He'd Really Rather Be A Dictator

Obama taking executive action on guns after Senate vote

The Obama administration was starting a process Friday aimed at removing barriers in health privacy laws that prevent some states from reporting information to the background check system.

removing barriers in health privacy laws

Yeah. Nothing could be wrong with that. Who knows why that have those laws, anyway? Why would you not want the government digging around in your health records? Remember, the government is us! You and me! We're all here to help each other!

How Far We've Fallen When Johnny Rotten Becomes The Voice Of Propriety

Johnny Rotten Says Celebrating Margaret Thatcher’s Death Is ‘Loathsome’

It's ironic and sad that the leftist, counter-cultural bomb-thrower, former Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten, who was the cultural polar opposite of Thatcher during her time as Prime Minister, shows more gentlemanly respect than the modern left.

The Tool And The Hand That Wields It

Hat tip from Instapundit: Stone tools helped shape human hands

AROUND 1.7 million years ago, our ancestors' tools went from basic rocks banged together to chipped hand axes. The strength and dexterity needed to make and use the latter quickly shaped our hands into what they are today – judging by a fossil that belongs to the oldest known anatomically modern hand.

...

Because the fossil is younger than the first tools, Ward's team believe it is the first evidence of anatomy evolving to suit a new technology. As stone tools became more widespread, those who had the wrist structure to use them would have had an evolutionary advantage over their weaker-wristed kin.

I find articles like this terribly misleading to the laymen, because they subtly promote the idea that the use of the tools caused the changes in the wrist. This is the old long-disproven Lamarckian theory. If you were to press the scientists on this, they would readily admit that, no, they're not saying that the tool use actually caused the changes, but that natural selection operated as a winnowing process, a sorting box -- the humans with the stronger wrists had better survival characteristics than humans with weaker wrists, and this produced more offspring.

This relies on several  assumptions, some of which are statistically ludicrous, none of which are proven:

1. That minute variations in wrist strength had survival advantages that managed to cause statistical variations in excess of the normal hazards of prehistoric living (disease, accidents, predation, violence, starvation, etc.).

2. There was a wide range of genetic variance in wrist strength and structure from which to select, and

3. Random genetic mutations that materially and positively affected wrist strength fortunately appeared at exactly the time that early humans were expanding tool use.

The last one, especially, requires an incredible confluence of rare events.

Draw your own conclusions.

I've Heard This Lie Before

Urban metrosexual "Republican" tries to convince us that anti-gunners don't really want to take our guns away. Universal background checks are "reasonable" and "popular." and won't lead to confiscation.

Not buying it. Because universal registration has led to confiscation in many, many places. And don't think I'm fallaciously conflating background checks with registration. The only feasible way to enforce background checks on private sales is through universal registration.

When Government Ignores The Law, People Should Ignore The Government.

Missouri Secretly Shares Entire CCW List With Feds Against State Law

This sort of casual disregard for the laws that are supposed to restrain it has become so commonplace, that I submit that our government has lost all legitimacy and forfeited the right to have any power over us.

It doesn't matter what laws we pass:

Congress ignores the law requiring it to pass a budget.

The President ignores

1. Laws governing secured creditors during the auto bailout
2. Law saying he can only make "recess appointments" when the Senate is actually in recess, and that only the Senate gets to determine when it's in recess.
3. The War Powers Act
4. The Immigration Act

Corruption of political parties is so endemic in Chicago, New York and Washington that it ceases to be remarkable

Government funds are doled out to "invest" in companies that are, coincidentally, owned by the President's bundlers and donors.

Ambassadorships are parceled out as rewards to supporters regardless of qualifications.

Laws are set aside for the elite -- it's OK for David Gregory to possess a 30 round magazine in D.C., because clearly, as an elite media reprentative, he's no danger to anyone. I wonder if a similar explanation would work for me (of course not).

I could go on for pages.

I obey the government only out of fear, not respect. I know I'm not the only one.

I Called This One: No Longer Safe For Gun Owners To Seek Mental Health Services

New York has begun confiscating guns from people who seek mental health services.

I called this a few months back:

The obvious takeaway from this is: gun owners, never, ever see a therapist. You never know what you might say in a moment of weakness or hyperbole that can be misinterpreted. Whether it's a "credible threat" is entirely in the mind of your therapist, the Department of Criminal Justice Services and the magistrate you'll be paraded in front of. Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya? If you feel a need to spill your guts to someone, find a friend and have a couple beers. If you don't have any friends, give a few bucks to a stripper and talk away. She'll pretend to be sympathetic as long as the money's coming, just like a therapist, and she's way hotter.

