*I promise unless something serious and unforeseen happens, this will be the last guest post for the week. I think I’m almost back to thinking in words. For those not otherwise linked to me — facebook, MGC — a friend who is part of our extended family went into ICU unexpectedly on Saturday. I haven’t exactly been busy with this — save for visits — in fact, it would be much easier if I had been busy, i.e. if there was anything I could do. And it’s not exactly totally unexpected; our friend has been ill. BUT it was out of the blue, and it left me feeling — partly because I couldn’t do anything — like someone took a cheese grater to my soul. He is much better and out of ICU, though still very ill, and my brain is pivoting away from fruitless panic. Tomorrow I should have words again. For now, my friend Bill, who doesn’t do guest posts for me normally unless I beg a lot, has sent me one in all on his own. So, here it is.*
Top Down
by BILL READER
I have been generous with my parentheticals in this post. I am normally a man sadly afflicted with footnotes, but they don’t work well in blogs, so you get parentheses instead. You can read past them if you’d prefer I focus on the point “like a laser”. But I did not come to cut, I came to bludgeon, and I have left in my deviations from the path accordingly.
Sarah tells me she’s had quite a lot of heat from the left. I’m very happy for her. If the enemy isn’t screaming, you aren’t fighting properly. Besides, I know the Huns and Hoydens love their chew toys and get downright rambunctious without them. That includes me, really. So while we have your attention, you teacher’s pets out of the Frankfurt School, let’s have a little chat about the cool kids in your class.
See, it’s often said that the head of a company defines its culture. The leader is the person people associate with that organization, especially the employees. Whether the leader causes the organization to imitate them, or alternatively, imitates organizational ideals to rise to power, varies. In many ways, this chicken-and-egg problem is not important, because either way, the leader would still be indicative of how the organization is arranged. But it occurs to me that, when you get right down it, political parties are basically large corporations. One wonders naturally, therefore, who are the leaders that pattern your organization, leftists? (And I anticipate naturally that you will object to being associated with a corporation. But it’s true regardless, so none of that prissy proletarian pap out of you, Democrats, Socialists, and Communists. You, and your big shiny DNC, are the people who put Mr. Billion-Dollar-Campaign in office, remember? You’ve got just as many expensive donors… George Soros, for one, who is about as grassroots as a bromeliad (and not nearly as pretty). Or how about the laundry list of high-rollers Obama was busy partying with during campaign season… the multi-thousand-per-plate dinners, you remember those? You ought to. One of those parties in Las Vegas was more important to Obama than deploying forces already in the area of Benghazi to stop our ambassador from being raped and killed. Ah, but I forget… you are “compassionate”, and so by your own definition no longer need to worry about the mere unnecessary loss of human life. Not if there’s money to be fed into your machine on the line. But I digress.)
Actually, one doesn’t really have to wonder about your heroes. You are up front about them. One might only be left to wonder WHY they are your heroes.
For example, you like Marx. You bleat that Marxism is a legitimate method for analyzing the world, and excuse or ignore that every time it’s actually been applied to the running of the world, it has resulted in massive death. To anyone but you true believers that would be a sign that Marx had fundamentally misapprehended the nature of both humans and their social systems. A friend of mine, analyzing the “Communist Manifesto”, concluded that Marx was an incoherent malcontent who had apparently sacrificed internal consistency in the piece in return for making it more inflammatory towards the “Bourgeoisie”. Me, I always thought Marx was just an idiot theoretician who forcibly hammered the square peg of history into the circular hole of his ideas and never had to atone for how much horror that little intellectual cheat would wreak on the world. Either way, it fits many of you well. It is no secret you like to be inflammatory. Like Stalin, life under your regimes is always the endless “revolution from above”. You are always jumping on some new enemy, always busy being offended at something or pretending to save the Earth, because “campaign” for you is not an event but a way of life. And you often sacrifice your internal coherence for being more inflammatory… that’s why you complain about the worsening global warming when the measurements of your own agencies show the Earth isn’t getting hotter. It’s also why you like to say that NSA isn’t really spying on people when it’s known to have subpoenaed enormous amounts of phone metadata sufficient to construct models of what lifestyles the phone owners have and what social networks they’re in. And to have been associated with a program called PRISM that had buy-in from several major tech companies, including Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft, which strongly suggests that reconstruction of social networks was the exact goal. And to be mediated in all this by secret and voter-proof FISA courts and to have abused its power in illegal ways already (Let it not be said that I’m unfair or overgeneral… David Sirota of Salon has noticed that Obama’s lying about the NSA not conducting domestic spying). And yet, many of your fundamental mistakes are motivated, as the perceptive commentator Bill Whittle pointed out in “The Train Set”, by a love of theory. You like Obama’s Keynesian stimulus of the economy because you like the theory that you can spend and print unfathomable amounts of money and somehow create value rather than just creating money. After-inflation costs of everything go up proportionally because the official inflation rate is being held down, of course. But you refuse to put two and two together because you have been taught that economics is whatever you tell it to be. You like “smart diplomacy” in the Middle East, because there’s a theory in your heads that says the world will work better if the US is less “imperialistic” and “aggressive”, even though Obama’s indecision, followed by much ill-decision in Egypt, has caused the country to devolve into a mess. I’m not sure if even Obama knows whether we’re on the side of the radical Islamists who want us dead or not. (And I don’t even know how I’d classify the “Al Queda is on the run” followed by serial embassy closures, or the scapegoating of a film producer for an attack we were warned about in advance, to the point where Stevens had repeatedly requested beefed-up security. It crosses the line from being “less imperialistic” to being “more brain-damaged”. If Jihadists celebrated Christmas, I imagine the ones who hoisted the black flag of Al Qaeda over the Benghazi embassy would have thought it’d come early.)
