Monday, April 30, 2012

Just to Emphasise that I Am Not an Objectivist

The most recent XKCD:




The rollover text says:
I had a hard time with Ayn Rand because I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with the first 90% of every sentence, but getting lost at "therefore, be a huge asshole to everyone."
And she's a terrible novelist. Excellent essayist, but terrible novelist.

Recycling

Robb's got a great meme going on the Republican bumpersticker format, but I'm not as creative or talented as he is. What I am good at is recycling other people's ideas. Here's one from the depths of 2009, done by Bubba of What Bubba Knows that pretty much says what Robb's stickers say without using a single word:

Yeah, that about says it all.

Except the RINO should be fucking a map of the United States.

The OWS Philosophy In Action

Dr. Sarah "Stickwick Stapers" sent me a link to this video. I think it's quite appropriate here the day before the Left "celebrates" Victims of Communism Day. Watch it all the way to the end for the payoff:




Tomorrow may illustrate an interesting variant on this behavior.

I Feel Better Now

You know, as a blogger, you're just not sure if you're reaching anyone unless you get some negative feedback from time to time.

I received an email this afternoon from one "Chris Carlsen" - no subject line, just two sentences of missive and a sigline:
Your(sic), sir, are a fucking idiot.  Good day.
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." Ode on a Grecian Urn, 49-50.
I replied:
Good to know you care!  Don't be a stranger.  Keep in touch.

Kevin
I have no idea just what offended him enough to fire off, but hey, I must be doing something right!

Quote of the Day - Education Edition

Very few people complete a math or engineering major without learning a lot of math and engineering, but it’s entirely possible to major in the humanities and never learn to read, write, or reason with any rigor. The problem isn’t inherent to the subject matter, it’s a symptom of professorial self-indulgence and laziness, together with the lack of external scrutiny, a problem that is much, much worse in humanities than in STEM. - Glenn Reynolds

Friday, April 27, 2012

OK, So I Wanna Build an AR

I put my order in today for a "Fill Your Hands You Son of a Bitch" York Arms stripped AR-15 lower, and I want to build a .50 Beowulf .458 SOCOM on it.

I've never built an AR.  I don't have a bench vise, but I can pick one up from Harbor Freight fairly cheaply.  I know Brownell's or somebody had a series of videos on building your own AR, but I haven't been able to find them.  I've checked both Brownell's and Midway and they are out of stock on AR-15 lower parts kits.  I don't want to buy an Alexander Arms complete upper, I'd like to build an upper based on this 18" AR-Stoner stainless barrel. I'm going to buy a Rock River complete upper.

I have a stock wrench and standard hand tools. So what other tools will I need?

UPDATED:  I've decided to go .458 SOCOM instead.  Thanks for all the suggestions and recommendations!

But He's a BIRCHER!

Robert Welch's 1974 speeches at the John Birch Society Council Dinner. A paranoid crazy? Give him a listen:



Found at Francis Porretto's Liberty's Torch.

Mystery Political Theater 2012

Andrew Klavan and Bill Whittle fisk Obama's campaign film:


Thursday, April 26, 2012

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Dallas Blogshoot AAR

Sorry I'm late with this, but here it is.

I left Tucson Thursday afternoon about 4:30 with the intention of stopping in El Paso. I got to Deming, NM before I decided I'd better stop. That was about 8PM Mountain Time. I left Deming the next morning about 6AM, which put me in El Paso just in time for rush hour.

Aaand there was an accident on I-10 East. I spent 45 minutes to go two miles. Oh well.

I got to Arlington, TX about 5PM Central time, and met up with US Citizen at his palatial abode. I took the family out to dinner. We went to Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen. I'd never been to one before. They say everything's bigger in Texas, but for a restaurant, this place was HUGE. And FULL. The food was excellent, as was the company.

We discussed the Super Secret Shootin' Location, and I was concerned about whether the Mustang would possibly get stuck going in. There had been a significant amount of rain on Thursday, so there was some concern about the condition of the access road. So when we got back to the house, I transferred my firearms, ammo and range back from the trunk of the Mustang to the already overloaded Traction Control SUV. Then I went and got a hotel room and got some sleep.

The next morning, I waited for US Citizen to pick me up. I called him at 9:00 and he said "I'm waiting out in front!" but when I went to the front of the hotel, no SUV. He was in front of the La Quinta. I was staying at the Quality Inn. Once we got that worked out, we were on our way to the blogshoot. When we arrived at the prearranged meeting point, there were already a half-dozen people waiting. We introduced ourselves, and got acquainted around waiting for others to arrive, which they did over the next thirty minutes or so. Best line of greeting: "Are you from the internet?" "Yes, we're from the internet, and we're here to help you."  To the best of my knowledge, a total of seventeen people turned out for the shoot.  A partial list:
And there were more whose names I did not get. "Blogless" was one of them.   Chime in in the comments if I missed you.

About 10:15 we headed off to the range.  I'm pretty sure I would have had no problem getting the Mustang in and out.  Apparently the worst of the storm missed the range site.  Oh well.  What a beautiful place to go shoot!  Sixty-five acres on a branch of the Trinity River, about 100 yards across to the opposite bank, and there's a flat area about 500 yards downriver from the shooting area.  Oh, and in Texas they have these huge tall wooden things with these "leaves" that block the sun!  Imagine that, natural shade!  I wonder if we can get those here in Arizona?  We could not have ordered more perfect weather.

So, the obligatory photo dump.

I got to shoot a semi-auto M1 Thompson, and a .50AE Deagle.  I'd already shot US Citizen's Kriss SBR.  The one gun I wish I'd taken a crack at was Southern Belle's SVT-40 "Natasha."  What a beautiful piece!  As mentioned previously, I brought four rifles; my M1 Garand, M1 Carbine, LRB M25 and my M4gery.  I managed to break the M4gery.  The first couple of (blurry) photos in the slideshow are of the missing extractor hook.  It shot well for two or three magazines, but then started failing to eject.  It was failing to eject because there was no extractor hook.  Oops.  Gotta fix that.  Several people shot the Garand, and uniformly loved it.  It's cosmetically beautiful and functionally perfect, but a bit worn.  It is, after all, a Danish rack-grade return from the CMP, but it's still a lot of fun. When I finally run out of milsurp .30-06 on en bloc clips, I may just have to break down and have it rebarreled in .308.

