Cogent Analyses

Cogent Analyses

In a comment to A Good Question, reader Rumpshot left a link to a piece by Doc Russia. I read it, then went to the top of the page and read the most current post.

I recommend them both to you most strongly. First We Won't Be Fooled Again, then The Dark Horse/The Black Stain.

Thanks for the pointer, Rumpshot. I try to read Doc Russia on a regular basis, but he's been posting so infrequently that I sometimes let it slip.

A Good Question

A Good Question

Reader DJ comments:

Way back in October of 1995, my wife and I attended a trade show in Paris. What is relevant about that trip is an event that happened on the way back.

We flew back on a TWA L-1011 from Paris to JFK in New York. We sat in seats 1 and 2 in row 53, in that small section of about ten rows all the way in the back. That little section of about 90 or so seats was filled with Russian immigrants. My nose told me emphatically that their trip, so far, had been a long one, and we had a long way yet to go.

Right across the aisle sat what appeared to be a middle aged couple traveling with a granddaughter about five years old. The were a stereotype right out of Life magazine. He appeared to have worked hard, his faced burned by the sun and frozen by the wind, and her cheeks a bright red as they peeked around the kerchief that was knotted beneath her chin. He was wearing a well worn tweed suit coat that might have fit about 25 pounds ago, and she was wearing a cotton dress over her dumpy frame that was more patches than original fabric. She carried the child while he carried a small bundle of boxes that were neatly stacked and carefully tied together with a ribbon.

What made it memorable was what happened as they took their seats in all the hubbub and confusion of immigrants who don't speak the language of air travel. She picked up the child and sidled into their seats, after which he slid into his seat next to them and on the other side of the aisle from me. They sat down, stowed their bundle, and got the child belted in.

Then, when all was ready for flight, he squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. Then he let it out and slowly, ever so slowly, slumped forward until his forehead was against the top of the seat back in front of him. Then I noticed his eyes were closed and his hands were shaking. He sat there, slumped over, his hands still shaking, for a full two minutes. Then he slowly straightened, leaned back, and I noticed tears in his eyes and hers.

What had they been through to get where they were?

I'd have given a month's pay to know his thoughts at that point, but I didn't intrude. As the flight progressed, it became apparent that they didn't speak English, only Russian.

That was thirteen years ago. I can't help but wonder what these people think of Obama. I have thought of them often as more and more of the reality of Obama has come to light.

Do you suppose they'll defend the freedom they came so far to find?

I think I know the answer Mrs. Ly Chho would give.

Well, Given His Recently Unearthed Coal Comments . . .

Well, Given His Recently Unearthed Coal Comments . . .

I'd say this cartoon is pretty much spot-on. (h/t Theo Spark)

Quote of the Day

On Professor Brian Anse Patrick's "Administrative Control Bias" of the media:

This time around I think it's more than just the usual MSM leftward bias. What the Brits may not have noticed is that the MSM actually has a vested self-interest in Obama winning this thing. After all, it won't be long before the MSM will join Wall Street and General Motors at the edge of the abyss and in desperate need of a bailout (and in the MSM's case, coupled with additional protection in the form of Fairness Doctrine v2.0). It's not hard to see which candidate, should he win on Tuesday, is most likely to go along with this. - "Joshua" in a comment to Presidential Media Bias as Seen from Across the Pond.

Hmm. . . Fits all the available facts.

Presidential Media Bias as Viewed from Across the Pond

In relation to yesterday's post, here's something in a similar vein from the UK's Guardian:

Mad about The One
The US media have been captivated by Obama, at the expense of their curiosity and scepticism

Harold Evans, Saturday, Nov. 1, 2008

It's fitting that the cynicism "vote early and vote often" is commonly attributed to Chicago's Democratic boss, mayor Richard Daley, who famously voted the graveyards in 1960 to help put John Kennedy in the White House. In this 2008 race, it's the American media that have voted very early and often. They long ago elected the star graduate of Chicago's Democratic machine, Barack Obama.

I am not talking of editorials in newspapers, though Obama has the preponderance of the endorsements over John McCain. Obama certainly deserves the credit for recruiting impressive advisers and running a more efficient campaign machine than any one in the US's political history.

What's troubling to anyone old-fashioned enough to care about standards in journalism is the news coverage in mainstream media. Forget the old notions of objectivity, fairness, thoroughness, and so on. The nastiest rumours on both sides haven't been published, but the coverage has been slavishly on the side of "the one".

It has not just been anti-Republican. It goes without saying that after eight years of George Bush's macho blunders, the disenchantment of even the conservative outlets was bound to show. Researchers at the Project for Excellence in Journalism report that in the six weeks since the Republican convention, McCain, once the darling of the media, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. Meanwhile, Obama got twice as many positive stories as McCain. The website Politico has also acknowledged that it had loaded the dice against McCain: 100 stories were more favourable to Obama than McCain; 69 were the opposite.

But the press bias towards Obama doesn't represent a simple revulsion for the Republican party. It was on display in the Democratic primaries with the persecution of Hillary Clinton. Worst of all, in the primaries, the press let the Obama campaign get away with continuous insinuations below the radar that the Clintons were race-baiters. Instead of exposing that absurd defamation for what it was - a nasty smear - the media sedulously propagated it.