Of course, you have other heroes. Some of you leftists are probably wearing the face of one of them right now, knowing you. And lord, how I love to see those Che Guevara tees, because they remind me that sometimes the bad guys will self-identify. Che is less cut-and-dried than Marx. Marx you know everything about, because he is a neat, self-contained microcosm of illogic floating separate from the rest of reality. But you don’t really know Che. Well, one hopes you don’t really know Che, anyway, which is kind of the central problem with you wearing his visage.
I have a book with me leftists are never going to read anyway, so whoever of you happen to still be hanging on or… more likely… skimming the article looking for a typo to build an ad hominem attack around, are going to get a few quotes and paraphrases out of it instead. The book is called “Exposing the Real Che Guevara” by Humberto Fontova, and it’s an interesting read… a kind of cross between George Forrest and H.P. Lovecraft, the latter being because of the depravity of the individual being examined. Some details stick in the mind. Like, for example, the fact that you who are so fond of thinking of conservatives as metaphorical puppy-strangling maniacs, are wearing the face of a man who ordered an actual puppy strangled, and then wrote about it in his memoirs. Maybe that’s not a shock, though, since your president does eat dog. So here’s a choice selection from the chapter “Fidel’s Favorite Executioner”, among the more blood-soaked chapters in a book fairly dripping. A fourteen-year-old boy who was, by his own admission, taken in because he’d tried to defend his father from the people who took him to the firing squad, was watched by the other prisoners as he was dragged to the stake, by Che personally, to be shot. This boy was so eloquent in pleading his innocence that only one of the men in the firing line actually had the gumption to fire a shot at him. Che’s personal friend, a marine deserter and ex-con named Marks, went up and shot the boy twice at point blank range. Then, and remember, all of this is under Che’s watchful eye, the entire firing squad, including the one who had fired, was arrested for disobeying orders. There are stories from poor Cubans who had their house raided, and family members stolen, and then were ordered not to mourn them (page 108). There is more ghoulish stuff… Che’s friend Marks liked to bring his dog in to drink the blood of people who had been shot (what of it was left… one of the things Che ordered done to boost the Cuban economy was the extraction of blood from prisoners, for sale on the black market (page 77)). And considering that Che specifically ordered the wall of his office that faced the firing squad removed so he could watch the bloody executions at leisure, it’s safe to say he approved. From that window he watched, by some accounts, as many as 400 executions in a week (page 74). Appropriate, one supposes. The chapter opens with a quote from Che’s diaries: “Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood.” (page 66). I cannot list all the “enemies” that fell in Che’s hands, since an enemy was anyone he wanted it to be and the trials described, transcribed, and recorded in the book are pure theater that reduced the death toll exactly none. This is your “secular saint”, leftists: A murderous coward whose victims’ blood you see fit to steep yourselves in as you go about your quests for “awareness” and “compassion”. To conservatives, I recommend the book extensively, along with Elie Wiesel’s “Night” and “The Black Book of Communism”, as part of a comprehensive understanding of leftist atrocities (and an additional note to the leftists… yes, for the thousandth time, the National Socialists, who nationalized all major industries, engaged in massive public works, and instituted strict economic and, infamously, social control, were also leftists. That they were opposed to communists in theory is neither here nor there. They were also theoretically opposed to fascists after the falling-out with Mussolini, and yet they had almost indistinguishable economic ideas about what makes a country successful… namely, the same ideas you Keynsians and Statists have.).
Now we come to the difficult question, leftists. Why do you wear the face of a communist regime’s chief executioner? To be counter-cultural? Congratulations, mission accomplished. Possibly you have even overshot into being counter-civilizational, and you’re approaching counter-human.
At the very least, I like to delude myself into thinking that you are motivated solely by ignorance. I imagine that if you’ve even bothered reading the “Motorcycle Diaries”, you’ve obscured any signs that Che Guevara is a kill-crazy psychopath with the tall roadside grass of denial. In that case it is broadly metaphorical of your selective perception. Your current highest official, the president, is a man who grew up with very little affinity for the ideals of the US, raised by grandparents who had moved across the country to put his mother in a school notorious for its communist teaching regimen. And then apparently they were supposed to have become as American as apple pie in between. Oh, make that until Obama needed to throw his own grandmother under the bus. He chaired the law review without reviewing any laws, and guest-lectured about the Constitution on the basis of no-one-is-entirely-sure-what-experience, given his bafflement at it only laying out… ahem… “negative liberties”. Despite all this evidence to the contrary, you never once question the idea that he has the best interests of the US in mind and the competence to protect them? (Side note: while one of Obama’s less publicized nuggets, “negative liberties” is undoubtedly one the most troubling. It frames the defense of the people from various governmental encroachments with the ultimate in negative words… the literal word “negative”. Much like the Orwellian reversal of “tax breaks” into the term “tax expenditures”, it spins everything from the perspective of the state… that is, from the state’s perspective, the constitution says what it can’t do. At the same time, it shows remarkable incomprehension of economics. It conflates not promising to give people certain services and commodities with failure on the part of a government. By that logic, all forms of success are necessarily some flavor of redistributionist. And that analysis, which was also done at the time Obama made that statement, has only been proven more and more prophetic, as Obama routinely tests the limits of the public patience on items in the Bill of Rights and exercises an increasingly disastrous economic program.)
