Wargaming VA Tech II

Wargaming VA Tech II:

Thanks to everyone for the many thoughtful contributions to the wargaming exercise, begun below. I'd like to summarize the first set of 'lessons learned.' This is only a summary of the broad areas of agreement: there is a tremendous amount of expertise available in the comments to the post below.

Scenario I has prompted two basic theoretical responses, one defensive and one offensive. The defensive response seems rather more popular: that, at minimum, an armed student with proper training and a defensive firearm could secure his own classroom, deny it to an aggressor, and (if an evacuation route were available, as they were at VA Tech) cover the escape of the unarmed. If that can be achieved, the armed citizen is then able to either leave as well, or engage in further operations at the risk of only his own life. He has to make a personal decision as to his capacity here -- for example, our former MP at Ft. Bragg, who notes that he is no longer sufficiently mobile to pursue less static operations, versus our Air Marshal, who is entirely (and doubtless justifiably) confident of his capability.

If there were one such armed civilian in any given classroom, it should be possible in most cases to deny the shooter victims beyond the first place he hits. If there is only one here and there, it would still sharply reduce the number of potential victims, and increase the danger to would-be assassins.

The offensive response notes that, the sooner the assassin is taken out, the fewer people will die. This mode suggests seeking out and destroying the assassin at once. This position is controversial among respondents:

a) Some note the lack of intelligence on the precise nature of the threat, which might not be a school shooter. It could be a legitimate police operation, or it could be a terrorist act.

b) Others mentioned the high level of risk to the armed citizen. 'Clearing a building is a team sport,' notes TheNewGuy, quite rightly. However, one also recognizes that personal survival may not be the point. Referencing Professor Liviu Librescu, we note that defending the weak is sometimes a matter for which we might properly undertake even great personal risk, or the certainty of personal destruction.

Nevertheless, a review of the severity and nature of the dangers ought to be sobering. Anyone undertaking this sort of measure would be wise to adopt 1charlie2's suggestion to inform the police of distinguishing features; the suggestion to expect police communications to be garbled, and thus to be prepared to surrender quickly should they overtake your position. Indeed, in any scenario 1 response, communicating your existence and intentions to the police is a priority, as is making sure they are aware of the situation in case you fail.

The general consensus is that this is a high risk strategy, with a relatively low survival probability. Some of the best trained and most experienced of respondents, however, suggest that it is the right course.

c) For those who feel competent to engage the enemy, there are two strongly supported pieces of advice. The first is from Air Marshal SamTheFAM:

Ten to one odds that guy was target fixated. Hell even after shooting tens of thousands of rounds in training I still chant "Scan and breath" to myself all the while shooting...scan and breath, scan and breath. Because the majority of folks forget to do both. He could have been taken out from behind by a few well placed center mass shots.

The second is the advice to track on gunfire, and lay a counterambush on likely points of transit. Whenever possible, leave a covered line of retreat open for yourself.

d) Some respondents point to the danger of shooting other armed students, attempting the same sort of actions. This is a good point: friendly fire is a real danger in these cases.

Scenario II has produced a fairly unified structure. We all seem to agree that the basic structure is as suggested: evade, control, retaliate, or as many of you put it, move, draw, fire. First do what you can to gain a second or two out of the direct line of fire; then, get control of your weapon; then, direct fire to center mass.

Two sideline discussions have arisen.

The first is among those respondants who know they will never be carrying arms. What should you do?

My advice is twofold. Those of you who think you might be constitutionally capable of learning to bear arms, lawfully and with personal discipline, ought to do exactly that. We need more of your kind contributing to the defense of the common peace and lawful order.

There remain those of you who are not confident of being able to do such things. There is nothing wrong with this. You should take the lead of those who are, and follow their directions in getting to the best exit available. Withdraw from the scene as you are able, and stay gone. Contact the police. Not everyone is a fighter.

The second offshoot wondered if the scenarios were valid. If we came to the point that people were reliably carrying arms on campus, at least two respondents asked, why wouldn't wannabe assassins change their tactics and go somewhere else?

There are two basic responses to that.

1) This is not a bug, it's a feature. The point is to harden the campus so as to make it a less attractive target. If that adjusts the behavior of bad actors so that they stop shooting up schools, good.

2) However, to have that effect, we have to get to the point that this is a reliable danger they have to consider. In order to get there, we need to establish an understanding of how to respond to events of this type, and get people to the point that they are carrying.

Wargaming VA Tech:

We've talked about the importance of training in being ready to respond to violence. If you are going to do a citizen's duty to uphold the common peace and lawful order, you must prepare for that duty.

Sovay suggests a wargaming exercise, which strikes me as a good idea. She asks this of the readership:

If you were at Virginia Tech that day and had a gun a) Please tell me what you would have done. b) Tell me how certain you are that you would have done it. The more detail you can give, such as location and situation of those around you, the better.

Tactics depend heavily on the actual situation and surroundings. The main shootings seem to have happened at Norris Hall, which you can see here. I gather this is the building to which the main exits were chained. It is two stories, and we know that the second story classrooms could be exited by the windows.

There is a map of the surrounding campus here. Police call boxes are not marked, but presumably -- if VTech is like any other campus I've been on -- there are some.

These photos are from inside Norris Hall. Internal walls appear to be solid cinderblock, easily capable of serving as hard cover against 9mm or .22 rounds. Presumably that would be the same for the classrooms. I can't think why they would have a different basic internal structure from the rest of the building, but if anyone knows better, shout out.

Let's consider two basic scenarios:

1) You are in class in Norris Hall, with a (lawfully carried, we'll presume for the purpose of this example -- let us say the law changes as a result of this episode) defensive handgun of your choice. You hear gunfire in the building. You may be either on the first or second floor, near or far from the stairwells, as you prefer.

2) You are in classs in Norris Hall, on the first floor near the main entrance. A student you know only barely walks into the room and opens fire.

Obviously the tactical situation in #2 is much worse, but consider it all the same.

I would say in scenario 1, the best option is to adopt a position that will allow you to use the cinderblock walls as cover, while controlling the entrance to the classroom. Once this is done, you can determine if any other fellow students are likewise lawfully armed, and what degree of training they may have had. If there is backup within the classroom, you have increased options; but if not, the best thing to do is to determine the best route of escape (probably through the windows) and see that noncombatants are evacuated safely, with instructions to contact the police at once.

At that point, depending on the sound of gunfire, you can either advance to set a counterambush on a likely point for the enemy to cross; or attempt to reconnoiter the enemy position in order to provide intelligence to the police. If it appeared to be a solitary killer, and you were able to approach his position without being spotted, you could kill him. If it appeared to be something more than that, you would be better informed to advise responding policemen.

