Way Up North: It Can't Contradict Itself

Way Up North: It Can't Contradict Itself

My friend, and often my commenter here, Rev. Paul, makes a very good point over at Way Up North. The proliferation of "gun free zones" around huge swaths of the landscape does nothing to protect those inside such zones. All it does is ensure that there will be no law abiding gun owner in such a zone ready to take on a criminal.

As I have pondered "gun free zones" over the years since receiving a CHL, I have come to believe that the logic is simply faulty. For example, I remember having this conversation several years back, after returning from Kentucky:

Me: I like that I didn't have to remove my weapon and store it to eat in an Applebees. And guess what? Nothing happened!

Other: I don't like mixing guns and places that serve alcohol.

Me: Well, you can't drink while carrying a weapon in such places you know.

Other: You might be sober, but what if some drunk grabs your gun and starts shooting up the place.

Me: Uh...my gun is concealed. How is our hypothetical "drunk" going to know I have it?

Other: Well I just don't like the idea of guns and drunks mixed up in the same place. It just doesn't feel right.

Me: !

In the end, that's how public policy is decided. Not on the basis of rational arguments, facts and logic, but on how it "feels" at the moment. No one is safer because of "gun free zones" but an oblivious few get to "feel" safer. For that, everyone else must give up their rights.

The Conspiracy Against Electric Cars

One of the reasons postings have been lighter of late is that I have taken on a part time job, driving cars no less. I remember having a conversation not unlike this one with one of the other drivers who apparently believes all 7 of the 7 High Voltage Lies About Electric Vehicles. I found the article, by Rex Roy on AOL Autos. It is a good summary of where we are in terms of gasoline engines, electric vehicles, and the oil industry in general. I would add that the Tesla, at over $100K is too rich for my blood. If that is what a person has to pay, after subsidies provided courtesy of the taxpayer (that would be you and me), electric vehicles are years away from being practical.

Incidentally, I used some of the very same arguments used by Mr. Roy, to little effect. Oh well.

Women Are the Chief Civilizing Influence in Society

Sometimes conservatives can sound hard and uncaring or unforgiving with some of the things they say. It is a danger always when one becomes excited, and too focused on the argument du jour. Such is the case when Rush Limbaugh refers to feminists as "feminazis." When Mike Adams rails against "womyn" at his college, he is not disparaging women in general, but a particular ideology that would pit men and women as enemies, when in fact we were literally made for each other. What Jonah Goldberg reminds us of in an article today at Townhall.com entitled Where Feminists Got It Right is that women have been the chief civilizing influence over society since the first cave man looked at the first cave woman, and the flinty glint in his eye softened just a tad. A quote from Goldberg:

The Taliban in Afghanistan is the most extreme example of the trend. Its members claim they want to keep the "chasteness and dignity" of women "sacrosanct," but it seems like what they really want is to protect themselves from the apparently hard work of not being a savage. So under the Taliban, women couldn't ride bicycles. They couldn't wear high heels because the sound of women's footsteps might excite men. Forget appearing on radio, TV or at public gatherings. Women couldn't step out onto their balconies.

And...

Forgetting the question of decency and morality for a moment, there's the matter of national interests. Female equality seems to be a pretty reliable treatment for many of the world's worst pathologies. Population growth in the Third World tends to go down as female literacy goes up. Indeed, female empowerment might be the single best weapon in the "root causes" arsenal in the war on terror.

The reason strikes me as fairly simple. Women civilize men. As a general rule, men will only be as civilized as female expectations and demands will allow. "Liberate" men from those expectations, and "Lord of the Flies" logic kicks in. Liberate women from this barbarism, and male decency will soon follow.

I have said before that the gun is a major civilizing influence, and it is. Guns allow the weak and infirm to be able to stand up to the young and strong. But the gun is a fall back position. Things have turned savage at that point, and there is no other options. Before we get there, our sons should be well trained in the art of being civilized, and treating all human life a precious, especially our daughters.

Bob Barr on the McDonald Case

Of Arms and the Law alerts us to a piece by Bob Barr on the McDonald case and the Starbucks "controversy" here. As to the latter, my wife, when reading a crawl on the subject on Fox News last night just laughed. How controversial can it be that Starbucks wants to follow the law? The Brady's are trying to make a sand pebble seem like a sand dune. In any case, support Starbucks to the degree you can, and let them know you are doing so because they are supporting you.