Clinton made the historically correct and uncontroversial remark that civil rights legislation came about from a fusion of the dreams of Dr Martin Luther King and the legislative follow-through by President Lyndon Johnson. The New York Times misrepresented that as a disparagement of King, twisting her remarks to imply that "a black man needed the help of a white man to effect change". This was one of a number of manipulations on race by the Obama campaign, amply documented by the leading Democratic historian, Princeton's Sean Wilentz. Clinton came close to tears in a coffee shop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which many thought helped her to win an upset victory there. MSNBC television gave a platform to the Chicago congressmen, Jesse Jackson Jr, where he questioned her tears and claimed that she'd not shed any tears for the black victims of Katrina, and that she'd pay for that in the South Carolina primary, where 45% of the electorate would be African-Americans.

In fact, MSNBC ran a non-stop campaign for Obama propelled by the misogyny of its anchors, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and David Shuster. Chelsea Clinton joining Clinton's campaign prompted Shuster to report she was "pimping" for her mother.

Obamania has not been deflated one bit by the non-stop talkers on rightwing radio. They offer vituperation in place of enlightenment; paranoia in place of policies, and as such have little influence with the crucial independents.

On the web, the rightwing Drudge Report highlights anything that favours McCain, the Huffington Post does the same for Obama, and the more independent Slate has said only one of its staff intends to vote for McCain, the other 55 for Obama. Fox News has the vehement Sean Hannity paired with the mildly liberal Alan Colmes, (mildly liberal?) not a fair match, but it has been more willing to investigate than CNN. In the Democratic primaries, there was a pattern on CNN where the short news videos of Clinton rarely let you hear what she was saying, but the short news videos of Obama let his words come through. I mentioned this to a CNN editor who said, "Oh, that's our young video editors, they just find Obama more exciting."

The young and affluent liberals have been captivated by Obama's charisma, the unstated notion that electing a black man will be absolution for the years of discrimination and prejudice, and the expectation that Obama's undoubted appeal to the outside world will repair America's image. All understandable, but these emotions have been allowed to swamp the commonplace imperatives of journalism: curiosity and scepticism.

All the mainstream national outlets were extraordinarily slow to check Obama's background. And until it became inescapable because of a video rant, they wouldn't investigate the Reverend Jeremiah Wright connection for fear of being accused of racism. They wouldn't explore Obama's dealing with the corrupt, now convicted, Chicago businessman Tony Rezko. They haven't investigated Obama's pledge to get rid of the secret ballot in trade union affairs. After years of inveighing against "money in politics", they've tolerated his breach of the pledge to restrict himself to public financing as McCain has done (to his cost). Now the LA Times refuses to release a possibly compromising video, which shows Obama praising Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi at a 2003 banquet, saying its promises to its source prevent it from doing so.

The British press is notorious for political distortions, which more or less balance out. But the American press likes to think of itself as more superior and detached than it actually is. In 2000, the mainstream media did a great deal to elect George Bush by portraying Al Gore as a boastful liar.

Let's hope the consequences of electing "the one" will be as wondrous as the press has led the voters to believe.

Let's rather hope that "the one's" loss will be seen (among other things) as repudiation of the press's manipulation.

I received the link to this piece from journalism professor Edward Wasserman, with whom I had a short exchange back in 2004, after I sent him an email about the Malone ABC piece. Hopefully in the not-too-distant future, I'll have a post up concerning a new exchange.

Gun Sales

Gun Sales

Tam points to a story on "Gun Sales Thriving in Uncertain Times" in the WaPo with this comment:

Say what you will about Barry...
...but the man's an even better gun salesman than Hils.

In the last 30 days (actually less) I've purchased a T/C Encore frame, ordered an assembled Bushmaster AR-15 lower (less buttstock), and going in the mail today is an order for a custom M14 to Ted Brown.

I'm also buying other stuff - reloading supplies, etc. (I purchased 11 20-round magazines for the M14 already, even though I won't have the rifle for months.) One thing I've noticed when I go into Sportsman's Warehouse or Murphy's guns (especially Murphy's) is that the gun counter is crowded. Murphy's parking lot just isn't big enough and hasn't been for a while. So the WaPo's observations are accurate even here in flyover country. Perhaps especially here in flyover country.

Van der Leun finds a Good One

Van der Leun finds a Good One


By the same artist:


And by all means, do peruse the site. You'll like this one, for example.

Philosophy, Revolution, and the Restoration of the Constitution

(*sigh*)

Vanderboegh is at it again.

Oldsmoblogger is convinced that Mike Vanderboegh is the Thomas Paine of modern times. I'm not so sure.

He's not shy, though.

The latest excrement-storm stems from an op-ed penned by Jeff Knox, or "Knox the Younger" as characterized by Mr. Vanderboegh. That op-ed, entitled "Mutual Assured Destruction" spells out the situation as Knox the Younger sees it. I'll excerpt, but you really should read the whole thing:

Don’t expect average Americans to rise up in revolution because the government is playing fast and loose with the Bill of Rights or because taxes get too high. That's not the way modern Americans think, nor is it the way the world works today. Armed revolt in America would not lead to a renaissance of Jeffersonian liberalism; it would lead to the destruction of our nation and the guarantee that whatever replaced it would be worse than what it replaced.

