When I hear this drivel about “having a conversation” it sounds like this, set in 1930s Germany; “It’s time we had a serious conversation about the Jewish problem.”
Lyle
August 21. 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
The situation in CA doesn’t qualify as a “slippery slope”, it qualifies as Free Fall.
Rivrdog
August 13, 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—Chuck Michel
[It’s not quite that bad. The courts have slapped them down a couple times and the lawyers are winding up to do a bunch more swatting.
The “silver lining” in all the oppressive laws against gun owners is that it makes it more likely to get favorable rulings in the courts that can be built upon to push things even further back.—Joe]
This year’s extremist legislative package proves that the threat of the slippery slope is all too real.
Chuck Michel
Attorney for the California Rifle and Pistol Association
August 10, 2013
Gun-control bills could push California to top of firearm-restriction list
[As if we didn’t have enough proof already of the existence of the slippery slope.—Joe]
Anyone know of a canonical list of “Liberal Canards”?
Catch-phrases like “it’s for your own safety,” “let the [trained] professionals handle it,” and “you shouldn’t fight back” are what I’m looking for. Things that sound good at first, and appeal to an “emotional common sense,” but fail to actually work or be correct as applied in real life. If there are no lists, comments are welcome, trying to build a list.
“We don’t make decisions based on common sense” – USAA Insurance claims representative, total loss department. That was pretty obvious by the time he said it. I told him it was going to be a quote of the day.
In June an old man pulled right in front of us in his pickup, from a cross road on our right, while we were at speed in our pickup on highway 26 in central Washington State. WHAM! My 15 year old daughter was driving on her learner’s permit. She could not have done anything to prevent a hard hit, but I think she saved that old man’s life.
You never really know what you’ll do in a situation like that, but I tell myself not to swerve for deer or anything else unless there is a real need to. Hit the damn deer and stay on the road, or hit that car in front of you and avoid a head-on, if it’s a choice between the two. I’ve seen it go very badly when people swerve. She swerved. If she hadn’t, if she’d gone in a straight line, that old man would have been squashed like a melon, I think. As it was we hit corner to corner instead of hitting him in his driver’s door.
I was telling the claims rep that since I had the trans rebuilt and replaced the engine, the hubs, the breaks, etc., that 309K odo reading meant very little, that the newer and shinier pickup I replaced it with actually has “Less useful life left in it, it cost me more than twice what I’m being offered for the totaled truck, and that I shouldn’t have to remind anyone that the injured party (I) should be made whole, within reason, to the fullest extend possible, and we’re not even talking about our ruined vacation.”
“Where did you get that verbiage?” He asked in reply.
“What do you mean?”
“Where did you get that verbiage?” He repeated. Well how do you answer that question? He seems to think that I’m reading from some book, or repeating someone else’s words, which I wasn’t. So rather than argue about that;
“It’s common sense” I told him. That’s when he came out with the money quote.
Yeah, so I’m out thousands of dollars after I take their settlement. Insurance markets, and the whole set of industries surrounding them, like the towing business and the body repair business, medical care, et al, are completely distorted. In a proper world it would be between me and the offending party, and if things fell apart there it would be in the courts, and the insurance company’s role would be to write a check afterwards (or up to the value of the policy). But this is the messed up world of scammers, politicians (but I repeat myself) and Progressives (and again I repeat myself) and so the party writing the check is the same one determining the value of the loss.
I guess that what we were supposed to do, rather than tell the EMTs at the scene that we were all OK and happy to be alive, if a little bruised, and go against their advice to take a ride in and get checked out by doctors, was instead to complain about pain, act all messed up an carry on and so forth, get some prescriptions and braces and all that, like most people, and scam the insurance company for all that pain and suffereing, woe-is-me-I-have-to-take-three-weeks-off-work-and-I-might-have-to-file-for-disability crap. But we didn’t, and won’t.
Karl Marx hated the USSR and what it did under the claim of his ideas.
Don’t believe me? Look it up.
NightShade09
August 4, 2013
Comment to The Invention of Ideology
[I’m quite suspicious of people who claim they can “channel the spirit” of someone. Defending the claim that it doesn’t happen is trivially easy. Hence I think the only look up required is that Marx died in 1883 and no government could claim the title of USSR until sometime after the revolution in 1917.
But Marxist defenders don’t really need facts. They just have to “understand” the benefits of communism even if they can’t understand the simplest and best tested of economics theories.—Joe]
The New York SAFE ACT represents a tremendous step toward sensible gun control.
