All posts by Bob Wescott

Drugs and Governance

teen-drug-abuse-s2-statisticsWe are not serious about ridding ourselves of drugs. We’ve been touting a “war on drugs” since 1971. Nixon’s concept was dead-on. Yes, it was a reaction to the wantonness of the ‘60’s, and an unpleasant adult’s attempt to restore adult control over the dangerously immature. But it is impossible to measure the destruction of lives that could have been avoided over the fifty-plus years since: the loss of fertile minds, the waste of generations of inner-city youth, the corruption of law enforcement and even the judiciary, and, now, the virtual abandonment of moral authority by governments at all levels.

The instinct to protect ourselves and others from mind-corroding drugs is now conflicting with a new, unprecedented concept of “rights.” America was founded in a time of moral adjustment and intellectualization of models of governance. Smart people, sensitive to history and the writings of philosophers both current and precedent, and fresh from the struggle of revolution, conceived of a constitutional republic where qualified citizens would vote for three levels of government: local, which elections already existed, state, which had existed for domestic issues despite top-down controls from England, and the new, federal, yet divided, central government. Overarching was the logical fear of creating a new tyranny to replace the old one: government could not be trusted to govern itself.

None of it worked without a shared morality among the citizenry and, most basically, moral self-governance. The Founders expected, and observed, a general ability to govern oneself, and the social agreement of when self-governance had failed. How distant those concepts are.

The Constitution, revered in theory and acknowledged in breach, has become the means to separate individuals from all external moral forces, starting with one’s parents. Not the original intent, but enough lawyers and psychologists, teamed with power-hungry political weasels, have managed to literally talk us out of our heritage. Shame on us.

We are now at the critical knife-edge of history where a civilization finds the courage to defend and restore itself, or passes from history to join the other failed attempts to organize societies with a measure of individual freedom. For the new power-meisters, morality and moral stricture are the obvious enemies of the individual’s enjoyment of life, and they are happy to take the votes of the threatened and pass laws that prevent morality from interfering very much. So long as “things” hold together – things like infrastructure, utilities, law-enforcement and food and energy supplies – individuals’ new friends in government will continue to find ways for their voters to avoid responsibility, taxes and work. Maybe. It’s all crap.

Meanwhile, human potential is dissolving in mixtures of chemicals, both legal and, nominatively, “controlled.” Parents are crying over suburban kids dying from heroin, boys and girls, while legislatures rush to legalize marijuana. The edge of logic has become fuzzy. Lives of otherwise responsible people are being distorted, ultimately twisted, by cocaine. Oh, but not “crack” cocaine! No, no, no; that’s for stupid people.

And the ‘War on Drugs’ goes on, accumulating statistics. What is missing is the will to actually stop the drug business. Succeeding will ruffle a lot of feathers.

Suppose a tough governor and a tough U. S. Attorney, working for an adult, a-political Attorney General, agree to designate a venue like a group of urban counties, and said governor agrees to take the heat for allowing a federal “state of emergency” in those counties. Under that declaration a special form of “martial law” would establish a camp, or camps, where National Guard troops will hold everyone arrested for even minor drug infractions. There they may be held indefinitely until the source of their drugs is identified and proven, on the presumption that ALL drugs have crossed state or international borders and are subject to federal penalties.

Detention camps will have ‘detox’ facilities. Addicts obviously are in possession of drugs on, or in their persons. They will be detained until their sources are identified. Then their sources will be arrested and detained until their sources are identified. And on, and on, until serious distributors are detained. As each level of source has been identified, the corresponding identifiers will be released to normal legal processes with all evidence gained under martial law admissible. We are either going to save our children – and society – or we are not.

Is it inevitable that individual freedom shall destroy our families, communities, schools, police and judiciaries? Because of our cleverness with words? Or do we have the right to cleanse society of corruption and disease, and to raise succeeding generations in clean, nurturing environments? Let’s choose rightly.

