From Alan Korwin:
At your next meeting where politicians
or candidates are present just ask:“As a candidate for office, do you support a moratorium on sales taxes on gun safes, to encourage people to buy and use them?”
Washington state does not have sales tax on gun safes. IIRC it went through the legislature and was signed by the governor without too much effort.
And why don’t we try getting subsides and/or tax credits for firearms safety training?
“One definition of a liberal, is someone who doesn’t understand the problem, or the history behind it, or the concept of consequences, but is arrogant enough to think that his off-the-cuff solution should be enforced with as much violence and as much of other peoples’ money as might be required.” — dustydog on August 30, 2015
Many years ago I heard that the definition of a “liberal” is “someone who’ll give you the shirt off of someone else’s back”, but this one is much better. It sums up all the horror and mass death of the 20th century in one, concise sentence. Collectivists (Progressives, Fascists, communists, et al) are either extremely evil or blind, or both. In any case they must be kept as far away from government positions as possible.
We have got to do something about gun violence in America — and I will take it on.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
August 26, 2015
Hillary Clinton vows to be gun-control president
[It’s good that she is making this very clear. Maybe this will make it a campaign issue as well. With support for gun rights the highest it has been since 1993 there is a good chance this will make it a loosing issue.—Joe]
I had a woman who was probably in her 70s, very sharp and alert; she came into the store and said, ‘I want an AR-15’. I said, ‘Are you sure?’ She said, ‘Absolutely. Obama says I can’t have one, so I want one.’
John Burrud
Owner of Loveland Colorado firearms store Jensen Arms
August 13, 2015
Politics, not violence, increase gun permits, sales.
[Obama, the greatest gun salesman of all time.
It’s an interesting dilemma the ant-gun people have. Any serious political push results in increasing the number of gun owners. If they don’t bring the fight to us then we take the fight to them against their weakest points.
It seems to me the only hope they have is to change the minds of the public at large before they can hope to make progress. But we have a significant advantage in that regard. They don’t have anti-gun ranges where people get a big smile on their face when they learn to not use a gun.—Joe]
These changes are a test of reason. If you can reason, you fail. If you can Doublethink, you pass.
Daniel Greenfield
June 30, 2015
No Truce With The Left
[Reason. I think of it as a test of someone trustworthiness. If they are unwilling or unable to reason I am uncomfortable being around them. I literally don’t have any idea what they might do or say next. Will they claim I attacked them when all I did was smile and say hello? Will they hit me in the head with a rock? I would rather be in the presence of a sociopath because I can model their behavior as looking out for their best interests and make it clear to them it would be irrational for them to cause me harm and in fact it would be in their best interests to have me as their ally.
But the irrational, non-reasoning, person is extremely dangerous. There is no loyalty. There is no mutual benefits. There is only unpredictability. There is only the prospect of chaos, suffering, and death.
Marxism, communism, socialism, whatever variety of leftism and you want to call it, has such a long proven history of poverty and death that only irrational people can support it. Venezuela is only of the most recent examples that went from an “economy was the strongest in South America” in the 1950s to the early 1980s to the massive shortages, unemployment, thriving black market, and the highest misery index score in 2013.
The USSR, mainland China, and many other countries learned their lesson the hard way with massive shortages, mind boggling corruption, and 10s of millions murdered by their own governments. Numerous experiments in the 20th century, on national scales, prove beyond any doubt the benefits of freedom and the hazards of adapting the ways of the leftists. How can anyone ignore the lessons of East versus West Germany? Or North Korea versus South Korea? China versus Hong Kong?
Freedom and capitalism has brought prosperity, and unbelievable technological advancement which benefits the entire world. Yet the political left continue to insist their way is “progress”. These are not rational people. They cannot be trusted. These people are incapable of rational thought and/or are evil. The correct diagnosis does not matter. Greenfield is right. There can be no truce with the left.—Joe]
That’s why they’re afraid of it.
A fire extinguisher is made as a tool to be used by someone who can cope, to protect his property and protect those who cannot cope.
The university educated, the entertainers, and media personalities, leftists in general, tend to wear their inability to cope as a badge of honor.
