Day of Protest

Very emotional day around the country today. Marches and speeches and signs, celebrities, songs, all the usual stuff associated with demonstrations. The target? Gun violence. Multiple mass shootings in the last decade or so have pushed this issue right into everyone’s faces. Now we’ve a bunch of high school kids leading - well, appearing to lead - a massive new push to rein it in.

On the one hand I find this to be just and proper, citizens exercising their First Amendment rights to assemble peaceably and make their voices heard. This is how it’s supposed to work when an issue is getting insufficient attention from the government.

On the other hand, a lot of what I heard today comes straight out of the leftist playbook. Lots of references to corrupt authority (read: established authority that the protestors disagree with), the currently popular “fake news” meme (which seems to mean not news that is false, but rather news that contradicts the Preferred Narrative), calls for greater government intervention. Which means greater government restriction of personal liberty. Restriction of choice. A further retreat from personal responsibility and into the comforting embrace of nanny-state government.

I understand the source of these impulses, I do. The world can be a scary, complicated place and it’s just ever so much easier to turn the hard parts over to someone else. Let the government make the decisions for you. Let them . . . take care of you. That’s what government is for, right? Make the Bad Things go away and let us live in a world of sweetness and light, lollipops and puppy dogs where nothing bad ever happens.

The root of this issue is the Second Amendment. About 250 years ago, our ancestors fought a war with a distant government that had become unresponsive and tyrannical. The lessons learned in that hard-fought struggle were applied to the new federal government formed by the several states. Looming large among those lessons was the need for a free people to be able to protect their essential liberties from a government grown corrupt and oppressive. And although the Second Amendment is written in such a way as to refer to the people’s right to keep and bear arms, what it actually recognizes and guarantees (the Constitution does not grant rights, it recognizes existing intrinsic rights and restrains the government from infringing upon them) is the right of self-defense, both individually and collectively. The First Amendment is the pivot of the entire American experiment, but the Second is the foundation upon which that pivot is balanced. Without the right and capacity to defend yourself, your community, your inherent rights, no other right can exist. And make no mistake, should the Second Amendment fall, the others will be right behind it. It’s a very short step from banning guns to banning talk about guns . . . see Youtube’s recent actions to remove firearms-related content from its service for a splendid example and hint of what’s to come.

Today’s protests are dressed up in the all-to-familiar refrain of “think of the children.” But the people behind these protests, those providing the funding and the scripts and the support, they’re not interested in the children except as pawns to advance an authoritarian agenda. Human beings are not individuals to these people. Individuals have no worth. Only the collective matters, the labor it can provide, the wealth it can create to be exploited, the power it can grant. Leftism, at its core, is a philosophy of childish petulance and fear. Those who adhere to its collectivist ways always see themselves as the elite who should by right be making the decisions for everyone else. Because they’re just so much smarter than anyone else and we’d all be better off if only we had the brains to see things the way they do. Never mind that their ideas only work when enforced by guns and hobnailed boots.

A gun is a thing. An object. An inanimate device. It’s very easy to put your hands on such a thing and take it away from others. It’s a simple fix to a complex problem. Never mind addressing the root causes of the violence we see unfolding, let’s just take the guns away. It’s quick and satisfying. We will have Done Something and the world will be better.

And if liberty dies a little bit more in the process, what’s the harm? We’ve too much of that stuff anyway. People think Incorrect Thoughts, espouse Incorrect Opinions, point out Inconvenient Facts that conflict with our desired world view. Once we’ve turned all that messy stuff over to the government so that the Right People can make the decisions, we’ll be better off. The naughty people with their own ideas will be made to toe the line.

Then we’ll be safe.

Sixteen Years Have Fogged Our Minds

Sixteen years ago today America was stunned by an act of sheer barbarism perpetrated by hate-fueled adherents of a bad interpretation of iron-age mysticism. On that day I lost three coworkers, one of whom was also a friend, and the memory is as sharp and fresh as it was the day after it happened.

Lieutenant Commander Vince Tolbert, USN.
Angela Houtz
And of course Gerry Moran.

In the sixteen years since we’ve seen America slowly lose its way. Theatrical and ultimately ineffectual measures have chipped away at our basic freedoms. We’ve failed to heed the old wisdom that says “those who would sacrifice their essential liberty for the sake of momentary security will soon find that they have neither.”

What is especially galling, even frightening, is that the same forces and twisted beliefs that drove the 9-11 terrorists to commit their despicable acts are evident in America today. Religious fundamentalists attack our most important beliefs, such as that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Goose-stepping morons parade in our streets, spewing their filth at any and all within hearing, while the reality-impaired followers of the extreme left dress up their own insanity in the guise of “help.” People claim to have “awoken” because they’ve fallen for propaganda that matches their existing biases. We’ve elected a complete imbecile to our highest office based almost solely on populist drivel and a deep seated anger amongst small-minded people who are afraid of change.

It was the same factors driving the Islamist lunatics who perpetrated 9-11. We can’t slide down that same slope. We must be better. We must be informed, rational, and view the world as it actually is, not thru the lens of whatever ism we find appealing or trendy.