Like nuclear deterrence, it is the threat that saves the world, not the execution.

--

While this is all accurate and works well on paper, just like Marxism and Amway networks, the whole thing falls apart in practice because people never do what you want them to do or what they ought to do – even when doing so is clearly in their own best interests. During the Revolutionary war, a full 40 to 45% of Americans actively supported the revolt. Today, less than 6% of gunowners are even minimally active in political activism. Gunowners turn out for elections at about the same rate as the non-gun owning public.

If gunowners and supporters of liberty can't even agree on a presidential candidate, what makes any of them think that they will be able to agree on a revolution? The threat of armed revolt must be maintained, but like the mutual assured destruction of nuclear war, its implementation must be avoided at all costs. If we have the numbers and the commitment to win a revolution then we should easily be able to win an election.

Mr. Vanderboegh of course disagrees. His piece is printed at Western Rifle Shooters Association and is entitled "An Open Letter to Jeff Knox: Destruction? Yes. Mutually Assured? No!" Again, read the whole thing (I'll be saying a lot of that), but here's some pertinent excerpts:

"Armed revolt" will come about because the leviathan will one day pick on the wrong guy, and a large number of them will be killed by this one guy. They will be shocked, they will be horrified and they will want blood. This individual case of resistance will cause a violent reaction on their part, lead to more onerous laws, confiscation, etc., which in turn will lead to even more incidents, and again, and again, until you get your "Red Dawn" or the ATF equivalent of it. As to whether it would lead to the destruction of our nation or the restoration of our republic is a matter of military argument. Don't wave your white flag just yet - you might be embarrassed.

--

(Y)ou're saying we have the ability but not the will. If we begin shooting, won't we run out of targets before they will? Oh, I forgot, you and yours aren't going to come to the party, so sad. One other thing. We're not talking about nuclear weapons, Jeff, we're talking about aimed rifle shots. Nothing indiscriminate about that. Which ought to make the gun-grabbers even more queasy, unless of course they're falsely reassured by your cowardly pap. One wonders indeed which audience you are writing this for.

--

We don't even need 6%. All we need is 3% -- less than that really -- to provoke the response that forces you, Knox the Younger, and your ilk to submit, or fight.

--

You fool. You don't have to agree with us. In fact, we're counting on your type folding at the first shock. People don't AGREE on revolution, they are FORCED into it by events. And there are enough of my kind, the three percent, to create the events. Have you learned nothing from history? It is made by determined minorities. We may be a minority but we are determined. If you want to hang onto ANY of your guns or other liberties, you will HAVE to fight. We will make sure of that.

It goes on like that.

Knox responded in another piece entitled "Philosophical Wars." (Yes, read the whole thing.) Excerpt:

It is mind boggling to me that intelligent people could be so short sighted and misguided as to think that killing people and blowing things up is somehow going to make things better for our grandchildren. They seem to think that because only about 5% of the populace supported the idea of seceding from the English Empire back in 1776, that their "magic number" is 3% and they think they have that because some survey suggested that 3% of the population thinks violence against the government is justified or could be justified today. What they fail to take into account is the "bluster factor" of people who will agree with such a statement, but who don't really mean it, and the radical other side - the people who support the terrorist tactics of the Animal Liberation Front and radical Leftists like Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.

What I want to know is, where are the Washingtons, Jeffersons, Adamses and Hancocks? Who do these Bozos think is going to lead the new America out of the ashes and back to its Constitutional glory, and why arent these giants running for public office and leading the political revolution? What do they think China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea are going to be doing while their merry little band of terrorists is busy crippling our nation and trying to foment rebellion? What exactly do they expect the "end" of their rebellion to look like? How are our children and grandchildren going to be better off?

Revolution is like cannibalism; it can be justified, but only when there is absolutely no other choice for survival.

And, of course, Vanderboegh rebutted, in a piece he titled "Reply to Knox the Younger." (You know the drill by now.)

The first sentence of his counterpoint deliberately mischaracterizes the reality we face. I say deliberately because he is otherwise a reasonably intelligent chip off the old Knox. (And I daresay that if his daddy ain't rolling over in his grave, he is at least restive at his son's latest foray.)

--

The predicate for armed conflict in this country will be made not by us, but by our would-be tyrants, who will pass more laws stealing our traditional liberties and seizing our property. It will be our enemies who, having read Knox's soothing missive, 'Let's get real, no one's going to resist the Leviathan,' will take it as evidence -- a professional opinion from 'one of them' -- that they can plunder us and, if necessary, kill us, without risk of retaliatory violence.

--

Knox spends much of his rebuttal belittling the number who he thinks would resist. Again, he offers no statistics, merely gratuitous opinions which may be as easily refuted.

Who indeed cares what the real number would be? It would still be enough.

He should recall how many cops tried to find the DC snipers - two mokes who were not very bright, had no support network, and a one-trick pony MO. They still managed to freeze the DC area for what, how many weeks? More then a month wasn't it? Two morons -- with the entire resources of the federal government and the local police looking for them, it was just two morons.