An alternative prospect arises if you know that most students are in a given section of the building, which can be isolated. You might well set up a defensive posture there, to cover their escape.

Scenario 2 is rather more dangerous. In that case, the thing to do is to follow the advice taught me by Ken Caton: "Evade, control, retaliate." The first thing to do is to take any decent cover that presents itself. Then, prepare your weapon. Then, attempt to respond, either by killing the enemy, or by pinning him down so that he could not harm others before police arrived.

Sovay asks how certain I would be that I would do this, rather than panic or something else. Having been in life-threatening circumstances just occasionally, and having dealt with violent criminals twice, I feel almost certain that I would respond in this fashion. My reaction to serious danger has usually been what Doc Russia describes as "the Machine" -- the shutoff of emotional content, and a very cold and ruthless rationality. It doesn't always save the day, but it does allow for a direct response to danger.

I'll post a link to this at BlackFive and MilBlogs, to invite a further response. Anyone with military, police or other relevant experience is invited to respond. The idea is to build a notion of what the basic elements are in a successful response to an attack of this sort, so that we may be better prepared.

UPDATE: At the point of 38 responses here and 35 at BlackFive, I composed a summary post on the broad areas of agreement emerging. Scroll up past this post to read it.

"Never Again"

"Never Again"

Here passed a hero.

One professor, a Holocaust survivor blocked the door opening in front of the shooter with his body while his students had the chance to escape out the window.

Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter, who had attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, "but all the students lived - because of him," Virginia Tech student Asael Arad - also an Israeli - told Army Radio.

Several of Librescu's other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he blocked the gunman's way and saved their lives, said the son, Joe.

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv.

H/t: Cassandra.

Retrospective

A Retrospective:

A news item from Virginia's legislature, dated 31 January 2006.

A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.

House Bill 1572 didn't get through the House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. It died Monday in the subcommittee stage, the first of several hurdles bills must overcome before becoming laws.

And therefore there was no one to stop him.

H/t: VCDL.

TR & Sq. Dealing

Theodore Roosevelt & Square Dealing:

Before his cousin came up with the New Deal, Teddy offered the square deal.

Lincoln Steffens, a ­reform-­minded journalist who had met Roosevelt long before his presidency, inadvertently gave the agenda its name. Steffens interviewed TR often and knew that he fancied himself a reformer too. Peeved by the caution of TR’s first year in office, Steffens tried to embarrass him into action. “You don’t stand for anything fundamental,” Steffens told him one day at the White House. “All you represent is the square deal.”

Roosevelt, plainly overjoyed, leapt out of his chair, pounded his desk, and bellowed, “That’s it. That’s my slogan: the square deal.”

...

TR tried to assure the bullies that the Square Deal was not socialism. He did not plan to confiscate the aces and give them to the poor, he said; he meant only to prevent crookedness in the dealing. He had no objection to men of great wealth, only to the “malefactors of great wealth,” as he would call them. He didn’t name names, but the press was soon slapping the label on J. Pierpont ­Morgan and every other tycoon who ran into trouble with the trust buster. TR also declared that he would not tolerate demagogues who incited the ­have-­nots to violence against the haves. From his presidency through his run for a third term in 1912, he would denounce class envy in one breath and in the next opine that “of all the forms of tyranny the least attractive and most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth.”

It's an interesting article from The Wilson Quarterly.

On the subject of tyrants, though, I must say that I prefer Edward Abbey's argument: "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." It was that sort of tyranny that drove the American revolution: not torture and secret courts, but the stamp act.

Heroes II

Heroes, Loud and Silent:

Karrde, in an interesting post below, wonders about whether a hero is properly boastful or not. The confusion he expresses arises, I think, from the fact that the West contains two separate traditions on the subject -- the old Indo-European heroic tradition, and the Christian heroic tradition that has largely supplanted it.

Heroic boasting was a social institution that was used by Indo-European cultures to do more than advertise their past deeds. It was also a form of accruing additional glory: both for the poetic excellence of your description, and by allowing you to essentially make wagers with the future about what you would be able to do. But you must remember that many of the ones we have today are not recordings of actual boasts, but poetic interpretations of what the boasts of the greatest heroes of yore must have sounded like. (For a version of what the boasts of regular, living heroes sounded like, see the Saga of the Jomsvikings.)

The greatest version of the heroic boast for a living man was to inspire others to extoll his virtues instead of doing it himself. This was normally done through the heroic virtue of liberality. By giving great feasts and fine gifts, you would inspire others to speak very highly of you. Professional poets would sing your praises, and they were free to do so in terms that were even more boastful than you could use yourself.

The Beowulf poem stands at the end of a very long series of revisions, now lost to us (as Tolkien pointed out in "The Monsters and the Critics"). Swimming in chainmail (which really can be done, as the folks at Regia Anglorum have shown) while fighting off sea monsters, etc., this isn't the sort of boast the old warrior on whom Beowulf is based would have made. They are the sort of poetics that would have arisen about him among the professional skalds who benefitted at his court, and their children and grandchildren, who sang of him to entertain later kings with tales of their heroic progeny.

These stories -- some version of heroic stories are what Kim du Toit is wanting when he says that "we need heroes" -- serve a number of useful functions. They showcase what a hero looks like, and how one acts. They make people think of themselves as more than just individuals, but as part of a great people with a proud history that they should uphold. They reinforce common values, and inspire better behavior. They help to socialize the young, and they also serve to remind the old about what was great and good about their own lives.

The silent hero is a Christian form, and one that developed slowly. Christianity has a lot to say against boasting and pride, and after the West became formally Christian, the Church began a centuries-long task of trying to restrain the pride that was expressed by the aristocracies of all the European cultures.

In the early Anglo-Saxon church, we have the famous cleric Alcuin protesting, "What has Ingeld to do with Christ?" That lament arose in response to the fact that heroic poetry was being read among monks instead of the Bible or the writings of saints. Those monks often came from the same aristocratic classes that furnished the great kings and warriors, and they enjoyed the same poetry. Indeed, we have the Beowulf because the monks preserved it.

By the time of Sir Thomas Malory, however, the concept of pride as sinful had at least taken hold among the fighting class. Le Morte D'Arthur still has prideful, boastful warriors, but it also has the quest for the Grail with its repentence and silence; it has the conclusion wherein Lancelot abandons worldly pride for the life of a monk. There is a deep conflict between the heroic virtues, and the Christian ones.

