The Quixotic Act of The Day 11/16/18

I think WhiteHouse.Gov petitions are about as fine an example of quixoticism as you'll find, but, still, that abortion of a ballot initiative passed, so wotthehell, as Mehitable said to Archie:

To abolish unlawful, unjust, and unconstitutional gun laws in Washington state (I-1639).

The great state of Washington, through fraudulent petitioning and tricky wording, has placed on the ballot and passed I-1639; one of the strictest anti-gun laws in our country. We The People therefor ask that our great President and our public servants, step in and abolish such laws restricting, infringing upon and/or otherwise limiting our right, that has been guaranteed to us within the 2nd amendment of the Bill of Rights, and further protected and solidified through centuries of bloodshed and legal proceedings.


We The People humbly and gracefully plead for your helping hand Mr. President. Please put an end to the destruction of our freedoms and liberties by protecting our second amendment rights; here in Washington state and throughout the states of our great country.
Thank you.

I mean, I don't know what they think the President can do about this, beyond launching a Twitter campaign.

Still.

Note that there's no restriction on state of residence for signing this thing...

That was unexpected

It seems that I have made it almost to the end of Downton Abbey without actually seeing an episode until the last week or two. I wa vaguely aware that it was considered to be somewhat subversive by some because of it's tendencey to show that British Upper Class, and specifically the landed, titled Upper Class, in a good light, but really, never had any interest.

So the last few weeks, what with my work schedule change, I have sat through a couple of episodes,  not really watching them, as I have nearly no chance of really following what was going on, but there is a sub-plot in which there is a bid by a larger hospital to absorb the smaller, local one. Most people support the move on the grounds that it will result in better care locally. Professor McGonagall*, who has transformed herself into the current mother of the Earl of Grantham, and is therefore known as the Doawger Countess, OTOH, is fighting to maintain local control; everyone assumes that she simply does not want to lose power, despite the fact that she has said repeatedly that the move would result in worse care locally, notwithstanding the allegedly better equipment the move would bring.

The other day she expanded on that, using a line of reasoning one might not expect from a member of the gentry. Citing King John Lackland and the Barons, she said (from Washington Examiner)

"For years I've watched governments take control of our lives, and their argument is always the same — fewer costs, greater efficiency — but the result is the same too," Violet said. "Less control by the people, more control by the state, until the individual's own wishes count for nothing. That is what I consider my duty to resist."

She went on to argue, "Your great-grandchildren won't thank you when the state is all powerful because we didn't fight."

Alas, not only your great-grandchildren not know whether you fought or not, it will probably never occur to them that there was anything to fight about.



*Yeah, I know, but I couldn't resist. Some actors, you always see them in a certain role.

Happy Birthday, Milton Friedman!

Cato Today: Remembering Milton Friedman.

'Cuz how often do I get to use the "Friedmanmen" tag...?

And while I'm at it, note this link in my left-handed sidebar: "Free To Choose" (1980) a TV Series by Milton Friedman

Also while I'm at it: Amazon.com: Milton Friedman: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle

Relativity II

Back on Pi Day I wrote Relativity, in which I mused on the differences between various states' rules and procedures for applying and getting approved for a permit to carry a concealed pistol, by whatever name that permission slip may be known.

Now, I'm sitting here planning to attend the NRA Annual Meeting in Nashville, and am glad to note that Tennessee recognizes a Washington CPL.  (In fact, TN apparently recognizes every other states' permits, except for Vermont. Oh, wait, Vermont doesn't even issue a permit, thus the original name for "Constitutional Carry", FKA "Vermont Carry.")

Now, here in WA I can carry in a restaurant, and even have a beer or some wine, but I cannot cross the--often invisible--line that separates the dining room proper from the bar. Entering a bar while armed is verboten.

"South of the border", down Oregon way, there is no rule against a lawfully armed citizen from sitting down in a bar and having an adult libation.

Getting drunk, no, having a drink, go for it.

In Tennessee, as it turns out, one can enter a restaurant that serves alcohol, but if The Man has authorized you to legally carry the means to defend yourself and your loved ones, you are expected to be on the wagon.