The theory I don’t wish to believe is that some of you know full well what kind of monster you’ve got there. I wonder if, like Che, you long to go beyond this petty government harassment as executed by the IRS and really get into the thick of it… create your own dungeons, build your own prison camps, execute your own thousands and kill men, women, and children alike for yourselves. Some of you, like Che, enjoy sending other armed people to do your dirty work while you watch from afar, as the disgusting tactic of S.W.A.T.ing has shown. On the other hand, some of you attempted to hold actual riots in 2008, and it was deeply satisfying watching you have panic attacks while the Denver police corralled you. Maybe that’s not far off Che, either, who was eventually captured while trying to “liberate” Bolivia… by which I mean he was knocking around the jungle ineffectually and in a drunken stupor.
But how does one tell if the left in general has the same desire to oppress? There is history, on one hand. Statists almost everywhere else have already racked up long and bloody records. And while it’s no guarantee, it makes sense. The prioritization of the state above individuals means that sooner or later, if individuals are perceived to threaten the state, the state lashes out. And the bigger the state, the smaller an action constitutes a “threat”.
Ours is fairly big already. I can tell because Republicans are demonized for the most trivial things, like allowing an automatic reduction in the rate at which government spending increases, also known as the “sequester”. The statists are upset, not over reducing government, not even over stopping government growth, but over slowing down the rate at which money is shoveled into its maw. Does that mean anything? I suppose first we’d have to ask if they’re even aware of that fact. After all, I can understand how someone who is under-informed could see government agencies furloughing people, so they can still have the money for the expansions they had already planned for, and incorrectly conclude that some kind of cut occurred. Obama has done his best to feed the myth, by stopping White House tours and complaining about the sequester around the country… if he has time to talk about how broke we are between the massive, expensive vacations, anyway. It’s a plausible out, at least for that case in point. Maybe leftists haven’t come as a whole to the place that they’ll defend the state above all. Merely being ignorant and easily misdirected is enough.
And if so, well, it’s fitting, because it circles back to Obama. Obama is an undeniable leftist idol, and of all the ones on this list, by far the most recent. Don’t even dream of denying it, guys… you don’t merely tolerate him, you venerate him. This is reward on investment, since he puts immense amounts of money into being symbolic of the left. And while all my conservative readers probably know a great deal about Obama’s past, that’s merely the framework built around what Obama is. Remember that first and foremost, as a third generation communist, Obama is an ideologue. He does not rise to the level of a theoretician, unlike Marx… he has no new ideas, he has dogma, handed down to him from his communist grandparents. He is ignorance personified, because not only does he have no comprehension of reality, he’s filled the place that might have been filled with comprehension with utter nonsense. But because his worldview leads him to believe in the ultimate superiority of all other countries in the world, it also makes him remarkably easy to mislead. That’s one reason why Putin has played Obama like a fiddle. It’s also why Obama’s little rainbow tour, filled with hugging despots, bowing to tyrants, and “reset button” antics, was so forehead-slappingly dumb. Like Dennis Rodman, it takes Obama about three minutes talking to a foreign dictator to decide they’re really not all that bad, because Obama is unspeakably gullible.
But, whether it is because they imitate him or because Obama comes from among them, Democrats have many of those traits from their leader. Like him, many of their avid practitioners are now either weathervaning bobble-heads, or people whose parents and grandparents got steeped in agitprop and never broke free. And they will believe the most preposterous things, in contravention of all evidence offered to them, in the face of even their own observations, if their leaders tell them it is so.
And so, at last, we come to the bottom of this ideology. Leftists can clearly be seen to reflect their idols, in myriad ways. They have, all of them, traits of Marx, Che, and Obama. Sometimes, arguably, there is that chicken and egg question, especially with Obama, being by far the most passive “leader” they have. But regardless, it is undeniable that among leftists, people with traits they reflect, as a group, have risen to high prominence and general recognition. As I said at the beginning, an organization’s culture is often defined by its leader, and think there’s a strong case to be made that Democrats are no exception.
One final point which we might reflect on, however, is that these demigods of the left are not merely flawed men, but men defined by their flaws. Marx could not have pursued the blinkered ideology that made him famous if he had had the courage to let reality supersede his theories. Che, given how questionably competent he was, would not have carved out nearly as much of a niche in pop culture had he not been bloodthirsty and power-hungry as well. It is the motive force that allowed him to rise to such prominence among people as repressive as his friends. And Obama may seem like he’s gone a long way for a man in blinders, but the fact that he cannot perceive a reality beyond what he was taught is also probably exactly why Democrats like him. When they hear him, he’s talking to them in the language of their textbooks, repeating the reassuring lies they love. And the wonderful thing about Obama is they know they can count on him never to break form, because there is nothing else in his whole mental world but their lies.
