic structures and increasingly virulent governments, I suspect help is on the way from historical evolution. Just as the agricultural revolution put an end to tribalism and the industrial revolution killed the kingdom, I think we’re heading for another multipronged revolution that’s going to make the nation-state an anachronism. It won’t happen next month, or next year. But I’ll bet the pattern will start becoming clear within the lifetime of many now reading this.
Doug Casey
August 4, 2017
Doug Casey on the End of the Nation-State
[For more background on his thoughts regarding this topic see Doug Casey on Phyles.
I’ve been wondering, for about 30 years now, how the rapid changes in communication might affect government. What new forms of government might come about now that worldwide communication is essentially free and messages travel at the speed of light. It never really occurred to me that perhaps the nation state would evaporate. Casey points out another factor that affects the continuing viability of the nation state, cheap transportation.
Sure, I’ve read science fiction books where a planet would be owned by a corporation and was, in essence, an evil government. But Casey is talking about something different here. He talks about Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age and Snow Crash as possible examples.
I’ll have to think about it more.—Joe]
The problem with socialism isn’t that you run out of other people’s money. The problem with socialism is that *you run out of fucking food.*
David Hines @hradzka
Tweeted on August 4, 2017
[H/T email from Ry.
Examples of this are left as an exercise for the reader.—Joe]
Government is not civil: it is naked force. I have practiced medicine for 48 years. Government has not helped.
Robert Margulies
August 4, 2017
Comment to Interesting law suit
[I’m reminded of a George Washington quote.—Joe]
From the top headline at Drudge this afternoon, comes a story about a guy suing the Republican Party for fraud. He donated significant money because they ran on the “Repeal Obamacare” platform and are now clearly not interested in fulfilling their promise.
The suit will probably never go anywhere, but it is worth noting. I’m not sure which is worse, or which is more likely to get results; all of us suing each other rather than accomplishing anything, or shooting each other rather than accomplishing anything.
The Republicans will, in any case, add the word “Replace” to the word “Repeal”. If they end up doing that, we won’t get repeal. Instead we’ll get some equally horrid, government-managed, socialistic and equally unsustainable (but I repeat myself) pile of feces, and then claim that we voters got what we wanted. Later they’ll blame us for their bullcrap.
So no; I will no longer use the term “repeal” and neither should anyone else who believes in liberty. Instead use “Laissez Faire”, which would require a repeal of not only O-Care, but all the rest of the federal shenanigans surrounding medicine. The medical industry is a price-inflated, over-complicated mess because of government interference, so get rid of the interference.
But, oops; Trump has been outspoken as an advocate of “Single-Payer” (commie care) which has been the pipe dream of the Progressive Marxist revolutionaries for generations.
Still, I advocate laissez faire. At least let the individual states destroy their own medical industries – We know they are capable of doing that without federal help.
How to Know When You Are Not The Beneficiary Of Cognitive Privilege:
You read Marx, and you didn’t get the joke.
Tirno
August 2, 2017
Comment to I guess we have not reached Peak Social Issues
[I came to a similar conclusion when I read The Communist Manifesto.—Joe]
Russia did not hack the Democratic party emails. Instead, an American intelligence whistleblower leaked them.
George Washington
December 12, 2016
Intelligence Officer Who Personally Met the Democratic Email Leaker Confirms Leaker Is with AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE Services
[It’s certainly plausible. American intelligence services have the capability. And that Hillary was so casual and flippant about her blatant security lapses was more than enough motive for everyone I have talked to who spent time in the intelligence community.—Joe]
Observe the paradoxes built up about capitalism. It has been called a system of selfishness (which, in my sense of the term, it is) — yet it is the only system that drew men to unite on a large scale into great countries, and peacefully to cooperate across national boundaries, while all the collectivist, internationalist, One-World systems are splitting the world into Balkanized tribes.
Capitalism has been called a system of greed — yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.
Capitalism has been called nationalistic — yet it is the only system that banished ethnicity, and made it possible, in the United States, for men of various, formerly antagonistic nationalities to live together in peace.
Capitalism has been called cruel — yet it brought such hope, progress and general good will that the young people of today, who have not seen it, find it hard to believe.
As to pride, dignity, self-confidence, self-esteem — these are characteristics that mark a man for martyrdom in a tribal society and under any social system except capitalism.
Ayn Rand
The Voice of Reason
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Interesting. Short version: PISA is the “Programme for International Student Assessment”, it tests schools/kids from around the world. 65 nations entered. America ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math. Ouch. Nations that didn’t enter were mostly places like all of sub-Saharan Africa which routinely score badly on such tests; it’s safe to assume the US did better than Haiti, even if they didn’t take the test.
However… Someone looked at how kids performed in each nation by ethnic backgrounds within a country, and compared them across borders (i.e., compare American Chinese to Chinese in China, American whites to whites in Europe, Mexican-Americans to Mexicans in Mexico, etc). Quote:
Asian-Americans outperform all Asian students except for Shanghai-Chinese. White Americans outperform students from all 37 predominantly white nations except Finns, and U.S. Hispanics outperformed the students of all eight Latin American countries that participated in the tests.
African-American kids would have outscored the students of any sub-Saharan African country that took the test (none did) and did outperform the only black country to participate,Trinidad and Tobago, by 25 points.
Huh. That means that one (or both) of these two cherished narratives are false:
(a) American schools are abject failures for the amount of money we spend per student, and spending more money will fix the problem, or
(b) There are no real and significant racial /ethnic /cultural differences, and the low academic scores highly correlated with economic achievement of certain groups is the result of white racism, oppression, discrimination, etc.
You can lead a horse to water… etc., etc.
You can’t have it both ways with this analysis of the data. Personally, I think we should treat all people as individuals, and do what we can with / for them. Move to an ability-based class-placement system for most things rather than age-based.
Sebastian has interesting comments on his site about this video:
See also my blog category of Smart Guns.
People who demand all guns must be “smart” must fall into one or more of the following categories:
Such people should be politely informed they are wrong, mocked, scorned, and prosecuted. In that order.