Now, I understand the reason behind this: "ZOMG, booze and guns don't mix!"And yet...

WA and OR manage to let a person who is deemed responsible enough to carry a gun to have a drink.

I am not aware of any state that says "No drinking and driving AT ALL."

"If you're driving you'd better not go take Communion!"*

Yeah, that'd go over well...

 TN also does not let you carry in a park. (I understand that this is changing very soon, perhaps before the NRAAM.)

Many municipalities in WA try and ban lawfully armed citizens from carrying in public spaces, like parks, but state preemption and all, they regularly get slapped down for it.

Not all states have preemption, and it can get pretty silly, the gyrations you may have to go through, figuring out how the rules may have changed when you're crossing an invisible line.

 Considering that it has been proven over and over again that crime goes down when citizens are armed, that all the panic-driven predictions of "blood in the streets" are untrue, it seems like being allowed to have a beer with friends, many of whom I've never seen, is jot too much to ask.

 ***

*Yeah, I know the "sacramental wine" is often actually grape juice that has not been changed...

Well, whaddaya know?

A search on Amazon for "libertarian science fiction" returns some interesting results.  L. Neil Smith and J. Neal Schulman (what is it with Neil/Neals?)m of course, a refrigerator magnet of Heinlein in midshipman uniform, the complete F. Paul Wilson (again with the initial initials!) LaNague Federation stories (staring with "Lipidleggin'")...  C.M. Kornbluth and A.E. Van Vogt.  (Met Van Vogt, way back when I was a Neo in fandom.  At the time, the thought of a Canadian writing books based on the premise that THE RIGHT TO BUY WEAPONS IS THE RIGHT TO BE FREE was not particularly ironic...)
Vin Suprynowicz is there.
Lots of what seems to be self-published stuff, speaking of which, DO NOT buy Carl Bussjaeger's books from Amazon, they're pirated editions.
Anthony Pacheco is there.  So is a lot of NOT science fiction...
...A lot of which seems intended to bash libertarianism.
Or Ayn Rand, specifically.

Oddly enough, a "sponsoring link" showed up at the bottom of the page for one of Washington's Representatives, Cathy McMorris Rogers.  Less dodly, another one was for The Libertarian Futurist Society.

The Question Libertarians Just Can't Answer - Answered!

h/t Daily Pundit

"Who can tax the sunshine...?"

Good morning!

Woke up this morning singing the Fun Show song. We'll see how I feel after coming home.

Generations

No, not the silly Start Trek movie with Shat and Stew.

I'm talking about generations of the Gun Culture.

The topic arose on the WA-CCW Yahoo! email list, in connection with a young man who heads up an organization (or maybe "is", not clear how many members it has) called The Second Amendment Enforcers, and who is organizing what he calls a Day of Resistance to protest current gun control efforts.

Now, to backtrack a bit:
Gun Culture v1 was into shooting, yes, but the members were mostly hunters and target shooters, and maybe collectors.  Concealed carry was very much a thing based on a perceived "need", i.e., bankers, businessmen, people who handled cash, or other precious materials, or who had made political enemies, and might need to defend themselves.  Machine guns might be interesting devices, but really, who would need to own one? Silencers?  Short barreled rifles and sawed-off shotguns?  No way!  Cheap handguns, i.e. "Saturday Night Specials?  Obviously catering to the lower, urban--and usually ethnic--classes, and who cares?

Nowadays we call these guys--almost always "guys", and they're still around--"Fudds." They agree with Vice President Biden that a double barrel shotgun is the best for home defense, that a "military style rifle" is useless for hunting, and that the government must Do Something! to close the gun show, next-door-neighbor, and water-cooler loopholes on gun sales.

Gun Culture v1 watched the Federal government pass gun control legislation in 1934 (in response to gangsterism and racketeering) and 1968 (in response to political assassinations and wide-spread civil unrest) and said nothing --at least, nothing that could have been construed as critical of the acts.

Gun Culture v1 could be summed up in a remark attributed, possibly apocryphally, to Bill Ruger, that "No honest man needs a handgun smaller than a canned ham."