Michelle Schimel
Assembly Member, NY State 16th District
August 6, 2013
Exit Wound: Who Will Take on Gun Control?
[The New York SAFE ACT is some of the most repressive, short of a total ban, legislation this nation has ever seen. That she thinks of it as a “step toward sensible gun control” should tell you all you need to know. I can only conclude that in her mind “sensible gun control” is a complete ban on firearms.
What we really need is for “sensible politician control” to be enforced.—Joe]
The New York City Department of Education is waging a war on words of sorts, and is seeking to have words they deem upsetting removed from standardized tests.
The words that could be banned include, alcohol (beer and liquor), tobacco, drugs, evolution, hunting, nuclear weapons, politics, slavery, terrorism, war, and weapons (guns, knives, etc.).
That’s going to make it rather difficult to write a test that addresses history and even the 2nd Amendment. But perhaps that is their intent rather than some sort of unintended consequence. It is New York City after all. They have put stunning restrictions on large sweet drinks, salt, and guns. Is it any surprise they now want to ban words?
Whether it’s sugar, salt, patrol rifles, or words the answer should be the same, ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ.
American gun owners should resolve to drive gun grabbers into social and political oblivion. Gun owners and gun owner groups should develop, promote and implement an attack strategy against gun grabbing establishmentarians.
For over four decades law-abiding gun owners and gun rights organizations have fought the enemies of freedom generally from a defensive position, reacting against anti-gun proposals as they are advanced.
However, gun rights people and interests should go on the offensive. It’s time to attack ideologically and practically the gun-grabbing establishment and its spokesmen and adherents with vim, vigor and absolute determination.
John M. Snyder
April 25, 2013
USA Should Drive Gun Grabbers into Oblivion
[Other than “YES!” I have nothing to add.—Joe]
August 4th, 2013. The Non Sequitur cartoon strip has “the birth of ideology.” Fundamental denial of reality, then parsing words in really silly ways to “prove” you are right. Yup. Pretty much. Comments are interesting, too. Shows some serious ideology.
http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2013/08/04
So you think that money is the root of all evil?
Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor–your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?
Francisco d’Anconia
From Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
[I have a silver round on my desk that was a gift from son James a few years back that sums it up far more succinctly than Rand’s character did:
Get your round here.—Joe]
Separating words from realities is one of the most important steps toward evaluating government policies, whether domestically or internationally. Since rhetorical skills are the most highly developed skills among politicians, any serious attempt to see government policies for what they are means keeping our eyes fixed on facts despite the distractions of rhetoric.
Thomas Sowell
2010
Dismantling America: and other controversial essays
[Separating words from realities is one of the most important steps in human interaction, not just in evaluating government policy.
I’ve dealt with many well spoken but irrational people and I know that identification of and dealing with them early is far better than later. It’s too bad we don’t have a quick and easy test for this. It would make life in general, not just politics, far better.—Joe]
The insurance companies are creating their own tombs. Much like the Jews boarding the trains to concentration camps, private insurers are used by the feds to put the system in place because the federal government has no way to set up the exchange. Several years from now, the federal government will want nothing to do with private insurance companies. The feds will have a national system of health insurance and they will pull the trigger on the insurance companies.
Sheryl Nuxoll
Idaho state Senator
January 23, 2012
Idaho senator compares health exchange to Holocaust
[My resident medical insurance expert says, “Time will tell.”
The problem is similar to the Jews boarding the trains. Once you enter the camp it’s too late to change your mind about getting on the train. I wonder how many of them said, “Time will tell.”—Joe]
From the Seattle Police Department blog:
Security came out of nowhere,” he told officers, adding that all he did “was not pay for some items.”
I will concede that the perpetrator could just be criminally stupid. But nearly every time I walk down the streets of Seattle I’m amazed at the number of communists openly advocating their failed economics. I can’t walk more than a couple blocks without seeing someone selling “Real Change” (here is one socialist/communist editorial I found after about 30 seconds of looking).
Tonight as I was heading to my bus I crossed Pine Street on the east side of 3rd. There were a bunch of people chanting and holding signs in the middle of Pine street. The one sign I bothered to read was something about demanding a $15/hour minimum wage. I couldn’t understand all the words of the chant but it ended with “against the wall”. I don’t know for certain but it sounded like a threat to me. On the north side of Pine there were a bunch of police officers on bicycles. One was giving directions to the others and they broke into two groups and surrounded the chanting crowd. A few minutes later I received a couple Tweets from the Seattle PD:
Officers have made 8 arrests in demonstration @ 3/pine. Police now working with crowd to unblock Pine St. Between 3/4 Ave.
— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) August 1, 2013
3/Pine demonstrators requested “symbolic arrests.” After giving dispersal orders, officers granted their request.
— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) August 1, 2013
I have to wonder; Is this what it was like in the early days before the communists took over in other countries? Even in the cities of Kirkland and Bellevue just a few miles to the east of Seattle openly advocating for communism is rare. On the east side of the state and on into Idaho it’s even more rare. Yet in downtown Seattle it’s so accepted that someone there acts as if there isn’t a problem with taking things from a store without paying for them.
We have a serious problem if the concept of private property is so alien that when these people get caught stealing their response is bewilderment and ask, “What’s the problem?”
What we really need are policies that penalize politicians and managers who undermine the right and ability of law-abiding citizens to get, carry and use the guns and ammunition they need to protect the right to life itself from the madmen and criminals who burden our society.
John M. Snyder
July 25, 2012
Colorado Mass Murder Shows Need for Unencumbered Armed Citizenry
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
I had my most successful year this year. I introduced 26 pieces of legislation and 21 of them are now law – – that’s almost a career.
Angela Giron
July 24, 2013
Colorado Firearm Advocates Push Recall in Gun Control
[I find it very telling that she measures success by the number laws introduced and passed into law. That she participated in the infringement of the Second Amendment rights of all the people of Colorado is just confirming her obvious unfitness for public office.
If I were keeping score for her I would measure success by the number of laws she successfully removed from the books.—Joe]
Why would someone push an agenda that is wrong? Lots of reasons that most of us are familiar with: ignorance, their parents did it, being reactionary, people like to feel they are part of a bigger group (there is strength in numbers, and strength is comforting), misguided principles, etc., etc. But things like ignorance can be cured, IF the ignorant person doesn’t have a significant vested interest in maintaining their current belief.
A related but different question: why would someone push something they know is wrong? Usually, it’s because they profit from it personally in some way, via research grants, accumulation of political power, they own the “alternatives” being pushed, it is a structural part of a larger belief system, or whatever.
Most global warmists / climate-change pushers can get binned into “profit from it” or the “scaring people is good for pushing more / larger government controls and regulations” view. You know the type. So here are a couple of very short, simple things about it all.
Cause MUST come before EFFECT. This isn’t even scientific method 101, this is toddler-learning-about-gravity level stuff. And if you graph CO2 and temperature, temperature change leads CO2 change. Ergo, CO2 CANNOT be driving temperature.
OK, a warmest replies, then what alternatives are there? Answer: The sun.
But, they say, the sun is constant. Ahem. No, it is NOT.
So how does it change that we can test or measure, the smarter ones counter, what’s the mechanism; it’s 93,000,000 miles away? (yes, yes, I know – it’s a darn small percentage of them that goes here, but let’s go there anyway).
Answer: Sun-spots. Sunspots, they reply, you must be joking.
Nope. Sunspots are indicative of magnetic field activity. The stronger the sun’s magnetic field, the more Galactic Cosmic Rays it deflects from Earth. You see, GCR passing through the Earth’s atmosphere interact with it in a way and at a rate that they act to seed cloud nuclei. Clouds are white and reflective. So:
Lots of sunspots -> few GCR -> less cloud cover -> lower albedo, -> more energy absorbed from the sun -> planet warms.
Few sunspots -> more GCR -> more cloud cover -> higher albedo, -> less energy absorbed from the sun -> planet cools.
In the 400+ years of actual sunspot observation, the correlation between long-term sunspot patterns and climate is well established. Now we know HOW. We’ve tested it in the lab. (Svensmark at CERN) And hey, what do you know – 700 million years ago, the sun was in a part of the Milkey Way that had much higher levels of GCRs – and it was an ice-ball, pole to pole.
One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people’s motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans– anything except reason.
Thomas Sowell
Dismantling America: and other controversial essays
[It’s so bad that people cannot distinguish between a coherent argument and an emotional appeal. I see this most frequently in the gun control movement but it is common in all of politics and probably all human interaction.
We saw it in government legislating “affordable housing”. We saw it in government legislating “affordable health care”. We saw it in the government creation of the welfare state. We saw it in government “creating jobs”. The list is probably impossible to enumerate.
Look at advertising. Do the majority of ads give you numbers and statistics or attempt to evoke emotions?
