The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
Roderick Pritchett Acquitted!
(Via Spoons)
Roderick Pritchett (first covered here Sept. 18) has been acquitted of all charges according to this Chicago Tribune piece.
Mr. Pritchett’s story, in his own words, is here.
The courts will not save us, but sometimes they’re still honest.
WORDS WOMEN USE
FINE
This is the word women use to end an argument when they feel they are right and you need to shut up. Never use “fine” to describe how a woman looks – this will cause you to have one of those arguments.
FIVE MINUTES
This is half an hour. It is equivalent to the five minutes that your football game is going to last before you take out the trash, so it’s an even trade.
NOTHING
This means “something,” and you should be on your toes. “Nothing” is usually used to describe the feeling a woman has of wanting to turn you inside out, upside down, and backwards. “Nothing” usually signifies an argument that will last “Five Minutes” and end with “Fine.”
GO AHEAD (With Raised Eyebrow!)
This is a dare. One that will result in a woman getting upset over “Nothing” and will end with the word “Fine.”
GO AHEAD (Normal Eyebrows)
This means “I give up” or “do what you want because I don’t care” You will get a “Raised Eyebrow Go Ahead” in just a few minutes, followed by “Nothing” and “Fine” and she will talk to you in about “Five Minutes” when she cools off.
GO AHEAD! (Loudly)
At some point in the near future, you are going to be in some mighty big trouble.
LOUD SIGH
This is not actually a word, but is a nonverbal statement often misunderstood by men. A “Loud Sigh” means she thinks you are an idiot at that moment, and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you over “Nothing.”
SOFT SIGH
Again, not a word, but a nonverbal statement. “Soft Sighs” mean that she is content. Your best bet is to not move or breathe, and she will stay content.
THAT’S OKAY
This is one of the most dangerous statements that a woman can make to a man. “That’s Okay” means that she wants to think long and hard before paying you back for whatever it is that you have done. “That’s Okay” is often used with the word “Fine” and in conjunction with a “Raised Eyebrow.”
PLEASE DO
This is not a statement, it is an offer. A woman is giving you the chance to come up with whatever excuse or reason you have for doing whatever it is that you have done. You have a fair chance with the truth, so be careful and you shouldn’t get a “That’s Okay.”
THANKS
A woman is thanking you. Do not faint! Just say you’re welcome.
THANKS A LOT
This is much different from “Thanks.” A woman will say, “Thanks A Lot” when she is really ticked off at you. It signifies that you have offended her in some callous way, and will be followed by the “Loud Sigh.” Be careful not to ask what is wrong after the “Loud Sigh,” as she will only tell you “Nothing.”
Send this to the men you know to warn them about future arguments they can avoid if they remember the terminology! (And send it to your women friends to give them a good laugh.)
A Decades-Long Slow-Motion Hate Crime
That’s how the War on Gunowners™ has been described. This piece entitled Intolerance of gun owners nation-wide problem puts it very well. Excerpt:
If you want to taste intolerance, let it be known you not only own guns, you like them. For instance, I can’t help but notice the worried looks and whispers of waiting passengers while helping a ticket agent check in my rifle or muzzleloader at the airport. In one case, my daughters overheard a woman tell her husband, “You’d think with children in his house he wouldn’t keep guns around.”
Amazing. I would have thought she would have been more impressed that my three daughters — then fairly young — had stood in line for 30 minutes without irritating the spit out of everyone within hearing.
(Hat tip, Say Uncle)
Tell Me Again How Democratic Those Democrats Are?
I’ve mentioned the local Lefty rag, the Tucson Weekly a couple of times before, but last week’s issue, which I just scanned through, had a letter to the editor I just couldn’t pass up:
[Op-ed columnist] Tom Danehy is right: President Bush is going to be re-elected, but not because Democrats don’t have it together (Danehy, April 22). They do have it together, but most Americans are too fucking stupid to recognize it.
President Bush will be re-elected because he is a fundamentalist, evangelical Christian. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution, and the other 72 percent believe in divine creation or some such nonsense. President Bush does not believe in evolution but does believe in divine creation. This is why he will be re-elected.
Patrick Bishop
Yup. Most Americans are just too stupid to vote.
Democrat.
That’s a real problem in a democracy, ain’t it?
Here’s a Pretty Interesting Take on Things
Does a deeply divided U.S. have the guts needed to win in Iraq?
Excerpts:
Here’s my soapbox, and I’m on it.
First off, let me say I was against us going into Iraq. No, I wasn’t concerned about the lack of a blessing from the United Nations, which couldn’t hit a bull in the rump with a banjo.
