Most people – including people who favor what they call “gun control,” would probably not support the idea of fitting all cars with speed governors. But why? Isn’t the principle exactly the same?
A car is a machine that’s capable of being used for “illegal” purposes. It can be used to cause harm, even to kill. Why should anyone be allowed to own a car with more capability than they need?
Most people would rise back on their heels and defend their cars. But why not someone else’s gun?
Because thoughtless Americans do not discern the commonality of interest – because they have been conditioned to never think in terms of concepts. They have been reduced to a state of bipedal animalism – because they have lost (or never developed) the distinctly human capacity to focus on principles rather than particulars. This, in turn, makes it easy to convince them that a given particular, invariably something of no great interest to them (such as a gun) is “bad” – based on childish arguments that would be washed away in an instant if their brains operated on the conceptual rather than the animal level.
If, for example, the argument is that a given item could be used in a harmful way, and for that reason must be banned – it inevitably follows that any potentially harmful item is also in principle subject to being banned. Guns today. Cars tomorrow. Soda pop the day after. Actually, make that yesterday – because it’s already happened. And more will happen – precisely because there’s no reason for it not to happen.
But the human cattle out there do not see the principle at issue, so it is easily surrendered by them to people who have much more in mind than merely that particular thing (“bad” guns).
The only thing preventing the wholesale banning of literally everything (because almost anything could, in the hands of a malignant person, be used to cause harm) is the subjective feelings of the majority – or rather, whomever controls the levers of organized force and can plausibly claim to be acting in the name of the majority.
The concept of rights disappears as the concept of principles slips beneath the waves. Human existence devolves into a high school popularity contest – with all the nasty outcomes of such a contest.
At the moment, guns are Not Popular. All the “cool” people are against them. But it’s not really guns they’re against – even though most of them don’t understand this.
Yet.
If a sufficient number of people can be emotionally hectored into supporting a ban on “bad” guns, then guns will be banned. People who’ve done nothing to warrant it will be transformed by legislative fiat into “criminals” for the non-crime of owning or possessing a “bad” gun. Probably, this will be cheered by a certain segment of the population – the herd animals who see the particular thing they happen not to like – in this case, guns – but cannot see the principle they’ve just surrendered.
But the herd will get its comeuppance when the principle swings around and something they do like – such as their cars, for instance – becomes the object of a popularity contest. Perhaps it will be decided that “society” cannot abide too much horsepower. People should not be allowed to own a machine they don’t really need. Perhaps they will find themselves punished for the actions of others – like the soldiers in Full Metal Jacket, who were punished because fat boy ate a jelly donut.
It’s not conjecture. It’s not hyperbole. It is inevitable. Because it is logically necessary. One thing follows from the next. Particulars are largely irrelevant.
It is principles that matter.
This is understood perfectly well by the people at the apex of the pyramid. They are not stupid people. They merely depend on the stupidity – the intellectual animalism – of the thoughtless masses at the base of the pyramid. Get them to accept A – and when the time comes, they will have no choice about accepting B. Because they have already accepted the principle. Which means they no longer have a principled defense. All that remains is the Popularity Contest. They will be allowed to continue driving for only so long as the herd regards driving as within the bounds of acceptability. The moment it is no longer sufficiently liked – that’s the moment after which it will no longer be allowed. 
And the same goes for anything – for everything – else. Whatever it may be, whether its enjoyment by you causes any actual harm or not – it will not matter the moment a critical mass of your fellow herd-animals decides, in their bovine manner, that they no longer like whatever it is. That you no longer need whatever it is.
And therefore, whatever it is must be banned.
That’s where we’re headed.
Hell, we’re already there.
Throw it in the Woods?
Excellent article! I tried to write the same theme, but lack your eloquence and writing abilities. Indeed, you hit the nail on the head– principles. Without them, our very minds are divided and conquered. Today, guns are evil, tomorrow knives. This is actually happening in the U.K.. Guns were banned, crime rose, so now they’re talking about banning knives. Their nanny state will soon have everyone wearing straitjackets and living in padded rooms. There is no end to the principle that they started with gun confiscation.
This silliness is not limited to weapons. Our CPSC, if I am not mistaken, banned sparklers. Recently, they banned Bucky Balls– an ADULT educational toy comprised of pea-sized magnets. The fear is that children may swallow them and be injured. An ADULT TOY. Never mind irresponsible parents that ignore warnings and allow kids to access the toys. Let’s ban the toy. Heaven forbid what they will ban next! What REALLY gets me is that “THEY” want to restrict ME, which I have decades of proven responsibility. That doesn’t matter– we will all be reduced to the lowest common denominator. Watch the satirical movie IDIOCRACY to see how this turns out.
I’ll be debating Gun Control and other issues on the radio this evening at 5:30 PM EST on the “Funny to the Moon” show on blog talk radio.
Google it and you’ll find the show.
Eric, why don’t you make it so your articles can be shared via facebook/etc? You write great articles, and you could get more exposure (and thus get more people to wake up) with such an option.
Hi Juliano,
I hate Facebook and Twitter – faux “community” (Facebook) and infantilizing “discussion” (Twitter) – and won’t have have anything to do with either of them!
Bravo, Eric, well put. Please keep this web site the “adult table”.
“Please keep this web site the “adult table”.”
Count on it!
Manufactured trends annoy me. Facebook – and Twitter – are manufactured trends. Designed to “frame” the way people interact (among other things).
I joined the KISS Army as a kid. But I won’t be joining the Zuckerberg Zombies!
Hi Juliano,
Eric does hate facebook, but we do have an epautos page there.
https://www.facebook.com/epautos
All the articles are up on the EP Autos facebook page.
Feel free to post them as well. All you need to do is copy the page address:
http://ericpetersautos.com/2012/12/24/speed-limiters-too/
And drop it into the “How are you doing” text box on facebook and hit the space bar. That will pull in the thumbnail images, then you can choose the image (or no image at all), click enter/post.
dom=mod backwards! conspiracy?
The bacefook page is a good article index.
http://whileloop.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/bacefook.jpg?w=630
Ha. I don’t mess around much on the facebook page other than just post Eric’s articles and friend as many porn avatared accounts as possible!
Actually when you think about it facebook is a brilliant intel scoop.
CIA guy 1: How do we assemble a secret dossier on everyone on the planet? These files must contain the individuals’ insights to help form psychological profiles as well as up-to-the-minute changes in their personal info? And we must be able to get this info without the people knowing it and with limited funds.
CIA guy 2: Simple, do not make it a secret and let the dolts with their foolish egos beg to give this info out on their own.
CIA guy 1: Brilliant! Hide it in plain sight and give the illusion that everyone will have a perpetual 15 minutes of fame.
CIA guy 2: Give Zuckerburg a billion dollars and tell him to call it something hipsterish.
Facebook as an intelligence tool is more or less garbage.
1) Most information of value the government already has somewhere. They would be better off linking their own databases. People lie on facebook and other places. People create fictional characters and alter-egos. It’s highly unreliable compared the government’s existing records.
2) The information they don’t have on political opinions and so forth they can get through their data vacuum cleaner operations via cites like this one.
If you’re going to blather anywhere on the intertubes it does not matter if you do it here or on facebook or anywhere else.
I think facebook is an excellent central knowledge base for civilian thoughts, ideas, and movements.
The Archons vie to be your Alpha & Omega. Manifestations of evil insofar as they employ violence and promote wrong thinking. They ask: are you a criminal or a law-abider? Are you a speeder, or a limit obeyer? Discard your life, and live instead for Good versus Evil games with kaliedescopic rules.
Disregard that we have stolen from you and use the fruits of your labor against you to imprison you within these riddles. We are the Monkeys in the coats of the President. We are the pig in the armour of the War Secretaries. You dare not laugh at us, St. Barack nor Lady Hilary, mere mortals, We transcend you all, behold our fine mantles of King & Queen Archon majesty and the terrible Rook,Knight,Bishop animal Chessmen powers of destruction we wield over life, and the puny, human tears and blood we spill on our World Disco Ball of Pulsing Neon Chessboards.
Archons & Illuminati (see Bush the Decider @ 5:58)
Archon Masters & Rule By Artificial Duality
Bevin,
I’ve looked at the states from 1776-1789 and they seem to all be in agreement on militias and the right to bear arms. At all times, I have looked at copies of the actual governing documents at the time, not interpretations or summaries written at later dates.
1) no infringement on your right to bear arms in defense of self or of your state.
2) militias were to be kept in lieu of standing armies. A militia is composed of ordinary citizen/residents of your state. No extra-state standing armies were to be kept during times of peace. If your state’s legislature saw reason to override this provision, the armies are still subject to the civil power of your individual state.
Here is the relevant Supreme Law of state of Pennsylvania from the End of the Revolution until 1789
Section 21 . Right to Bear Arms
The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.
Section 22. Standing Army; Military Subordinate to Civil Power
No standing army shall, in time of peace, be kept up without the consent of the Legislature, and the military shall in all cases and at all times be in strict subordination to the civil power.
http://www.legis.state.pa.us/wu01/vc/visitor_info/creating/constitution.cfm
Dear Tor,
Years ago I was forced to look up some of these points in response to victim disarmament advocates’ misrepresentations of the 2A.
No question about it. The documents back us up.
But frankly, even if they didn’t, the real issue is whether Natural Law backs us up. As we know, it does.
The Framers themselves made clear that the documents did not grant rights. They merely affirmed what Nature/”God” previously endowed human beings with.
Natural Law, like gravity, is indeed something learned by man, not created or influenced by his writings on it.
The right of self defense is called by John Locke the first law of nature. Each person owns his or her own life and no other person has a right to take that life. Consequently, a person may resist aggressive attacks.
He who attempts to get another man into his absolute power does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it is a declaration of a design upon his life. For I have reason to conclude that he who would get me into his power without my consent would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for nobody can desire to have me in his absolute power unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom — i.e. make me a slave.
This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther than by the use of force, so to get him in his power as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using force, where he has no right to get me into his power, let his pretense be what it will, I have no reason to suppose that he who would take away my liberty would not, when he had me in his power, take away everything else. And, therefore, it is lawful for me to treat him as one who has put himself into a state of war with me — i.e., kill him if I can;
Natural Right to Self Defense
http://www.mcrkba.org/w0.html
Swiss Constitution 1874
http://www.basiclaw.net/Appendices/switzerland__constitution.htm
Tor–excellent post. Your annotation of Locke’s quote is right on target.
Here’s the quote again, and here’s a link to the full treatise.
I don’t know, but I suspect, that you guys are feeling the same pricking in your thumbs, the same hackles rising on your neck, that I am.
Something BIG is afoot. We are at a turning point in history.
History repeats–or rhymes–and the cycles, because of communication technology, Jungian group consciousness, whatever reason…the cycles get shorter and the transitions quicker.
I think we are about to experience a phase-change in human civilization that will make the Reformation and the Enlightenment seem trivial in comparison.
The archons*, the demon-possessed**, the psychopaths, the mind-vampires who run the material world–are scared shitless of our awakening. Why else would they expose their plans so sloppily now? Why else would they bare the iron fist under the velvet glove, now of all times, when they are so close that just another decade or two of work would nurture their plans to fruition almost without resistance? I’ve heard some say it’s their sheer hubris, their arrogance, and it’s a measure of their success that they now trumpet their triumph. I’ve heard others say they’re aware their plans are in danger, and the triumphal trumpeting is a psy-op to neuter their opposition.
But I believe it’s absolute naked desperation.
We will beat these creatures–and make no mistake, I laugh at the Clovers and other useful idiots and minions…but at the highest levels, these people are, in psychiatric clinical terms, very sick fucks. They are creatures; they’ve forfeited the noble title “human”.
Historically we always win.
But the one variable we can control most readily is how long to victory. We’ll beat them; but there will be a period of hell on the way.
If enough people are aware and awake, it will be short and sharp.
* warning, freak show here–I don’t subscribe to these theories but they’re damned interesting
** I’m also most definitely not religious–but, it’s damned interesting how closely demon-possession descriptions match the actions and ideologies of the current crop of psychopaths-in-charge
Yikes–sorry for not closing the <a href> tag before the Locke quote.
Here are a few actions I’ve taken over the holidays:
1) Printed up some bumper stickers through Cafe Press’ design-your-own site that say “Simple: More Guns. Less Crime.” I’ve put them up on road signs at high-traffic intersections, bus stops, and at a few local businesses willing to post them.
2) I’ve handed out almost a hundred Infowars magazines, thirty of them to cops with the excellent “Obama is coming for the guns” issue (November I think).
3) I’ve engaged ten cops in direct “will you confiscate guns” conversations–ALL of them say they’d refuse the order, and so would their colleagues.
It’s easy guys. And it’s deadly, deadly serious–if they take our weapons, we’ll be in for a horrible, dangerous, dystopic decade.
The reason the 2,100 year old Nag Hammadi texts, are so important is that no-one has been able to put a spin or alter them [as in the Bible or Koran].
what they’d really like to do [to keep the information and knowledge from the masses]. Luckily, they survived, were successfully translated and when many people read them, they found a clear and defined discussion of what these Archons are. The texts had been buried in a deep cave in Egypt, in order to protect the most important information that they had.
Rense: There are 13 codices containing over 50 texts, which is quite a substantial amount of writing.
