"Let me be brave..."

I had a conversation today in which I made a striking connection, so I'm going to share it.

My mother had three different cancers over a period of 30 years. She was finally done in by leukemia. When faced with imminent death, one can either feel helpless or resigned. Fear and rage have no use. So my mother took experimental chemotherapy not because she had any expectation of it working, but in the event that the doctors might learn something from her that would cure the next patient.

When I saw the recent Doctor Who episode, "Face the Raven", I saw my mother standing there looking for all the world like Clara Oswald.

"Let me be brave..."

Squidlings of the World, UNITE!

It's that time of year when I shamelessly promote the best Christmas mascot since Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman... TWANGLES, the Christmas Squid!

Seven-tenths of the Earth's surface is ocean, and until recetnly it has been neglected on this most magical of holidays.

NO MORE! 

NO MORE, I SAY! 

SQUIDLINGS OF THE WORLD UNITE! 

Jason Morris has put this gem on Bandcamp as a no-minimum pay-what-you-want download. So pay zero! OR, pay what it's worth! Your choice! Email this song to your local stations and give them something fresh and new to put on the air for this holiday season! Heck... beg them to put it on. Organize an email bombing campaign! It's the least you can do for TWANGLES, the Christmas Squid!


If the station doesn't believe that their allowed to play this, it's easy enough to clear it with Jason himself using the Contact Jason Morris link on the lower right of the Bandcamp page. And if that doesn't work, just remind them that with Global Warming on the rise, we may need to rely a lot more on Twangles in the future! They need to get on his "nice" list NOW.

Finally... spread the word!  Go tell it on Facebook and Twitter and G+! Let the world know that you believe in the magic of...

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Twangles artwork by Kimberly Johnson, Union, SC

Finally, Somebody Gets It.

In the waning hours of this Thanksgiving day I have found something new to be thankful for. Finally, somebody somewhere "gets it".  The article, from TheSocialMemo.org:



College Students Call Police, Seek Counseling After Seeing Mouse





The quote that gives me hope:

"We have to give our children the freedom, which children have always enjoyed in the past, to get away from adults so they can practice being adults, that is, practice taking responsibility for themselves."

Well, YEAH. That's exactly what every sane parent has said for the entirety of human history, both written and forgotten.

Look folks. As a parent I've always been very open about this; and I'll take as an example that cute little rodent in the photo.  We've kept a variety of pets, including his kind. A lot of parents will tell you that a pet is a "family member". That may be so, but if they stop there, then they have next to no idea whatsoever what a pet is for. Likewise if they stop at saying, "It's to teach our kids responsibility". That's a partial answer. There are many more effective ways of doing that.

You know the overriding reason we gave pets to our children? 

It's because they die.

Of course, that's not why we as adults keep pets. We don't need to be taught responsibility, and we're well-acquainted with death, but we continue to have cats or dogs because we want them. We enjoy their emotional attachments (if any, depending on the pet), and we enjoy the responsibility of caring for others. Pets, to an adult, are often surrogate children.

But those reasons aren't why we give them to children. It's because children need practice being adults; and the most adult thing you will ever face in your entire life is the funeral of your parents. This is something for which you need practice. Unless you're adopting a young Galapagos tortoise, elephant, or parrot, the chances are almost certain that a pet acquired for a toddler will not survive the child's adolescence. It's going to die, and that child is going to have to suffer a loss. It is your job as a parent to make sure that they can weather that loss properly... because if they can't deal with the death of the family mutt, then they will be absolutely useless when you die.

That's your One Big Job as a parent. You can name anything you want, and it's all shit compared to this ONE parental task. Your children must be equipped to survive YOU.

Pets are practice.

That's not all they are, surely; but it is certain that unless your dog is Rin Tin Tin rescuing little Billy from the oncoming train, the most important thing that pet will do is establish a strong emotional connection to your child, then die.

Run that through your head a few times. Then realize that the rest of childhood is the same. Everything your kids do, every game they play, is practice for adulthood. And they're not going to get it from helicopter parents who hover and supervise and structure, and treat them like little Lego boys and girls in a little Lego city, being posed and moved at the parents' whims.

When children are told, they never decide. And if they never are allowed to make poor decisions, they never learn how to deal with them, or recover from them, or how to deal with a setback. Today we have sports with no winners. That's a sad, sad thing, because the people who love this idea don't seem to understand the most important thing about sports. Think about it: in a tournament, there's a winner... and then there's everybody else. If there are 20 participants, there will be 19 non-winners. Everybody who plays sports loses. Not everybody wins. So what do you think might be more important, hmmm? Learning to win? Or learning how to lose? And how do you expect your children to deal with anything that doesn't go their way if you've never put them in a situation where they must learn how to lose?  Grantland Rice once said, “It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.” He wasn't wrong, but his quote misses the bigger truth: It's about how you deal with the win or loss.

