"America's Most Trusted" Doesn't Mean Much

In connection with the Orson Scott Card piece referenced below, and my earlier piece on the Bush administration's policy of ignoring the major media, the VodkaPundit has a very good piece up on the Pew Research study of news audience attitudes. Money quote:

For all intents and purposes, more than half of the populace (everybody except partisan Democrats, and even their numbers for credibility are nothing for most of the press to brag about) has written off the vast majority of the national press. And they're doing so because they believe that the press has written them off.

Things have gotten to the point where the President of the United States sees no reason not to ignore the networks and the New York Times. If the coin of your realm is trust, and influence is what you buy with that coin, what do today's viewership realities say about the state of the realm?

RTWT. And the comments.

(Via Instapundit, who's still posting while on vacation. He's a blogging animal!)

This is Why You Must Be Very, VERY Careful When You Reload

This used to be a Marlin Guide Gun in .45-70, before it KABOOOOOOM!ed

My guess is either the wrong powder, or a double-charge. I lean towards the double-charge. Smokeless powders don't take up much room in cases designed for blackpowder. There is no evidence of a plugged barrel.

The shooter suffered relatively minor injuries to his left (supporting) arm from metal fragments. He's OK.

And damned lucky.

Why Character Matters

Mikhail Gorbachev wrote an op-ed in today's New York Times (via Kiwi Pundit). Here are the money quotes:

True, Reagan was a man of the right. But, while adhering to his convictions, with which one could agree or disagree, he was not dogmatic; he was looking for negotiations and cooperation. And this was the most important thing to me: he had the trust of the American people.

--

A true leader, a man of his word and an optimist, he traveled the journey of his life with dignity and faced courageously the cruel disease that darkened his final years.

(My emphasis)

Now, compare and contrast this with the projected Democrat nominee for the office of President.

More Cut-Through-The-B.S. from Orson Scott Card

(Via More Eclipse Ramblings)

Orson Scott Card is an author of a number of science fiction novels, writes an opinion column for The Ornery American, is a devout Mormon, and is a classical liberal - in short, he has nothing nice to say about the Leftists who have usurped the title "liberal" and debased it.

Well, he lays some smack-down on on the Leftist media in his latest column:

The Fanatics Who Tell Us the News

When Fox News Channel was founded by Rupert Murdoch, the consensus was that no startup all-news cable channel could possibly compete with CNN.

And if any startup had a chance, it was MSNBC, which had the combined clout of NBC's esteemed news division and Microsoft, which in those days was believed to own the future.

Now, about a decade later, Fox News Channel has left both CNN and MSNBC in the dust.

There's no guarantee that this is permanent, of course.

But it certainly has the Left in a panic. They hated it that American conservatism had any voice at all, back when it was confined to a few radio talk shows -- remember how everybody wanted to blame Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk-radio hosts for the Oklahoma City bombing?

I certainly do.

Read the whole piece - It beats the bloody equine corpse of media bias, but is still well worth your time.

I Love the Internet

Now that my Photobucket account has rolled into the next month, time to abuse my bandwidth privileges again. Two pictures stolen shamelessly off of AR15.com. First up, a revision of "Separated at Birth?"

I love the shot of Lurch!

Second, one I will display with no additional comment - it doesn't need it:

Mike Spenis Blogs the World Through Rose-Colored Glasses

But it's a beautiful picture he paints, and there's much truth in it.

Just remember, Mike, it's not all chirping birds and fluffy bunnies. As long as we understand that, things will keep improving.

Two generations ago tyranny swept the world. That's no exaggeration; real, honest-to-god tyranny really did sweep over much of the earth. A generation ago we feared a nuclear holocaust. Now, we fear truck bombs and hijackings. We are in the cleanup phase of the great struggle for civilization, and civilization has won.

We have found the recipe; wealth and trade and freedom. All the big players are either on board now, or grudgingly getting with the program. China remains a vicious place, but it is growing softer with age, threatened less by war then by prosperity growing out of control. Russia now begs to join the EU. Socialism, like some human disease, weakens all that it touches and will gently extinguish itself in our children's lifetime as the free world leaves it further behind.

Civilization hasn't won yet. It does look like the inning's almost over and we're way ahead, but you discount the too-tight-turban crowd too much, I think. It only takes one asshole to shove a stick through the spokes of progress, and they're the designated rectums.

Don't relax too much. Things have a way of surprising us.

Governments, Criminals, and Dangerous Victims

(This is Part III of a series. Please read Part I, "It's most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can", and Part II, Violence and the Social Contract before proceeding.)

Alexander Tytler is credited, perhaps apocryphally, for this quotation:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith

From spiritual faith to great courage

From courage to liberty

From liberty to abundance

From abundance to selfishness

From selfishness to complacency

From complacency to apathy

From apathy to dependency

From dependency back again into bondage

I don't know who actually said it, or when, but it echoes well another (probably apocryphal) quote attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville:

The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.

Benjamin Franklin, it is said, when asked what form of government the Constitutional Convention had settled on in Philadelphia in 1787 responded,

A republic, if you can keep it.

