Vandal With a Handle

Ballroom Dancing

2006-04-16T11:14:00.000-04:00

The family and I caught Take the Lead last evening. Banderas was masterful as the quiet teacher leading wild adolescents toward civilization through ballroom dance. The film is, as might be expected, rather formulaic but it was inspiring and entertaining nonetheless. By the way, for those in the Huntington, WV area interested in ballroom dance, a new ballroom dance blog is up. Check it out.

Fred on the Persecution of Religion

2006-03-12T12:24:00.000-05:00

It is amazing how much we can learn about religion from nonadherents. Nonadherents? Listen to me. The mere use of such a word indicates how far we have come. Or descended. Once they were heretics, unbelievers, infidels, the worldly and unbelieving masses. Now we speak of nonadherents. What once was an actual stance in the world is now a simple negation. Maybe unbelief means nothing because belief does too. Fred has his commonly unsettling and enlightening thoughts here. On a somewhat related topic, he speaks of science and religion here with his thoughts made more interesting because he has no vested interest in religion and some in science.

Sandy Froman

2006-03-12T11:53:00.000-05:00

I didn't know much about Sandy Froman, the Arizona lawyer who is currently serving as president of the NRA. Via The Geek, I learned of this article about her life and perspective on several things, among them firearms and personal defense. He also has a good gun show story that tells more than you might think at first about the empowerment factor and personal confidence that accompanies firearms. I say it accompanies firearms because it does not come from them. It belongs commonly to the people who own firearms but does not come from them. As Jeff Cooper is well known to have observed, you are no more armed because you have a firearm than you are a musician because you have a piano. If you read both selections, you can contrast the helpless distress of Sandy Froman in the description of her experience with a home invader, with the quiet, let's-go-to-work confidence of the people at the gun show. One of the most memorable parts of my Gunsite training was not directly about firearms at all. It was the instruction that when evil does rear its head in a person's experience, there are two possible responses. One is surprise and denial--they say, "I can't believe this is happening to me. What can I do?" The other is confidence and awareness of empowerment--"I thought this might happen and I can do what needs to be done. "

Power in diffusion, or, A Pack, not a Herd for Techies

2005-10-13T14:29:00.000-04:00

The October 13 issue of Electronic Design features an unexpected pat on the back for the Amateur Radio Service or, as it is most commonly called, ham radio. It appears that for all the high-tech gear that modern science has produced, it mostly went offline when Katrina whacked the New Orleans area earlier this year, leaving the area without reliable communication with the rest of the world. Only amateur radio with its decentralized, localized approach was able to establish communication for emergency purposes almost immediately after the disaster. They could be called the "tech militia". Each operator operates his own equipment which he can build, maintain and operate by himself.
As old as radio itself, hams were here before radio was licensed. They were the experimenters with communication; the tinkerers; the haywire-and-high-voltage people who learned the craft when it was mostly unexplored and uncharted. Hiram Percy Maxim, the founder of the American Radio Relay League, envisioned a national network of operators to carry messages in community service. Now hams occupy spectrum virtually from dc to daylight and communicate with voice, data, and video and still maintain the same focus on community service.
It's good to see amateur radio get credit for what has always been their strength: community service in times of emergency. On a broader view we should see here another strong evidence of the powerful advantages of decentralization and individual responsibility. When the strength is at the bottom of the pyramid it's almost impossible to turn over.

Update: the ARRL has a recap of emergency operations from an in-house perspective here.

Next honorary West Virginian

2005-09-14T19:13:00.000-04:00

The Handle Institute proundly recommends Pierce Pettis for Honorary West Virginian. I understand he is from Alabama but he obviously understands the power of the Appalachian personality. Check out the words of "A Mountaineer is always Free" his collaboration with West Virginian Tim O'Brien. You can listen to a clip and buy cds here and of course here. In my opinion the time is wrong for group singing or I would want to change the state song. I have one ancestor who came to Virginia fleeing Ireland after killing his landlord with a stick and another who married a Cherokee wife and built a family in another part of Virginia now called Kentucky. The song touches the independence, tenderness and toughness of the mountain people. It might also say something about why it is so difficult to move them from their native habitat. They paid too much to get there in the first place to leave without a struggle.

Help at hand

2005-09-11T17:02:00.000-04:00

It appears that the SHTF value of firearms has demonstrated itself to Sean Penn as he works in the Katrina relief effort. The New York Post gets credit for capturing the moment and Atlas Shrugged our compliments for the link. Comments in the Atlas Shrugged post contained this gem which has the ring of authenticity although not independently confirmed:

ER: you nailed it. This reminds of the time in the early '70s (IIRC) when Dean Martin was caught at an airport with a gun. A newsbabe asked: "Mr. Martin, do you believe everyone has the right to carry a gun?"

"Of course not," he replied. "Just me." The best reply to a reporter, ever.

Without a doubt, when the forces of order are absent or busy about other things, we may wish to have at hand the means of defending ourselves. See you at the NRA meeting, Mr. Penn.

Success

2005-08-21T11:03:00.000-04:00

This blog should keep us watching for the great people we miss because we do not expect them where we find them. Samples:

What I realize now, each night as I stand behind the counter of my little shop, years later on these beautiful Summer nights, is that I was dealing with one of the one people in about ten thousand that I would actually consider sane. He had figured out a truth so profoundly obvious and yet so painful for the rest of our vain, silly selves to accept: we are not truly defined by the things that we allow ourselves to be defined by. We are not our jobs, we are not our clothes, we are not our cars, we are not the opinions of others, or even our own opinions of ourselves. These things are ephemeral and shifting, chess pawns to be traded and sacrificed before the king that is the higher Self. These things do not have the power to make or break our happiness any more than we allow them to do so. They are labels which we were taught to adhere to early in our lives, in order to make us obedient and hence less difficult to control; they are sticks and carrots treating us as pack mules, and the truly daft thing is that we allow our lives, nay, demand that our lives be led this way, thinking that the better sticks and bigger carrots of promotions and new cars and home refurbishments will make us more than pack mules.

And furthermore:

John understood that a man’s greatness flows forth from the confines of his heart, that it is to be found nowhere outside, and certainly not on any line of an IRS 1040 form. Perhaps he even understood, like Jesus and Lao-tzu and Buddha, that he could change more people into good and great people by leading with his quiet, dignified example than with the soapboxes and megaphones that are the trade-tools of loud, blathering, discontented fools everywhere. He certainly knew that finding a job you loved involved not a better job, but rather learning to infuse love into whatever job it is you do. A lot of lawyers are detestable, angry, bitter, avaricious people, despite the fact that they make eight times as much money as convenient store clerks. A few convenient store clerks are really somewhat content being unimportant. At the end of the day, who’s really better off?

My first reaction to the blog was "This guy is too good to be where he is." Then I deduced that I had not yet heard what I read. Read the whole article here and don't miss this one while you're there. Really. Don't.

Jesus and Seneca

2005-08-21T10:35:00.000-04:00

Laudator Temporis Acti has an interesting post on comparisons of Jesus and Seneca. We may never know but the question is tantalizing, "Was Jesus a bucolic and simple teacher without learning of the larger world or did he know anything of the broader scholarly world?" Certainly it is possible for different teachers to arrive at the same thought without any collaboration. I would guess that the learning of the synagogue in NT times included some study of contemporaries.

Interesting thought on public broadcasting

2005-07-02T11:26:00.000-04:00

Maybe public broadcasting is not an idea whose time has come. Maybe it is an idea whose time has gone. Jeff Jacoby thinks so.

Last week the House of Representatives restored $100 million that the Appropriations Committee had cut from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's federal subsidy. Too bad: the CPB allowance should be cut, particularly when the federal budget is so badly out of balance.

But despite the argument made by some Republicans, the reason to defund ''public'' television is not its liberal political bias. It is that it has no legitimate claim on taxpayer dollars. Maybe it did back when public broadcasting was a lone oasis in a vast wasteland of mediocrity, but that is no longer the case. Thanks to cable, satellites, and the Internet, viewers now have access to an incredible array of offerings, much of it of very high quality. From ESPN to A&E to The Learning Channel, today's private broadcasters more than fill the need it was once said only public broadcasting could meet. They manage without a federal handout. Big Bird can, too.

I have listened to public radio as long as it has been on the air and some truly worthwhile programming has come to light there. A Prairie Home Companion, The Folk Sampler, Below the Salt from Ohio Public Radio, and naturally, Mountain Stage are my favorites. Much as I like the programming, I have to agree that there is no real reason to spend public money for quality broadcasting when plenty is being produced in the private sector.

Mr. Keillor is feeling better.

2005-07-02T10:48:00.000-04:00

I remarked in the past about a brief moment of apparent disorientation in Garrison Keillor's life and it is to my sincere pleasure that he is apparently back to his old self. The warmth and pleasures of the summer have brought back the old optimism. It seems to be related to strawberries and sweet corn. I can understand that. Long days, sunshine and fresh produce make everybody feel better. There is too, for the thoughtful, the sobering lesson of the grasshopper and the ant. There is more to the year than summer and for that reason we should enjoy it even more. The knowledge that winter comes only makes the enjoyment of summer more urgent.

The honeybees are enjoying their six weeks of life until their wings wear out and they drop dead, and we humans feel the transitory nature of life, too. Summer is brief up here in St. Paul. Fresh sweet corn has a short season. You boil up a few ears and you say, "G-d is great and G-d is good. And we thank him for this food. Let this meal to us be blest. And now I think I'll skip the rest. Let's eat. Amen." And you slather the corn with butter and salt it and eat it blissfully, row by row, left to right, hit carriage return, next line. And you think that this is the first of many corn feasts.

But it isn't. You're busy. Events press on you. The weeks pass and suddenly it's September and corn is over for the year and those ears are all you'll get. This happens again and again in life. Your friends sit in your back yard one night drinking beer and singing old songs, and you say, "Let's do this again sometime." And you never do. You promise yourself you're going to return to that great stretch of river in Montana and it doesn't happen.

Summer gets people outside for flea markets, county fairs and picnics. You see people up close.

On the Fourth, the adoption of Mr. Jefferson's little peroration against the King, you sit in the shade and think of America at its best, a generous and redemptive land, an amiable people. A nation of optimistic sentimental humorists. Europeans can be shocked at how instantly friendly we can be with people we don't know. We meet strangers over a cup of coffee and suddenly we're telling about the crazy uncle who ran off with the church secretary. We rally to help people we never met. Amiability is the basis of civil politics: You don't cheat people you like, you don't abuse people who might become your friends.

There are still people worth meeting out there and things worth doing, even if it's no more than sitting on the porch watching the squirrels.

