No, It Didn’t.

Today’s Day by Day:

No it didn’t. It just admitted defeat this year.

They’ll be back. They always are.

(And whatever she could hide under that dress must be a popgun!)

She Bush Turned Me Into a Newt!.

The structural scientists at DemocraticUnderground.com have performed an experiment that proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that the World Trade Center towers were brought down by a Bushco Conspiracy™ and not by the raging fires resulting from having fuel-laden 767/737s smash into them.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=56836&mesg_id=56836

Link left cold on purpose, but by all means, go look. Or, if you don’t want to do that, go look at the AR15.com thread. It reproduces the whole post.

To whet your appetite, here’s the mental midget’s “model” of one of the towers:

From his rigorous, meticulously detailed and calibrated test he determines:

What I conclude is that a fairly flimsy steel structure does not distort and bend and collapse very easily from a simple hydrocarbon fire. And thus, it is not clear why the much stronger steel columns in the WTC towers weakened so much from fires that the towers underwent global collapse.

Being a Python fan, what I was reminded of was this:

FIRST VILLAGER
We have found a witch. May we burn her?

ALL
A Witch! Burn her!

BEDEVERE
How do you know she is a witch?

ALL
She looks like one. Yes, she does.

BEDEVERE
Bring her forward.

They bring her forward – a beautiful YOUNG GIRL (MISS ISLINGTON)
dressed up as a witch.

WITCH
I am not a witch. I am not a witch.

BEDEVERE
But you are dressed as one.

WITCH
They dressed me up like this.

ALL
We didn’t, we didn’t!

WITCH
This is not my nose, It is a false one.

BEDEVERE takes her nose off.

BEDEVERE
Well?

FIRST VILLAGER
… Well, we did do the nose.

BEDEVERE
The nose?

FIRST VILLAGER
And the hat. But she is a witch.

ALL
A witch, a witch, burn her!

BEDEVERE
Did you dress her up like this?

FIRST VILLAGER
… Um … Yes … no … a bit … yes… she has got a wart.

BEDEVERE
Why do you think she is a witch?

SECOND VILLAGER
She turned me into a newt!

BEDEVERE
A newt?

SECOND VILLAGER
(After looking at himself for some time)
I got better.

ALL
Burn her anyway.

BEDEVERE
Quiet! Quiet! There are ways of telling whether she is a witch.

ARTHUR and PATSY ride up at this point and watch what follows with interest

ALL
There are? Tell up. What are they, wise Sir Bedevere?

BEDEVERE
Tell me … what do you do with witches?

ALL
Burn them.

BEDEVERE
And what do you burn, apart from witches?

FOURTH VILLAGER
… Wood?

BEDEVERE
So why do witches burn?

SECOND VILLAGER
(pianissimo)
… Because they’re made of wood…?

BEDEVERE
Good.

PEASANTS stir uneasily then come round to this conclusion.

ALL
I see. Yes, of course.

BEDEVERE
So how can we tell if she is made of wood?

FIRST VILLAGER
Make a bridge out of her.

BEDEVERE
Ah … but can you not also make bridges out of stone?

ALL
Ah. Yes, of course … um … err …

BEDEVERE
Does wood sink in water?

ALL
No, no, It floats. Throw her in the pond Tie weights on her. To the pond.

BEDEVERE
Wait. Wait … tell me, what also floats on water?

ALL
Bread? No, no, no. Apples …. gravy … very small rocks …

ARTHUR
A duck.

They all turn and look at ARTHUR. BEDEVERE looks up very impressed.

BEDEVERE
Exactly. So… logically …

FIRST VILLAGER
(beginning to pick up the thread)
If she … weighs the same as a duck … she’s made of wood.

BEDEVERE
And therefore?

ALL
A witch! … A duck! A duck! Fetch a duck.

FOURTH VILLAGER
Here is a duck, Sir Bedevere.

BEDEVERE
We shall use my largest scales.

He leads them a few yards to a very strange contraption indeed, made
of wood and rope and leather. They put the GIRL in one pan and the
duck in another. Each pan is supported by a wooden stave. BEDEVERE
checks each pan then … ARTHUR looks on with interest.

BEDEVERE
Remove the supports.