The eighteenth century saw the rise of the first truly representative government in the modern world. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the United States was one of the very few democratically-based governments in existence. Almost all others were hereditary monarchies or just plain dictatorships. Great Britain was a titular monarchy, but with legal restraints, and subject to the votes of the populace and the peerage. By the first quarter of the 20th century, the dominant model of government was some form of democracy - defined as a government that listens to and accomodates the populace which it serves through some form of popular vote. Colonialism was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

What made that possible? Democracies had risen in history before, but had fallen back into tyranny. Greece and Rome are but the two most famous examples. Democracy had never gained a solid foothold before, but suddenly (historically speaking) it sprung up worldwide. Industrialization had something to do with it. The world model of agriculture as the dominant economic engine had been replaced with industrial manufacturing and its supporting industry, mining. The natural resources needed now expanded beyond mere land. Now much more of what was beneath that land was valuable. And, as always, men fought to acquire that which was valuable.

The industrial revolution came to the aid of that, too. With the invention of useable, effective, inexpensive firearms, the professional soldier caste no longer held an advantage over the meanest serf - so long as that serf had a gun. All the training in swordsmanship and archery and the best plate mail were useless against a man with a matchlock and the meager skills required to use it. As technology progressed; the rifled musket, the Minié ball, the percussion cap, the metallic cartridge, the repeating arm, each step made it easier for the individual to be as lethal as his martial forebears. More lethal, in fact. A peasant with a scythe is an irritant to a landowner who commands a knight with a charger and a lance. When many peasants are angry and outnumber the knights, you have to pay attention to them, but one peasant with a musket is a problem of a different order entirely.

When the victims are dangerous, it changes the balance of the equation of power. The more dangerous they are, the more the balance changes.

After the American Revolution, and just a few years after the ratification of our Constitution, American jurist St. George Tucker wrote a review of American law called Blackstone's Commentaries. It was first published in 1803, and on the topic of our Constitutionally recognized right to arms, Tucker had this to say:

This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty. . . . The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty."

It seems that even then the English ruling class understood the problems that a dangerous victim represented. Well, it was understandable, given the results of the little dust-up that started in 1776.

It is, I believe, the firearm that is responsible for the level of individual freedom enjoyed in this modern world. It is, without a doubt, the tool used to inflict huge volumes of death and misery, but huge volumes of death and misery are historically unremarkable from long before there were firearms. As someone once noted, before there were firearms the world was run by large men with swords, and it was neither fair nor democratic. The difference is, firearms made the peasants dangerous. It's much less expensive to conscript peasants, instruct them in organized drill, teach them to load, aim, and fire a gun and send them off to battle than it is to pay for a professional mercenary army - especially when your conscripts, properly led, can beat that professional mercenary army.

But there's a drawback to that, if you happen to be the Head Muther%*$^er in Charge - once you train those peasants, you can't untrain them. And guns are not a particularly difficult technology. That's what makes them so attractive in the first place. That makes tax collecting a bit more sporting as it were. So the next time you want to raise their taxes, or take their property (or their daughters), you have to consider how they feel about that.

Unless you can disarm them.

The same condition holds true if your intention is merely to steal retail, as an individual, rather than wholesale, as a government. If your victim isn't dangerous, you needn't take his objections into consideration.

Representative government is the result of dangerous victims. The ability to object - and make that objection hurt, is the source of the power of the individual within the State. Guns gave that power to the previously powerless, no other technology, and that power was used to build governments that listened. Governments that don't listen still exist, and use guns to maintain their own power. Mao's famous quote is absolutely on the money:

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

And it explains precisely why totalitarian governments are very careful about who they allow to possess arms, and who they don't.

The pacifist philosophy holds that non-violence is the moral choice, that violence is wrong. But violence exists, everywhere. It is violence that leads us to organize politically, for only through organization can we effectively resist the predation of others. It is through violence that society exists, for as Rev. Sensing noted, "government stays in power by violence or its threat and the threat is meaningless unless it can be and is employed". If the government cannot threaten arrest, trial, and incarceration (or worse) for violation of the laws of society - and carry that threat out - then there is no society, there is anarchy - the anarchy we join into societies to counter. We, the citizens, agree to the laws of our society and follow them because we believe them just. We condone the use of violence to enforce those laws because, in the main, the government serves to protect our rights and our property against those who would usurp them.

In any group of people, however, there are always those who will not follow the rules of the society - the criminals. Certainly, if those criminals are armed they are more destructive that they would be unarmed, but there is no way to disarm the criminals without disarming the whole populace. Even then the level of success in disarming the criminal is only one of degree. It may be possible to deny a criminal a firearm, but that simply puts the society back at the "large men with swords" level. The pacifist philosophy that attempts to disarm the populace "for its own good" does no such thing. It merely renders that society more at risk, not less. And more, it places that society back at the mercy of a government that may or may not protect the rights and property of its citizens.

Because the victims won't be dangerous any longer.

St. George Tucker was right: The right to self defense is the first law of nature, and the right to arms is the palladium of liberty, against both criminal and tyrant. And Tytler may be correct that the pattern of history is for a free people to give up their freedom and descend once again into bondage, but so long as the people retain their arms, they may retain their liberty, or at least make their objection hurt. It is the deterrent effect of an armed populace that causes tyrants to pause and reconsider the balance of power equation. Ninth Circuit Court Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in his dissent to the recent Silveria v. Lockyer decision,

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

Guns in the hands of citizens means carnage and mayhem. Guns in the exclusive control of criminals and government risks far worse.

It is a better choice by far to have dangerous victims rather than powerless ones.

More on this here.

Original comment thread (thanks to the herculean efforts of reader John Hardin) are available here.