Yes to self-defense, in WV anyway

2005-06-12T12:18:00.000-04:00

(Original link via The Volokh Conspiracy)
All the way back to English common law, the right of a person to defend his own life is one of the constants. Whatever else may complicate the mix, people generally may not be condemned for stopping an assailant in the pursuit of his evil deed. In recent years, many persons, usually employed in low-paying jobs handling money for others, have been disciplined or fired for defending themselves against threatening robbers, or forbidden to carry weapons, even when otherwise legally permitted. Pizza delivery people and convenience store clerks are the most common examples. They get robbed a lot. Sometimes it is more reasonable to give up the money. Who wants to hurt somebody over $20? Or $200? Or $2000? Well, nobody, but what if they still want to hurt you after you give up the money? Three strikes laws and other mandatory sentencing guidelines make live witnesses a real problem for the robbers and people have been killed even after surrendering the cash because dead men tell no tales. Nobody should have to risk facing deadly threats undefended for any job. Here's the Vandal's Way-to-Go Award for the WV Supreme court in Feliciano v. 7-Eleven, No. 29564 where they decide in favor of an employee terminated for defending himself against a deadly attack. The defendant was represented by the Martinsburg office of Bowles, Rice, McDavid, Graff and Love. The question centered also on the WV principle of at-will employment, which means that unless there is an employment contract, either party can end the relationship at any time for any reason or no reason. There have been limits placed on the principle. For instance employers have been successfully sued for firing in retribution for standing for something of compelling public interest:

The rule that an employer has an absolute right to discharge an at will employee must be tempered by the principle that where the employer's motivation for the discharge is to contravene some substantial public policy princip[le], then the employer may be liable to the employee for damages occasioned by this discharge.
Syl., Harless v. First Nat'l Bank in Fairmont, 162 W. Va. 116, 246 S.E.2d 270 (1978). This exception to the at will employment doctrine recognizes that, in spite of the right of employers to terminate their employees, “'[o]ne of the fundamental rights of an employee is the right not to be the victim of a “retaliatory discharge,” that is, a discharge from employment where the employer's motivation for the discharge is in contravention of a substantial public policy[.]'” Kanagy, 208 W. Va. at 530, 541 S.E.2d at 620 (quoting McClung v. Marion County Comm'n, 178 W. Va. 444, 450, 360 S.E.2d 221, 227 (1987) (quotation and citation omitted)).

So, the question for the court was, "Is self-defense a matter of substantial public policy? Finding that it wasn't explicit in the state constitution or a law anywhere, they referred to their own prior decisions:

[w]hen one without fault himself is attacked by another in such a manner or under such circumstances as to furnish reasonable grounds for apprehending a design to take away his life, or to do him some great bodily harm, and there is reasonable grounds for believing the danger imminent, that such design will be accomplished, and the person assaulted has reasonable ground to believe, and does believe, such danger is imminent, he may act upon such appearances and without retreating, kill his assailant, if he has reasonable grounds to believe, and does believe, that such killing is necessary in order to avoid the apparent danger; and the killing under such circumstances is excusable, although it may afterwards turn out, that the appearances were false, and that there was in fact neither design to do him some serious injury nor danger, that it would be done. But of all this the jury must judge from all the evidence and circumstances of the case.
Syl. pt. 7, State v. Cain, 20 W. Va. 679 (1882) . More recently, we have similarly observed that

[s]elf-defense is generally defined as follows:

[A] defendant who is not the aggressor and has reasonable grounds to believe, and actually does believe, that he is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm from which he could save himself only by using deadly force against his assailant has the right to employ deadly force in order to defend himself.
State v. Hughes, 197 W. Va. 518, 524, 476 S.E.2d 189, 195 (1996) (quoting State v. W.J.B., 166 W. Va. 602, 606, 276 S.E.2d 550, 553 (1981) (citations omitted)). (See footnote 6) In the course of rendering these rulings, we have also clarified the essential elements of this offense. (See footnote 7)

and decided with only Mr. Maynard dissenting that

In conclusion, we answer the question certified by the United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia in the affirmative, but with limitation. Thus, the right of self-defense in response to lethal imminent danger is a substantial public policy exception to the at will employment doctrine and will support a cause of action for wrongful discharge. An aggrieved employer may then rebut the presumption of a wrongful discharge by demonstrating that it had a plausible and legitimate business reason for terminating its employee.

Leaving in doubt only one issue: What WAS Mr. Maynard thinking?

They keep coming...

2005-05-29T14:16:00.000-04:00

As expected, the last straw(see previous post) in the comedy of errors that is the British social experiment has drawn comment from others. Here is one. Another. The Volokh Conspiracy recalls Dave Kopel's 1999 article on the slippery slope. The original article from the British Medical Journal is here. Note that responses are listed at the bottom of the page and can be read here. Several of the responses indicate that the social policies of the knife banners are not supported by all in the Scepter'd Isles. A few American readers spoke well also. I actually wondered at first whether the article were a spoof on the lines of The Onion or some other parodist and some of the commenters did as well. Truth is indeed far stranger.

We knew it was coming. I guess.

2005-05-29T09:12:00.000-04:00

You will probably see this again but here is the evidence that when the foundation of personal responsibility is destroyed there is no logical stopping place before utter folly. Tell me again how the slippery slope argument is alarmist and paranoid. I am listening.
For further information, go here and see how much help the officers of the law are in a system where sociopathy is considered the fault of those who do not have it. They will take their little report and file it in the file and when it happens again they can go to the file and see that it has happened before and put in the new report that this is the second time and if it happens again all prior occurrences will be properly footnoted and the reporting task will be attended to with profound attention to detail and if excessive occurrence is noted, a special piece of paper may be issued. "What about addressing the perpetrators and the social and legal causes of the outrage?", you ask in plaintive tone. That appears to be beyond their concern. Like all bureaucrats who make a living from writing reports and shuffling paper, they are concerned only with the continued flow of events to report and paper to shuffle. We would continue but an excellent job has been done here, with links to further news items with related incidents of the same problem.
Of course, our preference for nonviolent resolution of conflict is well known. All of us know that violent solutions are last resorts marked by danger, pain and expense. We enter upon them reluctantly, as Rob says in his inimitable way. However, there is no way to justify prostrate acceptance of outrage like these examples. We can only quote again the words of Jeff Cooper,

One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that "violence begets violence." I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure—and in some cases I have—that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.

Cooper's remark is all the more telling for having been written in 1975. Good sense lasts a long time.

Poverty

2005-05-18T12:16:00.000-04:00

A couple of good articles on poverty and common misconceptions about it are here and here. Walter Williams' rules for avoiding poverty are the simplest and most effective I know. I have no taste for poverty myself but as Fred points out much of the discusstion about poverty is in fact about income redistribution and using the power of government to take what some people want but do not have the ambition or talent to earn. I have known quite a few people who gave liberally to help people in need, often at some personal sacrifice. There really are a lot of charitable people. It demeans real charity to make it a tool of political manipulation.

I’ve come into an apartment in mid-afternoon and found a half dozen men sitting torpidly in front of the television, into homes where the daughter of thirteen was pregnant and on drugs. The problem wasn’t poverty. The poor can keep their legs crossed as well as anyone else. If the daughter could afford drugs, she could afford food.

Most of these homes would have been regarded as fine by the graduate students of my day. They would have put in board-and-cinderblock bookshelves and a booze cache and been perfectly content.

Actors

2005-04-24T12:15:00.000-04:00

Joseph Sobran has a good essay on voice and actors. He recognizes some of the best voices in film and the power of delivery to make a role and a movie. I do think he should have included Russell Crowe, though. He is best known, for Gladiator but also deserves inclusion for LA Confidential.

Is a right really the same thing as a meal ticket?

2005-04-22T10:58:00.000-04:00

The legacy of FDR, or The New Deal in perspective here and here.

Politics, Money and Medicine

2005-04-22T10:00:00.000-04:00

P. J. O'Rourke said that when buying and selling are controlled by politicians, the first things to be bought and sold are politicians. He could have said that when politicians buy scholarly medical studies, the first things to be bought are doctors and scholars. It recently came to light that a big study from the Center for Disease Control a federal agency originally established to address the threat of communicable disease, had produced a study that grossly misrepresented the threat of obesity in American life. The way they told it, people were dropping like flies from 25% BMI. The fact that most of you already know what BMI is shows how well they did their work. It appears now that those of us who carry a bit more than the basic package may have just about the same chances of getting old as anybody else.

Apart from this huge downward revision in the numbers of people supposedly dying from fat, there are several things in this study which signal the end of any legitimate linkage between obesity and premature death. First, for the merely overweight with BMI's from 25-30 there is no excess mortality. In fact, being overweight was "associated with a slight reduction in mortality relative to the normal weight category." Being overweight not only does not lead to premature death, something that dozens of other studies from around the world have been saying for the last 30 years, but it also carries less risk from premature death than being "normal" weight. In other words the overweight=early death "fact" proclaimed by the public health community is simply not true.

The suggestion has been made that this misrepresentation might not be unrelated to the large sums of money that have changed hands because of tobacco-related lawsuits and other health-related legal outcomes. In other words, there might be a buck to be made in scaring the American people about being a bit on the stout side. Why should it be so unrealistic to expect integrity from people licensed as professionals in their fields? Aren't those supposed to be the people who won't lie for a buck? This set of events should remind us of the hazards of believing anybody who makes their living as a public employee. They simply have too much to gain to make their decisions on the basis of truth. It should also remind of us of O'Rourke's predecessor Mencken who said, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Update: More here.

The left defends Lawrence Summers

2005-04-22T09:29:00.000-04:00

Nat Hentoff is nobody's conservative, but he is a champion of fairness and liberty, as well as freedom of enquiry. In this article he offers his insight to the recent events at Harvard and current academic conditions.

Barney Fife in the Twenty-First Century

2005-04-17T10:56:00.000-04:00

I don't know much about Aimpoint equipment but other who do have checked and apparently the picture is not altered and the equipment is indeed installed incorrectly. This means that the fierce warrior in the picture is carrying a firearm incapable of being aimed. The optical sight only works in one direction and it is mounted on the rifle backwards. If our security really depends on these posturing buffoons, we are in deep, deep trouble. When the NYSE is guarded by an armed goon who has obviously never fired the weapon he carries, indeed, when the weapon has obviously never been fired by ANYBODY, a whole new age of incompetence has dawned. Respect for law enforcement is a necessity in any civilized society and we certainly don't want to tar good and bad with the same brush but facts is facts and this goofball for all his obvious effort toward an intimidating presence is shown to be a sham.

Trust

2005-04-17T10:38:00.000-04:00

A valuable old expression is, "Trust everybody, but cut the cards." The idea is that everybody is tempted to cheat and the game is made more pleasant for all when the protections of ritual safeguards ensure that all are on the straight-and-narrow. Most of us learn early that evil intent is not necessarily the source of every hurt. Some people hurt us because they are mean and intend to. Many more can hurt us by being careless or stupid. Everybody is tempted to lie or cheat when the consequences of their choices will be painful or expensive. Mona Charen has an article on JWR about this very phenomenon in connection with the payment of taxes. We recall the old story of the judge who changed his verdict when he learned that the offense involved his own property. It is the source of the expression, "It depends on whose ox has been gored." Trust everybody but cut the cards.