Weidner: A highly descriptive document of an entirely different world [from the one we know]. People don’t realise that, 2,000 years ago, there was a religion on this planet called Gnosticism, which was the biggest religion on earth at the time, was vying with Hinduism.
http://www.jayweidner.com/Archons.html
@Tor:
Thanks for the link, Tor.
I’m just starting to explore this avenue. I don’t want it to become a main focus; not because I think it’s wrong (I don’t know enough to form an opinion yet), but because whatever the mode of the psychopaths’ “possession”–whether biological, chemical, demonic, or archon–the game remains the same…
defeat them or die trying.
They are the Nazis, the Stalinists, and the Maoists combined, technologically enabled, and more fucking crazy than ever before.
I came across the idea of Archons from a very good Alex Jones/David Icke interview. I like David Icke, but his “reptilian” thing and mystical “vibrations” theories put me off a bit; I’m too rational for “that stuff”.
But it doesn’t matter what I believe about it–the Elites believe in Luciferianism completely!
Knowing that, at least studying aspects of these arcana will give us clues to their operational motifs.
And who knows? This universe is a damned strange place; we arrogantly assume we have a comprehensive world-view as “scientific” thinkers, but the more I learn about cosmology, the more I realize we don’t have a CLUE how it really works!
Dear Tor, meth,
Well it looks like “Gil” finally scuttled out from a crack in the baseboard.
Alas, all he could do was put words in your mouths instead of countering your arguments.
Now that is reassuring. When they attack you instead of your arguments, you know you’re winning.
Nice write-up. It really helps put into perspective just how screwed we all are.
沒辦法/mei ban fa – eh Bevin?
Night, descends, as the sun’s light ends. And black comes back, to blend again. And with the depth of the sun. Night blackness become one. Blackness being you. Peeping through the red, the white, and the blue. Dreaming of bars, black civilizations that once flourished and grew. HEY! – WAKE UP, “N-Words” or y’all through!
1970 Last Poets – Wake up “N-Words” 🙂
Dear Tor,
I suspect that the American slang term “No can do” comes from Chinese “Pidgin English.”
沒辦法 is “NO way.”
But it’s not like “No way” in “No way, Jose.”
It’s more like “Can’t do it” or “Impossible.”
Another Chinese expression that has entered American slang is “Long time no see.”
That is a literal, word for word translation of the equivalent Chinese expression.
Yes we be speakin APE(American Pidgin English)
tea (茶 tea)
look-see(看 look 見see)
chop chop(急 chop 急 chop)
Triads – East Side!
Yes, the logical extension of banning one particular item that’s thought to cause harm would be the banning of any potential item that’s thought to cause harm. But don’t forget the twin drags on any effort to realize a logical extension: bureaucracy and corruption.
Permits to own and operate the disfavored item will be available to those who have the proper contacts within the permitting bureaucracy,via favoritism or the payment of bribes, while a black market will flourish as it does whenever the supply of an item is bureaucratically (legislatively) restricted below the level of demand. Also, bureaucracy can’t afford to be too efficient in implementing a ban of any kind. Error and inefficiency are the life blood of bureaucracy.
Once feel-good legislation is passed, those for whom symbolic victories are all-important, a characteristic prominent among leftist intellectuals of the political class, the implementation of such legislation is frequently of little interest to those who lobbied for it.
I said publicly when it looked as if Obama would win in 2008 that I hoped the Dems would win the House and Senate (which they did) so Americans could experience full-blown Communism instead of the “boil the frog” incremental bullshit. Along that same line, it might be better to go ahead and have our little disagreement concerning our natural right of self-defense. I have replies from my Congress Clowns as far back as the early Seventies in answer to my pleas for them to protect my 2A rights; but maybe we should just back off and let ’em think they can successfully disarm us. Time is on their side as they brainwash each generation in their Dewey Camps. It’s not as if a terrible and bloody conflict is not inevitable, and if they wait too long I’ll be too fucking old to attend the party.
Anyone who’s ever spent any time in Washington DC knows that the speed limit on automobiles is there for the citizens and not for those in power.
Dear John,
It is just what you said.
Just one thing. I thought you were from Mars, not Virginia.
Clover is just a sugar-coated term for mentally retarded parasitic brat so they will always defend their godermint..Especially the violent-mommy Democrats.
They are so retarded that they can not even begin to follow this:
The fact is that clovers love the government and especially when a Democrat is sitting in the white house. They not only love the government they worship the GODvernment. If the Godvernment tells the clovers they need to all drive a car with 20HP they will find a reason to defend their deity from attack from the heretics. The same goes for just about anything else the Godvernment can come up with.
How many people are fighting back can’t be measured by the lines at the gun shop. Many of those people are clovers as well they just worship a different sect of the Godvernment. Republicans and Democrats are not much different that Catholics and Protestants. They both worship the same God they just do it in different ways.
Godvernment is indeed the name of Western Civilization. Hannukah of the 25th of Kislev and Christmas of the 25th of December is its greatest Holyday. An unstable mishmash of a rational Greek and irrational Jewish/Christian culture.
It is a thin tinsel polish on the old turdstorm clash between the Greeks and Jews. The inaugural meeting of our founding two rich cultures, each with so much to share, so much to contribute to the world together. So much synergy that could happen, and instead, an outbreak of primal violence.
The chimps in charge on both sides hit the battlefield. Greeks won. Jews eventually got back their temple and enough oil to keep a sacred temple flame burning for eight days. Whoopdee-freakin-do.
Fast forward to today you got a nation of 11 million Greeks. You got a nation of 8 million Jews. In between both you got a 600 pound gorilla nation Turkey with 74 million Turks on a hair trigger. The two natures of our society remains divided, and our enemies rise up to eat out our sustenance and gobble us up whole for their own culture’s glory.
It’s distressing. The Greeks were universalists. They were open to new ideas from wherever they came. They spread knowledge and understanding throughout the Mediterranean. 22 centuries ago, they had an opportunity to take Jewish values to the world, to make them public.
What then caused the Maccabee hotheads to refuse to come to some sort of compromise? My best gues is they saw the Jewish philosophy as a dangerous delusion. The liberal Greeks finally encountered something which made them conservative, something they determined they could not tolerate.
For both the Jews and the Greeks, this war was a defining experience. The red lines became clear, and with those guidelines, the essential Torah was made able to survive to this day. The rival Romans found an insidious irrational philosophy the Greeks were terrified of and quickly adopted it throughout their lands.
The whole Hannukah story was completely out of character for Ancient Greece. I don’t believe there was any other culture they ever oppressed or forbade. Every new culture had its set of gods and rituals, and that was just great. “Hey, you got gods? We got gods, too! Here, let’s trade god cards! How ’bout mix and match? You got rituals? You got belief-systems? We’re into all that stuff! We’ll even help you make big, pretty statues!” Greeks were great syncretists — meaning, they could jerry together every culture of the known world and make one big tzimmesz(stew) out of all of it.
But they found something frightening or dangerous in the religion of the Jews. There were the usual political power-plays going on that were the ostensible reasons for the conflict. But it’s obvious there was something deeper at play. Some subliminal annoyance that brought out the worst in the Greek and pushed the Maccabees to revolt. Apparently, there was something about the Jewish mind that didn’t mix and match.
When you look at it from the Jewish side: The Jews have likewise borrowed from every culture they’ve come in contact with. One culture they borrowed more from than perhaps any other was that of Ancient Greece. The Talmud says that the only language the Torah could be translated into elegantly is Greek. They said it was a beautiful language. It says that of all peoples, the Greeks had ideas closest to the Jews. They praised many of the Greek philosophers. Maimonides wrote that Aristotle was half a prophet. The Seder Hadorot, a kind of classic Jewish history book, claims that Aristotle was really Jewish!
So what is going on here? Why such a violent clash? Why were the Greeks and Jews unable to work out some sort of compromise with a Hellenist ruler? It’s important, because in a very real way, Hannukah lives on. Western society today is a mostly a bizarre grafting of these two cultures, the Hellenist and the Jewish. If this conflict existed back then, the question is, has there been some resolution over time? Or are we still fighting Greek elephants? Simply put: Is Western society hopelessly schizoid?
Conversation Between a Greek and a Jew
So here’s how the conversation goes. Which conversation? The conversation that’s been going on ever since the Greek mind and the Jewish mind
met one another, 22 centuries ago. Where does it happen? Mostly, somewhere deep inside Jewish minds, and a few Western minds as well:
Greek: So tell us about your gods, Mr. Maccabee(Jewish rebels Greek territory).
Jew: Um, that’s singular.
Greek: Okay, tell me about your gods.
Jew: No, not you. G-d. G-d is singular. Only one god.
Greek: Don’t worry, we’ve got so many I’m sure we can spare a few.
Jew: That’s okay, one is enough.
Greek: So, this one G-d, what does He look like? We’d love to make some nice statues for you. You poor, uncultured people, you have no statues!
Jew: That’s because He doesn’t have looks.
Greek: No looks? Ugly? That’s cool! A god of ugliness! Don’t worry, we can make ugly statues, too.
Jew: No, no. He has no looks at all. You can’t see Him.
Greek: An invisible G-d? Well, maybe we can do that in glass. But you have to give us some description.
Jew: Nope. Sorry. No description.
Greek: You mean nobody ever saw Him? How can you worship something if you don’t know what it looks like? I mean, how do you know He exists in
the first place?
Jew: It’s not that we don’t know what He looks like. He doesn’t have any looks. He has no image.
Greek: Well, I’m sorry then. If He has no image, we can’t make a statue.
Jew: That’s fine with us.
Greek: But we’d like to write books about Him. So just give us some definition and we’ll work around it.
Jew: Oh, our G-d can’t be defined.
Greek: Come, now. Everything has to have a definition. Or else it’s not a thing.
J: But G-d is not a thing. He creates things. But He isn’t a thing.
G: Oh! So He is the Cosmic Mind Who conceives and shapes all forms from the primal essence-matter.
J: No, He doesn’t just form them, He creates them. Out of nothing.
G: Now you’re getting silly. You can’t make something out of nothing. You need stuff to make it out of.
J: But there wasn’t any stuff when things began.
G: There was always stuff. How else could the Cosmic Mind make anything?
J: Out of nothing!
G: Look, you Jews don’t really think straight. But that’s okay. We’ve conquered all sorts of primitive cultures. You’ll learn, too. So, you
worship the Cosmic Mind — you’ll get along just great with Aristotle and…
J: No, He’s not just the Cosmic Mind.
G: Well, nothing’s higher than the Cosmic Mind.
J: Because that’s not who He is. I mean, even if He didn’t make a world, He would still be G-d. So you can’t say, “that’s who He is — the One
that makes a world.” There doesn’t have to be a world for Him to exist.
G: Of course there has to be a world. Otherwise, why is there a world if there doesn’t have to be one? The world makes sense. The Cosmic Mind
makes sense. That’s what it’s all about. Reason. The highest and most perfect of all things. We Greeks will teach you all about that. So, now
tell me about your rituals. We Greeks really dig rituals. Any that have to do with wine? Parties?
J: Sure, we make kiddush on Friday night to commemorate the Creation of the world from nothing.
G: Well, you can give up that one now, since I’ve just shown you that creation of the world from nothing makes no sense whatsoever.
J: We don’t eat milk with meat.
G: Why not?
J: G-d says so.
G: For what reason?
J: Reason? He needs a reason? For the same reason He created heaven and earth!
G: Which is?
J: He just wanted to.
G: That’s not a reason!
J: Sure it is. He decided He would like a world where there would be milk and meat and He would tell people, “Don’t eat that milk and meat
together!” and they would listen.
G: That makes no sense. That’s not a reason!
J: Reason is just another of His creations.
G: Reason is the ultimate! There is nothing higher than Reason!
J: Okay then, explain to me why the world is the way it is. Why does one plus one equal two? Why does the square of the length of the
hypotenuse equal the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two sides? Why do parallel lines never meet?
G: Because those are the rules of geometry!
J: So why does the Cosmic Mind, as you call Him, have to follow your rules of geometry?
G: They’re not our rules! They are the self-evident truths of nature!
J: Why are these the truths and not something else?
G: You stubborn Jew! Don’t you see that this is the most elegant, rational way things could be?
J: I’ll bet you He could break them. I’ll bet our G-d could make a world where parallel lines meet. He could break any of the laws of nature.
G: You can’t break laws of nature! They’re not like laws of the state or like your silly laws about cheeseburgers. They are truths. They are
perfect. They are the ground of reality. They are because they have to be.
J: Nothing has to be. Nothing but the Source of Being. But He could be any way He wants.
G: Geometry has to be. Cause and effect has to be. Logic has to be. If A = B then B = A. That is an absolute Truth. It must be.
J: Why?
G: Why?! Because if they don’t have to be, then I and you and this whole world have no real substance! And that cannot be!
J: That’s just what I was trying to tell you. This world has no real substance. They only truth is…
G: Don’t say it, Mr. Maccabee! You people are downright dangerous.
And that is why the Greeks did not forbid Jewish practice altogether. What they (initially) forbade were those practices that they saw as
irrational. Those practices that Jews do simply because they believe they believe they have a relationship with a Being who is higher than reason. That, the Greeks could not tolerate.
