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Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representative, represents these San Franciscans, attending the “Up Your Alley” street political demonstration. This is not a private party on private property, closed off from the public, but a public event, officially sanctioned by the SF city government. Budweiser is a sponsor, although their presence is much reduced after last year’s Folsom Street Fair.

The given link goes to a content-warning page, rather than directly to the photos.Take that warning very seriously, but click through, blurred or unblurred, and take a quick look.

These are the folk who put Pelosi in office, that she is beholden to.

We’re supposed to be tolerant of “gays”, because, hey, there’s not enough love in the world, is there? And who are we to deny it wherever it blossoms?

Do you see anything here suggestive or supportive of stable, long-term loving relationships?

Gay Marriage? See anybody here you’d trust to so much as sell you diapers, much less raise children of their own?

I regularly see charity panhandlers here in Houston, soliciting for “AIDS Awareness”. Do you really believe that these people are not intimately, personally aware of AIDS and its risks? Seriously, folks, how much do think the government needs to spend to make this kind of behavior even remotely “safe”? And why should I pay for it?

I’m told that one of the pictures shows a hepatitis testing station; I don’t want to go looking for it. Gosh, I don’t remember seeing one of those at the last gun show I attended. (Although perhaps a cholesterol testing station wouldn’t be totally out of place….) I’m struggling to imagine behavior this careless being tolerated at a gun show. I’m struggling to imagine the kinds of restrictions placed on personal behavior at gun shows  being enforced here. Tell me again, who are the dangerous, irresponsible ones?

Oh, yeah: I dare you to try to get a permit to hold an open-air gun show on the streets of SF. Or here in Houston, for that matter. Go ahead. I dare you.

And yes, which public event supports an activity explicitly protected by the Constitution? What’s that you say? There’s a “penumbra” around the First Amendment right to assembly that permits public fornication, but the Second Amendment doesn’t really mean what it says about a “right of the people” and “shall not be infringed”? You know what, asshole? Piss off. But in private, please.

And again, don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare, try to lecture me about how angry I get here.

By the way, I still support these guys. I still say that, barring felony records, even the people in Zombie’s photo have the right to keep and bear arms.

These pictures are courtesy of the anonymous Zombie Time, who devotes a lot of time photographing leftist, socialist, Democratic, homosexual, and antiwar public demonstrations in the SF area, and putting the pictures up for all to see.

For instance, here’s Zombie’s photo essay on the Code Pink demonstrations and vandalism at the Berkeley Marine Recruiting Station, officially sanctioned by the Berkeley city government. The Marines, by the way, were recently denied a permit to film one of their drill teams for a recruiting video in the Bay area. Do you really think the Marines would be more disruptive, more dangerous, more in violation of American ideals, than Up Your Alley?

The author of University Diaries, UD, will be going to a gun show, and plans to contact someone about a trip to the range.

She compares two extreme viewpoints there.

First Amitai Etzioni, a GW sociologist:

If one holds, as most studies do, that guns provide more danger than protection, and notes that other democratic societies greatly limit private gun ownership, one is naturally troubled by the threat that the new scholarship may help to overturn a strong and long-established endorsement of gun control laws by the Supreme Court. With so much at stake, should scholars refrain from conducting studies that might have grave unsettling social consequences?
… Would my colleagues put on their web site a study that demonstrating how to make the Ebola virus in a kitchen sink? Would they publish ways to make nerve gas in one’s basement? As I see it, when the results of a publication may well be fatal on a large scale, great weight should be given to social prudence.
… [M]y good colleagues in law schools [should] consider whether they should devote themselves to an academic pursuit other than undermining the Supreme Court rulings that have rendered gun control possible and legitimate…

To her credit, UD:

…finds Etzioni’s analogies — an individual in possession of a gun is a deadly virus, a nerve gas — as well as his aristocratic conviction that the possibly correct reading of one of our nation’s more important documents ought to be kept from ordinary American citizens, pretty stunning.

Stunning indeed, not least because Etzioni is comparing Second Amendment scholarship, not guns, to Ebola and nerve gas. We’ll assume ignorance, not malice, to be behind his comments about “most studies” and “a strong and long-established endorsement of gun control laws by the Supreme Court”.