Judicial activism

2005-04-17T10:22:00.000-04:00

Charley Reese has written an interesting piece on the roles of judges, legislators and executives. A sample:

As the Terri Schiavo case illustrated, people are not willing to give a judge credit for properly applying the law as it is written if the result is not to their liking. The proper solution, of course, is not to vilify the judge, but to change the law if you don't like it. That's probably too much to ask for people so easily swayed by demagogues and appeals to emotion.

There is one sound benefit: At least people are now thinking about the role of judges in the overall scheme of government. It does matter a great deal who sits on the bench in that black robe. They are the only government officials who have the power to imprison or kill people. And if the federal judiciary decides it will legislate, then we really are no longer a free country but a people subject to the rule of an unelected oligarchy.

Reese is right. The source of much of the political and social excitement in the US now may be a deep and abiding terror that the same judicial activism that imposed the values of the left by judicial fiat may now be employed by the right. The terror may be well-founded. I don't want either to be able to have that much discretion. Maybe somebody should have thought a long time ago that the constitution could protect everybody if it were to be respected by all. When constitutional protections are removed for political advantage, nobody is safe. Something about a goose and a gander.

This looks promising.

2005-04-17T10:00:00.000-04:00

It appears that a group of graduate students at MIT has developed software that produces bewildering unintelligible papers. Isn't this a wonderful idea? Think of the great minds that can be released for worthwhile projects, now that this annoying function no longer requires human attention. We may also fondly hope that some in the academic community will see in this event a clue.

Carnival of Cordite #8

2005-04-11T17:01:00.000-04:00

My pick this time was this posting on nonviolent methods for dealing with dangerous situations. In other words, the sweetest victory is no fight at all.

Joyce Foundation matters

2005-04-10T12:15:00.000-04:00

For those following this issue there is a nice treatment on Of Arms and the Law, a new blog connected to the legal aspects of firearms, which you might have guessed. Instapundit shows his dry humor. Heh.

Why indeed!

2005-04-10T11:45:00.000-04:00

More on the Social Security issue here. The matter of inflation and its effect on saving for any purpose, not just old age, is discussed. It appears that stable money might do more to enable secure old age than anything else.

When Roosevelt installed his first old-age pension plan, it promised Americans $8 a week. In 1934, Americans could live on $8 a week. How would you be faring today if that's what granddad had set aside for your retirement? Why save at all, if what you save will be nearly useless to your grandchildren?

Thread on Pirates

2005-04-08T09:51:00.000-04:00

I'm learning that the piracy issue is more common than I thought. There hasn't been much piracy in the West Virginia area since they cleaned up the river bandits down around Hanging Rock, Ohio. They used to rob flatboats on the Ohio on their way to Cincinnati. There's a good thread going on here with some interesting photographs. I was never in much danger of becoming a yachter anyway but it's interesting how the discussion of self-defense issues is the same wherever you find it.

Pirates update

2005-04-07T14:16:00.000-04:00

Apparently the recently reported incident is not the first in the area. Still more here, here, and here. Apparently, our subjects were unusual in successfully resisting the piracy. I, for one, was not at all aware of how common the practice of piracy is around the world. Some of the writers above discourage any resistance in the hope that only material loot will be taken. Others discuss major armaments and traveling in groups in dangerous areas.

Trouble on the High Seas

2005-04-06T19:51:00.000-04:00

Via Gun Watch, an Australian blog dedicated to firearms-related matters, we learn of this incident from only a few weeks ago, apparently an attempted piracy thwarted by a vigorous and timely defense. It certainly puts a whole new complexion on the sport of yachting! The attempted piracy illustrates several principles of self-defense made more stark by the setting thirty miles at sea. First, 911, the cell phone and the help of the authorities are all of little use when the damage will be done by the time help arrives. Second, Jeff Cooper's principles of alertness and aggressiveness are well-illustrated. The writer noticed what was happening and was ready. When he did respond it was with fierceness and decisiveness. The boarders were repelled and their vessels left adrift.
Not much was said about the arms used except that one man had a shotgun loaded with buckshot. Not a bad choice when one is on a pitching platform and the target is too. It is no accident that one of the early firearms for use on sailing vessels was a funnel-muzzled blunderbuss which could be loaded easily with shot, nails, glass or anything handy. It could shiver the timbers and tatter the sail. If I were choosing equipment for maritime use, such a shotgun as one of these would be considered. The marine models would be good in the salt spray but there are a lot of coatings now to make blued guns survive in the salt spray. The Ruger Mini-14 would also be good in stainless and the AK-47 has a lot to recommend it. It is cheap and available world-wide, as is the ammunition. Large-capacity magazines are available for them both so you could shoot well and often. The semiautomatic versions would be best. They are legal everywhere and aimed semiautomatic fire is more effective and less wasteful of ammunition. If two people are to be armed, a larger caliber would be nice--something to throw larger chips into the air. The .30 calibers would be good. Perhaps one of these. I may be getting carried away, but I am thinking one of these would work well at sea also.
In any event, the incident will serve as an illustration of the wisdom of alertness and preparedness. Reading the account certainly raises the breathing rate.
While you are at the Gun Watch site, by all means look around a bit. There are other associated blogs with some excellent recipes(mostly Asian and they sound good) and an excellent one around the subject of socialized medicine. There are some first-hand accounts from Australia(one about a pregnant woman in labor who was hauled 5 hours to another hospital because the first one was full!)that will give some real-life perspective to the issue.

Carnivals

2005-04-03T11:28:00.000-04:00

The carnivals are up for this week. Cordite here and Recipes here. I found a valuable posting on trigger control here and an interesting recipe for a delicious-sounding stuffed pork roast here. You, of course, may find some of the other offerings more to your liking. That's the idea. Enjoy.

Marriage

2005-04-03T10:44:00.000-04:00

The development of the institution of marriage in this century has been more involved and complicated even than the economics and politics, which have been complicated enough. Birth control, abortion, welfare, civil rights and gender issues have combined to make the institution of marriage much different than, say, in 1900. Some people say this is a good thing. Some people say it's not so good. Why? Because the reforms did not yield uniformly good results. What was lost was not just the bad stuff (There was plenty of that.) but some of the good and some of the real good that was gained (There was some of that, too.) was not as good as expected. For a fuller explanation of the whole complicated process, visit Jane Galt here. Don't go until you have some time. The post is a bit long, but a model of balance and evenhandedness. She says at the outset that she will not take a side and she succeeds admirably. If you are not already familiar with the economic concept of marginal benefit you might also read this which explains some of the references in the article.
I thought this quote from Chesterton summarized the purpose and aim of the posting and give it in full:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

The Pope, the Poles, Prayer and Pacifism

2005-04-03T10:39:00.000-04:00

Clayton Cramer the historian has a short but comprehensive post about the life and significance of John Paul II. A quote:

Pacifism is not a sufficient or general purpose solution to tyrannical governments. Against sufficiently evil governments, pacifists are just speedbumps. But the example of Solidarity in confronting the Polish government caused the Communists to lose confidence in their morality of their cause. When confronting evil, when you know that there is a strong chance that you will die,or be tortured to death (as happened to at least Polish priest at the hands of the Communists during this period), you darn well better know that your suffering and death, no matter how awful it is, will be a temporary situation on the way to something much better.

Women in Combat

2005-03-27T18:17:00.000-05:00

New data available for the discussion of the role of women in combat. It appears to make some difference when the women are from Kentucky. We might have anticipated that. It's a lengthy piece but worth reading and an interesting view into the way this kind of incident proceeds. The value of training and discipline also is demonstrated. Managers from any kind of operation can admire the fine example of how training and consistency allowed the team to succeed.

Another Carnival

2005-03-27T18:04:00.000-05:00

The Carnival of the Recipes is a weekly traveling event featuring the best recipes from bloggers. I will try to have a link here in future as a matter of policy. Here is the last one. The current one is here. Number 31 had the recipes for Tipsy Pork Tenderloin and Sweet and Savory on the Side. I shall try those two together soon. You may also want to note Lady Bird Johnson's chili recipe and a great breakfast casserole idea on the page.

Carnival of the Cordite

2005-03-27T17:40:00.000-05:00

If you haven't checked it out, the Carnival of the Cordite, a collection of gun-related web postings is an excellent opportunity to update yourself on what is going on in the firearms sphere. I found this site with a posting about the acquisition of a brand new Enfield for a bargain price. Furthermore, the buyer put some elbow grease and tung oil into the stock and made a pretty handsome item out of the rifle. Classy.
This posting also points out the value of the older revolvers still available. Some of them have distinguished histories and their owners will never part with them. Others may be available to the vigilant.

More on Social Security

2005-03-12T14:13:00.000-05:00

As I approach retirement age, I see Social Security as a very different thing than before. After forty years in the work force I have a big investment in the Social Security system. I got my first real job at 17 in 1964. I washed dishes and mopped the floor at McCrory's lunch counter in downtown Huntington. Since then, the proper percentage of my paychecks has been dutifully deducted check by check and that is money I never touched. They took it and gave it to other people. When I was born, the retirement age was 65. When I was 36, the age was raised to 66. I now am told that the system is in trouble and I may have to work yet longer or get still less. I am uncertain whether my so called investment will ever bring me any return at all. Both major political parties are acting like Social Security is the flower of their vision. Nobody, I thought, was calling it what it is, a socialistic system to take money from society's producers and give it to the others. For another perspective go here and here. I will certainly take my check if I live long enough to get one. I am not counting on it. It is too late to make a call about whether FDR did the right thing in his time. That was a long time ago. The real decision is what to do now and that just might be scrapping the whole thing and doing the right thing: leaving the money with the people who made it and encouraging personal responsibility in the context of people's own lives.

Evolution

2005-03-12T13:01:00.001-05:00

I have two college degrees. One in Biological and General Science(a B.A.) and one in Theology (an M.Div.). On the subject of evolution this means that I have background that most folks do not. That is, I have had professional training on both sides of the debate. Even when I was in these schools I noticed that both perspectives were informed as much by their assumptions of faith as they were by the data of their disciplines. My instructors in zoology proclaimed without any disclaimer whatsoever and in perfect confidence that multicellular organisms had their origin in single-celled forebears and that vertebrate life had progressed step-by-step from fish to amphibians to reptiles to birds. Not that these assertions are without plausibility. I only say that scientists and honest people in general limit their assertions to that which they can support empirically. Otherwise, they surmise, theorize, hypothesize and opine. They use their imaginations to form educated guesses about things and then test their assertions by the extant knowns of the field. Then they advance their knowledge by putting forth their surmises, theories, hypotheses and opinions, and supporting them with research and argument, all the while, remembering and reminding others that they are exactly that, i.e. surmises, theories, hypotheses and opinions. Others can then contribute by discussing and criticizing the assertions in a process called peer review. The net effect of this process is progress in learning as theories are sharpened and refined. These people did nothing of the sort. They said it was so because it made sense to so many of them.
This is exactly the same thing the religious community did. They said that the creator had made everything and that there was no reason to want to know any more about creation than that. Their community's discipline was committed to the assertion that creation was a divine initiative and anything more than that had to be wrong, much like the pope telling Galileo that the sun moves around the earth no matter what science might think.
I have to say that I never could get too excited about arguing either side. I was interested in science and happy to learn not only the data but the theories of the field. I never trusted people to tell me the truth anyway. I was also interested in theology and happy to learn whatever I could from whatever quarter it might come. Now there is in progress a mighty conversation about Intelligent Design. Some say it is just another name for Creationism and all the backwardness that recalls. Others say it is a Whole New Thing and doesn't have to be theistic or religious at all. Maybe not. Make up your own mind, but try to keep separate what is fact and what is argument. You don't have to marry the mountain to marry a mountain woman. I heard once, "If God did not create the earth and everything in it in a certain morning in 4004 BC, is the alternative atheism?" In any event, Fred Reed has contributed this article to the discussion and it is tremendously balanced and thoughtful, as well as entertaining. His experience seems to have been like mine in noticing the faithlike behavior of both sides:

This is the behavior not of scientists, but of advocates, of True Believers. I used to think that science was about asking questions, not about defending things you didn't really know. Religion, I thought, was the other way around. I guess I was wrong.