Two PEASANTS knock them away with sledge hammers. The GIRL and the
duck swing slightly but balance perfectly.

ALL
A witch! A witch!

WITCH
It’s a fair cop.

All
Burn her! Burn her! Let’s make her into a ladder.

The VILLAGERS drag the girl away, leaving ARTHUR and BEDEVERE
regarding each other admiringly.

And that is precisely the level of “science” involved in that “experiment.”

The forces of publik skooling have won. We’re doomed.

Another Example of Why People Keep Guns for Self-Defense.

Via Uncle, Stalker-0 Armed Husband-1. Excerpt:

On the other hand it gives me tremendous pause to consider just how close I was that night to a decision on whether to shoot or not. Because we didn’t arrest him we don’t know whether he was armed or not, at least the officer didn’t mention frisking him. Given the sequence of events I missed coming upon this freak by perhaps seconds. At night with a flashlight as my guide I would have had to make a decision on whether he was dangerous or not. I am glad it didn’t come to that sort of decision but given my attitude I am confident that I would not have been impetuous.

Pierre has no fear that having a .45 on him will “eat away at (his) sanity as if it were emitting lethal radiation.” Pierre understands the reason for the right to arms, and his responsibilities under it.

Good on ya, mate. I’m glad everything came out well.

“Sumbitch” Revisited

Back in November of 2003 I wrote one of my most popular essays, That Sumbitch Ain’t Been BORN! in response to some questions from a Brazilian commenter. Specifically, he asked what is the idea that all Americans share? My piece was an attempt to answer that question.

Today, Instapundit pointed to an essay that does it far better than I could, Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About America?. An excerpt (shades of “Sumbitch”):

Everywhere in the world, the rich person lives well. Indeed, a good case can be made that if you are rich, you live better in countries other than America, because you enjoy the pleasures of aristocracy. In India, where I grew up, the wealthy have innumerable servants and toadies groveling before them and attending to their every need.

In the United States, on the other hand, the social ethic is egalitarian, regardless of wealth. For all his riches, Bill Gates could not approach a homeless person and say, “Here’s a $100 bill. I’ll give it to you if you kiss my feet.” Most likely the homeless guy would tell Gates to go to hell. The American view is that the rich guy may have more money, but he isn’t in any fundamental sense better than you are. The American janitor or waiter sees himself as performing a service, but he doesn’t see himself as inferior to those he serves.

Another, more to the point:

In America your destiny is not prescribed; it is constructed. Your life is like a blank sheet of paper and you are the artist. This notion of being the architect of your own destiny is the incredibly powerful idea that is behind the worldwide appeal of America. Young people especially find the prospect of authoring their own lives irresistible. The immigrant discovers that America permits him to break free of the constraints that have held him captive, so that the future becomes a landscape of his own choosing.

If there is a single phrase that captures this, it is “the pursuit of happiness.” As writer V. S. Naipaul notes, “much is contained” in that simple phrase: “the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation, perfectibility, and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known [around the world] to exist; and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away.”

What is the idea that all Americans share, no matter what their nominal citizenship? No matter where on the planet they live?

We believe in the pursuit of happiness.

Read the whole thing. Twice.

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.


The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

Have a good holiday. Remember what it was about, 230 years ago, and what these men were risking when they put their signatures to that page.

Another Convert

Almost everyone who experiences an epiphany on the gun-rights question, at least in my experience, comes from an opposition to the right to arms to the support of it. Those (very) few who go the other way are (also in my experience) those who discover in themselves a fear of loss of self-control. They believe they personally cannot handle the responsibility of firearm possession and – since they are obviously “normal” – therefore no one else can either (with the curious exception of those members of society who draw a government paycheck.)

One of the best examples I can reference is that of the authors of the gun-control meta-study Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime, and Violence in America. Authored by James D. Wright, a professor of Sociology at Tulane University, Peter H. Rossi, a professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), and Kathleen Daly, a Sociology professor at Yale, Under the Gun was an examination of all the gun control studies that had been performed up until 1978. I’ve mentioned it before. The one excerpt from the book that I like best of all is this one:

The progressive’s indictment of American firearms policy is well known and is one that both the senior authors of this study once shared. This indictment includes the following particulars: (1) Guns are involved in an astonishing number of crimes in this country. (2) In other countries with stricter firearms laws and fewer guns in private hands, gun crime is rare. (3) Most of the firearms involved in crime are cheap Saturday Night Specials, for which no legitimate use or need exists. (4) Many families acquire such a gun because they feel the need to protect themselves; eventually they end up shooting one another. (5) If there were fewer guns around, there would obviously be less crime. (6) Most of the public also believes this and has favored stricter gun control laws for as long as anyone has asked the question. (7) Only the gun lobby prevents us from embarking on the road to a safer and more civilized society.