Therefore, a comment on the cool kids, leftists. Opponents of individualism and avatars of the collective like to justify the immense power they want the state to have by saying it will be wielded by good and decent individuals. Leftists often live lives that are moral by their own definition, supporting their party above all, practicing the religion of environmentalism and in general considering themselves superior to conservatives on the basis of their own delusions. But leftists, that self-deception, that you are somehow better because you call everyone and their brother an “-ist” of some kind, and worry constantly about perils that have shaky support or no support while ignoring clear and present dangers, and evangelize about received knowledge from your leaders, is exactly why you make such terrible leaders. You think that acting counter-intuitively makes you seem smarter, when in reality, it makes you fundamentally anti-empirical and puts you at odds with reality about 95% of the time. And the delusion is itself necessary to being a statist, since if you have no claim to superiority, then why should I be subordinated to you? That the claim to superiority comes through self-delusion is likewise no surprise, since self-delusion is always easier than achievement, especially when the society encourages it. Hence, we see a pattern emerge over and over… that the will to power is more often the result of narcissism than genuine superiority. Leftists are like the arch-statists they admire because they emerge from the same well… and the real lesson we learn from examining the “cool kids” is that even among those who would build a top-down state, they cannot escape the overwhelming effects of the individual. That mass of people who want to control others work together only because all their members are seriously broken in that same way. Thus, being set apart is still an individual endeavor. To be remembered among leftists, have an especially perverse desire to control others, be especially well indoctrinated… be especially broken. They may have twisted the standards of individual success in an attempt to supersede individuals, but they cannot remove success from the equation entirely. On the other hand, as they are conceived, they also cannot help but try.
This is why, in the end, we will win, and they will lose, because we are (as we have ever been), aligned with the laws that govern reality, and they are aligned with how they wish reality worked.
According To Hoyt 
Leftists like to think of themselves as “Free thinkers” when in fact, they are neither free, nor thinkers. They generally don’t have a single original thought to call their own, instead, they freely spout the latest talking points as if the novelty of being the first, (or the loudest when regurgitating the oldest lies) somehow makes them praiseworthy.
You nailed it talking about how their desire to be “Counter-culture” generally pits them against reality, on the losing side, but they are so mal-educated, thy can’t even tell when they’re wrong. It’s just another aspect of the whole Frankfurt School “Critical Theory” where all you need to do to be a cool thinker is tear something down and need not offer anything better to replace it. All that really does is make you a useful vandal at the ends of the puppet strings.
On their lack of originality — it was bracing to see the same lies spouted about WWI dredged up about Afghanistan and Iraq. No analysis to see if there’s any truth to their assertions, just a quick polish and updating the names.
One must remember George Orwell’s caution that atrocities stories may sound similar not because the stories are refurbished but the atrocities are:
I wouldn’t go as far as he says: after all, they ARE lied about and ARE made into propaganda. But certainly, they happen, too.
No, not about atrocities. Motivations — the ancient chestnut that wars are to make the munitions makers rich.
Oh, that one. . . you mean it came back? Lucky me, I managed to miss that one.
HALBURTON!!!!1111
Somewhere I have in my collection a book that explains that in great detail, from WW1.
Oh yes. It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.
Why, I’ve read histories painted on cave walls, when Og tribe went to war with Carg tribe, it wasn’t actually over the right to hunt mammoth at the foot of White Mountain, it was actually all to benefit Roc the flintknapper and Ug the spearmaker.
Little known fact: Hannibal invaded Italy at the behest of Roman jewelers, who made hundreds of new Senatorial rings after Cannae.
GIGGLE.
Thankfully, I stiffed a jeweler down near Circus Flaminus for about DCC silver denarii a few millenia ago …
My cousin? You stiffed my cousin? I shall tell mom.
you sure? I thought that was a plot between the spatha and pilum manufacturers….
Yahoo!!!!!!!!!!!! That will ruffle some feathers.
Go Bill. Razor sharp and I can’t wait to show my friends.
Please share any links to places you usually publish.
Fred
molon labe
He DOESN’T. I’ve been trying for two years now to convince him to get a blog. He says that he has a job. (Rolls eyes. Like I don’t.)
Good thing we’ve got you, then.
Good for you. This was a rocking post.
First it is necesary to grab the reigns of power to implement your grand design. Then it is imperative to continue to hold the reigns of power to insulate yourself from the bloody, stinking disaster you have created and would otherwise drag you down.
1. Grab reins of power
2. ???
3. Profit!
It is not done for profit, profit by definition of the prog on the street is utterly vile. What is important is the power to control and remake the people you seek to rule, who’s resistance must be overcome by nudging, controlling, invasive surveillance, and if they still won’t come around, using the collected data as evidence to condemn to re-education and probably the gulags. The insulation is to deep yourself inviolate from the retribution of the people whose lives you have destroyed and from your allies who think you’ve screwed up and need to be replaced.
The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it.
He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.
— Adam Smith
Speaking of Che Guevara tees, this one is probably my favorite:
http://inmycopiousfreetime.blogspot.com/2010/01/of-all-christmas-gifts-that-i-received.html
It’s just too much fun to wear, especially around certain types of people.
Not quite violent enough to capture my reaction.
I kind of want to make a shirt with the traditional Che Guevara on the front, and a similarly stylized Adolf Hitler on the back, captioned “I hope you had the same reaction when you saw me coming.”
Whenever I wear that t-shirt around town, people usually either smile and start comparing notes with me about how awful he was (I live in a little drop of red in a massive sea of blue) or just shake their heads and ignore it. The most memorable reaction was a total Che “true believer” who saw it from across the street. He kept pace for with me for two blocks and shouted through the traffic about how wonderful Che had been, and just got angrier and angrier as my dog got happier and happier, thinking the man wanted to play.
I used to wear that on campus a few years ago. The liberals never had the gumption to say anything about it. Although some may have been intimidated to speak up to their TA.