Postscript on Ussher's Chronology: By the way,the 4004 BC date has an interesting background. James Ussher, an Irish Calvinist bishop worked out a chronology of the Bible by adding up the lifespans of biblical characters and arrived at the date 4004 BC. It was included in the famous Scofield Reference Bible as well as other popular editions and,while a work of human scholarship, seems to have acquired the mantle of inspiration in the eyes of some folks.

Parody

2005-03-06T11:07:00.000-05:00

Well-done parody of assault weapon diatribe is here. I particularly liked calling the saddle ring a "weapon retention system".

Critical Mastiff

2005-03-05T16:35:00.000-05:00

Notes on the personal use of firearms and the evolution of one person's perspective on arms. Here's enough to get you started:

But still, the idea of self defense was theoretical, even if I could grasp it clearly in my mind. Growing up in California, guns were simply not part of daily life. The next major breakthrough happened when I took my first year of college in Israel. I can hardly describe how I felt for the first few days, surrounded by men and women (most scarcely older than myself) nonchalantly carrying around M-16's on their shoulders or pistols on their hips. I was probably near more guns in the first ten minutes on campus than I had ever seen in my life. They made me nervous, just because I had never seen anything like it.
Soon I accepted it as a normal part of life. It was strange going to the central bus station and seeing large stacks of rifles sitting near olive-drab dufflebags, as soldiers waited for their ride; but at the same time I felt safer than at any other time in my life, because I knew that if someone would cause trouble, he would be surrounded by dozens of people with guns. (The rabbi we studied under carried a Glock at all times. On the other hand, the only time my psychology professor wore his pistol openly in class was during Final Exams... but I digress.)

Chuck Hawks

2005-03-05T15:47:00.000-05:00

You will notice that the blogroll here is remarkably short. I tend not to notice who is in a roll if it is a page long or longer. I must, however, add Chuck Hawks.com. I am amazed at the breadth of interests found on the firearms related sites I visit. If some people think the gun community is provincial, myopic and limited in breadth of perspective, they have not been hanging out where I have. Oleg Volk has been mentioned before for his photography and massive website. I think it would be a daunting task to find a topic upon which Fred Reed could not give an entertaining after-dinner speech. Think of the NRA board and the breadth of experience there--doctors, lawyers, musicians, politicians, soldiers, policemen. Would it not be fun to listen around the table with such a group assembled? Whatever they are, firearms folk are not boring or one-dimensional. On Chuck Hawks' site you will find writing not only on firearms, but photography, astronomy, motorcycles, history, travel and fishing. You can go to any of these subtopics and find cogent, expert information based on years of personal experience. I don't know how he does it. For those who desire it, there is a site membership available with even more information, but the free stuff is plentiful and will occupy you for a long time. Try this firearms piece for an example of common sense and balanced opinion. Here is one of his excellent gun reviews notable for the absence of commercial interest and the presence of personal experience. I liked that one particularly because I think the Makarov is one of the great bargains of the current firearms market. It's all business and as trustworthy as a firearm can be. Here's another on what rifle accuracy is and is not. This is a good site to visit if you need a reliable source without commercial bias.

Haste Makes Waste

2005-02-20T10:20:00.000-05:00

The great American academic Poor Richard could have helped the University of Colorado when they were considering Ward Churchill for tenure. It may be that they shortcutted the the process in their hurry to make a place for him. Details are here and some interesting commentary here.

Harvard Update

2005-02-20T10:05:00.000-05:00

For those following the events around Harvard President Lawrence Summers, the full text of his address to the National Bureau of Economic Research is posted here and includes a transcript of the question and answer session. An informative article with a lot of quotes from attendees and others is here. Additional opinion from Janegalt.com includes some comments about the tenure process and the intellectual environment of the modern university in general.

Who Woulda Thunk It Dept.

2005-02-19T10:21:00.000-05:00

Via Video meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor we find that a study at Florida State University has found some evidence that self-esteem for its own sake, that is, without reference to character or performance, may not be an unmixed blessing.

People with high self-esteem claim they are more likable, attractive and have better relationships than others, but these advantages exist mainly in their own minds, the researchers found. Objective data, such as ratings by their peers, generally fail to confirm their high opinions of themselves, and in some cases, they are actually disliked more than others.

Can you imagine--people actually may not like folks who think they are better than they are? Now, being liked is admittedly not the real goal of life. It is also not to be sneezed at. We all crave the esteem of those around us, but let's keep the present focus. The article is not about being esteemed by others but by ourselves. I think the idea is that we can't control what others think about us but we can hold to our own principles and thus have a firm assessment of our own value as a person.
As I understand it, the self-esteem movement arose when it was noticed that people who performed well and who did praiseworthy things consequently had good feelings about themselves. It was thought therefore that if good feelings about oneself increased for any reason then praiseworthy performance would increase. This study says the process does indeed work in the forward direction but not in reverse.

A better approach, the researchers say, would be to boost self-esteem as a reward for ethical behavior and worthy achievements.

"We think it will require a basic change in many self-esteem programs, which now seek to boost everyone's self-esteem without demanding appropriate behavior first," they wrote. "Using self-esteem as a reward rather than an entitlement seems most appropriate to us."

Islam

2005-02-19T10:01:00.000-05:00

Via One Hand Clapping--an article on Islam by Khaled Abou El Fadl, UCLA School of Law. Looks like it would merit reading. Donald Sensing's own comments are here.

Social Security

2005-02-19T08:50:00.001-05:00

Charles Krauthammer has a good summary of the issue at JWR. The question arises when we want to know when the real problem will arise.

These pieces of paper might be useful for rolling cigars. They will not fund your retirement. Your Leisure World greens fees will be coming from the payroll taxes of young people during the years you grow old.
That is why 2042 is a fiction. The really important date is 2018. That is when this pay-as-you-go system starts paying out more (in Social Security benefits) than goes in (in payroll taxes). Right now, workers pay in more than old folks take out. But because the population is aging, in 13 years the system begins to go into the red. To cover retiree benefits, the government will have to exhaust all of its FICA tax revenue and come up with the rest — by borrowing on the world market, raising taxes or cutting other government programs.

Government has the same problem as all institutions. It loves to start things because the ones starting new programs get to look like visionaries and benefactors. It doesn't like to diminish or eliminate programs because that looks like bailing out or admitting failure. Maybe we could acknowledge that some water has gone over the dam since the New Deal and let the unspoken assumption of government be that it is best when it does the least.

To bring the silliness full circle, the president himself has since admitted that there really is no trust fund. But his 2042 date is based on the idea that there is. We will never be able to reform the system if the chief reformer does not clearly articulate what the impending crisis is, when it is coming and why.

History

2005-02-19T08:50:00.000-05:00

Donald Sensing has some photographs and historical observations about the invasion of Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima was invaded Feb. 18, 1945.

Sobran on Harvard

2005-02-19T08:23:00.000-05:00

Joe Sobran has some comments on the Lawrence Summers flap at Harvard we posted about here. He brings up a point that I thought of too: How could the president of Harvard University be blindsided by a pc issue?

The first thought that strikes me is how remarkable it is that a man should become president of Harvard University without knowing the current taboos against free speech. Even the college janitors must know what’s what by now. As Shakespeare’s Enobarbus puts it, “That truth should be silent I had almost forgot.”

Think about it. He's the president of Harvard for Pete's sake, the pc capitol of the world. This did not happen at Podunk Community College. What do college administrators think about half the time or more? I think I know the fatal assumption. He was at an insiders' meeting and thought he could speak candidly to a select group who would honor his confidence. Big Mistake.
Apparently the standard response to a scholarly enquiry is not rigorous analysis and logical testing of propositions. Certainly what Summers said was provocative and intended to be.

We’ve all heard little girls say, “Girls are smarter than boys, ’cause they can have babies and boys can’t.” Well, it may not be a matter of being smart, exactly, but they have a point, even if they express it childishly. They have a potential far more important than merely being smart. I can understand a woman’s preferring being a Harvard professor to being a mother; what I can’t understand is her taking childish offense at the idea that men may be, in some narrow respects, smarter than women. Why doesn’t she just laugh?

The White Man's Burden

2005-02-07T20:11:00.000-05:00

The phrase is the title of a Kipling poem. You can read it here. It counts the cost of empire, the price of world dominion and calls Kipling's nation to the task of bettering the miseries of the world. Who can say that the British Empire was without its benefits? Our contemporary calls to export liberty and freedom also have a certain hopeful ring. Who could object to taking the things we value about American life to the rest of the world? Who indeed. Neither Joe Sobran nor Fred Reed is opposed headlong to all forceful opposition to attack but both point out that the current course is a significant departure from the past and urge us to count the cost. Fred was a Marine in Vietnam and worked for Soldier of Fortune, and the Army Times. He was a police columnist for the Washington Times. Many of us cannot speak to these issues with any authority because we have never had combat boots on. At least he is talking about something he has seen in detail. These details are just to demonstrate that he is not exactly moveon.org material. Fred's essay is here. Check it out yourself.
The second line of Kipling's poem is

Send forth the best ye breed --

The first price of empire is not material. It is flesh. Our best and most hopeful youth are the first price of world dominion. It is one thing to ask for their blood when an agressor threatens our borders, and quite another when war becomes Clausewitz's "politics continued by other means." It is a long path with many disappointments

And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

The ones helped do not always respond well to their good intentions.

Take up the White man's burden --
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard --

As a Boy Scout, I enjoyed sitting around the campfire listening to the leaders talk about their wartime experiences. Battleships, helicopters, tanks and weapons were great entertainment around the fire. It was great entertainment but I was listening to the ones who came back and had all their limbs and faculties. Fred reminds us that many will be forgotten and neglected.

I once watched the first meeting between a young Marine from the South, blind, much of his face shot away, and his high school sweetheart who had come from Tennessee to Bethesda Naval Hospital to see him.

Hatred comes easily.

The country owes it to these willing souls to value their service and ask for sacrifice only when the enemy is at the door. It's not worth it for any lesser objective. Are we being cynical to think that a course is taken with the thought that only the less valuable are going?

