Category Archives: culture

What’s Their Limiting Principle?

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Progressives, as The Wall Street Journal puts it,

believe that every human problem can be solved with a policy tweak. A ban here, a background check there, and, voila, no more mass shootings.

But what’s their limiting principle?  What level of gun control would satisfy them?  What fundamental concept would make them believe they’ve gone far enough with their tweaks, checks, bans on an American citizen’s access to the means of defending himself and his family?  Besides their empty rhetoric of “I wouldn’t do that, I wouldn’t take all your guns away…,” I mean.

Some statistics would seem to give the lie to the Progressive-Democrats’ claims both about the ubiquitousness of gun violence and the purpose of these persons’ desired “controls.”

[A] 2015 Congressional Research Service report found that from 1999 to 2013 assault rifles were used in 27% of public mass shootings. The Virginia Tech shooter in 2007 killed 32 people with two handguns. FBI statistics show that of 15,070 homicides in 2016, 374 people or 3% were killed with rifles. Some 656 homicides were committed with “personal weapons” (hands, fists, feet) and 1,604 with knives.

Guns just aren’t that important to the violence humans commit against each other.  This, in turn, gives that lie to Progressive-Democrats’ claimed goals of merely wanting to “control” our firearms; our use of them is not out of control.

The Left, the Progressive-Democrats, don’t have a limiting principle.  Their tweaks, checks, bans are only first steps.  Their purpose throughout this “debate” is to disarm us completely, so that Government—one of the entities the 2nd Amendment seeks to enable us to defend ourselves against—will have the only guns.

Now, why might that be, exactly?

And this from a different angle on the Left’s desire to disarm us, from Larry O’Connor at Mediaite:

The US government is systemically racist and, through its inaction, seems willing to allow innocent, black citizens to be murdered by its police force. Furthermore, the judicial system is often rigged to protect the evil, racist officers by never punishing them for those murders. Additionally, the very same government is now in the hands of a fascist, incompetent criminal who, not only hates blacks and Latinos so much that he is willing to let the latter die of starvation and thirst [in Puerto Rico] rather than deliver humanitarian aid to them, but also calls the former [NFL player kneelers] “Sons of bitches” for protesting the racist country he oversees….

…if I really thought this country was so evil and so racist…I certainly wouldn’t want that evil, fascist, incompetent, and racist government to determine who could and could not arm themselves.

Why would a thinking American want a Government so evil to have the only guns?

The position on gun control of the Left generally and of the Progressive-Democratic Party in particular not only has no limiting principle, it makes no sense within itself.

 

h/t Grim’s Hall for the Mediaite link.

A Referendum

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Catalonia is trying to have one (had one as you read this) on whether the Autonomous Community should completely separate from Spain.  It’s turning violent as the Spanish military organization with police duties, the Guardia Civil, and the more civilian Policía Nacional, are using hammers and other such tools to break into locked buildings within which voting is occurring and truncheons and rubber bullets to try to block Catalans from entering and voting.

Nearly 850 civilian casualties had been inflicted by late Sunday, Dallas time.

This is counterproductive.  Like the Quebecois separation referenda, Madrid should let the Catalan referendum go forward without interference.  Most Catalans want the referendum, and most would vote to stay in Spain.

That vote would defuse the separation movement for a good long time.

The violent suppression is not going to work in the long run.

As Catalan President Carles Puigdemont is putting it,

The unjustified, unchecked, irresponsible violence by the Spanish state today didn’t just fail to stop Catalans’ will to peacefully and democratically vote….” It also made clear “what is at stake for us.”

It’s true enough that Puigdemont is playing politics with his characterization, but the characterization itself and its outcome isn’t far wrong.  Marc Quintana, a 34-year-old carpenter who was forcibly removed by police in Sant Julià before he could vote:

The only thing this will do is make those undecided people vote “yes” to independence[.]

It’s also true that the referendum is illegal under Spanish law.  However, if Madrid really thought it needed to arrest the referendum leaders, they could do that a lot more easily after a failed referendum.

