Category Archives: Politics

C.S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism

Posted on by

I have never been a big fan of C.S. Lewis in general. When I received the following email I very nearly responded back with a negative response:

Dear Joe,

Could I interest you in please posting a notice on your blog of the following new YouTube video from the C.S. Lewis Society of California of my keynote talk at the first annual conference of Christians for Liberty, that was held at St. Edwards University in San Antonio, TX, August 2, 2014?

Thank you for your kind consideration!

Best regards,

David
——
David J. Theroux
Founder and President
The Independent Institute
100 Swan Way
Oakland, CA 94621
(510) 632-1366 Phone
(510) 568-6040 Fax
http://www.independent.org

I decided that I should at least watch a minute or two of video before rejecting it.

This quote at about 2:25 in the video made me decide to post it:

Could one start a Stagnation Party—which at General Elections would boast that during its term of office no event of the least importance had taken place?

C.S. Lewis
1940

Naïve, stupid, crazy, or malicious

Posted on by

Some people “want to make it harder for bad guys to get guns”. Okay. I understand the sentiment. I can even understand that some people are more “practical” than principled.

People with far different principles than I have long made a “principled” case that economic central planning is better than a free market. Such a system “will make everyone more equal.” But that “principled” approach is easily defeated by pointing out the practical results of those experiments. Tens of millions murdered by their own governments and shortages of even essential products.

We have the principled approach of an inalienable right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment. What data do they have which contradicts this? Why can’t they understand it’s a fool’s mission to keep guns away from the bad guys?

This is from a UK paper article titled How did the Paris terrorists get hold of their weapons?:

In 2010, police in Belgium stated: “Counter to what you may have heard, it’s not easy to get hold of a Kalashnikov.” To prove them wrong, a reporter for Belgian newspaper La Derniere Heure managed to do so in less than six hours.

The evidence is overwhelming that black markets supply any product which is both technically possible and people have the money for. The price might be higher and the quality may be lower. But where there are buyers there will soon be sellers.

The examples are all around us as well as in history. Think of prohibition. Think of recreational drugs. As I have said before, “The average high school dropout can get all the recreational drugs they want within an hour anytime of the day, any day of the week. So just how effective you think a background check would be in reducing the abuse of recreational drugs?”

The people that insist that background checks, bans, restrictions on ammunition sales, and “gun free zones” cannot be right in the head. They have to be willfully naïve, incredible stupid, have mental issues, or they are malicious.

When you are dealing with people like this there is no value in compromising. There is no value in “agreeing to disagree”. There is no value in “respecting their opinion.” These people need to be defeated. They need to be put in their place. They need to be made an example of. They need to be made politically irrelevant. They need to be prosecuted. They are prejudiced bigots. They need to be swept into the dustbin of history. The should be despised as a 21st Century version of the KKK because this is what they are.

Today is The One Day…

Posted on by

…we are told, by someone (?) to celebrate the life’s work of one Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – gun owner, second amendment supporter and NRA member.

OK, but if I approve of his message and his efforts, then surely every day is MLK Day, no? Just as, if you’re a Christian every day is Christmas.

Anyway; I wonder what MLK Jr. would say today, more than 50 years later, of race relations and the moral state of Americans. I don’t recall him having said;

“I have a dream…of a day when a little black child and a little white child will sit down together, and the little black child will accuse the little white child of exercising “White Privilege” and blaming him for his problems. I have a dream of a time when over ninety percent of all black people will sell their votes to the political party of the KKK in exchange for largess, indoctrination into the authoritarian system, lies and broken promises. I have a dream of a time when black people are corralled into dysfunctional, government-union-controlled schools, discouraged from using the schools of their choice, and taught hopelessness and anger instead of hope and love, and I have a dream today, People, of a time when government will have replaced the father in the majority of black families…”

No, I don’t recall him saying any of that, but that is apparently what some people are celebrating today, while calling for more of the same.

Needing clarity

Posted on by

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over what to do with the “terrorism done in the name of Islam” problem in the wake of the recent events in France, just as there is after each such event. Many talking heads say many things, but mostly their words shed darkness rather than light. The first step in finding a solution is properly defining the problem. Without clarity, there can be no visibility.