The Long Game

bird
Of the election marathon of 2015-2016 it is safe to say that the Hillary phenomenon is not much of a surprise, although the Bernie Sanders phenomenon is – and he’s more instructive.
On the other hand, the Trump phenomenon has caught a lot of supposed wise observers by surprise and it surely ought not have. Trump is fulfilling an Alinsky-ite prediction: Obama’s EVERY effort has been to destroy his enemies and the classic Alinsky tactics have been employed repeatedly over his two terms.
First was / is to assault normalcy not quite outrageously, but steadfastly, in small ways and large. The “crisis” of financial meltdown, so convenient for Obama’s election, was the blasting cap. Never let a good crisis go to waste. Bam! In came the bailouts and Obama’s first victory in the budget-busting “stimulus” package that upped federal spending by 20%. Republicans didn’t have the majority, then, and watched helplessly, moaning and groaning, some even voting FOR it – able to swallow almost anything.
The Tea Party was born and the 2010 campaigns for Congress joined at that moment. The opposition was “stirred up,” as it were, and Obama’s plan was working. With the mainstream media lathering syrup on his every waffle of wisdom, Republicans were made to look silly in opposition. Time to strike!
In came Obamacare, that Orwellian lie of a law (or, Orwellian pile of crap… whatever works for you), that caught Republicans and the country off-guard. Bam! That was slammed through: another gigantic increase in federal share of GDP, gigantic increase in police-state controls over our most intimate freedoms, and Republicans were made to look silly in opposition.
In 2010 the House went Republican. Oh, wonderful, they said, now we can thwart Obama through control of the “purse strings!” Obama was perfectly satisfied to have Congress split. His plan never was to increase Democratic majorities – it was to destroy Republicans and any opposition to his socialist weakening of the U. S. When you’re in a shooting gallery, the only ducks you can hit are the ones parading by in front of you.
Well, the Republicans were really mad, now, and they proposed repeal of Obamacare, over and over again. The Senate pissed on that idea and Republicans were made to look silly in opposition. No formal budgets were passed, just continuing resolutions that cemented-in the 20% budget increase (plus Obamacare that kept getting funded) the stimulus had injected, and Republicans were made to look silly in opposition, especially when the government shut down for a few days.
Oh, my God! Look at the suffering! It didn’t stop the Republicans. They made believable promises to their base that once they had both Senate and House they could really stop the Obama regime and its terrible…, whatevers – fill in the blank and send a check. Republicans and conservatives were reaping a windfall in donations thanks to that ogre, Obama. And continuing resolutions were passed and the budget remained outrageous, even as Obama could claim to be “reducing deficits at the fastest rate in history.” It was still better that Republicans now controlled Congress for the press could make them look even sillier in opposition… as well as disingenuous to their base!
Having boxed them in with lies about government shutdowns and other opposing acts, Obama and the press displayed all too clearly how Republicans could not be trusted even when they had all the power to stop him that they’d asked for.
Enter Trump, a fallen angel, but angel nonetheless. He has ploughed through standard Republicans, and even Ted Cruz, engendering a substantial opposition within the Republican party, itself, including Mitt Romney Syndrome, that will, if successful in presenting a third candidate, complete the destruction of Obama’s enemies.
It was a long game, but perfectly played by the president, traitor though he may be. Watching the Republicans fumble around, afraid to impeach or withhold funds, all the other crises of Obama’s making were just diversionary, happily watched and waited-out while the long game played along.
Republicans’ 8 years of foolishness have brought us almost to our own goal line, not even talking about defending it, while Mr. Obama flips America the bird.

Prudence Leadbetter

Free Sex and Freedom

Titian-Bacchanal-1523-1524
Homosexuality and other sexual expressions have changed. No news flash there, but what does it mean? In many ways it is a frontal attack on religious belief and expression, but it is also an attack on free enterprise, Constitutional protections and the public covenant. AIDS was its greatest ally.
AIDS was spread almost exclusively from particular sex acts by men. It can infect both genders but it began with men doing unnatural – as in non-evolutionary – sex acts. And it was and is terrible.
Once it was identified and named, teams of researchers began seeking a cure and seeking voluminous funding from governments to expand the fight against AIDS. Within a couple of years AIDS had legal standing, virtually unique among diseases. Special non-discrimination provisions were added to our laws so that sufferers would not be ostracized and suddenly, everyone was feeling sorry for – and accommodating – homosexuals! Gays, queers, trannies, lesbians, dykes and butches were organized in ways and with successes, never achieved before.

It was great news when the first non-gay was infected because now AIDS was “everybody’s” threat and problem. Now, straights and gays were the SAME! No more could gay friends and co-workers coexist through tolerance or ignorance of their differences, now the path was celebration, equality, pin-point anti-discrimination, and marriage! Glory be to politics! Being recognized not for gender but for sexual practice was a new pathway to power, codified, publicized, made equal in education and made equal to religion. Soon it was not equality but dominance that was sought – and here it is.
Homosexuality is not an evolutionary trait. It occurs in nature but by definition cannot procreate and pass on more and more “successful” homosexual genes. Homosexuality, at least until the twentieth century, was never more than a tiny percentage of humanity because it is constantly dying out.
What has happened? Homosexuality has gained a social value, and, therefore, political value and power.

Non-heterosexuality (NHS) is not normal in that it is unable to reproduce, which is to say, it cannot strengthen the gene pool. This is not to say it does not occur. Even some animals display same-sex courtship activity, but whatever motivates such action, it will not “enter” the genetic stream.
This was the case for all of human history until quite recently. We can look back from our new ethical platform and say that it was terrible to treat NHS people so poorly. Today, except for Islam, most social systems have decided to accept NHS at varying degrees of ignore-ance, tolerance or “equality.” Muslims kill homosexuals. They kill lots of other groups they don’t agree with, also, but they are just about the last belief structure that applies torture and death to NHS’s. In most cases, then, homosexuality is now tolerated. In our cloudy enlightenments America and Europe not only tolerate it, we give it “equal” status with heterosexuality. That is, NHS’s can now “marry” some one not of the opposite gender. However, they are not really “equal,” because they have also gained legal protections that restrict only heterosexuals.

