Alphecca Turns Four.
Go congratulate Jeff on his blogiversary.
And read this rant, too. I disagree with his conclusion, but he do rant good, don’t he? Just one more reason I want Jeff to keep blogging for a long, long time.
Category: Uncategorized
Want to Make Your Blood Boil?.
Go to GiveThemBack.com. Watch the videos (you may need to use IE 6.0, but it worked for me under Firefox).
Then donate at least $30 and get a DVD of the whole thing for yourself. Play it for the next person who tells you that the government will never go door-to-door confiscating firearms.
(h/t: Xavier)
Saul Cornell Receives a Professional Whuppin’
(h/t: Geek with a .45 who emailed me the link!)
Professor of Law Stephen Halbrook has apparently had his fill of Associate Professor of History Saul Cornell and his attempt to rewrite history in the effort to convince people that the Second Amendment wasn’t written to protect an individual right to arms.
For those unfamiliar, Associate Professor Cornell is the director of the “Second Amendment Research Center” at Ohio State University – a “research center” established with funds from the rabidly anti-gun Joyce Foundation. Yet Associate Professor Cornell presents himself as an unbiased academic, merely out to explain to we poor, unwashed, ignorant savages what the Second Amendment to the Constitution really means. He writes op-eds that end up in newspapers all over the country, and he has recently published a book has received glowing reviews from gun-grabbers. I’ve written several pieces here on Associate Professor Cornell, including a rebuttal to an email he sent me in response to my first piece. See:
Professor Saul Cornell Responds, and So Do I
Saul Cornell, Unbiased Researcher
and, most recently, The Jabberwocky World of Saul Cornell.
While I’m merely an amateur, Stephen Halbrook is a professional. His curriculum vitae:
Attorney at Law, Fairfax, Va.; Ph.D. Florida State University, J.D. Georgetown University; former philosophy professor, Tuskegee University, Howard University, George Mason University. Books include The Founders’ Second Amendment (forthcoming); That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right (1984, 2000); A Right to Bear Arms: State & Federal Bills of Rights & Constitutional Guarantees (1989); Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, & the Right to Bear Arms (1998); Firearms Law Deskbook (2006). Argued Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997), and other Supreme Court cases.
So when Professor Halbrook talks about law, especially firearms law, one ought to listen. Professor Halbrook has written a 25-page rebuttal (a PDF file, about half of it footnotes) to Cornell’s recent presentation of “St. George Tucker and the Second Amendment: Original Understandings and Modern Misunderstandings” at a symposium at the William and Mary College of Law. Once again, Professor Cornell has twisted history to meet his agenda. Like others of his ilk, he selectively quotes, baldly misstates, and deliberately omits material that conclusively disproves the ideas he attempts to foist off on his unsuspecting, credulous victims readers.
I’m not going to quote too extensively from Professor Halbrook’s truly devastating rebuttal but let me give you a little of the flavor of it:
While humble people generally think that they are among “the people,” a segment of the not-so-humble appear to disagree when it comes to the right of “the people” to keep and bear arms.
—
Debunking the individual-rights “hijackers” of the Second Amendment, Professor Cornell refers to “the often-quoted passage describing it [the Second Amendment] as the ‘palladium of liberty’” at least five times, but strangely fails to provide the actual quotation or to acknowledge its contents. It would be worthwhile to do so at the outset in order to determine the extent of the constitutional hijacking by scholars who read the Second Amendment as protecting individual rights.
—
As with Tucker, Cornell studiously avoids mention of the content of Story’s analysis of the Second Amendment, much less does he quote any of Story’s “palladium of liberty” statement.
—
Having left the reader in the dark about what Tucker and Story actually said on “the palladium of liberty,” Cornell asserts that for both: “Protection of states’ rights, not individual rights, was the issue that had prompted the inclusion of the Second Amendment.”
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Cornell refers to this statement of Tucker, but fails to quote it, and asserts that it does “not address the question of individual self defense.”
—
Tucker made further references to infringement of the individual right to bear arms which Cornell fails to mention.
—
As usual, Cornell avoids the embarrassing quotations.
—
Cornell’s rendition of Tucker is long on Cornell’s characterizations and citations to recent law review articles supporting the “collective rights” view of the Second Amendment, but woefully short on Tucker’s actual words. This pattern also arises regarding Tucker’s views on judicial review.
—
Cornell refers to the page number, but neither quotes the passage nor summarizes its content.