Gun Culture v2 arose in the aftermath of the 1960s and GCA '68, and started to take an active interest in the firearms in the context of the Second Amendment.  The actual term "Gun Culture v2" was coined by gun writer and media host Michael Bane.  In an interview he described the genesis of his show Gun Stories thus:

All guns have their stories. We used to pass those stories down from generation to generation, because that’s how the gun culture “spread.” But as the Elf Queen Galadriel in LORD OF THE RINGS noted, “The world is changing…” The gun culture is changing — profoundly and now very quickly. Think of the new gun culture as Version 2.0…it’s younger, more libertarian than what we might think of a social conservative, more female, with the primary drivers being concealed carry, the training community and the shooting sports. Gun culture Ver. 2.0 isn’t steeped in the lore of guns, and we thought it made sense to, essentially, pass along our cultural waypoints, our lore, our history to a new generation. We also wanted to tap this huge reservoir of knowledge among the Ver. 1.0 experts, essentially introducing them to the new generation of gun owner.

Gun Culture v2 is interested in owning guns for many reasons, self-defense, hunting, shooting, collecting, and, perhaps most of all, "Because I can!"

Gun Culture v2 is far more interedsted in firearms as a civil rights issue than GC 1 is/was.  Gun Culture v2 also tends to be more technically savvy, especially when it comes to use of social media.  (Although, as I often warn young punks who need to get off my lawn people, the tech they're using was invented by people my age, or older.) 

The term "Fudd" was coined by members of Gun Culture v2, and may backfire.  Tolerance, it's not just for school and work!¹

The "Zumbo-ing" of Jim Zumbo -- who came to personify the Fudd side of GC v1 by dissing the use of "terrorist" (AR-type) rifles in hunting -- was largely the work of GC v2. 

Is there a need for a Gun Culture v3²? I don't honestly think so. I think it would be far to easy to think of this issue in terms of actual generations, as if young shooters shouldn't trust any shooter over 30.  Note that my home-boy Ted Nugent³ was instrumental in opening Jim Zumbo's eyes to the varied sorting uses of Ar15s.

The Gun Culture will continue to evolve, as society evolves, but, frankly, while many of the younger members of GC v2 have far more ink and shrapnel in their bodies piercings than some of us old farts are comfortable with, and you can't hardly call that noise "music", at this point in time, at least, the interests -- and concerns -- are the same.

***

Notes:
1. Gun Culture 1.0 v. Gun Culture 2.0 and More on Gun Culture 2.0, both
2. It’s Time for Gun Culture 3.0 | Gun Nuts Media
3.  I graduated from the same high school Ted did, about a decade later.

***

Some links:
Google search: gun culture 2.0.
The new gun culture | Conservative News, Views & Books
Gun Culture 2.0, Internet Zero - Misfires And Light Strikes
A podcast: Down Range Radio #245: Year 2011 and Gun Culture 2.0 | Down Range TV

Nil nisi bonum

Dear Ron Paul,

In re: Chris Kyle

If you can't say anything nice, then please shut the ***CENSORED*** up.

Love,

Drang

h/t TCinVA on Pistol Forums.com.

Who's got the popcorn?

GOP congressman threatens impeachment if Obama uses executive action for gun control | The Daily Caller

More on those pesky libertarians

As a follow-up to my previous post, "Inside the Cold, Calculating Libertarian Mind", Professor Reynolds asks for A HIGHER DOSE OF LIBERTARIANISM, PLEASE, in which he tells us that "Damon Root over at Reason takes on the New York Times’ David Brooks’ assertion that the increasing influence of libertarians in the GOP has been bad because Brooks doesn’t think libertarians 'speak in the language of social order.'  Root correctly points out that Brooks seems to have no clue about libertarianism...”

I think David Brooks is a tool and a schmuck. 

"Inside the Cold, Calculating Libertarian Mind"

Matt Ridley on Libertarians | Mind & Matter - WSJ.com

Otherwise, they'll rip your arms off

Or, worse.  You know how those Ron Paul followers get...