Nor did I care about evidence proving the presence of WMDs. Saddam was a weapon of mass destruction, a weapon designed by international meddlers such as ourselves.
My fear was, and is, that this country doesn’t have the guts and historical awareness to prevail in a region where numerous civilizations, some of them utterly ruthless, have lost their shirts.
—
And any idiot could’ve predicted the way we’d react when the real body count mounted, as it did in earnest two months ago. News agencies tripped over themselves to present the photos of our war dead, while greater numbers of people were being murdered on the streets of our own fine nation.
And look how we barfed over the images of the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, while we seem perfectly at peace with the common phenomenon of prisoners raping each other in our own country.
—
Former Abu Ghraib prisoner Dhia al-Shweiri said he preferred the electric shocks and beatings he suffered in the prison when it was under Saddam’s control to the humiliation he suffered when the American guards made him strip (once) – and lean against a wall (for 15 minutes).
“They were trying to humiliate us, break our pride. . . . They wanted us to feel as though we are women, the way women feel.” (So that’s the way they treat women?)
There it is. It’s better to be shocked, beaten and shot between the eyes than to feel like a woman.
—
We’re in the midst of a titanic cultural and religious war with a borderless enemy, and we’re unarmed on both counts.
Read the Whole Thing.
An Example of the Proper Application of the ClueBat™
Today’s Bleat contains a severe drubbing of one Hunter S. Thompson starting about halfway down. Well worth the read.
Human Nature Doesn’t Change
Steven Den Beste (I seem to be making a habit of commenting on his stuff) has a piece up entitled “Truth is Stranger than Fiction“ about a specific form of backlash against the bureacratic red tape that is part and parcel of the EU. Read Steven’s (short) piece, if you have not, because it is not exactly excerptable.
Finished? Good.
Steven asks two specific questions that I’d like to answer:
Can Europe avoid this nightmare? Do there exist people there who recognize the peril and who still are willing to work to prevent it?
IMHO, the answer to the first question is “no.” And the reason has to do with the answer to the second question. Certainly there are people in Europe who recognize the peril and are still willing to work to prevent it. But they are far too few to affect the flood. One of the pieces Steven quotes says this:
[A]t the heart of (Kafka’s) obsessive and horrifying narratives is an unfathomable bureaucracy, one that has emerged through a combination of inertia, default, and the institution of political power, perpetuating itself by feeding upon the rights of the people it was ostensibly designed to serve.
I submit that Kafka’s vision is merely the behavior of human nature with respect to “popular government” writ to its logical extreme: The maximization of the regulatory power of government with the minimalization of individual responsibility and accountability.
The only thing that actually prevents a completely Kafka-esque bureacracy is also human nature – the desire in a few to be the ones with their hands on the reins, even if, as the song goes, the reins are chains on their hands and they’re riding upon a train.
The purpose of our (apparently aberrant) Constitutional Republic was to build a government that could not “perpetuate itself by feeding upon the rights of the people it was ostensibly designed to serve.” By all appearances, that government too has “through a combination of inertia, default, and the institution of political power” finally headed down Kafka’s path. We’re just not as advanced along it as Europe.
But there are people here who clamor for it.
It’s human nature.
UPDATE: This piece describes, I believe accurately, the human nature behind Robert Conquest’s Second Law:
Any organization not explicitly rightwing over time drifts leftward.
It’s a good companion to this one. And it’s why, though there are people “who recognize the peril and who still are willing to work to prevent it,” there are almost never enough of us to circumvent Conquest’s law until we’ve all descended back into bondage. It also explains Tytler’s cycle.
UPDATE 5/16 9:55PM: A commenter, Dave Schuler of The Glittering Eye wrote:
While I do agree with you about the consistency of human nature, I can’t say that I agree with John Ray’s analysis. The Left has no special monopoly on elitism or authoritarianism/totalitarianism. Those on the Right would be just as happy to impose their ideas forcibly on others—they just have different ideas.
Part of the same human nature you’re talking about ensures it’s a pretty rare individual that doesn’t want to impose his views on others.
I responded, but it piqued something, so I hunted through my archives for a piece I wrote back when we were (only half-jokingly) promoting the Reynolds/Lucas 2008 candidacy – back when I wasn’t quite as pessimistic as I am now about government. It’s entitled History Calls – Will We Answer? (The answer is, apparently, “No” for the same reason I gave above – there aren’t enough of us.)
Anyway, it’s still a good piece, and it’s another good companion to this one, probably better than the John Ray piece linked above. In it, I quote something I found on the web long ago that answers Dave’s contention better than I did in the comments:
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
1) I started this blog on Wednesday, May 14, 2003.
2) I’m 42 years old.
3) I’m male, white, married, and overweight. I drive a pickup. (4WD. No gunrack, though.)