I kinda want the “Viva la Reagan Revolucion” one, which looks similar to a Che shirt, but has Reagan on it.
That one is cool.
We has it.
I find nothing quite as funny as a grad student wearing a Che shirt.
“Like, for example, the fact that you who are so fond of thinking of conservatives as metaphorical puppy-strangling maniacs, are wearing the face of a man who ordered an actual puppy strangled, and then wrote about it in his memoirs”
I’ve come across a few Che “apologists” who say they admire not the monster he became, but the idealist his memoirs show him to be.
If they’ve read his memoirs, then they’ve come across this incident, no? So, were they lying, omitting, or perhaps working off a sanitized version of the memoirs, a Hollywood production of them, perhaps?
I’ve come across a few Che “apologists” who say they admire not the monster he became, but the idealist his memoirs show him to be.
Sure, if your ideals involve micromanaging everyone’s lives to ensure “economic justice” or some other unicorn.
The reason Progressives are so focused on puppies is that they are very like puppies:
0 Neither can feed themselves, and when they feed they usually make a mess, wasting large amounts of the food …
0 Both whine and bark incessantly and over nothing …
0 Neither is useful, mostly obstructing folk who are trying to actually get something done …
0 They gnaw on the furniture that society relies on …
The difference is that puppies can be housebroken. Progs, OTOH….
“one of the things Che ordered done to boost the Cuban economy was the extraction of blood from prisoners, for sale on the black market”
So, Bill Clinton was not just an admirer, but a follower of Che’s example?
This is a great article and wonderfully describes the delusions of the left. Many people are fooled by their nonsense, which makes up most of the doctrine of the left, because they call their theories scientific, as in social sciences. In fact, there is nothing scientific about it at all. It’s still just shamanism relabeled.
The reality is, they make most of this shit up as they go along. So call anything scientific and most people fall for it, because look how much we’ve advanced since the days of Newton, Watts, and Faraday. Right?
Their science is more like Sir Bedevere’s, in Monty Python’s the “Search for the Holy Grail”, where he explains to the rabble, scientifically, of course, how to tell if the woman they are accusing is a really a witch. Hilarity ensues as he makes it up as he goes along. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBcKyWbYXdM
Accused witch: “It’s a fair cop.”
One problem with your comparo:
Bedevere proved to be *right*…. >:)
I don’t imagine there were any true-blue leftists who managed to get through this article, because 1) it hit too close to home, and 2) it used facts and logic. Still, it helps the rest of us to be reminded what motivates the leftist mind.
“Opponents of individualism and avatars of the collective like to justify the immense power they want the state to have by saying it will be wielded by good and decent individuals.”
1st rule of political philosophies: If it relies on the “right people” being in charged, it’s already doomed.
The difficulty with such red-meat rhetoric is that it is soooo satisfying to the faithful, and soooo distasteful to the enemy that it ends up preaching to the choir. Nevertheless, preach it.
Release the monsters of the id and they may destroy the city you want them to save.
Not sure if this is on topic– this morning I went to a Sheriff and Cheif’s association meeting on the topic of CCW (concealed weapons permits) and the first thing out of the proctor’s mouth was that this meeting was only about CCW’s and not about the 2nd amendment. 😉
LOL– boring meeting of course, but I did find out that we have a very expensive process for CCW’s and they last five years.
I can’t recall if you are in NV or ID. Idaho now has an odd two tiered permit system to expand reciprocity with other states. Nevada has recently repealed a silly “revolver” / “semiauto” specific scheme they had. Idaho has a fairly inexpensive fee but Nevada’s is higher (about same here in CO).
http://www.handgunlaw.us is a good site for info on each state.
NV– and yes they repealed that silly law. They say the reason it is higher is because they have the fingerprint done for the Brady Law exception. Plus each Sheriff’s office can charge a fee… (up to 60 dollars)
In Nevada, a concealed permit holder is exempt from background checks for purchases? Ooooooooo. I wish.
Yep– called the Brady exemption… but it does cost a lot extra (37.50) plus the rest. To get the first license with classes, it can cost up to 200 dollars the first time. Also if you come to NV, you can take the classes and do the shooting (has to be in the same county that you get the permit)… It can take up to 120 days to get the permit though… and other qualifiers.
Yes, for states with training requirements, that’s often the expensive part. Colorado counties are uneven in what they’ll accept as training – a few counties will accept Hunter Safety certificate which is very inexpensive but most won’t. Colorado requires issuance w/in 90 days. We don’t have a Brady exemption provision.
Yea– training is pretty stringent here. Plus they won’t take military training except for certain Coast Guard positions as training. (they have to be the same as police… as if the po-lice get good enough training lately.)
Yah, Colorado’s statute is a bit vague. In my own case, my county would not accept hunter safety (which I actually teach for Colorado Parks and Wildlife) but did accept my long history of competitive shooting in USPSA, NRA, and my range officer certifications.
So you are an instructor 😉 I would like to do more target shooting. I get tired though. (I would have liked to try competitive shooting a few years ago.)
I am a know-it-all, I am often informed.
If you are thinking of applying and would like any advice offboard, feel free to email me.
Thank you– I am not thinking of getting one, but the hubby might … He has been talking about it for a few years.
“In Nevada, a concealed permit holder is exempt from background checks for purchases? ”
There are states where this isn’t so? I thought that was a Fed deal.
