Monday, October 25, 2004
Combat Life Saver
I took an advanced First Aid course to get a First Responder certification in the last year. I took it to know how to deal with what happens in emergencies. The Questing Cat has a tremendous post viscerally telling what happens when everything goes to hell. Great post.
Hat tip: Citizen Smash
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Power Chugging the Kool-Aid
Listen Here!
"Consider these facts..."
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Dictatorships are Humanity in Retreat
One of the central axioms of military history is that more casualties are taken in retreats than attacks. People running away cannot defend themselves the way that people facing a threat do. The greatest genocides in human history have occurred under civil authorities in dictatorships. The recent uncovering of a killing field in Iraq where they found the skeletal remains of children clutching toys with bullets through their skulls drives this truth home. The thousands of Kurdish dead were not killed in a war; they were slaughtered to achieve political supremacy through terror.
The United States of America is in a unique position today; our way of life is proven through conflicts in military, scientific, economic, and cultural arenas. Culturally the United States is the supreme power on Earth; not because the Jerry Springer Show is good, but because it is an irrelevant fish in the largest ocean of competing entertainment offerings. Our economy is the largest in the world because opportunity is tempered by accountability to forge the strongest engine for sustained growth known to man. Our scientific achievements capture six out of ten Nobel prizes. The three most decisive military campaigns in history have been led by our armed forces in the last decade and a half; most impressively, these conflicts have inflicted a tithe of the expected civilian casualties. The greatest limitation to our ability to accomplish is our national will.
The nation that put man on the moon can bring democracy to the Middle East, if we choose to do so and maintain our commitment to that accomplishment. The peoples of Iran love the United States and are eager for our assistance in achieving lasting freedom. Even as we dither and listen to whines about civilian casualties in Iraq, ten times as many are dying in Sudan for lack of conflict. For people afflicted with dictatorships, pacifism is the strangulation of hope. Today we have the very real potential to simultaneously place within reach orbital flight for the common man in the United States, and real democracy for the rest of the world within our lifetimes.
We face a vote in two weeks where we decide as a people what we wish to accomplish. It is incredibly easy to embrace the pliant and comfortable sin of omission through withdrawal. Your friends cannot blame you for choosing to do nothing and hoping that things will turn out for the best because of your good intentions. I ask you to choose difficult and dangerous accomplishment instead. I ask you to help stop the retreat from humanity that is happening in Sudan and around the world. Face the dictators and show them what free people can do.
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Deferred Rebellion Not Necessarily Better
My friend Michael Totten is worried, with good reason, that in the event of a Bush re-election, the nutbar left will actively work to overthrow democratic process in the United States in retribution. He quotes a commenter on another blog, Cicero, who works at a California university and has heard people talking about open rebellion. Cicero is voting for Bush but rooting for Kerry because of the potential for deterioration of the democratic process in the event of a Democratic loss.
I think I get where Michael and Cicero are coming from, I just don't agree with where they are. The prospect of dilettante academics taking up arms to resist the lawfully elected government does not fill me with dread. Actually, it kind of fills me with humor. I've met, up close and personal, college revolutionaries and USMC Sniper School Instructors. I know for sure who I'd put my money on in a stand up fight or an insurgency, and it isn't the ones wearing Birkenstocks.
The most effective anti-insurgent military in the world is who the revolutionary intellectuals would be rebelling against; and the patchouli rangers do not have the tactics, training, discipline, logistical support, coherence of goals, or the leadership to accomplish much more than self-immolation. A lot of people would go to jail, and probably some particularly destructive schmucks would earn themselves a lethal injection for treason. It would be an embarrassment, but I think it would be a small one. The most striking lack in the nutbar resistance is credible leadership; Michael Moore is not even qualified to carry Abbie Hoffman's jockstrap, and there simply is nobody on the left near the same league as Martin Luther King, Jr. Actors and Rock Stars have not shown a significant capability to influence the general populace to do more than sell tickets, and they are generally more concerned with that endeavor. Discussions of a virtual leadership on the Internet are simply laughable. People risk their lives for ribbons and tin, but not the honor of a chat room or a blog. Honestly, any revolution in the near term would be over very shortly after it got started.
I have a lot more enthusiasm for experiencing this disturbance under the leadership of George W. Bush because he has already exhibited remarkable forbearance under pressure with regards to the Islamic community in the US and the world. That is something worth taking into account. Regardless of the persistent underestimation of the President that the moonbat left thrives on, there is no evidence that Bush gets stupid under pressure. More importantly, the Pentagon will never overthrow Bush and establish a military Junta. If they tried it, Rumsfeld would have their heads on pikes in his office in a moment, and that may not be just a figure of speech.
The people who are serious about exploiting revolutionary idiocy, like A.N.S.W.E.R., don't care if Kerry gets elected or not, because he is not their kind of Stalinist. There is no good reason to believe that the people herding the moonbat left really care who is in charge since nothing less than a revolution will make it them. I think we should take the people who say there is no difference between Kerry and Bush at their word and acknowledge that the results of this election will do nothing to forestall any attempt at revolt.