Depending On the Government for Your Protection

Reader Doug Sundseth sent the links this charming gun control success story:

Police accused of waiting too long over barbecue shootings

A police force was accused yesterday of waiting too long to act after a shooting at a family barbecue left two sisters dead. One witness claimed that their lives could have been saved.

Roy Gibson, 70, said he spent an hour waiting for help to arrive as he tried to save one of the women. Paramedics were prevented from entering until Thames Valley Police had completed a one-hour assessment of any further risk to life.

By the time police decided it was safe for armed officers and ambulance crews to go in, Vicky Horgan, 27, a mother-of-two, had died. Her sister, Emma Walton, 25, died a short while later from her wounds. Their mother, Jacqueline Bailey, 55, who was also shot, was in a serious condition in hospital last night.

The incident was witnessed by Mrs Horgan's daughters Bobbie Jayne, five, and seven-year-old Jade.

Mr Gibson, a neighbour who, with his wife Georgina, 58, tried to treat the wounded, said there was a chance both women could have been saved had they received medical attention earlier.

It's called the "golden hour" - the hour immediately after a serious injury, when caring for the injury is critical to the victim's survival.

Is the English government so terrified of armed assailants that it can no longer determine when a risk of life and limb is justified? Here's the BBC's version of the story. Money quote:

South Oxfordshire Area Commander Superintendent Jill Simpson said that police had to hold back ambulance crews for one hour in order to assess the "level of danger".

She said: "Firearms operations demand a calculated response in order to safeguard any members of the public who could be at risk as well as the officers and other emergency service personnel who could be at the scene."

Apparently the answer is "yes."

What the hell happened to the dry, understated "spot of bother," the "stiff upper lip?" "Mad dogs and Englishmen?" They appear more and more to be whipped curs with cold sweat-beaded lips aquiver.

Would FDNY paramedics hold back for an hour? Would NYPD officers hold them back? Or would they sweep in and guard the paramedics?

What happened to the country that produced Churchill? Are the only "civil servants" with a spine in that country in the military? Or is it just the policy makers who can't bear a risk anymore, and the subjects - indoctrinated for decades - blindly follow?

Sweet weeping jebus.

Update, 6/9: Doug Sundseth emailed me his comments on this piece because they're too long for Haloscan:

The one quote that I found most striking was:

[Mr. Gibson] said: "Vicky took her last breath as we tried to comfort her. There was no ambulance and no police officer with us, despite my repeated reassurances to officers that the gunman had long since fled. I think there is a very real chance that Vicky and Emma could have been saved if the paramedics had been allowed to the scene."

The concern of the police seems to have been that Mr. Gibson might have been forced to lie. So how many times has that happened?

Rescue personnel commonly assume risk in saving people from sinking ships, floods, burning buildings, whatever. They work to reduce that risk through training, but the risk never disappears entirely. Clearly, there are some situations so dangerous as to not warrant the risk of yet more lives, but that decision is made based on the individual circumstances of a rescue.

The police on this scene (by inclination or policy) so overestimated the risk of an idiot with a gun that the mere possibility of his continued presence prevented them from saving lives. I see this as yet another complete misunderstanding of the actual danger of firearms.

Let's look at the risks and take some WAGs at their probabilities:

1) Trained rescue people on scene reported that there was no gunman present. There is a very small possibility that they could have been coerced or mistaken. P(risk) ~ .05

2) Most shots in these sorts of emotional situations miss. P(risk) ~ .25

3) Most dangerous shots hit the body armor of armored responders. P(risk) ~ .25

4) Most shots that don't hit the body armor are entirely survivable. P(risk) ~ .1

If we use my (WAG) risk numbers, P(death) is somewhere near .03125%, or 1 in 3200. Can you imagine a fireman or Coast Guardsman (unofficial motto: "You have to go out; you don't have to come back) refusing to take such a risk?

Jasen is right that the same calculus applies to Columbine. I'd put the risk higher there, but the risk to innocents was higher too.

I don't know whether the cowardice was institutional or personal (I suspect the former), but that is only of relevance when deciding who needs to be fired.

Good points, Doug. And I concur.

I also predict that no one will be fired, or even reprimanded.

Well, This is Graphic

It seems that Steven Den Beste has stirred up a bit of a hornet's nest, and he's tired of the subject. However his description of the level of irritation struck me, and I think I'm going to have to add that to my list of quotes to remember:

The needle on the annoyance meter is currently pointing to "fingernails on chalkboard" and beginning to move towards "Chirac".

'Leave her alone or I'll shoot you right between the shoulders'

Another reason to respect Ronnie, though he should have kept some ammo:

Reagan Was Hero To Iowa Woman

Nursing Student Rescued From Mugger By Reagan

Former President Ronald Reagan is known as the "Great Communicator," but one Iowa woman will always know him as her hero.

Melba King was a 22-year-old nursing student in Des Moines in 1933. She was walking home one autumn night when a mugger came up behind her with a gun and demanded her money.

At that moment, Ronald Reagan -- who was a Des Moines radio sportscaster at the time -- came to her rescue. Reagan pointed a .45-caliber revolver at the robber from the window of his second-floor rented room.

"And he said, 'Leave her alone or I'll shoot you right between the shoulders,'" King told KCCI.

Reagan scared the man off and calmed King's nerves. Then, the future president said he would walk King home.

King didn't see Reagan again until 1984, when Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad heard her story and invited her to an Iowa caucus campaign event (pictured, above left).

After King and Reagan hugged on stage, Reagan laughed, and said to the crowd, "This is the first time I've had a chance to tell you the gun was empty. I didn't have any cartridges. If he hadn't run when I told him to, I was going to have to throw it at him."