Back off. Seriously. We have colleges and universities that are now filled with the product of completely well-intentioned, but idiotic, brain-dead, and thoroughly incompetent parenting. I really don't think it can be described differently. Give your kids chores and responsibilities and consequences for failing to meet them; but otherwise, just back off. Let kids be kids, give them unstructured time for which they are responsible; and let them fight the little battles and endure the little hurts and suffer the little losses that they need to fight, endure, and suffer in order to grow into proper men and women. Don't let your kids grow up to be like this batch. Just don't.

A Taste of Armageddon

On February 23, 1967, NBC aired an episode of Star Trek entitled "A Taste of Armageddon".

War, as waged on Eminiar VII

Today this episode is a reminder of something we used to know: War is not friendly; it is not civilized; it is not fair; it is not bloodless. The best deterrent to war is the horror of war itself; and for that the consequence of an act of war must be terrible and extreme. Those who move to start a war must know that it is not just they, but their people who will suffer most. They will suffer pain and loss and deprivation and death of their own making. The only way to avoid such calamity must be never to start a war. This is not popular, but popularity isn't a requirement for truth.

Aujourd'hui, nous sommes tous les Parisiens. Today we are all Parisians. I support President Hollande as he acts in accord with our own military to do what he must, swiftly and decisively, in the wake of the terrorist attack on Paris by ISIS.

Arc de Triomphe in Paris
Image by Sese Ingolstadt, cc-by-sa

On Gun Ownership

In a recent conversation on gun ownership, my correspondent made the laudable statement that he would rather not own a gun than be an irresponsible gun owner. He questioned whether increased gun ownership would necessarily lead to increased responsible gun ownership. And it's a good question.

I share his perspective when he says that he'd rather not own a gun than be an irresponsible owner. I think that's the most responsible thing you can say. I think it should be said about more things... pet ownership, for instance, and voting. I'd rather not vote than pick names at random from a list, or pick them because they have the "right" branding. I wish that more voters shared my sense of responsibility.

But responsible ownership is something that must be accomplished constitutionally. I'm afraid my answer here may blunt my Libertarian credentials ever-so-slightly, and it may simultaneously scare the pants off of you.

--==//oOo\\==--

Chris Conover presents data and commentary in a Forbes opinion piece, and I invite you to read it in full... here's my "Reader's Digest" summary of the main arguments.

Anybody can buy a car. They don't even need a license. You can even drive it, without a license, legally, as much as you want... on your own property. This is despite the fact that Americans are far more likely to die in a vehicle accident than by the accidental discharge of a firearm.

But if I want to get in that car and take it out on the road and mingle with the public, then the law says I need a license. So I get a license. The police don't come to my house and check my license periodically. If my license expires, they don't care, so long as I'm not driving in public. If I'm caught doing so they can fine or jail me, but there's nothing whatsoever that says I must have a license to own a car. And that's a device that's far deadlier far more often than guns. And that's despite the fact that there's no explicit constitutional guarantee of car ownership.

Gun control advocates use this same comparison -- cars vs. guns -- to argue that you should need a license to own a gun, "just like a car". But in truth you do not need the license to own a car. You do not need one to drive it. You need a license only to operate it in public. So in practice, regulating guns like we regulate cars would be very close to what gun advocates are asking for. Naturally, it's not the message that the gun control lobby intends, but it is what they asked for.

But we do have an explicit guarantee of gun ownership. Many people quibble over the "militia" clause of the Second Amendment, but they also often forget that the militia is distinct from the Army or Navy (per section 2) and that its composition is left to the various states (per the 10th Amendment). Here in South Carolina, for instance, the subject is in the main body of our Constitution. In section 20, the reason given is "As, in times of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty..."  It has nothing to do with hunting or fishing (our constitution asserts those rights independently). Our Article XIII explicitly defines the composition of the militia. And even then, while the militia clause provides a reason, the Second Amendment asserts the right of "the people", not "the militia". Our trust in our government has strict limits, so much so that we put it in writing.

Now you may think that this interpretation is a bit paranoid of the government, to which the answer is, "well, DUH"... it's a paranoia that was discussed at length prior to being written into the Constitution of the United States and individual States, so any law we make has to deal with that. And I'm of the opinion that "clever circumvention" is never the proper course. The Constitution should be complied with, both the letter and the intent.

