The mistakes made by Congress wouldn’t be so bad if the next Congress didn’t keep trying to correct them.
Cullen Hightower
[And instead of undoing what they did in the previous session they add to the previous mistakes.–Joe]
The mistakes made by Congress wouldn’t be so bad if the next Congress didn’t keep trying to correct them.
Cullen Hightower
[And instead of undoing what they did in the previous session they add to the previous mistakes.–Joe]
Budget: A mythical beanbag. Congress votes mythical beans into it, and then tries to reach in and pull beans out.
Will Rogers
[Something to keep in mind as our government debates what to do about the economic situation.–Joe]
Yes, it was a bitter election and we gun owners are disappointed and worried about the future under an Obama administration. But that doesn’t mean we should engage in riotous or criminal behavior like some countries do after elections or regime changes. We have more class than that.
With that in mind I present the following which I received via email from Bruce (The Squirrel Hunter) regarding the epitome of class, despite what her detractors claim, Sarah Palin:
The rest of the world cannot understand how after such bitter election campaigns, American politicians can return to reality. For instance Sarah Palin, has invited to her great state of Alaska the men who defeated her, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
She has provided a moose hunting trip for their enjoyment and has hired two other prominent men to assist them.
Dick Cheney will instruct them in safe gun handling and Ted Kennedy will drive them back to their cabins in the evening.
What a gal, that Sarah is such a sport and thinks of everything.
Crime does not pay … as well as politics.
A. E. Newman
[Apparently Rod (Pocket Rocket) Blagojevich was trying to capitalize on this assertion.–Joe]
I had an email exchange today:
From: “Disobey”
To: Joe
Hi Joe,
I am at that point. I am looking for ideas on how I as an individual can stage a peaceful, non-violent, but dramatic protest. I am willing to go to jail to make my point, but not unnecessarily or with unnecessary punishment if it can be avoided. I bet somebody has a laundry list of really good ideas with the legal implications well thought out. I was hoping you might be able to point me in the right direction?
Thanks,
“Disobey”
From: Joe
To: “Disobey”
Hmmm… I don’t have any such list or know of any. But if you want I will be glad to post the request on my blog and see what others have in mind.,
What aspects of our society do you want to protest against? It makes a big difference…,
-joe-
From: “Disobey”
To: Joe
Hi Joe,
Thanks for the reply. Please put it out on your blog, maybe it’s time to create such a list. In a nutshell, I want to raise public discourse on our disfunctional local school district and the elected officials who do nothing. I suppose that if I mention that I am in California you will just say I am screwed. I am still willing to keep fighting for justice and fairness.
“Disobey”
I keep thinking of Gandhi’s march to the sea to make salt. But I can’t seem to translate it into our time and situation except with respect to making machine guns or something–which has already been tried.
Any ideas?
Update: I don’t have anything for the disfunctional school situation but it seems to me that publicly putting flash hiders or folding stocks on your rifles making them “assault weapons” might be something worthwhile. It’s not nearly as scary as making machine guns.
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.
Abraham Lincoln
[Additional justification for Roberta X’s position in the first line of the second paragraph that I quoted from yesterday.–Joe]
I’d express it more forcibly, but the sentiment is right.
As far as I’m concerned, all governments cross my “line” on Day One. But governments are not like a single baddie confronting one in an alley; you cannot simply shoot them when they try to do you harm. Life can become very inconvenient for you if you even try.
Roberta X
December 10, 2008
Governments, Sandlines And Me
[Roberta hasn’t said anything previously in the “Three Percenter” vs. “Pragmatist” debate and I have said very little. She explains why for both of us.–Joe]
In another gift to gun owners before leaving office the adminstration arrested Illinios Governor Rod (Pocket Rocket) Blagojevich today.
Now instead of restricting access to guns which he mixed up with a popular sex toy there is a chance he might well become a sex toy himself while visiting Club Fed. After working so hard for so many years to screw gun owners we can only hope he discovers what it’s like to be on the receiving end for a few years.
This touches close to home for me, since our now WA state gubnuh “found” enough votes after recount after recount, to turn a loss into a victory. Ann Coulter gives us more detail from the Minnesota senatorial race than you’ll find anywhere in the Old Media;
According to Michael Barone, an examination of King County [Washington State] records showed that nearly 2,000 more mail-in ballots had been “cast” in King County than had been requested.
I was immediately suspicious when WA state went to an all mail-in voting system. Now I’m not suspicious– I know.
