National Ammo Day

I missed it by a day, but I put in an order today for 200 rounds of Federal Premium 168 grain .308 Match, and 200 rounds of 175 grain 7.62×51 Match.  That ought to cover it.  And it should let me test the accuracy capabilities of my 700 5R and my M25 (I hope).

We’ll see if this stuff shoots any better than my handloads, anyway.

Oh, and I also ordered a single-set trigger for the Remington a couple of days ago.  We’ll see if THAT helps reduce group size any, too!  At some point I’d like to be capable of hitting paintballs consistently at 200 yards with either rifle.

Tribalism

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address – November 19, 1863

It took another hundred and fifty years, but that nation, so conceived and so dedicated, no longer endures.

UPDATE:  Victor Davis Hanson, Too Few Oppressors, Too Many Victims – Excerpt:

Since the election, some fatalistic Washington conservative elites have accepted — and Obama operatives have rejoiced in — a supposedly new and non-white-male ethnic electorate: Americans will be categorized, and collectively so, on the basis of largely how they look and, to a lesser extent, how they sound. Republicans, then, better get with the new tribalism and remarket themselves to address the new minority monolith.

Accordingly, the enlightened and redeemable liberal elements of the otherwise now played-out old white majority, when combined with the new ethnic minorities, will result in a permanent progressive majority — one that rejects the archaic, if not toxic, racialist values that have been in the past so injurious to the idea of what the United States might have otherwise become. Just imagine a better world with no more required reading of white male Greeks, no more inordinate focus on Shakespeare’s Shylock, no need to suffer through Twain’s N-word or Tolkien’s stereotypical dark-skinned orcs — or indeed, the one-dimensional and boring world we inherited from a Jefferson, Madison, Melville, Lincoln, Grant, Edison, Bell, TR, Salk, Nimitz, and Ike.

You Are a Nobody without Your Tribe

Yet the new emphasis on tribe is not necessarily a liberal vision. It ignores all human individuality and assumes that friendships, marriages, and alliances will not dare trump racial and ethic solidarity. Ours is now instead a Galadriel’s mirror of the Balkans, of India’s castes, of Rwanda, but no longer of a multiracial melting-pot America, where our allegiances were to be political, economic, and cultural and not necessarily synonymous with how we looked.

RTWT.

Well, THAT was Fun!

Monday: 400 miles, 16 hours.

Tuesday: 160 miles, 13 hours.

Wednesday: another 160 miles, 19 hours.

48 hours in three days.  And I’m on salary.

I’m kinda tired.  And I have three days of accumulated stuff to catch up on.  Oh boy!  No blog for you!

Quote of the Day – Nice Daydream Edition

From a comment at Rachel’s:

Maybe it’s time to go rope-a-dope. Maybe this is the moment for Boehner to call a news conference on the steps of the capitol, with all House and Senate Republicans clustered behind him, to say something like: “Fellow Americans. Members of the media. We are here to congratulate the President and the Democrat party for their election victory. You want more candy? We’ll give you all the fucking candy you can eat. Higher taxes on the rich? You got it. Fast track for Obamacare? Let’s accelerate that sucker so the wait time for an MRI is a couple of months by 2016. History tells us that an iceberg is lying straight ahead of our unsinkable ship. History also tells us that if the Titanic had rammed the iceberg head on, it would have stayed afloat. So we’re not going to try to wrestle the wheel away from our teenaged Captain. We’re just going to tell him, and all the other passengers, that we’re about to hit a shitload of ice. So wear a warm coat, and full steam ahead.” – Buddhahat

I Just Wanted to Repost This

I first posted it as a Quote of the Day in September of 2008. Time for it again.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

by Rudyard Kipling – October, 1919

I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshiped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.