Of course, as you know, eventually some bright boys did design some geometries where parallel lines meet; where cause and effect got bumped out of quantum physics; where the world was discovered to have had a beginning; and even now it still is really nothing because the sum of all radiant energy minus all of the universe’s mass equals zero. Most of us today have accepted that there are things that are the way they are not for any reason, but just because that’s the way they are. Nothing has to be the way it is. Why do masses attract? Why is the grass green? Why is thereanything at all? There doesn’t have to be a reason for everything, because reason is not the foundation of reality. So what’s so absurd about connecting to the Foundation of Reality through mitzvot that are beyond reason? Pure Greek science has been “infected” with stubborn Jewish magical irrationalism.
Mind Under Matter
Nevertheless, the battle continues. You see, as mentioned above, the Greek mind, aside from worshipping human intellect, is also a great
syncretist. That means it can hammer together the most incongruous ideologies without blinking an eyelid. You’ve heard of Rice-Christians?
Peyote-Catholics? The Greek mind could do any of that, and more.
The two characteristics go hand in hand: When there’s nothing higher than intellect, intellect has no guiding light. Everything, even the
stupidest thing — as long as it doesn’t deny intellect — can be tolerated. Aristotle knew that the pantheon of Athenian gods was nonsense.
But what’s wrong with the common people, who cannot understand any better, having their way?
You can easily see that a knowledge of an absolute Divine Will beyond reason has become a necessity for human survival. Without the supposition
of a Divine Will, whatever you wish to make sense can make sense. If your system of logic cannot support an idea, just change the postulates
and rethink the data. Anything can be made to make sense when you determine the assumptions. Every society has had its philosophers and
philosophers have justified everything imaginable — from coliseum killing games to gas chambers.
Strangely, this may have worked to humanity’s advantage in one regard: The Greek mind applied itself to figuring out the material world. When
your belief system begins with Divine revelation you don’t necessarily apply yourself to mundane matters of how things work. So technological
progress became chiefly the domain of the Greek mind throughout history.
But it also has some nefarious consequences. Because when you marry intellect and materialism (a good description of Stalin’s Russia and
Hitler’s Germany), you’ve entered a bottomless pit of quicksand. When water mixes with sand, dirt and clay. You step in it and you can’t get out. The more you try to climb up, the further down you go.
A Donkey and an Ox
Today, we have those syncretists who wish to marry materialism with Torah. And nothing is less congruous than that.
Materialism is the ultimate of Greece stuck in the mud. It is the idea that all that exists is that which can be observed, described and
explained. Evolutionism, for example, is a materialistic explanation of existence. When people became disillusioned with the church and with
faith, they needed an explanation of existence that relied on Chance and Necessity alone, without recourse to G-d. Darwinism and current
cosmologies provide just that. So do the standard interpretations of history we are taught today.
Torah is an understanding that adheres in childlike fashion that behind the world lies a Divine Will, unhampered by the limitations of nature or human logic — because it is the source of all this. Why are there laws of nature? Because G-d generally chooses to work in consistent ways. Why did history unfold the way it did? Because that is all in G-d’s plan.
When someone tries to provide a materialistic explanation for Torah and mitzvot, they are creating a Promethean bed, killing all sense of Torah
in the process. So too, attempting to resolve conflicts between evolutionary doctrines and Torah makes less sense than marrying a donkey to an
ox.
Yes, we try to understand as much as we can. The Torah commands us to think deeply, to immerse our intellects in study and comprehension.
Whatever we can fit into intellect, we must strive to do so. Whatever explanation we can give, we must give it. But always with the sense that
with every new grain of understanding, we have expanded the seashore of the Infinite Unknowable.
Jews and Westerners may have a thousand reasons for not mixing meat and milk, but when it comes down to it, it is done because that is seen as a personal connection with the Divine Will, the Life of All Things. Art and Science be damned. And that is both the victory and the defeat of Hannukah.
I think you jumping too far ahead. First will come the black boxes that observe everywhere you go in your car. Then will come the automated speeding tickets that will be mailed to you when your car exceeds the speed limit on any given road. The police no longer will need to waste time and money putting speed traps on the side of the road. Once people self-regulate their speed to the point that state and local governments have bilked as much money out us as possible, and only the most flagrant speeders keep speeding because they “don’t care” what the speed limits are, the flagrant speeders will be the most visible minority, and “the majority” will ask for speed governors to be installed. They won’t protest then, because the automated ticketing process has already gotten them to slow down.
Any enforcement to that degree will result in total gridlock. The system of ticketing was designed to create the greatest volume of traffic tickets from safe, normal driving. If it is universally enforced the roads will grid lock. Traffic will leave the system at such a slower rate than it enters resulting in traffic jams.
To get this sort of speed control and keep the roads functioning would require increased speed limits.
Soon will there be fat control? People who choose to smoke should pay up for the good of the children (always) or matter of fact tobacco should be banned. Oh so you don’t care because you’re not fat and don’t smoke well they’ll come for whatever enjoyment you might have in life sooner or later.
I don’t know….Someone I know who is certainly not a “conspiracy theorist” was telling me how SHE (sorry, women seem to be more cloverish than men to me) thought Sandy Hoock was a government op. Heck, I don’t think it was an op and I’m a huge “conspiracy theorist”. I think this new AWB is going to fall flat
Dear z,
Quick. Marry her.
Bevin has a good idea!
But really, with all the mis-stated info on the Sandy Hook Shooting over the media, how can one be sure? Still, if Adam really had Aspergers (and people with this illness are peaceful, with empathy) then one wonders how even drugs could lead to this. Sadly, it’s not confirmed if he really had that illness, but this whole story could be interesting once the pieces are connected and found correctly.
Check out Brian Wilson’s piece in LewRockwell.com today.
I’ve been harping on prescribed drug use by medicated mass murderers since long before Lanza.
What constitutes a coverup? Maybe having a few doctors, chemists, lobbyists, and office holders dance on air is a lesson desperately needed. Perhaps having a few lickspittle editors spend a day or two having a knout or two worn out on their backs is also in order.
I can never feel the hatred for ignorant gutter scum that I feel for educated scum. The educated scum ought to know better.
tgsam
clover doesnt realize he is being made into a salad,that the “Elite”(those that know better-for the common good) can nibble at will.If anybody actually understood what a Democracy is,its not electing a bunch of wealthy ,busybody ,slothful ,power hungry,big feeling, bureaucrats ,to watch your “Henhouse”for you.
The coffee has scorched and boiled over,”caveat emptor!”-Kevin
Hi all, Just to let you fella’s know every gun shop I visited last week, big and small were busier than all get out! Me thinks there is a small awakening started.
Hi Smoked,
Others are reporting the same thing – it’s good news!
The last time there was a major push for “reasonable gun control” after some very public shootings – back in the 1960s – most people bought it.
This go ’round, not so much.
I think it’s going to be a very interesting year…
There are loads of relatively new gun owners out there, that’s a fact. I’ve done my best to encourage a few of them with lunch-hour range trips and such. 🙂
New gun control measures do seem like they will be much more of an uphill battle than way back in ’94. There are a lot more people who no longer view firearms as some malignant token of evil, but see them as just a chunk of plastic and steel that can be used or misused. It’s an encouraging thought for gun owners faced with the possibility of a ban, certainly. The outcry against a ban will be much louder this time. Of course, the outcry against the first bank bailout was loud as well and was ignored. The outcry against the health care bill was even louder and it was ignored as well.
If a ban is desired by the owners of this country, then a ban they shall have. Sure, the congressional deck may get reshuffled again, but the same kings and queens will keep coming up to give our rights the royal flush.
“…to give our rights the royal flush.”
Excellent turn of phrase, Ferret–and some pointed reasoning.
The Elites are pushing their agenda without subtlety or subterfuge now, and you may be right–they might engineer this one too.
We’ll see.
And if they do, they’ll have lost the one ingredient they so desperately need–CONSENT.
People are institutionalized into a way of thinking in government school… The collective punishment because one kid did something wrong, the parental nature of things, all conditioned…
…So why do people go for bans and collective punishments? That’s how it was programmed into them. When Johnny did something wrong the whole class was punished. If Johnny ran on the playground and crashed into the flag pole, well then running was banned. Plain and simple…
F.A. Hayek – The Constitution of Liberty – 1960
..It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil..
..freedom is that condition of men in which coercion of some by others is reduced as much as is possible in society..
http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/Hayek's%20Constitution%20of%20Liberty.pdf
You have nailed the problem squarely on the head. The fatal process is the destruction of individual thinking and its replacement with institutional thinking.
One simple improvement would be making public school attendance voluntarily. The State could still demand children stay off the public street during daytime hours.
By allowing young adults more options, we would immediately see a resurgence in two critical components of American Exceptionalism. The key components of individualism and freedom of choice, for all ages.
Quite so, and I’m sure CNN is still reminding its viewers that a majority support some gun control on “assault rifles.” As if that means anything, but it’s democracy in action with its institutional thinking.
That is why I invest time here. To rid myself of “institutional malthought processes.” I can remember when I was younger, not thinking in institutionally created “package deals.”
Besides instituions, there may be the natural brain-aging and the diverting of my brainpower to meaningless and even harmful subroutines.
At any given time, an adult body is consuming 100W of power, 20W of which is used by the brain.
When I was young, my brain was used to at least attempt to accomplish things I found important. It was my brain under my command.
Now, at the age of 45, my brainpower is often wasted on mundane things I could care less about. It is easily co-opted to do the bidding of outsiders, many of whom are mortal threats to my continued well-being.
I detest reading much of what I’ve written here. I imagine it to be much like reading one’s own doctor’s notes during an extended stay in a sanitorium.
But I want to improve, and find a cure for myself, or at least be a part of cure for future attempted self-healers who have yet to awaken and attempt the matrix-ectomy.
Dear Tor,
What goes on in online comments sections transcends the individual.
That may sound like a funny thing for an arch individualist to say. But it’s true. It’s not that the individual isn’t the most important element in human society. He or she is.
I am talking about something else. I am talking about liberty oriented memes. The back and forth that goes on at libertarian sites such as this, contributes to the evolution of liberty oriented memes.
The dialogue helps perfect these memes, the way an ecosystem enables organisms to become stronger through evolution.
As these liberty oriented memes become stronger, our individual liberty is increasingly secured.
I agree Bevin. In the main, their side is a collection of forced artificial sales campaigns tailored to power groups.
In contrast, we are a natural law compliant ecosystem of sorts. This difference may prove to be just the attribute that makes us more “fit” and enables us to “win” this ideological competition.
V.I. Lenin
The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.
– There is inherent instability and seeds of their side’s destruction in their telling “any given audience” the things it wishes to hear.
Our side’s rational discussion of what is theoretically possible to bring into fruition through voluntary social cooperation will be the tonic that gives us the vigor and health to outlast the disadvantages of our current dilemma.
Dear Tor,
The free market is the human societal counterpart to a self-regulating ecosystem in nature.
That’s something the Watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) just don’t get.
They ought to. They claim to be “more conscious than thou” about metasystems.
Ironically for all their rhetoric about seeing the bigger picture, they don’t realize that free markets and ecosystems are soulmates.
By choosing top down statism to implement their nominally “ecological” agenda, the Watermelons are confessing that they are actually less conscious than thou.
First they came for the guns,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a gun owner.
Then they came for the pit bulls,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a dog owner.
Then they came for the automobiles,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a car owner.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.
Dear Chris,
You got it.
Between the Demopublicans and the Republicrats not speaking out on this, that, and the other, it is only a matter of time before we lose all our liberties.
Actually, yes, a lot of race cars are not permitted to drive in public. There’s a quite a bit of difference between a street legal F1 McLaren and the full performance one. Hence it has already begun . . .
Except not for reasons of horsepower or top speed.
For having different safety equipment.
Not having proper lighting for a road vehicle.
For not having been crash tested.
Etc and so forth. But not because of horsepower or top speed.
Cars with limited top speeds are so set by their manufacturers because of something the manufacturer thinks won’t hold up.
I tried debating on the comparison: Faster cars more dangerous just as assault rifles are more dangerous. Of course this comparison was thrown out because he felt rifles were so “dangerous” that they had to be banned. Because, really, he felt there a PURPOSE or DESIGN of all assault rifles that made it unacceptable (he felt they were just for killing). Designs, purposes, and danger is subjective, I told him. But he rejected this by saying that it can be for killing at some point just as it was designed.
It was silly because there being an objective design or purpose or danger to a thing, a tool, was defended through and through by him. I got his thinking out of that debate though: Assault rifles ARE for killing, and that’s unacceptable (so no more assault rifles)! Seriously, you can’t even collect assault rifles in his world, because someone else would steal it and kill with it, he figures. He did pretend somehow hunting rifles and pistols could be okay for hunting and self-defense since they weren’t “designed” to be for armies to kill with.
Because he said he felt afraid after shooting a pistol, I could tell quickly this was just an emotional guy. He would never trust me if I was his neighbor because I sense his objective thinking on guns is really that deep.
Of course, the trust for the state is present. I would like to see him reflect on the killings the much bigger guns of the government are doing and have done, but he considers the state as being some special class. Really, he stated he didn’t care if gun owners wanted an assault rifle because it was so dangerous.
So yes, Eric, people use childish arguments to support something that won’t work in the desired way. Some believe these things and may resort to some objective danger due to a gun’s design when other points are proven wrong.