Western liberal democracy is in existential danger, almost at the point of crisis. Short term thinking runs amok, ideologues pollute the public discourse, and no-one seems to be willing to look beyond their own nose.

It’s time to do better, and the memory of 9-11 should be inspiration enough for that, shouldn’t it?

Ahmed and the Clock

Let’s see if we can explain what’s happening here. We all know the story by now, I’m sure, with opinions divided right along predictable lines. Kid builds (or didn’t, there seems to be some question about this) a clock, brings it to school in a briefcase to show his teachers, most of them say good work, one decides it looks like a bomb, hilarity ensues. Lots of media attention, the President tweets about it, people lose their freakin’ minds. As it happens, the kid is muslim, which lends a delicious spice to the proceedings. Lots of lecturing about how we’re all terrible people because we assumed the muslim kid had a bomb just because he’s muslim. Don’t tar everyone with the same brush, yadda yadda yadda.

Maybe I can explain the backstory here. Bear with me.

So you’re walking down a busy street in the city. Lots of people walking your way, lots of people walking the other way. Everyone is wrapped up in whatever errand they’re on, not paying too much attention to anyone else. Every now and then a guy wearing a purple shirt walks past you. You barely notice. Then a guy wearing a purple shirt punches you in the face, yells “Everyone should wear purple shirts!” and disappears up the street.

Stunned, you wonder what the hell that was about, chalk it up to a lone nut, and resume walking. Nine more guys wearing purple shirts walk past you. You barely notice.

The tenth guy wearing a purple shirt punches you in the face, yells “Everyone should wear purple shirts!” and disappears into the crowd. Concerned with your throbbing jaw, it scarcely registers on you that both guys who’ve punched you were wearing purple shirts. But as you resume your walk, you do begin to notice how many purple shirts you see. Most of them walk right past you.

And then the eleventh guy wearing a purple shirt punches you in the face, yells “Everyone should wear purple shirts!” and runs off.

Now you’re paying attention. As you once more resume your walk, you look at every purple shirt you see, wondering if you’re going to get punched in the face. Twelve or fifteen purple-shirted guys walk past without a hint of trouble. You being to relax and think about strange statistical aberrations.

Then the sixteenth guy wearing a purple shirt punches you in the face, yells “Everyone should wear purple shirts!” and runs off.

Now you’re angry. It seems that anyone wearing a purple shirt might punch you in the face. So you’re vigilant. You watch for purple shirts. When you see one, you give that person a wide berth. You begin to notice that every now and then someone wearing a purple shirt punches a random passer-by in the face, yells that everyone should wear purple shirts and runs off. You start to try to warn people to watch out for guys wearing purple shirts. Most dismiss you as a nut yourself. A few berate you for making assumptions about purple shirts. One or two get very angry and tell you they normally wear purple shirts themselves but today is laundry day and their purple shirt is in the dryer.

You start to doubt your premise yourself. Maybe it is just one of those weird things that happens.

Then a guy wearing a purple shirt punches you in the face.

Now you’re mad. You look even more carefully for purple shirts. When a guy wearing one comes your way, you raise your fists, ready to fight. The guy in the purple shirt looks at you like you’re crazy and goes out of his way to avoid you. You watch him go, just in case, and from behind you a guy wearing a purple shirt punches you in the back of the head. He asks you why you hate purple shirts and runs off.

So as you continue up the street, you keep a careful eye out for guys in purple shirts and you ready yourself to react any time you see one.

People call you crazy. They tell you you’re a horrible person with an unhealthy fixation on purple shirts. They point out that people wearing other colors occasionally punch someone in the face. You try to tell them that that happens a lot less often than someone wearing a purple shirt punching someone in the face but they tell you you’re wrong and refuse to listen to you any more.

Now a kid wearing a purple shirt comes down the street, his hands clenched into fists. What are you supposed to do?

Fourteen Years Have Not Dimmed the Memory

Jerry Moran. Angela Houtz. Lieutenant Commander Vince Tolbert. It's hard to believe it was fourteen years ago on a clear and crisp September morning when refugees from the twelfth century crashed airplanes into buildings and shook us out of our complacency. We remember.

2010 Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

So it seems the retrograde barbarians of the Religion of Peace are at it again. This time they've threatened violence against the creators of the television show South Park, who have dared to depict the Prophet Mohammed in animated form. Except it was a guy in a bear suit which was claimed to be Mohammed. And was then later revealed to be Santa Claus. And it's a freakin' cartoon anyway!!

Enough is enough, gentle reader. On 20 May of this year, let's ALL draw the Prophet Mohammed. It's time to drag the Islamist nut-cases kicking and screaming out of the twelfth century and into the present day. Draw a picture of the Prophet and post it to your blog on that day. It doesn't have to be insulting or degrading or disrespectful (tho it can be if you want it to be - that's kinda the point). Hell, it doesn't even have to look like a person. It just needs to be labelled as Mohammed. We'll renew our commitment to freedom of speech and show that we're not going to be intimidated by a sad collection of backwards madmen.

What If . . .

I like this.



It's jingoistic rubbish, but . . . there is truth in it.