In the Anglosphere, the increasing importance of the Protestant movement, I'd say, was the driving force in moving the balance point in that conflict. Boasting was something a good Catholic could still do, as long as he boasted of the right things and repented for other things. (As Chesterton wrote, "Any one might say, 'Neither swagger nor grovel'; and it would have been a limit. But to say, 'Here you can swagger and there you can grovel' -- that was an emancipation.") The good Protestant, especially a good Calvinist, should not swagger at all.

America especially has its cultural roots in Protestantism, and so we have a deeply embedded notion that it is wrong to boast. We like the hero (whether a soldier or a rider of bulls) who does great things, and then says it was nothing -- or simply says nothing at all. That is what we have long preferred.

There are strong advantages to this type, but also disadvantages. One of them is that you don't get the same degree of social benefit you got from the old heroic poems. Those came from having common heroes, whose stories were told and retold to all of us. A hero who refuses to be celebrated may be admirable for having the virtue of humility in spite of having done great deeds; but he also denies his culture the chance to use him as a rallying figure, to socialize the young and to help adults rededicate their lives to the better things.

In the last few decades, there has been a rise of another sort of claimant to heroism: I mean the swaggering criminal type. We've always had gangster movies, but even as late as the Godfather pictures, it was understood that the criminals were the bad guys.

That hasn't been the case lately: from "Smokey and the Bandit" to gangster rap, we've seen a resurgence of the boastful-heroic mode. It is a mode that is fundamentally better able to socialize the young than the humble mode of Protestantism. That is a problem, and it's another part of the problem Kim was discussing.

The old mode was sustainable as long as it didn't have to compete with an active heroic tradition in the counterculture. Children (especially boys) need bold, shining heroes to emulate, and if they can't get them elsewhere, they'll emulate the pimp.

There are two kinds of heroes we have to offer, and we need them both. The first are historic American heroes, so that we can celebrate our (cultural, rather than literal) ancestors in the way that Ingeld's descendants did. I think Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge did the groundwork here: their Hero Tales from American History serves as a great source for stories to celebrate.

We also need living, modern heroes. We are fortunate enough to have some. The DOD has begun a series called Heroes in the War on Terror.

The last thing we need are poets and movie makers to turn their craft to celebrating these heroes, historic and living. That, so far, is the one place where we fall short.

Anyone want to fund a movie company? I'll bet there would be a market for these films, if only someone made them.

Nonviolence

The Department of Nonviolence & Peace:

We had a discussion recently that touched on the philosophy of nonviolence. Tigerhawk wonders further, noting that 25-30% of the Democratic House has aligned on a bill forcing the creation of a new Cabinet-level position.

Meeting the Wounded:

Fuzzybear Lioness talks about the jolt of working with the wounded, and fearing she is not worthy of the sacrifice they have made for her.

And for us.

Backroad Pics

Backroad Pictures:

InstaPundit today links to a nice back road Tennessee picture. We can do good pictures from backcountry Georgia. They're not art shots, but you might like them.

If you ever wondered what it was like to sit on top of one of the Wild Bunch, here's a shot taken from atop Delaney. You can click on the picture for a bigger version. The tiny legs at the top of the photo are the puppy hiding by a chair and mounting block.



Speaking of the puppy, here's another shot of her.



Here's Blue Streke, who left this morning for his new home.



Not all the beasties are huge. Cinnamon the pony isn't exactly friendly (to anyone, although I have bad luck with creatures named "Cinnamon"), but he does have the virtue of being small.



And here's a good shot of the road, with Sherlock in the foreground.



It's not black and white, and the hills of Georgia are "small sky" rather than "big sky" country, but it's still a pretty place to be.

Heroes

Heroes:

The subject of heroes has come up at two blogs I visit regularly. Some of the questions raised are provocative: Why are certain kinds of men revered as heroes? What is the difference between the scholarly historian's list of heroes and the ordinary man's list of heroes? How does the creation of a list of heroes reflect the values of the culture?

In the comments thread at Kim duToit's place, several examples of heroes are mentioned. While many are 'big names', several are nobodies. These small-name heroes somehow seem more impressive in that they have tried to stay out of the limelight of public attention.

This raises a question about the definition of a hero--the Platonic ideal of a hero, as it were.

The great heroic legends are full of heroes who are eager to tell of their greatness to all who will listen. (Neither Achilles nor Beowulf are shy about mentioning their past deeds.) However, the boasts are not their sole claim to fame--the heroes rise to the challenge at hand, the challenge that is the center of the story.

These men are not viewed as heroes because of their boasts, but because of their deeds. Their boasts are not out of place.

In the modern world, this seems less common. One recurring image of a modern hero (especially those mentioned in this comments thread) is of a man who has done heroic deeds, and would rather not share that history with anyone else. His family and friends know, but few others have that knowledge.

Which image is a truer representation of the hero? Or do both represent the bearing of a man of heroic stature in different cultural situations?

After some deliberation on the subject matter, I am leaning towards the idea that the heroic ideal is silent about whether the hero spends his time advertising his stature. That is, the heroic ideal is centered on the actions of the hero, rather than his attitude towards telling his own heroic tale.

However, I am also deeply aware that traditional measures of heroic stature have lost most of their cultural currency in the West. We have men and women who proclaim themselves as heroes because they are in a default attitude of rebellion against the excesses of past generations. We have publicists and media personalities declaring celebrity for a variety of reasons; rarely are those reasons connected to heroic deeds. Anyone who wins the celebrity lottery has lost almost all privacy for the purposes of feeding a novelty-driven media culture.

This makes me very happy to be able to learn about heroic stories from locations like the weblogs I linked--or locations like the Someone You Should Know series at BlackFive. I can learn their stories without them being subjected to the attention of the mass media.

When discussing why a man might not want to become the center of a media circus, I pause to wonder if the existence of this corrosive media environment is a sign of sickness in the culture. If so, how deep does the sickness run? How could such a sickness be healed?

On Suits:

Arts & Letters Daily answers a question that has bothered me for decades: where did we ever get the idea that the suit was the right way for a gentleman to dress? A good one feels like you're wearing pajamas in public, compared to the rugged clothing suited for work or adventure: denim, wool, leather. The necktie is preposterous, and the only actually useful piece of the suit -- the hat -- has since been discarded by fashion. You don't see "the great men" of any other civilization dressed up like this.

It turns out there is a good reason for the development, one that arises naturally from the roots of the gentleman:

Suits are, in fact, unnatural. The peoples of antiquity, the early Middle Ages, and traditional Asia, Africa, and the pre-Columbian Americas dressed beautifully with a minimum of cutting and sewing. Togas, kimonos, pre-Columbian mantles, dashikis — however luxurious or elegant — were not constructed as second skins.