Indeed, the diaphanous basis for enacting laws that benefit only NHS people is constitutionally questionable, to say the least.

Lately the battle lines are between the tiny, tiny number of self-identified “trans-gender” NHS people. These are they who claim – and perhaps believe – that their “identity” and their bodies don’t match. For those not suffering the same way this is not only hard to empathize with, it is hard to tolerate in its outward expression. We are adapting, little by little, largely through force of the new political power connected to all things sexually deviant – deviant in the sense that they are not evolutionarily functional, only socially.

“Transsexuals” want to utilize facilities where clothing comes off, based on what they believe about their bodies. Removing one’s clothing is a basic sexual act in western society. It is also a necessity in order to relieve one’s self, bodily, or to bathe or to replace soiled clothing with fresh. For transsexuals, these things cannot be separated. Their perceived “gender” is the determinant of their rights and necessities, evidently with no compartmentalization.

Social norms require that our sexual beings be limited, which is to say, mostly private. We celebrate the events in the creation of families, from marriage to pregnancy to birth and on and on. Families are the keystone to our civilization. They are strengthened by shared restrictions on sexual activity, and destroyed by sexual abandon, debauchery, adultery and so forth. That destruction hurts our children and their upbringing and maturation, things that society – all of us – want to see happen. These norms – and our children – are under assault.
Ultra-feminism has a role in all this, as does liberalism generally, which gains through group identities and group victim-hood. First, feminism has distorted the roles of men and boys. It wants softness, less manliness, sensitivity. It demands that rambunctious boys be corralled and defined by female control.

Feminism has changed ratios of success and achievement in education, business, politics and medicine. At the same time it has equalized sexual abandon and destructive habituation. Most of all it has confused the roles of men and women in the key functions of love, romance, marriage, family and child-rearing. Politics, feminist-driven, has enabled and profits from this demand for both victim-hood and dominance. Manhood is retreating.

Non-heterosexuality is growing socially, not genetically. It has become simultaneously acceptable – celebrated! – and less-threatening to bond with another man or woman than to undergo the rigors and risks of heterosexual courtship and responsibility. Almost like gang initiation and in-group recognition or status, “coming out” removes one from fulfilling roles that accept the burdens and risks of society and family and love of, and sacrifice for, a true spouse. And, we have the full force of government – right down to first grade and earlier – punishing heterosexual expression when it isn’t even sexual.

We bring up children amidst all of this and (feminist-driven and politically protected) unfettered abortion of unwanted babies, and then marvel at their growing reactions as they choose to couple purely for fun, hetero or homo – responsibility be damned.

The arenas in which men fulfill male responsibilities and accept risks are shrinking, even in the military. Every form of sexual aberrance now has “rights” that all institutions in society (religions included, except Islam, apparently) must accommodate, if not promote. The destruction of culture and social strength that is racing to an end we pretend won’t come, is all of our faults. Shame on us and shame on the professions and politicians that enable it, rationalize it, give it classy names and ride the waves of new unfairnesses for their personal gains.

***

One would think that personal feelings could not be a premise for codification. There is no empirical evidence of feelings and as a result, any “law” based upon them cannot be enforced equally for all. A good example might be separation of bathroom and shower facilities based on gender. In keeping with the protection of females from feral males, and with the protection of children from pederasts, restricting access to “boys’ rooms” and “girls’ rooms” has been one of the most fundamental and successful social norms since civilization got organized… and crowded.

Indeed, as mass communications became increasingly sexualized in both words and images, and with heightened mingling of young men and women in schools, jobs and elsewhere, the removal of clothing became more and more of a point of risk for unwanted sexual contact with people unrelated to one’s family, and unknown in proclivities. The segregation of bathroom facilities – and other places of disrobing, even partially – is increasingly important, not less.

The fears of individuals – particularly females – about being assaulted in places of compromise or of temptation, are valid. The rights of those offended or just unnerved by the presence of someone other than one’s own gender, are equally valid, and codified in law! But, somehow, such laws are being over-ridden in the interest of… what? Celebration of mental incongruities.

The syndromes, or popularly-honored sexualities that have been named by psychiatrists as if to impart patinas of reality, are little more than mental distortions. This is not to say they aren’t deeply felt and troubling for those who feel them. They don’t derive from the wrong number of genes; these people are not genetic oddities. They are odd in habit and have, they claim, deep feelings. For whatever emotional, mental reasons these are feelings that express through sexuality and deserve, I think, sympathy.

