Darwin writes on one of my posts about gun control:

The liberal position trusts people to be smart enough to realize that’s it’s just not practical for every single individual independantly to protect themselves and their family, become an expert on the safety and nutrition of every food and and product and drug they buy, to be an expert in every field of medicine so they know that their doctors are competent, to monitor every factory in their state for dangerous emmisions and form boycott networks when a factory is poisoning their rivers or their air, to build roads and research charities and understand what scientific research should be funded and help hurricane survivors and etc and etc and etc. The liberal position believes that people are smart enough to relize that centralizing many of these functions is much more efficient and effective than leaving them to individuals, and it trusts those people to vote for a government that will give them those things that they want.

This argument has the unfortunate implication that those who do not concede that its more efficient for the state to manage safety, nutrition, health safety, industry pollution, roads, research, and releif efforts are not smart. I’m sure you don’t mean to imply I’m not smart enough to see the efficiency in centralizing these things and yet that ugliness is right there in the first sentence of that paragraph.

It simply is not the case that its more efficient to centralize all of these different things. Its alarming to see centralization push through to this century given it’s abysmal performance in the last century. On second thought, the desire to sign over so many responsibilities to a benevolent government has always appealed to certain kind of person.

The reason why the libertarian argument has the upper hand on your position is that you want to force your values on those that don’t share your values. The libertarian argument simply holds that citizens should have the freedom needed to protect themselves. This argument leaves it open to each individual to determine the extent they wish to exercise that freedom themselves. Some will be more willing to rely on state intervention while others will adopt a more independent attitude by arming themselves. The point is that the libertarian argument accommodates both choices. The libertarian position tolerates diversity in self defense and I mostly certainly chose those words intentionally.

Your liberal argument on gun control does not afford the same freedom. This liberal argument holds that citizens should not have the freedom to protect themselves with firearms. Your personal belief is that citizen protection by firearm should only by done by the state. On your say so, those that disagree with your personal belief regarding firearm protection when caught, will have their firearms confiscated and sent to prison. The liberal position is intolerant of firearm protection and reduces self defense diversity.

At the end of the day, you aim to jail those that dissent from your position. You aim to jail the libertarian.

America is so good at kicking ass it doesn’t even have to try and it wins. To bad so many of you hate this awesome country.

Lest you think the above are “extremists,” consider how deeply invested the “mainstream” is in a total fiction. At the recent climate jamboree in Bali, the Rev. Al Gore told the assembled faithful: “My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here.” Really? The American Thinker’s Web site ran the numbers. In the seven years between the signing of Kyoto in 1997 and 2004, here’s what happened:

•Emissions worldwide increased 18.0 percent;

•Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1 percent;

•Emissions from nonsigners increased 10.0 percent; and

•Emissions from the United States increased 6.6 percent.

It’s hard not to conclude a form of mental illness has gripped the world’s elites. If you’re one of that dwindling band of Westerners who’ll be celebrating the birth of a child, “homeless” or otherwise, next week, make the most of it. A year or two on, and the eco-professors will propose banning Nativity scenes because they set a bad example.

Link Here.

Does this guys global warming equal your global warming.

Hillman, senior fellow emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute, says carbon rationing is the only way to ensure that the world avoids the worst effects of climate change. And he says that the problems caused by burning fossil fuels are so serious that governments might have to implement rationing against the will of the people.

“When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it,” he says. “This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.”

The conclusion of this story is very insightful.

In ancient Greece, Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem. One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, “Do you know what I just heard about your friend?”

“Hold on a minute,” Socrates replied. “Before telling me anything I’d like you to pass a little test. It”s called the Three Filters Test.”

“Three Filters?”

“That’s right,” Socrates continued. “Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you’re going to say. That’s why I call it the Three Filters Test.

The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?”

“No,” the man said, “actually I just heard about it and…”

“All right,” said Socrates. “So you don’t really know if it”s true or not. Now let”s try the second filter, the filter of goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?”