But Gregoire got to be governor — having done unusually well among the imaginary voters of King County.
The head of the Washington State Democratic Party orchestrating this ballot theft was Paul Berendt. Guess who is advising Al Franken on the Minnesota recount right now? That’s right: Paul Berendt.
Surprise, surprise. We now have evidence of an interstate rent-a-cheat. Coulter adds;
And, per usual, the Republicans clearly haven’t the vaguest notion what is about to hit them.
Clearly. The Republicans are too busy trying to appear nice, and can’t be bothered with vague abstractions like the rule of law, or the state and federal Constitutions. I never could, and can never refer to them as the Grand Old Party. For now, it’s the Party of the Perpetually Clueless, or PPC. The trouble with the clueless is that they never know they’re clueless, and cowards always have a perfectly good rationale for doing nothing.
Alan Korwin confronts them asking if the bias hadn’t been there might have the presidental election gone the other way and they say:
Her answer: “No. Because the country was ready for change, you could just tell.” Her husband Carl Leubsdorf, Washington Bureau Chief for the Dallas Morning News, agreed.
…
What does she read to get a sense of what people are thinking?
Her answer: “Daily Kos and The Huffington Post.” She saw nothing unusual in this, adding, these are good places for finding story leads.
There is more. Take your blood pressure meds with you.
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
Milton Friedman
[It’s really sad that people are:
For those interested in political freedom I would like to suggest the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and 13th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution would be good additions to capitalism toward achieving political freedom. Although if the Second is uninfringed then the 13th pretty much should be taken care. Isn’t it ironic that our first president with a skin color strongly correlated with slavery in our country wants to continue the infringements that kept those people in slavery? And furthermore the first infringements upon that right in this country were enacted to keep people of that skin color from obtaining and using firearms? Condi Rice gets it. Barack Obama doesn’t. What makes the difference?–Joe]
Death by a thousand, self-inflicted cuts. This from our friend Howard;
Friends:
Today we really have a poporie of news.
I’m on duty patrolling downtown this evening. 20:30 I get the patrol officers briefing. 21:00 we get our volunteers briefing. Hope the rain holds-off. Then again if it starts raining for real I guess we just go home.
Soon we may be all the protection the public gets.
The public transportation unit is gone. More cops are leaving than replacements can be found. The Ministry of Interior is disarming the public who have licensed guns…after passing [a] process determining need for a gun and background, physical and mental record checks.
Who ever said registration and licensing were the path to confiscation? Once again we see Jews being disarmed, only this time Jews are doing it to each other.
Now the Finance Ministry is not going to fund the minimum wage school guards receive. So the schools will be totally unprotected.
This is what is known as the “Peace” process– The lack of meaningful opposition to socialist, Marxist, Fascist, communist or jihadist military expansionism.
I’ve referred to Jim Jones and the “People’s Temple” several times. They represent my ideal of the ultimate fate of a socialist organization. I visited San Francisco twice in the mid to late ’70s. My older siblings had spent time in West Coast quasi-religious, socialist communes (all very, very “hip” you understand) and I’d visited them, spending several nights at one of them in Oregon. I was even “touched by the spirit” at one of their rallies, and I’m here to tell you; that s#^t is real and it is powerful (something about human evolution having selected in us a tendency to bond tightly with our group, with extremely powerful emotions, in times of stress, but I’ll leave that to the sociologists, anthropologists and biologists). I learned all I wanted to know about these groups. Specifically, that I never wanted anything to do with them ever again.
These groups had sprung up in a lot of places back then, accepting the assertion that “All You Need is Love” or other similar nonsense. They were very socialist, as any description with the word “free” in it was super cool: Free love, free food, free store, free drugs, etc.. Everything belonged to everyone and all was love, love, love… Only trouble was, as you would expect, the takers always seemed to outnumber the givers, and so the givers (most anyone with options in life) would become disgusted at some stage and leave the group. You had to use extreme measures to coerce members into staying on, much as the Russians had to build the Berlin Wall and Jim Jones had to imprison his followers in a remote jungle.
I’d seen the History Channel’s documentary on Jim Jones, but there is a ton of stuff in Dan Flynn’s account that was never mentioned. I mean, Wow! Take some time to read the article (hat tip to Micheal Savage).