4) I have an IQ somewhere in the 130’s, and my Meyers-Briggs personality type is INTJ. (My wife says I should frame that description for future reference – it’s that accurate.) Supposedly INTJ’s make up only one or two percent of the population. That would explain a lot.
5) I have a BA degree in General Studies after spending 5½ years in college studying Physics, Mathematics, and Engineering.
6) The Arizona Board of Technical Registration says I’m a qualified, registered Professional Engineer, (Electrical).
7) I have a rare genetic enzyme disorder that causes a condition known as Acute Intermittent Porphyria. My case is relatively mild and doesn’t affect my mental balance, but it hurts pretty bad when it occurs and it requires me to sustain a carbohydrate-heavy diet – just ONE reason I’m fat.
8) I do not smoke, I do not drink, and I’ve never taken an illicit substance. I’ve never been intoxicated and never wanted to be. I don’t understand the attraction and don’t want to. But I don’t believe it’s the business of government to tell me that I cannot.
9) I’m a shooter and a reloader. Those are two of my hobbies. My blog is another, though it has consumed the majority of my time, spare and otherwise, over the last year. I also own a 1967 fastback big-block Mustang that will (someday) be built into a 500Hp highway-cruising hotrod.
10) I have two siblings; a brother five years older who is a professional auto mechanic, and a sister four years older who is a public school teacher.
11) Both of my parents are still alive and in their 70’s. We all live in the same city.
12) I was pretty much apolitical for most of my life. I was 12 years old when Nixon resigned, and I was quite happy when Jimmy Carter won the Presidency. THAT was short-lived. I turned 18 in 1980 and voted for Ronald Reagan for President. It was quite obvious to me that Carter was a nice man, but a lousy President. He’s still a nice man, but he should stick to building houses and stay the fuck out of policy.
13) Since that time there has not been a single candidate I was happy to vote for but quite a number I was more than willing to vote against. In almost every case, my vote has been against the Democrat running.
14) In 1992 I voted against G.H.W. Bush AND William Jefferson Clinton by casting my ballot for H. Ross Perot. I did not make that mistake a second time, though by then it didn’t matter. I didn’t really want Dole either.
15) In 2000 I cast my vote against Al Gore. On Sept. 12, 2001 I was very glad I had. I’m not quite as content with my decision today, but I still believe that Gore would have been an unmitigated disaster. (G.W. Bush is merely a mitigated one. His domestic policies are a mess. His prosecution of the war is not.) I believe the same to be true of any potential Democrat candidate for the seat this year. As I note below, I don’t think Kerry will be the name on the ticket come November.
16) In general, my politics are those of a pragmatic libertarian (small “L”). I believe in maximum freedom and personal responsibility. I recognize that those are relatively rare traits. (Remember my Meyers-Briggs personality type. “Does it WORK?”)
17) I had an AR-15 “post-ban” “assault rifle” custom built for me in 1997, specifically because of the 1994 AWB. And that sucker shoots. But it’s still the pipsqueak .223 varmint cartridge.
18) When the AWB sunsets, I intend to buy an FN-FAL “black rifle” in celebration. Probably about 2006. There are other guns I want more in the mean time.
19) I’m a shooter, not a collector. I don’t like overly fancy guns, but functional ones. I like hitting small things from a long way off, so most everything I’ve got is rifled. I have one shotgun, a Mossberg 590 model 50665. It is not a Sporting Clays gun.
20) I’m primarily a handgun shooter, though I really like rifles. I am the match director for the local International Handgun Metallic Silhouette matches a the Tucson Rifle Club.
21) I’m also the TRC’s Pistol Director, though that duty hasn’t required much of me.
22) My favorite target pistol is my Remington XP-100 center-grip chambered in 7mm Benchrest.
23) I’m a shooter, not a hunter. I understand the appeal that hunting has for some, but for me hunting is “taking your gun for a walk.” If you do it right, you only pull the trigger once, and then things get messy.
24) I prefer shooting steel to punching paper. I like reactive targets.
25) I have shot clay pigeons in the air with my sporterized 1917 Enfield in its standard .30-06 chambering, shooting Korean military surplus 147 grain FMJ ammo. I hit three out of the first ten. I have witnesses. (I missed all of the next ten, though.)
26) I want to do it again.
27) My favorite handgun is my Kimber Custom Stainless 1911 in its John Moses Browning intended caliber of .45 ACP. My favorite load (Disclaimer: Use At Your Own Risk) is a 200 grain Speer Gold Dot hollowpoint over 7.0 grains of Unique. Out of my pistol it pushes 950fps, hits with a 6 o’clock hold at 25 yards and with a dead-on hold at 50. It feeds and functions with complete reliability. I wonder if I could hit a clay in the air with it.