King's rescue became a national news story. "The phone rang constantly," King said.

All the media attention caused Reagan and King to stay in touch. The two families exchanged cards on birthdays, holidays, and during times of sickness and grief.

The Reagans helped King when she lost her husband Harold in 1987, and now she will send Nancy Reagan a sympathy note.

You Have to Wonder...

I haven't commented on Marvin Heemeyer's bulldozer rampage in Granby, Colorado. Reader Matthew wrote a piece on Triggerfinger.org entitled The Canaries are Dying that he linked to in the comments to Are We Headed for Another Civil War? that I recommend you read.

Back in December when I wrote Pressing the "RESET" Button I said:

I think a lot of people are getting fed up with ever-increasing government intrusion into our lives. With our ever-shrinking individual rights. More than one of Jay's respondents noted the apathy of the majority, though, and I agree. Government interferes lightly on a wholesale basis, but it does its really offensive intrusions strictly retail. So long as the majority gets its bread and circuses, it will remain content.

But not everyone.

I found this editorial today from The Rocky Mountain News that I think illustrates this very well.

Heemeyer's ire understood, but not his act (Tina Griego)

Since 2001 - Sept. 7, 2001, to be precise - Ted Mascarenas, of Brighton, has fought with his homeowners association and/or with the city zoning department over his roof, his gate, his fence.

"Even the driveway, if you can believe that," Ted says.

Then there was the trailer. "I used to have a trailer parked out front, I don't anymore, but they thought I was living in it. I wasn't. But there were three guys down the road living in theirs. 'How about them?' I asked. 'You can't be throwing rocks,' they said."

It didn't end there. Don't even get him started on the barn.

"I finally finished my barn; it'd burned. One of the HOA board members, he inspected it after it was done. But then we had a falling-out over the gate because I built my fence and then they wouldn't approve my gate and I put it up anyway.

"So, they told me, 'You don't have 12-inch soffits on the barn roof' - you know where the roof overhangs, the flat part underneath, that's the soffit. They wanted me to redo it. That'd cost me roughly around $8,000. So, I pointed out 10 other detached barns like mine, identical. I said, 'What about them? They don't have soffits.' You know what their ruling was? 'They're grandfathered.' And I said, 'Well, my barn was one of the first put up here. I built it in 1997.' I said, 'If anybody has a right to be grandfathered, it's me.'

"I can't win, I tell you, I just can't win. They have different rules for different people."

Which brings us to Marvin Heemeyer.

Heemeyer, as you know, is the muffler shop owner who took out his frustration with Granby officials by bulldozing several buildings and then apparently killing himself. I'm not saying Ted Mascarenas thinks Marvin Heemeyer is some kind of a hero who took on government - he doesn't - though it's pretty clear from a quick look online that Heemeyer is already being mythologized as such.

"Colorado MAN has had enough of their crap," begins one news group entry. "Good for him."

My, how short the journey from maniac to martyr. I doubt the "attaboy" cheerleading would be heard if Heemeyer had killed anyone other than himself.

Ted doesn't condone what Heemeyer did, either. No, what Ted feels is a certain amount of understanding.

"I know what he's going through," he told his wife as they watched the news.

Ted keeps pages of letters and papers documenting his various squabbles. His voice climbs in outrage when he describes his disputes. Leave it alone, his wife tells him, maybe they'll leave you alone. "I'm not built that way," he says. When he saw footage of the bulldozer biting into a building, he said: "Boy, I wish I had the guts to do that."

"No, you didn't," I say.

"I did," he says.

"You're not building a tank in your barn, are you?" I ask.

He laughs and says no, he likes living. "What a price to pay. It's crazy."

I keep wondering if at any point Heemeyer fired up the blowtorch, studied the flame and thought, "What am I doing?"

"He just had enough," I hear, as if this were a reasonable explanation for the rampage. Most adults are able to work out their differences without welding themselves into a bulldozer and punching the gas. But, there is some germ of truth here.

I've met plenty of people, decent and, by all appearances, sane, who feel powerless in the face of government, who believe they have been jerked around, dismissed. What part of public servant don't these bureaucrats understand, these people say.

Their ire usually zeroes in on a zoning inspector or parking enforcement officer or cop, on rules arbitrarily enforced, on someone in some office saying one thing and someone else in the same office saying just the opposite, leaving Joe Taxpayer red-faced and shouting, "Aaargh! Why didn't you tell me this before?"

Several people called the office Sunday to make this point.

One said he doesn't understand why more people don't go off the way Heemeyer did, what "with the cities and the land-taking and their condemnation and their closed-door politics. They just run over all the small people all the time."

A woman tells me of several frustrating experiences she had with Denver's zoning office. She spent a lot of time trying to get the problem worked out.

It never did happen.

"You can't fight City Hall and win," she said.

The whole thing was causing too much stress, so she and her husband decided to let it go.

After Granby, you have to wonder how many Marvin Heemeyers are out there who can't.

Yes, you do. And perhaps more government officials should, before they pass the next ordinance or enforce the next niggling little regulation, or confiscate the next chunk of property.

I Just Have To...

Thanks to some assistance from an AR15.commer, I give you Howell Raines as Saruman:

"Against the power of Mordor The New York Times there can be no victory."

----

Saruman: "We must join with them, Gandalf. We must join with the Democrats.
It would be wise, my friend."