“NV– and yes they repealed that silly law. They say the reason it is higher is because they have the fingerprint done for the Brady Law exception.”
They are feeding you a line there, because Idaho has that also, in fact until this subject came up I wasn’t aware any states didn’t.
Apparently some states have levels of gun licenses… Utah was cited as an example. Only one of the levels had the brady exemption. NV has only one CCW (handgun only now)
TX has the same distinction on their CHL. You can either get your permit for semi-auto, or revolver only. Presumably the more bullets you had the more stringent the permit….
Oh, and we also have a “Brady exception.”
Boy you have a lot of stereotypes that aren’t close to being true. But it’s easier than doing your homework, and allows you to hate more.
Words of wisdom NOT spoken by a tolerant NOT liberal.
Oh, WE hate, do we. Funny thing — after a week of people coming in and calling me swear words.
Tell me, though, oh, genius, which of those stereotypes aren’t right? Because I know all of them personally — and I’m sure everyone here does. Do you mean your kids don’t wear Che shirts? Good for, but tons of people do. And they’re on your side. Do you mean that you guys don’t quote Marx — btw, a shiftless grifter his entire life — Or you don’t quote Mao and Stalin? Or idolize Chavez? Or adore Chavez Worshiper Obama? Which of those are wrong? I DARE you to read the Big Black book of communism. I DARE you to step down from that pile of corpses and face reality.
Cue the ad hominem in two, one…
Let us not forget that Uncle Karl effectively refused responsibility for his family for his entire life
Yep. Shiftless grifter speaking for the working poor. Self-trained economist forgetting that distribution is part of a working economy. It would be funny if the stench of corpses didn’t make one gag.
It stopped being funny when Marxist critique made me responsible for society’s woes. Because white male, usually.
Or made me a victim because female, Latin — I’d like to point out I’m nobody’s victim, ever. By choice.
Being a speaker for the working man is how most of these clowns avoid BEING the working man.
*snort* Che shirts? H-ll, I saw a kid at Flat State with a Stalin shirt on. I should have stopped him and asked him to tell me about the guy, to see what he knew, but I was late for a meeting on the other side of campus (and I do mean waaaay other side).
To me, a “Che” shirt tells me that the wearer wants to steal from me and kill me but hasn’t got the fortitude to do more than buy the t-shirt at the campus bookstore.
What country was it (Peru?) where some celebrity twit showed up with a khaki handbag with a communist star on it and they went bonkers at her – rightly so given the immense death toll from Shining Path guerrillas.
Yes, those of us who got to experience the lovinkindness of socialists and communists REALLY are vaccinated for good. I wonder if Howey boy will be screaming “but I supported you” when his comrades send him to the wall.
I found it. Cameron Diaz. She had a handbag with the Maoist slogan “Serve the People” written in Chinese on the bags flap.
It’s a cookbook bag!
Unfortunately that will work only for those who have been there personally. I have a friend who backs, completely and eagerly, the idea that it would be so much better if nobody except police (and maybe some other representatives of the state) had guns. How that would make everything soo much better. Sometimes I bring the issue up, maybe I hope she might have changed her mind at least a bit, or maybe I just hope I’d get some proof that she just pretends to have that opinion, to tease me, but it seems she really does think so. Last mention of how much Americans have bought guns during the last years, her comment was something along the lines that yes, those people who are paranoid…
She’s a Jew.
Sometimes I despair of the intelligence of my ethnic coreligionists. Why would any European Jew not trust her countrymen to stand with and protect her. Trusting oneself to the generosity of others worked so well in Warsaw’s Ghetto, after all. Adam Czerniaków’s strategy of cooperation proved itself, in the end.
Had the ghetto’s occupants held more than a handful of guns they might have not sent Rabbi Friedman’s message: “Mr. Amos kept his promise from the fifth-third.” (Book of Amos, chapter 5, verse 3)?
Perhaps you should invite her to join you to watch Defiance (2008)?
Yes. Seconded. Even those of us whose families apostathized long ago should be weary. Look, the week after 9/11 a list appeared in certain professional circles. Apparently it was the “Jews” (should be spelled Joooos, of course, in these circumstances) who invited 9/11. Just look at the list of Jews screwing up SF/F. Yes, my name was in there. It was a piece of lunacy since vanished down the memory hole, but I remember. Trust them? I wouldn’t trust them with a cat, much less my life.
Apparently it was the “Jews” (should be spelled Joooos, of course, in these circumstances) who invited 9/11
Ugh. At least that one sorry b*stard politician around here quit running his Joooo-hating campaign ads on the radio after he lost pathetically 3 or 4 times. I was getting ready to start threatening the radio stations.
I could try. I doubt it would work. History, you know. Could not happen now, no way.
Finnish Jews were about as safe as any other Finn during the wars. Who knows what would have happened if Germany had won, during the war they could not exactly try to force an ally to do something said ally strongly refused to do, but I doubt Finland could have kept that stance against a victorious Germany.
One of the things getting older tends to teach (some people seem immune to learning, even from experience) is how easy it is to make bold pronouncements when not called upon to pay up. Over time an intelligent person learns to not say “were I in that situation, what I would do is …” unless one has actually been in “that” situation. Too few of us poor humans live up to our boasts.
H*ll, having been in a few hairy situations, I don’t KNOW how I ‘m going to react. Half the time I freeze. half the time I go nuts. And sometimes the reaction is inappropriate. Stupid human body.