The war in Iraq is fought by volunteers, which means people that no one in power cares about. No one in the mysteriously named “elite” gives a damn about some kid from a town in Tennessee that has one gas station and a beer hall with a
stuffed buck’s head. Such a kid is a redneck at best, pretty much from another planet, and certainly not someone you would let your daughter date. If conscription came back, and college students with rich parents learned to live in fear of The Envelope, riots would blossom as before. Now Yale can rest easy. Thank God for throwaway people.

No, not cynical at all.

Big Brother is gaining ground

2005-02-01T20:23:00.000-05:00

Much as we would like to report some happy news, we are faced with this sobering report. 36 percent of about 112 thousand high school think that newpapers should have to get government approval before being permitted to print a story. A scant 51 percent stood for the First Amendment freedom of the press. Maybe the 36 percent just missed school that day.

DuFresne murder

2005-02-01T19:48:00.000-05:00

It appears that the exemplary young man suspected of murdering the actress on the Lower East Side of Manhattan last Thursday has been apprehended. It also appears that the murder weapon has been found and some other corroborating evidence based on video surveillance film from the scene. So much of this picture is so predictable it is truly unsettling. He is 19, a parolee already with a history of violent behavior. Odd, the U.S. has more people in jail than any other country but these people keep getting out over and again. He was, however, in tears as he was driven away from the police station. Perhaps he was touched by the suffering of the bereaved, or, on second thought, the prospect of suffering himself for the crime. One thing is certain, neither his tears nor those of the grieving family can restore the life lost. There was no policeman to help Nicole DuFresne Thursday morning and the city of New York saw to it that she could not legally help herself. Now we will hear the calls for more crisis intervention services for troubled youth and more money for mentoring and scholarships. But nobody much wants to say anything about the one thing that might have helped Nicole DuFresne when she faced death Thursday morning--a gun of her own. There are some hopeful signs from Great Britain in accounts like this and this.

Yes, it works.

2005-01-30T11:32:00.000-05:00

For those who continue to insist that the value of armed private citizens is a foolish fiction and that increasing the number of police officers is the only reasonable response to crime , here is an answer, admittedly episodic and anecdotal but starkly persuasive nonetheless.

Bureaucracy-0, common sense-1

2005-01-30T11:24:00.000-05:00

Clayton Cramer has a good story about the victory of common sense in the Country of Hall Monitors. Sometimes you just need to know when to talk and when to shut up.

Firearms and Gunsite page

2005-01-29T18:02:00.000-05:00

How have I missed this page? Lots of Gunsite related information and general firearms-related stuff. By all means take a look around but you might start here and here.

Oops!

2005-01-29T17:43:00.000-05:00

Note: Need to keep a bridle on this academic enquiry thing. President Lawrence Summers of Harvard said he was trying to provoke enquiry but ended up horrifying some folks to the point of hyperventilation this week by suggesting that there might be something beyond the plumbing differentiating men and women. He knows better now. He might want to slip off campus to a secure location and read this and this. On second thought, maybe he'd better just lay low for a while. That reading stuff can get you in a heap of trouble.

A tragic study

2005-01-29T13:48:00.000-05:00

The brutish murder of a young actress and playwright this week lends emphasis to our recent post on the subject of awareness and personal safety. Clayton Cramer noticed that the dramatic work of the victim emphasized the dark side of human nature. The incident demonstrates tellingly that just because you are not interested in trouble does not mean that trouble will not take an interest in you. The victims were just that--victims. They did not seek out a confrontation or provoke the attack in any way. From all indications they were as innocent as any of us, going about their own business in a peaceable way. Nothing in this post will suggest in any way that they contributed to the crime or are in any way to blame for what was done. However, as we have pointed out before, safety is proactive. The best safety program is one that avoids danger, rather than one that concentrates on how to deal with dangerous things. I think I remember a firearms instructor from Gunsite saying that the best way to win a fight is not to be there when it starts.
The victims did one thing right. They were traveling in a group. Two couples are certainly less vulnerable than a single person or a loner. A group of five young men out at the wee hours, though, should have sent up a flare of alarm. It is not probable they were on their way to a deacon's meeting. They were probably not dressed for church. Had the victims noticed the possible hazard, they might have slipped into another business or tarried with a larger crowd. We will never know.
One thing is certain. In New York City, the perpetrators were pretty sure that the victims had no means of self-defense. Standing defenseless before the criminals, the only reasonable thing to do was to give up what was demanded without resistance. As it turned out, even a verbal challenge was too much. In the last analysis, the victims may just have been severely unaware of the danger of the man that Walt Rauch, the firearms trainer, calls otherhuman, to indicate the profound difference between him and the people most of us live with. He is inured to pain and utterly focused on his own desires. He is untouched by the suffering brought on others by his behavior. He is as unfeeling as an anaconda eating a rabbit. The rabbit is just another piece of food. In Rauch's own words

The hardest thing to teach some people is often that there are real predators out there in human's clothing. Predators that make a wolverine seem pleasant and harmless. They hurt people because you have things they want, and sometimes just because they like the look in your eyes when you beg or scream. Go visit a prison, and look at the folks "running" the cell blocks. They tend to spend their time pumping iron, practicing methods of attack, and generally studying for their next field trip. Some will be paroled next week. Before they are caught again, they will likely prey on many, many people.

These kinds of attacks can and do happen anywhere and to anyone. It does appear that there are fewer such incidents where the victims can bite back. Look again at the prior post and the articles linked. Terry Givens in the article quoted summarizes the issues this way

If you should find yourself faced with a life-threatening attack by a criminal, as a typical normal person, you will be faced by three enormous difficulties. They are:
1. Recognizing the presence of the predator in time;
2. Realizing, internalizing, and accepting that THAT MAN, RIGHT THERE, is about to kill you for reasons you do not understand; if you don't stop him; and
3. Overcoming your reluctance to do lethal violence against a fellow human being.

Much as I hate to admit it, some good has come out of reality TV shows like COPS, Jerry Springer and the courtroom shows like Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown. Most of Middle America sees these shows and says, "Where do they GET these people? How do they FIND them? I don't know anybody like that." Incidents like this senseless murder tell us that there are lots of folks like that---and worse. You don't want to find them, and they may find you.

A slow news day gone awry

2005-01-27T19:02:00.000-05:00

WOWK TV this afternoon I think broke new ground for broadcast news. You have perhaps heard people say that you don't hear about the planes that don't crash. You do hear about the ones that do. Well, it appears that that principle no longer holds. From a little before 4 pm until about 4:30, A team of local broadcast specialists preempted regularly scheduled network programming to watch a plane crash not happen. The facts were explained early. A small national guard plane was circling a small airport in Harrison County, WV because its landing gear did not lower. It had landing gear in the rear but not the front of the aircraft. The plan was to circle the airport until fuel was low and then try a belly landing. Landing with low fuel would reduce the possibility of a fire. So there they were for half an hour repeating the details, repeating what they had been told in the last fifteen minutes about landing airplanes, crashes, and the various approaches the pilot might take. They didn't know any more about it than I do and I don't know anything about it. At about 4:30, the pilot landed the plane on its belly without much fanfare. It was tense but it had been done before. I do know that pilots train specifically and definitely for those times when things go wrong. It was not the first time the pilot had heard that these things happen. It was not the first time he thought about what to do. They executed the plan and the plan worked. Both people in the plane walked away. The plane will be repaired and fly again. There were emergency, fire and medical people faithfully standing by to do their jobs if needed, but not much was required. All in all, broadcasting this event was an exercise in fecklessness inconveniencing viewers to no purpose. They told us what hadn't happened yet. When it didn't happen, they told us nothing happened.

What would we do without them?

Of course we are delighted and relieved that no harm was done and no life or limb lost. Thanks to good training and cool-headed people an emergency was handled without catastrophe. The whole experience, however, highlights how some journalists for some reason think they must mediate EVERYTHING to the public--even what does not happen. Are we going to watch icy roads on TV now to see the possible collisions not happening in bad weather? How about having the news crew hang out at the local bars to catch the Saturday night fights that don't break out for film at 11? Are we now watching tv so we can know what didn't happen today? I would suggest remembering the well-known words of Charles Anderson Dana in the New York Sun in 1882

When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news.

Every day, lots of really bad things do not happen, and a lot of very ordinary misfortunes do happen. Dogs bite men. Everyday heros prevent accidents and avert tragedy as a matter of course every day. News on the contrary is the out-of-the-ordinary. News is the unusual. Look for it and report it. If you don't see any news, why not play cards or watch a movie? I don't want to know what didn't happen today.

Safety

2005-01-26T09:21:00.000-05:00

Recent crimes like the Walmart kidnapping and others highlight the hazards of crime and the peril of failing to be aware of the hazards of our surroundings. The crime is also notable because it happened in the workplace. Megan Holden was going to her car after work just like millions of us every day. The incident was recorded by cameras and a security guard talked to the kidnapper before the crime. Yet, all this security paraphernalia did not prevent the crime. Tyler, Texas is not Chicago or Philadelphia or Los Angeles. It's not rural, either, being a city just a bit larger than Huntington, WV. I visited Tyler in the 70's and remember a beautifully kept friendly city with the nickname, "The Rose Capitol of America". Whatever the source of the problem is, it wasn't the profound urban blight of a place like, say, Cleveland. Paradoxically, human nature with all its glory and misery is everywhere. You don't have to go to big cities to find criminal behavior. As a matter of fact, you may not have to look for it at all. It may find you. It found Megan Holden. How to respond appropriately in daily life without paranoia is the question. Here is an article about how one person dealt with the issue. Here is another, and another.

The best system for understanding personal awareness issues is the color code taught by Jeff Cooper. Another article explains the issues more completely this way:

By learning to observe your environment, constantly evaluate it, and react appropriately to what you see, you can achieve a large degree of control over your fate. This requires you to learn to shift up and down a scale of readiness, just like shifting gears in a car, so that you can match your level of awareness/readiness with the current requirements of your situation. In a car, you shift gears based on the grade encountered or the speed desired. On the street, you must learn to "shift gears" mentally, to match the threat level encountered. There is a sliding scale of readiness, going from a state of being oblivious and unprepared to a condition of being ready to instantly do lethal violence if forced. One cannot live stuck at either end of this spectrum.

Specifically, the system allows us to move up and down in alertness states as our environment changes. We respond appropriately whatever our conditions.

If you try to live at the bottom of the scale, you will fall victim to an accident or to a criminal, eventually. It's just a matter of "when", not "if". On the other hand, you can't go through your daily routine with your hand hovering over your holstered pistol, ready to shoot if anything moves! What you must learn to do is escalate and de-escalate up and down this scale as the circumstances around you dictate. This is an easily learned system, and one that will help you be in the right frame of mind to deal with any conflict you encounter.

The women who told their experiences in the articles above saw their exposure to harm and determined to take control of their own security. They conquered ignorance by taking notice of hazards and conquered fear by taking responsible measures to ensure their own safety. The methods in the articles can keep us all safe without turning our lives into fearful exercises in paranoia. In fact, life can be more interesting when we notice more of what is happening about us.