Gandalf: "Tell me, 'friend', when did Saruman the Wise abandon reason for madness?"

----

Saruman: "I gave you the chance of aiding me willingly, but you have elected the way of pain."

Violence and the Social Contract

 In the previous piece immediately below, "(I)t's most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can," I put forward the concepts of violent and predatory and violent but protective, and their antithesis, non-violence or passivity. I also noted that the pacifist culture in general holds a logical disconnect in that it still supports violence, so long as that violence is threatened or performed by duly authorized agents of the State.

I found this link at Rev. Sensing's that illustrates why that logical disconnect, that dichotomy, exists. It's a quote from Christian philosopher-ethicist Jacques Ellul:

Violence is to be found everywhere and at all times, even where people pretend that it does not exist. . . every state is founded on violence and cannot maintain itself save by and through violence. . . . Everywhere we turn we find society riddled with violence. Violence is its natural condition, as Thomas Hobbes saw clearly.

Pacifists reject Hobbes's belief that the natural state of man is one of conflict, but in general hold his belief that governments are formed to protect people from their own selfishness and evil. And how do they do that? Rev. Sensing:

Ellul disagrees with the classic distinction between violence and force: it's lawyers who have invented the idea that when the state uses coercion, even brutally, it is exercising "force" and that only individuals or nongovernmental groups use violence. All states are established by violence. A government stays in power by violence or its threat and the threat is meaningless unless it can be and is employed.

The fact is that society depends on violence or its threat simply to exist. That's why there are police departments in every city. But there is no moral difference between the homeowner who protects his life or property with a gun and one who does not but summons a police officer. The police use violence or its threat to protect the law-abiding. The unarmed homeowner has merely "contracted out" his use of violence.

If using violence is sinful, the blunt reality is that there are no sin-free choices.

Note that critical point: "...it's lawyers who have invented the idea that when the state uses coercion, even brutally, it is exercising "force" and that only individuals or nongovernmental groups use violence." And that is, in my opinion, an insidious form of self-deception, because it draws a moral difference between a citizen who defends himself, and one who does not but instead summons a police officer.

This is a recent philosophical change. When Sir Robert Peel formed London's Metropolitan Police Force - the first of its kind in London - he set down his Nine Principles of policing:

The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.

Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.

The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.

Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.

Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient.

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.

Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.

The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

Note 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."

Now look back at Principle #1. The prevention of crime and disorder is incumbent on every citizen in the interest of community welfare and existence. But when a society, step by slow deliberate step, deceives itself into believing that there is a moral difference between defending oneself and one's community and "contracting it out" to the State, then that society will lose the majority of its defenders and risk descent into chaos. The converse is also true - when there is no reliance on the State, you risk anarchy as well,

Discourage self-help, and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians. Over-stimulate self-assertion, and for the arbitrament of the Courts you substitute the decision of the sword or the revolver. - The Law of the Constitution, by A.V. Dicey (MacMillan, London 1885).

(Quotation found at Samizdata. I recommend you read the whole piece.)

The concept of pacifism as it pertains to crime is generally predicated on the concept that all life is of value, and that using violence to injure or kill in defense of mere property is disproportionate - the value of the material is much less than the value of the life of the person attempting to take the material. Surprise! I concur. The life of a human being is of greater value than, say, the contents of my wallet. But this ignores something more important - the fact that the contents of my wallet are the least things at risk. Because someone willing to threaten bodily injury or death in order to take my wallet violates the tenets of the society in which both of us live. He puts in fear not only me, but the entire society. He has proffered a new social contract - "Give me what I want, and I won't hurt you."

The pacifist culture tells us that we should not resist, that we should call the authorities who are empowered to deal with social miscreants. At most, we should respond (as the British are required) proportionally. Yet a proportional response requires us, the defenders, to read the mind of the assailant. If he holds a knife, are we to ask "Do you actually intend to use the knife, and if so is your intent simply to wound or would you be intending a killing blow?" A proportional response requires the defender to reason cogently in a situation wherein our lives, or at least our health may be at risk. The advantage belongs to the attacker, and that is a recipe for social disaster.

To prevent that social disaster, the new social contract offered by the criminal should be understood by all parties to be: "Whatever it is I want, I have decided that it is worth risking my life for." And we, the potential victims, should be as dangerous as possible.

So long as a sufficient number of us are, the rest of society will enjoy the benefit of our protection. When there are too few of us, or when those of us who are willing to resist are restricted by law from doing so, there remain only two options: suffer the onslaught of criminals, or increase the police forces to overly burdensome levels. With the second option, assuming that a sufficient level is attained to reduce crime, the officers of the State required to accomplish that task will not then be reduced, they will be reassigned to other tasks, and a de facto police state will exist.

Those are the choices. It seems apparent which Britain has decided on.

(To be continued...)  Original comment thread is available here (thanks to reader John Hardin).

"(I)t's most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can"

That's the philosophy I subscribe to, very well put by James Rummel of Hell in a Handbasket. He was inspired by this piece at Grim's Hall on "Social Harmony."

In "Social Harmony," the author wrote:

I was reading an article the other day, in the local newspaper, about an elderly Korean gentleman who has moved into town and opened a martial arts studio. He chastened the reporter who had come to interview him not to suggest that the martial arts were 'all about fighting.' "No!" he said. "The purpose is social harmony."

That is exactly right. The secret of social harmony is simple: Old men must be dangerous.

