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Quote of the Day.

Via David Hardy, from a Harvard Crimson op-ed you really ought to read the whole of:

Academia is inherently ill-equipped to deal with the realities of conflict, since it is based on the premise that disputes can be resolved through rational exchange of ideas. Yet violence, whether it happens to squirrels or Harvard undergraduates, is a strange animal. It is sudden, profound, and oblivious to logic and theory.

Change “Academia” to “Intellectuals” or “Bureaucrats” or, as David put it, “Elites,” (or Thomas Sowell, “The Anointed,”) and it goes a long way to explaining the Iraq Study Group’s conclusion that we need to engage Syria and Iran in negotiations:

In order to foster such consensus, the United States should embark on a robust diplomatic effort to establish an international support structure intended to stabilize Iraq and ease tensions in other countries in the region. This support structure should include every country that has an interest in averting a chaotic Iraq, including all of Iraq’s neighbors—Iran and Syria among them. Despite the well-known differences between many of these countries, they all share an interest in avoiding the horrific consequences that would flow from a chaotic Iraq, particularly a humanitarian catastrophe and regional destabilization.

Doesn’t that just drip with the belief that “disputes can be resolved through rational exchange of ideas” while completely ignoring the fact that these states are violent, and thus not interested in the stability of Iraq? In fact, that they find the instabilty in Iraq to their advantage?

Doesn’t that one quote explain the urge to find out “why they hate us” – so we can exchange ideas rationally and resolve our dispute? Doesn’t this explain Neville Chamberlain perfectly? Our media? The Left?

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Named Estates.

“Monticello,” “Mount Vernon,” “Biltmore House,” “Pickfair,” “Tara.”

And now Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards’ new little bungalow:


“Other America”

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Global Bullshit.

Now that the UN has proclaimed the debate over Global Cooling Warming Climate Change to be ended, I got the urge to write one of my typically long and heavily link-filled pieces on the topic. Somebody beat me to it. Read J. R. Dunn’s A Necessary Apocalypse at The American Thinker if you have not already done so. A teaser:

That environmentalism is in fact a pseudo-religion goes without saying. Like all such, it possesses every element of contemporary legitimate belief. It has a deity, in this case the goddess Gaia, the personification of the living Earth, (first envisioned by James Lovelock, whom we can slot in as high priest). It has its holy books, most changing with the seasons, and most, as is true of the Bible with many convinced Christians, utterly unread. It has its saints, its prophets, its commandments, religious rituals (be sure to recycle that bottle), a large gallery of sins, mortal and otherwise, and an even larger horde of devils. (Let me pause here to sharpen a horn.)

Another item that a pseudo-religion must have is an apocalypse – and that’s what global warming is all about.

Once you’ve read that, sit back and enjoy Penn & Teller’s Showtime episode of Bullshit! on the topic of environmentalism.

Let me quote from one of the people interviewed for the piece: Patrick Moore, a founding member and former President of Greenpeace:

The environmental movement was basically hijacked by political and social activists who came in and very cleverly learned how to use green rhetoric, or green language, to cloak agendas that actually had more to do with anti-corporatism, anti-globalization, anti-business, and very little to do with science or ecology. And that’s when I left. (The Greenpeace organization.)

I realized that the movement I had started was being taken over by politicoes, basically, and that they were using it for fundrasing purposes.

Most of the environmental movement is composed of white, upper-middle class people who are, I think incorrectly, telling people in the rest of the world what to do, where people don’t live in nice houses and don’t have good drinking water and good health standards. I think the environmental movement is basically elitist.

Nobody’s going to listen to you if you say the world is not gonna come to an end, but if you say the world is coming to an end you get headlines. And so sensationalism, especially when it’s combined with misinformation, leads to a situation where people send gobs of money to these groups for campaigns that are actually totally misguided.

The campaign against forestry is a classic case of absolutely and totally misleading the general public. It’s true that we are losing forests in the tropics of this world, but it’s not because of logging companies, it’s because of poor people – millions of them, who are trying to make a living and grow some food for their families. The fact is, in North America, there is still as much forest as there was a hundred years ago. And the reason there’s so much forest is because we use so much wood. Because we cut trees down to make our houses, But the environmental groups have got people thinking that when you go into a lumberyard and buy wood, you’re causing the forest to be destroyed, when in fact what you’re doing is ordering new trees to be planted. It is something we have to do in order to feed and house the six billion people on this earth.

And it drives me even further crazy to have them say they’re against globalization when their main tools of trade are cell phones and the internet. It just makes no sense at all to be against science and technology, and then to use science and technology, whether its jet planes to get to international environmental meetings, or cell phones or laptop computers. You’re part of globalization. So how can you be against it?

I can’t add much to that, though in a future post I will attempt to.

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Quote of the Day.

Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery. – Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom.

And for some reason, large parts of our population seem to want us to return there.

The Journey Down the Path of Compelled Helplessness

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The title of this post is from a comment left at On Being Down and Defenseless in Britain over on The Gates of Vienna. The latest outrage from Old Blighty?

Jump up and down and shout to beat street crime

 Witnesses to violent street crime should try to ‘distract’ attackers by honking their car horns or even ‘jumping up and down’. That’s according to Labour’s Police Minister.

 The extraordinary remarks by Tony McNulty prompted an immediate, angry response from law and order experts, who described him as ‘irresponsible’.

 The standard police advice to people who witness violent behaviour is that they should not get involved and immediately call 999.

 But in an interview with the BBC’s Jeremy Vine, Mr McNulty said concerned citizens should ‘try some distractive activities’ instead.

Absolutely. Fucking. Amazing. This is the Monty-Pythonesque “You’re Not Qualified” mentality brought to its highest lowest form. Citizens shouldn’t get involved – even to the point of simply making noise. If this doesn’t define “compelled helplessness,” I don’t know what would. I’m reminded of an old post by Dave Kopel at The Corner where a University student told of her introduction to acceptable victim behavior while staying in England:

(The officer) instructed us on how to properly be a victim. If we were attacked, we were to assume a defensive posture, such as raising our hands to block an attack. The reason was (and she spelled it out in no uncertain terms) that if a witness saw the incident and we were to attempt to defend ourselves by fighting back, the witness would be unable to tell who the agressor was. However, if we rolled up in a ball, it would be quite clear who the victim was.

In other words, assume a fetal position. How appropriate.

The Minister, who is the deputy to Home Secretary John Reid, suggested that ‘simply shouting’ at would-be muggers or ‘blowing your horn’ at them could act as a deterrent. And he said that people who witness an attack in the street should ‘jump up and down’ while waiting for the police to arrive.

His comments come during a deepening crisis in the Home Office and follow new figures showing a sharp rise in violent crime.

Right. Would that be the report indicating that recorded violent crime is down, or the official crime survey report that indicates that violent crime is up? Because, you know, I’m confused. Of course, it’s fairly easy to reduce “recorded” violent crime. Just don’t record them, you see!

The interview with Mr McNulty is part of a Panorama special being screened tomorrow evening which examines the crisis of anti-social behaviour sweeping Britain’s streets.

Law and order campaigners warned that anyone following the Minister’s advice to ‘distract’ robbers could be putting themselves at serious risk.

Which is why “it’s most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can.” Instead, the UK emotionally and legally neuters its populace via an official but unwritten policy of compelled helplessness.

Street criminals routinely carry knives or even guns and there have been a growing number of incidents in which so-called onlookers who intervene have also themselves been attacked.

Because the criminals know they have little to nothing to fear from an unarmed populace unsure of what they can legally do to defend themselves or others, and the police are too overwhelmed to intervene. Besides, they’re too busy running the “Big Brother” video cameras.

The remarks add to the already confusing and sometimes contradictory messages sent out to concerned citizens.

In some cases police publicly praise so-called ‘have-a-go heroes’. But in other situations, people taking the law into their own hands have become police suspects while the original perpetrator has walked free.

Even honking a car horn, as Mr McNulty suggests, can backfire. A motorist who sounded his at a pedestrian who stepped out in front of his car was recently fined by police for ‘excessive’ use of the instrument.

Sweet bleeding jeebus. I rest my case.

Serving police officer Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, called the Minister’s remarks ‘irresponsible’, adding: “Tony McNulty needs to get into the real world. Only then will he realise how ridiculous these remarks sound. The public are not going to jump up and down – they are going to be scared witless.”

Only because you and those like you made them that way. Once upon a time, England was populated by a people with pride and a sense of right and wrong. Apparently between the losses of WWI, WWII, and the increasing control of their everyday lives by a Socialist government, the population has been domesticated. It’s sad, really.

For the Tories, Shadow Police Reform Minister Nick Herbert said: “Jumping up and down and waving your hands in the air in a hopeless manner does seem to be the standard Home Office response to problems these days. The public need some consistent guidance about what they should do in these circumstances.”

Figures out this month showed a two per cent rise in crime over the past year to a total of 2.44 million incidents, with gun crime soaring by ten per cent. And there was a 46 per cent surge in householders suffering the terror of being robbed at gunpoint in their home.

Isn’t England the sterling example that the gun control organizations point to as the pinnacle of achievment? Weren’t handguns banned there, oh, about 1996? Banned not as in “you can’t have any more,” but as in “turn them all in”? Aren’t all other guns there supposedly strictly controlled? Licensing? Check. Registration? Check. “Safe Storage?” Check. No “gun show loopholes,” no “assault weapons,” no “Saturday Night Specials,” no “Pocket Rockets”? Check. Isn’t England an island – without the excuse that neighboring countries don’t share its strict gun control laws? Check.