It is impossible for heterosexuals to empathize with someone who feels like his or her gender is a mistake. But, we should be kind; we should be completely civil; we should not denigrate or mock or chastise that person. He or she is human and deserves to exercise inherent human rights.

A proper question is whether we are being kind when we facilitate self-mutilation in a most fallible attempt to re-order the flesh to please the mind. Suicide rates would argue the negative.

What is the legal status of a gay or lesbian person who elects – chooses – to live a straight life. It happens all the time. People who have lived “straight” for even decades, decide to “go gay” at some point. That happens, too. In BOTH instances, the change is not genetic, it’s self-declared. Yet when he or she has decided to be gay or lesbian, he or she is protected by unusually strict anti-discrimination laws… laws so severe that “straight” people accused of such discrimination can be ruined socially and financially with the aid of government police powers. That is, when straight they are at great risk for persecution under laws that apply only to heterosexuals. Is there no definition under the 14th amendment?

As we move farther and farther away from the fundamental rights protected (ostensibly) by the Constitution, we get mired in the soft police-statism of creating rights that may only be enjoyed by taking rights away from others! To paraphrase a great mind’s observation: “The road to fascism is paved with good intentions.”

Mitt Romney Syndrome

RomTrumpSince Mr. Obama was elected in what was, until then, the most dramatic turn-around in U. S. politics (we elected a quite radical Muslim sympathizer who had been raised and largely educated by communists, who expressed a deep dislike of his supposed homeland, and who was the only person who ought to know his birthplace, who ever claimed – in writing – that he was born in Kenya – except for his grandmother and other members of his extended family), our politics and domestic body politic has been undergoing an even more dramatic shift. Few have taken good note of this, even as Republicans have consistently voted (they thought) for policies and people in direct opposition to what Mr. Obama represents. Their disappointment with the results of their overwhelming votes, votes that delivered House and Senate to Republicans and a wide majority of state legislatures and governorships as well, have finally found glaring outlet in the open presidential election marathon of 2015 – 2016.
Those who have fallen away as Donald Trump won the Republican nomination in the hardest-fought primaries of our lifetimes, still don’t grasp the implications, despite experiencing the reality. Republicans in “power” not only fail to grasp the shift, they are in denial and considering a tragic course to unseat the primary winner, Trump.
Key leader in this error is Mitt Romney, but there are dozens of ostensible conservatives and obviously liberal Republicans egging him on. For shame. Many of these claim to be struck by intense principles that prevent them from supporting Trump, led as much by William Kristol and those who orbit his diffuse conservatism, as by Romney.
Romney, too principled to stomach The Donald, was unable to declare said principles when debating Barack Hussein Obama in 2012, sitting silently as Obama spewed his Zebra-dung half-truths with the help of Candy Crowley. Perhaps Romney would be president now if he had shown proper outrage at the Benghazi and other outright lies and stormed off the stage of that debate with a statement that he was going to where Americans wanted to hear some truth! Obama deserved no more respect. But he did not have the spine – or principles – for that, which principles he claims guide him now.
Now his spine has returned to service. Trump is offensive to some and he, ROMNEY, will not stand for it… no, not for one minute!
How is it that millions of Republicans and others have chosen Trump over all those who use Republicanism, but don’t stand up for it? How is it that so many declare, loudly, that they aren’t seeking gentility or even manners, but rather someone with the nature of a bulldog who will not tolerate mealy-mouthed acquiescence to the destruction of liberty, personal responsibility and Constitutionalism?
Trump ain’t Winston Churchill, which would be nice, but this ain’t tiddliwinks, either; this is the salvation of the IDEAS of America and its promise, fought for so terrifically by Washington’s ragged troops.
Mr. Romney, be a statesman, now. Hold out your hand and help to Donald Trump and sign on to the victory that is within the grasp not of Republicans, but of real Americans.