Very nearly all the violence that plagues, rather than protects, society is the work of young males between the ages of fourteen and thirty. A substantial amount of the violence that protects rather than plagues society is performed by other members of the same group. The reasons for this predisposition are generally rooted in biology, which is to say that they are not going anywhere, in spite of the current fashion that suggests doping half the young with Ritalin.

The question is how to move these young men from the first group (violent and predatory) into the second (violent, but protective). This is to ask: what is the difference between a street gang and the Marine Corps, or a thug and a policeman? In every case, we see that the good youths are guided and disciplined by old men. This is half the answer to the problem.

This recognition of the difference between violent and predatory and violent but protective illustrates the difference in worldview between people like me, and the (we'll call it) pacifist culture.

Britain today represents a perfect example of the pacifist culture in control, because that culture doesn't really distinguish between violent and predatory and violent but protective - it sees only violent. Their worldview is divided between violent and non-violent, or passive. There is an exception, a logical disconnect if you will, that allows for legitimate violence - but only if that violence is committed by sanctioned officials of the State. And even there, there is ambivalence. If violence is committed by an individual there is another dichotomy: If the violence is committed by a predator, it is the fault of society in not meeting that predator's needs. The predator is the creation of the society, and is not responsible for the violence. He merely needs to be "cured" of his ailment. If violence is committed by a defender, it is a failure of the defender to adhere to the tenets of the pacifist society. It is the defender who is at fault because he has lived by the rules and has chosen to break them, and who must therefore be punished for his transgression.

Obviously I'm taking this example to its extreme. Certainly the pacifist culture in Britain hasn't taken over completely, but it is, without a doubt, the motivating factor behind the last fifty-plus years of ever more stringent controls on weapons and violent behavior. Laws that make it illegal to purchase a firearm for the specific purpose of self-protection. Laws that prohibit carrying anything that might be considered an offensive weapon, including pepper spray and tasers. Laws that make the use of deadly force in defense of self or others legally risky because:

"The law does not require the intention to kill for a prosecution for murder to succeed. All that is required is an intention to cause serious bodily harm. That intention can be fleeting and momentary. But if it is there in any form at all for just a second - that is, if the blow you struck was deliberate rather than accidental - you can be guilty of murder and spend the rest of your life in prison."

There is no doubt that the philosophy behind those laws holds that there is no such thing as legitimate violence if it is committed by anyone other than agents of the State. There is no doubt that this philosophy ignores the historical and biological fact that young men are violent, and unguided will be predatory. Instead, that philosophy speaks of a "gun culture" - one of predatory violence without recognizing the other "gun culture" they have systematically been destroying for decades that teaches responsibility, safety, and protection. That "gun culture" does not exist in that philosophy, because that gun culture teaches violence, and violence is, by definition, bad.

Unless it is done in the name of the State.

That is a mindset that is making inroads here as well. In cities such as New York, D.C., and Chicago, and in states like New Jersey and Maryland, similar laws - though not as comprehensive - have been passed. Yet Americans in the main hold to the "John Wayne" ideal - that violence in defense of self or others is legitimate - that the State serves us, and since it cannot be everywhere at all times we have primary responsibility for that defense. We still understand the concept of violent, but protective.

It's trite, but one of the best illustrations of the inroads of the pacifist mindset is in the DVD release of George Lucas's original STAR WARS. In the cantina scene Lucas has revised the scene to show the character Han Solo being shot at - at point blank range - before he kills the villain Greedo. In the original scene, Han, the quintessential space cowboy, shot Greedo from concealment under the table first.

And the American audience cheered.

We knew who the good guy was.

(More later...)  Original JSKit/Echo comment thread available here (thanks to reader John Hardin).

I Stand Corrected

Although I did change my mind and decide that former NYT editor Howell Raines was not Gollum, but Saruman, it appears that there was no possibility of Raines having the role of Gollum in the first place. Frank J. of IMAO has proven beyond a doubt that, in fact, John F'n Kerry has that role.

In retrospect, it's obvious. Kerry's the one with the split personality.

Requiescat In Pace

Ronald Reagan, succumbing to Alzheimer's disease and age, died today.

I didn't agree with everything Mr. Reagan stood for. I don't think there's a politician I ever will agree wholly with, but I respect him for what he did, and for very much of what he said.

When he stood before the Berlin wall and said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear this wall down!" I don't think I've ever been more proud of a President.

Except maybe when it came down.

You want to know why I'm voting for Bush this November?

Because he stands for something.

And Kerry most definitely does not.

Rest now, Mr. Reagan. You did a helluva job.

Are We Headed for Another Civil War?

A while back I wrote in response to a Steven Den Beste piece why I thought the U.S. would not see another Civil War. In What if Your Loyalty is to The Constitution? I said that America wouldn't see another Civil War because the majority of the population is too willfully ignorant and too apathetic to care much anymore. That piece was an update of Pressing the "RESET" Button, which I wrote in December. In that piece I wrote:

Generally, government is treated by the media as a vast benevolent force (unless, of course, that same government is defeating an enemy totalitarian government or unseating a murderous tyrant - then it's eeeeeevil.) Whatever actions that government takes for the benefit of an endangered species, or "for society" is more important than what it does to the people who are directly affected by these actions.

Oh, occasionally something really egregious will pique some reporter, and we'll get a "human interest" story that pisses off the few of us who are paying attention. Sometimes our ire will get the government to back off, claiming it was all a big misunderstanding or worse, the government doesn't back off at all. The recent incidents of Melvin Spaulding in Florida, George Norris in Texas, Dennis Pryslak in New Jersey, Stratford High School in South Carolina, and many others come to mind. Scroll through the archives of this site. There's probably at least one a week that will raise your blood pressure.

