Getting feisty on a Friday round-up and Open Thread

Victorian posy of pansiesI’m getting increasingly irked by ill-informed, knee-jerk demands on Facebook that we must petition the federal government to do everything short of storming houses and seizing guns in order to prevent more murderous rampages. As my plea for help yesterday showed, I’m no longer sitting on the sidelines watching this blather. Instead, I’m hitting back with politely-expressed, principled arguments and facts. Kevin Williamson has a good post offering both those things and Gun Facts is a superb, well-sourced site with tons of actual facts instead of maudlin fear.

I’m also starting to suggest to people that the killer’s parents, who have known since the year zero that he was deeply troubled, had some responsibility other than throwing money at him, putting him in New Age therapies, and blaming guns. (The Diplomad, incidentally, points out that the DemProgs have also corrupted mental health, making it challenging to call a crazy person crazy.)

Yes, the parents did call the police at the last minute, but in the old days, a responsible family would have institutionalized someone like this long ago. Oh, wait!  It’s not the parents fault that they couldn’t institutionalize their son.  The ACLU is in large part responsible for the fact that you can’t institutionalize dangerous people any more. Worse, nowadays everything’s in a government database, and no one really wants to turn a family member over to the NSA info-seekers.

Really, thinking about it, instead of blaming the NRA, the killer’s parents, and the rest of us, ought to be blaming the ACLU and the NSA for those tragic deaths in Santa Barbara.

And of course, there are those horribly sad cases where it appears that someone seemingly normal just snaps, like the 16-year-old boy who brained both parents because his dad took his iPod.  It’s probably relevant that he didn’t need a gun to get the job done. He just used objects lying around the house: a knife, a crowbar, pepper spray, and a baseball bat.

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The whole “guns make people kill” thing is such hooey anyway. A lesbian woman who murdered her lover’s child was crazed enough to be inspired by the Abraham’s almost-sacrifice of Isaac. Yes, you and I know that this Biblical story is about ending human sacrifice, which was rife in the ancient world, but a little thing like the Bible’s actual message wasn’t going to stop a crazy person.

Crazy people are just that: crazy. They’ll find inspiration, motive, and method wherever the voices in their head lead or, if they’re purely evil, where their ego or their pleasure centers tell them to look.

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A friend forwarded me an email he received telling him that Time Magazine sinned by reporting in a positive way about some aspect of the Family Research Council, a traditional values organization. The email urged all proper-thinking people to protest Time’s error in promoting a hate group.

My friend’s comment was to the point: “Just because someone doesn’t think your lifestyle choices are awesome doesn’t make them hateful. What a bunch of BS.”

I felt compelled to chastise him. He is, after all, a young man and should know better the new rules of modern living:

Anything but a fervent embrace of DemProg policies or the DemProgs’ favored people and groups is “hate.”
Anything but a froth-mouthed rant threatening instant evisceration of conservative policies, people, or groups, is “free speech.”

Once you’ve latched onto these guidelines, you’ll find life much less stressful. It’ll be comfortable, in a Stepford Wives kind of way.

Under this new world order, a person’s freedom to practice his faith, which he’s guaranteed by the First Amendment, must yield in the face of the newly-discovered civil right to same-sex marriage. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’ve said all along that the problem with gay marriage is that the DemProgs are going to try to destroy religious freedom just as surely as they’re working to destroy gun rights.

This kind of “proper think” will also ensure that you recognize how dreadfully politically incorrect Colin Flaherty is when he points out that, in cities across America, young black people are banding together and using the mob itself as a weapon to rob and intimidate people (no guns required). Who cares if Flaherty is factually accurate? And who cares if these gangs prey on other minorities as well as on the white privilege “it serves them right” types? And who cares that you can’t fix a problem if you refuse to name it? (Hermione, of Harry Potter fame, understood this with respect Voldemort. As she told others, you cannot fight Voldemort if you cannot even bring yourself to name him.) Even if speaking the truth benefits victims and actors alike, it’s still hate speech and must therefore be, first, denounced and, second, ignored.

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Kevin Williamson, who is a much better and more thoughtful writer than I, makes a point I’ve been fussing away at for a long time: All the DemProg magic in the world doesn’t make a biological man a woman. He can walk like a woman, talk like a woman, and dress like a woman, but biology doesn’t lie. He’s a man.

This reality doesn’t mean that, up to a certain point, we shouldn’t respect his request that, for his mental comfort, we pretend he’s a woman. But a pretense is all that it is, and to change our society, change our laws, and change our language to honor wishful thinking is just plain wrong.

And yes, I’m obviously a hater.

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The nice thing about being a DemProg is that you don’t have to be invested in silly little things like truth and honor. Just look at Mark Andrew, who wrote a libelous, hysterical screed against David and Charles Koch. John Hinderaker carefully shows just how vile Andrew’s written conduct was, but Andrew most certainly won’t let truth stand in his way. He’ll stand by his “fake but accurate” position in the face of any opposing stubborn facts.

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Hillary too is practicing spin, lie, stonewall, and insult as she tries to distance herself from a terrible night in Benghazi, when four men died on her watch. In some ways, the worst thing about this is that she’s manifestly without guilt or regret, other than to regret that those men were stupid enough to get killed in the first place, causing her all these problems. She doesn’t lie in bed at night see their bloodied faces push past her tightly closed eyes.

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Obama is promising that Michelle won’t run for president. Since I’m pretty sure this is the same man who promised that we could keep our insurance plans, doctors, and health care, among the many other untrue promises he made, let me just say that I’m already stocking up on my “No Michelle!” anti-campaign buttons.

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The problem with the modern “scientific” mind is that it tends to leap to politically-driven conclusions. When I first moved to Marin, all the chatter was about the unusually high incidences of breast cancer here. As a Marin woman, I got a “scientific” survey that was clearly intended to determine the cause behind this scourge.

Most of the questions seemed to be about bacon and power lines. More interesting questions might have asked about use of the Pill, whether the woman had children, the woman’s age when her first child was born, whether she breastfed, and whether she had abortions. The survey might also have tried to get data regarding the fact that Marin has lots of old ladies (who are more likely to get breast cancer) and that it has lots of rich people (who are more likely to get diagnosed). But noooo. It was bacon and power lines.

The same thing strikes me about the latest fad seeking to prove that it’s their diet that makes Greek monks live longer. Perhaps what actually makes these monks live longer is the lack of stress in their lives, their celibacy, and the mental health engendered by their faith. But nobody’s looking at that.

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Sometimes, though, faux-science can be fun. James Delingpole wrote a ridiculously funny post proving that DemProgs (and their European counterparts) are less evolved than conservatives.

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And lastly, George Stevens, Jr., discovered in a chest at his home color footage that his father, George Stevens, Sr., a well-known Hollywood director, had taken on and after D-Day, traveling through France, showing the liberation of Paris and the death camps, as well as the downfall of Berlin: