From a set of comments I and a few others left in a post by Smitty over at The Other McCain…

Joan Of Argghh!:

Seen the latest gaffe by Jeb Bush? “There are people on the right who are fearful of federal encroachment. That fear, I don’t think is justified. . .”

Smitty:

If 2016 turns into Clinton/Bush Redux, I will seriously consider voting Libertarian.

McGehee:

I won’t need to consider it — it’ll be the default.

Me:

I will never vote for another Ideologue – and the Libertarian Party seems to always nominate that type of person.

Assuming there is a Presidential Election in 2016 or the 22nd Amendment is not repealed [neither scenario is as crazy as you may think: consider some of things that have happened since 20 January 2009], if all that is offered are candidates who are Ideologues, I will abstain. Ideology is destroying this country. I refuse to play by their rules any longer.

The rubber has really met the road this time. This is the moment for all good men to stand up, whatever the cost, and say: ‘No! No more! Enough!’

Out hope lies in the Several States. The national system is terminal – we must take the patient off of life support and move on.

The United States Of America is an idea that is not bound by the number of sovereign states that are members of it. That idea will endure no matter how it’s physicial manifestation is constituted.

Also, let me include a comment from Adobe Walls that is fitting to the subject here at hand:

Doug Altner nails it though I’d insert Republicans instead of Conservatives when he correctly states that the Nation’s downfall is caused by not fighting the last Progressive generations gains. “Reform” is a fools errand whether one is talking about the GOP or various bits and pieces of the federal government.

Let It Burn.

I second my Right Honorable Friend’s motion.

BTW: Do read Smitty’s post, as it quite well-reasoned [per usual].

A N A S T A S I A   H A R R I S . . .

Please click on the image above to see full-size.

Please click on the image above to see full-size.

NOTE: Apologies for the shortened version, but it has been a very busy week.

Jeff Goldstein, the bandito di tutti bandito of the Right, nails it:

We are witnessing an attempted coup. By our very own President and his Party. Just because this bloodless coup doesn’t come from a man dressed in fatigues wearing a thick mustache and standing on a balcony doesn’t mean it can’t be happening here. It is. And it’s being sold as the only way to end “politicizing” the political, and saving us from the very gridlock that, ironically, is right now the only thing saving us from “fundamental transformation” — with John Boehner and Eric Cantor the last line of defense. God help us.

Dark days are coming. And when they do, we’ll have choices to make. Much as did those who founded this nation.

Dead solid perfect.

It should be noted for the record that Jeff has been trying to get across this message since at least the Spring of 2009, as have I, and I share his frustration at being thought a melodramatic fringe wingnut and fool by the people supposedly on our side in the war to restore our freedoms and liberties. As Jeff writes:

Sorry if I’m coming across as hyper-conspiratorial today. But the truth is, had more people listened to my views after Obama was elected than to the views of the GOP cheerleaders and establishment flacks, we’d be much better prepared by now to deal with what is coming. Not because I’m a genius. But rather because I saw who Obama was, and was never willing to pretend otherwise.

As those of you who experienced the same thing know: all it took to understand what this coalition of Socialists were up to was to do a little research. No extensive study was needed to see that the Left was planning to take the Stealth Coup they had been implementing through their over half-century march through our institutions and bring it out in the open via gaining control of two of the branches of the national government. The Left knew the GOP was run by self-made-clueless putzes who gladly would keep their heads buried in the sand if it meant they still were seated at the table — even if it was the kid’s table.

What we have witnessed over the past four years and, it appears, will continue on over the next four is the overthrow of the government of The United States Of America.

The Left is taking a huge gamble by it’s deliberate destruction of the American Economy. Forces may be unleashed by it that destroy them. The masterminds of the Left know this, but they believe that the cancer know as Leftist Thinking has invaded the souls of enough Americans that no major opposition will be able to organize and wage an effective counter revolution. I’d say the odds are on the Progressive’s side in terms of The United States as a whole, but the Left is ignorant of one very important truth…

The West [Christendom] is an idea that will survive in the hearts and minds of a few of us, just as The United States Of America is an idea that will live on in our souls.

Both are not subject to physical restrictions, so they can carry-on no matter how few believe in them.

It is our duty to those who came before us and those who are yet to be born to preserve that Sword Of Imagination that keeps both ideas alive.

The West and America will survive.

Nil Desperandum.

The Rev. David R. Graham has sent along this poem by James Russell Lowe:

ONCE TO EVERY MAN AND NATION

Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.

Then to side with truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses while the coward stands aside,
Till the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

By the light of burning martyrs, Christ, Thy bleeding feet we track,
Toiling up new Calv’ries ever with the cross that turns not back;
New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong;
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

This poem was eventually set to music…

…is awarded to Smitty, Meister der Wache über die Haushaltskrise, for Mind-Melding with the fifty-two percent that voted to re-elect Julius Obamacus Nero Caesar:

Voter’s summary of 2012 election: the only final cure for addiction is overdose. Sorry for the 48% who don’t dig that kind of needlepoint.

