Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Bleg for a Cause

Like guns and neat stuff?  Chuck Zeigenfuss (US Army, Retired) now runs Hero Labradors.  He raises Labradors for donation to organizations that train them to be service dogs for veterans.  He's running a raffle to raise money for Hero Labradors.  Not many days left.  Tickets are limited to 1,000.  Cost is $25 each.  Prizes are:

New AR 10  custom .308 rifle (Aero Precision)

New AR 15 custom .300 blackout pistol (MagTactical Industries)

Howa model 1500 .223 Rifle (gently used, in excellent condition) 

Walking Stick, custom carved and painted, signed by two MOH recipients (Sal Giunta and Clint Romesha... and possibly more!)

Rustic Labrador signs

House to House: signed by the Author, Staff Sergeant David Bellavia

If you've got a spare $25 and would like a shot (see what I did there?) at a new gun or a good book or a neat item, please go and buy a ticket to support Chuck and his organization.

Quote of the Day - Ed Driscoll Edition

Of course, as with all previous revolutions, eliminating statues of dead people is merely the precursor to eliminating living people deemed by the left to be, as Hillary would say, “deplorable.” And as her former colleague Susan Rice recently added, deserving of being placed in “the trash heap of history.” Recent events would imply that Rice was not speaking metaphorically.
Link.

Monday, June 15, 2020

Quote of the Day - GeekWithA.45 Edition

From the Wayback Machine:

Societies Gone Mad

To the people of my parent's generation, World War II was a reality that they had lived through, and not a bunch of black and white movies starring John Wayne.

Books upon books were written on the subject, to help them digest and understand just how it was that something of that magnitude could actually happen, how it was that an entire European society could go insane and do what it did. (As for the Japanese society, it was insane to begin with, and thus more easily understood)

Yes, as politically incorrect as it is, I stand by what I just said:

"Entire Societies Can and Have Gone Stark Raving Batshit Fucking Insane."



Sunday, June 07, 2020

A Repeat

From October 26, 2019, the Quote of the Day, possibly more valid now than it was then.  I went looking for the Codevilla part of the quote, and forgot about the rest of it.  If you are unfamiliar with Professor Angelo Codevilla, please read his supremely important July 2010 essay America's Ruling Class--And the Perils of Revolution. Please do give it, and the link, a read:

From Interview with Angelo Codevilla, a two-fer - one from the interviewer, David Samuels:
...there is no such thing as America anymore. In place of the America that is described in history books, where Henry Clay forged his compromises, and Walt Whitman wrote poetry, and Herman Melville contemplated the whale, and Ida Tarbell did her muckraking, and Thomas Alva Edison invented movies and the light bulb, and so forth, has arisen something new and vast and yet distinctly un-American that for lack of a better term is often called the American Empire, which in turn calls to mind the division of Roman history (and the Roman character) into two parts: the Republican, and the Imperial. While containing the ghosts of the American past, the American Empire is clearly a very different kind of entity than the American Republic was—starting with the fact that the vast majority of its inhabitants aren’t Americans. Ancient American ideas about individual rights and liberties, the pursuit of happiness, and so forth, may still be inspiring to mainland American citizens or not, but they are foreign to the peoples that Americans conquered. To those people, America is an empire, or the shadow of an empire, under which seemingly endless wars are fought, a symbol of their own continuing powerlessness and cultural failure. Meanwhile, at home, the American ruling elites prattle on endlessly about their deeply held ideals of whatever that must be applied to Hondurans today, and Kurds tomorrow, in fits of frantic-seeming generosity in between courses of farm-to-table fare. Once the class bond has been firmly established, everyone can relax and exchange notes about their kids, who are off being credentialed at the same “meritocratic” but now hugely more expensive private schools that their parents attended, whose social purpose is no longer to teach basic math or a common history but to indoctrinate teenagers in the cultish mumbo-jumbo that serves as a kind of in-group glue that binds ruling class initiates (she/he/they/ze) together and usefully distinguishes them from townies during summer vacations by the seashore. The understanding of America as an empire is as foreign to most Americans as is the idea that the specific country that they live in is run by a class of people who may number themselves among the elect but weren’t in fact elected by anyone. Under whatever professional job titles, the people who populate the institutions that exercise direct power over nearly all aspects of American life from birth to death are bureaucrats—university bureaucrats, corporate bureaucrats, local, state and federal bureaucrats, law enforcement bureaucrats, health bureaucrats, knowledge bureaucrats, spy agency bureaucrats. At each layer of specific institutional authority, bureaucrats coordinate their understandings and practices with bureaucrats in parallel institutions through lawyers, in language that is designed to be impenetrable, or nearly so, by outsiders. Their authority is pervasive, undemocratic, and increasingly not susceptible in practice to legal checks and balances. All those people together comprise a class.
And one from Prof. Codevilla:
(T)he Democrats (are) the senior partners in the ruling class. The Republicans are the junior partners. The reason being that the American ruling class was built by or under the Democratic Party. First, under Woodrow Wilson and then later under Franklin Roosevelt. It was a ruling class that prized above all its intellectual superiority over the ruled. And that saw itself as the natural carriers of scientific knowledge, as the class that was naturally best able to run society and was therefore entitled to run society. The Republican members of the ruling class aspire to that sort of intellectual status or reputation. And they have shared a taste of this ruling class. But they are not part of the same party, and as such, are constantly trying to get closer to the senior partners. As the junior members of the ruling class, they are not nearly as tied to government as the Democrats are. And therefore, their elite prerogatives are not safe.