I've quoted Jefferson's letter to William Smith several times recently, but this part is the one I find most interesting:

Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The past which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.

It seems, in the main, that we aren't informed at all, much less well. Lethargy? For the overwhelming majority, yes indeed.

Until it happens to you. Then you get pissed right quick, and wonder why nobody hears your side of the story.

I think a lot of people are getting fed up with ever-increasing government intrusion into our lives. With our ever-shrinking individual rights. More than one of Jay's respondents noted the apathy of the majority, though, and I agree. Government interferes lightly on a wholesale basis, but it does its really offensive intrusions strictly retail. So long as the majority gets its bread and circuses, it will remain content.

But not everyone.

And I gave the example of Steven Bixby, of South Carolina, who shot and killed two police officers over a 20' section of his property taken under eminent domain.

Today I read via Instapundit this quotation from a Village Voice theater review:

Republicans don't believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don't give a hoot about human beings, either can't or won't. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.

Compare and contrast this *ahem* progressive opinion with that of Wretchard of The Belmont Club in his latest piece:

Reader MG wrote to ask "in what way is The Left the spirit behind all the carnage of the 20th Century". The answer might properly begin with the words of the Internationale (1871), which took as its starting point the notion that men born to the world had nothing to lose but their chains.

-

It set the theme which was to endure for more than a hundred years: that the familiar world is not worth fighting for. Only the unseen tomorrow gives life any meaning. The present could never be ended too soon. The odious aspects of life in the early 20th century were clear enough, and nowhere better portrayed than George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier. Who can forget his portrayals of coal workers and their daily lives? From its earliest inception, the Left cried that the world was not good enough. It held that any attempts to find happiness in the present were not only doomed, but immoral. Religion, Marx said, "is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness." He claimed that capitalism could never feed the poor. Lenin said Marxism could, and defined Communism as "socialism plus electricity".

What they forgot to add was that the world would never be good enough. That not a single Marxist state ever managed to provide either the food or electricity in adequate quantities remained beside the point. Shortages were always in the present and the present was unimportant anyway. When capitalism provided wealth in quantities that Lenin could only dream of, then food and electricity themselves became hated in turn, the way starvation once was.

--

Lenin's future was attractive only for so long as it didn't exist and was legitimate only when its promises were not provided by capitalism. John Buchan could tell his son, when he wrote "Memory Hold The Door", which described friends who died in the Great War, that "they held up the world for you". But a true Leftist could only ever dream of boasting to his progeny that 'I tore down the world for you'. The present was always too hateful to endure.

Please, take the time to read the whole thing.

I doubt that many of my readers would argue with the proposition that the Left has a firm grip on a large part of American society. They certainly control the entertainment industry - perhaps the strongest propaganda machine ever assembled. They control the education system, and are busy cranking out more little ignorant, pliable leftists daily. They, by and large, control the courts. But they do not yet control the NATION, and are, as many people are noting, coming unhinged by that fact, as America still supports, in the main, the war that they abhor in their very veins.

Hugh Hewitt commented on George Soros's speech at a "Take Back America" conference. (Take it back? They haven't - quite - taken it yet.) Soros is spending $15 million - regardless of the "Campaign Finance Reform" law - to see President Bush defeated. Soros spent $18 million, according to this USAToday piece, to support that legislation. Soros's speech equated the Abu Ghraib prison abuses to 9/11, much as Teddy Kennedy equated the abuses there to Saddam's murder and torture. And he was loudly applauded for it. He was introduced, gushingly, by Sen. Clinton. Soros is a major contributor to MoveOn.org. The Left is quite large, quite powerful, and very well directed.

I believe that Wretchard is correct in his assertion that the desire of the Left is to "tear down the world." I don't think the rank-and-file see it that way, but the pursuit of their beliefs would absolutely result in it. It would appear that the Left believes that the Right wants to "destroy the human race and the planet." (Projection, do you think?)

This is a philosophical divide every bit as wide as the one that resulted in the last Civil War.

I cannot help but wonder: Are we going to war again, against each other? And what form would that take?

I think the answer might very well be "YES," and the form will be that of domestic terrorism.

And that means a very, very ugly future.

Another DeMotivational Poster

This one's by fellow AR15.com poster Bastiat, proprietor of Flashbunny.org:

Damn, that's good!

An Oldie, But a Goodie: Economic Theories Explained by the Two Cow Example

DEMOCRAT
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.


REPUBLICAN
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?
Revised: You sell him dairy products at a suitable markup. (Per Triticale)


SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.


COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.


CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.


DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a
man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from
your government.


BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you
for the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.


AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised
when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts
stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.


FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.


JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow
and produce twenty times the milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably
crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school.


GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give
Excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.


ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.


RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.


TALIBAN CORPORATION
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts.
Then you kill them and claim a US bomb blew them up while they were in the
hospital.


IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.


FLORIDA CORPORATION
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who like the brown one best, vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which is the
best-looking cow.


NEW YORK CORPORATION
You have fifteen million cows.
You have to choose which one will be the leader of the herd,
so you pick some fat cow from Arkansas.


CALIFORNIA CORPORATION
You have millions of cows.
Most are illegals.
Arnold likes the ones with the big tits.