The more deeply we have explored the empirical implications of this indictment, the less plausible it has become.

That’s from the last chapter, Policy Implications, but it is far from the whole chapter. Here’s some more I haven’t quoted before:

American progressivism has always taken a strong and justifiable pride in its cultural pluralism, its belief that minority or “deviant” cultures and values have intrinsic legitimacy and are therefore to be at least tolerated if not nourished, and certainly not be suppressed. Progressives have embraced the legitimacy of many subcultures in the past, including tolerance for a vast heterogeneity of religious beliefs, regional diversities, a belated recognition of the rights of American Indians, and tolerance for immigrant peoples. And more recently, progressives have hastened to affirm the legitimacy of black culture, Hispanic culture, youth culture, homosexuals (and, for that matter, nearly every other subculture that has pressed its claim for recognition.)

A critical issue in modern America is whether the doctrine of cultural pluralism should or should not be extended to cover the members of the gun subculture. Is this cultural pattern akin to the segregationism of the South that was broken up in the interest of the public good? Or, is it more akin to those subcultures that we have recognized as legitimate and benign forms of self-expression?

The authors don’t answer that question, placed as it was in the last paragraph of their 1983 text. The following twenty-three years of the gun control movement, however, has.

This evening I ran across a post at the blog OK So I’m Not Really a Cowboy that brought all of this back up again.

How The Left Made Me A Gun Rights Advocate

People on the left talk a good game. About freedom and empowerment. About prosperity and harmony. Which is all fine and good until you realize that they intend this to happen by instituting government control of all aspects related to the above. But what really gets me about them is that they turn a blind eye to the negative (but all-too-often expected) consequences of their illogical actions. The gun control debate is a perfect illustration of both their disconnect from causality and their inherently statist outlook. Which is–perversely enough–the reason I became a gun owner.

Go read the whole thing.

And for further examples, may I suggest these earlier posts of mine?

How do you Convert a Gun-Phobe? Put One in Her Hands!

Fear, The Philosophy and Politics Thereof

How Do You Get Your Rights Back?

Awakenings IV

Gun-Lust.

You ever come across something that just really grabbed your attention? Something that made you say “I want that”? I feel that way about the Porsche 997 Carrera 4S, for example, notwithstanding that the cost of the car far exceeds what I originally paid for my home.

One gun I’ve wanted for a long time is a nice, custom Browning Hi Power, JM Browning’s last (and some say best) handgun design. I already have a 1911 (yes, I know – “Only one?), but I’d really like to have a Hi Power. Problem is, I have pretty big, fleshy hands, and the Hi Power doesn’t have a beavertail frame. On the 1911, this is a simple fix – get a beavertail grip safety installed. On a Hi Power, this means welding, grinding, polishing, and refinishing. Otherwise I get to be a blood donor somewhere in the middle of the first magazine as the hammer nibbles away at the web of my hand. Even bobbed hammers aren’t much of a help.

I’ve seen a number of nicely done custom Hi Power pistols like the ones by Yost-Bonitz Custom, but like a Porsche, they’re just way too far out there in price for my wallet.

Then I stumbled across this lovely piece currently in stock at California’s famed Bain & Davis gunshop:

It’s advertised on the GunsAmerica website: “This 40 S&W Hi Power has a custom welded beaver tail safety. 3 1/2 lbs trigger job, AO Express sights. Black Moly Coating of all steel parts. and other extras. Well, it has a beavertail, but it’s not a safety. It has an ambidexterous safety, however. That is one workmanlike Hi Power, and it’s not outrageously priced.

But I just put new brakes and four tires on my truck. No can do.

It’s fun to look, though. Maybe next year.

(*sigh*)