Second, she cites GW law professor Robert J. Cottrel, who says:

[A] society with a dismal record of protecting a people has a dubious claim on the right to disarm them…. [I]t is unwise to place the means of protection totally in the hands of the state….

[T]he ultimate civil right is the right to defend one’s own life…. [W]ithout that right all other rights are meaningless.

Both of these quotes are from NRA websites; UD is not relying on one sided sources. She is honestly and thoroughly investigating guns and the Right to Keep and Bear.

Whatever conclusions she comes to, whether she elects to become a gun owner or not, she will have honestly earned her opinion, and I for one will respectfully listen to whatever she has to say.

[Series note]

I didn’t realize this was going to turn into a series. I’ve retitled the posts so far, but have left their URLs untouched so as not to break any existing links. Note that my numbers are not consistent with UD’s.

Posts in this series:

Prof Meets Gun 4: UD Visiting Gun Show, Range (this post)

Prof Meets Gun 3: On Scholars Visiting Gun Ranges

Prof Meets Gun 2: Gun Range Visit & Gun Answers

Prof Meets Gun 1

“Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform, don’t kid yourself.”
– Frank Zappa, Burnt Weenie Sandwich

Now read this, over at Overcoming The Bias:

Lonely dissent doesn’t feel like going to school dressed in black.  It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit.

Damn straight, Skippy.

I know people who simply refuse to like anything they hear on Top 40 radio, simply because it’s popular, and they can’t tolerate along with the crowd.

Shakespeare’s bad, because, you know, he’s a cultural icon.

Most of them are against the war in Iraq, because, you know, they’re questioning authority. They’re speaking truth to power. They’re out on the edge.

‘Scuse, please, but they’re credulous starry-eyed sheep. Avowed skeptics and inclusive multi-culturists, they’re bowing down before the most racist, sexist, close-minded, anti-progressive religious cult to come along in the past thousand years, a cult that openly promises to enslave or kill them. They’re trying to elect a presidential candidate from the Chicago Machine they’re treating like the Messiah. Meanwhile, if I can keep from vomiting on the voting machine, I’ll vote for this guy.

I know, vaguely, what wearing the clown suit feels like, because I’ve come out to “liberal” friends and family as a gun owner. My advocacy of possessing a tool that would allow me to actually resist tyranny made me a pariah to folks who are very strident in their rebelliousness. (I probably also wore the clown suit a lot in school, but wasn’t aware of it. I don’t think that counts. Hm, I did almost start a fad for carrying Slinkies around, but the teachers put a stop to that, because they’re so damn noisy. Does that count?)

And mind, by the standards of the linked article, I’m still not a true rebel, because I didn’t figure out, on my own, how crucial the right to keep and bear arms really is; I picked it up from a chance conversation back in ‘76, and had it reinforced by Gharlane of Eddore, a nut job science fiction fan posting in the Babylon Five usenet forums.

I’m giving up on trying to be a rebel. I swear, from here on out, not to care how popular or unpopular my positions are, but only whether or not I feel they’re right. If I conform, too damn bad.

Now me, you know, I really am an iconoclast.  Everyone thinks they are, but with me it’s true, you see.  I would totally have worn a clown suit to school.  My serious conversations were with books, not with other children.

But if you think you would totally wear that clown suit, then don’t be too proud of that either!  It just means that you need to make an effort in the opposite direction to avoid dissenting too easily.  That’s what I have to do, to correct for my own nature.  Other people do have reasons for thinking what they do, and ignoring that completely is as bad as being afraid to contradict them.  You wouldn’t want to end up as a free thinker.  It’s not a virtue, you see - just a bias either way.

So I liked Madonna’s “Material Girl” video. So sue me.

[update]

Holy. Crap.

Overcoming Bias is a serious trip, particularly if you’ve let yourself get intellectually lazy. It’s a bigger, and far more productive, time sink than Wikipedia or even TV Tropes. Very, very strongly recommended.

Weeeellll, not exactly.

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred post a chart showing who really armed Saddam: the Soviets, by a huge margin, followed by France, China, and Egypt. We contributed about half a percent of total arms sales to Saddam. The Sovs started in 1973; we didn’t piss in the pot for another decade.