Now to really scare you.

Personally, I'm fond of revolvers.
Limited capacity, but highly reliable.

I'm not in favor of mandatory registration of guns. Truth be told, I want my government to be scared of its citizens. I don't want them to know whether you have a gun, an arsenal, or nothing at all. I want them not to know how many guns there are, and I want them not to know where those guns are, at least not without a warrant. I think the probability of actually using these guns against my government is vanishingly small... and I want to keep that probability low, so I do not want my government ever to be comfortable in believing that it has more power than its citizens. When I was in the military, I felt no different. And many of my compatriots felt the same way. In this country the government cannot rely on the military to subdue its own people.

Of course, this could make things difficult for the police, but nobody said law enforcement was an easy job. And those difficulties are only incremental, in that the vast majority of gun owners are not only law-abiding, but they support the police. Those that don't support the police also don't give a damn about restrictive gun control laws. And because of this, I want the law to be such that criminals don't know whether a law-abiding person is armed or not... in public or private. Criminals should be as wary of their would-be victims as they are of the police.

Furthermore, I don't want an invading army or any other group, should there ever be one, to be able to hack a database or pull records and find every weapon. I want this country to be unassailable by enemies "foreign or domestic". Even in a time when CNN's Jake Tapper opines, "I think the American people, honestly, want security over freedom," I prefer to side with Patrick Henry:

"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

I think it's a very good thing that I and other like-minded individuals are so inclined. It was people who shared our "paranoid" view that created this nation. It was these people like this who have defended it for 240 years. It is largely these people who man our all-volunteer armed forces today, just as I did in my day. We swore an oath to defend Liberty, not security... to defend the Constitution, not back-yard fences and "safe spaces".

--==//oOo\\==--

Having said all that, I absolutely want gun owners to be both responsible and knowledgeable, as does anyone who has been affiliated with the NRA. To that end, if I were a gun merchant, then I would include a free gun owner's course with the purchase of any weapon. I wouldn't need government regulation to institute such a policy; just come take the course and then take your gun home. If you've already taken such a course, fine... show me your certificate of completion or permit. If not, then store policy says you take the course.

Could such a policy be codified as a law? Well, sure... anything at all can be made a law. I don't know that it should... and whether it would survive the courts is an interesting guess. But we don't need to pass a law in order to do it in practice. There is no Constitutional impediment preventing a vendor from bundling whatever conditions he wants into a sale. Me...? I'd give 'em a course. And if a private vendor did such a thing, I'd get behind him 100%. Might it make it more difficult to get a gun for someone who is illiterate or feeble-minded if I required him to take tests first? Yes, it would. But it would also be completely legal. He may have a right to bear arms, but as a private citizen I don't have the obligation to sell them to just anyone. That is, right up until the PC police violate my right of free association and force me to sell to idiots. But that's another topic.


Resources for online training:

• https://www.handgunsafetycourse.com/
• http://www.nraonlinetraining.org/

I Wish...

Think about it. 

Voting in our political system, if it were done ideally, would work like this:

1. All voters would cast ballots for those candidates who best represented their interests.
2. The votes would be tallied, and the winner would be the candidate who best represented the interests of the most voters.

But it doesn't really work like that, does it?  For many voters, elections are a form of team sporting event. Voters don't cast ballots for the candidate who best represents them. Rather, they get behind and cheer on the champion on their team who has the best chance of winning, whether their agenda aligns with the voters' or not. If it has ever puzzled you how it is that Congress can have an approval rating of 14% (fourteen percent!) even though each and every member was elected by a majority vote in his or her district, then here's your answer. The voters play the game instead of voting in their interests, and when to no one's surprise they are not represented, they are dissatisfied with the people they pretended to prefer for the sake of the "election game".

Doesn't that sound a little silly to you? So I want to talk to the "team players".

The only time the you seem to take a genuine interest in your own best interests is when you are discussing the candidates of your own party's opposition. It's a bit bizarre, but the next time you're watching the network pundits prattle on, pay attention and you'll see it in action. Militant Leftists wax philosophic about what "the Republicans" need to do. Right-wing mouthpieces do the same about "the Democrats". They are both supremely adept at finding the flaws in the other side's candidates, and they are both supremely inept at recognizing the same in their own.