The present male uniform began to emerge in the 14th century as an unintended consequence of military innovation. The body-fitting plate armor that we now admire in museums was replacing mail of the earlier Middle Ages. New craftsmen, the linen armorers, emerged to construct padding to cushion warriors' new exoskeletons, cutting and stitching pieces of cloth to fit the body. Those artisans, Anne Hollander declares in Sex and Suits (Knopf, 1994), "can really count as the first tailors of Europe."

It goes on from there, through revolutions French and Industrial, but that is the root of the thing.

German Medals

Righting an old Wrong:

I had not been aware that 15 April was the official day for members of the Jewish faith to remember the Holocaust. I was very pleased, however, to read this account of a small measure of justice being done by the German government.

Although the army he fought in was an enemy of ours at the time, it's good to see justice done for a man who once fought for hearth and home.

H/t: InstaPundit.

Eject!

Bill Whittle:

He's written another long essay, and as always, it merits your attention. This essay is on reason, and conspiracy:

My father was interred at Arlington National Cemetery in 2002. I will never forget that day. It changed my life, and was the event that started me writing here at Eject! Eject! Eject!

The man who coordinated that service was on a hill about a half-mile from that side of the Pentagon on the morning of September 11th, 2001. He told me that they had been informed that something was going on in New York that morning. Then he heard something that he said he thought was a missile attack – a roar so loud and so far beyond a normal jet sound that he looked up at that exact moment expecting to die.

What he saw emerge from the trees overhead, perhaps a hundred feet above him, was American Airlines Flight 77 as it went by in a silver blur, engines screaming in a power dive as it hit the near side of the Pentagon. He told me – to my face – that body parts had rained down all over that sacred field. Just like red hail on a summer day. Those body parts are buried in a special place at the base of that hill.

Now. If Rosie O’Donnell and the rest of that Lunatic Brigade is right and I am wrong, then that man – that insignificant Army chaplain and his Honor Guard of forty men – are all liars. He is lying to me for Halliburton and Big Oil. That Chaplain—and all of those decent, patriotic young men in the Honor Guard, and all the commuters on the roads who saw an American Airlines jet instead of a missile – ALL of those people are liars and accessories to murder. And all of the firefighters who went into buildings rigged to explode were pre-recruited suicide martyrs dying for George W. Bush’s plans for world conquest.

Whittle mentions Popular Mechanics' tireless attempts to trod down this mire. I'd like to mention Sovay's site on the subject, which has been devoted to disproving 9/11 conspiracy theories since not very long after 9/11.

This is something that concerns us all. It is important to get it right. Kudos to those who have, as Whittle says, shed the light of reason on these matters.

Feminist Reviews

There is a Beauty in Being a Feminist Voice...

...as Germaine Greer certainly is. That beauty is that you can write a review that says, 'This book is so bad a woman must have written it.'

The review is a masterpiece of the art of criticism, brutal and insightful at once. My thanks to the ever-valuable Arts & Letters Daily for the link.

Links

Some Great Reading:

BlackFive has a story about two good young men living the fantasy of every Marine. Ooh-rah, Lance Corporals.

Karrde, who really should be posting this stuff here as well, put up his thoughts on the subject of a man's word of honor. It was occasioned by Kim du Toit's draft chapter of his book.

There's little doubt that keeping your word is the main, most important test of a man. There's a very great deal that can be forgiven or ignored, as long as you do what you say you will do, and keep your oaths.

I see that long-time reader and commenter Noel is now blogging at Cold Fury. I would have thought I'd have put CF on the blogroll a long time ago, but apparently it escaped my attention. I'll do it now, though, for certain. Noel's stuff is either very good or very, very bad, depending on how many puns he tries to work into his arguments.

Either way, it's always worth reading.

No Riding

No Riding Today:

Today my saddle busted a fender; and one of our electrical fences suffered a rather astonishing failure occasioned by two young horses barreling through it at high speed. So, lots of work, but no time for me to ride.

Plus there was one additional distraction from regular business:



The puppy picture is by way of apology to the ladies who complained about the last entry about the horses. There are good things about the horse farm, too.

There are fewer horses to ride just now anyway. In addition to Blue Streke, we've got another one of the Wild Bunch sold if he vets out. His name is Sherlock. I'm going to miss having him around -- he's the best tempered of the bunch.



Sherlock's always friendly, and according to his trainer has taken quickly to his lessons. He's been trained as a dressage horse, and I know nothing about dressage, so I have spent little time with him. Still, when I have worked with him, I've always liked him.

So, you see, it's not always terror and fury out of these beasts. Most of the time, it's pleasant and relaxing in spite of the hard work.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness:

I had a post at BlackFive responding to a lady blogger from the sinister side of the blogosphere. She had given us a backhanded compliment:

Do you think Jihad Watch and LaShawn Barber’s Corner and BLACKFIVE and Mudville Gazette and Wizbang got to be in the top 25 at TTLB only (or even mostly) because of their writing or their core fan base? Not at all! They zoomed to the top because bloggers like Michelle Malkin, Powerline, and Hugh Hewitt talked them up, linked to them, befriended them. It does not make me happy to know that people whose worldview is so narrow, intolerant, exclusive, and hateful are so much better at supporting their ideological soulmates than we on the left, whose values run to diversity, inclusiveness, a place at the table for everyone, human needs before defense contractors’ wish lists.

Yeah, the lady has a good backhand. Let me tell you about intolerance and hate.

About a week ago, I had one of the Wild Bunch throw me hard. (We're about to sell one of them, by the name of Blue Streke. He's an outstanding blue roan, with spirit. The guy came out to ride him on Saturday, and the horse bucked him right up into the air. Took two people on the reins to get the horse straightened out. The guy said, "If my vet says he's healthy, I'll take him." That's a horseman.)

This horse who threw me, I've ridden before. He is the one who threw me earlier last month, and put me briefly in the hospital. But he'd been scared by a truck that day, and on the day in question, he seemed to be calm. I'd ridden him since the incident without a problem, and he seemed happy. He came willingly to me when I showed him the rope, and he let me saddle him without any complaint.

In other words, he lied to me.

No sooner did I get on this horse than all fourteen hundred pounds of him started to run and buck. I pulled his head around and stopped him, with an effort. My partner for the ride was ready to go, and I didn't want to spend a lot of time on this horse, so I said I was going to swap out to another for the ride.