After all, he didn’t reply to my questioning of the thinking behind why Adam wanted to join the Marines, or of drugs, or of state violence’s effect on thinking and private violence, or of why my local area is peaceful despite all these dangerous weapons being nearby, or how bombs can be used instead, or how creative one can be with a truck to kill. No, I just got long dialogues of him asserting there’s one objective design to the assault rifle.
Logic bounces off people who think this political stuff is just majority opinion or what CNN to FoxNews thinks. At best, I got to practice debating, but I knew I would waste time against such a robot. After a while, it’s best for people to just separate from the debate with another because there are others to try convincing. (At least I think so, you can have fun debating with a robot for days on end ;p)
Hi Alan,
Yup –
And: I cringe whenever I hear a Clover rant about “assault weapons.” As with the demagogic phraseology, “gun control,” the term is used to manipulate, not inform.
A true “assault rifle” is a combat rifle capable of fully automatic fire (the gun continues to fire until the shooter takes his finger off the trigger or the clip is emptied). Very few of these are in private hands – and not one has been used in a mass shooting. “Assault rifle” is a non sequitur.
The term is used to impugn all auto-loading rifles (the gun only fires once with each trigger pull, though it is ready to be fired again).
The object is to de-legitimize any rife that’s not a single shot/bolt action rifle. (And once they successfully ban the auto-loaders, they’ll turn to the single-shot/bolt action rifles.)
In the same way, they talk of “automatic” handguns – with the intended purpose of scaring the firearms-ignorant. What they are going after, in actual fact, are all semi-automatic handguns. Revolvers could be conceivably described as “automatic” since the cylinder rotates with each trigger pull, “automatically” lining up the next round for firing.
The whole thing is a dung pile of ignorance and effrontery.
Dear Eric,
The Political Class has no intention of stopping any point along the way.
There is no such thing as “reasonable gun controls” for them.
They may say they only want to ban full auto weapons on day one. But sure enough, they will want to ban semi-automatic weapons on day two, repeaters on day three, single shot breach loaders on day four, single shot muzzle loaders on day five.
They are like blackmailers collecting extortion money. They will never stop.
Think about it. Their ilk has already banned nunchucks for chrissakes. What are nunchucks? Why nothing more than two sticks linked with a short piece of rope or chain. Bruce Lee used to use them.
If they have already banned nunchucks, what makes any gun owner think they will stop at any point along the firearms spectrum?
Gun owners must adopt a “zero tolerance policy” toward “gun control,” better known as victim disarmament.
The only acceptable victim disarmament, is no victim disarmament.
I must admit the debate brought up a side thought as well. I wondered why felons should be banned from legally buying weapons. Gary North mentioned he supported them buying them legally, but I haven’t learned enough to be certain about my thoughts. It could be blow to politicians who do want to have control over guns, but I wonder if a libertarian society would be allowed to ban guns from those who have done bad things.
They really banned numchucks in some states, not federally, at least the wiki article said so. Still you have a point:
The guy I debated against believes the danger of an “assault rifle” made it necessary to ban, but I wonder how much of a sucker he can be to ban more and more guns over time. He didn’t understand that the gun is a tool as bad or good as the PERSON using it. His thinking is not going to seek out why a person commits these acts, he seemed clear he only wanted the “dangerous” rifles banned to limit the killing.
So more murders will go on and this term “reasonable gun control” will change to limit access again. Thanks for the replies, Eric and Bevin, too.
Dear Alan,
“They really banned numchucks in some states, not federally, at least the wiki article said so. Still you have a point:”
By “they” I meant officials who wield the coercive force of government at all levels, federal, state, and local.
Just a clarification.
“The Political Class has no intention of stopping any point along the way.”
Don’t look for them to quit while they are ahead. Historically, the Political Class tends to keep adding insult to injury until their victims finally get enough of it and they kill them.
tgsam
Dear Tinsley,
No argument from me!
This video may have been cited here before. If so, ignore it.
Otherwise, everyone here has to click on it. Only about 4 minutes long.
AG Eric Holder, admitting that the Political Class is determined to brainwash the public into hating guns so that it can take them away from us.
This is akin to Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels’ open admission that:
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”
Addendum:
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”
— Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister and victim disarmament advocate
“We need to do this every day of the week and just brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.”
— Eric Holder, US Attorney General and victim disarmament advocate
Connect the dots.
thoughtless Americans do not discern the commonality of interest – because they have been conditioned to never think in terms of concepts. They have been reduced to a state of bipedal animalism – because they have lost (or never developed) the distinctly human capacity to focus on principles rather than particulars. This, in turn, makes it easy to convince them that a given particular, invariably something of no great interest to them (such as a gun) is “bad” – based on childish arguments that would be washed away in an instant if their brains operated on the conceptual rather than the animal level.
Perfectly summarized, Eric. This needs to be rubbed in the nose of everyone in Amerika.
Now for the other side…
American life is one prolonged government school experience now. People are institutionalized into a way of thinking in government school. The collective punishment because one kid did something wrong, the parental nature of things, all conditioned. Oh and of course the congenital high school mentality.
As many here have probably detected I believe the cornerstone of control is the government school system. If there were one thing I could dismantle of the government, one thing, I would pick the schools. Without the schools the whole blasted thing falls apart in a generation or two. Sure it would take longer than other options but it would as permanently as anything could break the state.
The military, the central bank, the connected corporations, everything hinges on the schools. They program and condition us through these institutions. And if it doesn’t stick then the damaging begins to try and make it stick. I know first hand. It took a good amount reading as an adult to figure it out. A child doesn’t understand what’s being done to him. The adult teachers don’t even understand. It’s the system. Those who designed the system, they understand.
So why do people go for bans and collective punishments? That’s how it was programmed into them. When Johnny did something wrong the whole class was punished. If Johnny ran on the playground and crashed into the flag pole, well then running was banned. Plain and simple.
It all starts in the schools.
I agree wholeheartedly, Brent. All of the thought patterns that produce clovers are indoctrinated into children throughout their schooling.
It’s disheartening to hear conservatives wail about the need to improve the schools. They simply don’t get it: the schools are doing an outstanding job at what they are designed and intended to do. They produce millions of mind-numbed drones willing to follow every diktat of the god they are brainwashed to worship: the state.
BrentP said: “…the congenital high school mentality.”
You are correct, sir. But dismantling these gubment indoctrination centers will never happen until all of amerika falls.
I do not think it is possible to deprogram the majority of the victims of gubment skools. The best hope is to keep our own kids out of the Conformity Factories. And maybe help those few who are salvageable.
“High skool isn’t a time or place. It is a state of mind” – Frank Zappa.
Having bean foerced to attend Cathoholic School, I hartily concurr. It was a tearable religious dungeon of repression, but many of us, though sumwhat warpt, were abel to sirvive mhostly intact.
The dim timid isolated autistic chimpanzee eyes of public schoolers is heart-rendering. You can sometimes coax them out of their faux reality bubble habitats, but their limited use of tools and advanced conceptualizations leaves them ill prepared for life without the beastmasters of the state.
Edward Bernays – Selling War
http://www.youtu.be/JQZFTbPh4jM
I have one nit to pick. Guns are very popular. I’ve never seen so many gun geeks poking into the mainstream culture. There are gun shows on TV now. Even non-gun television shows the gun geek in positive light as just another kind of collector.
It is the big government allied news media that is against firearms now. They want to make guns seem unpopular. That’s their mission, to shape the society. To program the masses.
Remember the switch to digital and all the concern some people might not get television? I would say ‘they want to make sure everyone gets their programming’. 😉
Yep, the programming is no longer subtle. The interesting part is even though it’s now completely obvious even more people are buying into it!
Hm, I don’t think so Dom!
People are NOT buying into MSM elite memes anymore. The MSM is in its death throes; Newsweek, for instance, just announced it’s shuttering its benighted doors. Viewership of Communist News Network, Faux News, MessNBC are at catastrophic lows and dwindling rapidly from there…so much so that they’re perennial recipients of taxpayer largesse as ‘bailouts’. ‘Bailouts’, also knows as ‘payments to carry State propaganda’. They’re so obviously state-owned that even the worst clovertards are questioning their veracity!
And look how people are voting–as Ludwig von Mises said, the ultimate expression of democracy is the ‘vote’ constituted by every penny they spend.
And they’re spending those pennies on AR-15’s. Have you tried getting one lately? I picked up another a couple of weeks ago when my spidey-sense was tingling, along with an ammo-can full of 30-round p-mags…eleven bucks each. NOW try buying those!
We’re winning the 2A argument–big-time. People doubt the MSM. And people despise with a fiery vitriol their ass-clown “representatives”–Congress’ approval rating is 9 percent!
The frantic rush to complete the surveillance grid and lock down the police state is desperation; desperation by the PTB who can see their demise approaching.
We were behind, badly ten years ago. We’re neck-and-neck now. We may win this thing without much shooting–but it means every last one of us has to act like a complete maniac and attack them back on every front, all the time.
Each in our own little (or big) way; Eric’s a fine example, providing succor, a place of respite and a place to sharpen our arguments…but even that little word you put in at the grocery store checkout counts.
I hope you’re right. I was basing my statement on a poll number I saw on the CNN website the other day. It was something to the effect of 54% of America want more gun control. Just from my daily experiences and personal opinion I believe there are more sheep than free thinkers. Our global socioeconomic model demands it.
I hear you, but remember two things:
1) poll by CNN–like saying “poll by Soviet Pravda”, except even more scientifically biased; propaganda’s come a long way under the Tavistock Institute in 50 years!
2) it doesn’t take a majority. It takes a very small, very vocal minority–that out-numbers the PTB by 1000:1
I get depressed too Dom; but history’s on our side. What’s under our power at this point is how long, and how brutal, the transition to the next era of freedom is.
Dom / Methyl, here’s some Winter Solstice cheer to warm your troubled hearts: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/12/20/A-Real-Public-Opinion-Poll-8-000-People-A-Day-Join-NRA-Since-Dec-14
Now we can excoriate the NRA all we want for compromising, but there is no question this phenomenon is “real” democracy in action. People are waking up daily, they are pissed and are indeed voting with their money. Message to the Brady Bunch: Keep pushing your agenda; this ain’t Australia or the UK. Critical mass may be just around the corner…
Boothe, thanks for that link! It did my heart good…and the comments that followed were righteous.
I joined GOA last week; I hope their membership is surging, too, because (as good as it is NRA’s growing)…I think we all agree on NRA’s role as a Trojan horse.
Still–8,000 a day, even to the wrong organization, says it all; they’ve LOST this debate!
Not to mention…have ya’ll tried to buy an AR lately? Can’t. They’re GONE.
Thanks for posting that Boothe, that’s amazing. I thought about purchasing a suppressor (for my .22 pistol) the other day and started checking prices. $50 over MSRP plus the $200 tax stamp hit. I’m going to keep looking till I find it for less than I paid for the gun itself. When I purchased my AR I only purchased the lower receiver. I’m sure they can still be picked up pretty easy.
Dom, I don’t think lowers are readily available just now. I spoke with a dealer the other day and he said he’s tried eight different distributors; no lowers, no parts kits. I also heard that Magpul P-mags are going for $50 a piece with some sellers asking as much as $100. Drum magazines have gone totally stupid. I haven’t checked the AK situation, but I expect it’s much the same.
Dom you may want to check out the Econo-can “oil filter silencer” offered by http://www.cadizgunworks.com/zcstore/
Here’s a video of it in action. Keep in mind that the oil filter is a serialized registered part so you can’t just screw any old oil filter onto the adapter, according to federal law you have to use the one that comes with it. But for $75 plus tax stamp and shipping, it’s not a bad deal. But don’t get any ideas about having a machine shop make one of these or turning one out yourself. That would be illegal.
Oops! Here’s the video link Dom:
Hey Boothe, that oil filter adapter is pretty damn cool. I’ve heard of it before but never checked it out. Absolutely amazing how quiet it is on the Walther P22 (which is the exact unit I have). So the lowers and everything are sold out across the board huh, wow!
“People are NOT buying into MSM elite memes anymore. The MSM is in its death throes…”
You are correct that the MSM is in its death throes, meth. But it is dying not because the majority of amerikuns have decided to look else where for the news so that they can be better informed. (Those of us who want real news and facts left the MSM a long time ago). They simply stopped looking for the truth.
Why should they think when they can just be entertained.
The idiocy on MSNBC, CNN, faux news, etc. is not nearly as entertaining as the idiocy over on the kardashians. Or honey boo boo bear. Or the real housewives of fill-in-the-blank. Or ESPN sports center.
That is not to say that TPTB are not still brain washing the dolts. They just figured out that it does not take thirty minutes of katie couric’s babbling to establish a meme. Thirty second sound bites, reinforced through regular tv shows, work just as well on a feeble minded audience.
Someone wisely noted that Idiocracy is not a movie; it is a documentary. We are watching it being produced in front of our very eyes.
skunkbear, there’s a vast mass out there we’ll never reach. You’re right; they’re thoroughly entranced, entrained to the comforting delta-wave flicker-rate of their favorite televised fecal matter. They are literally zombies.
Forget them.
We’re after the remnant, the twenty percent…and we’re getting them.