We’ve all see it; the guy well into adulthood who cannot drive a car, for example, and is clearly proud of the fact. Driving is what servants do, for me– It is not something I do. He has his nose in the air when he informs you he doesn’t drive.
If you gave him the gift of jumper cables and a nice floor jack, he’d be offended and maybe even a little scared. If you required him to demonstrate a fire extinguisher on a network TV show? Same thing.
Only icky people can build things, fix things, cope with unexpected dangers, and use guns or fire extinguishers. Eeew!
The Special Little Snowflake, or as I call him, “Fragile Little Flower” gains his identity through his weaknesses. He has learned that his weakness is his power over other people.
Those of us who can cope are to blame for this situation, through our failure to correct and through our capitulation. The FLFs are in charge of much of society and culture as a result.
Someone recently brought up The Lord of the Flies to describe the world, and it fits quite nicely. When the adults fail in their responsibilities to encourage and guide the “children” into becoming capable and responsible adults themselves, then all hell will break loose. That describes world politics for the last 100 years quite well.
Instead of pointing fingers at the innumerates running Athens, they should consider our own situation.
…
It’s an imperfect analogy, but imagine the green is your salary, the yellow is the amount you’re spending over your salary, and the red is your MasterCard statement.
Jon Gabriel
June 30, 2015
Athens on the Potomac
[I am not the only one wondering if we are watching a version our future play out in Greece.—Joe]
According to Suffolk University, in addition to not wanting to hear about gun control in 2016, a majority of Americans do not believe increasing gun control via expanded background checks will curb mass violence. Fifty-six percent of respondents said it would not, while only 40 percent of respondents said it would.
This makes sense, when you consider that Roof allegedly purchased his gun via a background check at a Charleston gun store.
AWR Hawkins
June 30, 2015
Survey: Majority of Americans Not Interested in Gun Control for 2016
[Makes sense? It would make sense if it were 95% instead of 56%. That 40% think expanded background checks would “curb mass violence” when the example immediately in front of them is completely counter to that hypothesis is proof of their inability to draw even the simplest of logical conclusions.
This is a demonstration the fact that for a very large percentage of the population they, at best, make reasoning sounds. The concept of reason is completely alien to them. This is really frightening to me. I would expect dogs, cats, dolphins, and some birds, let alone all primates, to have that good of reasoning skills with similar problems. Apparently humans, on the whole, can do little better than chance.—Joe]
“Liberty lives in the hearts of men and women. If it dies there, no constitution, no law and no court can save it.” — Roy Masters, June 29, 2015
To that I would add “no military and no armed citizenry” can save it.
I heard him say it while listening to his radio program on internet re-feed on the way to work. He may have been quoting someone else for all I know, so don’t hold me to the attribution. It’s the kind of thing he’d blurt out spontaneously anyway, so I figured it was his.
So, now with words having no meaning until the court interprets them for the masses, we do not know what any law means until it comes back from the high priests holy of holies. The Senate and Congress no longer need the high salaries they get, nor do they need to be in session more than a week or so out of the year. They no longer need staffs of statute writers, since all they need to do is give the high priests of law a general request. Perhaps the title, and some language analogous to asking a tailor for a fully custom suit. It took over 100 years for the Administrative State to swallow Congress through the actions of this administration, I don’t think the next step, eliminating Congress as legislature will take as long.
Windy Wilson
June 25, 2015
Comment to Quote of the day—Robert W. Tyson
[This was in reference to the SCOTUS decision in regards to subsides for Obamacare.
Everything I have to say about this ruling Ry and I have said before in regards to a previous Obamacare SCOTUS decision. It’s good to have clarity.—Joe]
Alumni of the UC system should immediately cease wasting their charitable dollars on such an anti-intellectual, fascist institution. And any intelligent young person should avoid it like the plague. The system has clearly been captured by individuals with micro-brains possessing micro-tolerance and micro-confidence. It is–like too many institutions of “higher” learning–a place where critical thinking goes to die.
Elizabeth Price Foley
June 16, 2015
SO BASICALLY EVERYTHING IS A MICROAGGRESSION
[Examples from the “faculty training guide” (if they pull that copy I have another here) include:
And my favorite part is from the Fox News story on the training guide, “According to psychological and public health research, micro-aggressions can lead to negative health consequences including heart disease, diabetes, depression and substance abuse.”