I have a simple proposal:

The next time there is such an event in a western nation and we can positively identify and surround the perpetrators before they are dead, we offer them this deal: Drop their guns/bombs and hold up their hands and surrender with the remaining hostages unharmed, and they can be tried in the Sharia court of their choice, with the following caveats: the trial must be started within one year, the verdict delivered within two years, and the court must be formally recognized and approved of by at least two leading national Islamic leaders in the Islamic world (such as the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and the Ayatollah of Iran, or similar) who acknowledge in public, in the nation’s native language, to the people of their respective nations, the court’s legitimacy.

Either they find the perps not guilty and we can have an official Islamic court ruling that Sharia is utterly incompatible with western culture, laws, and values; or they are found guilty and executed, and we have an official Islamic finding that terrorism and murder is forbidden under Islam. If no leading scholars will recognize the court publicly it will be a tacit admission they want it both ways – be legal in Islam, but not have the west see that.

Either way, the clarity such a decision would provide would allow the appropriate battle-lines to  be drawn, so the proper war could commence with sides more clearly delineated.

Achtung, Juden! Das ist Verboten!

Posted on by

In processing a customer order today, we got a “Service Not Allowed” message from our credit card merchant services bank. They’re the ones who handle all of our credit and debit card transactions. We called them to find out what this message means, because we’d not seen it before. Well, they were by this time quite familiar with the “problem”. The problem is MBNA, in this case, who issued the card to our customer, DOES NOT ALLOW TRANSACTIONS WITH GUN RELATED BUSINESSES.

If you’re doing any business with MBNA, you’d best give them a jingle, and DO NOT FORGET this. This sort of thing seems to be on the rise, and it will get worse unless we push back, soon.

Update, Jan. 7, 2015; The customer called his bank, assuming the “Service Not Allowed” was due to a late payment on his part. As I explained to him several times; we were told by our Merchant Services bank that it was due to MBNA policy, and that our Merchant Services people were quite familiar with said policy as they’d had to deal with such denials many times previous. The customer only repeated what he’d said about a possible late payment. In any case, the transaction, on the same card, was approved today. All I can make of it, given what we were told by Merchant Services, is that MBNA will cave without comment or discussion once they’re called on it. From what commenters are saying, the practice of denying transactions may be random, or it may be targeted toward individual customers or vendors. Without more information I have no way of knowing. This would all seem quite unbelievable, except for what we already know about the recent IRS targeting, Fast & Furious, the attempted intimidation of Sharyl Attkisson and others, and other insidious pranks aimed at the perceived enemies of Progressivism.

Quote of the day—Bill Hooper

Posted on by

A Nation Practically Owned and Run by the N.R.A. and Walmart,which has countenanced the Fascist W regime ,and where Jeb Bush is a likely Presidential Candidate DESERVES Gun-toting Dogs on a Rampage.

Bill Hooper
December 18, 2014
Comment to Dog shoots man: Accidental shooting injures man
[H/T to Paul Koning.

Disregard the factual errors and hypocrisy of claiming President Bush was Fascist with no mention of President Obama. This is what they think of us. You and I DESERVE to be shot.

Why are progressives so violent? Oh, Now I remember. It’s in their nature.—Joe]

This is what I’m talking about

Posted on by

In the comment thread here ubu52 demonstrates something I have been saying for a long time. Sometimes people literally cannot “hear” (or in this case read) your words without mapping them into something else which you did not say.

Here is an abbreviated version of the conversation:

ubu52: That’s ridiculous. That’s like saying all those who wanted to see Bush/Clinton tarred and feathered actually wanted to see that.

Joe: 

And it is ridiculous to think those saying, “Rats. Destroy Them.” actually wanted to see that.

Spiegelman-Rotten

Right?

ubu52: [Repeatedly says she doesn’t get it. After completely spelling it out for her she finally says she gets it.]

Joe: [In six different contexts I ask, “Is it ridiculous to believe they are serious?”]

ubu52: So, who created it? Was it the occupiers? Was it someone Danish? Did they do it under duress or with their own free will? Was it created to mock the Nazis or was it created by someone who agreed with them? Without knowing it’s actual background, it’s really just a piece of 1940’s art.

…

Sometimes, creative people do things for effect. It has absolutely nothing to do with what they really think or feel. You are looking for some sort of deeper meaning to things that may not mean anything at all. (You’re also trying to compare them to people who are mentally ill, but that’s another topic altogether.)