Added, from reader Tom:

HONG KONG CAPITALISM:
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute an debt/equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows.

The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company.

The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.

Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the Feng Shui is bad.

Too Little, Too Late (I Hope)

It appears that the pressure is on now to renew the Assault Weapon Cosmetic Legislation Ban.

The GOA is reporting that Sen. Diane Feinstein is looking for a bill to which she will attach a renewal amendment, and that's being covered by Publicola, the Geek, and others.

Meanwhile the Brainless Brady Bunch are sending out recruitment emails - as usual - filled with fear-mongering lies. Reader Ben, a stealth member of "StoptheNRA.com" - a subsidiary of the Bradyacs - was kind enough to send me a copy of their latest list of lies. Let us fisk:

Dear Friend,

If you are going to get involved in renewing the Assault Weapons Ban ... the time is now. Congress is in session for only 30 more days before the ban expires later this summer. If the ban isn’t renewed, in most states, new assault weapons will be sold at gun shows without even a background check.

LIE #1 & #2. If it's new it will be sold by a FEDERALLY LICENSED FIREARMS DEALER - who, by the way, can sell new "post-ban" weapons right now. And all FEDERALLY LICENSED FIREARMS DEALERS MUST run a background check whether they sell the gun at a gunshow or at their shop. So there's two lies here. Regardless of whether the ban expires, you can buy a new "post-ban" weapon that lacks a few cosmetic features, but you'll get a background check anyway. Or you can buy a "pre-ban" rifle from an individual sans background check, also regardless of whether the ban expires. Only the price will change.

That means assault weapons could be sold to anyone: criminals, gang members, drug dealers, and terrorists.

And this is different under the existing conditions exactly... how? If the first argument is wrong, this one doesn't improve it.

Our advertising campaign starts next week and it is crucial that we maintain it throughout the summer. We need your support to renew the ban. We can’t do it alone. CLICK HERE TO MAKE A CONTRIBUTION.

Just a heads-up. And as for that contribution? I wouldn't piss on you if your head was on fire.

Over 75 percent of Americans agree that the Assault Weapons Ban must be renewed. Every police organization in the country, religious groups, educators and scores of other mainstream organizations agree.

If true, it might have something to do with the way you and groups like you LIE TO THEM. Ya THINK?

In fact, there is only one group in the country in favor of letting the ban end: The National Rifle Association. And so far President Bush is listening to the NRA over every other constituency.

We cannot let this ban expire. Here's what happens if the NRA wins:

And let's count the lies, shall we?

1. In most states, eighteen-year-olds will be able to walk into gun stores and buy new American-made AK-47s.

Which they can do RIGHT NOW.

2. In many states, it will be possible to bring concealed TEC-9 assault pistols, loaded with thirty rounds of ammunition, into bars, churches and sports arenas, and even public schools or universities.

Which can happen RIGHT NOW. The "ban" didn't make the guns go away, it just changed the way they look. All those thirty round magazines are still out there.

Fearmongering like this REALLY PISSES ME OFF!

3. In many states kids as young as 13 will be able to buy brand new American-made AK-47s at gun shows and through the classifieds.

Current FEDERAL LAW, 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1), (c)(1), prohibits firearms dealers from selling or delivering a shotgun or rifle, or ammunition for a shotgun or rifle, to any person the dealer knows or has reasonable cause to believe is under the age of 18. Dealers are prohibited from selling or delivering other firearms (e.g., handguns) or ammunition for those firearms to any person the dealer knows or has reasonable cause to believe is under the age of 21. STATE law controls transactions between private parties. As of right now if a 13 year-old has $1,000 laying around he can probably purchase just about anything he wants, if he knows the right people. The AWB DOESN'T ADDRESS THE QUESTION.

More fearmongering.

4. New assault weapons will be advertised over the internet.

Hmm... Bushmaster, DSA, DPMS, and there are a lot more. The product line will simply broaden again. But if you want to BUY one, you still have to go through a FEDERALLY LICENSED DEALER.

5. New rapid-fire ammunition magazines that allow guns to fire up to 100 rounds without reloading will be mass-produced and sold on a cash-and-carry basis to anyone, with no questions or background checks.

Oh Jeebus, I hope so! Standard capacity magazines are way overpriced these days.

Here's how you can help renew the ban:

1. contribute to our campaign (Bite me!)

2. sign our petition if you haven't yet (Ditto!)

3. forward this mail to everyone you know (Posted it on my website. Happy?)

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said in a past presidential race that he would find it hard to back any candidate who favored repealing the federal assault weapons ban. "Someone who now voted to roll back the assault-weapons ban would really be demonstrating that special interest politics mean more to them than life-or-death issues."

Good thing nobody has to "vote to roll back the assault-weapons ban" isn't it? All they have to do is just let the useless, irritating thing die a natural death.

More later.

Of that I have no doubt.

Thank you for your support.

No, thank YOU, you morons.

UPDATE 6/5: Publicola reports that Diane Fienstein has introduced her AWB renewal bill, S2498, in the Senate. At first blush it appears to be a simple 10-year extension of the existing cosmetics ban. Co-sponsors are the usual suspects:

Barbara Boxer (CA), Lincoln D. Chafee (RI), Hillary Clinton (NY), Michael DeWine (OH), Christopher Dodd (CT, Jim Jeffords (VT), Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Carl Levin (MI), John Reed (RI), Chuck Schumer (NY), and John Warner of Virginia.

Time to start writing and calling your congresscritters.

NOW.