“No, on the contrary…”

“So,” Socrates continued, “you want to tell me something bad about him, but you’re not certain it”s true. You may still pass the test though, because there’s one filter left: the filter of usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?”

“No, not really.”

“Well,” concluded Socrates, “if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?”

This is why Socrates was a great philosopher & held in such high esteem.

I dare you to watch this video and then deny god’s existence. I dare you.

Let me just go on the record as saying science rules but rules even more with the help of computer graphics.

Taken from this editoral is this lovely chunk of statistics. Numbers don’t lie.

Different parts of this country display disparities in rates of serious crimes. But that crime rate has been falling steadily for almost 20 years. While many factors undoubtedly contribute to that trend, including tougher sentencing laws, the ability of people to defend themselves also counts.

The 40 states (including Maine) where concealed-carry permits are readily available to law-abiding people report on average a 22 percent lower violent crime rate, a 30 percent lower murder rate, a 46 percent lower robbery rate and a 12 percent lower aggravated assault rate than the 10 states where the possession of firearms by honest citizens is greatly…restricted.

Its makes basic sense that the appropriate policy response to mass shootings is letting citizens arm themselves. Bringing in a large state aparatus to remove all the guns is would only work in the fantasy land of liberalville.

For the common good.

If we went back to the obesity rates that existed in 1980, that would save the Medicare system a trillion dollars.

Said Barack Obama at today’s Democratic debate. That sounds absurd to me. But let me be fair. He prefaced that assertion with the phrase “it’s estimated.” Oh, estimated. Well, then. He wants to “emphasize how important prevention and cost savings can be.” I get it. The plan is to get the government to pay for all sorts of routine health care for everyone, and we’re supposed to think it will actually save money. But the truth is that going to the doctor more is not going to solve our fatness problem. If it did, we’d be paying now for the treatment (not that we wouldn’t like the government to reimburse us). The false hope of a solution to obesity and a promise of illusory savings is being used to soften us up for massive spending on health care. I’m estimating.

This is an excellent article looking at what kind of wars a Democracy is good at fighting. It also examines the military relationship to elite class in a society.

Liberal democratic societies have commonly been defended by conservative military establishments whose members may lack the social graces of the cosmopolitan classes they protect. Such a conservative American military now has a particularly thankless task, however. Much of what it does abroad is guarding sea lanes and training troops of fledgling democracies, helping essentially to provide the security armature for an emerging global civilization. But the more that civilization evolves—with its own mass media, non-governmental organizations and professional class—the less credit and sympathy it grants to the American troops who at times risk their lives for it. Irony is stock-and-trade for sophisticated wit, of course. But it cannot forever obscure the contradiction between the functions of an effective warrior class and the unwillingness of those functions’ beneficiaries to support its warriors. I cannot remember how many times a soldier or marine told me that we don’t want to be pitied as victims, but respected as fighters. That respect is not abundant, which brings us to an especially sharp practical edge of what our forgetfulness has wrought.

A common criticism of business in general is that they use lobbyists to control congress. If this is the case then how does one explain this:

The bill’s centerpiece requires automakers to increase vehicle fuel economy to an industry average of 35 miles per gallon over the next 13 years — a 40 percent increase and the first boost in the federal gas mileage requirement since 1975 when the rules were first enacted.

For years, auto companies have fought successfully any increase in the automobile mileage standard which now is 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.2 mpg for small trucks and SUVs. But an agreement forged with the help of Rep. John Dingell, D-Michigan, the longtime protector of the auto industry in Congress, cleared the way for the new requirements which have bipartisan support.

As far as industries go, automakers are one of the most powerful and yet is helpless to stop the passage of this bill. How does one explain this? My suspicion was that there is enough political support for the bill that pressure by lobbyists was ignored. Lobbyists influence on policy is minimized when people care about the legislation.

Incidentally, I’m against this legislation. Its not entirely clear why the democrats are in favor of supporting a bill that will hurt poor people. Forcing car companies to build in more technologies will result in increased cost for all cars. Personally I object because the federal government has no business telling citizens what kinds of cars they can and can’t buy.