Reason is nothing but a thin veneer which is easily and frequently pierced.—Joe]
Die verfluchte Hure, Vernunft.
(The damned whore, Reason).
Martin Luther
[While this and similar words from Luther are frequently used as justification for rejection of religion I, even as an atheist, tend to give him a bit of a pass for it. It appears that in context he was referring to using reason to determine the nature or validity of god(s), not the general use of reason. He was not consistent in this however. For example he concluded that the earth was motionless and the sun, moon, and stars moved around the earth because some phrase in the Bible said as much.
But an analysis of Luther’s philosophy is way beyond the scope of a blog post as well as my interest. I bring up this quote because of it’s application to politics, economics, gun control, and even interpersonal relationships.
As Lyle has pointed out many times:
If you’d been born in Saudi, you’d most likely be a Muslim, in Borneo maybe a cannibal, born in America with low self esteem and watching the Old Media, you’ll be what I call a “default leftist”, meaning you’ll have the mentality that has you expressing puzzlement. It’s a given, and very few people can escape it, and even then they don’t really escape conditioning really, but are merely receiving conditioning of a different kind.
In Luther’s case he had a set of assumptions that he would not, perhaps could not, challenge despite evidence those assumptions had flaws. The Muslim, the cannibal, and the “default leftist” have a different set of assumptions about the world around them. To a certain extent those assumptions are unchallenged or even buried so deep into the unconscious they are invisible to the possessor of said assumptions.
The very basis of truth and knowledge within a culture depends upon a base set of shared assumptions. If those assumptions are at odds with the real world, as in the movement of the earth versus the sun, moon, and stars in Luther’s case, then reality is frequently rejected rather than the unacknowledged assumptions.
Lyle goes on to claim:
To be truly objective means you have no Earthly conditioning. How possible is that, being as we’re all born into some form of conditioning?
What are we doing right here, right now, if not attempting to reprogram people to a different set of cultural assumptions or “stimulus A = reaction B”?
Is our over-arching thesis that there is an “Ultimate Measure or Ideal of Right and Wrong” and if so, where is it? Or are we trying to tell people to “be objective” and then be the ones ourselves to define what is objectivity, thus forming our own cult?
I don’t buy the conclusion that there is no, or perhaps cannot be, an objective view of reality. Yes, we have biases from our culture. Yes, we have limitations of our senses. Yes, ultimately we cannot say with absolute certainty that our universe is not just an incredibly detailed simulation in some super-being’s computer lab. But even in this later case we can characterize the essence of our universe in a way that can be reproduced by others with significantly different cultural biases. For example, a dropped rock always falls and boiled water always evaporates and you will be find wide agreement with those claims across nearly all cultures.
From such simple, reproducible, observations one can build an entire objective view of the world that includes mass, time, distance, and temperature. You may lose some people as you start manipulating the simple concepts and forming derived concepts such as energy, sub-atomic particles, and quantum effects but a (perhaps very long, detailed, and expensive) set of experiments can be done to retrace the path and arrive at the same conclusions. If a different conclusion can explain the same data obtained from the repeatable experiments then two or more people can discuss the differences in the conclusions and, in most cases, devise an experiment to disprove one or both of the differing conclusions.
This is the scientific method.
Yes. The scientific method can be, at some level, described as a cult. This is because, if you dig deep enough, there are base assumptions which are not provable. An example would be that we can trust our senses to correctly tell us there does exist some object we call a rock and that such an object does fall. You might claim this is clearly provable. But I claim that you cannot disprove the claim the entire universe was created a millisecond ago complete with intact memories, buildings, books, and archeological evidence of ancient plant and animal life. Or try proving that the “rock” you are so certain actually exists is not just an elaborate model, along with models for all life forms and the rest of the universe, in a super computer.
But even if you can successfully argue that the scientific method is a “cult” not all cults, or world views, are of equal validity. The cult that believes a spaceship with aliens will soon arrive and carry off the true believers saving them from the imminent destruction of the earth can be proven wrong when the arrival date of the spaceship passes and the associated destruction of the earth fails to occur.
Data and reason conclusively demonstrates that some “cults” are more valid than others. It is only by the willful, or negligent, rejection of reason and/or data that most “cults” continue to have followers.
Many will claim, with what I find to be fairly convincing evidence and reasoning, that reason has been destroyed in our schools. While this may have a great deal of validity a case can be made that reason is just a thin veneer over a very primitive brain that does not recognize reason and is far, far more eager to embrace the assertions of authority figures or comfortable beliefs of simple sound bytes.
How else can you explain the widespread embracing of assertions as “Violence is always wrong.”? Or the small parade of people marching past my office window yesterday chanting, “No justice, no peace!”? It is my opinion that people gather into crowds and chant in unison because it helps them believe the irrational and the unbelievable. It penetrates that thin veneer of reason and taps into that deeper primitive brain. It gives them a sense of accomplishment when no accomplish, beyond the destruction of reason, has been achieved.
The “currency” of the left is in masses of people with simple, and almost always, wrong ideas.* Why do you think we run into “Reasoned Discourse” so often? Why do you think the leftist talk show hosts shout down their “guests” who disagree with them? It’s because they actively reject reason and data. Their minds have been stripped of, never developed, or actively reject that thin veneer of reason.
Peterson Syndrome is merely an articulable example of the absence of this thin veneer. I have recently mentioned to Ry and Barb L., “There are far too many crazy people in the world.” It’s true that much of the bizarre behavior we see around appears “crazy”. But these people are not really crazy in the usual sense.
It is crazy to reject success? The left has made tremendous strides in Dismantling America (Thomas Sowell) by rejecting reason. All the advances in gun control in the last century was through the rejection of reason and data on both the benefits and the clear intent of the 2nd Amendment. It’s crazy that an abusive spouse would claim their victim deserved the beating because dinner was five minutes late. But if they repeatedly convince their victim it was their own fault and the victim stays with them was it really crazy to make that claim?
It is my belief “the damned whore, reason” only services a small subset of the human population. That small group of people were, and are, frequently attacked for being seduced by the “damned whore”. But that same group of people, when they could escape the inquisitions, purges, and genocides, brought us health, wealth, and knowledge billions of times greater than the collective minds of 100’s of millions of others who could not or would not partaking of her services.
As Thomas Sowell points out, after Roman collapsed it took a 1000 years to recover to a point comparable to the peak of Roman culture. How much more clear of examples than Detroit, Greece, Cyprus, and Spain do people need to reject the politics of the left? Will it take another 1000 year lesson?
The answer is no example will be “clear enough”. These people do not operate on examples the way those serviced by the whore do. They cannot distinguish between intention and results. They cannot distinguish between truth and falsity. They are missing that thin veneer of reason and appealing to reason in someone without reason is a fools errand.
I see only three futures with numerous variations ahead of us. Two are exceedingly unpleasant and I believe the third is exceedingly unlikely. Those options are:
For a long time I assumed rural areas, such as the farm where I grew up, would be relatively safe. But there is historical evidence that farmers (along with bankers) are frequently among the first victims of societal collapse. So now I don’t know what to think or how to prepare for the final fall of reason to the barbarians.
I’m left thinking about the wise words of Marty Smith:
To hell with the 72 virgins … Give me three good whores.
—Joe]
* One of the most basic tenets of the political left is that is somehow wrong for there to be wealthy people. It’s not wrong that there exist super wealthy people. The world would be a better place if everyone, by todays standards, were super wealthy. And in fact by the standards of 1000 years ago the bottom 1% of the population in the U.S. have nearly unimaginable wealth. 1000 years ago all the richest king’s gold could not have bought a vaccine to prevent their child from contracting small pox. Nor could they have purchased a ride on a vehicle that could take them 50 miles in less than hour. Or gotten a valid answer to some of the toughest questions ever asked within a few minutes. But almost anyone today can get that for a pittance if not for free.
Without that thin veneer of reason the people of the political left cannot, or in some cases will not, recognize that the poor are only temporarily, if that, improved by taking wealth from the rich and redistributing it. The situation of the poor is improved through the creation of more wealth.
This creation of more wealth was how our world today became so much better for everyone than the world of 1000 years ago. We created a trillion (just a WAG) times more wealth. Creating more wealth may increase disparity between the rich and the poor but in the long term the poor will be improved far more than if the wealth of the rich was taken from them. This is not just an assertion but a simple extrapolation of countless “experiments” run in hundreds of cultures around the world over hundreds if not 1000s of years.
This creation of wealth required a large population growth and a dramatic increase in the consumption of natural resources. Both the population growth and the consumption of natural resources were, and are, seen as catastrophic by the political left. Yet, humans are far better off for it.
If a politician can’t be trusted to respect your 2nd Amendment rights how can they be trusted with any of your other rights?