The PTB are shitting their pants; why else are they ruining 100 years of perfectly effective gradualism with a five-year rush to totalitarianism that’s so obvious even McDonald’s employees are noticing it?
Dear meth,
I agree.
I have to believe that we’re approaching a watershed, a tipping point of some sort.
The signs are too obvious. Since 9/11 the Political Class has stepped up the pace, apparently in a panic. They realize more and more of us are catching on.
The 9/11 Truth Movement. The Ron Paul Revolution. The gun buying frenzies after every false flag shooting incident. More sheeple are becoming people. More people are taking the red pill.
meth and Bevin, I sure hope you guys are right and I am wrong.
And maybe I am. The spike in gun sales does create some optimism.
And it is evident that TPTB are indeed bum rushing their agenda through. There does seem to be a terrible panic amongst the elite.
Their engineered collapse of the economy is designed to put in place the boot to stomp on a human face forever. But there is one severe threat to their plan – an awakened people.
The future will either be one of an absolute tyranny or one of an unstoppable wave of freedom for mankind.
Thanks for giving me hope.
Mike Judge(Idiocracy Creator), is the shit. Here’s his animated Six Million Dollar Redneck video for Zac Brown Band.
Also creator/voice of Beavis/Butthead, Hank Hill/Boomhauer, Office Space, Extract… “a genius with the ruthless gimlet eye of Southpark Libertarianism”
Why-come you don’t got the tattoo?
Dear skunkbear,
I hope so too!
I’m not complacent about it.
But many of the signs are indeed positive.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
I think it’s a case of “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, can’t get fooled again.”
Dear meth,
Not to worry. I figured out that’s what you must have meant.
Sometimes typing directly into the comment box results in botched phrasing.
I’ve done it often enough too.
It appears that younger people in particular are not following the mainstream media (MSM) because they aren’t following any significant amount of news anywhere, and those in this group who do follow current events at all get their info from such fluff as Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert’s satirical “news” programs.
Just over a year ago in the Richmond, Virginia, area, an autistic child wandered away from his father and got lost. The result was a massive manhunt involving over 1,000 volunteers over several days, with national coverage and blanket local news coverage before the boy was found alive. But students at one university in the Richmond area who were asked for reactions and info about any possible assistance had universally not heard about the child and the hunt at all as it was continuing.
This is the reason the MSM is having problems, not the notion that people now get their news elsewhere. They just ain’t gettin’ the news at all. They’ve literally and figuratively tuned out.
One columnist in Car and Driver recently mentioned with disdain the requirements some insurance companies are trying to impose for younger drivers just starting out to have a monitor like that Progressive Insurance advertises. Teens and young adults are accustomed now to monitoring and control to an extent people just a little older would have disdained and resisted.
Something tells me these most of these younger people would be quite accepting of speed limiters and bans on sales of cars capable of excessive speeds. They already seem to have been indoctrinated on the gun control agenda with analogous restrictions.
I’m pushing 50. I hope I don’t have too many more years to go as the police state ramps up.
A side note is necessary. Many of the instances of toddlers getting access to weapons and of “accidental” shootings of toddlers are highly suspicious and should be investigated as murder. In other words, I believe that some parents are framing toddlers for deliberate shootings by the parent. Children that age (2–4) don’t have the finger strength to pull the trigger and fire most weapons themselves, especially given the weight of that very gun, which would be heavy for them to handle. Leaving a loaded gun with the safety off where a child just happens to be able to reach it is in itself suspicious anyway.
“Accidental” shootings like that of the Pennsylvania man who shot his 7–year-old son are likewise suspicious, especially when you learn that the man had just left a gun store trying to sell his guns (which must be unloaded for examination) to pay bills, his son was autistic, and he was divorced and paying an undoubtedly significant amount of support for that special-needs child. And he just happens to place his finger on the trigger while placing his handgun, which just happened to be pointed at his son, in the vehicle console—and then he drove for some distance before calling for help. Please.
Such cases are fishy. They call for criminal investigation, not the attitude that the parent should not face charges because he/she has “suffered enough”. And they make gun owners look really bad.
“People are NOT buying into MSM elite memes anymore. The MSM is in its death throes”
True, indeed. There are still an awful lot of people, though, who watch TV news and network TV programming. I make it a point, when someone asks if I saw this or that game or program, of saying “I haven’t watched TV in 15 years”.
People who have nothing else to talk about quickly give up talking to me after hearing my statement. It’s a quicker way of being rid of them than loaning them money. 😉
Bevin, your quote reminded me of the former asshole-and-murderer-in-chief’s gaffe “fool me once”
America is indeed a high school popularity contest. A contest fought with lies, gangs, appeals to our animal nature, and switchblades. A raging battle that impedes learning and keeps our generations in a permanent state of arrested development. [clip from Blackboard Jungle]
Surrendered Principle A. Tobacco is bad. The content of our television, magazines, & newspapers are third world class. Why? They’re not allowed to carry tobacco ads. The high dollar advertising is banned, so we’re left viewing the banal pablum that remains profitable. Shows about principles, like Twilight Zone, are no longer economical. Their major sponsor has been demonized. The old cigarette ads are flushed down the memory hole, and are forgotten, and new generations are left to wonder why the quality of entertainment is so low.
Surrendered Principle B. Alcohol is bad. The Great Depression occurred during the 14 years when trade of liquor was outlawed. Outlawing free trade of one good gave the state the means to stop all other types of trades in goods while looking for contraband.
More recently, an irresponsible man killed Candy Lightner’s daughter while intoxicated. Quickly the State rises up and returns us to the economy killing years of prohibition. It’s near impossible to safely profit in the libations industry in the USSA. Most liquor, beer, and other intoxicants are made abroad. Protection money is siphoned off to the Insurance Mafia, and the Prosecutor Mafia. 1% of Americans have had a career killing DUI, have been robbed by the justice[sic] system. We spend much more on our jails full of pre-crime might-be criminals, than we spend on our school systems.
Surrendered Principle C. Sex is bad. C1-Age of consent for sex. C2-Type of sex and C3-permitted sexual relation.
The principle of what is a sex crime must be determined by authorities.
If one of the parties is unable to give consent that is reasonably called a crime. Let us, the State, take it to extremes. The preference for monogamous heterosexual couples to live with like-minded folk is reasonable. We, the State, can hereby intrude into myriad places outside the Constitution.
Scandinavian adult films, sometimes paid for with state funds, showed adults as young as 11 in erotic scenes. Even now films with 14 year old adults are “grandfathered in” and allowed to exist outside the banks of the Mainstream, the Styxian river to worldwide serfdom and incarceration.
Throughout history, polygamy was the norm for men of sufficient wealth had wives who gave consent to alternate means of sexual congress to their powerful husbands. Many men could and did support a mistress. The richest kept a slave woman or two. Washington pushed through the Fugitive Slave Act in an attempt to retrieve one of his favorites, Oney Judge.
The Jefferson family, and many others, were still considered upstanding men, even though they openly kept a source of female sport and heir creation on the grounds of their plantations.
Many Muslims, Africans, Asians, all still follow the ways that have existed for millenia. Pre-pubescent brides are selected and moved to the households of their eventual Husbands. Both the “child” and her family give consent to this.
In this way, their “newness” is beyond reproach. In this way, they can assimilate and adhere to the customs of their “new family.”
Although different than are values, these are not crimes. They are traditional practices that have existed for millenia. We are free to sail by in a boat, and offer females of all ages, to come aboard and leave for lands of different opportunities and different status. We are not free to initiate force to penalize foreign cultures for convoluted doublethink “Sex Crimes.”
Surrendered Principle D: Malthoughts are bad. When the physical wars in Europe and Japan came to an end, the bloated state wished to continue to expand. Cynically, it launched an offensive on peacetime reasoning and thought.
We are in a cold war against Communist ideas, they said. We must seek out and destroy all men who hold fascist views. Destroy the East Asian type of nationalism, and heretical religion. We must fund a force of international agents who violently bring regime change, so the world will be in compliance with our beliefs and our ways of doing business.
In summary. Eric’s forecast is impeccably presented here. We are seeing landfall of an F5 Freedom-Loss-Hurricane named Sandy Hook by the National Propaganda Weather Service.
The Principle to understand here is the “worst common denominator.” The WCD is the worst losses of freedoms the commoners are ready to endure in the face of this latest school shooting.
This tragedy is being escalated into a storm thousands of miles wide. A stormfront psy-op by the CIA and the Global Elite. It will leave all kinds of freedom destruction in its wake.
Here are some of the principles you can expect to see significantly damaged during the sustained high emotional winds and sensory waves of fear, water, and surrendered personal property debris.
1 Dangerous guns are in the hands of individuals. only safer guns, or no guns should be in the hands of individuals
2 Parents need to raise responsible individuals. Single parents should be monitored and controlled. Unemployed children should be monitored and controlled.
3 A national institution has lost face. the world see us only as institutions, not individuals. To restore our public image, we must divert resources from individuals who are unseen, and redirect resource to the institutions which are seen in order to restore our reputation and good name. We need a national educational guard on campus, to protect our national educational elementary, high school, and college institutions.
4 This tragedy occurred because we didn’t know where the Sandy Hook Shooter was, and what he was doing. We need to track and monitor potentially dangerous people. Monitor potential criminals before they commit their terrible crimes.
Remember, both lethal weapons, and the roads are the nationalized property of the State. You use them insofar as they permit you the privilege to do so.
The State is a jaded and incompetent steward of property of any kind. Don’t surrender to the principle that gun control is common sense. Don’t surrender to the principle that speed limiters are common sense. You simultaneously lose rights to your own body, family, and everything else that gives you dignity and sets you apart from the other Unfree Nations of the world.
Good observations! One minor quibble:
The Great Depression occurred during the 14 years when trade of liquor was outlawed.
Prohibition was from 1919 to 1933, so it did overlap with the Depression, but most of Prohibition, and most of the Depression, occurred without the other.
Yes, one did occur, the Depression, after the other, Prohibition, was in effect. And what could one infer from the fact that WW2 dovetailed towards the end of the Depression? Looking at what is going on now I’m concerned that another setup for WW3 is being laid as we speak.
I’m not reasoning in the Keynesian/Kantian positivist ideas of historical cause, but rather in the Menger/Aristotlean principles of cause and effect. Quite possibly in a ham-handed, ill-conceived manner I admit, let me take another tack through these murky straits of history.
Prohibition proceeded the Great Depression. Let me restate my thesis in this manner, for your consideration.
Prohibition, the “noble national temperance experiment” forever altered the public’s economic and social reasoning process. It was a type of fatal mutation that even today threatens our national society.
Just as Abolitionists had provided cover for Yankee plunder of the south. Prohibitionists provided cover for Statist plunder of importers, farmers, and small businessmen nationwide. A continuous plunder, still underway today with MADD, War on Drugs, and other campaigns.
The efforts of human labor to produce goods was now hostage to the plunders in power acknowledging them to be “official goods” and thus safe from their predation and confiscation.
These morality memes of Central Planner omnipotence destroyed the very idea of “goods.” It hijacked the goods infrastructure and poisoned the mindset which formerly had allowed the common American to seek to satisfy his needs as a sentient being who listened to his own inner voice. Now the American first looked to the sanction and wrath of the tribal chiefs. A group of savages starving any chance for a free meal of plunder in the name of the common good.
Carl Menger
All things are subject to the law of cause and effect. This great principle knows no exception, and we would search in vain in the realm of experience for an example to the contrary. Human progress has no tendency to cast it in doubt, but rather the effect of confirming it and of always further widening knowledge of the scope of its validity. Its continued and growing recognition is therefore closely linked to human progress.
One’s own person, moreover, and any of its states are links in this great universal structure of relationships. It is impossible to conceive of a change of one’s person from one state to another in any way other than one subject to the law of causality. If, therefore, one passes from a state of need to a state in which the need is satisfied, sufficient causes for this change must exist.
There must be forces in operation within one’s organism that remedy the disturbed state, or there must be external things acting upon it that by their nature are capable of producing the state we
call satisfaction of our needs. Things that can be placed in a causal connection with the satisfaction of human needs we term useful things.
If, however, we both recognize this causal connection, and have the power actually to direct the useful things to the satisfaction of our needs, we call them goods.
If a thing is to become a good, or in other words, if it is to acquire goods-character, all four of the following prerequisites must be simultaneously present:
1. A human need.
2. Such properties as render the thing capable of being brought into a causal connection with the satisfaction of this need.
3. Human knowledge of this causal connection.
4. Command of the thing sufficient to direct it to the satisfaction of the need.
Only when all four of these prerequisites are present simultaneously can a thing become a good. When even one of them is absent, a thing cannot acquire goods-character, and a thing already possessing goods-character would lose it at once if but one
of the four prerequisites ceased to be present.
Hence a thing loses its goods-character: if, owing to a change in human needs, the particular needs disappear. From this it is evident that goods-character is nothing inherent in goods and not a property of goods, but merely a relationship between certain things and men, the things obviously ceasing to be goods with the disappearance of this relationship-thing is capable of satisfying,
(2) whenever the capacity of the
thing to be placed in a causal connection with the satisfaction of
human needs is lost as the result of a change in its own properties,
(3) if knowledge of the causal connection between the thing and the satisfaction of human needs disappears, or (4) if men lose command of it so completely that they can no longer apply it directly to the satisfaction of their needs and have no means of reestablishing their power to do so.