So, instead they smuggle Uzis in via truck.

Economics 101. Supply will meet demand.

The statistics come against a backdrop of a growing crisis in the Home Office, with Mr Reid admitting he and his ministerial team had failed to make the Home Office ‘fit for purpose’. Mr McNulty was reshuffled from immigration to his current brief last May after the scandal over foreign criminals being allowed to walk free without even being considered for deportation.

Sounds like catch-and-release is popular on that side of the pond as well.

But, as the man in charge of law and order, the 48-year-old MP for Harrow East has continued to be dogged by controversy.

He was recently blamed by the Tories for another furore, this time involving Britons who committed sex crimes abroad being allowed to return home and work with children.

Of course. It’s not like he’s in danger of losing his job or anything. He’s from the government, and he’s there to help you. Good and hard.

Extract from the full Panorama interview

Jeremy Vine: “You see a young man looking aggressive, shouting at an old woman. What do you do? Do you retreat and ring the police?’

Tony McNulty: “I think you should in the first instance. It may well be simply shouting at them, blowing your horn or whatever else deters them and they go away.”

Jeremy Vine: “He’s now hitting her and the police haven’t come. What do you do then?’

Tony McNulty: “The same, the same, you must always…”

Jeremy Vine: “Still wait?’

Tony McNulty: “Get back to the police, try some distractive activities.”

Jeremy Vine: “What? Jump up and down?’

Tony McNulty: “Sometimes that may well work.”

At least he wasn’t advocating curling up into a fetal position. How about grabbing something heavy and beating the sonofabitch into unconsciousness? Would that be excessive?

Edited to add: If you want your blood pressure to spike even further, read up on some other recent outrages carried out by the UK government as chronicled by Irons in the Fire. Read down to the updates. Stow all breakables out of reach first.

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“Gee, I Never Knew 110VAC was a Caliber.”

Hat tip to Xavier. I haven’t finished watching this yet, but that line had me rolling. A 13 year-old girl explains Canada’s gun registration system. Watch “Katey’s Firearm Facts”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJggEvIlsJ4&w=425&h=350]

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What Happened to the Concept of a “Speedy Trial”?.

Back in 2003 when I wrote Pressing the “Reset” Button, I mentioned the case of Steven Bixby and his father Arthur of Abbeville, SC. The Bixbys admittedly shot and killed two SC peace officers over a dispute about a 20-foot section of property taken for a road-widening project. Steven Bixby is going to trial shortly. Bixby claims the first officer was shot in self-defense. Judging from the scant evidence provided by the newspapers, the second officer cannot be so justified.

Jury selection begins next week, according to an AP news report.

According to the latest report:

The Bixbys left New Hampshire about a decade ago after participating in a group angry with zoning laws and taxes.

And, of course, anybody who dissents over government exercise of power is painted with the same broad brush:

“When I think of the Bixbys, it’s like the arc that anti-government folks take,” said Heidi Beirich, spokeswoman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Alabama-based civil rights watchdog group. “You start not paying your taxes, you start hating the government, you get involved reading publications from patriot groups. So many of them end up committing acts of violence.”

“Patriot groups.” Really. No “scare quotes” either.

As I wrote in “Reset” Button:

Jefferson suggested a small armed rebellion every 20 years or so. We didn’t take his advice. Our last one ended in 1865, and it was so devastating, I think it put us off rebellion entirely too long.

Government isn’t “us” and hasn’t been for a long, long time. It represents the people who run the Democrat and Republican Parties, and those who pay them the most. Government-run education has ensured that the end product coming out of our schools is uniformly ignorant of how the system is supposed to work, and it’s done a damned good job of indoctrinating our children in the “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” philosophy, and the “if it feels good, do it” philosophy. Fifty-plus years of this has produced a very large, very ignorant, very apathetic population.

I think that “pressing the reset button” is going to happen, but all it’s going to get some of us is a tighter collar and a heavier chain.

—

I don’t think you’re going to see a widespread armed uprising. What you’re going to see is individuals and small groups who’ve simply had enough arming and striking – and probably dying in the process. If you’ve read John Ross’s Unintended Consequences you’ll get the idea, but I don’t expect anything like the level of response he writes of. Not enough people are pissed off enough to do that.

Of course the media will spin it as “lone deranged gun-nuts” or “anti-government militias,” but if you pay attention you’ll note an increase in the numbers over time.

In the earlier piece, Steven Bixby reportedly stated: “If we can’t be any freer than that in this country, I’d rather die.” Chances are good he’ll get his wish.