Outward appearances suggest people that came up this must have solved all the other problems in their utopia and had to mine for nuggets in the world’s deepest mines to find the concept of “micro-aggressions” worthy of more than a few milliseconds of their time.
But Occam’s Razor tell us the simpler hypothesis is the most likely to be true. Therefore I have to conclude the real explanation is “crap for brains”.—Joe]
…among a certain personality type, that when faced with some problem serious enough to cause anxiety or other symptoms…how do I say this? The last place that person will go for help or advice is to those who are dealing with the same exact situation successfully and without stress.
Progressives, for example, behave that way all the time. They will not look to the more successful cities and states, to their policies and culture, seeking the path to the same success. Instead they’ll group up with other problem cities or states and impugn, malign and attack the successful ones.
This happens on a personal level, exactly the same way, because it is the same phenomenon.
I have two such people very close to me in my life, and it is getting to the point that something major (majorly bad, and expensive, and possibly worse) is going to happen. Things simply cannot continue as they are. It’s come to a head, as the personality type is always pushing for it. There is no talking to them about it either, because it causes a Ferguson/Baltimore type response. The resemblances are uncanny, actually.
It’s to the point where I’ll very likely be facing having my business (which I started) and my house (which I bought) taken away from me, or completely hijacked, which amounts to the same thing.
Beyond giving up the capital assets as the ransom my precious freedom I’m at a loss (and again, just like dealing with Progressives – such people are VERY dangerous). Maybe an answer will come along which, at the moment, I cannot see.
If you want to know where social Marxism (collectivism) is headed, this is it: the labeling of individualistic philosophies as dangerous thought crimes and tribal communities as time bombs waiting to explode in the face of the wider global village. They desperately hope to conquer the world by dictating not only national boundaries and civil liberties, but the very moral code by which society and individuals function. They wish to bypass natural law with fear, fear that the collective will find you abhorrent and barbaric if you do not believe exactly as they believe. Individualism will one day be the new misogyny.
Think of it this way: If an undoubtedly forgettable movie like “Furious 7″ can’t even portray a fictional step away from the abyss of collectivist cultism without a prophecy of doom from Reuters, then is anyone really safe from these lunatics?
Brandon Smith
May 13, 2015
Collectivists Hate Individuality, Tribalism And ‘Fast And Furious 7′?
[No one is ever completely safe from any lunatic. Even a completely sane person might make a careless mistake and run over you in a crosswalk.
But Smith was asking a rhetorical question after painting what appears to be pretty accurate picture of the collectivist cult mentality. A clear statement of the problem is the first step in solving the problem and Smith appears to have done a good job in this regard.—Joe]
There can be little doubt that man owes some of his greatest successes in the past to the fact that he has not been able to control social life. His continued advance may well depend on his deliberately refraining from exercising controls which are now in his power. In the past, the spontaneous forces of growth, however much restricted, could usually still assert themselves against the organized coercion of the state. With the technological means of control now at the disposal of government, it is not certain that such assertion is still possible; at any rate, it may soon become impossible. We are not far from the point where the deliberately organized forces of society may destroy those spontaneous forces which have made advance possible.
F. A. Hayek
October 1, 1960
The Case for Freedom
[The size and scope of our government has penetrated to depth in our society far beyond what Hayek could have reasonably foreseen in 1960. The banning of certain toilets, shower heads, and light bulbs is just the tip of the iceberg. The use of “eminent domain” to take your property and give it to another, the banning of larger than average soft drinks, and the banning of firearm accessories are just the tip of the same iceberg. The thousands of pages of law and regulations churned out each year are just the tip of the same iceberg.
Our vehicles license plates are scanned by police cars as they drive by, our cell phone positions are tracked, our phone call metadata is stored for use against us, the IRS has been weaponized and is used against political opponents, and drone are ready and able to drop a bomb on your location if the administration believes you to be a threat to national security.
It is easy to argue that “the deliberately organized forces of society” will destroy, or essentially has destroyed, the spontaneous forces of which Hayek speaks. Furthermore it is not farfetched to claim the only viable option at this point is to protect yourself and those close to you as best you can and prepare to rebuild from the ruins of the coming collapse.