Good for her

2005-01-21T14:42:00.000-05:00

This is a good account of the experience of a young woman investigating the benefits of firearms. As she should have, she sought training, and studied the subject before proceeding. It is good for those who might teach one new to shooting to understand what a shock it can be for all that noise, flash and smoke to happen on the end of your own arm. It is a barrel of fun later on but at first it can be pretty rattling.

It was as if a bomb went off in my face. A flicker of flame burst from the barrel, followed by a curlicue of smoke and a whiff of gunpowder.

Firing a gun is portrayed on TV and in movies as a fluid and natural action, something that can easily be done with one hand and while running, driving or jumping out of a burning building.

For me it was violent and jarring. The recoil made me worry that the gun was going to jump out of my hands.

It is also of interest that she took the first step even before she knew it. The first step was deciding that her safety was her own job and not to be delegated or evaded. Once that step was taken, the rest was easy to figure out. She has a ways to go but has things under control without a doubt.

The class made it clearer than ever: Owning a gun is a huge responsibility. Not only do you have to know the law inside and out, not only do you have the cost of the gun itself and firing range time to keep skills current, but you have to keep close tabs on a firearm at all times.

More religious humor

2005-01-15T18:45:00.000-05:00

Some more religious humor from the Unitarian Universalists.

Evolution

2005-01-15T17:55:00.000-05:00

One of the perennial issues of the Christian understanding of the world and science is the creation-evolution debate. Little progress can be expected as long as the discussion proceeds along the lines of the Scopes Trial. From my experience with religious people, most of them seem to accept both the elements of a scientific world view and divine creation without too much effort to harmonize the two poles. If this is compartmentalization it seems to work for a lot of people. Maybe they accept the Biblical account as myth without saying the word out loud, which annoys some of the clerics. This could work too on a practical level. In any event, sensible analysis is not as plentiful as it might be and Clayton Cramer offers a thoughtful contribution to the discussion here.

Krauthammer on Rathergate

2005-01-15T16:46:00.000-05:00

I am as surprised as anyone to see Charles Krauthammer quoted on this blog, mostly because of his gun control views, although he has shown the restraint of common sense on occasion. He does give an interesting analysis of the Dan Rather memo affair. The Handle Institute is fair and balanced, pointing out good sense wherever and from whomever it appears. He is particularly of interest because if he is a partisan, it is probably for the Democrats albeit the conservative ones. (He wrote speeches for Walter Mondale.) What I think strikes me as positive about Mr. Krauthammer is that he appears to have an almost chivalrous sense of fairness and justice in, of all things, politics. In other words, he seems to think that even in political discourse one should speak the truth.

Then comes the coverup: 12 days of CBS stonewalling, with Dan Rather using his evening news platform to (a) call his critics "partisan political operatives," (b) claim falsely that the documents were authenticated by experts, and (c) claim that he had "solid sources," which turned out to be a rabid anti-Bush partisan with a history of, shall we say, prolific storytelling.

Now comes the twist: The independent investigation — clueless, uncomprehending and in its own innocent way disgraceful — pretends that this fiasco was in no way politically motivated.

Then he investigates the plausibility of the claim.

Did Mapes and Rather devote a fraction of the resources they gave this story to a real scandal, such as the oil-for-food scandal at the United Nations, or contrary partisan political charges, such as those brought by the Swift boat vets against John Kerry? On the United Nations, no interest. On Kerry, what CBS did do was ad hominem investigative stories on the Swift boat veterans themselves, rather than an examination of the charges. Do you perceive a direction to these inclinations?

Furthermore, Krauthammer points out that the motivation may not be simple partisanship or a desire to cheat by disguising partisanship as unbiased reporting, showing the wisdom of the old principle of not attributing malice where incompetence will explain the behavior.

I do not attribute this to bad faith. I attribute it to (as Marx would say) false consciousness — contracted by living in the liberal media cocoons of New York, Washington and Los Angeles, in which any other worldview is simply and truly inconceivable. This myopia was most perfectly captured by Pauline Kael's famous remark after Nixon's 1972 landslide: "I don't know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don't know anybody who voted for him."

The rest of the article has some statistical information about media bias some people may find interesting. Whatever the motivation, Jefferson's words hold true, "Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to tolerate it." Blogs are probably more reliable than mainstream media not because the bloggers are more virtuous but because they are all free to speak and garbage can be pointed out as garbage.

Where does it end? It doesn't.

2005-01-15T16:07:00.000-05:00

In the never-ending drive to enforce standards of prudence and propriety the North Korean government is giving attention to that intolerable rebellion, personal untidiness.

The series is entitled Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle.

While the campaign has been carried out primarily on television, reports have appeared in North Korean press and radio, urging tidy hairstyles and proper attire.

By all means. Do tell me again how the pleasant sunshine of socialism has delivered us from the repressively enforced religious and cultural standards of the former decadent regime. There is a clue in the article about the provenance of the program.

It is the strongest media campaign against men's sloppy appearances mounted in the reclusive and impoverished Communist state in recent years.

If we can't have enough to eat or decent housing, at least we can be well-groomed. It has to be easier to cut hair than to revive a failed economy.

Hair is a "very important issue that shows the people's cultural standards and mental and moral state", argues Minju Choson, a government daily.

"No matter how good the clothes, if one does not wear tidy shoes, one's personality will be downgraded."

Oh great. Now a haircut and a spiffy pair of shoes will raise the mental and moral state of the country and give you a better personality too.

For party papers such as Nodong Sinmun, the struggle against foreign and anti-communist influence is being fought out in the arena of personal appearance.

"People who wear other's style of dress and live in other's style will become fools and that nation will come to ruin," it says.

I wonder how long it will take socialists in the U. S. to take up the banner of good grooming.

Give yourself a break!

2005-01-15T15:52:00.000-05:00

I always knew this was true. At least one study now says

that high-energy activities, such as pounding the treadmill at the gym, accelerates the ageing process and makes the body more susceptible to illness.

"A more relaxed way of life is important for your health," said Dr Axt-Gadermann. "If you lead a stressful life and exercise excessively, your body produces hormones which lead to high blood pressure and can damage your heart and arteries."

Somebody should have said this a long time ago. Why should we have to feel guilty for not exercising more when what a lot of people really need is a break.

Dr Axt and his daughter advise readers that gentle walking, their own preferred form of exercise, is sufficient to keep people in shape if combined with a sensible diet that is low in carbohydrates and high in protein.

"We try to put our own ideas into practice but this does not mean that we do nothing all day," said Dr Axt-Gadermann. "Laziness should not be to the extreme and work is an important part of life, but recreation and relaxation should not be underestimated."

I could have told them that.

Religious humor

2005-01-09T14:22:00.000-05:00

Parody for the religious. Other handy stuff on the blog too.

Caught in passing

2005-01-09T11:10:00.000-05:00

Here are a couple of blogs I am going to watch. I haven't had time to read a lot but these may be worth some attention in the future.
First, there is Le Sabot Post-Moderne, a Christian blog, or clog from Kiev. There are a lot of links to other Christian blogs and sources for home-schooling and education in general. There is a nice photoblog from Ukraine here and a theological quote with a quote from Spurgeon here. I was drawn to the site chasing a reference to C. S. Lewis and his essay, The Necessity of Chivalry, which is apparently very much used by some in the education of boys. The link is here and worth reading not only for the reference to Lewis but also for a nice picture of Degas' The Little Dancer. Well, maybe I spent more time in passing than I thought!
The other is linked on the aforementioned. It is Calvinist Libertarians, which is of interest more for its mere existence than anything else. I didn't know there were such critters. Good for them! They also appear to have many links to religious and libertarian sources. Anybody who links to Samizdata must have something worthwhile to say.

Silence is less often regretted than speech.

2005-01-06T17:07:00.000-05:00

Vigorous debate and the free exchange of ideas is of the essence of the American system. All of us should remember before we speak to examine our thoughts and motives and the effect of our words on everyone in the room. Perhaps we are saying that words are arrows impossible to recall and we need to think twice before sending them on their way. Some folks can't distinguish courage and boldness from callousness and meanness. An illustration here.

Some things never change.

2005-01-04T11:09:00.000-05:00

It is, alas, a continuing problem.

A real merry Christmas!

2005-01-03T09:20:00.000-05:00

Some people really got a Santa visit. See here both the nice Christmas present received by somebody introduced to the pleasure of shooting and the picture of the WWII Ranger (the blogger's grandfather) with a folding-stock M1 carbine and what appears to be a Randall knife. The knife may be a Model 1, but I am not any kind of authority. She discovered one of the intangible pleasures of owning firearms, the connection with history one feels when holding an historic firearm. Maybe it's not all that intangible, because what happens is that you can hold and shoot the same firearm as the historic persons you are interested in. The Colt Peacemaker takes you back to the streets of Tombstone. The M1 Garand to D-Day. The Mosin-Nagant to the siege of Stalingrad. The side-by-side shotgun can put you on the seat of a stagecoach for a moment and give you a connection to the past more than you can get from reading and photos alone.
Details of the New-Year's Day shoot are here.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

2005-01-01T11:40:00.000-05:00

Those familiar with the literature on the natural right of self-defense and resistance to tyranny often see the quote:

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [...] The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (Chapter 1 "Arrest")

TSO points us to an interview with Mr. Solzhenitsyn where he discusses the role of religious faith in modern culture. I found his view of Calvinism interesting.

Calvinism says that nothing depends on man, that faith is already predetermined. Also in its sharp protest against Catholicism, Protestantism rushed to discard together with ritual all the mysterious, the mythical and mystical aspects of the Faith. In that sense it has impoverished religion.

It would appear that one of the shortcomings of Protestantism in general is the atmosphere suggesting that all things can be completely and clearly explained from where we stand. Understanding myth and mystery gives us humility because they take for granted that we are powerless to explain finally the most important realities of life.
On the subject of change to reach the current culture, a professor in my past said, "We must look for norms within forms." In other word we must see more than what our forebears did, we must accurately perceive why they did what they did. Hence the quote:

A return to the forms of religion which perhaps existed a couple of centuries ago is absolutely impossible. On the contrary, in order to combat modern materialistic mores, as religion must, to fight nihilism and egotism, religion must also develop, must be flexible in its forms, and it must have a correlation with the cultural forms of the epoch. Religion always remains higher than everyday life. In order to make the elevation towards religion easier for people, religion must be able to alter its forms in relation to the consciousness of modern man.