You have such a black/white way of looking at things, it seems that you are incapable of seeing any of the grays in life.

I was asking if it was ridiculous to take the rat poster seriously. This was the work of the most famous genocidal group of all time targeting their most famous victims and she changes the subject to be something about “creative people” doing “things for effect” and claims I’m “incapable of seeing any of the grays in life.”

I cannot fathom how someone could see “shades of gray” in answering the question whether it was ridiculous to take the poster seriously. This poster cannot be interpreted any other way than literally deadly serious. It would be unfathomably ridiculous to interpret any other way than serious.

My question was not verbal, but in written word, repeated six times, and yet ubu52 ignores the question, changes the subject to be a question about the person who did the actual artwork, and tells me I have some deficiency in seeing the nuances of “just a piece of 1940’s art.”

Either she is deliberately trolling me to waste my time or chiefjaybob got it right, “In the end, they are all like Joan. It’s just a matter of degrees.”

Quote of the day—Bill Whittle

Posted on by

Progressivism is a philosophy of lawlessness, disregard for truth, contempt for individual lives, and individual freedom. It is utter, total, barbarism.

Bill Whittle
December 12, 2014
THE NEW BARBARISM

[H/T to Kevin.

I have nothing more to add.–Joe]

Their humor is very telling

Posted on by

While I have a desire and perhaps even fantasies of my political enemies being prosecuted for breaking existing law this (NSFW) is a really messed up way to think of your opponents. There are over 600 comments praising it. I almost always think of my opponents getting a fair trial, their sentences matching their crimes, and respecting their right to not be subject to cruel and unusual punishments.

What these people are doing is way beyond resorting to Markley’s Law when we inform anti-gun people about SCOTUS decisions. But it’s of the same mindset. They degrade, insult, and attempt to humiliate those who oppose them.

These people think sexual domination and degradation is a form of humor. Would they think it funny if one of their political commentators were subject to this sort of “humor”?

I find it difficult to imagine this is anything other than a form of “othering” in preparation for making their fantasies come true. This should give more than enough reason to fight for your Second Amendment rights. These people would torture and murder you if they got the chance.

North Idaho Socialist Party

Posted on by

Brother Doug also sent me this today:

I stumbled across this story in the June 29, 1928 edition of the Clearwater Tribune.

IdahoSocialistParty20141219_120230
IdahoSocialistParty20141219_120304

IdahoSocialistParty20141219_120323

The Clearwater Tribune is published in Orofino Idaho which is in Clearwater County. The advocacy for the nationalization of natural resources is interesting to me. So how did that work out for Venezuela and their oil recently? Or maybe the farm land in the USSR at the time of this article?

Some people get it

Posted on by

Meet Jonathan Gentry.

This is what happened as I see it now. The Party of the KKK, the Party of Progressivism and Margaret Sanger, saw what was happening in the 1960s, and saw that they could not stop it. So they got out in front of it. It’s a standard tactic of the left; if you can’t stop it, at least take some credit for it, join in, and steer it your direction or otherwise work it to your advantage. Co-opt it.

Now the Democrats have over 90% of Black Americans in their back pocket, keeping them angry, keeping them feeling sorry for themselves, keeping them hopeless, and thus keeping them voting Democrat. Meanwhile far more black babies are being aborted, as a percentage, than white babies, and the black family has been degraded such that Black mothers turn increasingly to the government as a surrogate father. Margaret Sanger, right there. She and Woodrow Wilson both loved the KKK.

In summary; the Democrats, with help from Uncle Toms like Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson and promoter of violent revolution Lewis Farrakhan, are trying to turn black Americans into the objects of hate that they’ve always been for Progressives. And as a two-fer, they’re also trying to turn police into the “pigs” that the hippie/beatnik/communist/Progressives said they were back in the ’60s.

Same thing has been happening with the feminist movement, by the way. It’s standard playbook. Co-opt a budding pro-liberty movement and turn it into a tool of agitation, of anti-liberty, anti-rights, anti-capitalist anti-human activism. It’s happening all around you.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party is frozen stiff with fear, and anger at their own base. They didn’t get into politics to fight. They didn’t run for office to be harangued and maligned, yet that’s what they’re facing, and they’re making it worse the longer they sit on their hands and play their stupid games. They will never lead. Principled leadership has been bred out of the Party. Forget the parties. They’re done. Totaled. FUBAR. It’s up to the People.