By virtue of producing rent-free rent-a-rallies for liberal politicians and causes, Jim Jones engendered enormous amounts of good will from Democratic politicians and activists. They allowed their political ambitions to derail their governing responsibilities. Frisco pols like Harvey Milk never seemed to care how Jones could, at the snap of his fingers, direct hundreds of people to stack a public meeting or volunteer for a campaign. City Councilman Milk just knew that he benefitted from that control, and therefore never bothered to do anything to inhibit the dangerous cult operating in his city. Instead, he actively aided and abetted a homicidal maniac. It wasn’t just local hacks Jones commanded respect from. He held court with future First Lady Rosalyn Carter, vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale, and California Governor Jerry Brown.
Self-determination, the autonomy of the individual, asserts itself in the right to race his automobile, to handle his power tools, to buy a gun, to communicate to mass audiences his opinion, no matter how ignorant, how aggressive, it may be.
Herbert Marcuse
An Essay on Liberation, ch. 1 (1969)
[Some people don’t want to be liberated. And a great many more don’t want others to be liberated either.–Joe]
President-elect Obama, I wish you all good fortune as you embark on your Presidential career. I suspect that you will come to realize (if you haven’t already) that Socialism and Communism don’t work, that we can’t tax our way into prosperity, and that punishing motivated people who succeed on their own by forcing them to support those with little or no ambition is a recipe for disaster. If you don’t figure those things out, that’s okay too. We might have to wait for the midterm elections of 2010, but one way or another, because of you, the nightmare of Socialism will finally be over for America.
John Ross
November 8, 2008
Hallelujah! The Nightmare Is Over!, or Thank You, Mr. Obama, for Putting So Many Bad Things Behind Us
[If it were only so easy. Maybe he’s right. But Barb tells me I always optimistic and I’m not optimistic in our present situation. Is this the way it has ever been? People elect a socialist to the top spot, he or she takes the country down the toilet and everyone realizes it was a terrible mistake and becomes capitalistic overnight (two years)? Show me an example where that has been the case and maybe I can be optimistic again.–Joe]
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
Edward Abbey
(1927 – 1989)
[Among other accomplishments, such as his books, Abbey inspired the formation and associated with the members of Earth First! I find it very interesting how the words of one set of extremists can match the words of their opposites.–Joe]
I sometimes do a back-and-fourth with a self described centrist, or moderate (which is another name for a leftist in denial, something like a “moderate drinker” who can’t get through a day without alcohol) over at Say Uncle in the comments, but I thought it should be posted here too. Today we’re talking about the proposed (yet another) GM “bailout”. I explained how propping up failure is inviting more failure, while at the same time negatively influencing the way we make decisions, while at the same time freezing out some of the small, hungry, innovative businesses and potential businesses, to say nothing of unfairly punishing taxpayers for the bad decisions of others. He offered some of the regular arguments against pure capitalism;
“…the party with leverage will take advantage of that leverage, often to the level of exploitation..”
To which I replied;
I know that is the age-old argument, but what you describe has a simpler name. It’s called crime [or corruption]. That’s what government is for– to protect basic rights by punishing (retaliating against) crime.
And the reason why centrism is the superior stance;
“…pure capitalism and pure socialism are both bad…”
How so? Do you have any proof of that? Any evidence? Have we ever seen pure capitalism? If so, I’d like to know. Give me an example. I’ll bet you a case of beer that any example you attempt to give will in fact be an example of what happens when government get its nose into the market, creating some form of monopoly [either that or government has simply failed to do its job as protector of basic rights].
I’ve been all through this many times before. Please read the book, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal or I’ll be forced to re-write the whole damned thing right here. Trouble is; that would take months and I’d go broke wasting my time writing. As I said, you haven’t seen this stuff [these ideas] before, and so you’re falling into all the old traps. You need some genuine de-programming. I know that sounds really insulting and condescending, but the same is true anytime you try to tell an alcoholic he’s an alcoholic. This is damned tough stuff. I’m saying here that you’re addicted to a belief in government-sponsored coercion. You’re convinced that it has a proper place in a free society. I’m saying that that is a contradiction in terms.
The coercion pushers have gotten to you and got you hooked. You’ve grown up with pushers and you’ve known nothing else. The same happened to me and it was a tough, slow, painful withdrawal. Even still it’s one day at a time. I have to go to regular meetings with other people struggling with the destructive effects of believing in socialist theories. Oh sure, I thought a little bit here and a little bit there would be fine. A lot of people do it just to get along in social situations. Lots of people think like that, but a little bit is never enough, is it? You always end up needing another fix, and there’s always another pusher ready and willing to sell it to you…
“Hello. My name is Lyle and I’m a recovering socialist…”
You have to first admit you have a problem before you can take the steps to solve it. Your original post is a good start– you’re asking questions. That’s good, but you’re fighting the answers because they go against everything you’ve ever known. If you really want the answers, it’s going to take a lot of effort on your part. It will be time-consuming and it will be painful. Some of the people you thought were your friends are going to chastise you [even disown you]. Stay strong. Only you can help you, but we can help point you in the right direction. You will have friends.