We shot until after 3:00PM, and then packed it up for the day.  The only thing I'm bummed about on this trip is that I wasn't able to join the rest of the crew for dinner.  I was riding with US Citizen, and we were headed in a different direction from the crowd.

So I took vacation, drove about 2,000 miles round-trip and spent three nights in hotels to make this trip.  I think it was worth it.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

HOME!

I pulled out of the hotel parking lot at 8:15AM Central time and pulled into my garage at 8:20PM Pacific Time - 14 hours and 5 minutes and 957 miles later. That included three stops for gas and one for food. Actual time on the road: 12 hours 52 minutes.

I'm beat. Blog Shoot AAR tomorrow. I've got the day off.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Doggerel

Jim of the blog Smoke on the Water (where he doesn't post much these days) has re-written the lyrics to that classic ditty How Much is That Doggie in the Window? and has allowed me to premier it here first at TSM:
How much is that doggie on the menu? (arf! arf!)
The one with the chicken-fried-tail
How much is that doggie on the menu? (arf! arf!)
I loves me a fried doggie tail

On Air Force One to Indonesia
Vacationing far from my home
But they’ll serve me dog, yes I’ll eat some
I’ll chew it clear down to the bone

How much is that doggie on the menu? (arf! arf!)
The one with the chicken-fried-tail
How much is that doggie on the menu? (arf! arf!)
I loves me a fried doggie tail

I know that my party are robbers
Who love to keep folks in the dark
So I’ll have me a plate of some doggie
Halal or haraam but no bark

Don’t fry me a bunny or kitty
I don’t want a bird in a wok
I don’t want a plate full of fishies
I just want some fried dog, not dog talk

How much is that doggie on the menu? (arf! arf!)
The one with the chicken-fried-tail
How much is that doggie on the menu? (arf! arf!)
I loves me a fried doggie tail

Don't blame me, I'm just the messenger!

Thursday, April 19, 2012

On the Road Again

Headed out for El Paso on my way to the Dallas Blogshoot.  See everyone on Saturday!

What it Will Look Like...

...after Obama throws everyone under the bus:

Quote of the Day - Robin Williams Edition

Propofol, which nickname is "Milk of Amnesia."  Michael Jackson was taking Propofol to sleep, which is like doing chemotherapy because you're tired of shaving your head.

I woke up from my heart surgery after propofol - I had the surgery in Cleveland - after propofol I woke up from the surgery and said "Where am I?" and they went "Cleveland!" and I went, WHY?
Seen here.

UPDATE:  8/11/14 - And Robin Williams has left us. Dammit.

Dallas Blogshoot

I'm really looking forward to the Dallas blogshoot on Saturday. I've been getting everything together that I'm bringing:
  • M1 Carbine and 900 or so rounds
  • M1 Garand and six bandoleers of en bloc clips
  • M14 (my LRB M25) and ten loaded mags
  • M4gery and ten mags
  • Kimber Classic 1911 and a couple hundred rounds
  • 327 TRR8 and about 150 rounds
  • M&P9 and a couple hundred rounds.
That ought to weigh the 'Stang down a bit. Obviously, I won't be shooting all of this up, so there'd better be a bunch of people attending!

I've been checking on the weather. A couple of days ago the prediction was for 72º and windy. Now it's for the high 60's and breezy. Guess I'll bring a jacket. Still haven't made hotel reservations. I may not, and just find whatever's close that looks decent. I'm planning on driving over on Friday, getting into the DFW area about 10PM local, then leaving on Monday morning. That gives me an extra day in the area. 

Hope to see you there!

Monday, April 16, 2012

Capitalism and Morality

In the comments to Confidence, Part IV, reader "ScottFree" left an impassioned plea:
I would agree with Mr. Bezmonov that "demoralization" is at the heart of American philosophical collapse. I would just place it WAY earlier in the timeline. Historically, the intellectual bottom fell out at the Great Depression. Nothing of that scope had ever happened (certainly in America.) And for over 10 years Americans were fed the "practical" definition of insanity: keep doing the same thing over and over yet expect different results.

EVERYONE'S standard of living fell dramatically, unemployment varied somewhere between utterly ridiculous and totally insane, and there was NO fundamental, lasting hope of improvement throughout the entire period. .Gov had seized the money supply and regulated the economy to within an inch of its life -- but there was no INTELLECTUAL defense of the capitalism that had existed prior to government control of the country. There were basically no significant marches, no protests, no strikes, and no even small-scale opposition organized to fight against socialism -- hell, no one even DARED call the system that existed socialism, let alone what it actually was: fascism.

Why? Because no one could (or would) MORALLY refute it.

And no one is doing so now. No one is refuting the notion that Socialism is the ONLY social system that addresses the alleged "deficiencies" of capitalism, specifically the idea of "social justice". Messrs Levin, Murray, Sowell, et. al. are splendid classical liberals who attack the legion of failures inherent within Socialism and espouse a litany of virtues for capitalism. But, fundamentally, all of their arguments rest on the flawed notion that capitalism is PRACTICAL, NOT MORAL.

The Crisis is here, Kevin. It has been here all along, right in front of everyone's nose. The magnificent brilliance of the Founders was that they devised a structural method to ensure that morality was kept out of the government and everyone was then free to pursue their own moral beliefs and they did so by stripping the government of all powers except the absolute minimum necessary to BE a government (i.e., the protection of individual rights.) Where "we" failed as a people, morally, is when we began to believe on some level that we are our brother's keeper. The Progressive movement secularized this moral belief and, with the Progressives' takeover of the education system, it has been ingrained in us ever since.