Prudence Leadbetter

All we need is Pot

Brain Food
Brain Food
One of the least productive efforts a thinking society could engender is the legalization of marijuana. Now that we have failed, miserably, to control the entry of drugs into the United States – not because we can’t control them, but because we have not the collective will to do so – pot-heads are using that failure as a reason to legalize.
Then there is the old saw, “Alcohol is even worse, so give us our dope.”
Liberals and other statists can’t wait to, quote, “regulate it,” unquote, and tax it… ohhh, my gawwd… tax revenue. Ohhhh. Wow.
Dopers and those who will profit from their pot habits, point to traffic accidents tied to booze and say that those statistics “prove” that pot is less harmful, so let’s party, man. To them it’s also proof that we long-ago relinquished our societal right to limit anything people want to do for pleasure. Besides, since those who most want to restrict pot don’t use it themselves they have no right to limit those who do.
Clearly if your skin is not brown you have no right to pass judgment on a brown-skinned law-breaker; if you’ve never raped a girl you can’t understand or condemn a rapist; if you didn’t grow up poor you can’t criticize rioters.
So I can’t criticize pot users, but a few facts are still pertinent. I was going to say timely, but the irony would be lost… eventually.
Like any psychoactive substance, marijuana messes up mental function. It has its own set of effects, but its common effects are well-known and the subject of much humor. Today it’s politically incorrect to joke about alcohol problems and drunkenness. Marijuana’s effects, on the other hand, are still funny, still mocked, still mimicked… and we laugh.
As marijuana gains popular legitimacy through various forms of disingenuous ballot initiatives (you know “medical marijuana” is a giant lie; if it were “medical” it’d be sold at CVS) prompted by looming profits and the intense desire of pot-heads to gain permission as it were to do something “wrong” and slightly stupid, politicians – social leaders, they – are finding ways to gain votes by helping to destroy the social fabric. The fact that we appear to have “lost” the war on drugs is proof only that we have never truly fought it, not that widespread drug use is “inevitable.”
Despite what you may have heard, pot use does often lead to use of stronger drugs. Pot that will soon be “recreational,” or, better, “de-creational” is 10 times stronger than what the great leaders of the ‘60’s messed around with. And the euphoria of toking comes from interaction with the same pleasure receptors as do cocaine and opioids, which we still, sort-of, think are bad.
That child development is severely messed up by pot use – as is their future success and mental balance – should lead us to make it harder to get the stuff. Not so according to great pot-conflicted, or pot-afflicted, political “leaders.”
Pot, I believe, has a lot to do, pre-natally, with the rapid increase in ADHD and autism-spectrum disorders. Not to worry, we have renamed amphetamines to help some of those, and other drugs may come along to counteract other drug downsides – like Narcan.
It’s all depravity but repackaged to be rational because alcohol is bad for some people. To the degree that some drinkers become alcoholics, so do pot smokers become addicted and / or strongly habituated, suffering withdrawal reactions when cut off from it. What a victory for society. You think the Constitution protects license as much as liberty? Is there a line you won’t cross in that descent? Why not this one?

Prudence Leadbetter

Mothers and Fathers, oh, my!

American society (and civilization) is dissembling, which we like to blame on religious flaws, drugs, video games and e-mail, but it’s due as well to modern feminism – the kind that hates motherhood, fatherhood, marriage and the unique civilizing roles of the females of our species.

This in no way is an attempt to justify keeping women “down,” or to relegate them to male-defined positions in society. Quite the opposite.

Humans are animals – mammals – which means there are sperm-bearers and egg-bearers, and the egg-bearers conceive internally, gestate internally, give birth to live offspring, and suckle them with mammary glands until able to eat gathered or prepared foods. The sperm-bearers have it all too easy in this process, since their commitment to the physical acts of procreation is over in a matter of minutes, depending on what is required to gain the egg-bearer’s acceptance, following which they are not physically tied to the rest of the biological imperatives to which egg-bearers most definitely are. As animals, then, the sperm-bearers are “free” to impregnate other egg-bearers, and many do or try to. This process works for musk-oxen and cattle.

For male humans there are other, overarching obligations than just providing sperm, although popular culture has succeeded in convincing many to ignore them. Crappy politics has a role here, too.

Like it or not, human beings are more than animals. We are sentient – at least most are – which requires very large brains and crania, which means that our gestations are lengthy, rendering females weak and vulnerable for a period of time, during which caring males are obligated to protect them and their newborns, who, themselves, are weak and vulnerable for years after birth, requiring fathers to protect and care for both mother and child until maturity and independence are attained by the child.

There are stresses within these relationships that threaten continuity (success) for the father’s sperm, as it were, and, equally, for the mother’s egg. As societies became civilization, formal rules developed to maintain fathers’ commitments to mothers and to children.

Today we’re too smart for these concepts. Feminism first taught us that women don’t need men except for fun, when permitted. “Progressives” immediately latched on to this new voting bloc and determined that a well-funded governmental, unemotional, non-judgmental, morally neutral, quasi-paternal socialist structure of “free” support for single mothers, could be sold as somehow creating equality for women, and therefore part of the “American Dream.” This perverse outlook invaded and took over education, essentially, as the most effective way to marginalize boys, boyhood and manliness in the name of “equality.” That the breaking of the most critical bonds of civilization was also a result of this weird, new “feminism,” matters not at all to those who have won a great political victory.

There are wise, somewhat reviled mothers, who recognize the importance, indeed, essence of mother- and father-hood. These are they who can see the plain truth of family disintegration virtually at the hands of our own government. They can see that single-motherhood creates the greatest likelihood for poverty and for the development of failed men and, literally, subjugated women! Why does this happen?