What the centrist doesn’t realize is that, though some people are bad and as a result sometimes people will get burned, when government shifts away from being the protector of rights and becomes the main perpetrator of coercion, we’re all screwed. This has been referred to as the equal distribution of misery.
When I was five, my first-grade teacher taught us to repeat a random string of syllables she called “the Pleh-juh, Vuh-Lee-junss”. We were to recite it every day at the beginning of class for the next several years, while holding our right hand to the left side of the chest (reportedly, this is where our hearts were to be found inside the chest cavity).
Getting ready for that first day of school (I never attended kindergarten) my mother told me, “Now, do what the teacher tells you”. No “goodbye” no “be sure to learn something new and interesting so you can come back and tell me about it.” Just “Do what you’re told.” I was frightened.
And so we learned to repeat these random syllables, every day, for years.
It was only much later in life that I began to wonder whether these syllables could be broken out into actual words, and even later before I wondered what the actual words meant. No one ever attempted to teach us. I suppose the teachers were doing this exercise for the same reason we kids were doing it– because we were told to do it. If you’d asked me, at age six, what language the Pleh-juh, Vuh-Lee-junss was in, I’d have been at a loss for an answer. Surely it’s a trick question. Are you trying to make fun of me? I want my mother…
“Eye Pleh-juh Vuh-Lee-junss, tootheuh flag, of the united states uvuhmerika, and toothuhrepublik for whitchit stands…Won nation, induhvizuhble (invisible?) with libertee and just us four all.” I knew there were actual words in there (I could recognize several) but it never occurred to me even to wonder about them. All the other kids apparently did the same thing, for the same reason, and never spoke about it. It was simply the thing to do because we were told, like so many of the other things we did in school for no readily apparent reasons and no explanation. The school principal would occasionally step in, see that we were at attention, right hands on the left sides of our chest cavities, facing the flag and reciting all the correct syllables in the correct order, and it all appeared to be fine and dandy (the principal was vastly more powerful than God. He could physically grab you by the arm, shake you, and demand; “Why were you doing that? Huh? Why? To which you invariably gave the standard reply; “I don’t know…”) Wonderful how the kids are learning respect for the flag of their country, and the critically important principles it represents! He left satisfied. The God was satiated. All was well.
But they never taught us a damned thing about it. Nothing. Ever. Likewise, we were taught “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless America” and we’d occasionally sing “Alaska & Hawaii” (this was in 1963 when those were brand new states. We knew nothing about such things, but dutifully repeated the syllables) and no one ever discussed the lyrics. At all. It wasn’t until I was out of high school that I began to actually learn some of this stuff, such as the difference between a republic and a straight democracy, or what a pledge is, or an allegiance. That was after the effects of having my curiosity crushed to death in school had started to wear off.
Richard P. Feynman wrote about this in his autobiography. As a professor of theoretical physics, he often visited other universities. When on a visit to a South American university (in Brazil, IIRC) he was introduced to a class of very high-level students (which is to say they got extremely good grades). It took him some time speaking with them to figure out that they knew next to nothing. They could recite, practically word for word, from the text books but when it came to understanding and applying the concepts they were at a total loss.
This is the Soviet model, come here to roost in our public education system. Hope you like crap.
The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind. When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious.
Dr. Lyle Rossiter
The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. 2006
[H/T to Jeff.
While looking around for an Zune compatible format for my consumption I ran across this:
Rossiter’s dream is to construct a grand, idealized libertarian, nightmarish, dystopia that creates hardships and inflicts wounds. This is dangerous, tragic, and sick.
So both sides accuse the other of being mentally ill.
Interesting.
So one then has to ask, “Which world view has resulted in the worst outcome for the affected populations?” I would presume the United States has best approximated (and poorly at that) the Libertarian viewpoint. But I’m not sure which of the following best represents the centrally planning government of the Liberal viewpoint: Communist China, USSR, Nazi Germany, or the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. But then I decided that it really didn’t matter.–Joe]