If you were looking at it purely as election strategy, it is the worst one to take. After all, if you want your candidate to sail through the general election to victory, shouldn't you encourage the other party to offer up some halfwit as their nominee? It seems to be what they'd naturally do if you weren't around to "help" them with your sage advice as to who's best, doesn't it?

Of course, that's not exactly how your advice runs. Opposition commentary is almost entirely negative. You point out the flaws so they can pick the candidate with the fewest to offer up. But the end result is the same. By speaking up, the opposition party has exerted a lot of pressure on you to pick the candidate with the "fewest flaws". One who can win. As a result, the opposition has just picked your candidate's flaws. That's not going to affect your vote, of course... you're a team player.

Then comes the General Election, and you have nothing but the one nominee from your party, whose flaws you pretty much completely ignored during the primaries, having been fixated on what was going on in the other party for whom you would never vote as a pure matter of principle. And suddenly you recognize that your nominee isn't going to win with just your core party votes. There are swing voters out there, and they're paying attention to all the details you ignored. And you have to deal with that, so it's all back to team sports and your own nominee's weaknesses and strengths honestly don't matter. General Electioneering becomes an exercise in denying all the flaws the other team picked for your candidate, and denying any of the strengths in theirs. Anything you've ever said good about one of your candidates is bad when it's said about the other guy. And right now, I'm going to pick on the Democrats, because as the champions of identity politics they provide so much low-hanging fruit:

• Pick on Obama? You're racist. 
• Offer up a black candidate of your own? You're still racist because he's an Uncle Tom. And saying he's an Uncle Tom isn't racist, because you're the racist, not me. QED.

• Pick on Hillary? You're superficial and a misogynist. 
• Offer up a female candidate of your own? OMG, what is she wearing? And seriously, does she think she can win with that face and hair? 

• Ask about Obama's birth certificate? RACIST! BIRTHER! 
• Ask about Ted Cruz' birth certificate? No, really... this has serious problems! 

• Offer only rich white people who are past retirement age as candidates? No they're not (seriously). Besides, they know what's best for you. 
• Offer a multicultural buffet of young candidates... black, white, male, female, hispanic? They're really condescending old white guys. And racist. Don't forget racist.

And it works the other way around. If a Democrat has an idea it can't be good because... well, because. And Republican ideas are good just because they're Republican. (Seriously, visit this link if you think I think it's all Democratic nonsense). Any candidate's qualifications and disqualifications are moot because you don't want "them" in charge. "Them" is, of course, the other team.

Neither one of you has a candidate... you're voting for the Donkey or the Elephant. Go, team!

Personally, I prefer it the way it's supposed to work. So I don't intend on voting Republican or Democrat or even necessarily Libertarian... and I proudly proclaim my lack of intent. I'll vote for a Presidential candidate who best represents my interests. And if they all suck, I'll abstain, knowing that my vote won't reduce the the amount of "suck" in the system.

But to be honest, most of that suck is from you guys.

Military Training vs. CWP

In a discussion I started about the Second Amendment, there was the following exchange. This is stripped down and the names changed for the privacy of the participants. So I used "Tom" and "Harry". [1]

Tom: College age "kids" fight our wars for us. 

Harry: You do realize that the college age "kids" who fight our wars have had a certain amount of training, both in handling their firearms and in keeping their cool in a stressful situation prior to going into combat, don't you? 

Tom: So do all of concealed carry permit holders. 

Harry: I do not have a background in the military. So correct me if I'm wrong in assuming that the training required for a Conceal Carry permit in just about ANY state does not even begin to equal the training one would receive in ANY branch of the Military. I know it varies from state to state, but in Illinois (the first state whose specifics showed up in my Google search) the training requirement is 8 hours of firearm safety/marksmanship and 8 hours of instruction of how the Conceal Carry law works (when it's acceptable to carry, etc.).

Actually, Harry's assumption isn't unreasonable. Anyone watching movies (or just the news) may have the impression that all military personnel are well-honed killing machines, trained in esoteric forms of armed and unarmed combat. This isn't really true, although those folks do exist. Most jobs in the military are just jobs.

I was in the US Air Force. I was a radio electronics tech, but having been stationed overseas, I was required to undergo weapons qualification above that which was provided within the continental US. Keep in mind that I was not in a combat role, and received the equivalent of about a 1 day concealed weapons permit (CWP) class, centered around specific weapons that we would encounter. It was of far more interest to the USAF that I get through Basic Training to tech school and learn as much about radio electronics as humanly possible during my stay there.

