The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
Step 1: You’re being oppressed (by the rich, by whitey, by corporations, etc)
Step 2: Give me power and I will fix this
Step 3: I haven’t fixed it yet because you haven’t given me enough power
By AR15.com member HarryStone.
Yeah, that’s about it. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The people on JournoList claim they were just social networking, so let’s start calling it SociaList — Jim Treacher, Daily Caller
(Other than that, I got nothin’ for you today. I’m working 6:30AM to 6:00PM, and when I get home I read the blogs and the ‘toons, and I go to bed.)
Even unfired (by me, at least) out of the box, racking the slide was like rubbing snot on glass. — Day at the Range, SVI Infinity – Initial impressions and first 1000 rounds
Or, as they say where I grew up, “slicker’n snot on a glass doorknob.”
Hat tip to Uncle for the pointer.
Referring to yesterday’s Pew Poll discovery, Iowahawk twitters today’s QotD:
Poll: 1/4 of Dems See 2nd Coming in Next 40 Years; http://bit.ly/afVo71 Other 3/4 Believe 2nd Coming Happened in Nov 2008
I don’t care who you are – that’s funny right there!
In the short term at least, the country class has no alternative but to channel its political efforts through the Republican Party, which is eager for its support. But the Republican Party does not live to represent the country class. For it to do so, it would have to become principles-based, as it has not been since the mid-1860s. The few who tried to make it so the party treated as rebels: Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. The party helped defeat Goldwater. When it failed to stop Reagan, it saddled his and subsequent Republican administrations with establishmentarians who, under the Bush family, repudiated Reagan’s principles as much as they could. Barack Obama exaggerated in charging that Republicans had driven the country “into the ditch” all alone. But they had a hand in it. Few Republican voters, never mind the larger country class, have confidence that the party is on their side. Because, in the long run, the country class will not support a party as conflicted as today’s Republicans, those Republican politicians who really want to represent it will either reform the party in an unmistakable manner, or start a new one as Whigs like Abraham Lincoln started the Republican Party in the 1850s.
American Spectator – Angelo M. Codevilla, America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution
Important as they are, our political divisions are the iceberg’s tip. When pollsters ask the American people whether they are likely to vote Republican or Democrat in the next presidential election, Republicans win growing pluralities. But whenever pollsters add the preferences “undecided,” “none of the above,” or “tea party,” these win handily, the Democrats come in second, and the Republicans trail far behind. That is because while most of the voters who call themselves Democrats say that Democratic officials represent them well, only a fourth of the voters who identify themselves as Republicans tell pollsters that Republican officeholders represent them well. Hence officeholders, Democrats and Republicans, gladden the hearts of some one-third of the electorate — most Democratic voters, plus a few Republicans. This means that Democratic politicians are the ruling class’s prime legitimate representatives and that because Republican politicians are supported by only a fourth of their voters while the rest vote for them reluctantly, most are aspirants for a junior role in the ruling class. In short, the ruling class has a party, the Democrats. But some two-thirds of Americans — a few Democratic voters, most Republican voters, and all independents — lack a vehicle in electoral politics.
Sooner or later, well or badly, that majority’s demand for representation will be filled.
American Spectator – Angelo M. Codevilla, America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution
Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat” was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.” Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.
Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits.
American Spectator – Angelo M. Codevilla, America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution
And the rest of us are the products of public schooling and everything but Ivy-League higher education.
As though that was the entire purpose of the educational system.
RTWT. It’s worth your time.
From The Geek with a .45 (who really needs to blog more often, ’cause he’s friggin’ brilliant):
A generation before the American Revolution, the English philosopher John Locke dug a deep well from which the waters of liberty are drawn, laying out the manner in which explicit, finite, enumerated Powers can be delegated by the People to government, while reserving all other prerogatives to themselves.
A generation later, the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau poisoned, pissed and shat into that well, restating the social compact with key bits sabotaged to support collectivism and the oppression of the individual by the allegedly infallible democratic will of the people.
The refutation of this point is a simple question: “Is there any process of democracy that will justly allow you to rape another against their will?”
If the answer is no, then there are limits to what the democratic will of the people can justly enable, and the remainder of the argument is about where those limits are, and by what process/axiom/principle they are discovered or established.
If the answer is yes, I don’t want to know you, it’d be best for you never to encounter me.
One of the things the Gun Blogger’s Rendezvous does is raise money for a very deserving charity – Project Valour-IT. For today’s quote of the day, some words from the founder of that charity, Maj. Chuck Zeigenfuss, who does not care for journalist Michael Yon all that much:
You recently said you couldn’t adopt a kid because you couldn’t return to war. Guess what, Mikey? I go to war because of my family, because I want them to live in a better world. This is me after 34 reconstructive surgeries (and more to go.) Guess what else, Mikey, I am going back to war, Again. I am going to go back to Iraq right before Christmas. How do you think the kids will enjoy that, considering last time daddy went away, he died several times before coming home? I know sacrifice, but not like they do. You, mikey, have no idea what personal sacrifice means. If you write her a nice letter, maybe my 7-year old daughter could explain it to you.
THAT left a mark! There’s very much more, along with some pretty graphic graphics, but I strongly recommend the entire piece. I’ve met the Major at GBRs II, III and IV. He is a very no-bullshit guy. He and his family are currently stationed in Hawaii as he prepares for his upcoming deployment to Iraq, living in insufficient housing, and unable to get sufficient housing before he ships out. Anybody over there able to help him out?
I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbours and ample rivers – and it was not there; in her fertile lands and boundless prairies – and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good – and if America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
This quote has been attributed to Alexis de Toqueville, but it’s apparently apocryphal, like the quote attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler. It has become “an old adage” however, and remains true – as the “Tytler” quote remains accurate.