Yeah – but in case any of our Prog trolls were visiting I didn’t want to complicate matters by noting that even when you’ve been in it before you can’t be sure how you’ll react when next it happens. “Past performance is no guarantee of future results” and all that.
That is one reason why real heroes tend to be modest.
What else is spitting on a cop or soldier, but a one-level-up bravado claim?
I wonder if I can post a picture here…nope.
Well, here’s a link for your friend (I hope it works): http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-s3_71YsSBe8/UhPqj4kRgkI/AAAAAAAAbpc/_MOxzae6Lkk/s1600/539022_507290049354209_835384588_n.jpg
Did he miss his cue?
As has been observed: to know what the left is doing, first look at what they are quick to accuse you of.
Wheee! Just in time for my snack break. 😀 *settles in with milkshake and score card*
Seems to have been a drive-by. Just one comment?
We’d had a fair number of those.
Good thing I didn’t make any popcorn. Maybe a bit disappointed too. The longer roasts can be entertaining.
Mrs. Hoyt mentioned that all the prior spam-blocks had gone away– I’d guess as recognizable drive-bys with no history show up, she blocks the IP address.
More likely, she turned on the “first time posts are moderated” setting after they came through, and their lack of a login or address borked them.
He’s done this repeatedly on other posts — I think I’ll ban his IP. Meh. He’s boring.
Great, another example of the Left’s projection.
Its tiresome, howard, that the Left ultimately rests all of its arguments on its own emotional infancy. You are like two year olds that insist upon grabbing things you are not knowledgeable enough to comprehend, and when its taken away from you by reality, your only reaction is to insist that reality hates you. The big mean people hate you. The successful hate you. And the powerful hate you. Economics hates you. Its all a conspiracy to hate you.
But reality does not work that way, howard. So grow up.
I would have to ask, what homework should I be doing? Right now I’m reading Raico, Hazlitt and trying to read Guevara’s _Guerilla Warfare_. Do you have something other than Das Kapital to suggests?
I like Thomas Sowell’s “Marxism” myself.
I’ll put it on my list.
(Usually if Das Kapital comes up I have an odd urge to say that I was disappointed that it didn’t have as many Indians as his other books)
No one laughs at that joke, do they? Don’t feel bad. I bring some of my “A” material here and get no love.
The first thing that happens when the subject of Marxism and Marxists comes up is the departure of my sense of humor. On a 6-month tour of Outer Mongolia, usually.
Which stereotypes would these be, howardbrazee?
Do enlighten us poor iggerant rednecks (who happen to include a pretty impressive collection of nationalities, ethnicities and cultures) and explain just what is stereotypical about Soros and friends whose donations eclipse donations to the Republican party.
Or would the stereotype be with the complete failure of Marxism to improve life for the oppressed folks it claims to be trying to help? I’d love to see some actual evidence to the contrary, something that isn’t soaked in the blood of “enemies of the state”.
Maybe it’s Guevara’s evil that you find stereotypical? Nah. Couldn’t be. He boasted about those things in his self-aggrandizing memoirs. Unless you don’t think that what he did actually was evil, in which case, I can confidently expect to find you in politics as a Democrat or in prison on the wrong side of the bars (possibly both) at some point in the future.
So what do you think is stereotyped and not close to being true? Surely you’re not claiming that the facts are stereotypical and not close to being true.
The jibe about homework isn’t worth the time, given that Bill Reader cites several documents and you can’t even be bothered identifying which of his claims gets under your skin. Which rather makes your comment about hatred into a nice piece of projection, dearie.
We like a robust discussion here. We’ll happily have one with you – but you do have to show your work.
Do be a darling and show us your work, Howie. You don’t want me to hold my breath waiting – “smurf” is SO not my color.
“Do enlighten us poor iggerant rednecks…”
At least one of us is a po’ eggnrnt redneck. *grin* Top be clear, “po’ ” is a technical term here in the South that means “poor” is a few levels up. Ignorant of many things, yes indeed I am. I know this. Thing is, ignorance is curable. Ya can’t fix stupid. Lastly, good honest work out in the hot, hot sun will give just about anybody a “red neck” tan. I’m proud of that. Guess what else is stereotypical about me? I listen to talk radio. Voted (R) in the last county election. Drive an *American made* pickup. Raised Catholic. Own my own home, in a tiny little speck of a town. And I purely despise liberal stupidity.
Know what? I also listen to NPR on occasion. I read the NYT on occasion and watch CNN sometimes. Helps to know what the other side is saying. I’ve got a college degree that I earned, no scholarships for being po’, white, and sub-4.0 GPA (was a 3.89 at grad; cum laude on the diploma). Studied psychology, sociology, got the final degree in physical anthropology. I’s a eddicated redneck, ayup. All that means, for the purpose of this discussion is I can recognize bullsh*t when I see it. I don’t have issues with the LGBT crowd being what they are (*attitudes* I take issue with, sometimes). I even get along with atheists, again, provided they don’t have a stick up their arse. Hell, I even like live Shakespeare- our local theater does it up a treat when they get around to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I pay attention to, and can even appreciate some of that stuff y’all usually think is exclusively liberal.
Tell me ‘howard’- or any other of his pals that decides to drop by- what do *you* understand of the right, eh? Every time I see one of us engaging on *issues* all we get back is rants, ad hominem attacks, and the occasional badly wobbling spin. When *we* talk facts, you cannot grasp them. The mob that follows you, that votes your same ideals, is only there for the bread and circuses. The day will come when you can no longer provide them, and on that day, you will fall. The incredible irony of this is, your only savior at that point can only be… one of us.