But why would the Leviathan go down this path in the first place?

BECAUSE THE JEFF KNOX'S OF THIS COUNTRY HAVE ALREADY TOLD THEM THEY CAN, THAT NO ONE WILL RESIST, THAT NO ONE SHOULD RESIST.

It is at this next excerpt that I will start commenting:

Knox asks what our traditional enemies will be doing when the three percent (who he calls "terrorists") are "busy crippling our nation and trying to foment rebellion?"

I reject the notion that it will be we who will cripple our nation and foment rebellion. He has us confused with the Leviathan. This decision is entirely up to our would-be oppressors. Of course our enemies will take advantage of such a situation. All the more reason why the Leviathan should not push us into this corner.

Vanderboegh may reject the notion of placing the blame, but he cannot reject the reality of the fact that he just described the crippling of our nation in the face of our foes.

Next excerpt:

Then Knox asks, "What exactly do they expect the 'end' of their rebellion to look like?"

Gee, I don't know. Maybe the country I grew up in without the stain of segregation and racial discrimination?

Once they start this dance, if they want to get out of it with their lives, the Leviathan will have to dial back to a time when they didn't control so much of our lives. It's either that or they lose their lives. Which way do you think they'll vote when they understand that?

Knox next criticizes us for advocating "revolution", when it is really Restoration that we are seeking. We want the constitutional republic of the Founders back. We want it restored.

It is the collectivists who have infested and infected every corner of our government with the statism and corruption of their nanny regime.

They are the revolutionists.

They are the cannibals.

And now it's my turn.

One quote I like very much is this one by Ambrose Bierce:

Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.

The number of "successful" revolutions - ones that accomplished their stated intents and actually brought liberty and freedom to the oppressed can be counted on one hand with fingers left over.

Here's another quote, this time by Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal.

Jeff Knox described that "cult of material well-being" in a line from his first piece:

The fact is that only those who have nothing to lose (and nothing to live for) are willing to give up everything – including their lives – in a symbolic gesture of defiance. The rest of us, those with families – kids, grand-kids, vulnerable parents – and homes, jobs, and lives, are not interested in ditching the house, refrigerator, and HD-TV in exchange for a prison cell or a mountain cave.

That's part of it, but it's the symptom, not the disease.

Vanderboegh is convinced that his 3% can drag - perhaps kicking and screaming, but drag - a significant (and, more importanty, sufficient) portion of the population into the fray in support of the 3%.

I'm not so certain. In fact, I'm severely doubtful.

Here's why.

It all goes back to philosophy. Billy Beck has pulled his hair out over the topic:

(Y)ou people are talking about blowing the place up, whether you know it or not. That's the only way it can go, as things are now, because there is no philosophy at the bottom of what you're talking about.

Neither Knox nor Vanderboegh addresses the subject directly.

We're in an ideological war, once described thus:

The heart of the conflict is between those to whom personal liberty is important, and those to whom liberty is not only inconsequential, but to whom personal liberty is a deadly threat.

Vanderboegh dismisses Knox's objections with respect to voting:

Knox also condemns us us for talking "revolution" but not "actively and diligently working hard every day to elect quality people to office at every level and to educate the elected officials already in office about their core responsibilities."

What does he think we've been doing these past twenty years of more? Does he think we just jumped into this thing and started threatening people?

I was doing political work on behalf of the Second Amendment when Jeff Knox hadn't sprouted short and curlies. The real question is how long do we continue to labor in those fields when the collectivists keep dumping Agent Orange on our work?

We have sacrificed in the political arena, we have fought and spent and argued ourselves half to death with the struggle.

And yet - here we stand today on the precipice.

And why? Because one philosophy has predominated in this country over the last 100 years. Vanderboegh also wrote:

The Constitution is a piece of paper if its spirit does not live in the hearts of men. If it is despised, disregarded and prostituted against the Founder's intent, then it is so much toilet paper.

Indeed. And that's very much what it has become - because the philosophy of the Founders has been replaced.

And revolution won't restore it.

I hate to say it, but I think Ambrose Bierce was right. And Billy Beck's prediction of "The Endarkenment" is pretty much the way it's going to go.

Reader Mastiff left a comment here not too long back:

To win this fight, we need to reform the institutional structure of government--create structural incentives for specific actors in government to want to defend our freedom. Otherwise, in a long-running fight between a government that wants to expand its own power and a populace that doesn't know what it wants, the government will win.

Gramsci works both ways. If in the space of a hundred years, an ideology alien to our traditional mode of politics was able to dominate our intellectual class, there is nothing stopping that process from working in reverse. IF people settle in for the long haul and start laying the groundwork.

Unfortunately, the Publick Edumacation Sistim stands athwart any effort to reverse Gramsci.

And the Endarkenment Approacheth, in part because - 3% or not - there's a bunch of people who will not go gently into that good night, and have the means and the will to make it painful. Whatever results will not be "the country I grew up in without the stain of segregation and racial discrimination."

UPDATE: David Codrea commented on the kerfuffle first.

UPDATE: William comments.

UPDATE: Oldsmoblogger comes out of hiatus and comments as well.

But, but, the Evil KKKorporate Media is RIGHT WING!