Americans have to come to a point where they have the intellectual fortitude to question the fundamental moral beliefs that they've been taught and come to the (even more unlikely) conclusion that they MIGHT be wrong -- because all of the rest of "conservatism" is just smoke and window dressing if you cannot validate capitalism MORALLY.

To paraphrase Rand so eloquently, America needs not to return to morality but to discover it.
Awhile back I quoted the Dalai Lama on the subject:
(Marxism has) moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits.
The whole quote, from news.com.au, is this:
"Still I am a Marxist," the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader said in New York, where he arrived today with an entourage of robed monks and a heavy security detail to give a series of paid public lectures.

"(Marxism has) moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits," the Dalai Lama, 74, said.

However, he credited China's embrace of market economics for breaking communism's grip over the world's most populous country and forcing the ruling Communist Party to "represent all sorts of classes".

"(Capitalism) brought a lot of positive to China. Millions of people's living standards improved," he said.
There's a pretty powerful philosophical voice stating that capitalism isn't immoral, but amoral. That's an important distinction, and it's not an insult. Immoral means "violating moral principles".  Amoral means "not involving moral questions; neither moral nor immoral."

And while I will grant that the promise of Marxism is that it has "moral ethics," in actual practice it produces the exact opposite, to the tune of over a hundred million corpses in just the past century.

Back when I wrote the Ãœberpost  What We Got Here is . . . Failure to Communicate, an exploration of Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, I quoted Dr. Sowell extensively on the topic of "intentions vs. results."  Sowell's book is based upon a (he admits) crude binary division of humanity into those who hold that humanity is constrained by his nature, and those who believe mankind is unconstrained.
So in the Constrained vision human nature is flawed, and while some flaws in some - even most - men can be ameliorated with time and teaching, this does not hold true for the whole of mankind. We are imperfect, and being imperfect the systems we establish, the institutions that we build, the traditions, laws and rituals that we practice carry along with them vulnerabilities to our inherent flaws. In order to achieve social benefits those institutions, traditions, laws and rituals must offer individuals some incentive. But more, those institutions, traditions, laws and rituals must also carry protections against abuse by those in which the flaws are extreme. In the extreme Unconstrained vision, intentions are more important than results, and results without intention are "scarcely worthy of notice."
The Dalai Lama apparently rolls with the Unconstrained Vision.

But he is in error. He is in error because he's comparing apples and oranges. Marxism and capitalism are not two opposing economic theories as many people believe. Marxism is a religion, and capitalism is an economic theory. Moreover, capitalism is an economic theory THAT WORKS. As even the Dalai Lama admits, capitalism in China "...brought a lot of positive to China. Millions of people's living standards improved."

Capitalism is amoral because it is an economic theory. Marxism has a morality because it is a religion.
re·li·gion - noun: a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
Note that this definition says especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies.... Said agency is not required for a religion to exist. Whereas:
the·o·ry - noun: a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena
Marxism says that if everyone just behaves perfectly, then we will have complete equality and utopia will exist. Capitalism says that if two people make a trade, both come away better off than they were before they made the trade. Marxism says that the economy is best run from the top down. Capitalism says that the economy is best run from the bottom up. Marxism says that everyone should be a perfect altruist. Capitialism says that looking out for your own best interest is better for everyone in the long run.

We've already discussed what capitalism has done for China in a very brief period of time, but by far the best illustration of the difference between the religion of Marxism and the economic theory of capitalism is this singular image:




Capitalism in and of itself is amoral, but for capitalism to work best it requires a pretty specifically moral populace. Capitalism requires freedom - the freedom to choose for oneself that which he or she will trade. Capitalism requires honesty, and trustworthyness. You can't make a profit if your vendors and customers rip you off, or if government officials must be bribed.

Capitalism works even where such a populace is thin on the ground - black markets, after all, work everywhere, even under the most severe dictatorships. It's human nature. But where freedom is greater, the better capitalism works.

But capitalism itself is amoral. The benefits it brings to the entire economy - rich, poor and everyone in between - are not brought about by the intention of those out there trying to improve their own lot. They're a side effect.

And thus, apparently, don't count.

The intentions of Marxism are morally pure - the equality of man, man!

And the results it brings are, more often than the Marxist ever want to admit, death in the millions and tens of millions.

I understand there's a certain equality in the grave.

So no, capitalism is not "moral." It's completely amoral. But it functions best where the Golden Rule is the morality people actually live by, and market forces incentivize that particular morality.

I Drank the Kool-Aid (Bumped)

Happy birthday to me. (And this is my BAG Day gun, since I bought it once I knew we were getting a substantial tax return.)



I just picked up my present to myself, a Smith & Wesson M&P9. I looked at both the full-sized and the compact, but my hands are big enough that the compact just didn't fit right. I traded in a Ruger GP-100 on it, so it only set me back $165 plus tax. Now I need an Apex trigger, more magazines, magazine pouches and a concealment holster. Finally, I guess I'm going to have to get a 9mm caliber change kit for my Square-Deal B so I can reload for 9mm.

Only $165. Yeah. Right.

Well, at least I'm with all the other kool kids who have drunk the M&P Kool-Aid.

UPDATE:  Fresh out of the box I used the new M&P to win Minor class at my bowling pin match out of a field of seven shooters, and I think I would have won the overall match if I hadn't run out of ammo.  (I brought 84 rounds, but I needed about 90.)  All 84 rounds (Winchester 124 grain NATO +P FMJ) ran flawlessly, with no failures of any kind, and I even managed to clean at least one table with five shots.  It hits where it's pointed.  I haven't been a fan of tactical Tupperware, but this thing is impressive.

And Robb Allen has the graphic I was looking for to top this post.

UPDATE: Now I've got six magazines, 1,000 pieces of brass and a bunch of projectiles to load, and I need to order the Apex parts.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Confidence, Part IV


The worst thing about living in the declining era of a great civilization is knowing that you are. -- Robert A. Heinlein
This is the second essay by the title of Confidence that I have written, the fourth that I am aware of that has been posted to the blogosphere.  The earlier two (not written by me) are no longer available online.  My first one posted February 15 of 2009.  Not a great deal has changed since then, except for the worse.