A few more on Romney/Ryan

Larry Correia: Economists for Romney and my opinion on Paul Ryan « Monster Hunter Nation.  Key 'graphs:

Paul Ryan is a moderate republican who stayed awake through accounting 201.
You want an example of extreme, how about Harry Reid and the democrat senate not passing a budget for THREE YEARS… Think about that. We were able to pass budgets during the Civil War. What’s their excuse now? Paul Ryan is so extreme that his budget got a couple hundred votes, while Barack Obama’s budget got zero.
Ryan’s budget is only extreme if you operate under the belief that having 51% of Americans pay no tax at all and over 100,000,000 Americans on some form of welfare is a good thing. Ryan’s budget is only extreme if you think that every single government program is sacred and can’t be cut at all, ever. The second you start to cut any program you get the screams of anguish and suffering and killing grandma and blah blah blah, so nothing ever gets cut, so the government just keeps on getting bigger and stupider, until it will inevitably mathmatically collapse. Then we get to leave our kid’s generation to figure out how to pay the tab. Bravo, democrats. How very extreme of you.

Two from the Wall Street Journal:

• The day His Imperial Majesty got up to give a speech about his budget, and turned it into an ad hominem attack on Paul Ryan: For White House and Ryan, Deficit Became Personal - WSJ.com. (Granted, it was a Seattle-style, passive aggressive, not-naming-names, ad hominem attack...)  
• Review & Outlook: The Ryan Choice - WSJ.com

I think anyone wishing for an ideological pure candidate team should keep in mind that it has been said that Politics is the Art of the Possible, and Milton and Rose Friedman are not available in any case.

Good Lord, though, what a wonderful administration that would be!

EDIT:  Added title. Ooops.

Libertarians

They want to take over and leave you alone!

Great bumper sticker philosophy.  Too bad that many of the people who would be attracted by it would be repulsed by the corollary:

Libertarians:  We want to take over and make you leave the other guy alone!

even if most Libertarians, or ("small 'l'") libertarians, would do so by moral suasion, and making sure "the other guy" was able to defend himself, as opposed to actually, you know, somehow forcing you to mind your own damned business.

In my previous post I made a joking reference to the fact that the Libertarian Party  is commonly viewed as the Party of Legalization of Drugs, and little else more.  I really do think they should start emphasizing the economic liberty aspects of libertarianism, and let the whole "Declare victory in the War on Drugs and go home" thing wait until they have the ability to do more about it than debate esoteric points of political philosophy...

Speaking of which...

The AnarchAngel : Two libertarians walk into a bar...

Aretae's lovely wife ran out of steam just around the time we (just barely) started talking about compatibilism, utilitarianism, determinism, associationism, the veil of ignorance, the social contract, and the fundamental nature of rights.

See, we barely know Chris and Mel, other than by their blog, although I did enjoy swapping war stories with Chris, and Mrs. Drang talked spinning and other crafty stuff with Mel, at Gun Blogger Rendezvous IV.  I can just imagine him rubbing his hands in anticipation at being able to have that kind of discussion with fresh meat a new victim friend.

Me, my eyes glaze over just reading about it.  So that's another thing: Go ahead and debate those esoteric political philosophical points all you want with each other, but know your audience.

Political Ideology

UPDATE:  Link fixed, sorry!

Chatting (via text message) with Mrs. Drang about the previous post, about the "Which candidate?" quiz, prompted me to look up Jerry Pournelle's essay about the "Pournelle Chart", which Dr. Pournelle calls The Pournelle Political Axes.

Here's the chart as it appears in the essay linked to above:

Wikipedia has a slightly cleaned up, slightly prettier version, at the second link above:

Note that it does not directly address the questions of economic freedom versus control/regulation.  Not sure that's important--what good is economic freedom if you have none, otherwise?

Do read that article.  Dr. Pournell not only discusses the issues with the traditional Left/Right line, but he goes into a bit of the history behind it.

Wikipedia discusses a similar chart at Political compass, which, it cautions, uses European/Commonwealth terminology, which can be different than US terminology.  (I.e., "conservative" in the UK means something different than it means here.)  This chart also has two axes, "Economic" and "Authoritarian."  (The left end of the economic scale calls for collectivization, the right end for a free market, laissez faire approach.  I assume the "authoritarian" axis is self-explanatory.) 