— Haushaltskrise (@smitty_one_each) December 10, 2012

Spot-on.

One has to wonder if a sizeable part of the population has been infected with the schlocking pneumonia and the Nihilistic flu.

King Shamus has written a very thoughtful post on just how boring art of any kind can become when it’s made a vehicle for overt propaganda for one Ideology or, even, for one philosophy — and I say that despite the fact that His Majesty quotes me quite favorably in the piece. And he rightfully scolds those who lavish praise on such artists even when they produce mediocre or dreck-filled work.

He uses the band Green Day and comic Jon Stewart as his main examples.

A highlight:

For many people on the Left, Jon Stewart is a comedic genius. He’s also the scourge of evil Rethuglicans. He’s also the voice of a generation. He’s also a total dreamboat.
It’s just too bad he and his buddy Stephen Colbert don’t get the same ratings as “Swamp People”–even when you add the viewers of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report together.

But because Jon Stewart is a vociferous liberal who routinely buttresses leftist assumptions, he is covered in accolades far beyond his actual influence or ability.

The mental and emotional gymnastics needed to be a liberal must be exhausting. You have to support undertalented overrated court jesters. You have to laugh at their tired clap-humor. You have to recite their dopey bits at parties as if they were the second coming of Richard Pryor.

And that just covers the television socialists that have to be fawned over. There are many musicians who put their liberal politics well ahead of their songs….

The extended takedown of Green Day that follows is priceless and makes the main point of his post quite forcefully.

What adds to the veracity of KS’s point, is the ending, where he rightfully chastises the Right for their hypocrisy in matters of art, how so many of our critics focus nearly exclusively on the political and moral implications of a work of art over whether or not it works as entertainment. Also, how we, just like the Left, will often endorse a story or film written by a member of Right, even though it’s executed rather badly, just because we agree with that artist’s philosophy [think of those God-awful Left Behind books and movies].

Do take the time to click here and read all of the post by King Shamus.

One Final Word: I think the Right behaves in the way described above for a number of reasons, but the most important reason for it, I believe, is because we all, to varying degrees, have been infected with the virus known as Leftist Thinking. We have allowed ourselves to be brainwashed to think like Leftists. In other words, we now have a tendency to see every aspect of Life as political. This is a perverse way of reasoning worthy of the mental misfits known as Leftists. It is not the way men and women of Reason conduct themselves.

That the Right is behaving this way is another token of The Present Crisis.

Welcome to The Land Of Hope And Change…welcome to the jungle…

Today Steven Crowder and the people in the Americans For Prosperity tent [two of whom were in wheelchairs, according to reports] in Lansing, Michigan were set upon by union thugs.  Steven was repeatedly punched by, as far as I can see from the video below, by at least two union goons as he tried to protect the people in the tent.

Here’s the video he has uploaded:

Here’s some more from the scene, taken by Fox News [BTW: Reporter Mike Tobin is a Dupe]:

Please see Smitty’s comments here and Twitchy’s reporting here, here, and here.

This is exactly the kind of behavior the Left wants to see.  Ever since Leftism came into being in the mid-18th Century, they have believed a necessary first step in bringing about Revolution is to sow Chaos in all areas of the society.  They want the populace to break into tribes of competing grievance groups.  To achieve this, the Left needs many groups from various fields it can count on to do it’s dirty work — bureaucrats, elected officials, academics, etc.  These minions of the Masterminds lay the ground work by sabotaging all of the institutions of the Society from within and without, working to pervert and, thus weaken, the existing Culture.

At some point, however, the Leftist Masterminds need to move to the next phase of the march to Revolution: violence.  We have entered that phase in the last few years in The United States Of America.  Barack Hussein Obama and his comrades have encouraged and nurtured and unleashed forces designed to tear this country apart.

To bring about the violence of this next phase, the Masterminds need their assault troops to disrupt peaceful assemblies and physically attack opponents of the Leftists seeking to implement the Revolution.  In Russia in 1917, in France in the late 18th Century, in Germany in the early 1930′s, in China in the mid-20th Century, and now in America in the early years of the 21st Century, the Left has turned to thugs to be their storm troops.  Members of unions controlled by Communists and Socialists, such as SEIU and the AFL/CIO, are being used as a modern version of the Sturmabteilung [better known to us as the 'SA'].

These criminal thugs are rarely arrested, let alone prosecuted, because many of the arms of law enforcement — such as the unionized police forces and district and state attorney’s office — have been infiltrated by Progressives and corrupted.  If, by chance, one of these violent criminals is brought before a judge, he stands very little chance of being sent to prison because so many members of the judiciary are either corrupted or live in fear of the Leftists in power and their assault troops.