I strongly recommend you (re-)read that previous piece, but in it I wrote:
It has been an ongoing theme here at TSM since I hit "PUBLISH" on Not with a Bang, but a Whimper? in October of 2003, that things are not going well for the Republic, and they appear to be getting worse. As Bill Whittle said, there's something very wrong with our foundation. The Left exhibits cockroach resilience, while the Right seems ever less willing to even lace up its boots.

--

What I've witnessed over half of my life (the time I've actually been paying attention) and especially the last five and a half years (the time I've been writing about it) is what appears to me to be America's inexorable slide away from our individual "pursuit of happiness" towards a pursuit of collective security in what the populace - what few of them who think about it all all - hopes will be at least a gilded cage. It's the pursuit of an illusion, but it's a pretty illusion.

--

The fault is ours. We let it happen. Too much of the population lost its abiding belief in the Constitution some time long before I was born. I put the date around the Great Depression, with FDR and the New Deal, after the country was prepped and primed by Woodrow Wilson's presidency. With the New Deal we finally reached the point that Tocqueville (maybe) warned us against:
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
The New Deal did exactly that. But entropy can be slow, and the nation had a lot of momentum to overcome. That's been taken care of now, though. The only way to achieve high office in this country now is to be a statist willing to promise redistribution of wealth (though it is generally disguised as "earmarks" and not - usually - blatantly referred to as "spreading the wealth.")
I also quoted Bill Whittle from his piece entitled Confidence:
When all is said and done, Civilizations do not fall because of the barbarians at the gates. Nor does a great city fall from the death wish of bored and morally bankrupt stewards presumably sworn to its defense. Civilizations fall only because each citizen of the city comes to accept that nothing can be done to rally and rebuild broken walls; that ground lost may never be recovered; and that greatness lived in our grandparents but not our grandchildren. Yes, our betters tell us these things daily. But that doesn’t mean we have to believe it.
But we know from history what happens when we do.

Let me list just a few recent books - some less pessimistic than the others - all describing different aspects of the same dark future:



 
Dismantling America - Thomas Sowell, publication date 8/2010




The Secret Knowledge:  On the Dismantling of American Culture - David Mamet, publication date 6/2011




After America: Get Ready for Armageddon - Mark Steyn, publication date 8/2011




Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? - Patrick Buchanan, publication date 10/2011




Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America - Mark Levin, publication date 1/2012




Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 - Charles Murray, publication date 1/2012


A comment from Sailorcurt I saw a few days ago spurred this post. Here it is:
We’ve been on the long slide for a long time. We’re nearing the bottom. We’re WAY past the point of no return.

Romney as the "conservative" alternative demonstrates that more clearly than anything I could articulate.

Basically, our society is headed for the crash and has been for years, the only difference is how fast we get there.

I'm beginning to feel that I'd prefer to get there sooner rather than later. With every generation, our kids are being indoctrinated and brainwashed into further believing that the Government is the answer to all our ills, that human beings, when left to our own devices, will destroy ourselves and the earth, that it is more noble to be cared for and kept than to live in freedom and face all of the risks, benefits, consequences and rewards of same.

Perhaps it's better to keep the "faster" version in charge and let us rush into the void headlong, while there are still at least a few free-thinkers around to give us even a semblance of a chance of getting back on the right track after the dust settles.

Granted, the odds of that happening are extremely slim, but they're better in this generation than they will be in the next, or the next, or the next.

Everything that has a beginning has an end.

The end of our little experiment in liberty is in sight. It is unavoidable at this point IMHO, it’s only a question of how long it takes to get there.

Are we content to keep things as comfortable for ourselves as possible as we trudge slowly toward oblivion? Because that seems to me like what is being advocated by those desperate to get Obama out of office.

Be electing Romney, we'd not be averting, only kicking the can down the road and leaving our mess for someone else to try to clean up.

Again.
And in response to that, Weerd Beard replied:
I couldn’t agree more, Curt!
This kind of sentiment is getting to be more and more common on the blogs and message boards I frequent.

Shortly after reading Sailorcurt's comment, I saw this at Market-Ticker:
Our government with its present infestation of Democrats and Republicans, and the inability to find a single third party that will stand for the end of the stupid when it comes to the policies they espouse, including the one I'm currently involved in quite-heavily, means that we're going to go off the cliff Thelma and Louise style with the entirely-certain outcome.
This was in response to a speech given by Mohamed A. El-Erian, CEO and co-CIO of PIMCO, Pacific Investment Management Company. Mr. El-Erian gave his speech as the "Homer Jones Memorial Lecture" at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

That speech is rather lengthy, but here's what I (and others) think is the key excerpt:
To crystallize our conversation today, allow me to use a very – and I stress very – clumsy sentence to summarize the current state of affairs: In the last three plus years, central banks have had little choice but to do the unsustainable in order to sustain the unsustainable until others do the sustainable to restore sustainability!
(Emphasis in original.) As others have asked, what is the likelihood that our titular "leaders" are any nearer to doing "the sustainable to restore sustainability"?

Zilch, so far as I can see.

Still, there are those who hold out hope. Bill Whittle in his latest Afterburner decries the horrible quality of education our youth have received, but near the end says:
To that one in a hundred of you who's actually angry at how badly you've been ripped off by your educational system, and you're willing to face it, let me say this: It's not over. It's not too late. Our best days are still ahead of us and we're going to do great things, you mark my words. We need you, you one in a hundred.
But in counterpoint, Captain Capitalism's latest video advises How Gen Y is Completely, Hopelessly and Totally Screwed Part 1.

And he has data.

As I noted in the previous piece, I have had a consistent theme at this blog since almost the first post that what is going on, here and in the rest of Western civilization, is a war between two (now three) utterly incompatible philosophies.  Initially the two philosophies were Locke's and Rousseau's - Locke's being one of "Life, liberty, property" and Rousseau's being, not "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" but Marx's 1850 expansion from that to "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." The third incompatible philosophy that has been added to the mix is "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His prophet," but the first two are what I will be discussing at the moment. This war has been ongoing pretty much since Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.