Halbrook corrects Cornell’s omissions, and proves conclusively that what Cornell is selling is unadulterated bullshit.
When I wrote Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn’t (and Won’t) Work, I noted
What they say (and this is overwhelmingly true for these groups) is only partly (in this case, minimally) true. There’s a whole lot of information they neglect, gloss over, bury, and avoid.
Associate Professor Cornell is another example of this sad fact. Professor Halbrook hammers that point home until Cornell’s reputation ought to be nothing but a thin, putrid smear. However, as is common for the type, I’m sure Associate Professor Cornell will continue with cockroach resilience, writing more op-eds and more books filled with omissions, distortions, and outright lies.
And we, amateurs and professionals alike, will keep exposing him.
See What Happens After I Spend a lot of Money?.
The only 9mm handgun I’ve ever wanted comes on the market at a damned good price.
An FN-made Browning Hi-Power with alloy frame and the Safety Fast hammer.
Damn.
Think the Dems are Going to Win This Time…
…because the Republicans and Independents are going to stay home in disgust?
Read this thread at AR15.com.
I get the distinct impression the Dems are going to be shouting “STOLEN ELECTION!” again.
I’m reminded of this quote from Instapundit today:
…if losing elections made political parties improve, the Democrats would be in a lot better shape than they are about now.
Apparently a whole lot of people instinctively grasp that idea.
Now, how do we hold Republican feet to the fire after the election? Nothing seems to have worked so far.
UPDATE: Kim du Toit explains the situation well.
And Tam cuts to the quick with a razor-sharp observation.
Schadenfreude!.
Read this, courtesy of Arms and the Law.
That is all for now.
Edited to add: See also, OUCH!!
Edited again to note that Ravenwood wants an .88 Magnum. (Read the comments!)
Just So You Know…
Vacation is over. Coming back to work after two weeks off certainly proved that. Posting will continue to be thin, bland, and random.
Thanks for visiting!
Said Better, Elsewhere.
Instapundit links to a discussion at Hit and Run about Libertarians (big “L”) and why they don’t achieve much as a party. The pertinent quote, from a comment to the post:
The fact is, libertarians aren’t generally joiners. Yet to influence people, you have to go to their meetings, bring a snack, raise funds for them, and listen to their ideas before they’ll listen to yours. Politics is about people, after all, and people don’t often think in policy paper terms. If you want to change minds you have to engage others in a positive way.
At the Gunblogger Rendezvous I was discussing this topic with Joe Huffman and paraphrased one of my favorite quotes. When I got back to Tucson, I dug it up and emailed it to him. He made it his “quote of the day” for that day. Here it is, again:
“It stands to reason that self-righteous, inflexible, single-minded, authoritarian true believers are politically organized. Open-minded, flexible, complex, ambiguous, anti-authoritarian people would just as soon be left to mind their own fucking business.” — R.U. Sirius in How To Mutate and Take Over The World
Consumer Confidence.
Jebus I love how the media spins good news:
That’s the Reuters headline from Google News’s #1 return on a search for “consumer confidence.” Want another example?
That’s from CNNMoney.
What’s the horrible news that’s destroying the bond market?
Consumer confidence – and spending – are up. Retail sales are up. So is the dollar.
THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!
For some, apparently, there cannot be good economic news. It might lead to Republicans getting credit! Can’t have that.
Well, I’ve done my part to assist. I spent a few hours yesterday buying a new truck. I didn’t help out Ford or GM this time (sorry, JimmyB), I bought a made-in-Tennessee Toyota Tundra, which I have committed to making payments on for the next five years.
How’s that for “consumer confidence?”
The Engineer’s Perspective.
This deserves repeating, so I shall. Taken verbatim from The Purple Avenger‘s blog:
My best friend is a lawyer, bright, gifted, … PhD in law; bored with his job, he decided to study engineering. After his first quarter, he came to me and said that the two “C”s he’d achieved in Engineering Calculus 101 and Engineering Physics 101 were the first two non-A grades he’d ever gotten in college, and that he had had to study harder for them than for any other dozen classes he’d had. “I now understand”, he said, “why engineers and their like are so hard to examine, whether on the stand or in a deposition. When they say a thing is possible, they KNOW it is possible, and when they say a thing is not possible, they KNOW it is not. Most people don’t understand know in that way; what they know is what we can persuade them to believe. You engineers live in the same world as the rest of us, but you understand that world in a way we never will.”
