Category: Painful Truths

Sometimes it is interesting to get a perspective from ‘across the pond’- in this case, Gates of Vienna:

“Gun Control” is nothing new. In fact, it’s been around for much longer than guns have existed. It’s been a universal phenomenon amongst human societies. And it’s never been about public safety. It has been, and always will be, an act of caste stratification and population control.

In ancient Feudal societies all around the world, notably China and Japan and many parts of Europe and the Middle-East, peasants and plebeians were prohibited from owning weapons. When the ruling aristocrats and feudal land-owners required a military force, their trusted retainers would issue arms to conscripted peasant-levies, and send them into battle as vanguards of the main force. After battle finished and the troops had looted the field, the retainers would retrieve these weapons and send the serfs back to work. Why were the commoners prohibited from possession of weapons?

Simple.

To prevent uprisings.

Folks over here should keep this in mind when they hear the mindless cries to ‘outlaw those awful guns’. They’re the only thing that truly keeps you free.

Doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. Via Ace of Spades:

Some random clicking led me to this NPR piece on red light cameras which was interesting.

What’s the point of a red-light camera — to make intersections safer or to generate revenue? That’s the question prompted by researchers at the University of Tennessee, who say the cameras are sometimes used in ways that are more likely to make money than to improve safety.

Real shocker that something sold to the public for “safety” would be perverted into a revenue maker that might actually compromise safety, right?

OK, you’re done rolling your eyes now I suppose…moving on…

In other news, water is wet, sun rises in east, and progs are batshite crazy.

A touching reminder of those who gave all. The amount of volunteers brought tears to my eyes.

… and Charles C. W. Cooke does. A brilliant explanation of America’s love/hate of the ‘black rifle’.

Sometimes an idea is both so jaw-droppingly brilliant and obvious at the same time it must be the product of a superior intellect. Ladies and Germs, I present The Blogfather:

With the obvious politicization of the bureaucracy, which probably isn’t limited to the IRS, what to do about the civil service, which is overwhelmingly Democratic? My advice: Flood them with interns. And as part of their training, the interns should be told: “If you see anything funny, talk to us (the intern program office) about it.” Result: Thousands of eyes and ears everywhere.

As the IRS scandal (ongoing) has made perfectly clear, the problem is not the politicians; they can eventually be ousted one way or another. The problem is the lifers in ‘Civil Service’- they’re “dug in deeper than an Alabama tick” to use my homie’s vernacular.

Into the breach, younguns…

What Ken said.

I cannot add to it.

Shelby Steele writes in the Wall Street Journal about the current state of the civil rights establishment today, and unlike most of what I’ve read in the past week he states his case with both dispassion and compassion:

The purpose of today’s civil-rights establishment is not to seek justice, but to seek power for blacks in American life based on the presumption that they are still, in a thousand subtle ways, victimized by white racism. This idea of victimization is an example of what I call a “poetic truth.” Like poetic license, it bends the actual truth in order to put forward a larger and more essential truth—one that, of course, serves one’s cause. Poetic truths succeed by casting themselves as perfectly obvious: “America is a racist nation”; “the immigration debate is driven by racism”; “Zimmerman racially stereotyped Trayvon.” And we say, “Yes, of course,” lest we seem to be racist. Poetic truths work by moral intimidation, not reason.

 

In the Zimmerman/Martin case the civil-rights establishment is fighting for the poetic truth that white animus toward blacks is still such that a black teenager—Skittles and ice tea in hand—can be shot dead simply for walking home. But actually this establishment is fighting to maintain its authority to wield poetic truth—the authority to tell the larger society how it must think about blacks, how it must respond to them, what it owes them and, then, to brook no argument.

The Zimmerman/Martin tragedy has been explosive because it triggered a fight over authority. Who gets to say what things mean—the supporters of George Zimmerman, who say he acted in self-defense, or the civil-rights establishment that says he profiled and murdered a black child? Here we are. And where is the authority to resolve this? The six-person Florida jury, looking carefully at the evidence, decided that Mr. Zimmerman pulled the trigger in self-defense and not in a fury of racial hatred.

And here, precisely at the point of this verdict, is where all of America begins to see this hollowed-out civil-rights establishment slip into pathos. Almost everyone saw this verdict coming. It is impossible to see how this jury could have applied the actual law to this body of evidence and come up with a different conclusion. The civil-rights establishment’s mistake was to get ahead of itself, to be seduced by its own poetic truth even when there was no evidence to support it. And even now its leaders call for a Justice Department investigation, and they long for civil lawsuits to be filed—hoping against hope that some leaf of actual racial victimization will be turned over for all to see. This is how a once-great social movement looks when it becomes infested with obsolescence.