27) When it comes to bolt-action rifles, I’m a cock-on-close enthusiast. My first bolt gun was a No. 4 Mk I Lee Enfield, my second a 1896 Swedish Mauser. Now that I’ve acquired a 1917 Enfield, I’m even more convinced that cock-on-close is the way it ought to be. Your mileage may vary. I don’t give a shit.
28) I’m also convinced that recoil, at least to some point, is something you can simply learn to ignore. When I started shooting rifles, my .303 No. 4 kicked pretty damned hard. Now I can sit at a bench and put 100 rounds through my 1917 with essentially no discomfort. I’ve fired a couple hundred rounds of .30-06, .303, and 12 gauge high-base in a single afternoon and had barely a bruise and just a tiny bit of stiffness the next day.
29) Flinching, on the other hand, requires a LOT of practice to overcome, and it comes back if you don’t keep up your practice. Intentionally setting off an explosion a few inches from your face is not a natural act. It takes a while to convince your subconscious that everything is copacetic, and I don’t think it remains convinced long.
30) I think I prefer handguns because shooting a handgun well is more difficult than shooting a rifle well. I like the challenge.
31) I like reloading because it requires concentration and precision, just like shooting does. Loading my own ammo adds that much more control over the entire process. It doesn’ hurt that it costs a lot less than buying commercial, either. But I won’t load for someone else, and I won’t shoot someone else’s reloads.
32) Back to politics: I think our political system has degenerated from “loyal opposition” to out-and-out “the other side.” I think this bodes ill for our future as a nation. The polarization affects about 10-15% of the population, leaving 70-80% in the middle pretty sick and tired of all the crap they have to put up with. Unfortunately, very few in that middle bother to vote much. Fewer bother to think.
33) I’m a REPUBLICAN but not a member of the “Republican Party.” By that, I mean that I believe our Founders had it right in that Democracy was a quick path to Hell. As one local op-ed columnist put it recently
The Electoral College stands as an elitist and blatant reminder that the founders of this nation believed the rabble – that’s us – couldn’t be trusted with the task of directly choosing our president.
And they were right. About that and a lot more. But we’ve managed to (mostly) overcome the safeguards they built in, and the rabble – that’s us – has managed to do what DeTocqueville warned against:
“The American Democratic experiment will succeed until the people realize they can vote themselves money from the public treasury… then it will collapse.”
That’s what a Republic is supposed to prevent. It failed. It was supposed to be foolproof, but we keep making better fools.
34) I have a stepdaughter, about to turn 25, who is a product of Tucson’s public schools.
35) I have two grandchildren, one four and one five, who will also be exposed to that system. I hope to be able to intervene, or at least mitigate the impact. I am not, regardless of my sister’s chosen profession, a public school enthusiast. I am convinced that the public school systems are a tool, deliberately crafted twisted by the left to produce mindless, unthinking, compliant, obedient proles. And they are largely successful in spite of the efforts of teachers like my sister.
36) And I’m beginning to wonder about the effects of 20+ years of public school systems ON my sister.
37) I hope that the world my grandchildren grow up in is a bright, cheerful, and safe one. With the rise of Wahabist Islam and the moonbat Left, I don’t think it will be.
38) I intend for them to be able to think for themselves and stand up for their rights. And I will threaten violence, if necessary, to keep the “authorities” from putting my grandson on Ritalin or any other substance when he happens to exhibit a personality in the classroom.
39) I concentrate in this blog on the right to arms because, to me, it is the litmus test of the politician’s faith. If you do not trust the populace with arms, you should not be a leader. A Republic needs to be lead by leaders, not people courting popular support. Always understand that some will not be worthy of that trust, but that’s not reason to strip all of their rights. Government is there to protect the rights of its citizens, not parent them.
40) In a Democracy, the majority rules. If 50% +1 decide that all left-handed redheads should be exiled, then it’s law and that’s all there is to it. A Constitutional Republic has a basis in law that says “Government may NOT DO” and “Government may ONLY DO” and when it strays from those rules, its citizens lose. That system WORKS, as long as we let it. But once we start bending those restrictions for personal advantage, it begins to fail. Our system began failing almost from inception, but for over 200 years it has worked better than any other government in history in making the United States of America the most free, most productive, and most hopeful nation on Earth.
And I hope we can prevent it from collapsing under the weight of 225 years of being fucked with “by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
This, according to Blogspot, will be my 1,020th post since starting this blog. I don’t intend to post anything tomorrow, and I don’t know about this weekend. I still owe Tim Lambert a response, though, and I may get to it then.