Conclusion
Prohibition destroyed the concept of goods. The depression destroyed the concept of individual economic cooperation absent the state. The world wars destroyed the primacy of the individual over the forced groupings of the state.
Each historical tragedy has been distorted and twisted to bring us to the tangled mass of State Slavery we endure today. To discourage real goods and replace them with illusory, unreal goods we’ve been tricked into thinking are the real authentic goods.
Nice write-up. It really helps put into perspective just how screwed we all are.
Gubment skools, academia, the MSM, frankenfoods, and idiot box flicker rates have produced a weapons grade idiocy across amerika. Now this mass of morons will deliver themselves to their own destruction via “democracy”.
This vast population of sheeple will gladly vote to disarm themselves, thereby giving the small pack of wolfs the sole power to decide what is for dinner.
The only hope for those of us without gubment-issued brain damage is for us to cull ourselves away from this incurably diseased herd of dolts.
Secession or folly.
In between all the advances in self parking and braking technology and that self-driving google piece of shit they’re testing, we’re already on the way to not being allowed to drive cars. Soon we’ll all merely be passengers and our best friend will be siri who will report all our thoughts back to the pre-crime police.
Let me off this planet…I’ve had enough now.
Agreed, Turd –
There must be some kind of way out of here…
Said the joker to the thief…
All kidding aside, this is what these statists want and they don’t care what they surrender to get it.
If it even saves 1 life you know, as if that’s an accurate way to measure the effectiveness of these dictates.
The “if only one life is saved” idea is the noose around “their” neck:
It’s worth it to have every single able bodied and willing grown up on the planet armed and trained even “if only one life is saved” by the defensive use of that arm.
Exactly.
Isn’t the abolition of all gun laws worth it if we can prevent just one young woman from being raped?
Dear Rusty,
That is exactly the right way to counter statist sophistry!
Turn their “logic” back on them.
Way to go.
This is my own approach too.
One of the great things about this approach, is that one does not need to remember a lot of detailed empirical data.
One need only apply a priori logic. One need only look at their “argument,” mull it over, and turn their own “logic” against them.
Turd, I believe you’re right. It will (at least initially) be like the scene in the movie “I, Robot” where Detective Spooner takes manual control of the car and Dr. Calvin practically comes unglued when she sees he’s actually “driving.” At first you will have the option for manual control; but that option will slowly be removed. Oh you’d probably still have a “manual” option, but it would be limited; much like “limp home mode” on some ECU equipped vehicles.
“Auto-drive” will probably appear first as an option for congested urban areas where it’s “unsafe” for humans to drive manually. Gradually all cars will have this feature, much like automatics have supplanted manual transmssions. There are many folks right now that can’t drive a stick shift. Soon there may be plenty of folks that can’t drive at all.
Fast forward a few years and try to imagine the shocked looks on the faces of the sheeple if someone like Eric or me were to slalom through their automated traffic on an unlicensed 2 stroke crotch rocket? If it does come to this, I may have to try that just for fun. I can hear Clover sputtering angrily now: “C-C-Call in a drone strike on him! N-Now!”
I’ve mentioned around here before, in most of the world automatics have not supplanted manual transmissions.
I understand that P.M. and agree. Trouble is, I live here in Amerika, home of the fee and land of the slave; not the rest of world. Here we have altogether too many folks that can’t drive a car with a manual transmission or even change their own oil. Sadly, many of the folks I’ve met in this sad condition have college degrees too; even doctorates. It’s a pathetic state of affairs. So, in many ways I think Europe is more “mature” than “the states.” But then again we didn’t succumb to the Euro. We have had our own brand of worthless national fiat currency for nearly one hundred years now, thank you very much. 😉
I’m of German descent and my blood relatives in the Vaterland are your typical “good German” in that unless you’ve been trained in that particular vocation, that being mechanics, you have no business changing oil or repairing your car. Same in Japan for many. It’s the Prussian system made flesh.
Here we have altogether too many folks that can’t drive a car with a manual transmission or even change their own oil.
And who resolutely REFUSE to learn to do so. I would love to be able to rent a manual transmission car when I travel on business (which, unfortunately, I do with great frequency). Unfortunately, here in Amerika, that’s all but impossible to do anymore. I don’t know of a single rental car company that even offers MT as an option. Apparently “liability” (i.e., having to engage in preventive babysitting of millions of brainless boobs who never learned to drive properly in the first place) makes doing so almost impossible.
AFAIK, many European countries still REQUIRE prospective drivers to learn to drive a stick before getting a license. IIRC, Germany used to require that the road test be taken on an MT car (might be wrong on this one).
Actually more automatics are now starting to come with sports shifting.
Gil the operative word in your post is “automatics.” What does that have to do with having the coordination and skill it takes to operate a clutch and a shifter?
Do elaborate Boothe.
Submitted for your approval and enjoyment:
Machine:
1969 Dodge Super-Bee 383-Magnum 4-Barrel 4-Speed Posi-Trac
Music:
Rush’s Red Barchetta.
Video:
.
I feel exactly this way every time I peel the cover off my bright orange 455 Trans-Am!
John & Dagney Galt,
Great video to go with an excellent song.
Thanks. 🙂
It’s not stupidity, Eric. It’s Orwellian doublethink.
Somehow comparing high capacity assault weapons that have slaughtered 6 year old kids and fast car doesn’t seem relevant. Obviously there needs to some restrictions on certain weapons that are available to the general public, we don’t need to be armed like a navy seal to stop an intruder in our homes.
@Brian:
You’re missing the entire point of the 2nd amendment–what if it IS a navy seal invading your home?
And it is precisely then that the 2A comes into its own; the founders understood the final bulwark against tyranny was superior firepower.
Millions of competent gun owners in America who own effective battle rifles stand in the way of the tyrants’ plans.
It may not be wholly obvious yet. But look at history! Concentration camps, re-education centers, forced labor brigades…250 million killed outside war. The psychopaths who infiltrate and occupy all government eventually LIKE killing. It’s not just a means to an end; it’s FUN.
Clovers can’t believe such monsters exist; can’t believe they lust to dominate and kill; and absolutely will not believe “their” government…is a psychopath.
You’d probably be the first to get gassed rather than be some sort of “Braveheart” leader.
Oh…I must have been mistaken; aren’t you the pussy who lives in the pussified country that recently disarmed its citizens?
So spare your psychological projections. I’m an adopted Texan, sprung from Afrikaanse Boer stock that fought off the English against 10:1 odds in South Africa*.
Yesterday I shot a face-sized group with iron sights at 100 yards.
With the highly effective battle rifles I’ve retained the right to keep.
In short, fuck off.
* Until the English–the same stock now attempting global domination–resorted to starving and killing the women and children in concentration camps. The same stock YOU come from, penal colonist.
31 Concentration Camps of the Boers
http://www.boer.co.za/boerwar/hellkamp.htm
Bugger Off All You Zeuros and yer European/Non-European Hogslop
http://www.youtu.be/wOtLbwjKhOg
Dear meth,
Gil wrote:
“You’d probably be the first to get gassed rather than be some sort of “Braveheart” leader.”
That makes Gil’s allegiances pretty clear I’d say.
People like Gil were the ones who played “These boots are made for walking” at Waco.
Dear Bevin,
We are the few, Gil is the many. Since there are more of him than us, his monotone mainstream Hegellian Dialectics carry more weight than our minority claims of reason & logical argument.[attempt at dialectic sarcasm:)]
What the Heck is Dialectics You Ask?
Dialectics is a tool to understand the way things are and the way things change. Understanding dialectics is as easy as 1 – 2 – 3.
One-Every thing (every object and every process) is made of opposing forces/opposing sides.
Two-Gradual changes lead to turning points, where one opposite overcomes the other.
Three-Change moves in spirals, not circles.
The three laws of dialectics were discovered by Frederick Engels, writing in the 1870s in his book Dialectics of Nature. Engels believed that dialectics was “A very simple process which is taking place everywhere and every day, which any child can understand”.
Engels, drawing from the philosopher, Hegel, called this law the “interpenetration of opposites”; Hegel often referred to it as the “unity of opposites.”
It may sound contradictory, but it is easy to understand. It’s like the saying, “It takes two to tango.” There is no game if one side quits. There is no atom if the electrons fly away. The whole needs all of its parts to be a whole. Here is a scientific explanation:
The Dialectics of Water
“If we heat the ice cube on the stove, first it melts and turns into water; that is, it undergoes a phase transition. [or turning point] Now let us heat the water until it boils. It then undergoes another phase transition and turns into steam. Now continue to heat the steam to enormous temperatures. Eventually, the water molecules break up. The energy of the molecules exceeds the binding energy of the molecules, which are ripped apart into elemental hydrogen and oxygen gas.
“Now we continue to heat it past 3,000 degrees K, until the atoms of hydrogen and oxygen are ripped apart. The electrons are pulled from the nucleus, and we now have a plasma (an ionized gas), often called the fourth state of matter (after gases, liquids, and solids). Although a plasma is not part of common experience, we can see it every time we look at the sun. In fact, plasma is the most common state of matter in the universe.
“Now continue to heat the plasma on the stove to 1 billion degrees K, until the nuclei of hydrogen an oxygen are ripped apart, and we have a “gas” of individual neutrons and protons, similar to the interior of a neutron star.
“If we heat the gas of nucleons even further to 10 trillion degrees K, these subatomic particles will turn into disassociated quarks. We will now have a gas of quarks and leptons (the electrons and neutrinos).
“If we heat this gas to 1 quadrillion degrees K, the electromagnetic force and the weak force will become united. The symmetry SU(2) x U(1) will emerge at this temperature. At 1028 degrees K, the electroweak and strong forces become united, and the GIT symmetries [SU(5),O(10), or E(6)] appear.
“Finally at a scorching 1032 degrees K, gravity unites with the Grand Unified Theory force, and all the symmetries of the ten-dimensional superstring appear. We now have a gas of superstrings. At that point, so much energy will have gone into the pressure cooker that the geometry of space-time may very well begin to distort, and the dimensionality of space-time may change. The space around our kitchen may very well become unstable, a rip may form in the fabric of space, and a wormhole may appear in the kitchen. At this point, it may be advisable to leave the kitchen.”
Here’s a challenge–Can you think of anything that isn’t made of opposites?
1. The 2nd amendment was written shortly after a revolution against the most powerful government in the world. The writers meant for us to have military style weapons. In 1789 that was a flintlock. In 1898 when it was the militias that responded to the call for men (remember the rough riders?) it was a bolt action rifle. In 2013 that will be a military style semi or full auto rifle with large capacity magazines
2. 10 USC CHAPTER 13 THE MILITIA
Sec. 311. Militia: composition and classes
a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age, and except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
b. the classes of the militia are –
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
3. Should, G*d forbid, the necessity arise for you to fufill your militia duty, what do you intend to use.
Exactly right, Cactusjack.
The 2nd Amendment was written by men who had just used “state of the art” weapons to defend themselves AGAINST the government.
Moreover, since government has no innate rights or powers, only those that have been delegated to them, then they have no right to weapons (or anything else) that they would deny to me or any of their employers. That includes fully automatic firearms, flame-throwing tanks, and nukes. On the latter, I grant that I have no right to them, therefore I cannot delegate that right to the government that claims to represent me.
No they weren’t, they were there to help the government in times of rebellion and insurrection.
Brian,
First, it wasn’t “assault weapons” that slaughtered six-year-old kids. It was an evil man who did so – using (wait for it, now) a semi-automatic rifle.
“… we don’t need.”
Who’s “we,” Brian? Don’t presume to speak for me. Much less presume to take away my rights based on your arbitrary ideas about what I “need.”
Which, by the way, was the whole point of the article – which you apparently missed.
“Need” has nothing to do with it – in a free society. The only relevant consideration is – or ought to be – has this particular person caused someone harm?
If he hasn’t, leave him alone.
Stop insisting that people who haven’t done a god-damned thing be held accountable – restricted, limited, controlled – because of the actions of a handful of criminals.
Restrict, limit and control them to your hearts content.
Ok?
Eric, haven’t you heard? They took the bushmaster off the trunk of the car, after all of the shooting was over.
I did hear – that and several other versions, too. It’s hard to know what’s what.
I do think it’s not coincidence that several similar events have occurred recently. TPTB are capable of anything. We know for a fact that they have in the past used drugs to manipulate people (MK-Ultra) so it’s not “conspiracy-mongering” to suspect they may be doing so again. We know for a fact they at least considered killing innocent citizens to advance an agenda (Operation Northwoods), so it’s not beyond reason to imagine they may actually have done so.
Here we go again..
“William Spengler, 62, used a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle, the same kind of weapon used in the assault on Sandy Hook Elementary School, Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering said.”
@dom:
Therefore, all who own a Bushmaster are guilty.
Because Bushmasters kill people.
I’m tempted to go buy another just to support the company.
@methylamine
That is correct! Even though all ARs are pretty much EXACTLY the same thing other than the company logo engraved, Bushmaster are the worse. Media clowns! On a side note I drove to work today (40 miles one way) just to discover they are closing early, so I turned around and drove back home. I fought the traction control/abs the entire way home. My car yelling (beeping) at me all the while. Hate modern cars!