In Basic Training I spent one afternoon at the firing range, where I was taught basic gun safety, how to load the weapon, and which end to hold and which to point. I fired at a target and had to hit it. While the military trains in firearm use and safety, it did not provide me with any of the additional training regarding civilian law that comes with a CWP. To be perfectly honest, unless you're in a combat role, CWP training is more extensive and practical. A military trainee would not know where he can or can't carry a gun, how it is properly concealed, or how it is properly stored outside of a military armory.

He does learn about who is or isn't a valid military target and has a weapons officer who ensures that the weapons are secured for him. In a seven-year military career I touched weapons only a few times: that one day in Basic Training, a refresher course before being sent overseas, and qualification training at RAF Croughton.

Of course, my experience is dated. We've fought a couple of wars since then. I'm sure things are dramatically different for those who are deployed today.

Harry was unskeptically accepting of that information, and I'm glad, because it's the truth. Those who are in combat roles are unquestionably among the most highly trained in the world at their primary job. But there are many, many people in support and non-combat roles who are given cursory weapons training because they need to be focused on becoming the most highly trained in the world at their primary jobs, be they radio repair or anything else.

Harry had a follow up question that I'd like to share, because it's a good one:

Harry: Thank you both for educating me on that. As a civilian, I guess I find that surprising. Of course, if it's not crucial to your job, I don't suppose firearm training is all that important. I admit that most of my information on what basic training is like comes from movies and from conversations with a few friend of mine who went through the marines. (and those are almost 25 year old conversations). Is it also incorrect for me to assume that all our servicemen are trained to function in highly stressful situations?

Here's my perspective: Actually, Basic Training itself is a "highly stressful situation" if you're not mentally prepared for it. As to whether it matches what you see in movies... well, that depends on the movie. If it's "Stripes", then not so much. But we got our identities stripped away to a certain extent with the buzz-cuts, uniformity of clothing, and the universally-shared name of "Airman". We got yelled at and made to do menial and sometimes nonsensical tasks without explanation. We were physically pushed to the limit of our physical condition every day. In my flight, I saw one recruit attempt to take his own life. I saw another one collapse and die on the track. But I personally was not stressed at all. There is nothing in Basic training that is particularly stressful if you are mentally prepared for it.

And that's really the purpose of such training. Mental preparation. Your identity is stripped down, and then built back up with less emphasis on yourself and more on teamwork. Your body is stressed to improve it. Your mind is stressed for similar reasons. You're given nonsense tasks to accustom you to following orders that may not make sense from your viewpoint because they are given by someone who has a broader strategic view. When such orders are given in the real world there isn't the luxury of educating the rank and file and getting their "buy in". That could get you killed, and we were aware of that.

At my duty station overseas we did regular week-long NATO drills. We were issued gas masks and chemical gear. Just going outside was not a task you underwent lightly, as your return indoors involved a long and drawn-out decontamination process. If you did go outside, you'd better have visited the bathroom first. We were not issued guns, but were given cards denoting who would have had guns if this were an actual incident. Scenarios included chemical attacks, bomb strikes, and mock invasions. One of the favorites was something we referred to as the "officer-seeking missile" or "NCO-seeking missile", in which those with the least experience were the only ones left "alive" to carry on the mission. Again, I didn't find these particularly stressful (they were actually kind of fun). As with Basic, the idea here is mental preparation, and you quickly learn that if you are willing to accept that unexpected things WILL happen, you don't freak out when they do. It's 90% in your head. If you're paying attention to life, you don't actually need a military education to come to that conclusion.

Outside of training, there were certain realities of life as a military member overseas that became routine that you might find strange. Such as, we were encouraged to vary our route to work daily, as well as check our cars before starting them. The IRA was still a "thing", and this was around the time that a car bomb was exploded on a runway in Beirut. Shortly after I returned home, I was preparing to drive my mother somewhere and by force of habit I checked the wheel-wells for bombs and cut brake lines. My mother asked me what I was doing. I didn't tell her, but I did laugh a little at myself and thought, "Oh, yeah... this is America."

Does that prepare someone for live fire? I can't tell you, because I've never been in a firefight. All I can say is that most training involved thinking about such things in advance. If you think about scenarios in advance, then you spend less time thinking about them when time is something you don't have. Every individual I know with a CWP spends a considerable amount of time outside of formal training thinking about how that weapon would be used if necessary. I wouldn't minimize the importance of doing that, or put them down for it, as it's completely responsible and makes them and the people around them much safer.

Where the conversation went from there is something that I'll have to save for a later post. I may scare you.

---

[1] If you're wondering where "Dick" is; in most any political discussion, *I* am the Dick.