Thursday, June 04, 2020

Pushing an Agenda

Foreign Policy magazine comes out with a shrieking Gloom-'n-Doom piece, A Moment of National Shame and Peril—and Hope subtitled "We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of American democracy, but there is still a way to stop the descent."

What has so frightened author John Allen, "president of the Brookings Institution, a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star general, and former commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan"?

Well, this:
The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020. Remember the date. It may well signal the beginning of the end of the American experiment.

The president of the United States stood in the Rose Garden of the White House on Monday, railed against weak governors and mayors who were not doing enough, in his mind, to control the unrest and the rioters in their cities, and threatened to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens. It was a stunning moment. But, in particular, it was notable for three important reasons.

First, Donald Trump expressed only the barest of condolences at the murder of George Floyd, but he also said nothing about the fundamental and underlying reasons for the unrest: systemic racism and inequality, a historic absence of respect, and a denial of justice. All of these factors are centuries old and deeply engrained in an American society that systematically delivers white privilege at the expense of people of color.

Yes, he mentioned George Floyd, but he did not touch on long-standing societal problems at all. He sees the crisis as a black problem—not as something to be addressed by creating the basis and impetus for a move toward social justice, but as an opportunity to use force to portray himself as a “law and order” president. The reasons were irrelevant to the opportunity. Remember the supposed invasion of the southern border and his deployment of federal troops ahead of the 2018 midterm elections? The president’s failure to understand the reality of the problem was on full display when, on Saturday, he attempted to explain that his supporters, the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, “love African American people. They love black people. MAGA loves the black people.” Evidently his movement, MAGA, is a coherent thing, and it’s white, which leads to the next point about his speech.

Second, Trump was clear he views those engaged in the unrest and criminal acts in these riots as terrorists, an enemy. He said so, ostensibly as justification to deploy the U.S. military to apply federal force—his “personal” force—against the riots.


I'll admit, I was initially wary of the invocation of the Insurrection Act, until I discovered that, although passed in 1807 it has been used by several Presidents, mostly Democrats, since passage.  An incomplete list:

Rutherford B. Hayes (R), October, 1878 -- to suppress the Lincoln County War

Grover Cleveland (D), July, 1894 -- the Pullman Strike (look into that one.)

Woodrow Wilson (D), April, 1914 -- the Colorado Coalfield War

Herbert Hoover (R), July 1932 -- the Bonus Marchers in D.C. (definitely look into that one)

Franklin D. Roosevelt (D), July, 1943 (while the military was already quite busy with other things) -- the Detroit race riot.  Hmm, sound familiar?

Dwight D. Eisenhower (R), September, 1957 -- Protecting the Little Rock Nine

John F. Kennedy (D) - twice:  September 1962, and September 1963 -- the first for The Battle of Oxford, the second to enforce desegregation of Alabama public schools.

Lyndon B. Johnson (D) - FOUR TIMES: July, 1967 -- '67 Detroit Riot, April, 1968 -- Washington DC riots, April 1968 -- Baltimore riots, April 1968 -- Chicago riots.  1968 was a year of widespread riots.  Sound familiar?

George H.W. Bush (R) - twice:  September 1989, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo, May, 1982 -- the Rodney King riots in LA.