As for McDonald, Barr says:

While Supreme Court observers appear uniformly to consider that Chicago’s handgun ban will be invalidated, constitutional lawyers were more interested in the grounds on which the High Court might base its expected decision. Would the High Court frame its decision narrowly, as urged by the National Rifle Association, for example? Or might the Court take the more unusual step of using the Chicago case to establish that the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental “privilege or immunity” (in the words of the Fourteenth Amendment)? The latter would make it more difficult for states and even the federal government to impose significant restrictions on future exercise of the Second Amendment’s guarantees.

The smart money is that the Court will throw out Chicago’s gun ban, but on narrower rather than broader grounds. I would prefer the broader, more constitutionally-honest approach, but I don’t anticipate being pleasantly surprised when the Court’s opinion is released later this spring.

So here is another opinion that the Court won't have the guts to do what needs to be done here. Too bad.

Climate Hucksters Trying to Revive a Dead Horse

Like shamans performing a ritual to raise the dead, the Climate Change hucksters are trying to revive belief in the Goofball Wormening religion. First up is this piece from AOL news yesterday, Proof of Man Made Global Warming Grows Stronger by Theunis Bates. The story is short on facts, and long on assertions, which tells us all we need to know about their opinions of our gullibility. There isn't much worth quoting, but note that this is coming out of the British Met offices in East Anglia.

More interesting is Methane Madness by Jeffrey Folks over at American Thinker today. Folks points to climate "scientists" who are changing the discussion altogether, and attempting to revive a somewhat discredited theory of a "tipping point" by claiming that it is actually methane that will drive the world into uncontrollable Goofball Wormening. A quote:

For decades now, alarmists have claimed that CO2 emissions are warming the earth past the "tipping point" and that only extreme reductions in the use of fossil fuels can avert catastrophe. Yet the earth today is less warm than it was in the middle ages, a period in which it cannot be claimed that human activity was contributing much, if anything, to global warming. Global temperatures in 2010 are colder than they were in 2000, despite a tripling of CO2 emissions in the last decade largely attributable to the mushrooming economies of developing nations such as China and India. Alarmists have been predicting catastrophe for over thirty years, yet the earth continues in natural cycles of warming and cooling, just as it has for eons.


Even before the exposure of factual errors and potential misconduct at the IPCC, the East Anglia Climate Centre, and other organizations, the public in America and elsewhere (Australia, New Zealand, and even Britain) had begun to doubt the claims of climate scientists. Now, with these disturbing revelations concerning the way climate science actually works, the public has become even more skeptical. Maybe that's why climate science has shifted its attention to methane.

I suppose it is a testament to the amount of money to be made by these charlatans and hucksters, but Goofball Wormening simply will not die, no matter how many mortal wounds it suffers. But I did have hopes that the issue would slink off the radar for 30 years or so, and we could be dealing with things that really matter. But no, as with all bad ideas, Goofball Wormening keeps coming back, hoping to ensnare a few more poor souls in its ugly grasp.

Hard Times Coming

Kevin Jackson has a great piece in the American Thinker today about beer sales leveling off, of all things. Partly tongue in cheek, but not really, the article, entitled Maybe We Can Split a Beer makes the point that even in the deepest of recessions, and even when troubles look the blackest, people still buy beer. So, InBev's flat sales projections give a pretty good preview of what we're up against. A quote to get your taste buds working:

The fact that InBev, now the largest brewer in the world, had flat sales is astounding -- a true rarity in historical terms. This is the company that bought Anheuser-Busch, the makers of Bud Light -- the most popular beer in America, for goodness sakes! At this rate, InBev may all have to change their vats from brewing beer to making Kool-Aid, the liberals' favorite beverage these days.


At a press conference in Brussels, InBev CFO Felipe Dutra reported fourth quarter results for the world's largest brewer and maker of Budweiser, saying that InBev garnered "a fourth quarter profit of $1.28 billion, helped by cost cuts and price hikes, but global beer sales were stagnant and forecast no rebound in 2010."


Economists may point at things like "housing starts," "exports," or "durable goods manufacturing" to measure the economic health of America. However, beer sales are a much better indicator, second only to cosmetics!