Lenin himself acknowledged that Communism could not succeed until the Western capitalist nations were overthrown - violently, he emphasized. It was only through violent revolution that the proletariat could bring down the bourgeois, and that is what the true believers in Marxist-Leninist ideology have sought ever since. As others have noted, when World War I did not result in such revolutions except in backwards Russia and instead the citizens of various nations put on the uniforms of their national militaries and went to war to support their governments, many adherents of Marxist-Leninist theology - unable to question the gospel - were forced to ask what caused a delay in the historically inevitable? The Frankfurt School was established to study this problem, answer the question and come up with a solution, and they did.

The problem, they concluded, was that Western capitalism made the proletariat too comfortable to revolt. In order to overcome that, it would be necessary to destroy Western capitalism from the inside. To accomplish this would require a long period of time and take several steps, but True Believers believe in long-range planning. Former soviet propagandist Yuri Bezmenov (aka Tomas Schuman ) explained those steps in 1984 thus:
The first one [is] demoralization; it takes from 15-20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years which [is required] to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy, exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxist-Leninist ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students, without being challenged, or counter-balanced by the basic values of Americanism (American patriotism).

The result? The result you can see. Most of the people who graduated in the sixties (drop-outs or half-baked intellectuals) are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, [and the] educational system. You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated; they are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind[s], even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior. In other words, these people... the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To [rid] society of these people, you need another twenty or fifteen years to educate a new generation of patriotically-minded and common sense people, who would be acting in favor and in the interests of United States society.

--

The next stage is destabilization. This time [the] subverter does not care about your ideas and the patterns of your consumption; whether you eat junk food and get fat and flabby doesn't matter any more. This time—and it takes only from two to five years to destabilize a nation—what matters [are] essentials: economy, foreign relations, [and] defense systems. And you can see it quite clearly that in some areas, in such sensitive areas as defense and [the] economy, the influence of Marxist-Leninist ideas in [the] United States is absolutely fantastic. I could never believe it fourteen years ago when I landed in this part of the world that the process [would have gone] that fast.

The next stage, of course, is crisis. It may take only up to six weeks to bring a country to the verge of crisis. You can see it in Central America now.

And, after crisis, with a violent change of power, structure, and economy, you have [the so-called] period of normalization. It may last indefinitely. Normalization is a cynical expression borrowed from Soviet propaganda. When the Soviet tanks moved into Czechoslovakia in '68, Comrade Brezhnev said, 'Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia is normalized.'
So the professors of the Frankfurt School wrote books explaining what needed to be done, they lectured and they spread their philosophy far and wide, and it took seed.

Not everyone believed fully in the Cause, but enough did, and enough more were blinded by the beautiful utopia promised by that philosophy to embrace enough of it make them want to spread it, too. Bezmenov said:
This was my instruction: try to get into large-circulation, established conservative media; reach filthy-rich movie makers; intellectuals, so-called 'academic' circles; cynical, egocentric people who can look into your eyes with angelic expression and tell you a lie. These are the most recruitable people: people who lack moral principles, who are either too greedy or too [much] suffer from self importance. They feel that they matter a lot. These are the people who[m] [the] KGB wanted very much to recruit.

--

They serve [a] purpose only at the stage of destabilization of a nation. For example, your leftists in [the] United States: all these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders. They are instrumental in the process of the subversion only to destabilize a nation.
In America his counterparts needn't have bothered. The process was self-sustaining very early on, as he noted himself:
The demoralization process in [the] United States is basically completed already. For the last 25 years... actually, it's over-fulfilled because demoralization now reaches such areas where previously not even Comrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such a tremendous success. Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to [a] lack of moral standards.

Socialism is extremely attractive to a certain type of intellectual. In fact, Thomas Sowell once said:
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
And they do. So that is why, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, Socialism itself is still being pushed, no matter how many people die to make the lie true.

The first two steps, demoralization and destabilization are brought about through the education system and mass media.  Each are used, as Bezmenov explained, to "change the basic perception and the logic of behavior" of a population, but it goes even further than that.  Remember, Socialism is a class struggle.  The motto of the United States is E Pluribus Unum - "Out of Many, One."  The goal of destabilization then must be balkanization.

Rules for Radicals, the last book published by the first acknowledged "community organizer,"  is the textbook on how to divide a nation, bottom up, from the inside, with the final goal being revolution. Richard Cloward and Francis Fox Piven developed their strategy to overwhelm the welfare system and cause its collapse. Cloward was also instrumental in the "motor voter" National Voter Registration Act of 1993. Piven has been a longtime member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Cloward got his master's degree at Columbia University's School of Social Work - Columbia being the home of the Frankfurt School after it fled Nazi Germany, and Piven received her B.A., M.A. and PhD from the University of Chicago - the city where the Communist Party of the USA first set up its headquarters in 1919.  Saul Alinsky got his Bachelor's in Philosophy at the University of Chicago.

These two schools seem to be the epicenter of the early spread of Socialism among the intellectual elites.  William Ayers - former member of the Weather Underground, "guilty as Hell, free as a bird" in the deaths of (at a minimum) three of his compatriots, and probably of the death of a San Francisco police officer in a "successful" bombing - received his Masters and his Doctorates in Education from Columbia University, and until recently taught Education at the University of Chicago. He's one of the highest-profile Socialists in Education, but a long way from rare.  