Another chart is the Nolan Chart, which the Libertarian Party displays in it's booth at the State Fair when it is not behind the cow barn smokin' a doobie.*

(It's usually rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise, putting "Libertarian" at the top.  Go figure...)

This model, of course, does emphasize economic freedom.

Keep in mind that "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" was originally "Life, Liberty, and Property", based on the writings of John Locke.  As explained in an article at Yahoo!,

By "property," Locke meant MORE than land and goods that could be sold, given away, or even confiscated by the government under certain circumstances. Property also referred to ownership of one's self, which included A RIGHT TO PERSONAL WELL BEING. Jefferson, however, substituted the phrase, "pursuit of happiness," which Locke and others had used to describe FREEDOM OF OPPORTUNITY as well as the duty to help those in want.

As George Mason put it in the Virginia Declaration of Rights

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

No surprise, really, that Mason and Jefferson (and Adams, Franklin, et. al.) were reading the same philosophers...)

(See also the Wikipedia article on Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)

As I told Mrs. Drang, Joe Waldron (of the GOAL Alerts I post here) once observed that "a libertarian is a guy who can argue esoteric points of political philosophy all day, but needs velcro to fasten his shoes."  That may have been true at the time, but I suspect the tide is changing.  More and more people are getting fed up with an overly intrusive nosy nanny state.

I can always tell people who get their opinions of the Tea Party issues to them whole by HuffPo, MSNBC, Kos, and/or the DNC--as if there were a difference--by how far off-base their assumptions are.  Middle-aged white guys like me are definitely outnumbered by a younger demographic, which seems to have a higher proportion of X chromosomes than that of us more seasoned types, among other differences.

***

*OK, a cheap shot, but, really, guys, while I agree about the futility of the War on Some Drugs, in the public mind, assyoumeing they've even heard of you, to most people you're the Party of Decriminalizing Pot, and little more. 

Fine, I'll wear the Wookie Suit

Following a link Tam put up in comments--which, BTW, got NPR all over my netbook, so if I suddenly find links to the Huffer Post, Kostipation.com, or Hopey-Chanegy.com, I know who to blame--I took the "Which Presidential Candidate" quiz.

93% Ron Paul, what a shock.  91% Gary Johnson.  Mittens was somewhere in the 80s.  I dunno who Jimmy McMillan or Virgil Goode are, but they scored higher than His Imperial Majesty, who only broke 50% because of "science issues", which seems odd, considering that's where the globull warmening question was...

QOTD, 04/29/12, Browncoat Edition

"A government is a body of people, usually, notably, ungoverned."
Shepherd Book
(Supposedly quoting Malcolm Reynolds.)

WTF?! GOP Edition

King County GOP leader boots caucus outside after Ron Paul backers take over | Politics Northwest | The Seattle Times

Over the weekend, Republicans in the 37th Legislative District gathered to choose delegates to the state GOP convention.

The caucus started out Saturday morning inside Dimmitt Middle School. But it didn't end inside the building.

After supporters of Texas Congressman Ron Paul elected one of their own to chair of the meeting, the gathering was booted to an outside basketball court by King County Republican Party Chairman Lori Sotelo.

The move came after attendees irritated Sotelo by rejecting her choice to run the caucus - former King County Councilman David Irons.

Instead, the group voted for Tamara Smilanich*, a Paul supporter.

That prompted Sotelo to declare the meeting was no longer a Republican Party event - but a Ron Paul campaign event.

(More at the link.)

Sounds like some RINO is a sore loser. And/or a control freak, and/or has the 37th District GOP Caucus confused with "Lori Sotelo's Private Party."

Note to GOP: If you want to appeal to folk like me--and you do--you'll purge the ranks of folk like her.

***

*I have a nearly overwhelming urge to contact her and ask if she's any relation to Drill Sergeant Daily's colleague, SSG Smilonich. "Nearly", because I'm not sure I want to know. Besides, it's been so long I might be remembering the name wrong...
BTW, I opted for "not-new user interface", but this is not the not-new-user interface I'm used to...