For a more serious treatment, Chuck Roger has Tell Us the Truth in today's American Thinker. Quoting from that article:

Current events in Greece illustrate the misery that comes from ignoring the basics. The Greek economy is collapsing. A rampant entitlement mentality and the resulting government expansion have ballooned publicly-held debt to 121 percent of the country's 2010 economic output. (America could exceed the 100-percent debt-to-output threshold in 2011.) The European Community's reaction to the Greek tragedy? Mixed. French Prime Minister Sarkozy says the euro block will help "if needed." German Chancellor Merkel offers no aid. A senior member of Merkel's party suggests that Greece sell some of its islands to raise money.

Greece's Prime Minister Papandreou says that Greece has become "a laboratory animal in the battle between Europe and the markets." Progressives view society as their laboratory. Just as President Obama preaches to Americans too dim to swallow his wisdom, Euro-progressives want to force foolishness on a people's unreceptive leader.


Greece needs to address its own problems, the first of which is reality-blind union workers violently whining for government to hand over money the government doesn't have. But the E.C., observes Manhattan Institute's Nicole Gelinas, cannot bear to let Greece solve Greek problems. Too risky. Greece is too big to fail. Gelinas writes, "The empty purse is Papandreou's best tool for keeping public resolve strong in the face of crippling strikes by public workers." In other words, forcing bratty children to take the hit for bankrupting mom and dad is just the right medicine. In Greece, severe pain just might spark sane policies!

The bottom line for both articles? We are in for painful times. We are going to have to cut Federal spending, and Federal taxes by as much as 50%. Entitlement spending will have to be restructured, defense spending will have to be dramatically cut, and agencies like the Education Department and the EPA will have to be scaled back drastically. For the US, there is no big daddy to bail us out.

McDonald v. Chicago May Not Be a Landmark Case

I am sure there will be much more analysis of McDonald v. Chicago, but I thought I would highlight some early thoughts on the case. First up is Kurt Hoffman, St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner in First Impressions about McDonald v. Chicago. Hoffman thinks we will win our basic argument, that the Second Amendment applies to States and municipalities, but don't get excited and start planning the purchase of an M4 just yet.

Then, there is our own Charlotte Gun Rights Examiner, Paul Valone's take on the case that
Incorporation is a Distinction Without a Difference. The Court seems unwilling to reverse the Slaughterhouse Cases because they have been with us a long time. Doing so, however, would open the door to incorporation through the "privileges and immunities" clause rather than through the narrower "due process" clause. I can understand the reluctance on the part of the Court, but if the cases were wrongly decided, as it appears they were, then the Court has a duty, it seems to me, to strike them down. But then, I am not a lawyer. If on the other hand, they do not strike them down because of a fear that some other cases dear to conservative hearts will go down with them, the Court is guilty of conservative judicial activism as bad as liberal judicial activism. To do that is to cede the "living document" argument to the progressives. The restoration of the Constitution can not be accomplished by fiddling with it to make it more conservative, but only by an honest interpretation of what the Framers meant when they wrote it.

Most interesting of all is Dave Hardy's comments on the case at
Of Arms and the Law. As with Heller, Dave Hardy was involved in putting the legal arguments together, and he was at the Supreme Court to hear the oral arguments. I found Straightarrow's comment to be most on point:

I am opposed to the use of the 14th amendment, Hell, I'm opposed to the amendment. The rest of the constitution is crystal clear, and every state had to agree to abide by it to become a state. The 14th says "you gotta do watchya said ya wud do, but if ya don't, hey, we got nothin'. anyway we may not like some parts of liberty under the rest of the constitution so, we'll use the 14th like a chinese restuarant menu."

It's a pretty sorry state of affairs when reliance on a subsequent amendment is required to honor the original plain as day "shall not be infringed" amendmnent. Yeah I know we should feel fortunate that we are getting a second bite of the apple. And I would, if I didn't recognize the fact that like the Heller decision, this one too is subject to be only correct enough to forestall armed insurrection without really dismantling any of those prohibited infringements.

Later comments made the point that McDonald would be only a "first step" and that other cases would hopefully flesh it out.

My own take? In order to get the fifth vote to win this point, the justices can not go too far. But I also believe that there is an element within the Court that sees itself as the maintainers of authority. That is an ugly side, to be sure.