It's still going on today.  Zombie put up an interesting piece on a lecture, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, given recently by retired professor H. Douglas Brown of San Francisco State University. You really should peruse it. These are the people, like Bill Ayers, teaching the teachers, and they have been for literally decades. From the comments comes this interesting bit:
My sister was studying to become a high school teacher a couple of years ago and looking through her text books I was amazed to see how prominently Paulo Freire and his theory of "Critical Pedagogy" was emphasized. When I asked her about it, she told me that "critical pedagogy" is the preferred way educators are expected to teach in the L.A. Unified School system. She said they're supposed to teach kids "how to think", not to stuff their heads full of facts and information. When I told her that Freire was a devout Communist she shrugged. Needless to say my sister is a Lefty, so informing her of the fact that Freire was a Communist was like telling her that he cares for humanity.
Freire was, in fact, a Christian Socialist, but a major fan of Marx. The point remains valid, though. From the Freire Project website:
Several notable twentieth century educators and activists influenced and in some cases contributed to the body of research and literature of Critical Pedagogy including John Dewey, Myles Horton, Jonathan Kozol, Michael Apple, W.E.B. Dubois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Paulo Freire, and Augusto Boal, The Frankfurt School of critical theorists developed a unified approach to cultural criticism and seminal contribution to the work of Critical Pedagogy, including Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Jurgen Habermas, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal, and others.
Everyone involved in the Frankfurt School was a big "S" Socialist.

So where am I going with all this?  In 1984 Bezmenov - remember, a propaganda agent of the Soviet Union - stated that "at least three generations of American students" had been the victims of Socialist indoctrination.  We're now twenty-seven years further on - at least one and more like two generations more.  The education system we have now is an utter failure at actually producing educated thinking students, but it has become the ideal machine for producing a demoralized nation.  Our economy, and the economies of the majority of Western nations are at the very edge of destabilization - we're just waiting for the first domino to fall, the first plate to stop spinning and drop from its stick.

When that happens, there will be crisis, and as Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel has told us "You never let a serious crisis to go to waste."  No, someone has to normalize things when that happens.

And there are probably thousands of dedicated Socialists and tens of thousands of their useful idiots out there rubbing their hands in anticipation.  They've worked independently for decades to reach this point. 

I know Louis Farrakhan is.  His is (partially) of that third incompatible philosophy, heavily influenced by the second. Then there are the Anarchists for More Government Cheese, the EarthFirst!ers, and many other groups who are willing to kill and destroy to achieve the Utopia they've been promised.  And that's just on the Left.

Let's face it, after five generations of indoctrination, even Bill Whittle admits that "one in a hundred" is about the best that have escaped, and while they understand that they've been robbed, well they've been robbed.  They realize that they don't possess what they need, but now they have to do the work that twelve years of "education" didn't provide them.  Most of the rest of the population?  They've been prepped to be reliant on the .gov: ignorant, unprepared, incapable of functioning on their own.

And the war is on the "one percenters."

I don't think "our best days are still ahead of us."  I'm in very good company.  I'm aware that Cassandras have been proclaiming the downfall of civilizations since time immemorial, but as Billy Beck once observed, "Sometimes they're right."

Sailorcurt opines:
Perhaps it's better to keep the "faster" version in charge and let us rush into the void headlong, while there are still at least a few free-thinkers around to give us even a semblance of a chance of getting back on the right track after the dust settles.
There's that hope again. Let's parse that sentence. We should "rush into the void headlong" on the off chance that, after we go smash on the bottom, some of the few survivors will be free-thinkers who might get the rest "back on the right track."  Who thinks they'll be the ones prepared for "normalization"?

Who says they won't be around if we try for the soft(er) landing? Tuesday's Quote of the Day was humorous, but it was funny because it was painfully accurate. Like Robb Allen, I'd like to postpone the crash as long as possible, but we're not voting our way out of this.

Maybe Bill Whittle's right. Perhaps the horse might learn to sing.  But the best I can honestly hold out for Billy Beck stated three years ago:
All the political initiative now is with the forces of Amsoc. Where the so-called conservatives have fought generations of piece-meal rear-guard action against the integral resolution of socialism to corrode its worst enemy -- the practical and living ideal of freedom: America -- out of existence, and as they have done so as effects of disintegrated philosophy, the socialists are assuming the commanding heights in full political battle gear.

It is important to understand that this can only and inevitably mean physical battle gear, right in front of your eyes, right here in America. The spirit of this place that was not born of the slave's obeisance will require this government to bare its fangs. I still believe that. The ways in which and the singular souls from which Americans select their values are not yet so beaten to any alien molds so well that they will peaceably stand for the conformations that this government will eventually require and demand -- not "ask".

Regardless, there's Tough History Coming.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Bill Whittle on Education - Again

Generations:


There is an entire generation, maybe two by now, that has had their fundamental human gifts of wonder, ambition and self-reliance beaten out of them by the progressive social engineers that have turned their education into a political brainwashing.
Can I get an "AMEN!"?

Quote of the Day - Critical Pedagogy Edition

Zombie visits a lecture on "Teaching as a Subversive Activity" which one commenter accurately assesses as:
"Should we indoctrinate students with leftist ideologies?" and only after five minutes of talking in circles eventually concludes "Yes."
But that's not the QotD. This is:
I am concluding forty years of engineering, primarily energy infrastructure, $2.5 Bn in nukes (24), fossil fuel power plants (48) and decades assessing advanced technologies (what is coming, the technical barriers, costs, etc.). These educational practices are alien to me in my ancient education. Engineering and hard sciences (which means truth) demands rigorous disciplined thinking. There is the right answer to the home work, and wrong answers.

Today, in climate change, nuclear safety, fracking, the current technologies controversies, I continually read many articles which can be summarized as, "Cesium 131 will kill everybody in Japan because I hate GE." I find it irrational.
Read the rest. And see above.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Vote Stay Puft

Robb Allen weighs in on the election debacle.

As only he can.

See also this.

My New T-Shirt

In relation to yesterday's Quote of the Day:


I hope it comes in in time for the Dallas area blogshoot! (Click the picture for a link to the source.)

Quote of the Day

In comments to Weer'd Beard's post Mitt Romney Wins the GOP Nomination:
Given how the GOP field has been winnowed, this has really just been a race to determine the form Gozer the Traveler takes.

So this just means the giant Sloar is off the table and means is we’re looking between the moving Torb and the Staypuff Marshmellow man.

-- Jack

Edited to add this link to a T-shirt I must have courtesy of WFGodbold.

Was PETA There Flying Their Drone?

British expat Phil B. emails from Middle Earth about an Easter event most of us could get behind, a 24-hour bunny shoot!
Guess what the Kiwis do for Easter ...