Denny Crane

2005-01-01T11:20:00.000-05:00

I can't help it. I like Boston Legal. I don't watch much tv at all but I try not to miss that one. This writer doesn't like the show, but he's a lawyer. He seems think the show will ruin the reputation of lawyers. He's too late. Perhaps he should remind himself that tv is entertainment not propaganda. It doesn't hurt a bit to have some romantic interest among attractive men and women. It doesn't hurt to have some psychos and sickos like they had on The Practice but leave out the lawyers taking themselves so, so seriously. It's even good to hear William Shatner singing somewhere beside the 100 Worst Albums of the 80's. We have been watching Law and Order too long, seeing criminal after criminal released on technicality after technicality. Truth and justice take a whipping daily on a whole family of crime and court programs. On Boston Legal we get to see justice served when Alan Shore outslimes the slime and wins the day for the good guy. There is nothing so hidden from some people as a tongue in a cheek. For others it just makes the gag that much better.
For tv as propaganda, see The West Wing, the left's vision of the mythical wise and good leader steering the ship of state for the peoples's own good. for tv as entertainment, I like Boston Legal. I can't help it.

Hope from the government?

2005-01-01T10:28:00.000-05:00

If you ever wondered what would make a person turn their back on the whole idea, a gripping explanation is here.

Happy New Year!

2005-01-01T10:15:00.000-05:00

We are not big drinkers here at the Handle Institute but this sounds good! British readers, please disregard.

And furthermore...

2004-12-31T11:59:00.000-05:00

While we are at it on gun control, we should note what is well-known to most writers on the subject, that is, that logical argument about the law, the second amendment, natural rights, public safety and all the debate points that usually come into the discussion actually have next-to-nothing to do with the real reasons for efforts at gun registration and gun prohibition. It is a matter of power. It is a matter of control. It is the refusal to accept the ability of the people to say no. If all the arguments were won by the people who want to be armed, the people who want to control would still try to disarm them because that is the only way that they can be assured that they may have their way unhindered. Article like this one are cogent, thorough and persuasive that a populace armed for self-defense is a natural right guarded and preserved in the Constitution. That however will not matter to those who want to rule, or perhaps reign is the better term. They want that degree of control because they fear the time when opposition to their programs arises and they have no way but force to make them happen. Debate is a great part of the process but the winning of arguments does not address how we shall respond to those who want to rule over us whether we want it or not. No matter how good the argument or how skilled the debater, don't expect to convert a lot of the opposition. They did not reason their way to where they are and they will not be reasoned away. In fact, I think that the well-marshalled arguments of Kopel, Polsby, Levinson, Kates, Lott and the rest are more useful in reassuring the faithful than in converting the lost.

A fleeting glimpse of reality

2004-12-31T09:03:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the actual facts of a matter become so starkly obvious that they cannot but be acknowledged. It seems that the government of New Zealand is choosing not to seek to register firearms because it doesn't work.

The chairman of the Council of licensed Firearms Owners, John Howat, agreed with the decision.

"There's no evidence, anywhere in the world, that registration systems assist police in generally controlling firearms," he said.

"It is incredibly costly. We don't want to go down that track, it's a waste of money."

Can you believe it? Maybe the Australians, Canadians and British will observe and learn. If Canada had looked at the issue that realistically a few years ago they would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars that now lie at the end of the tube. Clayton Cramer observes:

I do hope that this isn't a surprise to anyone. People that commit trivial crimes like murder, rape, and robbery, tend to be a bit careless about obeying the really important laws, such as gun registration.

News from the battlefield of education

2004-12-22T10:55:00.000-05:00

The notes of a real college professor on the state of American public education are here. The Handle Institute often posts on matters relating to the instruction of the young. We should not hold our breath for those in the failed system to provide a solution. The bureaucrat will always seek to enhance his own significance, even in the face of signal failure. Kim Dutoit's remark is on the money:

Here's the dirty little secret that the public schools don't want you to know: no matter how badly you screw up your own kids' education, they'll still be better-educated young adults than if they'd gone through the public school system.

Why not West Virginia?

2004-12-22T10:38:00.000-05:00

Perry DeHavilland at Samizdata is looking for a new home in the U.S.

It is now the law that ID cards will be imposed by force in Britain, with the support of the Leaders of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. They have won and as far as I am concerned, the guttering flame of the culture of liberty in Britain just blew out.

He's talking about New Hampshire which I'm sure has a lot of good points but he doesn't really sound enthusiastic. I see there are others suggesting a variety of states. You could do a lot worse than West Virginia, Perry. Montani Semper Liberi.

Current developments

2004-12-17T17:07:00.000-05:00

It appears that firearms are in the news in a couple of instances. Undaunted by the signal failures of others, the county supervisors of San Francisco, CA have placed a ballot initiative for next year to make the possession of handguns completely illegal there. Sure, that'll work. If you were worried, I forgot to say that the angelic forces for good in society, the police and private security guards are not included in the prohibition. Clayton Cramer covers the matter here and there is the usual good legal background here. Jeff at alphecca.com sums the whole thing up here and here.

Here we go, folks, another city decides to violate the Second Amendment and to deny residents the right to defend themselves from the mutants. If SF has such a high crime rate now, what on Earth makes the city supervisors think that completely disarming the law-abiding will make it any better?

It hasn't worked in Chicago, it hasn't worked in DC, it's a total failure in England and Australia. And showing what complete morons they are, the San Francisco tyrants think that somehow it will be different in their town? Lunacy is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

And given the liberal make-up of the city, the vote will probably pass.

California already HAS tough gun control regulations in place and that hasn't worked.

And if this ban is enacted, is it even constitutional? Unfortunately, the hyper-activist Ninth Circuit Court will probably rule that it is.

Criminals in San Francisco must already be activating their grass-roots "get out the vote" machine cranked-up! *Sigh*

On the brighter side, just in case you were feeling there was no hope, the Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department has affirmed that the Second Amendment describes an individual right. Details here, with a link to the document itself. This may get interesting.

Fred reads the paper

2004-12-15T16:56:00.000-05:00

Fred reads the paper. And perhaps also the handwriting on the wall.

We're Famous!

2004-12-15T16:13:00.000-05:00

Via Overlawyered.com we learn that West Virginia continues to excel in one area, a plaintiff-friendly court system. Golly, #4 in the whole country! Here is the press release. The whole report, complete with quote from former Justice Richard Neely is here (requires Acrobat Reader). A quote:

West Virginia is the only state where people can collect cash awards in these suits even without showing that there is a reasonable probability that they will become ill and there is no medical benefit to the check-ups. Also cash is awarded to the plaintiffs to use as they please. The award is not reserved for medical monitoring purposes.
In September 2004, DuPont was forced to settle a medical monitoring claim class action even though the plaintiffs offered no evidence that the substance at issue — C8, which is a by-product of Teflon production — is even dangerous or has the potential to cause any ill health effects. DuPont is spending $70 million up front, which includes funds for a panel to see if there is a link to health effects — something the plaintiffs generally have to show before filing such a suit. If so, DuPont will spend up to $235 million more on a medical monitoring program. The plaintiffs attorneys are guaranteed $22.6 million regardless of what the study shows.

While you're at it, be sure to check out the Loony Lawsuits link. I really liked this one.

Religious topics

2004-12-13T20:07:00.000-05:00

I am not sure why I am finding material of a religious nature and particularly material of a Roman Catholic nature lately. Perhaps it is a byproduct of the holiday season. Continuing on the religious training of children posted on earlier, this writer calls on the natural law basis of the Roman Church to explain the necessity of education for the good of civilization.

We find ourselves in a time when religious belief is considered a menace to democracy. A series of judicial decisions elevated a Jeffersonian obiter dictum on the wall of separation between church and state into a dogma, interpreting it to mean that the state must be forever vigilant against the encroachments of religion. A constitutional stricture against the establishment of a state religion was read as the need to disestablish religion and so privatize religious belief that it had no place in the public square. Moreover, what until yesterday was the common morality of the nation is now seen as the arcane deliverance of a religious sect. School children must be protected against the display of prohibitions against theft, lying, fornication and murder, the Decalogue now seen as a set of rules that some few might choose to accept but which have no claim on the wider society.

It would seem that prohibitions against theft, lying etc. have to be more than obscure "values" if they are to be transferred to the next generation.

It is absurd to think of the free individual as an autonomous unit, naked before the state. Even Justice Kennedy knows where babies come from. They are born into families without whose nurture they would not survive a day. This dependence, materially, lasts for nearly two decades; spiritually, it marks us for life. Man is a political animal, but he is first of all, and essentially, a family animal His very existence depends upon the family. Political theory has toyed with the idea that states are formed when individuals come over various points of the horizon and converge on Philadelphia. Doubtless they are all feral, raised by wolves, as fit as Romulus to found a city. Save as a heuristic device, contract theory is absurd, and even as a device it is pernicious. Because people come to think it is more than a device and take from it the false assumption that our original position is as fully constituted individuals, without histories, without a culture, without families.

At the very least, these remarks can remind us, as we all enjoy what family we have, of how much it means to be a part of a family and to enjoy a heritage that was passed, not in a school or a church, but around the hearth and the table.

Hyperdictionary

2004-12-13T20:00:00.000-05:00

On the order of Wikipedia is Hyperdictionary, an online dictionary and thesaurus. Looks pretty good.

Spirituality

2004-12-13T13:21:00.000-05:00

It is a cause of continuing interest at the Handle Institute how often people acknowledge the value of religion, ethics, morals and systems of values in general. I remember hearing in a sales meeting how customers want to deal with companies with "values". Here is an article about how to nurture spirituality in your child. It is with the specifics and definite elements that they find occasion to balk. I can certainly agree that the pursuit of the spiritual brings life to bloom. I am not so sure we must avoid so studiously any specific content in the practice. C. S. Lewis said,

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

Bishop Sheen

2004-12-12T10:34:00.000-05:00

For those who think that it is a novelty of the Twenty-first Century to have religion rear its head in public, here is an article about Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, who outdrew Frank Sinatra and Milton Berle on TV in 1952. I think I heard Berle quoted saying, "If I have to lose, I'd rather it would be to Him." I remember seeing him (him, the Bishop, not Him from the Berle quote) on our little black-and-white set with his flowing robes drawing on a chalkboard as he spoke. One of my professors said that he had the eyes of an actor. Notice the photo of the TV Guide cover here. He radiated concentration and genius.

Life Is Worth Living was given a Tuesday night spot where it went up against Milton Berle on one channel and Frank Sinatra on another (known in the industry as an “obituary spot”). No fear: Sheen knocked them out. By April 1952, he was on the cover of Time magazine. He won the 1952 Emmy Award for “Most Outstanding Television Personality,” beating out giants like Jimmy Durante, Edward R. Murrow, Lucille Ball, and Arthur Godfrey. (In his predictably witty acceptance remarks, he said, “I wish to thank my four writers: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.”) A nationwide poll of radio and television editors named him TV’s “Man of the Year.” Vice President Nixon thanked him for his “outstanding contributions to a better understanding of the American way of life.” President Eisenhower invited him to the White House.

Sermon for Doubters

2004-12-12T10:26:00.000-05:00

Donald Sensing has today's sermon up. It deals with the question of John the Baptist from prison, commonly used to illustrate the failure of doubt. Mr. Sensing helps us understand that it may not be the failure we have been led to believe. I like this part:

"Life," goes an old saying, "is what happens while you're making other plans and dreaming other dreams." Most of could recount a litany of broken dreams, of plans never carried out, expectations never met and goals not reached. Some of us came this close to attaining them and then watched them brush past us like strangers in a crowd. Maybe we thought there would be other days, not knowing then there would be no other days. A tragedy? I don't know.

