Comments on: Military man schools woman who says rape can be prevented by teaching men not to rape

By: Mike Devx

Mike Devx — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 02:12:38 +0000

Jose and Larry,
Thanks, that is the conclusion I came up with. It is not an issue of training; training is irrelevant. It is the fact that the military views its soldiers as property, and property must be kept safe at all costs. It is also the fact that the military is a bureaucracy, with mountains of regulations and paperwork. Soldiers are not allowed handguns due to questions surrounding accidents and safety – and the mountains of paperwork, legal proceedings, questions and CYA are why guns are prohibited to them on base.

I appreciate the responses!

By: Jose

Jose — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 01:51:52 +0000

Larry,
There isn’t a *reason*.

There are only knee jerk reactions, feel good decisions, and lots of CYA.

By: Larry Sheldon

Larry Sheldon — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:32:35 +0000

You know? There was an important question asked up there that I don’t remember (and a quick scan did not disclose) every being answered.

“I’m looking for the *reason* why it makes sense to prohibit soldiers from being armed.”
Could it be that if the weapons are not stored in the armory, the soldier would never be truly “off duty”?

By: Mike Devx

Mike Devx — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 23:57:31 +0000

Ymar, my sincere apologies for misinterpreting the two opening paragraphs of #10. Miscommunication is far too easy with the written word. I assumed those first two paragraphs were linked. My mistake! I should have asked.

By: Ron19

Ron19 — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 04:57:15 +0000

Today’s Gospel Reading resonates well in several places with the above comments:

Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

By: Mike Devx

Mike Devx — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 04:06:20 +0000

Ymar, #10 and #12, just wanted to say, I read your arguments on those points and agree with every one. In a military fight against a foreign aggressor, the leader is highly likely to – must? – be concerned primarily with force projection: the entire apparatus of war. We haven’t faced such an existential war since WWII, and I think we’ve completely forgotten, and refuse even psychologically to face up to – what it would require these days.

Also, I don’t know how much a leader can do these days to protect civilians and civilian families and communities. Even in WWII the USA didn’t face very much threat there. We rarely have faced it as a nation. These days the possibilities are rather horrifying, *should* we enter a “symmetrical” war against an enemy with the military might to actually challenge us. As an example, consider the effects of nuclear electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, about which there is some scientific debate. Suppose a relatively minor nuclear exchange occurred involving, say, “only” six warheads exploding in a grid above the continental USA at a height of say 100 miles. If the worst scientific projections are correct, our “civilian civilization” would retreat 150 years instantly. But 150 years ago they were equipped to survive at that level of sophistication; surprisingly we today are not at all ready to survive at that level, so we would descend within a year another two or three hundred years backwards. It would take years to recover; tens of millions, or hundreds of millions, of deaths would be practically inevitable. All from six EMP pulse detonations without even one single life lost from the military event itself.

Tyranny, and the oppression of individuals by their own government, is a whole other concept worth looking at.

No matter what crises we face in the future, the kind of people you envision as the best, with the qualities you describe, are the ones most likely to survive it and in the end prosper.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 03:26:50 +0000

That was in response to the opening post. My response to you Mike, started after I quoted the relevant subject. Why people attribute things that aren’t intended for them all the time in a negative light, I do not care about but I have noticed happens too often to be coincidence.

If one thought about it using reason, why would I make the claim that Mike Devx was spreading evil ideas? Does that even complete a logic check?

This is because humans don’t operate by reason. It is useless. In a sense.

By: Mike Devx

Mike Devx — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 03:08:41 +0000

Ymar, you say:
Too many evil ideas floating around. They’re very annoying and I’d rather stick to the true strength, rather than cater to weakness. and quoting me: “I’m looking for the *reason* why it makes sense to prohibit soldiers from being armed.”

Ymar, at times you and I have simply got different priorities. This is a blog comment section; I encountered a debate situation with a liberal friend I couldn’t logically handle. So I thought I’d toss a question out here, asking for insight and help. In no way am I trying to spread evil ideas and float them around. I don’t have an answer and I’d like one. You consider the answer irrelevant, as you said: “Finding reasons for prohibiting soldiers from being armed won’t change things. Finding reasons for not prohibiting soldiers from being armed won’t change things either.”

At times both you and I advocate strongly for our positions here! But at other times, I am simply interested in posing a question because the commenters here have better insights than I can find anywhere else. So I pose the question as best I can. It can’t be that dangerous to “float evil ideas” around; to pose questions so that I can bounce ideas off of others to have better resulting arguments. Maybe there *is* no answer to my question where the answer provides a *logical* reason. But I hardly think anyone here should be threatened by exploring it. Maybe casual non-conservative readers will walk away with the impression that they’ve discovered a *fatal flaw!* in a conservative argument. Gasp! I hardly think we’re that fragile here. I’d hope some intellectual fermentation might actually excite them, actually.

If the only goal of commenting is to provide propaganda to prop up our arguments, and nary a question is ever heard – let alone a voice of dissent, which sometimes is voiced by a regular commenter here, too – well, that kind of rigid adherence to propaganda points would be fine for, say, the website run by a minister of government propaganda. But I’d hope that there’s got to be a place for people to hone their arguments and get help when they want it. Why not here, among the best-thinking community I’ve yet found? If not here, where?

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 03:00:13 +0000

The leaders couldn’t defend the children from Clinton’s goon squads. The leaders couldn’t defend the civilians at Ruby Ridge. The leaders couldn’t defend Sarah Palin against the Leftist assassination team. The leaders couldn’t even defend American soldiers from enemy IEDs. They didn’t do anything for Ft. Hood. They didn’t do anything to prevent Columbine or Virginia Tech. They couldn’t stop American soldiers from rolling grenades into the command officer tents.

The role of a leader isn’t to do the job of the workers, the warriors, or the healers. The job of a leader is to harness the power of the many, for a single purpose, whether that purpose is Good or Evil.

Everyone can pour as much power as they want into the police, the military, the generals, and the dumb arse politicians, but you ain’t going to be defended worth a damn. When Hell Comes to Earth, they will save their friends, their family, and their pets, and you will merely Burn. That is all that will happen. Leaders have no power by themselves, and when the entire population is under assault, they’re not going to have anything to spare for anyone other than themselves. The power of a nation rests upon its people. The weaker the people, the weaker the nation. If the leader has most of the power, then he has to somehow be omniscient in order to help everyone. But he’s not omniscient, and even if he was, he might not give a damn for one single family: yours.

By: Larry Sheldon

Larry Sheldon — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 02:58:51 +0000

For Jose (9): If the “blanket prohibition on privately owned firearms on the installation” had been in effect before the incident, how many fewer weapons would have been in the room? Assuming that the bad guy obeyed other orders (don’t shoot you roommate, don’t bring a private weapon on base), how many?

Also, do Marines still have those big-ass swords? Where are they kept? How about the ugly knives they used to stick on the end of an M1? Where are they kept?