Category: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

Of Ether, Lead, and Misattribution

Those of us who pursue the ethereal should never forget that it is blood, iron, and lead that secure the spaces of tranquillity wherein we flourish.

I found the following in a gun forum:  “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” It was attributed to George Orwell.

I don't know whether Orwell wrote those exact words.  I rather doubt that he did.  But he did write, in Notes on Nationalism, "Those who 'abjure' violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf."  The thought is essentially the same, and a good and true thought it is.

Pacifism is for angels.  But we are mixed and mixed-up beings, half animal, half angel.

You should never trust any unsourced attribution you find on the Internet.

An Unarmed Man

An unarmed man is a defensively naked man.

Now I defend your right to go around (defensively) naked, but only on condition that you defend, or at least not interfere with, my right to go around 'clothed.'

……………………….

Facebook comment:

Paraphrasing Machiavelli: Why should a man who is wrong pay any attention at all to a man who is right, and not armed?

Just so. In the world as it is, appeals to what is right carry no weight unless backed by might.  Suppose you are hiking in the wild. You come across a girl being raped by some brute. If you are unarmed, all you can do is appeal to the brute's conscience. "Sir, don't you see that what you are doing is both morally and legally impermissible? Please stop!" If, on the other hand, you are armed, then then you have the means to intervene effectively should you decide to do so. Whether you should intervene is a difficult decision that depends on the exact circumstances. I am making just one very simple and indisputable point: an unarmed man lacks the means to defend himself or anyone else.

Leftists Regularly Abuse Language: ‘Gun Buy Back’

The expression 'gun buy-back' as used by Kamala Harris and other leftists makes no sense. If I sell you something, I am free to attempt to buy it back from you, and you are free to refuse to sell it to me. But I didn't buy my guns from the government, but from reputable gun dealers in compliance with all the Federal and state and local regulations. So the government can't buy them back from me. That is ruled out by the very sense of 'gun buy back.'

Furthermore, if the dealer wants to buy back my gun, I am free to say No. But I am not free (in the same sense) to say No to the government when they try to confiscate my firearms. 

'Federal gun buy-back' is an obfuscatory phrase designed to confuse and trick the populace. In plain English, it amounts to COERCIVE CONFISCATION with monetary compensation.

When I call leftists moral scum, part of what I mean is that they misuse language to trick and confuse people. Decent folk don't do that. They say what they mean, and they mean what they say.

Leftists are stealth ideologues. They don't say what they mean, and what they mean is not what they say.

If they were intellectually honest, that would be one fewer reason for people to buy guns.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Philosophical Justification for a Drink or Two

From time to time  it is perhaps appropriate that we should relax a little the bonds that tether us to the straight and narrow.  A fitting apologia for a bit of indulgence and even overindulgence  is found in Seneca, On Tranquillity of Mind, XVII, 8-9, tr. Basore:

At times we ought to reach even the point of intoxication, not drowning ourselves in drink, yet succumbing to it; for it washes away troubles, and stirs the mind from its very depths and heals its sorrow just as it does certain ills of the body; and the inventor of wine is not called the Releaser [Liber, Bacchus] on account of the license it gives to the tongue, but because it frees the mind from bondage to cares and emancipates it and gives it new life and makes it bolder in all that it attempts. But, as in freedom, so in wine there is a wholesome moderation.

Sed ut libertatis ita vini salubris moderatio est.

. . .

Yet we ought not to do this often, for fear that the mind may contract an evil habit; nevertheless there are times when it must be drawn into rejoicing and freedom, and gloomy sobriety must be banished for a while.

Scotch bourbon beerAmos Milburn, One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer

The Champs, Tequila.  Arguably unique in that its lyrics consist of exactly one trisyllabic word.

Electric Flag, Wine.  Great video of the late Mike Bloomfield and his Gibson Les Paul in their prime, at the Monterey Pop Festival, 1967.  Definitive proof that a Jew can play the blues. Cultural appropriation at its finest. We all could profit from more cultural appropriation, blacks especially. Think what they could learn from the kike, the chink, and the honkey, not to mention the dago, the guinea, the greaseball, and the wop. 

Canned Heat, Whisky-Headed Woman.

Tommy McClennan, Whisky-Headed Woman, 1939

Doors, Whisky Bar

Buck Owens, Cigarettes, Whisky, and Wild, Wild Women

Cigarettes are a blot on the whole human race
A man is a monkey with one in his face
So gather 'round friends and listen to your brother
A fire on one end, a fool on the other.

Ramblin' Jack Elliot's version

What are you drinking? I'm having me a Whisky Highball, classic, and simplicity itself: ginger ale and your favorite whisky. Mine tonight is Canada Dry ginger ale and Jim Beam bourbon.  

Addendum 9/16

David G. writes,

Back when I was working for Google and making crap loads of money, I started sampling high-end bourbon and scotch. Maybe I'm just not a connoisseur, but in my judgement, although some of the 12-year-old Glen's were marginally better than Jack Daniels, none of the bourbons were, and there were several high-end whiskeys that were noticeably worse than Jack, so now that I'm poor, I really don't mind going back to my old friend Jack.

Also, as I'm sure you are aware, you can't post a list of songs on the internet and not have someone tell you you missed some. One you probably know:

EmmyLou Harris, Two More Bottles of Wine

and one you probably don't, unless you follow local Arizona bands:

Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, Jack vs. Jose.

Jack is good enough for me, too, and so is Jose Cuervo Gold, and if you are mixing these bad boys, not with each other mind you, but with, say, ginger ale or tonic water respectively, then there is no call to shell out for the top-shelf hooch which is outrageously overpriced. You don't always get what you pay for.  If a snob challlenges your judgment, Dave, arrange a blind taste test.