Otago is the bottom right hand bit of the south Island.

Otago bunnies grow BIG (about the size of a hare but proportionately stockier) and are considered a pest. Rules are simple - a team of three, 24 hours, shoot as many as you can in the time. No limit on calibre of rifle, shotgun, method or what state the rabbit is in when it is handed in for counting (i.e. flattened by the Ute still counts).

Doesn't make a blind bit of difference to the numbers but it pisses off the tree huggers and bunny lovers enormously.

It is usually reported on the 6 O'clock news as the highlight of the Easter weekend news with the scores and discussions about how it was better/worse than last year, record etc. Among firearms afficianados, the subject of rifles, calibres and loads for the ammunition are discussed as avidly as the chances of who'll win the FA cup in Newcastle.
This year was a little disappointing:
Conditions favoured the rabbits this year at the Great Easter Bunny Hunt in Central Otago, with 10,424 bunnies bagged - the lowest tally for six years.

Teams of hunters from all over New Zealand converged on Alexandra for the 24-hour event, organised by the Alexandra Lions Club.

Their haul was displayed in the town's Pioneer Park yesterday and the top team out of 36 - the Southern Hopper Stoppers - won the contest with 1035 rabbits.

This year's tally was less than half last year's total of 22,904 and event convenor Dave Ramsay said the odds were in the rabbits' favour this year.
And look at the picture!


OMG! THE CHILDREN!

Well, here's a couple who brought their kids with them:
The Great Easter Bunny Hunt can have a happy ending - just ask Mike and Kate Evans.
Mike proposed to Kate during the event 17 years ago, and now happily married and living in Arrowtown, the couple are back in the hunt this year in a team that includes son Nicholas and daughter Mikayla.

--

Mikayla (7) and Nicholas (11) would be acting as support crew, as "picker-uppers" and maybe doing some cooking or providing hot drinks for the hunters. The family was looking forward to spending some time together "away from any electronic equipment", Mrs Evans said.

"You get to see countryside that you would never normally have access to and that's a real privilege," Mr Evans added.

"It's a real good weekend, getting out in the fresh air and getting some exercise; spending time with your family. It's not really about how many rabbits you get."
Isn't that nice?

Sunday, April 08, 2012

Shorter John Derbyshire

John Derbyshire has been fired from National Review for writing a completely politically incorrect piece entitled The Talk:  Nonblack Version. Pretty strong stuff.

Short version:
There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved. -- Jesse Jackson

Read this piece by Heather Mac Donald, too.
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.  --  George Orwell
UPDATE: EXCELLENT discussion of the topic over at RobertaX's place.

UPDATE II: Eric S. Raymond (and his commenters) have some interesting things to say as well. Take Eric's quiz. At least one commenter here has failed it.

Principle #7, Mr. Cosby

Well, Bill Cosby has opined on the Trayvon Martin incident:
"We've got to get the gun out of the hands of people who are supposed to be on neighborhood watch," said Mr. Cosby, whose remarks were the first he has made publicly about the case.

"Without a gun, I don't see Mr. Zimmerman approaching Trayvon by himself," Mr. Cosby explained. "The power-of-the-gun mentality had him unafraid to confront someone. Even police call for backup in similar situations.

"When you carry a gun, you mean to harm somebody, kill somebody," he said.
Yes, that's why the police carry them.

Let me refer once again to Sir Robert Peel's Nine Principles of Modern Policing - specifically Principle #7:
Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
Mr. Zimmerman was doing his duty as he saw it. And he couldn't carry an entire cop around with him. IIRC, he did "call for backup." There's audio of the call, in fact.

Tam had it exactly correct:
An honest assessment would say that this is what we know:

  1. Zimmerman was out doing his neighborhood watch thing and saw Martin.
  2. He called 911 and followed Martin in his vehicle.
  3. When Martin walked someplace that Zimmerman couldn't follow in his vehicle, he got out of his vehicle and followed on foot.
  4. ???
  5. In the process of getting his ass beaten, Zimmerman busts a cap in Martin.
The entire case turns on what happened in the ???, but don't tell that to the media, the folks playing poker with a deck full of race cards, the victim disarmament crowd, or apparently the frickin' President of the United States of America.
Or Bill Cosby.

UPDATE: On a related note, whom did you mean to harm, to kill, Mr. Cosby?

Friday, April 06, 2012

No Bowling Pin Match in April (Bumped)

It has been brought to my attention that the second Sunday in Apri, the 8th, is Easter Sunday.  Consequently, there won't be a Bowling Pin match that day.  Sorry for the short notice. 

(I really should check a calendar occasionally.)

Slowly, Slowly

Quite a while back in the depths of 2004 the Geekwitha.45 wrote a post about the mechanisms of oppression in which he said:
We, who studied the shape and form of the machines of freedom and oppression, have looked around us, and are utterly dumbfounded by what we see.

We see first that the machinery of freedom and Liberty is badly broken. Parts that are supposed to govern and limit each other no longer do so with any reliability.

We examine the creaking and groaning structure, and note that critical timbers have been moved from one place to another, that some parts are entirely missing, and others are no longer recognizable under the wadded layers of spit and duct tape. Other, entirely new subsystems, foreign to the original design, have been added on, bolted at awkward angles.

--

We know the tools and mechanisms of oppression when we see them. We've studied them in depth, and their existence on our shores, in our times, offends us deeply. We can see the stirrings of malevolence, and we take stock of the damage they've caused over so much time.

Others pass by without a second look, with no alarm or hue and cry, as if they are blind, as if they don't understand what they see before their very eyes. We want to shake them, to grasp their heads and turn their faces, shouting, "LOOK! Do you see what this thing is? Do you see how it might be put to use? Do you know what can happen if this thing becomes fully assembled and activated?"
Bill Whittle expands on this theme:



As I said in 2009's Malice vs. Stupidity:
At some point it becomes immaterial whether the laws were due to incompetence or maliciousness. That point is when their implementation is indistinguishable from maliciousness. I submit that we've passed that point, and the only thing preventing even more massive public blowback is our general ignorance and our well-established general respect for the Rule of Law.
And I wonder how much longer that blowback will hold off.