(h/t to Phelps.)

First there was CBS's Bernie Goldberg. Then Dr. Bob Arnot of NBC. Now ABC's Michael Malone:

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.

Read the whole thing.

Of course the commenters are accusing Malone of being a Republican.

Still, the one thing I noted in Malone's piece was the absence of any mention of the same bias shown by the media in 2004. Oh, not to the same degree, certainly, but there was definitely a pro-Kerry media bias. In fact, I had a short exchange with Journalism Professor Ed Wasserman of Washington and Lee University about it that September. Apparently 2004 was a practice-run for 2008.

And You Can Walk on Water, Too!

If you're not too lazy to get off the couch. Bob Parks has found perhaps the definitive example of the stereotypical Obama supporter:

I never thought this day would ever happen. I won't have to worry 'bout puttin' gas in my car. I won't have to worry 'bout payin' my mortgage.

Yeah, I never thought this day would happen either. Guess I'll be puttin' gas in your car and payin' your mortgage.

Oh, wait . . . I don't make $250k a year. Or is it $150k. Or $100k.

(Edited to correct transcript error.)

UPDATE:  The original JS-Kit/Echo comment thread for this post is available here, thanks to the work of reader John Hardin.

Noonan's Response

Peggy Noonan has her own web page, unsurprisingly enough, and several days ago I made use of her contact page to ask her a question. It says right on the contact page:

(O)wing to the amount of spam I have received in the past, messages are not forwarded to me until they have been reviewed. That generally results in a delay of a day or two before I see the message.

I imagine she's received a flood of mail since she endorsed Obama, so I'm not all that surprised that my little missive has apparently not reached her notice.

I didn't save it, but I remember the gist of it. It was, after all, a variation of the one I sent to Rev. Donald Sensing. In Ms. Noonan's case, the piece she wrote was Oct. 27^th, 2005's A Separate Peace, which inspired my essay, Tough History Coming. I quoted from her column:

Do people fear the wheels are coming off the trolley? Is this fear widespread? A few weeks ago I was reading Christopher Lawford's lovely, candid and affectionate remembrance of growing up in a particular time and place with a particular family, the Kennedys, circa roughly 1950-2000. It's called "Symptoms of Withdrawal." At the end he quotes his Uncle Teddy. Christopher, Ted Kennedy and a few family members had gathered one night and were having a drink in Mr. Lawford's mother's apartment in Manhattan. Teddy was expansive. If he hadn't gone into politics he would have been an opera singer, he told them, and visited small Italian villages and had pasta every day for lunch. "Singing at la Scala in front of three thousand people throwing flowers at you. Then going out for dinner and having more pasta." Everyone was laughing. Then, writes Mr. Lawford, Teddy "took a long, slow gulp of his vodka and tonic, thought for a moment, and changed tack. 'I'm glad I'm not going to be around when you guys are my age.' I asked him why, and he said, 'Because when you guys are my age, the whole thing is going to fall apart.' "

Mr. Lawford continued, "The statement hung there, suspended in the realm of 'maybe we shouldn't go there.' Nobody wanted to touch it. After a few moments of heavy silence, my uncle moved on."

Lawford thought his uncle might be referring to their family--that it might "fall apart." But reading, one gets the strong impression Teddy Kennedy was not talking about his family but about . . . the whole ball of wax, the impossible nature of everything, the realities so daunting it seems the very system is off the tracks.

And--forgive me--I thought: If even Teddy knows . . .

I asked her, as I asked Rev. Sensing, if the intervening years had altered her opinion, and if so in what way.

But here's an equally pertinent excerpt, the concluding paragraphs:

If I am right that trolley thoughts are out there, and even prevalent, how are people dealing with it on a daily basis?

I think those who haven't noticed we're living in a troubling time continue to operate each day with classic and constitutional American optimism intact. I think some of those who have a sense we're in trouble are going through the motions, dealing with their own daily challenges.

And some--well, I will mention and end with America's elites. Our recent debate about elites has had to do with whether opposition to Harriet Miers is elitist, but I don't think that's our elites' problem.

This is. Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.

I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours."

You're a lobbyist or a senator or a cabinet chief, you're an editor at a paper or a green-room schmoozer, you're a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, and you're making your life a little fortress. That's what I think a lot of the elites are up to.

Not all of course. There are a lot of people--I know them and so do you--trying to do work that helps, that will turn it around, that can make it better, that can save lives. They're trying to keep the boat afloat. Or, I should say, get the trolley back on the tracks.

That's what I think is going on with our elites. There are two groups. One has made a separate peace, and one is trying to keep the boat afloat. I suspect those in the latter group privately, in a place so private they don't even express it to themselves, wonder if they'll go down with the ship. Or into bad territory with the trolley.

I believe I have my answer. I think Ms. Noonan's opinion hasn't changed. She's just found a group of elites she fervently hopes might possibly save the ship, put the trolley back on the tracks, ignoring the fact that the elites never do the actual work. It's always left to Joe Six Pack. (Or Joe the Plumber.)