I had to go look these up, because no major media outlet bothered to inform me.  For them, history started yesterday.

As far as MAGA being a white thing?  Look here.  If the media won't tell you about how the Insurrection Act has been used in the past, what makes you think they'll admit that not all black people live on their plantation?

General Allen (Ret.) further states:
Finally, the governors have sufficient law enforcement capacity—and, if necessary, the combat power of the National Guard—to handle their respective crises. If not, they can ask for federal assistance. There is no precedent in modern U.S. history for a president to wield federal troops in a state or municipality over the objections of the respective governor.
Neither Eisenhower nor Kennedy got the permission of the governors involved.  Those governors were quite happy with the status quo.  "No precedent in modern U.S. history"?  Pull my other leg.  And the gist of the phone conversation Trump had with the various governors was "You have all the law enforcement capacity you need - use it, or I'll send in troops who will."  Seems it worked.

FUCK I'm tired of this shit.

Quote of the Day - Charles W. Cooke Edition

From his National Review op-ed This is Why We Need Guns:
During the coronavirus lockdown, there was a public debate over whether gun stores should be deemed “essential.” During this outbreak of rioting, such an inquiry seems quaint. Now, as ever, there is no greater prophylactic against a criminal on the rampage than a loaded firearm in the hands of a free man.
Read the whole thing.

Wednesday, June 03, 2020

Quote of the Day - Larry Correia (Again)

This is not a short one.  I'm quoting the whole damned thing:
A friend of mine posted about seeing this: "Where are all you gun owners now that the federal government and police are attacking citizens in the streets?? Now that the National Guard is out oppressing citizens? I thought this was the moment you're waiting for? So why aren't you out there fighting them with your guns? You're nothing but a bunch of fucking cowards!"
My response was the GIF of Nelson Muntz going HA HA. :-D
But I've seen this sentiment a lot too over the last few days, so please if you are so incredibly fucking dumb that you are actually wondering why America's gun culture aren't commuting into the democrat cities you have banned us from in order to get into gun fights with the National Guard on your behalf, allow me to elaborate.
Hypothetical Liberal "Ally" Who Lives in the Suburbs Which Aren't On Fire - "Hey, gun owners! Here is some civil unrest! Why won't you come and help us?"
Snort. Fuck off. 
"Pussies! Why not?"
Well, every single gun nut in America has spent their entire adult life being continually mocked, insulted, and belittled by the left. You've done nothing but paint us as the bad guys.
In Hollywood, we're always evil, stupid, violent, malicious, redneck, racist, murderers. That's so ingrained in the liberal religion that when "ally" Harvey Weinstein was trying to get out of being a sleazy rapist, his repentance consisted of promising to make more movies about how the NRA is bad.
In the news, everything is always our fault. If there is a mass murder, we can always count on the vultures to swoop in and blame America's gun culture. They flog it for weeks on end, 24/7 coverage, hoping for gun control. And if the identity of the shooter doesn't fit the narrative, it drops off the news in mere hours.
And then at the local, state, and federal level, legally speaking, the left fucks us at every opportunity. You ban everything you can get away with. You ban things that literally make no sense. You ban shit just out of spite.
When we fight back against gun control laws, you declare we are stupid because only the police should have guns (hey, aren't those the guys you are protesting right now?)
"Stupid racist rednecks! We live in a civilized society! Don't you realize the police will protect us?" until when your democrat cities are on fire, and you call 911 and the operator tells you sorry, the police can't come to your house right now, please try not to get murdered... How is that strict gun control working out for you?
Then you did everything in your power to chase gun owners out of your sainted liberal strongholds. You passed laws. You banned everything we like. Forced all the shooting ranges to close. Forced most of the gun stores to close. And just generally let us know that our kind is not welcome there.
But now you've started some shit, YOU want US to go into democrat cities, with democrat mayors, and democrat police chiefs enforcing democrat policies which cause strife among democrats, in order to get into gun fights on your behalf?
How fucking gullible do you think we are? Like holy shit. Damn dude!
Because we all know that literally 30 seconds after a gun nut blows away a government employee on your behalf, then all the national media coverage of the riots will instantly cease (sorta like the Corona Virus coverage did) and it'll be back to the news breathlessly reporting about right wing extremist gun nuts, and all you useless fucks would go back to whining for more dumb ass gun control.
You've already thrown the black community under the bus, cheering as their neighborhoods get burned and yours are safe. Seriously, white liberals are the shittiest "allies" in history, and your moral foundation has the consistency of Play-Doh. Your moral compass is a wind sock.
Just a little while ago, gun nuts had a massive peaceful protest in Virginia. Tens of thousands of people turned out to protest gun control proposals from a democrat with a penchant for wearing black face (he still considers himself an "ally" though!) They didn't break any windows. They didn't kill any puppies. They didn't burn any horses. They didn't flip any police cars or murder any security guards. They were downright boring. They were polite, and even cleaned up their litter.
Except then you called them domestic terrorists, and were super sad that they didn't get massacred by the government (said government you are now mad at for killing people, because again, you fuckers ain't exactly consistent)
Liberal "allies" are quick to call gun nuts the bad guys, but we're not trying to disarm people. We want everybody to be able to defend themselves. It's a common thing to see some meme on the internet, showing a black family shooting or posing with their guns, with some caption like "bet this offends the NRA", which is liberal projection, because in reality in my social circles everybody is like, "fuck yeah, good for them". And the harshest complaints I've seen have been about trigger finger discipline or lack of eye protection.
My side isn't the one that wants the state to have a monopoly on force. We know the 2nd is for everybody, regardless of skin color or where you live. You fuckers are the ones who keep declaring we can't fight the government with AR-15s because they have tanks and nukes, but then you bumbling fuckheads try it by throwing rocks?
So not only no, but hell no.
 