It is a result of both boys and girls growing up without fathers, which, most unfortunately, often means almost without mothers, too. Boyhood without proper fathering means a population of feral males who have no concept of how a man should treat a woman, no concept of commitment, compromise or responsibility, no understanding of sacrifice for one’s family, including actively working to provide the best possible environment for one’s children. Consequently, any girls who will succumb to their feral blandishments, will soon be “known” by one (or more) of them, and often impregnated thereby, only to produce children who are likely to fail (or be jailed) in modern society, or an abortion – a statement of complete social failure.

For the fatherless girls’ part, they grow up never experiencing how a man is supposed to treat a woman, or experiencing marital commitment of a man (and woman), or understanding chastity and retention of a woman’s sexual favors / powers as part of the bonding with a husband and father for protection of her progeny.
These girls, tragically, accept feral sexuality as real emotional attachment. Soon their lives are on a downward path that government agencies can never, ever, ever, fix. Their barely wanted children will experience the hatred of other, feral boyfriends and, with predictable likelihood, painful abuse and death. We claim, as all-caring citizens of the world, that child abuse is wrong and should be more illegal than it now is, but we expend more love on abused animals than on abused children.

Our response? More government quasi-responsibility for our erstwhile “happiness,” and less personal responsibility for our actions. What folly.

The New Collectivization

There doesn’t appear anywhere in history to be an instance of “collectivization” that was not / is not done for the purpose of centralizing power. It is always sold to the downtrodden as the way to take power away from evil masters. “Rise up for Freedom!”

It’s always “freedom” from tyranny. Recognize and celebrate your membership in thus and such “group” (collective)… identify your brethren and sistren. Once part of the group you will have the power that used to be wielded against you by the King / Czar / Lord / Boss / Unfairness / System / Establishment / Church / God. All that’s needed, today, is a compliant, sans-perspective media and groups can be created and joined in no-time; there’s even a name for it; flash-mob.

The media consists of a half-dozen instant messaging sites that reward speed and not intelligence. Suddenly some affront becomes a cause and the next morning, “real” media starts politicizing it, asking first this supposed “leader,” then that one, how he or she feels about this brewing controversy. Few if any of these professionals has the wisdom or spine to question the entire premise or point out the idiocy of the idea, the anger or the demands. Nor will they find it in college or among the power elite.

Very, very few “millennials” grasp economics, although they are certain they grasp “unfairness” and “social justice.” To most – and shame on you teachers – there is only evil in capitalism and aught but light in socialism. Shame, shame, shame on you, educators, but, then, you know no more than your students, do you?

Everything teachers, administrators, teachers’ unions, janitors, municipal governments, D.P.W.’s, police and fire departments (might as well throw in nurses, doctors, hospitals, clinics, ambulance companies, and the contractors who maintain them all) enjoy in resources, facilities and payrolls, comes from (block your eyes, ears and mouth) capitalism. And, when I say “capitalism,” I mean free-enterprise, independent business and enterprise. Unfortunately, “capitalism” is all mucked up (primarily due to socialism and dirty politics) in the U. S. and around the world.

However, capitalism, private property and profits comprise the only system ever devised that can lift literally everyone out of poverty. There are no laws than can make capitalism work – it is innate in humans. There is great need for laws that allow capitalism to work, because humans are innately selfish and even greedy… some even lust for power and control over the lives of others.

The highest expression of law that allows capitalism, freedom and charity to co-exist is the U. S. Constitution – thanks in no small part to our extraordinary religious freedoms. Constructed by the great minds of the late 1700’s, its principles are truer – and better stated following needed refinements – today than when written. Somehow (shame on you, educators) we have lately decided that since Thomas Jefferson or James Madison may have picked their nose in public, the workings of their brains and hearts count for nothing.

We govern… no, that’s no longer true. We ARE governed, now, under a nearly complete perversion of the Constitution (shame on you educators and politicians) where government types create new rights to fit social whims, often in answer to newly articulated “un-fairnesses” that take root in minds that have little or no training in the realities of life.

The younger generations believe that the “government,” or, at least, the president, can make a law preventing difficulties and uncomfortability. Given that “the government” has been willing to borrow without restriction or logic to attempt to do just that, great hatred emerges for anyone who says we must be responsible, even if that responsibility is merely personal. Is this our future?

The Trump Effect

Having been an obvious conservative and Republican for decades, people ask me about Donald Trump and as the primary season has bumped along, my answer now is to divert, slightly, to the “Trump effect.”

The Trump effect has proven to be catalytic. He came in to the race as an erstwhile Republican, and there are fair arguments against the validity of that, but without any political power. He had financial power, but lots of people do and it doesn’t mean they have political power. He had bragadoccio and courage, but those don’t mean political power, either. He had influence, and lots of media exposure, and those are important to political power, but don’t create it.