Welcome to Chaos, where the Rule Of Law has been replaced by the Rule Of Thuggery, where might makes right, where no decent person is safe.

It’s happening, America.  Pretending that it’s not is not an option any longer.

A Final Note: The next time you get the urge welling up inside of you to give any Leftist the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their responsibility for this kind of vile and disgusting behavior, remember that they all — every single one of them — believe that the ends always justify the means, no matter how despicable those means are.  The end goal is all to the Leftist.  They will trample upon anyone and anything to get to it if asked to.

-I may Update this post later on.

UPDATE at 1931…

-Typos corrected in the original post.

-William Jacobson has a picture of the guy who punched Steve Crowder.

-Smitty [who was kind enough to link back] comments:

It seems that the Americans for Prosperity tent was a hotbed of raaaaacism, and the 1% were using it as a base for #WarOnWomen attacks. So I guess you can sympathize with the need for ‘honest’, State-fearing Union Goons to protect the turf on which the tent sat, and the power that the Union had accumulated through years of graft.

-Instapundit has aggregations here and here.

…of the life of Brett Kimberlain [with apologies to Billy Shakes].

John Hoge, CIO of Hogewash, has been doing the dirty work of reading Mark Singer’s book on Kimberlin entitled Citizen K [one hopes that John routinely delouses himself after spending time in the funhouse mirror world that encases the perverted soul of this pitiable and sorry excuse for a Human Being] and posting excerpts that reveal the deep depravity of Brett Kimberlain.

It is a great service John is performing and I encourage you all to click here and read all of what he’s posted on this so far. And keep checking back, as I’m quite sure he will providing many more.

Even if you have not been following the whole Brett Kimberlain / Neal Rauhauser Saga [and it is tough to, even for those of us who have been doing so for some time], I highly recommend that you peruse the exceprts because they provide an insight into one type of Leftist mind. We have to know our enemy — especially how they view the world — in order to employ the right weapons against the them in the coming desperate battles for The American Soul. There are more Brett Kimberlains out there they we realize.

…and there the antick* sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and, humour’d thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell, king!
—Richard II, III, ii _
* ‘antick’ = a fool

[category Hogewash, Leftist Thinking, Leftist Playbook, William Shakespeare,

From CBS Connecticut, we learn [tip of the fedora to Drudge]:

The asteroid that many scientists credit with wiping out the dinosaurs and decimating other lizard and snake species also caused the extinction of a newly-identified lizard: the Obamadon gracilis.

Maybe the Mayans were right and an asteroid is going to hit Earth on 21 December. We can hope.

According to Princeton University’s WordNet 3.0, one definition of a lizard is:

Noun 2. a man who idles about in the lounges of hotels and bars in search of women who would support him

I don’t know if the jug-eared, relatively-long-bodied reptile we call Obamacus Douchesillis ever hung around in bars and hotels [steambaths are another story], but he most certainly has gathered around him women who support the ideological gigolo, such as Valerie Jarrett, Lady Michbeth, Susan Rice, and Hillary Rodham.

When the union thugs attacked Steven Crowder and tore down the Americans For Prosperity tent in Lansing yesterday [see my post on those two incidents], they also attacked and seriously damaged vendor Clinton Tarver’s hot dog catering equipment.

Mr. Tarver was hired by AFP to provide food for those who visited the tent.  He was not taking sides in the protest.  He was a hard-working family man doing a job that he had been hired to do.

And his fellow ‘working men’ sought to destroy his business…oh, and they called him a ‘Nigger’ and, of course, an ‘Uncle Tom’.

-Stacy McCain has a report up that includes links.  He comments:

Good Lord. Of course, they have no sense of shame, but are they also completely lacking a sense of irony? I mean, the Left has spent nearly four years building their “Tea Party is racist” meme, and the AFL-CIO brutes — who were nearly all white, as Stranahan reports and video verifies — decide they’ll just waste all that liberal media propaganda in order to terrorize a guy whose only “crime” is serving hot dogs?

-Velvet Hammer has the best aggregation of links and videos for this story, so please do take the time to click here and check it out [especially Dana Loesch's interview with Mr. Tarver].

-Welcome to Chaos, where the Rule Of Law has been replaced by the Rule Of Thuggery, where might makes right, where no decent person is safe.

It’s happening, America.  Pretending that it’s not is not an option any longer.

A special guest post by The Reverend David R. Graham, A.M.D.G….

If you are too lazy to manage your life, your neighbor will eat you.

If you want to be taken care of, your care taker will eat you.

If you dream the world belongs to you, the world will eat you.

Work or be eaten. You too, trust-funders.

The social contract prevents cannibalism. It does not promote conviviality. That you must earn.