Lately I've been hearing from people who talk about the need to throw a revolution every so often to keep things fresh. I have a lot of friends who are both decent people and incredibly disconnected intellectuals. I do not think they are organized because I do not have any evidence they have sufficient discretion to sustain a significant organization. I've seen these people fold up like a card table when they run out of cigarettes; I do not think they could talk to me for a half-hour under the influence of a bottle of wine without gossiping about how they are conspiring to install a new government.
Honestly, I think we would be better off dealing with this now than postponing it until later. We know this is coming, and I think we are much better off handling it as close to the memory of 9/11 as possible.
Penguin In the Water!
Those clever folks in the blogosphere have done their penguin best to herd one of their own off the ice and into the water to see if there are leopard seals about!
It's not like a blogger could do a worse job than most senators!
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Imagine a World without Empowering Delusional Twits
(UPDATED)
Some years ago the Wall Street Journal ran an article describing the hotbed of anarchist empowerment that is my former stomping grounds of Eugene, Oregon. One of the flyers they reproduced had a drawing of Winnie the Pooh by a bucolic pond playing with a butterfly with a title something like, " Imagine a World without Corporate Greed" or some such. The idea being that once we embrace anarchy as a collectivist expression of our individual capabilities we will live in a wonderland like Christopher Robin. Probably the Journal chose the absolutely most delusional anarchist flyer they could find to drive the point home; but let's be honest, they had a lot to choose from. There is a lot of idiotic thinking on the left that in the September 12th world we live in needs to be corrected.
Michael Totten is writing that the Left needs to get hammered by history for a while to knock off some of the useless detritus and pound the worthwhile remainder into some kind of shape. I agree with the principle, but think he is utterly wrong on the method, since he thinks this will happen during a Kerry presidency. Michael has been to the Sahara this year, so he knows what a desert is. In most major religions, you go to the desert to atone for your sins of excess and come back with the strength to make things right.* The desert scours your soul and makes you stronger.
Washington, D.C. is a swamp, not a desert. Being in control of the largest aggregate of money in the world, the U.S. government's budget, is no way to atone for your sins of excess. With all those billions flying around, it's pretty near impossible to recognize a sin of excess if it is hitting you in the face really hard. With all the grant money and government contracts to direct, and all those new friends telling you how wonderful you are, your soul is never going to get scoured.
The central failure of Michael's theory is that there is no incentive for a winning team to change. The only way to get desert tough, desert pure, is to go to the desert and that NEVER happens willingly. Nobody gives up their position on the Federal Interagency Council on Statistical Policy to go clarify their reality and come back with a stronger philosophical ideal. They stay at their jobs, pay off their houses, hire their friends, direct grants to their alma maters, and change in the direction of securing their position.
Michael wants his friends to change to a rational and aware position on the basis of logical thought and awareness of the real dangers of the world we face. This month at a party at Michael's house, one of his friends tried to explain to me that it was logical and reasonable to believe that the forged documents used by CBS were somehow an administration plant intended to damage the Kerry campaign through a series of articulations too bizarre to repeat here. Michael, your friends need to go to the desert to change, and they will not do so on their own like you did. That moment has left us. There is no way that you believe that Kerry is strong enough lead anybody out of the desert, and the only way he is going to lead anybody into the desert is if he loses badly in three weeks and his supporters are driven there.
The way the idiots with the Pooh flyer start imagining a world that actually exists and stop being useless twits is to be confronted with reality. Giving those people executive positions at Disneyland is not a good way to start.
*Communism is a major world religion that does not have this tradition. In Communist tradition, you get taken out back and shot or they chase you to Mexico City and bash in your head with an ice axe. The absolute lack of significant doctrinal progress in Communism is not quite as hard to explain as some would have you think.
UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Michael. I still think you are too attached to your friends or good manners to appreciate that the Left is going into the desert if they win this election or not. I honestly think that the Left has some chance of recovering relevance sooner if they lose this fight than if they win. A lot of that is because Bush is such a liberal Republican that to have any ground to stand on that isn't within reach of Bush's appeal, you have to go out to the very fringe.
The only traction the Pro-Choice folks are able to get is by fear-mongering about his potential judicial appointments. If they had something concrete to nail Bush on, they certainly would use it. The simple fact is that directly attacking the middle doesn't sell tickets, and that is the position Bush is occupying. The Left needs a candidate who occupies the middle better than Bush, and right now all they come up with is a candidate to tries to be everywhere.
Friday, October 01, 2004
Questioning the Timing of the Mt. St. Helens Eruption
The crack investigators at NRA News are on top of the partisan actions of this geologic feature near two battleground states. One savvy caller noted the violations of the Kyoto protocol by this seismic event, clearly indicating its partisan behavior.
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