Edited to add; Here are a few famous and very loved Progressives, spilling the beans;

Early 20th Century playwright and darling of the Progressives, George Bernard Shaw.

Democrat President Woodrow Wilson and his pro KKK movie “Birth of a Nation”.

Margaret Sanger, early 20th Century Progressive, revered to this day, on the “Negro Problem” and the purpose of advocating birth control. Sound familiar? It should. It was the inspiration for the German National Socialist’s Eugenics programs, and their Final Solution, which we now know as The Holocaust.

And we’ll wrap it up with another all-time darling of the Progressives all my life and even to this day, Helen Thomas on what they view as the Jewish Problem.

They must be laughing like hell at the fact that they actually managed to get the American black and Jewish votes wrapped up, and that no one called them out on it all this time.

Mugme Street news

Posted on by

This is about the area near where I work:

My heart is a little heavy because the city that I love, the city in which I grew up, the city where I’ve chosen to raise a family and make my livelihood, it’s just done. I’m finished with Seattle.

Two weeks ago, we were talking to Seattle police about the area around Westlake Center. It’s an area that has gotten completely out of control. There is rampant open weed smoking everywhere you look between Westlake and Pike Place. There’s open drug dealing going on down there. There is all kinds of crime.

…

There is no way I would bring a family into downtown Seattle right now. The criminals have won. The gangs have won. The protesters are out of control.

Seattle police, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, Kshama Sawant, they’ve all lost. But they refuse to do anything about it because it’s the rabble-rousers that comprise their base. They don’t dare stand up to the criminals and protesters who have taken over downtown Seattle because that is the element that got our politicians elected.

Yup. I didn’t care for what I saw here over three years ago when I first started working here. There have been ups and downs since then but the culture I see and hear (literally, many floors up from the street I can hear them chatting nearly everyday) is that of looters (in the Ayn Rand sense). I don’t see it getting better any time soon.

Quote of the day—evilwhitemalempire

Posted on by

I personally wish the blue states (but only blue states) would legalize all the drugs.

Reason: You can’t straighten any of them out but you MIGHT be able to screw them up badly enough to render them useless as a voting bloc.

evilwhitemalempire
November 26, 2014
Comment to The Children’s Wing of the Libertarian Party
[I understand the desire to screw up the voting of the blue states but I don’t think drug legalization would have that effect any more than freely accessible alcohol and tobacco does now.

Yes, many of the drugs are much more dangerous than alcohol and tobacco but I think that in general the people who currently avoid them because of their danger would continue to do so. And the people that don’t recognize the danger will, as they currently do, run those risks.

Yes, I believe there will be some people that will use the drugs that wouldn’t have if they were illegal. But I also believe that some people will be more likely to get help and recover from the consequences of recreational drug abuse.

And more importantly, where do you or the government, with a limited set of powers that you posses, get the authority to make decisions about what sort of recreation others partake in? Society has a legitimate concern about driving while intoxicated, or even carrying a gun in public while intoxicated. But aside from a few cases like that it really should be a matter of freedom of choice.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lyle

Posted on by

Something we should all understand, and the sooner the better; the anti WANTS to be stopped. Believe it. Just like the errant little child, testing his parents’ strengths and weaknesses by misbehaving, the leftist is testing you, wanting more than anything to find the good, principled, rock solid father figure that he never had, so he’ll be loved and corrected like he never has been. Every time you cave or compromise like a shitty, girlish, drunken Republican on anything, the leftist is disgusted with you, and will ramp up the volume and rattle the cage even harder. It’s a search, you see, for even one good, principled individual.

Lyle
November 21, 2014
Comment to Quote of the day—Anthony W. Ishii
[It is true that our anti-freedom opponents have a nearly unending demand for the government to force us to do things. So why not give them what they want by government forcing freedom upon them?—Joe]

It’s all in the interpretation

Posted on by

We often pick on authoritarians for being hypocrites and liars, which of course they are, that is, in the big picture or from the standpoint of principles. We must be careful though in interpreting their words. When Obama said this a while back, he was being perfectly honest and consistent;

“The biggest problems we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I am president of the United States of America.” — Senator Barak Obama, March 31, 2008

I say he was laying his intentions right out in the open, for all to see. T-ball. George Bush was trying to bring more and more power into the executive, and Obama intended to reverse that by instead doing it himself.

