This One’s Late, But Too Good Not to Put Up.
Artist is John Deering, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Month: July 2003
The Sound of Music It Ain’t
Artist is Dennis Draughon, Scranton Times, OH.
Hey! I Resemble That Remark!
Artist is Mike Thompson, Detroit Free Press
And This Would Be Different…How?
Artist is Mike Ramirez, Los Angeles Times
I Have an Idea:
Clayton Cramer links to this Reuter’s report:
Carrying the message of “Control population growth, pay attention to sexual health, prevent AIDS,” a bright yellow condom covering the facade of a 20-story hotel in the southern Chinese city of Guilin marked United Nations World Population Day on Friday. The roundness of the three-star Fragrant River Hotel provided the perfect shape for erecting the giant condom, according to the hotel manager, who declined to give her name. “The initial plan was to cover the whole building, but because the wind was so strong they could only cover the front half,” said the manager. The Guilin Latex Company has applied to the publishers of the Guinness Book of World Records to recognize their giant condom, which is nearly 330 feet around and 260 feet tall, said the Xinhua wire service. Local activists and international experts agree that more publicity and government leadership are needed to avert an AIDS catastrophe in China.
My idea? Let’s call a joint session of Congress and then put a condom over the Capitol building. They are airtight, right?
In Their Eyes, I Don’t Doubt It
Threat rating: Medium. Your total lack of decent
family values makes you dangerous, but we can
count on some right wing nutter blowing you up
if you become too high profile.
What threat to the Bush administration are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
(Bad spelling is Quizilla’s, not mine.)
“The Myth of Man The Killer”
Armed and Dangerous has an outstanding essay up on the nature of man and the erroneous belief that man is a natural killer.
Some quotes:
The Rousseauian myth of technological Man as an ugly scab on the face of pristine Nature has become so pervasive in Western culture as to largely drive out the older opposing image of “Nature, red in tooth and claw” from the popular mind. Perhaps this was inevitable as humans achieved more and more control over their environment; protection from famine, plague, foul weather, predators, and other inconveniences of nature encouraged the fond delusion that only human nastiness makes the world a hard place.
—
Another, darker kind of romanticism is at work as well. To a person who feels fundamentally powerless, the belief that one is somehow intrinsically deadly can be a cherished illusion. Its marketers know full well that violence fantasy sells not to the accomplished, the wealthy and the wise, but rather to working stiffs trapped in dead-end jobs, to frustrated adolescents, to retirees — the marginalized, the lonely and the lost.
To these people, the killer-ape myth is consolation. If all else fails, it offers the dark promise of a final berserkergang, unleashing the mythic murderer inside to express all those aggravations in a gory and vengeful catharsis. But if seven out of ten humans can’t pull the trigger on an enemy they have every reason to believe is trying to kill them, it seems unlikely that ninety-seven out of a hundred could make themselves murder.
—
The man who fears Hobbes’s “warre”, who sees every one of his neighbors as a potential murderer, will surrender nearly anything to be protected from them. He will call for a strong hand from above; he will become a willing instrument in the oppression of his fellows. He may even allow himself to be turned into a killer in fact. Society will be atomized into millions of fearful fragments, each reacting to the fear of fantasied individual violence by sponsoring the political conditions for real violence on a large scale.
That’s enough – go read the whole thing. It is, I must say, a perfect companion peice to “A Mistake a Free People Get to Make Only Once.”
U.S. v Miller in Detail
Publicola links to this detailed explanation of the U.S. v Miller decision on the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) site. It’s very, very good.
Not Quite, Mr. Koch
Instapundit points to this Newsmax column by former New York Mayor Ed Koch. In it, Koch warns the Democrats that they’re making an error in beating the “Bush Lied!” drum, but something else in the column caught my attention:
At the core of the Democratic ideology is a belief in helping the less fortunate among us. The Republican mantra, on the other hand, is “I made it on my own, and you will have to do the same.”
Not quite, sir.
The core of the Democratic ideology is a belief that the GOVERNMENT must help the less fortunate among us. The Republican mantra, on the other hand is “I made it without a government handout, and so should you.”
Charity is all well and good, but when the government takes from some for redistribution to others, it’s not charity, it’s extortion. There’s no such thing as “obligatory charity.”
Spending Other People’s Money Always Is
Artist is Chuck Asay, Colorado Springs Gazette