The instant he felt me take my feet out the stirrups, he threw back on with all he had. The young lady (same one from the missing-mare episode) said it was like watching a rodeo: he bucked and reared and fought as hard as a 1,400 pound horse can go. I had him in a headlock for a second, but he reared so hard I had to lean far forward to stay balanced. He got his head free, and then while I was forward he dropped and bucked and I went flying.

I landed right on my skull, with an impact that should have broken my neck. The only reason it didn't is all those years of jujitsu training and teaching: I fell exactly the right way, against instinct but with muscle memory. Because I had pressed my chin to my chest, instead of my neck breaking the impact was distributed through the muscles of my back and chest. My back still hurts every time I do anything.

The horse went running, and my brave but young companion foolishly went after him. It took me a couple of seconds to get to my feet (my Stetson had a big dent right in the back-of-the-skull section) and by the time I caught up to her, she was doing something I wouldn't advise any of you to do. My horse had run into the barn, and she had dismounted and followed him. She still had her horse by the reins in one hand (Doc, for those of you who remember the post about him) and the Wild Buncher by her other hand. He was still rearing and snorting and yelling when I got there.

This all means that she was in a narrow place, with an angry horse on one side of her and a horse that was increasingly frightened on the other, and she was holding both of them. Brave, brave girl. But it was not a good place for her to be.

I came in and took control of the horse that just threw me. In order to do that, I had to get his reins -- and in order to get the girl to safety, I needed to do it in a way that wouldn't further spook him, and therefore her horse also. I could see the fear mixed with the anger in the beast's eye when I grabbed his reins. There was only one thing to do.

I pushed all the anger out of my heart, let it go, and looked him in the eye. "I am not angry at you," I said in level tones. "Come on. Calm down."

A horse can tell if it's true. They know if you're mad. If I wanted him to be calm, he had to know I had forgiven him. All this was less than a minute after he lied to me, sucker-punched me, and almost killed me because of it.

Everything worked out. I convinced the young lady to take her horse out of the barn and go on her way without me. I got the horse to his stall, and took his tack off, so that I could go and hurt in peace. My back still hurts, but it will be all right in time. When the girl got back, I took Doc for a short ride -- because you don't want to get thrown and walk away without riding if you can help it. You need to get back on a horse.

This story is about forgiveness. If you're going to ride horses, you have to be able to clear your mind of hate and intolerance in an instant. It has to be truly empty of those things when you grab the reins or the halter of a frightened beast.

Now, there is (I admit) a certain part of me that thinks this particular horse would make an excellent rug. But it's not the part of my soul that entertains hate; it's the part that entertains humor.

I've said from time to time that I'm not aware of hating anyone, and I honestly believe that is true. There are people I like and people I don't; there are people I'm proud to know and people I think ought to be ashamed of themselves. I don't think, though, that I hate anyone.

The lady has a Shel Silverstein quote on her homepage: "If you are a dreamer, come in." My mother used to read that poem to me. If she thinks I hate her kind, she's wrong: in that she reminds me of my mother, I'm predisposed to love rather than to hate her.

What she may not understand about me and my kind could be explained this way: Shel Silverstein also wrote "A Boy Named Sue."

America, like the poet, has room for both of us. If there's room for the part that is 'a magic-bean buyer,' and there's room for the part that came "up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear."

Now, how's that for tolerance? For ladies and horses, I have more than you might imagine.

Tartan day 2007

Happy Tartan Day:

Absinthe & Cookies once again hosts the "Gathering of the Blogs." Today is Tartan Day, a day established to celebrate Scottish heritage.

Given the readership's interests, I thought we'd talk about the Battle of King's Mountain. One of the turning points of the Revolutionary War, this battle was fought largely by Scots and Scots-Irish who had taken up residence in the backcountry. Its importance is reflected in the prominence of the mountain fighter in the crest of the Scottish American Military Society. Because they crossed over the Appalachians to resist the British, the Patriot's backcountry fighters were called "Overmountain Men."

Thomas Jefferson said at the time that it was a major turning point in the war; that sentiment was confirmed by Theodore Roosevelt in his history The Winning of the West, with the benefit of more than a century's perspective. He pointed out the importance of the mountain fighter in subsequent American history:

The warlike borderers who thronged across the Alleghanies, the restless and reckless hunters, the hard, dogged, frontier farmers, by dint of grim tenacity overcame and displaced Indians, French, and Spaniards alike, exactly as, fourteen hundred years before, Saxon and Angle had overcome and displaced the Cymric and Gaelic Celts. They were led by no one commander; they acted under orders from neither king nor congress; they were not carrying out the plans of any far-sighted leader. In obedience to the instincts working half blindly within their breasts, spurred ever onwards by the fierce desires of their eager hearts, they made in the wilderness homes for their children, and by so doing wrought out the destinies of a continental nation. They warred and settled from the high hill-valleys of the French Broad and the Upper Cumberland to the half-tropical basin of the Rio Grande, and to where the Golden Gate lets through the long-heaving waters of the Pacific. The story of how this was done forms a compact and continuous whole. The fathers followed Boon or fought at King's Mountain; the sons marched south with Jackson to overcome the Creeks and beat back the British; the grandsons died at the Alamo or charged to victory at San Jacinto.

(King's Mountain is associated with the excellence of the now-famous Ferguson Rifle, because that rifle was designed by the British commander, Patrick Ferguson, although it is not clear that any of his rifles were deployed there. Louis L'amour wrote a novel around the idea that he had two of them, and gave one away: The Ferguson Rifle. Fans who want to read one of his works set in an early period of the American frontier will enjoy it.)

Ferguson sent a challenge to the backcountry to lay down their arms, or he would bring them fire and sword. Instead, they decided to bring the fight to him. The battle was decisive in preventing the British from cutting off the American South from the Continental Congress. We might have had two Canadas, in other words: a few remaining British colonies in the north, and a few in the South. That makes for an interesting mental adventure -- perhaps someone should write a book about it.

If you wish to read still more, Wikipedia's page is here.

Civilization & the Time Traveler:

Eric Blair -- who is either a supervillain or a camel-like space alien, but who has apparently excellent taste in beach drinks and Chinese pottery -- reminds us of the outstanding civilization available in Mexico in 1650.

By happy coincidence, here is a review of a book on the glories of that civilization at its merry core: England. I assume they're downplaying the good parts a bit. Like the beer: to judge from literature of the period, the beer must have made it worthwhile.

Go Scouts

A Cheer for the BSA:

It's hard to imagine any case in which I'd side against the Boy Scouts of America, who must be the finest youth program extant. When they're allied with the DOD, however, they're assured of my support. The loser, in this case, was the ACLU.