Hope springs in Great Britain

2004-12-05T10:11:00.000-05:00

In the U.S. support for firearms rights and self-defense has always been strongest among the citizens at large and among the police, who understand that they are at best able to serve, but not often to protect. It has been weakest among politicians, lawyers and judges. The situation appears to be the same in Great Britain, but glimmers of hope are breaking that the British may return to seeing self-defense as one of the "rights of Englishmen".
While you visit, notice the Gadsden flag on the wall in one of the photos in this post. The snake was a well-chosen symbol for early American flags because snakes are always non-agressive. West Virginians and other mountain folk know that nobody ever gets run down by a snake and attacked. For the most part, snakes are shy creatures who only want to go about their business unmolested. They only attack when intruded upon. Apt.

Journalists

2004-12-05T09:33:00.000-05:00

Speaking of journalists, an interesting discussion of exactly what that means and exactly who is qualified to call themself one is going on here. A clipping:

What some people seem to forget is that "the press" is only a metaphor for journalism. By giving freedom of the press as well as freedom of speech, the probable "intent" of the framers of the First Amendment and their probable "public meaning" was to recognize the freedom to publish without prior restraint and with broad (though not absolute) protection against later suit or punishment. If I'm right, then the "press" phrase of the First Amendment doesn't give more rights to journalists than to any other profession or sort of people who publish. It provides protection for whoever uses a publishing press, not a protection for a profession, like journalism. (To the extent that any states deviate from this basic First Amendment approach by privileging journalists only, they are acting unwisely in my opinion and contrary to the idea of the First Amendment.)

Birthday wishes

2004-12-05T09:08:00.000-05:00

Clayton Cramer is 48 today. He is a writer who, as neither politician nor journalist(in the official sense)has contributed tremendously to the cause of firearms rights and particularly concealed-carry reform all over the U.S. with books, columns and a popular blog. Middle age is the time when all of us, should we be spared so long, must pass from youth, when everything is possible, to age, when possibilities, uh, taper off, as it were. Older people are more fun and probably more useful after they get over trying to be great and start trying just to be good to those around them. His meditations on the day are worth reading here.
There are also good posts on self-defense in Great Britain, and an extraordinary woman in history whose story needs to be told more often.

Kant and Transcendental Thinking

2004-12-02T17:12:00.000-05:00

A new article on the influence of Kant on von Mises the economist is here. The article includes an interesting comparison of the different methods of investigating cultural and physical phenomena.

What's a conservative?

2004-12-01T14:49:00.000-05:00

Charley Reese has a new article up at Lewrockwell.com. It's about what makes a conservative. Some people think they know and don't. I say Mr. Reese is pretty close. We should not mistake plainness of language for shallowness of thought. Here's his take on what makes a conservative:

So, let me explain what a conservative is. A conservative believes that not only should the Supreme Court strictly construe the Constitution, but so should the president, the House, the Senate, governors, mayors and everybody else. A conservative does not approve of wars, except in defense of the land and the people, and only upon a declaration of war by both houses of Congress. A war to liberate somebody else from a nasty government is unconstitutional, illegal and immoral.

There's something here for the religious too:

A conservative Christian believes that his own soul is not imperiled if other people down the street decide to do some sinning. A conservative Christian recognizes that he is commanded to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and comfort the sick and dying. He is not commanded to shift this responsibility to government. He is not commanded to judge other people's lives and to regulate their behavior. A conservative Christian recognizes that something does not have to be illegal in order for him to refrain from doing it.

The whole thing is worth reading.

Online library

2004-11-19T17:16:00.000-05:00

I just found the Online Library of Liberty Fund Inc. featuring a large number of ebooks in a number of formats. The stated emphasis is “…to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals” but there is a lot of information from a broad range of sources. Just for example, here is a page of what they offer from that perennial favorite, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). You can search by historical period, author, subject and several other categories.
I found the site via NoQuarters who was discussing in a more, uh, popular style Kant's contribution to the British concern with civil liberties here.

Maybe she would be a better attorney general...

2004-11-19T13:12:00.000-05:00

This via The Volokh Conspiracy is from the Montgomery Advertiser about Condi Rice and gun control issues:

Rice has said memories of Birmingham's racial turmoil shaped some of her core values.

During the bombings of the summer of 1963, her father and other neighborhood men guarded the streets at night to keep white vigilantes at bay. Rice said her staunch defense of gun rights comes from those days. She has argued that if the guns her father and neighbors carried had been registered, they could have been confiscated by the authorities, leaving the black community defenseless.

Time for the voice of moderation

2004-11-19T11:59:00.000-05:00

If anyone else has noticed the remarkable bitterness of current political feelings, we can take hope from thoughts like these from a California rabbi and talk-show host. In his words,

Whereas love is the glue that holds things together, fear is the antigravity that tears everything apart. America will continue to bleed so long as the two sides continue to be so panicked. It is time that we faced our fear.

A radical solution is proposed--visiting with each other!

I believe that President Bush and Sen. Edward Kennedy should join together to launch a national initiative encouraging Democrats and Republicans to invite one another to dinner in their respective homes. How sad that conservatives today only enjoy other conservatives company, that religious-minded people only want to hang out with fellow people of faith. How tragic that so many of my liberal friends consciously avoid having any social interaction with conservative colleagues from work and demonize them in their minds as fiends.

It's just crazy enough to work.

Then there is the FUN angle...

2004-11-19T11:22:00.000-05:00

Who woulda thunk it, firearms can be fun. Apparently, there is a person at Slatewho will consider being a human guinea pig for trying unusual activities. It appears that they tried a go at shooting and, wonder of wonders, liked it. Like most skills of value, imagined hazards keep a lot of people from learning helpful skills. Take somebody shooting. If you do not shoot, get somebody to take you. I like this part:

I switched to a Beretta 92FS 9 mm Parabellum semiautomatic and again I punched a decent hole. Ricardo then let me try his Sig Sauer P226 9 mm with the crimson trace laser-grip. With this gun, when you put your finger on the trigger a red laser dot illuminates your target. Ricardo had me load the magazine with 15 bullets. (From watching movies, I had thought magazines came already loaded, which I realized was like thinking candles came already lit.) After a few shots around the center of the plate, Ricardo told me to get in a faster rhythm, and I found myself hitting with greater accuracy. "Go ahead, paper plate, make my day."

After I emptied the semi, Dianna came up hesitantly. "Umm, how hard would it be for me to umm, shoot a few rounds?" she asked Ricardo. I said, "I told you so."

"Well, you look like such a badass doing it, I want to try," she explained.

Maybe she thought she would turn into a homicidal maniac and was surprised when all that happened was a good time.

Get Mr. Keillor a glass of water...

2004-11-16T17:23:00.000-05:00

Many of us have been delighted for years by the NPR syndicated radio program A Prairie Home Companion and its wonderful regular feature of the news from Lake Wobegon narrated by the show's emcee, Garrison Keillor. He always gives us touching and humorous pictures of the lives of ordinary folks who are shown to be anything but ordinary in reality. I am always amazed at how he sees the heroisms and kindnesses in the lives of everyday people. However, it seems that recent events have taken quite a toll and perhaps he needs some time off. Read here of Eugene Volokh's take on events at the University of Chicago and here for a followup. The original article, from the Chicago Maroon is here. Volokh's remarks also include insights useful beyond the present context for the use of humor. "I was just kidding." is a weak excuse that hides many a cruel and vicious remark. If many a true word is spoken in jest, so is many a mean one.

State of the country's youth

2004-11-14T17:47:00.000-05:00

Where did we go wrong?

Dreadful weaponry

2004-11-14T17:21:00.000-05:00

Via Instapundit, the monitor of dangerous stuff of all kinds comes this. Only the brave should play the mp3. We would not interrupt our normal blogging decorum but for the state of high peril involved.

Election 2004

2004-11-13T10:21:00.000-05:00

It's good to see that Fred is working through some of his bashfulness and is sharing some of his thoughts on the recent election-day event. Click through the main page to Fred Columns and select number 255, "Fred on the Election". Many have sought to find rhyme or reason in the election unsuccessfully. Fred's line of thought may have something to it. His "guaranteed reprehensible" claim is safe. There is something here to offend Democrats, Republicans, Christians--come one, come all. It appears that Fred would agree with Barnum that nobody ever went broke(or unelected -vwh)underestimating the intelligence of the American people. For example:

When you have seen a thousand impassioned sheep waving witless placards at a political rally, you realize that facts don’t matter. Look and feel are everything. Bush and Kerry are both pampered ineffectual rich brats, one a drunk, the other a gigolo. Kerry comes from Massachusetts, though, and you just know he eats curious salads with strange names. By contrast, Bush has a certain ferret-like pugnacity to him and a low-wattage mind that people between the coasts are comfortable with. He isn’t going to use any of them high-falutin’ words, because he honestly doesn’t know them. He won’t confuse anyone.

His analysis of the coast-heartland break is interesting:

A lot of columnists and talking heads on the coasts thought that the election was going to be a referendum on the war in Iraq. I doubt it was. Nobody in the middle of the country knows, or cares, anything about the world outside the United States. Nobody in Massachusetts knows anything, or cares much, about the world inside the United States. The Bush people have never heard of the Crimea. The Kerry people have barely heard of Texas.

As usual, Fred is unusual, but he may be onto something.

2004-11-07T15:53:00.000-05:00

While we're at it let's just add links to Oleg Volk's sites. There is a wealth of reliable information there for those interested in firearms and self-defense issues. The new links appear on the list to the right.

Oleg Volk

2004-11-07T10:48:00.000-05:00

Via Kim DuToit I find that Oleg Volk has been posting new stuff. A lot of new stuff. Most people who explore firearms issues on the web will already be familiar with his first-rate photography and incisive posters appearing on other sites. His own site, featuring his broad range of interests includes much more than firearms and self-defense material. The new material is found under 2004 Gallery There are photos of people of all descriptions, automobiles, insects, buildings, and about anything else that might tempt a talented photographer. Mr. Volk is a Russian-born American citizen who teaches multimedia methods and graphic arts in Nashville, TN. A word of caution, don't go unless you have some time to move around and enjoy the material. By all means, stop by and see the pictures of some of my particular favorites, the Russian Makarov and Mosin-Nagant.

After all, what is wealth?

2004-11-07T10:14:00.000-05:00

Charley Reese is a columnist from Florida who regularly appears on Lewrockwell.com(link at right). He has a background as a worker in political campaigning and in the newspaper business, ending his newspaper career with the Orlando Sentinel as a columnist. His latest, on the difference between money and wealth, is worth reading and appears here.

Whither Second Amendment?

2004-11-04T14:21:00.000-05:00

Dave Kopel who writes from time to time in National Review Online has a summary of how firearms issues are looking after the recent election. He also has an excellent site of his own focused mostly on the same issues. West Virginia got a very positive report!