The plain fact is this- white folk were rightly expected to do something about the Bull Connors and the Lester Maddoxes and the George Wallaces in our midst- and we did. It was a long, painful process, and not entirely successful. Human nature is what it is.

But they no longer have any power to go with their bigotry.

I was raised in the Fifties and Sixties to never judge a man by his ethnicity, but by his character. So were most of my peers- and I grew up in a small North Georgia town.

Now it is time for the black folk to do the same to the haters and civil rights profiteers, the Al Sharptons and the Jesse Jacksons and the Reverend Wrights in their community. This is not an unfair or an unreasonable request. The plain fact is the black folks have to tend to their own business- they have to make the change. Otherwise we’ll continue down this bad road to a worse end.

Us creepy-ass crackers can’t do it for you, and rightly so. You need to clean your own house, and own the results.

Else, you really are going to own the results.

Some words from the Diplomad:

Many years ago I was asked to address a class of new FSOs at the Foreign Service Institute in Northern Virginia. These new officers were about to go overseas on their first assignments. Since I had served in Pakistan, the instructor told me to expect to hear concerns from female officers heading to Muslim countries. I gave my little insipid pep talk. In the Q-and-A session, as the instructor had predicted, a woman officer asked how tough it would be for her in a Middle Eastern Muslim country. I still have the notes of what I said, “If you’re a woman get out of the Foreign Service. If you’re a man get out of the Foreign Service. If you’re black, brown, or white get out. If you’re Jewish, Christian, Hindu, or anything else, get out. When you’re out there, you’re an American. You represent only the United States, nothing else. You cannot let your interlocutors see you as anything other than as an American representing the USA.”

This President would not have made it through that class.

Nope.

A new article from the BBC quotes documents purported to be from ‘the man himself’, and give some interesting insights:

The letters reveal that Bin Laden was also sceptical of so-called lone wolf missions by homegrown jihadists.

He urged his associates “not to send a single brother on a suicide operation; they should send at least two”.

He added that in cases when only one militant undertook an operation the “percentage of success was low due to psychological factors that affect the [designated] brother in such a situation”.

Other papers suggest Bin Laden ordered his militants to look out for opportunities to assassinate President Obama or David Petraeus during any of their visits to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mr Petraeus, now CIA director, formerly commanded international forces in Afghanistan.

But Bin Laden warned them not to bother targeting Vice-President Joe Biden because “Biden is totally unprepared for that post [of president], which will lead the US into a crisis.”

OUCH. I guess we’re not the only folks unimpressed by Slow Joe.

link via Ace

via Insty

News flash: National guard units in Massachusetts seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned assault weapons were ambushed by elements of a para-military extremist faction. Military and law enforcement sources estimate that 72 were killed and more than 200 injured before government forces were compelled to withdraw.

Speaking after the clash, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage declared that the extremist faction, which was made up of local citizens, has links to the radical right-wing tax protest movement. Gage blamed the extremists for recent incidents of vandalism directed against internal revenue offices. The governor, who described the group’s organizers as “criminals,” issued an executive order authorizing the summary arrest of any individual who has interfered with the government’s efforts to secure law and order. The military raid on the extremist arsenal followed wide-spread refusal by the local citizenry to turn over recently outlawed assault weapons.

Gage issued a ban on military-style assault weapons and ammunition earlier in the week. This decision followed a meeting in early this month between government and military leaders at which the governor authorized the forcible confiscation of illegal arms.

One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed out that “none of these people would have been killed had the extremists obeyed the law and turned over their weapons voluntarily.” Government troops initially succeeded in confiscating a large supply of outlawed weapons and ammunition. However, troops attempting to seize arms and ammunition in Lexington met with resistance from heavily-armed extremists who had been tipped off regarding the government’s plans. During a tense standoff in Lexington ‘s town park, National Guard Colonel Francis Smith, commander of the government operation, ordered the armed group to surrender and return to their homes. The impasse was broken by a single shot, which was reportedly fired by one of the right-wing extremists. Eight civilians were killed in the ensuing exchange

Ironically, the local citizenry blamed government forces rather than the extremists for the civilian deaths. Before order could be restored, armed citizens from surrounding areas had descended upon the guard units. Colonel Smith, finding his forces overmatched by the armed mob, ordered a retreat.

Governor Gage has called upon citizens to support the state/national joint task force in its effort to restore law and order. The governor also demanded the surrender of those responsible for planning and leading the attack against the government troops. Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, who have been identified as “ringleaders” of the extremist faction, remain at large.

And this, people, is how the American Revolution began.

April 20, 1775

via Mehibatel33 at the Belmont Club

Lest we forget:

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Remixed for your listening pleasure…