Rapper Lil Flip Busted With Bushmaster AR-15 Assault Rifle
OMG I thought the “we” business was put to rest months ago!
What the hell does this mean?
“Obviously there needs to be some restrictions on certain weapons..”
Dear dom,
Clover was out to lunch and didn’t get the memo.
Executive Summary:
Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
Too cliched for you clover?
Too bad. Cliches are cliches because they’re true.
No gun has ever killed any human being. No human being has ever been killed by any gun.
Gee, Bevin, strange how the Chinese fellow couldn’t manage to get any kills with stabbing spree.
Clover,
The bottom line here is you believe it’s acceptable to limit/control what “Smith” may do on the basis of what “Jones” has done. It’s not about guns. It’s not about their effectiveness as instruments of causing harm. It has been shown – objectively, factually – that harm can be caused in many ways. Yet you and yours fixate on guns. And not merely guns, Clover. But guns in the hands of private citizens. You have no issue with guns when they are possessed by what you regard as “lawful authority.” That is, by the people in costumes who may threaten and kill under color of law. The people, Clover, who have used guns to kill literally millions of people. A death toll orders of magnitude beyond all the citizen shootings that have ever occurred all together.
But that’s ok with you, because those deaths are “different.” When costumed agents of the state use guns to commit murder – including mass murder – you place that in a separate category of human events. Yet – according to your own Cloveritic logic – if “guns kill,” then they have “killed” with awesome effectiveness in the hands of government. Government, therefore, must be disarmed at once!
But such as you will never – ever – urge such a thing. Because you are not capable of the intellectual consistency or honesty to pursue such a course.
The awful truth is you simply want to control others.
And that, Clover, is why you support “gun control.”
Dear Gil,
Thanks for confirming the truth of what I said, namely that objects do not kill people. People kill people
Knives don’t kill people. People kill people.
No knife has ever killed any human being. No human being has ever been killed by any knife.
Hope you got that.
Dear dom,
Not sure if this has been referenced yet. If it has, forgive me.
School Obama’s Daughters Attend Has 11 Armed Guards
by AWR Hawkins
24 Dec 2012
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/12/23/School-Obama-s-Daughters-Attend-Has-11-Armed-Guards-Not-Counting-Secret-Service
Some interesting news has broken in the wake of the latest push for gun control by President Obama and Senate Democrats: Obama sends his kids to a school where armed guards are used as a matter of fact.
The school, Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, has 11 security officers and is seeking to hire a new police officer as we speak.
If you dismiss this by saying, “Of course they have armed guards — they get Secret Service protection,” then you’ve missed the larger point.
The larger point is that this is standard operating procedure for the school, period. And this is the reason people like NBC’s David Gregory send their kids to Sidwell, they know their kids will be protected from the carnage that befell kids at a school where armed guards weren’t used (and weren’t even allowed).
Shame on President Obama for seeking more gun control and for trying to prevent the parents of other school children from doing what he has clearly done for his own. His children sit under the protection guns afford, while the children of regular Americans are sacrificed.
The Seven Commandments are reduced to a single phrase: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.
Gee, people want to control dangerous implements? Who knew? Libertarians know guns are weight-for-weight one of the best weapons for the individual. Hence they’re more for guns than grenade and bazookas even they ought part of a militia arsenal.
Hate to interrupt your idiocy Brian but no weapon, assault or otherwise, has ever killed anyone. Not one person has ever been killed by a gun. Know why? Because guns are inanimate objects. Can you say, “inanimate object”? Go on, at least try…
Why is that simple fact so vehemently denied by so many people? Because to recognize it would mean they would have to admit that there is evil in the world. Confronting evil takes more courage and fortitude than does blaming a tool. Cowards these people are.
And – god I am so tired of having to explain this to the dolts of the world – a semi-auto rifle is NOT an assault rifle! An assault rifle is one which can be switched from semi-auto to either 3 round burst or full auto. These weapons are already banned Brian.
And as meth already wisely noted, the second amendment is indeed about stopping a gubment assault on us by SEALs or any other military forces.
Want another, and more likely to happen, scenario for which we citizens need high capacity weapons? Ask the Koreans who successfully defended themselves, their families, and their businesses from the hordes of savage rioters during the Rodney King riots.
Forcing a citizen to confront a vicious mob with a musket is not “reasonable”. Yet that mob does still need to be confronted.
Just wait till the coming Trayvon Martin riots this summer.
Brian, shouldn’t I have that choice? Im not a felon. im not under the care of a psychiatrist. If not, why not? Perhaps you should study a bit of history before deciding what we need. Besides, more children are killed in cars than mass murder. If you really cared for the children, you would be espousing your support on banning cars. And this gets into the crux. More kids were murdered by governments than by armed citizens. What, pol pot just killed adults? Hitler only killed defenseless adults? Stalin, Che, Castro. You aren’t clamp ring to take high capacity mags from soldiers and cops? You must be a monster. Obama has killed hundreds of innocent kids since he became president, are you against him, or perhaps you’d like to limit what he can use? Maybe just allow him to kill kids with bullets, no more hellfire missiles? The individual is responsible for committing these heinous acts, not the inanimate object. Those directly responsible, the criminal, unsupervising psychologist who isn’t monitoring medication, idiot who left a loaded gun lying around for a kid to find, these are who,you should spend your energy on limiting.
The 2nd amendment is NOT about self defense. It was established to affirm the right of every individual to defend himself/herself from a tyrannical government.
Hunting and self defense are secondary(however important)rights.
Dear tony,
The distinction you make is important. Very important. Glad you raised it.
Some gun owners I have talked to in the past, dismiss the possibility that civilians may actually need to defend themselves against “their government.”
They thought that even raising the possibility discredited gun owners, and played into MSM media defamation of them as conspiracy nuts.
They thought it was “unthinkable.” Literally. Something one must not think about.
I doubt anyone commenting here thinks that way of course. I think they were addressing the self defense issue merely in response to controversy over violent crime.
I would guess most people commenting here suspect a government false flag operation similar to Eric Holder’s Fast and Furious.
I know I do.
Gil, the collective “militia” is merely less likely to be used in the same fashion as a standing army (i.e. mercenaries) historically has been and is currently being used: foreign imperialistic adventure. The fact that “the militia” have been called up against “the people” in the past has nothing to do with the real purpose for our Second Amendment which is to hold the government in awe of the people in much the same way that nuclear weapons hold individual governments in awe of each other. The idea being that when government actors break the law, the individual as well as the collective militia can effectively fight back.
The militia isn’t called up to defend an individual; it is up to the individual to defend himself from whomsoever violates his rights even if it is a government employess. This is the reason Indiana passed Senate Bill 1 (http://legiscan.com/IN/bill/SB0001/2012). This is established law dating all the way back to the Magna Carta. In order to be able to defend oneself from unlawful use of force, one must possess the means to do so. You’ve made it clear in the past that you don’t like that fact Gil. Are you a government employee that takes pleasure in riding roughshod over your fellow countrymen with impunity? Does the fact that we still remain armed in the U.S. chap your Aussie hide Gil? Pray tell us Gil: What do you do for a living?
In an American context, actions against labor unions and worker strikes starting in the late 19th Century and continuing into the 20th were most commonly carried out not by state militias, but by private mercenaries such as Pinkerton security goons hired by the employers. These hired guns were able to kill and hurt defenseless workers with much more impunity than would a state militia.
Boothe: less likely? How many times the army been called up to suppress people? In days of Rome a general and his army might well oust an incompetent emperor and thus serve as a check of power in Rome.
On the other hand, A1S8 of the Constitution make it quite clear that being called up against the people is most definitely one of their duties.
Ekrampitzjr: so you prove private enforcement agencies are probably worse than militias and armies? Certainly the militia had no qualms about attacking people during the Ludlow Strike.
Clover,
The facts in re the 2A have been carefully explained to you by several people here on numerous occasions. The fact that you ignore these facts (mark that – ignore facts – not disagree with a debatable opinion expressed by someone) reveals you to be either a troll or someone not very bright. Perhaps both.
For the final time:
There can be no debate about the 2A’s formal acknowledgment of the private individual’s right to possess arms.
To deny this, one must explain why there were no restrictions whatever placed upon the ownership/possession of any type of firearm by any citizen at the time of the 2A’s ratification and for decades thereafter. If the 2A was meant to “regulate” firearms in the modern sense of the term – that is, to impose restrictions and controls – one must explain why there were no such restrictions or controls subsequent to the 2As ratification. Firearms in private hands were ubiquitous; there were no “gun control” laws. People carried and kept handguns and rifles as a matter of routine, openly and concealed – in public and private. There was no permission slip required.
Facts.
You Clovers ignore this – for all the obvious reasons – and harp on “well-regulated” – counting on the ignorance of your audience, which you hope will accept the modern meaning of the term rather than what it meant in the 18th century when the 2A was written.
In the 18th century, Clover, “well-regulated” meant nothing more than taking care of your weapon and becoming proficient with it. That’s all. It did not mean “gun free zones,” restrictions on type of firearm, requirements that people show a “reason” or a “need” to possess a gun…
Facts, Clover.
As opposed to oily sleight-of-hand, your specialty.
Just as “militia” meant nothing more than able-bodied adult men – private citizens – capable of coming to the defense of the community or nation in the event of a crisis. It did not mean members of a standing army, or some special (government-approved) cadre of “troops.”
The entire Bill of Rights is a formal codification of individual rights – against government usurpation of those rights.
And this is why you and your fellow Clovers despise it so. Because you despise the very idea of the individual’s rights. Because you see yourselves as smarter, better-informed. The idiot masses (not you, of course) cannot be trusted – but you can be. Underneath the surface of all your blather is this sick contempt for other people – hand in glove with an even sicker urge to control them.
I am convinced you are not interested in a legitimate debate. It would be one thing if you said: Well, I agree the 2A was meant originally to enshrine an individual’s right to possess guns – but times have changed and perhaps the law should be altered accordingly.
We could discuss that. But your purpose isn’t discussion. It’s obfuscation – and provocation.
I suspect you come here to deliberately disrupt. To annoy people – and so (hopefully, from the point of view of whomever you are working for) exhaust people and so stifle intelligent discussion of this issue.
Well, Clover, I won’t have it.
When you ignore factual posts and then post regurgitated non sequiturs whose sole purpose is to take up space and waste people’s time, such posts will just be deleted before they see the light of day here.
I’m through with you, Clover.
Dear Boothe,
Does the fact that we still remain armed in the U.S. chap your Aussie hide Gil? Pray tell us Gil: What do you do for a living?
Did you notice that Gil shined on the part about telling us what he does for a buck?
Dear ekrampitzjr,
Actually, early on the Pinkertons were subcontracted by the DOJ to form an entity dedicated to “the detection and prosecution of those guilty of violating federal law.”
The Pinkertons and the now renamed Blackwater were hardly what market anarchists have in mind when they advocate about PDAs (Private Defense Agencies.”
They were just the opposite. They were private hitmen hired by “The Government.”
Sort of like when the Mafia hires “outside muscle” to do a hit instead of handling the matter in house.
As champions of the 2nd Amendment know, the meaning of the term “militia” has been badly twisted by gun grabbers.
Its meaning is now far too ambiguous to be useful in a debate — unless what it denotes is defined in advance.
Wiki has nine, count ’em, nine, different definitions of the term “militia.”
When libertarians say “militia,” especially re: 2A, they mean private citizens who form a civilian defense force of their own volition in times of need.
They most emphatically do not mean the National Guard, which is a top down gubmint entity.
Gil is engaging in disingenuous sophistry by playing on this semantic confusion.
This site
http://www.guncite.com/gc2ndmea.html
is an excellent resource for 2A historical information.
I’ve used it often in the past.
It covers the precise intent of the Second Amendment in painstaking detail.
For example, it explains how “well regulated” militia, meant a “smoothly functioning” militia.
The term “regulated” in this context did not mean “government regulations.”
On 30.12.12 at 4.42 p.m., Bevin wrote (and others wrote similar things, like Eric):-
Those are both wrong. More importantly, “well regulated” militia did not mean “smoothly functioning” militia.
You can get a better idea by looking at the technical terms in the church, “secular clergy” and “regular clergy”. “Regular” and “regulated” mean “functioning under a set of rules”, like monks in a monastery – or soldiers in a regulated militia. It says nothing about those rules coming from the government (in monasteries they usually don’t), and nothing (so far) about smooth function; a regulated militia could have (say) rules setting up ranks for its members but still be as shambolic as the Keystone Kops.
But you would expect rules to help function, or they would not have been put in by anyone sensible. A well regulated militia would be one in which the rules did just that. But you could have a completely informal militia with no rules but just a common understanding of what worked, and it would still function smoothly; the old Scottish custom of summoning the clans, a “tumult among the Gauls” as the Romans put it, worked very well.
So, a well regulated militia would function smoothly, but only as a consequence; that’s not what it means. There are other things that function smoothly and don’t qualify, so although you could use that as part of a test there would have to be rules as well – just knowing what to do isn’t enough, you do have to be subordinate to a structured system of rules to qualify, and those have to work, too. But absolutely nothing intrinsic requires the rules to come from a government, any more than the rules for monasteries (there is another technicality too: where the rules come from isn’t the same question as who enforces them and how, but let’s not go there).