A Couple Thoughts on the NFL Players’ “Protests”

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The Wall Street Journal ran a couple of pieces on this, one by Matthew Futterman and Andrew Beaton (Behind the NFL’s Frantic Scramble to Hit Back at Trump) and the other an op-ed by Jason Riley.

The former centered on the purported disarray among the NFL’s management, players, players union, owners, and coaches as they tried to figure out how to ride the tiger they’d turned loose with their “protests.”  The latter was a sort of coming-of-age piece wherein Riley went from national anthem sitter to a national anthem stander.

My two thoughts are closely related to each other.  This is my view of the Futterman and Beaton piece:

….players—many of whom say they are deeply offended by the president’s statements….

That’s OK–many of us are deeply offended by players’ attacks on our flag and national anthem.

Goodell had released a statement that Trump had shown “an unfortunate lack of respect for the NFL…failure to understand the overwhelming force for good [we] represent in our communities.”

Where is the good in the NFL’s divisive attacks on our national symbols? Where is the NFL’s respect for these?

These Precious Ones claim to protest inequities against minorities. This is nonsense. Were they interested in protesting inequities against minorities, they’d do that instead of attacking our flag and anthem. Were they interested in working against those inequities, they’d go into communities and work the problems rather than kneeling on the safety of the sidelines saying, “There’s a problem. Someone else fix it.”

This is what Riley’s piece generated in my pea brain:

The players have said they are protesting the unjust treatment of blacks by law enforcement….

This is nonsense. If the players wanted to protest unjust treatment, they would protest unjust treatment. Instead, they’re attacking our flag and our national anthem, and they’re insulting Gold Star families and veterans who fought, many of whom were maimed or killed in those fights, for these guys’ right to protest.

The stereotype of “dumb jock” was ugly 50 years ago, and it’s no prettier today. These players know full well what they’re doing; perpetuating that stereotype by pretending they don’t is as ugly as the stereotype.

A Bit of Snark

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Because it’s my blog, and so I get to.

Gene Malcolm (@spike012002) has a tweet up:

Next, Japanese businessman will start wearing business suits. When will this cultural appropriation end?

There also is a joke wandering the rounds:

Q: What’s the difference between Los Angeles and yogurt?
A: One of them has a living culture.

Which makes me wonder, in the context of Malcolm’s tweet: between LA and yogurt, which is inflicting cultural appropriation?

The Not Good Enough Legacy

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Here are some stats regarding Obamacare’s impact on our poor, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.

More than one in three of taxed [via the individual mandate penalty] households earned less than $25,000, which is roughly the federal poverty line for a family of four.

And

More than 75% of penalized households made less than $50,000 and nine in 10 earned less than $75,000.

And

Fewer families paid the tax in 2015 than in 2014, yet government revenues increased to more than $3 billion from about $1.7 billion, as the financial punishment for lacking coverage increased.

Never mind that these honest Americans can’t afford what Obamacare has on offer, they still have to pay the tax.  Never mind that what is on offer is so bad they won’t buy it; they’d rather pay a tax they can ill afford.

This is what Senator John McCain (R, AZ) has said he prefers to Graham-Cassidy, never minding that the Arizona governor (for whom McCain claims great admiration) has strongly endorsed the bill.  This is what Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) has said is better than a bill that repeals much of the funding for Obamacare and sends it instead to the States so they can set up their own health insurance/health coverage plan markets—including State-level Obamacare, if that’s their preference—never minding that States’ Rights has been part of his mantra since his first Senate election campaign.  This is what Senator Lisa Murkowski (R, AK) seems to want to preserve over Graham-Cassidy‘s elimination of her State’s exploding premiums and imploding plan provider participation.  This is what Senator Susan Collins seems to want to preserve, never minding Maine’s governor endorsement of the bill.

The WSJ pointed out that

…the point of this coercion was to substitute the government’s political preferences for individual judgment….

Just as these four Senators are substituting their own political preferences for the individual judgments of their constituents—whom the four are betraying with their support for Obamacare over Graham-Cassidy.

Remember this for the coming primary election season.