You just have to understand it from their perspective as competing, or fellow, authoritarians. One professional boxer may very well intend to beat the snot out of another professional boxer, but that does NOT mean he’s opposed to boxing. Look at it this from the perspective of rival gangs;

“The biggest problems we’re facing right now have to do with The Eastside Gang trying to exercise more and more power in this town, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I become Leader of the West Side Gang.”

It’s not that the prospective leader of The Westside Gang is saying he’s anti-gang, is it? But the inattentive, or the wishful thinker, may see it that way if he chooses. Our prospective gang leader’s fellow gangsters on both sides of town know exactly what he’s saying, though the words are chosen to appeal to a broader audience consisting of largely distracted and de-moralized victims of gang intimidation.

Likewise, in W.W. II in Europe there were three competing gangs: Italian Fascists, German National Socialists and Russian communists. Then, American Democratic Socialist (or progressive communist, i.e. Progressive) FDR got the U.S. into the fray. It was not at all a war of opposing ideologies, but one of competing authoritarian systems and separate gang interests competing for turf. Same goes for Democrats and Republicans, on a “good” day. On a bad day (which is more common now) they all work together against their common enemies, which are reason, human dignity, independence, justice and liberty.

Understand all of that and the whole world makes a lot more sense, and you’ll rarely if ever be left wondering what the hell just happened.

Hat tip; Tam

Quote of the day—John Feinblatt

Posted on by

Our electoral strategy this year is driven by our plans to keep passing better laws that will prevent gun violence state by state, whether we’re doing it through legislation or doing it through the ballot.

John Feinblatt
President of Everytown
November 11, 2014
Gun Control Groups Eye More State Ballot Initiatives After Victory In Washington State
[Feinblatt is apparently unconcerned that what he is doing and wants to do is in violation of the Second Amendment as well as having been proven to be of zero effect in preventing violent crime. If the background checks were of value in reducing violent crime we would have seen the statistics in their advertisements here in Washington State. Where’s the data from the other states which passed “universal background checks” Mr.Feinblatt? That’s right, there is nothing you want the general public to see.

The crowd he associates with is unconcerned with the facts. They know it’s the only way they can win. The article is just another example of this. It has numerous errors such as claiming I-591 “would have loosened gun laws”. This is completely false.

I hope the day will soon come when we can generate some concern in Feinblatt and his ilk with felony charges for their criminal acts.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Christopher Cantwell

Posted on by

You give us absolutely no option for escaping this violence. We are forced to choose between the violence of you, or the violence of someone else. You tell us “Love it or leave it!” or “Move to Somalia!” like I don’t have any right to be left in peace in my own home. The fact of the matter is, if you give us a choice of violence or violence, eventually we’re going to give some violence back to you, and making fun of you on twitter will become the least of your concerns.

Christopher Cantwell
April 8, 2014
Top 10 Reasons Libertarians Aren’t Nice To You
[H/T to Say Uncle.—Joe]

This is what they think of us

Posted on by

From Alexis Clark:

B1s3IDFCUAANuLC

She describes herself as “Pleasantly Opinionated.”

If she thinks calling people who live in a certain area names like that is “pleasantly opinionated” you shouldn’t be surprised that she got the labels on her map mixed up.

Update: The Tweet and the picture were deleted a few hours after I posted this.

Quote of the day—TS

Posted on by

Democracy allows for criminal code to be passed this way? Not to mention the very abhorrent idea that 51% of the people can lock up the other 49% if they want via ballot initiative.

TS
November 6, 2014
Comment to More on the I-594 Loss
[Direct democracy also allows 50+% to impose oppressive taxes on the 50-% as well. This is why we have the concepts of enumerated powers and inalienable rights written into our constitutions.

The I-594 people do not recognize these concepts.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Hank B Reardon

Posted on by

Just wait for the next initiative and you all will be shooting those nerf guns.

Hank B Reardon
November 5, 2014
Comment to Editorial: Voters stand ground on gun control in passing I-594 over I-591
[The irony of his handle aside, our opponents know what their objective is and occasionally let it slip.

Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]