Probably a sweat-stained redneck. Someone like me, whose life has been one of unceasing effort and toil, for *real* things and *real* people. People like our families, and the friends we’ve chosen who are like our own blood, so close are they. Things like a home to put them in and protect them from the world at large. The higher concepts we follow, things like honor, faith, and justice- they don’t mean the same to you. But honor is the shield that protects you from our anger. And, believe me, we *are* angry. Faith is the strength behind our arms- be it religious faith or simply faith in what is right and good. Justice is the sword that strikes down the wicked. And the world is indeed full of wickedness that you have been sheltered from since birth.
For all your talk about fairness and equality, you don’t do it very well, either. We’re more egalitarian than you. Anyone can succeed, in our view, provided he puts in the effort and gets the results. There’s no “privileged few,” but we take care of our own, and more. As a percentage of income, we give more than you do. And that doesn’t even cover how we help out neighbors who’ve lost a job, single moms whose deadbeat dad is never in the picture, even strangers who’re stuck on the road and can’t afford a tank of gas. Yeah, I’ve done all that. Everyone else here can probably tell you a similar story.
So tell me, what exactly is it that’s so great about spending ourselves out of debt *cough* Bailouts! Obamacare! Stimulus! *cough* and racing to cut more freedoms *cough* gun control! *cough*, kowtowing to those who would exterminate us if they could, corrupting our youth with poor education, and ruining our economy with endlessly worthless printed money? I’m awaiting that enlightenment now. I’ll be right over here, not holding my breath either- I’m more of a redneck kinda guy anyway. I’d probably turn purple, not blue. *grin*
*clap* *clap* *clap*
Stands up. Applauds. I like me a man with a Southern accent, and, sir, I’m glad you’re on our side.
I like the cut of your jib, sir.
Thank ye kindly sirs, Miss Hoyt. Y’all are good people.
“People”? I ain’t “people.” I am a – “a shimmering, glowing star in the [blogosphere] firmament.”
http://www.hark.com/clips/fwdvmfxslr-i-aint-people
It says so – right here.
I am not. You take that back.
Awright, fer certain extra wide defined values of “good” and uncertain rather vague (tilt yer head and squint) values of “people,” y’all ain’t bad.
*stab stab*
Eh, well, maybe yer awright.
Shucks, Howard — people here do extensive homework and don’t actually hate hate anybody who hasn’t attacked us (and not even all of those poor misguided ignorami.) So, it appears you are the one suffering from stereotypical thinking (and thanks, BTW, for demonstrating the technique of Left-Wing vitriol.)
Of course, if you could cite a couple of those “stereotypes” that you claim aren’t close to being true I am confident many here would be eager to engage you in in-depth debate over the accuracy of the representations.
And if you could actually point out an example, Howie, you would have.
*has barely got to the SWATting part*
Goodness. You are quite red meat-y– I LIKE it!!!
Proper response to an invasion of foaming lefties.
“Red meat-y”? No, that’s pure bacon.
Mmmmmmm. Bacon.
That’s honorary red meat.
“… in the end, we will win, and they will lose…”
Unfortunately, there’s little basis for that statement. Poland did switch from communism to democracy, but that was primarily because communism had been foisted upon the Poles. Most collapses of left-wing governments are followed by different left-wing governments or dictatorships, not conservative or libertarian democracies. Russia went to a dictatorship. Italy went from fascism to a mess. Ukraine went from communism to a nominal parliamentary democracy, but its parliament is a mess with dozens of parties and many causes of divisiveness.
What you are pointing out is that countries with weak institutions quickly fall out of democracy and back to oligarchies or dictatorships because of the weakness of the institutions. Not news unfortunately.
And maybe the reason why those institutions get weakened by the Left, eh?
“You think that acting counter-intuitively makes you seem smarter, when in reality, it makes you fundamentally anti-empirical and puts you at odds with reality about 95% of the time.”
My favourite line. I was just thinking of this the other day, but I was thinking of it as a ‘superhero sidekick’ kind of thing. Like when you’re a kid watching cartoons and you think “why didn’t Superman just fly back in time, then he could have saved everyone and STILL get the magical princess” etc.
I think there are some kids that never shook off the whole ‘trying to outsmart the situation’ kind of monotony, and it’s transformed into ‘outsmart common sense’ and then ‘outsmart reality’. It’s just a mode of thinking, and I guess they enjoy it enough that there’s no motivation to re-examine their own premises. They just keep trying to get better and better at being counter-intuitive, and never stopping to wonder what’s actually wrong with the straight-forward solutions.
Very well developed thesis, with clearly stated themes building into a solid rhetorical structure. The Progs will rant about it (and you) but will never make even the slightest attempt to seriously engage your thought.
Because they do not think. A reasoned argument is like Greek to them. The only thing they can do is rely on what they believe to be thought: Emoting.
As demonstrated by the only effort of any Prog to enter the discussion here, they are essentially medieval, having only the token wards of their catechism with which to confront challenges. They can call names, they can denounce, they can deflect (stereotypes? cite one) but they cannot engage in reasoned debate because they have not reached their dogmas through reason.
Oh, fiddle!!! Prior comment was in reply to:
Have we broken WP again?
Reblogged this on dogdesert and commented:
Impressive essay. I wish I could be this eloquent on this subject.