What is required is some or all of those things plus a key ingredient from among these few: a political or power vacuum in society, an intense desire to gain political power, an intense, patriotic, statesmanlike desire to save society, an intense, sympathetic/empathetic desire to heal and comfort everyone – the penultimate social worker, an idea, or cause, that is shared by large numbers of voters, or a willingness to gain power by hook or by crook for personal, megalomaniacal aggrandizement.

I believe that from these 6 evolve or devolve all the motivations that lead people to desire the presidency and every office below it in hierarchy. Where does the “Trump effect” fit in?

First, Trump seized upon a severe problem that forms the basis of a cause for large numbers of Americans: open borders, or ill-enforced immigration policies. Law-abiding citizens watch in horror as illegal entrants are treated better than citizens, provided welfare of various kinds, granted quasi-legal status despite being criminals, even being allowed to vote, as though the function and sovereignty of the United States is not defendable – or even defensible. He launched his effort with a cause.

The reaction to the cause, however, has yielded intense hatred for Trump and all of his followers. It just happens that the opposition is from the “left,” which, collectively, hates the United States to one degree or another, and which sees flooding the country with illegal entrants – especially racially and culturally very different illegal entrants or supposed Islamic “refugees” – as just desserts for all the cultural crimes the U. S. has committed for so long. This automatically places Trump on the “right,” or in Republican country, a place in which he does not comfortably fit.

Whether or not Trump survives the nomination marathon, “his” widely shared cause will continue to motivate large numbers of citizens. This is the “effect” that we can name as Trump’s for now, but which is a valid political force whose adherents – millions of them – fear will not have a champion if he fades politically. Should that be the outcome of the primaries, caucuses and convention, there will be a real risk of the “Trump forces” breaking away from standard party politics. The reactions of the left to this may not be the smartest, as they perceive a great, false proof of their ability to wield total power.

People who are sympathetic to the “cause” but who are not bound to it, will be unable to stop the breakup of the “right.” Almost by definition, the current “right” would become one end of the “left’s” spectrum. The observed tendency of the Republican “establishment” to cooperate rather destructively with the parts of the governing establishment that desires to disassociate the U. S. from its Constitution, will then make a weird sense. A new “right” will be born.

Suddenly, the political landscape will re-define itself. New alliances among those who are passionate about the Constitution, who are pro-life, pro-individual responsibility, pro-sovereignty and pro-defense of our borders, language and culture, will coalesce. Left and Right will become more distinct and more distinctly opposed. “The Trump effect,” then, is a new politics for both “sides.” Nothing the Republican party – a quite-flawed institution, can do, will put this genie back in a bottle.

Shooting Back

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The second amendment is also an area of increasing logical failure. And factual failure. The killing of innocents is a crime no matter how much news is generated. When a group of innocents are killed, and the news multiplies, along with public upset, and the killer has used a gun to do the killing, there is no longer room for common sense. All gun owners are blamed… and responsible.

Guns are objects, mechanisms, machines. None does anything until intimately directed by a human. Ahh, but they facilitate the doing, don’t they? Any sane proto-murderer would blithely discard whatever hatred, passion, ill-will or socio-pathology that may have bubbled up prior, when faced with the lack of a firearm. Right?

Well, no, silly, but at least he or she won’t be able to kill as quickly as he or she might with one of those… those… scary-looking GUNS. For Heaven’s sake, use your head!

Maybe that’s right; how silly of me.

On the other hand, Timothy McVeigh managed to quite efficiently eradicate 168 of our fellow citizens and injure nearly 800 more without a single bullet or gun to fire it.

Oh! Be serious! An act like that takes a lot of planning and preparation. Most gun-involved deaths are spur-of-the-moment acts of passion or stupidity. There’s no point to be made bringing up Oklahoma City.

You know, you’re probably right… if your point is how the government can make it harder to be an efficient killer. In fact, that is where the argument is, isn’t it? If we can somehow make murder by amateurs harder to do, we’ll save a few lives. And, as any person who shrinks from the silhouette of a scary assault rifle will quickly tell you, “If it saves only one life of an innocent child, it’s worth it!”

Maybe that is sufficient reason to lop off a chunk of the Constitution, but I’m not so sure. To start with, look at the nature of past and proposed gun bans and their possible positive impacts.
The 1994 “Assault Weapons Ban” had a nebulous impact on U. S. so-called “mass murders.” A stricter ban in Australia appears to have had a more significant effect on multiple-murder events, there, but a single statistic does not a story tell. There are so many social-demographic differences between Australia and the United States that a far broader analysis is needed before we should try to set public policy (and Constitutional subversion) based on an apparent impact on a very different population.
Most of the parameters of the “ban” were derived from the appearance of the weapons, and not their functions. The one key exception was the size of the magazines, which could have a limited role in inhibiting a mass-murder. How would that work?