H/t: The Castle.

PQ

"The Pirate Queen"

Any readers in NYC who might enjoy a Broadway show are invited to let me know if this is any good. I can't see how a production about Queen Elizabeth I and the Irish rebel pirate named Grace O'Malley could be all that bad.

It appears to be a "Riverdance"-type show, so you'd have to like Irish music and dancing. Otherwise, for a play, it seems interesting.

GWOT Heroes

American Heroes:

The DOD is doing something very sharp: giving us heroes. That is, it's taking the time to introduce us to them:

Army Staff Sgt. Jeremy Wilzcek, Spc. Jose Alvarez, Spc. Gregory Pushkin, and Sgt. Michael Row
Part of the Soldier’s Creed is never to leave behind a fallen comrade. On the night of March 13, 2006, then-Sgt. Wilzcek, Sgt. Row, then-Pfc. Alvarez, then-Pfc. Pushkin, and the rest of their squad risked life and limb to live up to that promise.

Row, the point man, was leading the soldiers through dark, narrow alleys in the city of Ramadi as the squad headed back to base. Suddenly two men darted into a nearby house – and at that hour, Row saw that as a clear sign of imminent danger. He stopped the team, but within seconds the street exploded with an onslaught of machine-gun and small-arms fire, RPG explosions, and hand grenades. The squad dropped to the ground and directed fire at the enemy’s position.

Alvarez moved to a covered position to reload his weapon, and he noticed one of his comrades had been hit and was lying in the middle of the firefight. Without hesitation, Alvarez rushed into the kill zone to check the soldier’s vital signs – but it was too late. He covered the soldier’s body with his own and continued firing on the enemy. When he ran out of ammunition, Alvarez stood up and started dragging the soldier out of the line of fire. Row, who was pinned down nearby, provided cover fire as Alvarez struggled to move the body. When Wilzcek and Pushkin saw Alvarez’s difficulties, they ran into the open to help. But as the three moved back toward cover, two RPGs exploded 10 meters away, knocking them down and sending a volley of shrapnel into Alvarez’s right knee. The men stood up and continued dragging their comrade to the safety of a nearby courtyard.

After establishing a safe area for the injured, Pushkin and Wilzcek ran back and forth several times from the courtyard into the line of fire to rescue trapped soldiers. Meanwhile, the RPG explosions had also injured Row’s elbow with shrapnel. Even so, he continued firing on the enemy position to help the others reach safety. Once everyone was clear, Row, who was alone in the middle of the street, called for help. As Row remembered later, “I was trapped in the street, and [Pushkin and Wilzcek] pulled me out of there.”

The squad was now in the courtyard and medical assistance was being administered – but their work was not done: enemy fire continued to light up the area. When the squad started planning the next phase, Alvarez refused to be moved with the other injured soldiers, staying to help in the fight.

The insurgents, seeing the evacuation in progress, focused their fire on the rescuers. Wilzcek, already on the roof, began firing back. After clearing the rooms below, Pushkin and his team hurried up to the roof to help Wilzcek. Row grabbed a Bunker Defeat Munition – a shoulder-launched explosive for use against fortified positions – but his injured elbow prevented him from using it. He ran up to the roof, handed the weapon to Pushkin, and helped guide Pushkin toward the targets. With Row and Wilzcek providing cover fire, Pushkin took aim and fired – destroying the enemy’s position and killing a number of insurgents. With that, the squad was able to leave the area safely.

On Feb. 15, 2007, Wilzcek, Alvarez, and Pushkin were awarded the Silver Star for their bravery and actions; Row was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor.

There are many more.

Bye, FL

Huh?

Florida commits suicide, or at least you'd think so, by inviting almost all felons to vote in her elections. That strikes me as monumentally stupid, but:

Florida is one of three states — the others are Kentucky and Virginia — that still deprive felons of civil rights for life. Most other states automatically restore felons' rights when they complete their sentences, probation or parole.

Who knew? So maybe it's not such a big deal... although it still seems like a dumb thought to me.

A TX Spring

A Texas Spring:

Miss Ladybug sends a post on Texas Bluebonnets, the colorful flowers that mark the arrival of spring. She includes photos from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower center.

Surge Signs

Surge Sign:

I don't do day to day news roundups, for the obvious reason that there are a lot of places that have the money and manpower to do it better. Still, I'd like to look at some evidence on a particular question of great moment to all Americans: is the Surge, still incomplete, working?

Our SECDEF says "So far, so good," noting both successes and danger signs.

Illegal militia in Baghdad have stood down, though activity continues in some parts of Iraq. Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr remains in Iran, and there are “some signs that his prolonged absence is leading to some fractures in (his militia’s) organization,” Gates said.

Gates also discussed the military’s need for funding to finance the war effort. He said he is concerned about delays in enacting an emergency supplemental bill. Each house of Congress has passed a version of the bill, and both versions contain a timeline for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. President Bush has vowed to veto any bill containing the withdrawal language.

Gates said each of the armed services will be affected by a delay, with the Army being the worst off. The service may be forced to suspend training for deploying forces, repairing equipment and putting in place a civilian hiring freeze. The secretary said a threatened complete cut-off of war “would be dramatic.”

Omar Fadhil reports heavy armor in Baghdad, and mujahedeen messages that promise a great deal more than they deliver. He says friends of his in some parts of the city worry the American surge losing momentum, but that hasn't been his observation.

Rear Admiral Fox says:

There are “some preliminary good signs” that security measures are taking hold in Baghdad, Fox said, as U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to make their presence felt as they operate from 31 joint security stations established across the city.

“Our troops now are living and operating in the districts of Baghdad,” Fox said.

However, it is too early to say if the reduction in violence is permanent, Fox said, noting there have been an increase in the numbers of car-bombings and other spectacular attacks in Baghdad.

That's not surprising in itself -- car bombings, sniper attacks and IEDs are the three forms of combat that the enemy can execute with minimal danger of a successful Coalition reaction. In other words, it's a sign of Surge progress if those types of attacks rise accompanied by a fall in kidnappings and direct terrorism. It means the enemy is being forced to adopt safer tactics in order to survive.

General Petraeus is shopping again.

ABC News reports the Surge is having "a large and positive effect."

Early signs are positive, then. If we can maintain the pressure, it should work. There are dangers, but the serious ones seem chiefly to arise from internal US politics. Military leaders don't seem to be especially worried about what the insurgents will do, because it is already known what they will do, and the military has developed a great deal of expertise over the last several years in countering it.