From Mark Steyn, we learn:

During my battles with the Canadian “human rights” regime, we relentlessly exposed the corrupt relationship between the Commissars and Canada’s self-appointed Hatefinder-General, Richard Warman. See [BOB: Mark Steyn links to three videos here that are no longer available (thanks to QM)].  Almost as soon as the truth about his Nazi website postings became known, Warman began suing. He sued Ezra Levant, with whom I’ll be appearing on Saturday, as well as Kate McMillan, Kathy Shaidle, Free Dominion and anyone else who got in his way. At the time, many people asked me why he hadn’t sued me, both for columns that appeared in Maclean’s and for posts such as this one at SteynOnline.

Well, the reason he didn’t sue me is because (a) Maclean’s is a corporate entity with very deep pockets and (b) SteynOnline is based in the United States, where no court would give him the time of the day. So considerably more vulnerable Canadians have had to bear the brunt and serve as proxy targets for Warman’s shakedown racket. He is now suing Blazing Cat Fur merely for linking to “far-right web site” SteynOnline, and demanding half-a-million dollars for damage to his “reputation”. “Lame,” says Instapundit. Warman will not win, but please go over and drop a few bucks in the Cat’s kitty for his legal defense fund. The disgusting Warman has already been rebuked by a CHRT judge for his dress-up Nazi activities, and we owe the exposure of that not to his doting stenographers at The London Free Press but to a few plucky bloggers like Cat Fur. Do help out if you can. (More on this from Mrs Cat Fur. See also Cat On A Hot Trudeaupian Roof – and some cartoon advice for both Warman and the Prophet.)

Big tips of the fedora to Evi and Donald Douglas.

[CORRECTION: The Mark Steyn quote above is from two years ago.  The rest of the quotes and links are new, from yesterday and today.  Apologies. —BOB]

-Donald writes:

Well, yet more in the ongoing freedom to blog series: It turns out my good friend BCF — a.k.a Arnie, Kathy Shaidle’s husband — is being sued by serial litigant Richard Warman, a so-called “human rights activist” and actual member of the white supremacist Stormfront group.

-Instapundit has generously made a contribution.

-As I warned many moons ago, the Left has unleashed a multitude of barrages against the Right from angle in every country of The West, but most especially in The Anglosphere. Their goal is to intimidate and/or bankrupt us into silence.

However, let me state again: there is no physical active Leftist conspiracy loose in the land. The indoctrinations that have been carried on by the Left in all the institutions of Western Society have molded people like Mzzz. Sandra Fluke, Warman, et. al. to do the Left’s bidding instinctively.

The Leftist army has very few brigade commanders, but every grunt has their manual implanted in their souls.

-Details on how to contribute and how to spread the word can be found here at Fur’s scratching post.

There many forms Resistence To Tyranny can can take, and this is an example of one man resisting the Soft Tyranny of The Establishment…

From National Review Online, Robert Costa reporting, we learn [worth quoting in full][tip of the fedora to Wombat-Socho's Live At Five]:

Representative Justin Amash, a conservative Republican, has a warning for Speaker John Boehner: He’s not welcome in Michigan’s third congressional district.

“If Speaker Boehner wants to come back to my district, he’s not going to be met with very much welcome,” Amash told reporters this afternoon.

Amash, who was elected in 2010, was recently booted off of the budget committee by House Republicans. Amash blames Boehner for orchestrating his removal.

Amash added that he has little faith in Boehner’s negotiating tactics.

“I spent a lot of time saying, ‘Speaker Boehner is doing the best job we can do.’ I did that for a year, a year in a half. But we’re not doing the best job we can do,” Amash said. “We need people who are going to be bold, we need leaders.”

“This is about who’s fighting for the American people,” Amash said. “I want to speak out now because I want to encourage my colleagues to be more outspoken.”

Yes, what Cryin’ John did to this man and the four others is a form of Soft Tyranny. Boehner’s main goal is to place nice with the Leftists in power so that he and his cronies can maintain their seats at the long table of power and get their share of the takings been served. It doesn’t seem to matter to these Useful Idiots that they’re seated at the farthest points from the kitchen and, by the time the plates arrive at their end, all Boehner and his collaborators will get to enjoy are the scraps. In fact, like the beaten-down and mangy dogs they are, they seem content with this arrangement.

One hopes that more members of the Congress who actually give a damn about restoring our freedoms and liberties will choose to emulate Representative Amash. The Republican Collaborators do not deserve to be treated with any gentlemanly deference or courtesy, for they have made common cause with those who seek to destroy America. Tarring and feathering’s too good for ‘em.

On every front possible, we have to take those actions which will undermine Tyranny in all of it’s forms – even the bland and dessicated kind like Boehner practices.

Resistentiam Tyrannis nunc.
Resistentiam Tyrannis saecula.
WOLVERINES!

[Resistance to Tyranny now.
Resistance to Tyranny forever.
WOLVERINES!]

Pete’s mother has passed away.

From Stacy McCain:

Pete @datechguyblog‘s mother just died. Readers may wish to hit Da Tip Jar at Pete’s blog datechguyblog.com I did. #tcot

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) December 13, 2012

Requiescat in pace, Mrs. Ingemi.