Cultural self-perpetuation is on my mind today. I’ve posted before on this Civics Literacy Quiz, which was given to freshmen and seniors at 50 colleges and universities. By and large, they failed miserably, with the Ivy League students doing the worst. (I scored 55 out of 60, an A-.)

The QOTD post below, “I’ve heard of that,” links to a brief introduction to the problem.

Now go over to Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority and read the long version. I’m not even going to bother to quote from it. It is infinitely worth your time, particularly you home schoolers out there, who are facing state execution, because you are doing the job that state teachers are specifically trying to eradicate: turning your kids into functional, literate citizens. (Hi, Chanda!)

Oh, OK, fine then, fine. Here’s your quote:

I am of the carefully considered opinion that both our media and our educational system have been largely taken over by people who are acolytes of the Holy Grail that Socialism promised, and who put themselves in those positions in the belief that it is up to them to help create the New Men that Socialism cannot succeed without. Our schools, especially, have become centers for the teaching of collectivism, “identity politics,” and for want of a better term, “rage against the machine.”

And to some extent, it has worked.

To a larger extent, it has not.

What has resulted are the unintended consequences of declining standards, high dropout rates, functional illiteracy and innumeracy, almost no general knowledge of geography, history, or civics, and nearly complete ignorance of science - both general and applied.

Schools should be the foundry through which the raw material of our youth is run, coming out the other end with strong and tempered minds well prepared for the world. The ore hasn’t changed, but the ratio of dross to valuable product has grown precipitously.

OK, I gave you the quote. Now do your share and read the whole thing, where Baker backs it up with statistics, with quotes, with news articles, with cold hard logic.

Public schools aren’t simply incompetent. They’re doing an excellent job of creating a people fit for socialist tyranny, which means a people unable to govern themselves.

Steve at Hog on Ice, commenting on Israel Prime Minister Olmert’s traitorous decision to return the Golan Heights to Syria:

Liberals believe battered wives aren’t fit to be trusted with handguns, but they think savages are fit to handle huge armies and nuclear weapons. Someone explain the logic.

===

As TC says in comments: “Ehud Olmert : Israel :: Jimmy Carter : United States”

Yes, Carter is also a traitor.

===

On the other hand, as Sigivald notes, “that’s if we can believe a Syrian cabinet minister. Olmert and the Israeli Government have not, it appears, said it themselves.”

However that may be, Steve’s comment on what those who call themselves Liberals believe is still accurate.

Today is St. George’s Day.

This flag has long been a symbol of England. It’s also associated with the Crusades, and is therefore reviled by jihadists. Today, the dhimmi forces of appeasement are working to ban its public display. In the latest outrage, a St. George’s Day parade has been canceled, because the planned participation of 1,500 children made it too attractive a target for the Religion of Peace.

Can’t be said enough:
There is no God, certainly not Allah; and Mohamed, may piss be upon him, was no prophet, but a child-raper and mass-murderer who invented a sociopathic warrior cult that advocates more of the same.

So, you, or someone you know, is thinking about enlisting, “moving to the sound of the guns”. What should you read to prepare yourself?

Beats the bloody-be-heckers out of me. I’d guess maybe Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, famous, even notorious for its provocatively pro-military views. But it’s SF, and the lady in question is not a fan, to put it mildly. (If she were, of course, she’d already have read her Heinlein, including the inspiring but now-quaint retelling of the American Revolution, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

How about movies? I remember Private Benjamin being an entertaining portrayal of a privileged young woman who goes to boot camp in rebellion against her smothering parents and intended husband. An Officer and a Gentleman shows a full-of-himself young man also benefiting from almost washing out in Basic. (Turns out Larz’s Mom has already ordered Benjamin. I can’t wait to find out how that goes.)

But that was all I could come up with, so I wrote to Grim Beorn, a very literate warrior indeed. I knew he’d published reading lists for folk already in the service, but didn’t remember seeing anything for civilians considering enlistment. Grim kindly pointed me to his standard post on the topic. It starts out with a story about adjusting to the culture in Iraq, but then moves on:

“An eighteen year old arriving at West Point,” says Grim, “already knows nothing but High School. What he needs to learn is how to be a hero.”