There's a scene from Frank Herbert's classic SF novel, Dune of a dinner party on the desert planet Arrakis where some rather delicate but vicious political maneuvering is going on. During the dinner conversation, Paul Atreides, the young hero of the novel (not at that point, though - that comes later) takes a political jab at one of the dinner guests himself:

"Once, on Caladan, I saw the body of a drowned fisherman recovered. He --"

"Drowned?" It was the stillsuit manufacturer's daughter.

Paul hesitated, then: "Yes. Immersed in water until dead. Drowned."

"What an interesting way to die," she murmered.

Paul's smile became brittle. He returned his attention to the banker. "The interesting thing about this man was the wounds on his shoulders -- made by another fisherman's claw-boots. The fisherman was one of several in a boat -- a craft for traveling on water -- that foundered . . . sank beneath the water. Another fisherman helping recover the body said he'd seen marks like this man's wounds several times. They meant another fisherman tried to stand on this poor fellow's shoulders in the attempt to reach the surface -- to reach air."

"Why is this interesting?" the banker asked.

"Because of an observation made by my father at the time. He said the drowning man who climbs on your shoulders to save himself is understandable -- except when you see it happen in the drawing room." Paul hesitated just long enough for the banker to see the point coming, then: "And, I should add, except when you see it at the dinner table."

And, I would add, except when you see it in political punditry.

Thomas Sowell Channels Robert Heinlein

From the fifth and final segment of the Uncommon Knowledge interview comes this snippet:

Thomas Sowell: I think before so many people went to colleges and universities, common sense was probably much more widespread.

Peter Robinson: Why is that? Why is that? Why is that? We keep coming back to higher education as a kind of pollutant in the American political system. That's been a theme of our conversation. WHY? What's going on?

Sowell: That's, that's a tough one. That's my next book, which is about intellectuals.

Robinson: Oh really?

Sowell: Yes. Yes. But . . .

Robinson: What have you found, what conclusions have you reached so far?

Sowell: That all the incentives are for people who are intellectuals, in the sense in which I would define the term, to venture beyond what they are competent to do. That is, we know that uh, who's the man at MIT, the linguist? Noam Chomsky.

Robinson: Noam Chomsky.

Sowell: We know the man is a landmark figure in the study of linguistics,

Robinson: Yes.

Sowell: But we would never have heard of him if he stuck to linguistics.

Robinson: True enough.

Sowell: We know that our wonderful colleague Mr. Ehrlich . . .

Robinson: Paul Ehrlich here at Stanford.

Sowell: . . . has a reputation in entymology, but we would never have heard of him if he had stuck to entymology. And so all the incentives are to go beyond what you are competent to deal with, and to just assume that because you are wonderful at this, that this makes you sort of a general philosopher-king.

Robert Anson Heinlein dubbed this "The Expert Syndrome," stated thusly:

Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so.

The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.

Quote of the Day - Monster

Quote of the Day - Monster

"You ever heard of Richard Matheson? He wrote some pretty good science fiction back in the day, lots of Twilight Zone Episodes and a whole host of short stories back in the 50's and 60's. He's most remembered for one short story thats been made into a movie about a half a dozen times. It's called "I AM LEGEND". Its the story of the last man on earth after a plague wipes out most of the population. What parts of the population the plague doesn't wipe out, becomes transformed into what can best be described as 'vampires'. Most people know that narrative of the story, but most every filmed version and most retelling of the story forget is the main point of the story. The point is this; When you live on a planet where humans are normal and vampires are the monsters, thats something we understand. What Matheson's story forces the reader to come to grips with is the opposite, that when you live on a world where the vampires are the normal, then you, as the last remaining human, have become the monster.

"This is what we conservatives and libertarians have become. With the plague of 'fairness' now loose in the ecosystem of public ideas and discourse, we have become the monster. They are working to destroy our nest (the markets) and after that is destroyed, they will come for us." - Varifrank, Monster.

READ. THE. WHOLE. THING.

I've been holding this one for Halloween.

Even More

From the same portion of the Uncommon Knowledge interview of Thomas Sowell:

Peter Robinson: Back to Barack Obama. You mentioned the, uh . . . I think you would call it a naive view of world affairs. That he places a great deal of faith in rhetoric, the ability of rhetoric to solve global problems. This reminds you of the 1930's, it reminds you of Neville Chamberlain. I read you a quotation, the notion of "spreading the wealth around" and again you said that's perfectly pure Socialist doctrine from the 1930's. Is it . . . Would you argue that this man is the most leftwing, or the uh, purest embrace of the Unconstrained Vision that we've seen in American politics since . . . since when? Since the New Deal?

Thomas Sowell: Since there's been an American politics.

Robinson: Really?

Sowell: Yes. Yes, I mean, even FDR you know pulled back on some things. But Obama really, he does have the Unconstrained Vision which is really an elitist vision that says "I know what is the best to be done, and I will do it." When he says "I will change the world" you realize this is a man who's actually accomplished nothing other than advancing his career through rhetoric. And it reminds me of a sophomore in college, you know, who thinks that he can run the world, because he's never had to run anything. And you can believe that only until you have personal responsibility for consequences, and that's when it gives you a little bit of humility.

Robinson: Why don't the American people see through that? Isn't that the fundamental bet that the Founders made, that the, that voters would see through, ultimately they'd see through nonsense?