Thursday, April 05, 2012

Well, THAT Was Interesting

I tell people I spent twenty-one years complaining about consulting/specifying engineers, and then I became one.  And I was right.  After doing the consultant thing for four and a half years, I left my cloth-covered cubicle and went back to the industrial-supplier side.  No more eight-hour meetings, no more bid analysis reports, no more specification writing.  Instead, I get to do application, design, programming, startup.  Field work.  Fun stuff.

Well, I just did an upgrade to a system I installed eleven years ago.  Startup had to wait on the customer, since my upgrade occurred during a plant shutdown.  Startup was to occur Monday morning at about 10:00AM, so I got up at 4AM and pulled out of the driveway at 4:45 to be on site at 7.  They were waiting for me when I arrived.

We tested manual control before 9AM, and just had to wait for plant startup to put it in Auto.  Remember 10:00AM?  Uh, no.  They had some problems.  I went to lunch at 11:30.  They called me a little after Noon and said it looked like it was going to about 7PM.  I went back to the plant and they let me on a computer to do some work, but by 4PM it was obvious that 7PM was not going to happen.  I got a hotel room and waited for a call.  I tried to get some sleep, but failed at that.  I went to dinner about 7.  They called.

Midnight.

So I was on site at midnight.  We finally fired it up about 4:30AM.  I'd been up over 24 hours for the first time in a LONG time, but we weren't done yet. Due to operations considerations, we still couldn't put the system in Auto.  That didn't happen until 7AM.  My hotel room sat empty all night.  I finally hit the sack at 9AM.  Two hours later, I got a call - the unit was working, but it was a little slow.  They told me I could sleep a little more, though.  I tried, but didn't get much success, maybe another half-hour.  After a shower and shave, I was back on site at 1:30PM.

And they were down again.  We discussed the problem they'd experienced earlier, and I made some adjustments, but they had no idea when they'd be starting up again.  I was pretty confident in my changes, so I went home.  I pulled into my driveway 36 hours (and two and a half hours of sleep) after I'd left the day before. 

Ten hours of sleep later, I was back in my office, preparing for a class I was supposed to teach the next day.  I was also waiting to hear about my system upgrade.  I sent an inquiring email, and got to work on my class prep.  A response came soon:  everyone was very happy with the upgrade.  I didn't need to go back for more adjustment.  I could continue my class prep.

Then the main office called.  There was a problem on another project.  Could I help?  What about my class prep?  This project was more important, the class could be rescheduled.  I pulled out about 10:30AM and headed for the new site.  Yes,there were problems.  Things did not go well.  I got home at 11PM with plans to head back to site at 5:30AM.   (It's a 90 minute drive.) 

Back on site at 7AM, we flogged on the problem until late afternoon, but finally figured it out.  I pulled into my driveway this evening at 7:15PM.

I've put in 66 hours in four days this week.  I'm taking Friday off.

I left the cushy comfort of consulting engineering to do this for a living again.  I think I made the right choice.  Making stuff work is rewarding in ways that specification writing is not.

Sunday, April 01, 2012

In the Mail

I just received a review copy of Your Teacher Said WHAT?!: Trying to Raise a Fifth-Grade Capitalist in Obama's America, by Joe Kernen and his daughter Blake. I'm not quite finished with Paul Kengor's Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives For A Century, but having just read the preface to Your Teacher Said WHAT?!, it's interesting seeing the current-day effects of a hundred years of Marxist/socialist influence on education, both primary and higher.

For example, read this excerpt from Dupes, concerning the members of the Weather Underground:
Aside from Kathy Boudin, David Gilbert, and Judy Clark, most of the comrades eluded prison time. Ultimately, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers avoided jail because of charges dropped due to prosecutorial problems. That escape from due justice has since prompted Ayers to celebrate: "Guilty as hell, free as a bird! America is a great country!"

Free a a bird to pursue what? Ayers and others may have received the answer to that question as early as 1967, at a pre-Weatherman SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) conference held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ayers's academic home. The conference, held July 14-16, 1967, was staged by SDS's Radical Education Project and titled "Radicals in the Professions." Dr. Quentin Young, the "SDS doctor" who would turn congressional hearings into a circus the following year, spoke on the importance of radicals entering the field of health care. But at the conference, the student radicals paid particular attention to the American educational establishment, especially higher education, and specifically the departments of education, where they could train the future teachers of America.

Bill Ayers would eventually follow the Deweyan tradition of ushering in social and political change through education rather than politics -- the latter of which had failed him and his fellow Marxist-Leninists. He and Dohrn both sought out the ivory tower again. They believed they had a lot to import to America's youth and its future. (Mark) Rudd, too, eventually ended up in education, teaching and lecturing at colleges. Basically, almost all of them would take that path.
But here's the kicker:
And the contacts they would make in that capacity are nothing short of awe-inspiring. One of them, yet another product of Columbia University, would -- forty years after that conference in Ann Arbor -- become a political rallying point for the suddenly reborn SDS and Weather Underground "progressives." He was a beacon for Ayers, Dohrn, Rudd, Hayden, Klonsky, Machtinger, Jones and more. They would come to Chicago, this time with a very different take on the man the Democrats were looking to send to the presidency. In 2008 they would organize yet again, this time working within the system, to help make this man -- Barack Obama -- president of the United States.

To achieve that goal, they would need to be very careful in publicly expressing their true feelings and motivations. Otherwise they would risk driving away the masses, especially traditional Democrats, moderates, and crossover voters. They had made that mistake in the initial SDS split, losing the support of a huge number of non-Communists. In 2008 they would be vigilant not to repeat the error.
And they would not receive just complicity but the the aid and support of the media in keeping their "true feelings and motivations" out of the public view. After all, many in the media shared those feelings and motivations, and understood that they were far from "mainstream" thought.

It starts in the primary school classroom, and continues all the way through the university.