His suggestions:

• Beowulf. “Out of the darkness of the prehistory of the human race, a superb and splendid hero emerged, to do battle with the monstrous forces of evil.” –Lin Carter, if I’m not mistaken. Quote from memory.
• The Illiad (Fitzgerald translation)
• The Saga of Burnt Njal.
• The Havamal, which “will teach you everything a hero needs to know, from how to enter a room to how to behave in company, from how to make and keep friends to how to be respected among great men. It is in its way a complete education.”

Grim explains:

This will teach our soldiers what they need to know to relate to the sheikhs, and indeed many other cultures abroad. But it also does the soldier a great kindness, as it makes him an educated man. These are exactly the things you need to know to comprehend the Western tradition. With these as your base, nothing in America’s history is forbidding.

In his email, Grim goes on to make what, for me, was a very surprising suggestion: The Hobbit, which offers “a deep but subtle introduction into the pieces I suggest in the standard reply”. It’s been a long time since I’ve read The Hobbit, because I prefer the longer, sterner Lord of the Rings. Precisely because of that sterness, and the heavier use of myth and fantasy, I rejected LotR for Larz. And because, in contrast, I’m used to considering The Hobbit as, well, fluffier, more of a children’s book, I didn’t even think of it. But Grim’s got it right: it’s a fairly easy read, and shows very well the transformation of a quiet stick-in-the-mud civilian into a hero. I’m going to have to read it again myself.

He continued:

Try her on the Norse sagas — they involve very much sailing and hardship, and serve as an advanced course in heroism. Don’t worry that they aren’t “modern,” because really, the technology changes aren’t that important.  What really does matter is the culture, and the culture of fighting men (and, these days, women) is a thing long ago perfected.  We just need to continue to remind ourselves of what our ancestors knew.

Then he said something else I’ve never considered, but take very much to heart:

In addition, the slightly alien feel of the sagas will prepare her for thinking about a slightly alien world like the Navy. It’s an important skill that she should learn, how to think about the meaning behind customs and traditions that are different from what she already knows.

Whether Larz reads this stuff or not, it’s clear that I, myself have some catching up to do. She’s young and fit and strong and can no doubt even now whip my flabby middle-aged butt anytime she chooses, but I will not be outdone on the reading front.

Then, as a parting gift for boot camp, I can in good conscience give her selections from here,  the official Marine Reading List. This list also includes another work of science fiction that has come under peacenik fire: Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. This, too, is a tale of a boot-camp, but a very strange one, one for grade-school children in outer space. I would never have guessed that the Marines would take that as an authoritative introduction to military life–but now I see that the “slightly alien feel” Grim speaks of may well have played a role.

Another important item from that list is available on-line: the Marine Corp manual on Warfighting [PDF]. This is golden: the inside skinny on how Marines think about the thing they do better than any other force in the world.

Anyway, thanks, Grim, for the reply, and for your website generally, which has over the past couple-three years given me considerable insight into the Warrior Spirit, as exemplified by this from G.K. Chesterton:

How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,

Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.

Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,

When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.

The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, –

You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.

A couple of other bits  I dug out while writing this:

Confederate Yankee’s take on LTC Dave Grossman’s original Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs essay (quoted in its entirety). Everybody, sheep or sheepdog, should read this.

Bill Whittle. Wordy, but oh so satisfying:

Here’s his recent piece on fighter pilots, and the fighter pilot, and what he taught America’s military about war fighting generally. Part 1 Part 2 This is survival material.

Honor, the short, sweet essay that made Whittle’s reputation. “…The many, many sergeants…”
I cannot hear or read the word “sergeant” anymore and not think of this essay.

Freedom, and the price that must be paid for it. Why we have the Second Amendment. Whittle hits his stride.

Empire: “For the first time in history, a nation powerful enough to rule the world has simply refused to do so.” Damn betcha, and why, exactly why, my precious, precious niece does an honorable thing by volunteering to go forth and put herself in harm’s way.

War. Why we’re at it, right now, written at a time so many of us were not sure.

History. A little bit about how we got here, about another time when everybody knew “The war is an abject and utter failure. What everyone thought would be a quick, decisive victory has turned into an embarrassing series of reversals.” And how it all turned around on an insignificant mound of dirt known as Little Round Top, with an insignificant amateur named Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain as the hinge pin.

Whittle. He’s one of the good guys, and does not write often enough. Read all his stuff.

This young lady is considering enlisting in either the Navy or the Marines. (The Air Force, apparently, has ugly uniforms, and is right out.)