Our military leadership is worried about the split between the Congress and the President, and what that is going to mean. They aren't worried about defeat, in other words -- they're worried about being undercut at home.

We should all be pressuring our public servants to ensure that does not happen.

Pelosi/Scarf

Pelosi & the Headscarf:

I apparently have misjudged something Speaker Pelosi did. This morning I complained about her choosing to wear a headscarf in Syria; like everyone I had seen the pictures at the top of articles about her trip to Syria to meet with the government there. However, I seem to have been misled by the photograph's prominence into thinking that she was wearing it throughout her visit.

I've looked through a lot more photos of the trip now, and that is not at all the case. In fact:

1) She only wore it while visiting one particular mosque, and,
2) She did so in the Roman Catholic fashion rather than the Islamic fashion, as made clear by her crossing herself at the shrine of John the Baptist located in that mosque, and,
3) During the rest of her visit, both to Syria and Saudia Arabia, news photos show her without a headscarf. There's a good one in Yahoo News Photos of a Saudi police officer saluting the un-scarf'd Pelosi.

The photos played in the first news cycle as apparent submission to Islamist notions about a woman's place. That, coupled with the stories about her trip to Syria, to negotiate with a power supporting insurgent efforts against us in Iraq in despite of her President's request she not go, made the Speaker appear to be showing symbolic surrender. In addition, as the reports did not make clear that she was acting out of her own faith rather than submitting to another, she appeared to be hypocritical rather than faithful.

That impression, given by the way the news reports ran the headscarf photo with the stories about her diplomatic trips, was not fair. Indeed, as I reflect on it, it was defamatory (in the non-legalistic sense).

As she is herself a Catholic, there is obviously nothing wrong with her performing a (unusual in America, but traditional elsewhere) Catholic ritual; it is not hypocrisy or submission but a private act of faith to which she is wholly entitled. That should have been made clear, and prominently so, in these stories.

Further, far from the original impression, in fact Speaker Pelosi has given the Saudi world an image of a strong female leader who feels no need to submit to their religious requirement that she "be modest" and invisible. One hopes the photo of the saluting policemen is printed widely in the Islamic world. Good for her.

I still disagree with her decision to attempt diplomacy with Syria as if she were an executive rather than a legislative figure; but on the point of the headscarf, at least, she has done well. It appears the press can be as unfair to a San Francisco Liberal as it can be to a Texas Republican. I would like not to be unfair to anyone, and so wish to do what I can to correct the impression.

Crossing the Wilderness III

Crossing the Wilderness III:

Kim du Toit is having the next go-round of the game. We played the last time, thanks to Doc Russia tapping Grim's Hall for knife suggestions. There are a couple of new rules, and Kim picked up my addition from last time of asking for dog breeds:

Yes, it’s that time again.

Enough time has passed since last I posed the question that we can play the game once more. For the benefit of New Readers who weren’t around to play it before, here’s how it works. (Old-timers, note that some things have changed. RTFQ.)

The Challenge:

You have the opportunity to go back in time, arriving on the east coast of North America circa 1650, and your goal is to cross the North American continent, taking as much time as you need. When/if you reach the Pacific coastline, you’ll be transported back to the present day.

Your equipment for this journey will be as follows (taken back in the time capsule with you):

-- enough gold to buy provisions for the first five days’ travel
-- a small backpack containing some clothing essentials
-- a winter coat, raincoat and boots
-- waterproof sleeping bag
-- ONE long gun (but no scope)
-- ONE handgun
-- 1,800 rounds of ammo, divided between guns as desired
-- TWO knives, and (new) a “toolkit” knife
-- an axe
-- a box of 1,000 “strike anywhere” waterproof matches
-- a large-scale topological map book, binoculars and a compass
-- and a large U.S. Army First Aid kit.

Once there, you’ll be given a horse, a mule and a dog—and apart from that, you’re on your own. Remember you’ll be traveling through deep woods, open prairie, desert and mountains. You may encounter hostile Indian tribes and dangerous animals en route, which should be considered when you answer the following questions (and only these):

1. What long gun would you take back in time with you?
2. What handgun?
3. Which knives?
4.—New—What breed of dog?

The Rules:

1. Emails only will be accepted (comments are closed on this post), addressed to kim - at - kimdutoit dot com

2. Subject Line: Crossing The Wilderness. Not “What I’d take”, or “Guns and knives” or anything else: Crossing The Wilderness. Copy & paste the words from this post into your subject line.

3. Feel free to elaborate on your choices, BUT in no more than 100 words per answer. I don’t wanna read an essay on survival skills, nor do I wanna hear about the sixteen finalists you went through before you eventually made your choices. I’m looking for answers like: “Colt SAA in .45 LC, because it works and the .45 LC is a proven stopper.” (That’s 16 words.) Feel free to tell me (if you’ve played the game before) whether your choices have changed since last time, and why. Inside the 100 words.

4.—New Rule—multi-caliber combo guns will not be allowed, nor will barrel sleeves (which allow one to swap calibers), nor multiple barrels for the same receiver (eg. a Browning Citori with 12, 20 and 28ga barrels). You get one gun, one barrel / barrel set (in the case of shotguns or a double rifle, in the same caliber). Obviously, a gun which, unaltered, can fire different cartridges like the .357 Mag/.38 Spec or .45 LC/.410ga will be allowed.

5. Answers to me by next Saturday, April 7th. Results will be posted on April 9th.

Have fun.

To save the readers chasing it down, I said I'd join Doc in choosing a stainless lever-action .45 Long Colt rifle; I'd pick a Ruger New Vaquero in the same caliber; and a good bowie knife plus a skinning/utility knife. What constitutes a "good" bowie knife is personal to your physique: length of arm, strength of grip, and so forth.

I don't see any reason to change those choices.

I don't think I ever got around to answering my own questions: what breed of dog, horse, and mule? So let me do that now.

Dog: A Labrador mixed with something larger and heavier. These dogs are unfailingly brave and reliable, tough and with boundless energy. They are also strong enough to defend you, but have good hunting instincts. I've worked with several over the years, and one in particular, and they're great animals.

Horses: You want a fast horse that has good endurance. I'd suggest one of the gaited breeds, like a Tennessee Walker. They can cover ground fast and without putting strain on you. A non-gaited horse will have to canter (at least) to keep up with them, which will wear out their riders.

Mules: There are several good choices in mules. I'd say a draft cross with a Mammoth Jack donkey; they can carry a ton, and if you have to eat them, you'll have plenty of meat to dry and carry with you.