Sowell: Yes, but that was before nonsense became a large part of the curriculum of our educational institutions.

Again, absolutely. Absolutely.

Now, read this.

Too Good a Quote to Leave Until Tomorrow

Too Good a Quote to Leave Until Tomorrow

Aside from the fact that I have a QotD for tomorrow that I've been sitting on for a while.

Thomas Sowell from his Uncommon Knowledge interview with Peter Robinson, Part 4 of 5

When people ask me why am I going to vote for McCain rather than Obama it's because I prefer disaster to catastrophe.

To further quote Mr. Sowell: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

You've Got to be Kidding Me

You've Got to be Kidding Me

I got a link from the USA Today website. No, really.

I don't figure it will last, so I took a picture:


(Click to embiggen)
USA Today has a "Charlton Heston" page? And it grabs posts from gun blogs?

Are they that desperate? What, they couldn't find out what color thong Sarah Palin is wearing today?

As a Follow-On . . .

As a Follow-On . . .

. . . to We Are SO Screwed, I give you this, found at Theo Spark's:


Yup. That about says it.

Well, Thank You!

Ambulance Driver has awarded me this:


In the spirit of the thing, here's the source of the award and the rules:

* Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.

* Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.

* Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award.

* Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we'll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!

* Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

So I've done Item 2, Item 3, and Item 5. I will fulfill item four shortly, but here's Item 1 (after I perused the list of previous recipients among which were several I'd have chosen for my own.

In no particular order:

Crystal of Boobs, Injuries, and Dr. Pepper.

Mark Alger and Dolly of Baby Troll Blog

Rachel Lucas

LawDog of The LawDog Files

And last, but definitely not least, Tam of View from the Porch

If I didn't pick you, please understand - I could only choose five. You have looked at my blogroll, right? How do you pick only five out of all of those?

Anyway, thanks AD! I appreciate the nod.

I Will Not License, I Will Not Register. Period.

This is what licensing and registration are for:

Gun purchase glitch raises questions

Del.'s small-arms advocates shocked over DSP recordkeeping

Delaware State Police stopped Alvina Vansickle from purchasing a .22-caliber pistol for self-defense because she was too old and a woman, said Superintendent Col. Thomas MacLeish.

The outrage that followed led to the revelation that Delaware State Police had been keeping lists of gun buyers for years; state law requires them to destroy these records after 60 days.

Without so much as a traffic ticket, the 81-year-old Lewes resident should have sailed through the mandatory state police background check when she tried to buy a Taurus revolver from Charlie Steele's Lewes gun shop last August.

Problems started after Steele made the required phone call to state police for approval of the firearms transaction.

An employee in the state police Firearms Transaction Approval Program noticed Vansickle's age and gender, and brought the sale to an immediate halt.

Vansickle's application was then routed to Sgt. Benjamin Nefosky, who heads the firearms approval unit.

According to MacLeish, the transaction was halted over concerns "based upon age and gender."

"To be very honest with you, we have a legal obligation under the law to do approvals," MacLeish said. "We also have an obligation to make sure we're safe, and paying due diligence."

MacLeish said the initial call taker "was concerned this individual never purchased a weapon before. Age and gender caused her to take caution."

As to whether age and gender are included in the state statute as legitimate reasons to reject a firearms purchase, MacLeish stated, "No, they are not."

"I believe there was caution taken on behalf of the call taker," he said. "It was done without malice."

Vansickle's purchase was eventually approved -- 10 days after the initial application -- after she and the dealer were interviewed by police about the purchase. A normal delay is three days.

The sale eventually went through.
Government tracking feared

Word of the delay rebounded around Delaware's small-firearms community, eventually making its way to Dave Lawson, a retired state police lieutenant and firearms instructor. Lawson spoke to his former colleague Nefosky about Vansickle's dilemma, Lawson said.

Lawson said what Nefosky told him revealed there was a much larger problem in the firearms approval unit than keeping a small-caliber revolver out of the hands of an 81-year-old woman.

Lawson said Nefosky told him he searched seven years of firearms transaction records to see if Vansickle had ever bought a gun before.

Some gun owners fear any government agency that tracks gun purchases or keeps lists of who has them. They worry these lists could someday aid in weapons confiscation, fall into the wrong hands and serve as a road map for burglars and thieves, or result in increased scrutiny by law enforcement.

"I was totally drop-jawed," Lawson said. "I asked him how far back the records went. He didn't know. He didn't care. He felt she was possibly a threat because of her age, a threat to herself or her family. That's what the implication was. He was concerned that never having bought a gun before, why would she want one now, at 81?"

Lawson served in the State Bureau of Identification as a lieutenant, which includes the firearms approval section and other specialty units. He knew the law. Nefosky's concern about Vansickle's age and sex, he said, should never have come into play.

Lawson also knew the gun records should have been destroyed.

MacLeish would not allow Nefosky to be interviewed.

In an interview with The News Journal, MacLeish claimed all paper firearms records are destroyed every 60 days.

The electronic records, however, are another story.

"Our review of our electronic records indicated we had a glitch in the system, back to August 2005," he said. "They have since been purged."

The electronic records never posed a threat, MacLeish said.