Several Libertarians [please note the capital 'L' for future reference] have come out in opposition to Right To Work laws.

Iain Murray posts about this over at The American Spectator and is worth quoting in full:

There’s been a lot of fuss recently from respected libertarian thinkers like J.D. Tuccille and Jonathan Adler about whether or not right to work laws are libertarian. They are offensive to the principle of freedom of contract, the argument goes, and so no right-thinking free marketeer should support them.

Up to a point, Lord Copper. Tuccille and co. are right that they are offensive to freedom of contract. Should an employer so wish, he should be able to enter in to an exclusive negotiating arrangement with a union and require that all his or her employees join that union if they want to have a job at that company.

So far so good. Yet the possibility of such arrangement does not exist. The default position of federal labor law is that if a union gains a simple majority of votes cast in a workplace (50 percent plus one), it is authorized as the exclusive bargaining representative for all workers in that bargaining unit, including those who voted against the union. This is also demonstrably unlibertarian.

States cannot overturn U.S. law. That is why, as my colleague Ivan Osorio explains, states pass right to work laws. They are the only practical option for those who find the framework damaging to worker freedom.

Yes, it would be better to repeal or reform the Wagner Act, but that is extremely unlikely to happen at present. Passage of right to work laws allows some relief from that oppressive statute and also makes the eventual reform of the Wagner Act much more likely. When enough states have passed right to work laws (there are currently 24, including Michigan) then there might be enough groundswell to overcome the entrenched opposition of the union bosses in D.C.

As CEI founder Fred Smith has said, when you are in enemy territory the route back to safety is not always a straight line.

I see such statutes as Right To Work laws as a holding action meant to minimize the damage caused by a force that, at this time, cannot be defeated. It is my understanding that this was the reasoning used by Robert Taft in his crafting of the Taft/Hartley Act.

Mr. Tuccille shows that he is a Libertarian rather than a libertarian — the distinction is important. It is the difference between an Ideologue and not being a slave to a system of ideas, not being an unyielding purist.

Ideologues are committed to their system of ideas and, therefore, carry said ideas to their logical ends [logic is neutral; it is merely a process of thinking and it is neither Good nor Evil in and of itself].

J.D. Tuccille and those who agree with him are slaves to abstract principles that were developed in the sterile laboratories of the mind, far away from Reality. Such creations are fragile – they can shatter at any moment – and must be protected from the messiness that is Real Life. Therefore, the Ideologue is compelled to follow the logic of his positions [and demand they be followed by everyone else] and that requires he delegitimize the views of those who disagree with them, because, if he doesn’t, the whole structure of his Ideology comes tumbling down. Such is the fate of anything created and developed in a vacuum.

The fact is: Life does not follow logic. It often defies it.

The Ideologue demands perfection because of the fragile nature of all ideas created away from Real Life. The trouble is: nothing in Life is perfect. Perfection can only ever be an aspiration for Human Beings.

Mr. Tuccille and those who agree with him make a fatal error when they enslave themselves to ideas rather than their own experience and, more importantly, the experience of those who have come before us.

In their pursuit of perfection, the Ideologues reject Right Reason, Prudence, Morality, and Tradition and set themselves up for the inevitable dissatisfaction and disappointment and depression [often sparking a descent into Nihilism]. As long as those results are restricted to the individuals who believe in the Ideology, that is fine. It is when they impose their Will To Power on others that they cause misery and death.

A NOTE ON THE TWO TYPES OF LIBERTARIANS:

I turn to Russell Kirk to explain the difference between Libertarians and libertarians.

The small ‘l’ variety:

…a number of the men and women who accept the label "libertarian" are not actually ideological libertarians at all, but simply conservatives under another name. These are people who perceive in the growth of the monolithic state, especially during the past half century, a grim menace to ordered liberty; and of course they are quite right. They wish to emphasize their attachment to personal and civic freedom by employing this 20th century word derived from liberty. With them I have little quarrel – except that by so denominating themselves, they seem to countenance a crowd of political fantastics who "license they mean, when they cry liberty."

The capital ‘L’s':

…For the ideological libertarians are not conservatives in any true meaning of that term of politics; nor do the more candid libertarians desire to be called conservatives. On the contrary, they are radical doctrinaires, contemptuous of our inheritance from our ancestors.

They rejoice in the radicalism of Tom Paine; they even applaud those 17th century radicals, the Levellers and the Diggers, who would have pulled down all the land-boundaries, and pulled down, too, the whole framework of church and state. The libertarian groups differ on some points among themselves, and exhibit varying degrees of fervor. But one may say of them in general that they are "philosophical" anarchists in bourgeois dress. Of society’s old institutions, they would retain only private property. Th y seek an abstract Liberty that never has existed in any civilization – nor, for that matter, among any barbarous people, or any savage. They would sweep away political government; in this, they subscribe to Marx’s notion of the withering away of the state.