I don’t think that you have to love math to be an engineer, but you are going to have to learn it. That means that you’re going to have to do the homework, correctly. Mistakes and “close enough” are the ways to build bridges that fail.
htom | 09.26.05 – 2:10 am
Knowing, in your soul, that if you screw up your work you could be responsible for the injury or deaths of innocent people tends to make you look at “reality” in a way I think is different from the majority of the population. Engineering attracts those with a certain kind of personality, and repels others.
At the Gunblogger’s Rendezvous I spent some time talking with SayUncle, and among other things we discussed personality types. As I’ve noted here before, my Myers-Briggs personality type is INTJ – Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging. According to Wikipedia, INTJs make up about 2.1% of the population (and, I think, a significantly larger proportion of bloggers). I believe this profile accurately describes me. (My wife agrees. She said I ought to frame it.):
To outsiders, INTJs may appear to project an aura of “definiteness,” of self-confidence. This self-confidence, sometimes mistaken for simple arrogance by the less decisive, is actually of a very specific rather than a general nature; its source lies in the specialized knowledge systems that most INTJs start building at an early age. When it comes to their own areas of expertise — and INTJs can have several — they will be able to tell you almost immediately whether or not they can help you, and if so, how. INTJs know what they know, and perhaps still more importantly, they know what they don’t know.
INTJs are perfectionists, with a seemingly endless capacity for improving upon anything that takes their interest. What prevents them from becoming chronically bogged down in this pursuit of perfection is the pragmatism so characteristic of the type: INTJs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion “Does it work?” to everything from their own research efforts to the prevailing social norms. This in turn produces an unusual independence of mind, freeing the INTJ from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake.
INTJs are known as the “Systems Builders” of the types, perhaps in part because they possess the unusual trait combination of imagination and reliability. Whatever system an INTJ happens to be working on is for them the equivalent of a moral cause to an INFJ; both perfectionism and disregard for authority may come into play, as INTJs can be unsparing of both themselves and the others on the project. Anyone considered to be “slacking,” including superiors, will lose their respect — and will generally be made aware of this; INTJs have also been known to take it upon themselves to implement critical decisions without consulting their supervisors or co-workers. On the other hand, they do tend to be scrupulous and even-handed about recognizing the individual contributions that have gone into a project, and have a gift for seizing opportunities which others might not even notice.
In the broadest terms, what INTJs “do” tends to be what they “know”. Typical INTJ career choices are in the sciences and engineering, but they can be found wherever a combination of intellect and incisiveness are required (e.g., law, some areas of academia). INTJs can rise to management positions when they are willing to invest time in marketing their abilities as well as enhancing them, and (whether for the sake of ambition or the desire for privacy) many also find it useful to learn to simulate some degree of surface conformism in order to mask their inherent unconventionality.
Personal relationships, particularly romantic ones, can be the INTJ’s Achilles heel. While they are capable of caring deeply for others (usually a select few), and are willing to spend a great deal of time and effort on a relationship, the knowledge and self-confidence that make them so successful in other areas can suddenly abandon or mislead them in interpersonal situations.
This happens in part because many INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals; for instance, they tend to have little patience and less understanding of such things as small talk and flirtation (which most types consider half the fun of a relationship). To complicate matters, INTJs are usually extremely private people, and can often be naturally impassive as well, which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand. Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense. 🙂 This sometimes results in a peculiar naivete’, paralleling that of many Fs — only instead of expecting inexhaustible affection and empathy from a romantic relationship, the INTJ will expect inexhaustible reasonability and directness.
Probably the strongest INTJ assets in the interpersonal area are their intuitive abilities and their willingness to “work at” a relationship. Although as Ts they do not always have the kind of natural empathy that many Fs do, the Intuitive function can often act as a good substitute by synthesizing the probable meanings behind such things as tone of voice, turn of phrase, and facial expression. This ability can then be honed and directed by consistent, repeated efforts to understand and support those they care about, and those relationships which ultimately do become established with an INTJ tend to be characterized by their robustness, stability, and good communications.
Out of all of that, the one thing that really struck me is the phrase “Does it work?“ That’s it, exactly.
I’m not a perfectionist. As an engineer I am thorougly familiar with the aphorism that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” I once described my job to someone as follows: “To solve my customer’s problem A) using the most current, appropriate technology, B) in the most timely manner and C) at the best price possible. Choose any two.” I’m not a perfectionist, but I’m more than happy to reject a lot of what other people would consider “good enough.”
“Good enough” too often gets people killed, but “perfect” never gets built.