"The info was in an electronic file that no one did anything with," MacLeish said. "We've since purged that file in its entirety.

Enter the National Rifle Association.
Civil rights of gun buyer at risk

John Thompson is president of the Delaware State Sportsmen's Association, the local affiliate of the NRA.

Several people told him of Nefosky's delay, and expressed their outrage about the list of gun owners maintained by the Delaware State Police.

Thompson, an attorney, had worked with state lawmakers in the early 1990s to craft the state's background-check law.

Legally, he said, Vansickle's reasons for wanting a firearm are moot, and he knew the lists were a problem.

"This suggests two violations: one is denial without cause, and the other is keeping records of gun purchases," Thompson said. "Under statute, the Delaware State Police are required to destroy any purchase records that involve approvals. Now they're maintaining lists of gun owners, which we think is inappropriate. We did not create this system to allow this to happen."

Vansickle's civil rights were violated, he said.

"There is nothing in the Second Amendment or the Delaware Constitution that says the right to own firearms is limited to people of a certain age," Thompson said. "We don't have any problem with age restrictions regarding children, but we don't think someone ought to arbitrarily decide people are too old to own guns."

Retired Dover police captain John Sigler is president of the National Rifle Association, a position once held by legendary actor Charlton Heston.

"I was literally shocked that such an event would occur in the state of Delaware," he said. "I am very, very troubled that an individual -- based on her age -- was denied the ability to defend herself."

Both Sigler and Thompson pointed to the recent Supreme Court decision District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the court found that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess firearms for personal use, such as self-defense.

While Sigler expressed "the highest respect" for the Delaware State Police and MacLeish, he found it intolerable that the agency "has been keeping records they're not supposed to have, for at least seven years."

"That means that for seven years that office has been violating Delaware state law and thumbing their nose at the state Legislature," he said. "I certainly hope it's not true, but it appears that it is."

Sigler brought the goings-on in his home state to the attention of Bob Dowlut, NRA general counsel.

In a letter to MacLeish sent Aug. 28, Dowlut and the NRA requested two separate investigations: one to focus on Nefosky's denial, "and all other transactions of similar scope and nature." According to the letter, the second investigation should focus on who's responsible for keeping lists of gun owners in the state.

"NRA respectfully requests to be notified about all actions taken to correct this situation," Dowlut wrote. "At this time, there are a number of people urging the filing of a lawsuit to remedy this matter, however, taking of corrective steps immediately would be preferable to litigation for all concerned."

MacLeish said two internal investigations "have been initiated by myself, by the division."

Dowlut copied his letter to Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, who declined to comment for this story.
Elderly woman's husband speaks out

Vansickle's husband, who has legally purchased several weapons over the past several years, spoke on her behalf about the delay.

"Apparently, they thought she might shoot herself with it," said J.R. Vansickle, 83. "She has a clean record. There was no reason to turn her down. I lost both legs through diabetes. I'm in a wheelchair. We're an elderly couple. She wanted the gun for self-defense in our home."

The state police firearms unit was established as a result of the Brady Law, which took effect in 1994.

Nefosky supervises four criminal-history employees, who take calls from gun dealers around the state, and approve or deny the purchases based on the buyer's criminal history.

According to state police, during 2006 and 2007, the unit processed 21,304 transactions, which have resulted in 711 denials.

Dowlet told the newspaper that for police departments, the types of problems the Vansickle case exposed are extremely rare.

"Most police departments, when they put someone in charge of a unit like that, they need to be completely familiar with the law," he said. "There's an anomaly here, someone in the Delaware State police who wasn't following the law. Most police departments -- especially in our litigious society -- if that's what the statute says, that's how they enforce it."

"Glitch" my aching sphincter. That was a deliberate decision made by a nanny-state employee - a "civil servant." And as Heinlein once observed, "Civil Servant" is semantically equal to "Civil Master." This is a perfect example of that fact.

Firehand has said about everything that I wanted to concerning the incident (as it's been making the rounds of the gunblogs for a couple of days now) except this: Yes, I know that I have "licensed" myself by getting a CCW. Yes, I know that filling out a 4473 when I buy a firearm "registers" me and records the gun. But given the current state of things, it is not possible for the State to know exactly what or how many guns I own - just that I probably own several.

However, if an official licensing and registration scheme is implemented, I will not comply. As noted by Charles T. Morgan, at the time Director of the Washington office of the ACLU said in Senate testimony in 1975 when asked about gun registration:

What the administration's and Congressman McClory's bills . . . call for is a whole new set of Federal records. . . .

I have not one doubt, even if I am in agreement with the National Rifle Association, that that kind of a record-keeping procedure is the first step to eventual confiscation under one administration or another.

I am in complete agreement. That is, realistically, the only purpose of a registry. Now the gun owners of Delaware, some of them anyway, are aware that a defacto registry exists. Will any heads roll over this?

'Tain't likely, McGee.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

I have never in my life been so ready for an election season to be over and done with. I can hardly wait for the Messiah to be sworn in so unicorns will start farting rainbows on the front lawn of my gold house and I can run them over with my rocket car on the way to my governmentally-guaranteed middle class job. - Who else? Tam, of course!