I hope we can learn from what I fear is a lesson of staggering magnitude. Then, if the time comes, we must rebuild upon a foundation of solid political and economic philosophical principles. The works of Hayek are almost certainly part of that foundation.—Joe]
Fred;
“That amount of beauty necessary to launch one ship”
Translation; Check (stop or reduce) your objectivity
The more objective person has great advantages over the less objective person, and those advantages will be seen by the less objective person as threatening, unfair and oppressive. The less objective person thus sees the more objective as aggressors, imposing all manner of suffering upon the less objective.
It has two great benefits to the ego of the less objective. It reduces the comparative advantage of being objective (thus providing “Social Justice”), and it absolves the less objective of responsibility for their foolishness.
Since it requires a great deal more objectivity (which the less objective hate with a burning passion, much as a vampire would hate the sunlight) to convince the less objective to become more objective, the situation is a sort of Catch-22.
The classic definition of such is paranoia, but I see it more as a convenient method of control, by the less objective, of the more objective. A form of bullying from below, if you will.
So long as we entertain the foolishness of the less objective in any way whatsoever, we are being controlled by, and we are thus encouraging and empowering, the foolish. Our entertaining the foolish comes from our unwillingness to become the targets of their naked outrage. It is cowardice. When we know better, and do it anyway, we deserve everything that results (which will of course be horrible).
From Ken White we have a Leaked Northwestern University Email States Rules For Title IX Investigations which includes this among other things:
Classes on the American court system, civil rights and civil liberties, and criminal justice may continue so long as professors emphasize to their students that they are participating an an anthropological study of a profoundly sexist and cisgender-biased system and that no positive normative judgment is intended.
I’m in complete agreement with commenter AddictionMyth who said:
I understand that satire is protected by the First Amendment. But this was insufficiently parodic to avoid being confusing. At least, I didn’t laugh. Not once.
More than nonlawyers would expect, the justices are fair-weather textualists, demanding strict adherence to congressional language when it suits them and inferring hidden implications when that’s more convenient.
Paul Barrett
June 1, 2015
What the Abercrombie Bias Case Might Mean for Obamacare
[Not only more than what we expect but far more than what we can tolerate.
When they are inconsistent we don’t know what the “law” is at the time you make your life choices. Can you really call it “law” when it depends on the whim of someone in a black robe a thousand miles and years removed from the scene and time of the “crime”? In order for the law to be just it must be knowable at the time you make your choices.—Joe]
We always look at it backwards, don’t we?
…
People are always talking about demanding more and better performance from elected officials. But when you get right down to it, shouldn’t a democracy demand more and better performance from the citizen who vote?
Admiral John Geary
The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Leviathan by Jack Campbell
[He’s got a point.
One would think there being stringent requirements before you were allowed to vote would be the best approach. But that method was abused in times past and probably will not be a viable option for quite some time, if ever. The next best thing would seem to be educating the voters and discouraging uneducated citizens from voting. But then the side that encourages uneducated voters to vote for them wins.
I’m at a loss as to how best to solve the problem.
As a side note, I have really enjoyed Campbell’s Lost Fleet series. I love the space battles which take into account relativistic effects, momentum, and large fleets with sub formations. He does a good job on psychology of different people too.—Joe]
As much as I hate to say it, the NRA is effective primarily because it is largely right when it claims that most gun control laws inconvenience and threaten the law-abiding while having little or no impact on violent crime or criminals.
Jody Powell
Former President Carter press aide
January 1994
George Stephanopoulos sought gun control debate in Bill Clinton administration
[H/T David Hardy.
Gun rights advocates have been saying this for at least five decades. The Clinton administration knew this over two decades ago. If you listened carefully to the anti-gun politicians and even most of the leaders of the anti-gun organizations you would find they use evasive wording when they talk about gun control. It was, and still is, very clear they know gun control doesn’t and can’t reduce violent crime. I’m certain the Obama administration knows this as well.
So what is the real reason they advocate for gun control?
Whatever the answer is, it can’t be good.—Joe]