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Arrogance, Thy Name is Arkin.

I’ve been too busy to comment on Washington Post opinion writer William Arkin’s recent piece slamming the troops in Iraq for expressing an opinion, but his latest piece has pegged my rage-o-meter. His apology for calling our troops “mercenaries”:

I was dead wrong in using the word mercenary to describe the American soldier today.

These men and women are not fighting for money with little regard for the nation. The situation might be much worse than that: Evidently, far too many in uniform believe that they are the one true nation. They hide behind the constitution and the flag and then spew an anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-journalism, anti-dissent, and anti-citizen message that reflects a certain contempt for the American people.

Mr. Arkin, you didn’t just disrespect the U.S. troops in Iraq – you just insulted the majority of Americans in “flyover country.”

You know, The American People.

We don’t “hide behind the Constitution and the flag,” we revere them. It’s the liberals, journalists, dissenters and “anti-citizens” who wipe their asses with them, then “hide behind” them when called on it. Mr. Arkin has exposed himself as another Nina Burleigh, someone who despises the military, but that’s OK because they choke up when they hear “America the Beautiful.” Mr. Arkin exercises “Socially Acceptable Bigotry“:

The bigotry of America’s Left-leaning intelligentsia is based upon cold logic that unfolds in the following predictable, if venal, fashion: I’m very smart. I’m well educated. So are most of my friends. I give generously to liberal causes. I’m a kind and caring human being. I defer to nobody in my exemplary set of values. I care about equality. I believe in a just society. These values are integrated into the core of who I am. I work diligently to teach these values unto my progeny. And these are just the values that, generally speaking, have been represented by the policies and actions of the Democratic Party.

The corollary logic continues: I don’t have much respect for the values of the Republican Party. Oversimplified, Republicans stand for the rich, for the status quo, for selfishness, and for war-mongering. These logical trains of thought are tinged with intellectual arrogance and gross stereotyping. Of course, some liberals who speak ill of Republicans have an ulterior motive. They use the tactic to undermine the credibility of all Republicans, who must be evil, stupid – or both.

Reagan, and his crowd, were a bunch of cowboys. NRA supporters are dumbfucks from Wyoming. The Christian Right is the imbecilic underbelly of the South, led by money-grubbing preachers. George W. may have gone to Yale and the business school, but he’s basically a shallow frat boy and – yikes! – a Christian. Locals who line up with such thinking tend to be knee-jerk right-wingers with low IQs.

In short, the justification for bigoted comments directed at those with whom the educated Left disagrees politically is based on two foundations: 1) We’re a lot smarter than they are; and 2) We’re better people than they are. That logic leads to three inescapable conclusions: We’re right. They’re wrong. QED: All Republicans are assholes.

And all soldiers are anti-American, apparently.

As far as I can tell, Mr. Arkin suffers from Bush Derangement Syndrome, and extends his illness to the troops because they’re the ones carrying out Bush’s doctrine. Australian journalist Carole Overington expressed her understanding back in 2004:

Any student of history knows that this is true. America saved the Western world from communism. America saved Australia and, for that matter, France from a system that would stop you from reading this newspaper.

Americans support the war in Iraq and, by extension, Bush because they see it as part of a bigger picture. Like everybody, they now know that Saddam was not the threat they thought he was (at least, not to them) but they still think it was a good idea to deal with him, before he became one.

The price of freedom is high. You might think you would not sacrifice your life for it, but maybe you don’t have to. After all, 20-year-old Americans are doing it for you, every day.

While the majority of people polled today may not support the war, I’d imagine the numbers are a bit different in “flyover country” still. Much of the opposition, I’m certain, comes from the Jacksonians who are tired of the rules of engagement that have restricted the actions of our soldiers, and doubtlessly resulted in some of their deaths – it isn’t that they’re anti-war, it’s that they’re for unrestrained war. I’m sympathetic to that view, myself, but I know it’s the wrong one for what we’re trying to accomplish in the Middle East.

Mr. Arkin thinks those troops are “anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-journalism, anti-dissent, and anti-citizen.” Interesting how he feels comfortable enough to say that to people who carry guns for a living, isn’t it?

After all, it’s not like he has to risk his life to exercise his freedom of speech.

A Bleg

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A commenter asks:

Would some of you folks mind commenting in this thread –

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.co…nseless- in.html

There is a Finnish guy that is mighty proud of his homemade surveillance system.

I’m digging around this site on how the state isn’t obligated to protect individuals and Clayton Cramer’s gun defence blog for fodder.

But I’m thinking you folks might come up with better arguments than me posting several links to other info.

It’s an interesting piece and an interesting comment thread. Have at ’em.