It turns out that, in New York, even being prescribed any psychoactive drug (which could include any of the widely-used drugs to treat depression or ADD),  makes you "dangerous" in the eyes of New York officials.

Stay away from mental health professionals and social workers.

Happiness In Novels And Monsters In The World

I recently posted this review of A Modern Witch by Deborah Geary.

The book is an excellent example of why we end stories with "happily ever after." Because "happily ever after" is really, really boring.

I was reminded of the contrast in the next book I've been reading, Written in Red: A Novel of the Others, by Anne Bishop. I'm not finished and thus not ready to post a review yet, but so far, it's a lovely book.

As I was reading along, rooting for the heroine, it dawned on me that I am pulling for her to lead a good, happy life. But, having just read an entire novel detailing a woman's good, happy life, I realize that is the last thing I want to read about. I really want conflict, suffering, loss, peril and tough choices. I just want it to all end up with "happily ever after."

I've never been much of a fan of those nihilistic novels where everyone is still sad and suffering in the end, because that's how life is and the book is gritty and real. If I want to know about people whose lives persist or end in suffering and despair I can turn on the news. The universality of suffering is not something I need to be reminded about. Who are those people that need that reminder? Would it be fun to live in their world, or really really boring? Or is is just that misery loves company? Again, there's plenty of miserable company in the real world. I don't need it in my literature.

Because I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, I also regularly read books with monsters of some sort in them. I realize that this isn't a new observation, but the monsters of fantasy are really just us. They're a way of putting a neat wrapper around evil so that we can see it and compartmentalize it and reassure ourselves that it doesn't have anything to do with us. We are not monsters. The vampires and werewolves and demons -- they're the monsters! Of course, the most self-aware sci-fi and fantasy realizes this and generally finds some way of inverting that trope (hopefully in ways not as awful as Twilight). But it's a reminder to take with us back into the real world. There is nothing the monsters of our fantasies can possibly do, no act so vile or depraved, that it has not already been inflicted upon one human by another human in the real world. Why would we need to be afraid of vampires? There are humans out in the dark.

On Reagan, Thatcher, John Paul and the Shoulders of Giants

Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size. -- John of Salisbury

With the passage of Margaret Thatcher, we have lost the last of the triumvirate of the great leaders of the free world of the late 20th century.

It is sad that they failed. But giants always fail, in the long run. The wheel of time grinds even giants beneath it. What is important is that we occasionally have giants, so that we briefly have their shoulders to stand upon.

One might respond that they didn't fail, that they brought down the Soviet Union, and helped freedom and capitalism flourish. But the Soviet Union itself was just a giant of a darker kind. The giants rise and fall, but the impulses that drive the world remain the same.

The Soviet Union and its fellow Marxist states managed to take what seems like an admirable, egalitarian sentiment "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." and turn it into one of the worst nightmares of human suffering ever seen on the planet.

If our giants had really triumphed, then that impulse would be gone. But it is not. Not even close. Because it is a fundamental feature of human nature. Always there have been people who have a vision for making the world a better place. And always there have been those willing to make their visions a reality by whatever means necessary.

The 99% vs, the 1%. "Asking" (because there's no "asking" involved) the "rich" (the defining line of who is rich is always changing) to "pay their fair share" (what share is "fair" is never, ever given a hard definition, for that would rob the phrase of its usefulness), or "spread the wealth around" is just another formulation of the original marxist creed. "You didn't build that" is another expression of the collectivist urge.

The collectivist urge can't be wiped from the human psyche. Indeed, there's nothing evil about it. We do accomplish great things when we work together. Likewise, the urge for individual achievement cannot be wiped away either. It, also, is fundamental, and not evil -- the world needs giants -- people of great ambition and ability.

What is evil is the totalitarian urge. The totalitarian urge isn't left or right, collective or individualist, it's simply the wielding of force to achieve one's vision without the consent of those who disagree or who are in the way.

The totalitarian urge, too, I'm afraid, is an essential characteristic of human nature.

Thus, giants of light and dark will always arise and impose their will upon the world. Masses will rise up and perform sweeping acts of collective good and evil. And talented ambitious people will use their abilities to achieve great and terrible ends.

This will not change. Ever.

We will never escape the giants of light and dark. The value of the giants of light isn't that they may change things for good, forever, but that when we live in lesser times, in lands of dwarves, we may remember when we stood upon their shoulders, and how far we could see.