Can I get an "AMEN!"?

From the comments to the FB thread:



As I Have Said Repeatedly...

"Gun Control" as proposed means "Gun Elimination" - that is, reducing the number of guns in private hands to a number indistinguishable from zero.

The BBC proves my point in a 2017 piece recently reprinted on Pocket:  How Japan has Almost Eradicated Gun Crime. Excerpt:

If you want to buy a gun in Japan you need patience and determination. You have to attend an all-day class, take a written exam and pass a shooting-range test with a mark of at least 95 percent.

There are also mental health and drugs tests. Your criminal record is checked and police look for links to extremist groups. Then they check your relatives too - and even your work colleagues. And as well as having the power to deny gun licences, police also have sweeping powers to search and seize weapons.

That's not all. Handguns are banned outright. Only shotguns and air rifles are allowed.

The law restricts the number of gun shops. In most of Japan's 40 or so prefectures there can be no more than three, and you can only buy fresh cartridges by returning the spent cartridges you bought on your last visit.

Police must be notified where the gun and the ammunition are stored - and they must be stored separately under lock and key. Police will also inspect guns once a year. And after three years your licence runs out, at which point you have to attend the course and pass the tests again.

This helps explain why mass shootings in Japan are extremely rare. When mass killings occur, the killer most often wields a knife.

And that's better, because reasons.  And it also glosses over the arson massacres.  The September 2001 Myojo 56 Building fire that killed 44, the October 2008 Osaka movie theater fire that killed 16, and (understandably since this piece was first published in 2017) the July 2019 Kyoto Animation attack that killed 36 and injured 33.  No, the Japanese don't have many mass killings, but it's not because they don't have guns.

The result is a very low level of gun ownership - 0.6 guns per 100 people in 2007, according to the Small Arms Survey, compared to 6.2 in England and Wales and 88.8 in the US.

"The moment you have guns in society, you will have gun violence but I think it's about the quantity," says Overton. "If you have very few guns in society, you will almost inevitably have low levels of violence."

Not necessarily so.  The UK has very few guns in society, and has been the most violent nation in Western Europe.  They're trying to ban knives there now.

Henrietta Moore of the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London applauds the Japanese for not viewing gun ownership as "a civil liberty", and rejecting the idea of firearms as "something you use to defend your property against others."

Somehow, I don't think that reasoning would fly in major U.S. cities at the moment.

But for Japanese gangsters the tight gun control laws are a problem. Yakuza gun crime has sharply declined in the last 15 years, but those who continue to carry firearms have to find ingenious ways of smuggling them into the country.

"The criminals pack the guns inside of a tuna so it looks like a frozen tuna," says retired police officer Tahei Ogawa. "But we have discovered cases where they have actually hidden a gun inside."

So, the ownership rate is somewhat higher than 0.6/100 then?  RTWT, but the next time someone says "nobody's trying to take your guns," tell them to fuck off.