Fratello Pepito recommends The Four Deuces, White Port Lemon Juice, 1956.

The Grave Danger to the Republic of ‘Red Flag’ Laws

Destructive Democrats now label the National Rifle Association  a 'domestic terror organization.' Mind-mannered Mike of Mesa is a member and receives their publications. His mail man, though, is a flaming lefty. The mail man reports Mike to the government as a domestic terrorist on the ground that anyone who is a member of a terrorist organization is a terrorist. ATF agents break into Mike's house in the wee hours and seize his one and only firearm, a semi-automatic pistol. A year later, Mike is able to get his gun back, but he must pay all court costs.

Not quite Nazi Germany, but getting there.

If Democrats call NRA members domestic terrorists, I call Democrats totalitarian proto-Nazi scum. The difference between the two labels is that my label applies.

Never forget that the Left's strategy is incremental: gun confiscation in violation of both the Second and Fourth Amendments.

The Democrat Party is now a hard-Left party. 

Gun Violence and Border Control: A Plea to Our ‘Liberal’ Brethren

Dear 'Liberal,'

If you are concerned with gun violence, then you ought to be concerned with controlling the border. A porous border allows for human trafficking, drug trafficking, and — wait for it — gun smuggling. Now can you grasp that weaponry illegally brought into the country can and will end up in the wrong hands?

Sure you can! And you CARE SO MUCH, don't you? Then you ought to support President Trump and oppose the obstructionist Democrats who either want open borders or practically promote them via their Trump-hating obstructionism.

Private Property

The right to private property is another thing leftists don't understand, unless it is their private property. 

Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, tr. Ryan Bloom, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010, p. 177:

The Revolution is good.  But why?  One must have an idea of the civilization one wishes to create.  The abolition of property is not an end.  It is a means.

This is foolish. Private property is the foundation of individual liberty.  The problem is not private property, but too few people owning property, property they have worked for, and thus value and care about.  I include among private property the means for the defense of life, liberty, and property against assorted malefactors from unorganized criminals to rogue elements in the government.  

Banning Guns and Banning Muslims

Conservatives are not opposed to gun control, but they strenuously oppose gun confiscation and proposals to ban civilian ownership of semi-automatic weapons. These include semi-auto handguns of .22 caliber,  semi-auto rifles such as the AR-15, and semi-auto shotguns. Most of these same conservatives, however, support a reduction of, or moratorium on, Muslim immigration, either across the board or from selected terror-sponsoring states.  

This raises a question. Is the differential stance of these conservatives reasonable?  According to Libertarian Michael Huemer,

The threat of mass shootings is vastly overblown. The U.S. murder rate is about 4.9 per 100,000 population per year. The comparable *mass shooting* death rate is about 0.002. We should stop freaking out about a relatively tiny risk.

He also maintains that

The threat of terrorism is vastly overblown. In the last 50 years or so, about 3,300 Americans were murdered by terrorists, while about 800,000 were murdered by non-terrorists. We should stop freaking out about a relatively tiny risk.

I will assume that Huemer's numbers are correct, at least  for Americans on American soil. The numbers seem about right. Going by the numbers alone, it is not rational for a random individual to worry about dying either in a mass shooting or in a terrorist attack.  So why the differential stance? is it not irrational for conservatives to support the right of civilians to own semi-auto weapons while wanting to reduce Muslim immigration out of concern that some Muslims will engage in terrorist attacks?

I say it is entirely rational to stand for gun rights while also demanding special vetting of Muslims and a reduction in Muslim immigration.  This is because immigrants bring their culture with them, and in the case of Muslims, their culture, based as it is on sharia, Islamic law, is antithetical to American values of the sort that libertarians and classical liberals tend to uphold.  These include freedom of thought and expression, even unto the mocking of their Prophet, religious liberty including the liberty to eschew religion, and separation of church/mosque and state.  Muslims, bringing their culture with them, are not interested in assimilating, but in remaking our culture in their image.  Taking advantage of our excessive tolerance, they seek to replace our tolerant culture with their intolerant culture.   

Libertarians, however, understand none of this since they tend to think in a narrowly economic way.  Blind to culture, libertarians are blind to the cultural damage that Muslims do by refusing to assimilate to American values and ways.  So they tally up how many are killed by berserk shooters and how many by berserk Muslims.  But that involves vicious abstraction. Once cannot reasonably abstract from the cultural impact of Muslim immigration.

When Americans stand for their Second Amendment rights, they are not altering American culture but insisting on it. Ours is a culture of liberty and self-reliance and limited government. It is a culture that prizes freedom of expression and open inquiry. It is anti-totalitarian in a way that theocratic Muslim culture is not.

Libertarians strike me as embarrassingly un-self-aware. They don't seem to realize that a culture in which they and their ideas can flourish is not a culture re-made along the lines of sharia.  For the sake of their own survival they need to realize that the threat that Muslim immigration poses is not merely the terrorist threat but the broader cultural threat.

How Not to Start a ‘Conversation’ About Guns

Lefties are big on 'conversations' about this and that.  We've had enough 'conversations.' But if you insist on starting one about guns, Fuck the NRA is not a good opener.

Tucker Carlson, whose verbal pugilism is improving with age and experience, tore Pat Davis to pieces last night. Tucker's reactions to the leftist loons he has on his show tend to be either expressions of astonishment or expressions of mild depression that anyone could believe the nonsense they believe.  But last night he vented a righteous anger, refreshingly both righteous and angry.

And yet his boyish good looks and natural charm kept his anger within bounds. He became angry without becoming ugly.

(Memo to self: write an entry on the moral justifiability of some forms of anger.)