Cooperation Aids Prosperity. One trouble with this primitive understanding of freedom is that is could not possibly work in 20th century America. The American Republic, and the American industrial and commercial system, require the highest degree of cooperation that any civilization ever has known. We prosper because most of the time we work together – and are restrained from our appetites and passions, to some extent, by laws enforced by the state. We need to limit the state’s powers, of course, and our national Constitution does that – if not perfectly, at least more effectively than does any other national constitution. The Constitution of the United States distinctly is not an exercise of libertarianism. It was drawn up by an aristocratic body of men who sought "a more perfect union." The delegates to the Constitutional Convention had a wholesome dread of the libertarians of 1786-1787, as represented by the rebels who followed Daniel Shays in Massachusetts. What the Constitution established was a higher degree of order and prosperity, not an anarchists’ paradise. So it is somewhat amusing to find some old gentlemen and old ladies contributing heavily to the funds of libertarian organizations in the mistaken belief that thus they are helping restore the virtuous freedom of the early Republic. American industry and commerce on a large scale could not survive for a single year, without the protections extended by government at its several levels.

Rousseau’s Disciples. ‘To begin with unlimited freedom," Dostoevsky wrote, "is to end with unlimited despotism." The worst enemies of enduring freedom for all may be certain folk who demand incessantly more liberty for themselves. This is true of a country’s economy, as of other matters. America’s economic success is based upon an old foundation of moral habits, social customs and convictions, much historical experience, and commonsensical political understanding. Our structure of free enterprise owes much to the conservative understanding of property and production expounded by Alexander Hamilton – the adversary of the libertarians of his day. But our structure of free enterprise owes nothing at all to the destructive concept of liberty that devastated Europe during the era of the French Revolution – that is, to the ruinous impossible freedom preached by Jean Jacques Rousseau. Our 20th century libertarians are disciples of Rousseau’s notion of human nature and Rousseau’s political doctrines….

So, when I refer to ‘libertarians’, I mean the former; when I write ‘Libertarians’, I mean the latter.

As Mr. Kirk points out, the former are really conservatives who, for whatever reason, do not wish to be labeled ‘conservative’. The latter are Ideologues who are just as dangerous as the Leftist versions.

Eighty-nine of the world’s prettiest gals have gathered in Las Vegas, Nev
to compete in the 2012 Miss Universe Pageant and we’ve got twelve of them here…

Miss Israel…

Miss El Salvador…

Miss Spain…

Miss New Zealand…

Miss Venezuela…

Miss India…

Miss Colombia…

Miss Montenegro…

Miss Great Britain…

Miss Cyprus…

Miss USA…

Miss Kosovo…

You can read more about the pageant
and see more lovely ladies by clicking here.

I may offer some additional thoughts as this post goes on, but the quotes from some of my Friends In The Ether that follow express my thinking, probably better than I could have…

-Stacy McCain:

Just now, one of my 20-year-old twin sons came by the house to help with the family Christmas tree. The TV was reporting this crime, which was the first he’d heard of it. “Twenty-seven people? What the hell happened?”

“Evil,” I said, and made the darkly sarcastic suggestion that Congress would pass the “Evil Control Act of 2013″ to outlaw evil.

Dark sarcasm is just a habit, and perhaps not the best way of expressing my frustration toward idiots…whose reaction to news like this is to share her cheery enthusiasm for new federal gun-control legislation.

-From a post by him late last night:

“Obviously not well.” In other words, Adam Lanza was nuts.

Psycho, loony, bonkers, daft, zany, berserk and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Advocates for the mentally ill discourage such colloquial terms as tending to stigmatize psychiatric patients. But we might ask whether stigma — and the consequent damage to the fragile self-esteem of kooks — is really worse than turning loose a homicidal schizo who kills 27 people.

I saw we might ask that, except that it’s politically incorrect to do so. We have been carefully taught that wackos are victims, and we’re not supposed to talk about the possibility that they might also be dangerous, lest we infringe the “rights” of murderous lunatics.

To quote Dirty Harry, “Well, I’m all broken up over that man’s rights.”

…

Our culture has lost all sense of perspective, of reasonable balance, so that we are unable to make common-sense judgments about risks. Which is the greater danger: That a schizophrenic might have his feelings hurt, or that a schizophrenic might go off his meds and kill people?

Common sense is quite nearly illegal nowadays and it’s certainly unfashionable in the Obama Age. So the usual liberal dingbats — including the ACLU types who assured us it was “a fearless, independent life style” for a crazy woman to defecate in public on the streets of Manhattan — are telling us we need more gun control.

And I say, no, what we need is more kook control. But no member of Congress in either party would have the guts to introduce “The Dangerous Lunatic Incarceration Act of 2013,” which would put wackjobs like Adam Lanza some place where they couldn’t kill people.