Morning, PM –
The problem with this line of reasoning remains: Why is it that there were no legal restrictions placed upon the keeping and bearing (that is, carrying) of arms by citizens during the early years of the American republic and for many decades thereafter? It is a fact that during that era, any adult male citizen (which included teenage boys) could – and did – openly possess handguns and rifles, in private and public – without requiring permission and without any legal restrictions. How does that fact square with the notion that the 2A’s use of the phrase, “well-regulated” meant regulated in the modern sense, i.e., restricted or under the control/authority of the state (or only with the permission of the state)?
Clearly, the intent was not “regulation” in the way we understand it today.
Moreover, it doesn’t parse to imply or claim that the 2A – unique among the Bill of Rights – does not enshrine an individual right.
You’re obviously an intelligent and well-read man. Do you see it as even slightly plausible that the individual state delegations to the constitutional convention would have countenanced a document restricting the natural right of citizens to keep and bear arms – having just concluded a long and bloody war that was ignited when government goons attempted to confiscate the colonists’ weapons?
It is simply not possible to intelligently claim that the intent of the 2A was to restrict the private citizens’ legal right to keep/bear arms. Rather, its obvious intent was to make explicit the natural right to do so.
PM wrote:
Those are both wrong. More importantly, “well regulated” militia did not mean “smoothly functioning” militia.
PM is clearly mistaken. Badly mistaken.
If anyone is in doubt about this, click on the link to Guncite.
The webpage goes into painstaking detail about the 18th century use of the term “well-regulated.”
Read it and you will have no doubt about the correct interpretation of the expression.
Also, as I mention previously, the real issue is Natural Rights, not “Constitutional Rights.”
Constitutional Rights are merely affirmations of our Natural Rights. They do not determine what our rights are. They merely express approval of our rights.
If they fail to express approval of our Natural Rights, then they are wrong and should be ignored.
Well, Eric has misunderstood what I was trying to bring out – which just means that I didn’t bring it out clearly enough – and Bevin has simply got it wrong. So let me show the error in the latter and then try to clarify what I was really stating.
Bevin, I know what that site asserted; I followed the link and read it before commenting. Bluntly, it is wrong. Read it and believe, and you will indeed come away with your views. Only, “it ain’t what you don’t know that’ll get you into trouble, but what you do know that ain’t so”. That’s why I brought out that stuff about the clergy, to show an independent use of the idea. For instance, many monasteries follow the “Rule of [Saint] Benedict”, which makes them regular. But it’s not the only monastic rule in use. Likewise, a regulated militia is one that has and follows regulations – just as there are army regulations, e.g. (these days) Queen’s Regulations apply in the British Army (for fun, look up QR989, or do I mean 898?). Well, even before 1776 there had been militia bodies; before he became a historian, Edward Gibbon was in officer in one in Hampshire, in England – and those were under regulations too, even though they weren’t regular [sic] soldiers under army regulations. There, it is a technical term – and, in a legal document like the U.S. Constitution, you can be sure that terms are always meant in a technical way, even if they rest on ordinary usage. If nothing else, they are always taken as precisely as possible. So in what I have just told you you have precedent to see what was really meant at the time; if you don’t believe me, go and research it for yourself, but don’t simply stop on a rubbish authority like that one you linked that is itself merely asserting this particular point without even my level of backing – it will just give you confirmation bias. Any other misunderstandings may be of the same sort as Eric’s, so read on.
Eric, nothing you state is wrong in itself, only you seem to think I was arguing that that document was talking about government regulation. No, and I thought I had made that clear. That document is acknowledging that there is a public interest in there being a “well regulated militia”, as backing material to support what it is putting forward: the right of the people to bear arms – jointly or severally. Those are technical terms too, that you can look up if you like; they mean you can have your own arms as an individual, or you can organise with others to form an armed group – after all, the need for that could come up. If you do organise like that, and you put together a set of rules for it and you run everything well (in the engineering sense, not the ethical sense), you get what they were describing and thought would be nice to have: a well regulated militia. Without rules, experience suggests that you may get problems (though Celtic history shows that that isn’t certain). But, since you can’t do that without coming together with the tools for the job – weaponry – it necessarily follows that you have to be able to get those arms off your own bat, before you come together, or else at some point you have an unarmed group in one place waiting for arms. In the trade, they call those “victims” (as my family nearly was, as part of the white community in Luluabourg in 1960 – my father had to borrow a pistol to take part in the defence against the mutinying Force Publique, who were the official defenders of law and order). So that document specifies the individual right involved, even though it also describes a larger public benefit that that facilitates, as backing for it.
Nowhere in all that is there anything about the government organising, regulating or setting up such militias. Intrinsically, that would be self-defeating for anything but government-approved purposes, though it would make a great deal of engineering-type sense to adopt and adapt actual army regulations as a model since – as Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle point out in The Mote in God’s Eye – doing things by the book is mostly using a “book” of crazy tricks that have worked in the past, so you get to learn from other people’s mistakes and don’t have to make them all over again yourself. This is the part I mentioned at the end of my last comment, that there is a difference between where the rules came from and who enforces them; these days, it isn’t Saint Benedict who enforces the Benedictine Rule in monasteries that follow it – and, even if you crib from government regulations for convenience, you don’t have to and they can’t and shouldn’t make you, nor should they have anything to do with enforcement either.
By the way, it isn’t morning, it’s just on midnight (here). So Happy New Year, whether you like it or not. Rats, I’ll have to get a new calendar.
@Gil – “Boothe: less likely? How many times the army been called up to suppress people? In days of Rome a general and his army might well oust an incompetent emperor…” Gil, do your homework. You bring up Rome in general. Let’s look at Justinian in particular. He not only cultivated a relationship with the Huns, but allowed them to raid, pillage, plunder and take Roman farmers captive. He then prevented his generals from doing their duty in protecting Roman life, limb and property.
The Roman farmers organized their own militia, pursued the Huns, killed some of them and took horses laden with spoils as compensation. What did Justinian do? Why he labeled the farmers terrorists and sent his agents to beat and torture them, recover the Huns’ horses and take the farmers’ property. So the Roman government did not secure the citizens’ lives, limbs and property as it was charged to do.
Instead Roman government thugs punished those that would dare form a militia and seek true justice. Oh and Justinian made sure they wouldn’t be able to do it again or mount a successful uprising with Title XIV of the Eighty-Fifth New Constitution, Concerning Arms (http://www.constitution.org/sps/sps16.htm). Just do a search on the page for “Concerning Arms” Gil and you will read the Holy Roman emperor’s version of “gun control.” Go learn something Gil and in the future start your brain before engaging the keyboard.
First of all, nice job beautifully making the author’s point.
ie:
Do we really need to have a car available to the general public that can go over 55mph? That is dangerous.
Do we really need the general public to be able to put 2 skis on their feet and slide down a snow covered mountain? That is dangerous.
Do we really want the general public (including minors) to be able to purchase gasoline, diesel fuel, and kerosene? That is extremely dangerous.
Do we really want to pipe 120 volts of deadly electricity into the general public’s homes?
What about natural gas or fuel oil? Hell, those things could blow up an entire neighborhood.
Do we really need to allow the general public to purchase a 33.6 megapixel digital camera with a 64 gigabyte memory card? Heck, it could be used to produce child pornography, and lots of it. That is dangerous. Don’t you care about children?
Would you somehow feel more at ease if a murderer killed 50 people with one 50 round magazine versus the same 50 with five 10 round magazines?
Do you realize these “innovations” which so frighten you were all developed in the early and mid 20th century? You might as well be opposed to jet engines or RADAR.
The naiveté, arrogance, and vacuousness of the anti-gun crowd is simply stunning. It’s the complete abscence of conceptual thought.
“ME SCARED AND WANT THIS, NOW!!!”
Cops routinely invade the wrong home on SWAT raids and kill innocents. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to arm myself and KILL them for trying to kill me? Or why not disarm the cops first and they lead by example?
Dear MoT,
Right. Cops also routinely spray bullets everywhere.
Then when civilians attempt to record these “public serpents'” misdeeds, they are beaten to a pulp.
One day, in the very, very near future (i.e., this year sometime, conceivably within the next few weeks), a band of government-costumed thugs is going to pick the WRONG neighborhood in which to run roughshod over the citizenry. By “neighborhood” I mean that they’re going to pick a house that not only is bristling with weapons of all sorts, weapons that the residents will not think twice about using in their own defense, but will have neighbors similarly well armed and ready to back their neighbors up. The result will be a “pig roast” on a scale never before seen in Amerika. Such an incident just might represent the proverbial “tipping point” that kicks off a full-scale civil insurrection.
Ugliness and slaughter on an unimaginable scale to result? Surely. But, as the old expression goes, people who realize they have nothing left to lose usually do.
Bevin, of course that old dead horse gets flogged time and again with the typical retort “Departmental guidelines, yada, yada, yada….” Well MY departmental guidelines tells me to kill the cop, or whomever, who violates my castle guns ablazin. Now how do their “guidelines” jibe with that? Obviously YOU have no right, in their eyes, to self defense. That’s called tyranny and no amount of “training” changes that unless the one being trained has an epiphany and decides the decent thing is to quit.
Yes MoT you’re dead on. The implication here is that not only do you not dare challenge these modern Samurai wannabe’s even in legitimate defense of your own life and limb, you’d better not make the mistake of letting their shadow fall on you when you are kneeling in supplication before them. You’re also right in your assessment of “good” cops. They usually quit or at least never make it past patrol officer in their careers.
I knew a State Trooper that was so principled he made his own wife go to court, face the judge and pay a speeding ticket she expected him to “fix” (she divorced him shortly after that). He wouldn’t do it because in his mind she was no different than the rest of us and he expected her to follow the same rules. I asked him one time if they had a ticket quota. He said no, but they were encouraged to write as many tickets as they wanted to (wink-wink). He told they did have a list of troopers up on the bulletin board with the number of tickets each had written. He said the “over-achievers” got promoted. Imagine that. After 25 years he still had never received a promotion. Most cops would have given up a long time before that.
Which is why, in no small part, we are stuck with the current lousy crop of “social janitors” and “revenue collectors.” I just hope that more states will follow Indiana’s lead and make it plain to the thug-scrum that invading an innocent’s home wrongfully may well result in their untimely demise. That’s the real reason for the 2nd Amendment and they know it.
Dear Brian,
Actually, the analogy between high-capacity firearms and high-performance automobiles is perfect.
Say an irresponsible spoiled playboy with more money than sense, who owns an Ferrari F12berlinetta, runs over a bunch of school kids in a school zone. Do “we” make it illegal for everyone to own an Ferrari F12berlinetta?
Say a disgruntled postal worker who owns a Bushmaster AR-15 murders his former co-workers at the local Post Office. Do “we” make it illegal for everyone to own a Bushmaster AR-15?
Neither the Ferrari F12berlinetta nor the Bushmaster AR-15 had anything to do with the deaths.
The irresponsible playboy and the disgruntled postal worker were the culprits. They were the problem. Not the car or the gun.
Depriving the thousands or millions of other people who own these cars or these guns will do nothing to prevent such incidents.
Sad to say, I know from past experience that laying out the clear logic of the situation will not make you budge.
That’s because a person cannot be reasoned out of a position he was not reasoned into in the first place.
But it is relevant. How many children die in fatal car wrecks each year? Howe many because of speeders, drunk drivers, reckless drivers, unsafely maintained cars, etc.? You could argue, persuasively, that cars capable of going over certain speeds are dangerous, and that nobody NEEDS such cars, so they should be banned. But nobody makes that argument. Why not? Why not call a car with a certain amount of horsepower or without stability control, or without a speed governor, or with other dangerous features, an “assault car” and ban it for civilian ownership?
We have another problem no one ever seems to address: metal and plastic “assault chairs.” Here’s an example from back in 1992, http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1138609/index.htm
It wasn’t the fault of Allen Iverson or any of the other players in the fight at Circle Lanes in Hampton, Virginia that caused innocent bystander Barbara Steele received six stiches in her face. Not at all; it was those dreaded metal and plastic “assault chairs” available for any miscreant to pick up and start bashing with. What we need to do is ban those dreaded “assault chairs” and only let bowling allies use bean-bags and foam Futons. Next we need to look into the dangers of bowling balls and bowling pins. I’m thinking Nerf here.
I had a 1998 Ford Contour SE and it did have a speed limiter (112 MPH max.) on it, supposedly because of the limitations of the tires.
Many cars have manufacturer speed limiters due to tires or other components that the manufacturer believes could fail at higher speeds. That has to do with the engineering of the car, warranty, and liability concerns.
I watched an episode of Top Gear where they reviewed the new Nissan Skyline GTR. It had a switch that the driver could disable to turn of the control systems for traction etc.. There was a warning on the button that said everything from here forward would be recorded and the warranty voided.
Yes. I spoke to a salesman who said as much. Which begs the question of why put it on the vehicle at all?
I discovered that my mercury mountaineer had a 107mph limit when driving the autobahn with it the first time. Probably a good idea as an SUV like that isn’t suited for that sort of speed. It really got uncomfortable to drive at about 90, even with good michelins.
Except for target practice, what ever fun that may be, the purpose of a gun is to kill something. Fine for food or removing our far too many deer off the road. Not what a car is designed to do.