Suppose the situation were like that at Newtown, Connecticut. A sick, twisted, bent-on-mass-murder dope breaks in to a purposely gun-free school. Instead of a 20 or more cartridge clip, he is limited by the availability of no more than 9-shot clips. So, he brings 2 extras, with one in the rifle. As soon as the first few shots are fired, everyone is scrambling to save him or her self or to protect the kiddos. No one is charging at the murderer. When the clip empties there would be a brief quiet period – but very brief: maybe 5 seconds while the clip is popped and a new one inserted and the slide pulled to “cock” the rifle again. The next 9 shots will fully terrorize a grade-school staff that is not only ignorant of firearms, but who fear them, firing or not.

Murderous dope will get his 27 shots off with no problem. If that Newtown numbskull had more clips he could have walked to another classroom and murdered some more people. He shot himself when police arrived, evidently acting out a suicide ritual he had long contemplated.

So the 1994 “Assault Weapons Ban” would have made no difference unless the rifle, itself, had not been available at all. In all likelihood, the difference would have been that the murderer would have made more shots with pistols. One can imagine that in lieu of a large-magazine rifle, our knucklehead would have brought maybe 3 or 4 handguns and equally terrorized the school’s population with 20 to 30 bullets fired slightly slower than with a scary-looking Bushmaster. No one there was prepared or equipped to challenge him, either physically or psychologically. Dope’s mom could have prevented the tragedy by keeping her legal firearms away from her known-to-be-disturbed son.

Essentially, all the non-NRA proposals that have spawned from the Newtown tragedy will have one basic effect: children in school buildings will be left defenseless, but, since murderers will eventually be a bit less efficient, a few fewer kids will be murdered than otherwise. Hopefully, mom and dad, your defenseless kiddo will be one of the lucky ones.

Those who are aiming at complete confiscation of all but BB guns, could, if their hare-brained concept ever comes to pass, conceivably save most of the TWO hundred lives lost to non-drug, non-gang, non-criminal gun events each year. They might prevent a few suicides, too, and consider the loss of freedom well worth the cost.

What they won’t prevent are the tens of thousands of criminal gun events, because criminals don’t register their weapons and can hide them fairly easily when the Gestapo comes looking for them. I hope that no one reading this is looking forward to living in a country that can even attempt to confiscate private property (or forcibly buy-back) from tens of millions of owners. It’s the same country that doesn’t enforce the gun laws it has now.

All plans for restricting guns and their law-abiding owners can be seriously considered only by putting on blinders to some serious, serious reality. There are many myths that liberals and those further left, continuously proclaim as truth, and which all the people that matter believe. Here are a few:
• The presence of guns will spur an increase in gun accidents, stupid gun crimes, and random, foolish shootings. The opposite is what reality is, in fact.
• Attackers will take a defender’s gun and use it against him or her. This happens extremely rarely, and can be made even rarer with proper education. Rare means a literal handful of times each year. It is more common that unarmed defenders wrest weapons away from attackers.
• Gun deaths increase, overall, because of the availability of so-called (ie. “scary-looking”) assault rifles. In truth only about 6% of shootings involve such weapons, and not even 6% of deaths. Most deadly shootings are done with handguns, often with small calibers.

Finally, the far more important statistic, the far more life-preserving and crime-preventing statistic is this one: EVERY YEAR IN THE UNITED STATES, PRIVATE FIREARMS ARE USED IN SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 830,000 AND 2 MILLION DEFENSIVE EVENTS. Most of these involve no discharge of the weapon, but not only lead to hundreds of thousands of apprehensions, but prevent many tens of thousands of other violent crimes because perpetrators encountered an armed defender, leading to arrests. The logical argument is that we could not enjoy a civil society without private gun ownership.

The only truly effective change that should come from Newtown, Aurora and other such murders of defenseless innocents, would be to teach gun safety and handling to every child, starting around age 8 or 9, including proper self-defense. Teach it right in public school. It is certainly more productive and worthy than lesson plans based on homosexuality and gender-identity problems. Worse, they teach kids how to have sex “safely” in far too early years. There are thousands more lives ruined with pre-marital sex by kids, than by guns. Taking away the unalienable right of self-defense, and damaging the Constitution in the process is a “solution” that deserves the very highest skepticism and suspicion.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Brussels

Obviously the correct response for the U. S. to the murders in Brussels… (wait for it), is to invite a few tens of thousands of Syrian or other refugees to our country. This will have two guaranteed effects: One is that they will know we love them and sympathize with their unfortunate circumstances; then it will keep Europe safer. It’s a win-win! Certainly they will be grateful and become model citizens.
I would refer you to Prudence Leadbetter’s “Book of Obvious” on Immigration. If you would like a copy of the “Book of Obvious” just say so in your comments. Leave your eMAIL so that we can arrange the shipping. Nominal expense.