Another Plastic Turkey Story

So the media has been ranting about Trump's march through Lafayette Park to St. John’s Episcopal Church, the victim of arson the previous night. 





I could go on, but it's not necessary.  The story is bullshit, like so much coming from the media.  These days, nearly everything.

It's another Plastic Turkey! story, so good, so juicy it just HAS to be true!  ORANGE MAN BAD!!

Tuesday, June 02, 2020

Quote of the Day - Re: George F. Will

I've read some of George F. Will's work, and generally found it worthy.  In fact, I transcribed one of his speeches here at TSM, titled "Learned Feudalism" from the 2010 Cato Institute Milton Friedman Prize dinner.  It was witty, erudite, and absolutely accurate.

But the election of Donald J. Trump seems to have unhinged him.  He is the Never-Trumper's Never-Trumper.  Over at Instapundit Ed Driscoll comments on a XiNN piece about Will's most recent Washington Post op-ed calling for a rout of the Republican party to -- one assumes -- "restore" the REAL "Conservatives."  But that's not the QotD.  That honor belongs to a commenter, DoggerelPundit, who I think has accurately described what has happened to Will:
Pierre Boulle drew this man's exact caricature in Col. Nicholson. He was oh so British and so the pinnacle of Civilization with a capital C. Though their prisoner, with his men forced into slave labor, Col. Nicholson would show his uncivilized captors a thing or two about British superiority. He built their "unbuildable" bridge, furthering their war effort in the process. Only at the end did he realize.
Yes, Mr. Will would fit right into Bridge Over the River Kwai.


Thumbnail

Parking Lot Koreans


During the Rodney King riots, Koreatown in Los Angeles was a target of the rioters. The police, like they have in Minneapolis, abandoned the city. The shop owners in the area, their friends and families, defended their businesses, some from the roofs of their buildings - AKA “Roof Koreans.” Since then, anyone who defends against rioters has been termed a “Roof Korean” in the gun community.
Here are some that defended a Minneapolis tobacco store recently. Watch the video, but I want to show you a screen shot you won’t see on ABCNNBCBS or any other major news outlet:
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ec7b2ec02f161b726f7cb08e141eea4f
The two self-confessed “rednecks” are being interviewed. The two “gentlemen of color” off to the right there also defending the store, were not. Note they all are carrying the evil AR-15 rifle, but they aren’t shooting anyone.

The Second Amendment is for everybody.


The Practical Result of "Gun Control"

Just over 17 years ago I wrote a two-part post, Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection?  In it, I discussed a couple of cases that proved that there is no "Duty to protect" on the part of the government -- municipal, county, state or federal.  The second example was of Linda Riss, a New York City resident who was stalked by a jilted lover.  She tried to get police protection, but could not.  Until an attacker hired by her ex threw lye in her face, scarring and blinding her.  THEN she got round-the-clock protection.  She sued the NYPD - and lost. 

The dissenting judge in the case wrote this:
Linda has turned to the courts of this State for redress, asking that the city be held liable in damages for its negligent failure to protect her from harm. With compelling logic, she can point out that, if a stranger, who had absolutely no obligation to aid her, had offered her assistance, and thereafter Burton Pugach was able to injure her as a result of the negligence of the volunteer, the courts would certainly require him to pay damages. (Restatement, 2d, Torts, § 323.) Why then should the city, whose duties are imposed by law and include the prevention of crime (New York City Charter, § 435) and, consequently, extend far beyond that of the Good Samaritan, not be responsible? If a private detective acts carelessly, no one would deny that a jury could find such conduct unacceptable. Why then is the city not required to live up to at least the same minimal standards of professional competence which would be demanded of a private detective?

Linda's reasoning seems so eminently sensible that surely it must come as a shock to her and to every citizen to hear the city argue and to learn that this court decides that the city has no duty to provide police protection to any given individual. What makes the city's position particularly difficult to understand is that, in conformity to the dictates of the law, Linda did not carry any weapon for self-defense (former Penal Law, § 1897). Thus, by a rather bitter irony she was required to rely for protection on the City of New York which now denies all responsibility to her." (My emphasis)
As I wrote at that time, this is the practical result of "gun control." Denial of the means to defend yourself, while not providing any other layer of real protection.