-Roger Kimball [tip of the fedora to Instapundit]:

…Mute horror seems appropriate as a first response to such obscene displays of malevolence. But already one is hearing the predictable homilies about “gun control,” as if depriving people of their liberties would somehow contravene evil. Some wacko loads up some firearms and murders a couple score innocent people, ergo certain moralists conclude that they must confiscate guns from the rest of us. Had a few teachers been packing heat, the twisted soul who murdered his mother and those school kids might have been stopped after getting off but a couple of shots. Who knows how many lives might have been saved?

-Former NYPD Detective John Baeza has no doubts on this matter [tip of the fedora to Sdferr][the video is not embeddable at this time]:

God Bless you, sir, for saying what must be said.

-Instapundit on ‘gun free zones’:

Policies making areas “gun free” provide a sense of safety to those who engage in magical thinking, but in practice, of course, killers aren’t stopped by gun-free zones. As always, it’s the honest people — the very ones you want to be armed — who tend to obey the law.

This vulnerability makes some people uncomfortable. I teach at a state university with a campus gun-free policy, and quite a few of my students have permits to carry guns. After the Virginia Tech shooting a few years ago, one of them asked me if we could move class off campus, because she felt unsafe being unarmed. I certainly would have felt perfectly safe having her carry a gun in my presence; she was, and is, a responsible adult. I feel the same way about the other law students I know who have carry permits.

Gun-free zones are premised on a lie: that murderers will follow rules, and that people like my student are a greater danger to those around them than crazed killers. That’s an insult to honest people. Sometimes, it’s a deadly one…

-Glenn and his readers rip Rupert Murdoch a new one and it’s well-deserved.  A highlight:

IN RESPONSE TO TODAY’S SHOOTING, WHICH DIDN’T INVOLVE AUTOMATIC WEAPONS, Rupert Murdoch asks: “When will politicians find courage to ban automatic weapons?”Appalling ignorance.

…

MORE: Reader Mike Puckett wonders what kind of weapons Murdoch’s bodyguards carry. I’d ask via Twitter, but, well . . . But hey, Rupert: What kind of guns do your bodyguards carry? And why are you more deserving of armed protection than ordinary Americans? You can email me through the blog.

-A picture from Joan Of Argghh!’s post, entitled:

Obama Responds With Tears.
Israel Responds With Teeth.

This is the only course of action that should be taken.  America, thanks to the triumph of Leftism in all areas of our Society, has brought about a degeneration of our Culture into Barbarism.  Must as had to be done in The Old West, we have to now be armed most of the time as the forces of Chaos, especially Lawlessness And Disorder, gain Power and Control.

-I end with Jeff Goldstein, who expresses exactly the way my thinking on this matter runs [worth quoting in full]:

Predictable as the sunrise.  Sayeth the Light Bringer and erstwhile armory to the Mexican drug cartels:

As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it is an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago, these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods and these children are our children. And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.

Yes. And we can begin “coming together” by stoking race hatred, engaging in class warfare, and terming our political opponent “enemies,” or “teabaggers,” or mental defectives — then use every last tragedy, be it the shooting of Gabby Giffords or the Aurora theater shooting or the murder suicide of an NFL linebacker or the Oregon mall shooting or today’s shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, as an opportunity to restrict a basic human right, the right to self-defense (a right disallowed, incidentally, by the law-abiding players in many of these tragedies, thanks to gun-free school zones, or gun-free movie theaters, etc.).  That is, we can pretend our rank and disgusting political opportunism is some moral cloak, to be draped on like public finery only when it can be used to push a leftist agenda.  This is what you mean by taking “meaningful action,” and everyone knows it.

Only, here’s the meaningful action we should all be taking, were we truly serious about reducing the likelihood of such tragedies taking place going forward:  On a personal level, get a concealed carry permit, and ignore signs telling you to leave your guns in the car.  If it’s concealed, and they don’t have metal detectors, then you aren’t carrying. Until you need to defend yourself.  On a societal / political level,  get rid of restrictions on guns in school zones and theaters and the like, because the people who go shoot up these places care not a whit about the restrictions — criminals by definition don’t follow the law — and so they haven’t a fear in the world that they’ll meet any kind of armed resistance.

The idea that doing away with firearms or particular types of firearms (here, the gunman left his rifles in the care and used pistols) will somehow magically restrain violent outbursts has been disproven in countries where strict gun laws are in effect. But most egregious of all about these canned arguments for gun control are that the people who make them either don’t know jack about firearms, or else know they full-well that gun bans or restrictions won’t don’t anything but exacerbate the problem — yet they believe taking the position will buy them some public moral grace.  It makes them feel enlightened, even as on a practical level it makes them less able to defend themselves.