All of us who know her, even me, have done a double-take: “The Marines? The Storming Iwo Jima Marines? Squeem Queen Larz in the Marines?”

We are wrong to have done so. Indeed, to my burning shame, I find myself having fallen for the same stereotype as, gack, the Puppy Trainer of Record, the New York Times. From Subsunk over at Blackfive comes this very reassuring take:

Really???? “Potentially misleading”, “selling war”, “She’s supposed to look like she’s being empowered”, “hard to think of it as empowerment”? What’s misleading about female Marines being in charge? What’s  misleading about female Marines knowing how to pick up a rifle and use it? What’s misleading about portraying female Marines as Leaders. Where is selling the Iraq war mentioned in the ad?

I don’t know about you, but if a female Marine Officer struck a defensive martial arts stance on me, I wouldn’t think of it as anything other than a prelude to getting my ass kicked if I laid a hand on her. If that’s not “empowering” (God, I hate that word…it is too PC and wimpy for me), then I don’t know what is.

He corrects a few other misconceptions which, I’m pleased to say, I don’t share in the least:

It would seem [from the Times article] that our forces are taking a pounding from the enemy. While I am reasonably sure Ms. Thompson [a quoted "expert"] didn’t actually mean it that way, it is the quote the reporter chose to use, and it conveys facts which are not in evidence. The only “pounding” our guys take is the pounding their morale takes due to long deployments away from home, and the MSM characterizing them as murderers of innocents, and uneducated grunts with bad table manners and horrible breath. In the context of actual combat, while I am sure they do not appreciate incoming fire, I am equally certain that “taking a pounding” is not a sentiment that they would choose to use in describing their situations. “Giving a pounding, ass kicking, meting out excessive punishment, “getting some”, or just generally beating the living sh*t out of some assh*les who desperately deserve it” might be a more accurate portrayal of their language.

Anyway, Larz, my anxiety and doubt is relieved. Take the aptitude test, pass your physical, finish high school, sign the contract, take the Oath, get through Basic, and Kick Ass.

Remember the one thing Blackfive says the Times got right:

There are no female Marines. Just Marines.

(And I hope it’s clear that the title of this post is meant to subvert the idea of “girly”, not to denigrate the Marines.)

Update:

Be sure to read the comments at Blackfive. Some note that the Times article can be seen in a very positive light.

Mom (”Hi Mom!”) is growing tomatoes in her backyard garden, right next to the patio. Apparently she’s got a few little green fruit beginning to bud out. We are all awaiting BLT day.

She’s not the only one, although these folks are probably not going to contaminate theirs with bacon:

Three months after US forces dropped tonnes of bombs on Arab Jubur and put Al-Qaeda to flight, farmers are everywhere out in their fields tending their tomatoes.

Homes in the Sunni Arab rural patch about 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of Baghdad, meanwhile, are being rebuilt, schools reopened, roads repaired and irrigation pumps renewed, even as shopkeepers happily dust off their shelves.

“It’s the first time in three years I am able to work in my lands,” said Ammar Wadi, a 30-year-old vegetable farmer who also runs a small dairy herd.

His lands, on the banks of the Tigris, are thriving. Besides tomatoes, he also grows ochre and wheat, while some of his 30 acres is devoted to pastures.

“When Al-Qaeda was here it was impossible to farm,” said the jolly-faced farmer from under an orange cap while taking time out from his labours to visit his cousin’s newly-reopened grocery store on a dusty rural road.

“They cut the power so we couldn’t pump water,” said Wadi. “We couldn’t buy fuel. They would shoot at anyone they saw in the fields. They kidnapped and murdered many people. They destroyed life here.”

If you want some lovely, juicy hope, actually ripening on the vine, read the whole thing.

Via Insty.

By the way, I have to point out that AFP, Agence France-Presse, has been consistently anti-American, and anti-War up till now. If they’re reporting good news like this, it means two things:

First, that the news from Iraq is so very good, and so bountiful, that not even they can ignore it anymore.

Second, that the streets of Iraq are safe enough for AFP reporters to come out of the their hotels and do some actual reporting, rather than depending on stringers of very questionable allegiance.

Finally, is anybody at all surprised that the French identify good news in Iraq as being about…food?