This situation has raised its head again in many places, but New York in particular.  Read the New York Post piece Worse than War:  My Night Besieged by Looters and Thugs in New York.  Excerpt:
Every minute brought some new shock and a fresh surge of adrenaline: more and more of those roving gangs, some sticking around for minutes. Squad cars racing down in convoy, sirens blaring. The smashing of windows (a hair salon on the block, I learned in the morning, had been smashed in). The screeching of tires. The shouting of men: “Stop, you motherf–ker!”
Why won’t the men in blue stay in front of our house?
At two in the morning, it couldn’t be denied that one particular roving gang was roving no more; its members were obviously staking out our building. Now cackling, now going ominously silent. Should I race upstairs and bring a kitchen knife? How would this scenario play out? Would they just smash our lobby and leave? What could stop them if they wanted to take the elevators up to our homes?
Not a damned thing.  It's a meme, but it's a fact:


See also Joe Huffman's Quote of the Day.

Monday, June 01, 2020

Seen at Facebook:



This is the sudden exposure to the fact that the police HAVE no "Duty to Protect." Now someone needs to introduce people to the Killhouse Rules:


"Our first purpose was not to be noticed."

A long time ago I read Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for the first of many, many times.  I'm pretty sure I was twelve or thirteen at the time. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the plot, the Earth is governed by a United Nations of sorts, and has turned the moon into a penal colony much like England did with Australia.  Subtle difference, though, without certain drugs and strenuous exercise, spending too long on Luna will result in irreversible physiological changes that prohibit living on Earth again except as an invalid.  The moon, through hydroponic farming using water from lunar pockets of ice, has become the breadbasket of humanity.  A massive linear accelerator is used to send cargo packages of grain down the gravity well to feed Earth.

The population of Luna is only partially convicts as the story begins.  Most of the residents have either served their sentences or been born there as "free people."  Free being a relative term.  The Authority runs the colonies, and there are several. 

The crisis is that if projections are accurate, Luna is going to run out of water soon, and Earth doesn't care and doesn't want to know.  And they want "the convicts" to just do their jobs and feed Earth.

So a small group decides that the only way to save Luna is to have a revolution.  Here's the passage that struck me so many years ago:
Our first purpose was not to be noticed.  Long distance purpose was to make things worse as much as possible.  Yes, worse.  Never was a time, even at last, when all Loonies wanted to throw off Authority, wanted it bad enough to revolt.  All loonies despised Warden and cheated Authority.  Didn't mean they were ready to fight and die.
This popped up over on FB a day or two ago, a Tweet from Jeremy Boreing, one of the producers of Ben Shapiro's podcast and other Daily Wire things, I think:
  1. Instill fear
  2. Lock people in their houses
  3. Drive tens of millions out of work
  4. Remove the pressure valves:  sports, concerts, bars, theaters. lunch with friends
  5. Close the churches
  6. Dehumanize through masking the healthy
  7. Wait
  8. Strike match
I don't think this was orchestrated, any more than I think the WuFlu was a bioweapon, but the groundwork had already been laid and full advantage is being taken.
Marx defined revolution as violent overthrow of state and economic system when workers would come out of their false consciousness and would realize their exploitation done by the capitalist society. According to Marx, capitalism will eventually dig its own grave but the working class should not wait for it to happen on its own and rather catalyze the process to end their misery through revolution.
The next stage after revolution would be Socialism.  We have had more than one generation "educated" in our places of "higher learning" that Capitalism is Bad and Socialism is Good:


I'm not saying that this is that "revolution." I think it's another "wet firecracker," but there will be more of this, more often, until the entire system collapses, because a significant portion of the population, many working in government and media, want it to and are actively, quietly working towards it.  Things have to get worse before Joe Sixpack will be willing to fight and die.

Thing is, I don't think the Socialists are the ones expecting to die.

Quote of the Day - Sarah Hoyt Edition

From a post at Instapundit:

Two things, before my calm gets damaged further.
a) most businesses are not insured against civil unrest. Most will get nothing.
b) when you say “are your possessions worth a human life?”  Most people’s possessions are their lives. They spent days of their lives and strength and health to acquire them.
As for their being “worth” a human life…  Humans who think it’s okay to hurt people and take their stuff are only going to cost more lives in the long run. The right to be secure in your possessions is part of what made America great. Who will work, invest, innovate, if at any minute the government can decide their work is non-essential and brownshirts at the service of the democrats can burn it all down?
You allow this to continue, you have Mogadishu, not the US.