Obama and most of the other public leftists who leap on these shootings to begin pushing for gun bans are opportunists of the worst sort.  And it happened while the bodies of those dead children were still warm. That they pretend their opportunism is somehow disconnected from their political aspirations is shameful.  That they pretend that disarming a population makes it safer — while simultaneously trying to maintain the facade of individual freedom — is despicable. And we shouldn’t even pretend to engage their arguments on some level outside of politics.

My children aren’t your children, Barry, and your children aren’t mine — though unlike mine, yours have a security detail to protect them.  Michele is not the dietitian to the collective and you are not its avuncular guardian. Give up your own security detail and we can maybe have a talk about restricting gun ownership.

More, the only thing “we’ve” got to come together on is the idea that, in advance of your willingness to surrender your protection, you and your regulatory henchmen had better not try to stand between me and my ability to protect my family.

There’s a reason gun sales are at an all-time high, and it has nothing to do with millions of people wanting to shoot up an elementary school.  “Progressives” — like, eg., your friend Bill Ayers, who once posited that come the new order, 25 million Americans may have to be put in camps or otherwise disposed of — want a helpless and compliant pool to manage, the masses, and it’s a wet dream of theirs to secure not only all political power in their own hands, but all the policing power as well.

Fuck you. Molon Labe.

I second Jeff’s motion.

Do take the time to click here and read the Comment section of Jeff’s post [now approaching 400 entries] — his regulars offer a lot of wisdom and insight.

…is awarded to McGehee, frequent commentator over at both Protein Wisdom and The Other McCain, for his response to the news that Hillary Rodham fell, suffered a concussion, and, therefore, will not be ‘able’ to testify at the Benghazi hearing this coming week:

I sure hope her concussion doesn’t cause her to go shooting people like a football player.

Spot-on.

For your own safety, I’m not making the comment I could here.

M E L I S S A   D E B L I N G . . .

Please click on the image above to see full-size.

Please click on the image above to see full-size.

From Mediaite, Noah Rothman reporting, we learn [tip of the fedora to Memeorandum]:

David Sirota, a columnist for Salon.com, appeared on [MSNBC's] Up with Chris Hayes on Sunday for a discussion about the possible policy recommendations that could be adopted in the wake of the mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school which may prevent future shootings. When the question of profiling came up, Sirota insisted that the perpetrators of these kinds of crimes are most often white men – the only group in America that is “not allowed to be profiled.” Sirota said, if the shooter was any race other than white, the debate over policy measures to prevent these types of events in the future would have been “uglier.”

Hayes said the thought that policy makers in Washington will be moved to do something about this tragedy. He said he could envision lawmakers calling for a more invasive surveillance regime.

Sirota agreed, but said that the political impediment to that was the fact that most mass shooting suspects are white.

“The issue with it will be, politically, I think; the profile is white men,” Sirota said. “That’s a profile that’s not, essentially, in America allowed to be profiled. That’s the one profile in America that’s not allowed to be profiled.”

Sirota said that he thought that, if the shooter belonged to a different demographic, the debate about how to address this mass shooting would be “much uglier.” Hayes agreed.

Sirota closed by wondering if the Republican party would have the same reaction to this event and policy recommendations to address it as they did to a report by the Department of Homeland Security raising question about the threats posed by right-wing militias. “Republicans said, ‘this is a way to demonize white America’ or ‘good, god-fearing America,” Sirota said.

Do click here and see the video clip Mr. Rothman has posted.

“The issue with it will be, politically, I think; the profile is white men,” Sirota said. “That’s a profile that’s not, essentially, in America allowed to be profiled. That’s the one profile in America that’s not allowed to be profiled.”

Huh?!?  Tell that to the Behavioral Unit at the FBI that does criminal profiling.

Sirota is either profoundly ignorant about law enforcement practices in this country or he is a Leftist apparatchik employing a tactic straight out of the Leftist Playbook [the CHAOS —> Helter Skelter section].

For his soul’s sake, I hope it’s the former.

William Jacobson brings up another issue:

Sirota’s racial politics ploy fit in nicely with Chris Hayes’ scoffing at the notion of better monitoring of the mentally ill. The problem is not dangerously mentally ill people who are protected by privacy and other laws, but the evil white man trying to protect his own!

I told you that mental illness would not be addressed seriously, even though mental illness with warning signs of danger is a pattern in these mass murders. I had not anticipated that the race card would be the factor that got in the way.

The Professor is right that the Left does not want to see any serious discussion of how we deal with the mentally ill in America.

For the Leftist Masterminds, Reality is relative.  Therefore, your Reality is different from mine or anyone else’s.  Therefore, to treat people who deviate from the Reality excepted by the vast majority of people any differently than the said majority is - oh no! -

DISCRIMINATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Claiming this as you make a facial expression similar to the person in Munch’s painting The Scream also has the benefit of sowing even more Chaos into the fabric of American Society, which will aid, the Leftists believe, in speeding-up our collapse.

Could This Be One Explanation?