Blogging Award

Thinking Blogger Awards:

We've been nominated for an award in the Thinking Blogger contest. I'm not sure Grim's Hall has ever been nominated for anything before, so it's nice to know.

Rurik is a longtime reader, and occasional commenter. I appreciate his interest, and the kind words.

VictoryPAC

VictoryPAC:

Armed Liberal of Winds of Change would like you to know about his new venture, VictoryPAC. You've probably seen the video and letter of explanation:

I'm a liberal Democrat (pro-gay marriage, pro-choice, pro-progressive taxation, pro-equal rights, pro-environmental regulation, pro-public schools) who supported and supports the war in Iraq. As I tell my liberal friends "Did I miss the part where it was progressive not to fight medieval religious fascists?"

I've been waiting for four years for the White House to start really explaining the war to the American people, and to do anything sensible at all to maintain the political capital necessary to keep America in the fight - to keep us from withdrawing because the war is too messy, or too long, or just plain makes us feel bad.......

I've given up, and decided that it's up to each of us to start doing more. To that end, I've decided to start a PAC that will offer support to Congressional candidates of either party who support a foreign policy that doesn't involve wishing problems away.

Sounds good to me.

What you may not know is that he's looking for videos like the first one, from Iraq war veterans. If you'd like to make one and don't know how, let me know (well, I don't know how either, but I can find out).

Site Changes

Site Changes:

The contract I signed with Pajamas Media ended on 1 April. Though I elected not to continue as a PJM blog, I'd like it understood that Pajamas Media kept every particular of their contract with me, and I have no complaints with them. I simply wished to part ways, for reasons of my own.

The company of co-bloggers voted, and narrowly chose to enact some other form of ads in the future. I'll be looking into that directly; I'm not entirely sure how it works. In the meanwhile, the site is back to the pre-PJM format.

Violence and Moral Progress - III

Steven Pinker, Decreased Violence, Moral Progress - III

Happily, as Grim has shown, Prof. Pinker's New Republic article is now in the clear. Thus, I am saved the trouble of trying to summarize it. It's good reading.

In comments to this post of Eric's, Grim argued that there is no such thing as "moral progress," and that it hasn't happened. This article, to me, looks like a good counter. Towards the beginning, Prof. Pinker lists some of the commonplace cruelties of the past:

"Cruelty as entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, conquest as the mission statement of government, genocide as a means of acquiring real estate, torture and mutilation as routine punishment, the death penalty for misdemeanors and differences of opinion, assassination as the mechanism of political succession, rape as the spoils of war, pogroms as outlets for frustration, homicide as the major form of conflict resolution..." (He was talking about violence rather than moral progress in general; that, I believe, is why the subjection of women is not on the list, though in some cases - I cited the Yanomamo before - the two go hand in hand.)

...things that, in our time and place, are not tolerated. That looks like progress to me; and since it's progress in the realm of how we treat our fellowman, what better name for it than "moral progress"? But the main thrust of the article is about decreasing violence. In particular, he is looking at a long-term downward trend in murder rates as documented by Manuel Eisner. He's talking about murder, not justifiable or necessary violence. Again, all over the west, it's been dropping for centuries. We still want to do each other harm, that's clear enough, but we don't act on that desire as often.

On foreign policy, his case is a little weaker; he cites the Human Security Brief a little selectively (war death rates are way down; terrorist death rates are up). But Grim himself has just made a better case for moral progress in the sphere of international violence, with his Blackfive post, particularly Part IV. When the Scots fought each other, Edward I intervened - to increase his own dominion. When the inhabitants of Yugoslavia fought each other, Europe and the US intervened - to try to make peace between them without taking a square inch. A moral improvement? How could it not be? I am honestly at a loss to see how these developments could be called morally neutral.

Movie Review

Movie Review:

From Fox:

The best movie so far of 2007 is one in which Rose McGowan, best known to TV audiences as a kind witch on "Charmed," has her leg chopped off and replaced by a snap-on semi-automatic machine gun.

That sounds great! Except for the part where it's a "semi-automatic machine gun."

@#$@#%#$%@#!!!

Somebody in Hollywood must know something about guns, given that they include them in their movies so often. In The Outlaw Josie Wales, they managed to custom-build cartridge conversions for historic Walker Colts, which (as Guns of the Old West magazine reported not long ago) nobody in the world was tooled up to make in 1976.

So how come they can't explain it to the reporters?

War for Profit

"War for Profit"

I have a new piece up at BlackFive by that title.

More on Self-Defense

Of Self-Defense and Texas

In the comments to my last post, we struck up a conversation about self-defense and the "castle rule." I talked about an nineteenth-century Vermont case that discussed the common law rule as applied over several centuries; I've put the relevant text here.

The subject of Texas also came up. I've been doing just a little reading on the subject and wanted to share it. Justifiable homicide in Texas is covered by Penal Code 9.31 and 9.32(a). Under the current law, of which there is a good, brief discussion here, Texas already has a version of the duty to retreat/castle rule used by Louisiana and Vermont, and as listed in section 9.32(a)(2). You don't have to retreat if a reasonable man would not (because retreating would put you in more danger); but you do have to retreat if a reasonable man would do so (or at least, you lose the mantle of "self defense" if he would and you don't). Subsection (b), which removes the duty to retreat outright if the other is unlawfully entering your home, was added in 1995.

On September 1 of this year, the new version will go into effect. This specifically removes the duty to retreat, provided the person who acts has a right to be where he is. But the old law (section 9.32(b)) specifically provides that the duty to retreat doesn't apply when you're at home and the person you kill is unlawfully entering (otherwise, the fact that you were at home was still a factor in deciding whether retreat was "reasonable"). In other words, Texas didn't just enact the castle rule last week, but has had some version of it for years. The Texas Bar Journal published an article on the subject in 1967 ("Showdown on Art. 1225," 30 Tex. B.J. 339); I don't have the right kind of law library handy to read the article right now. States do differ in their self-defense rules, but the differences aren't as great as some people think.

In comments to the previous post, some have expressed a hope that this will reduce the incidence of lawsuits for wrongful death. Be careful. If you're dealing with a killing by a police officer, as one commenter was, the question of whether he used excessive force is a matter of federal constitutional law (shooting a man is treated as a "seizure" of his person by the state for Fourth Amendment purposes). No statute can change the standards for that. The standard, however, was and is "reasonable under the circumstances." A lot of those cases never see a jury because the undisputed facts simply don't create an issue as to whether the shooting was unreasonable.

Prison

The Evil of Prison:

I've written occasionally about the failures of the prison/rehabilitation system with which we attempt to correct criminals, although I have no personal experience with it. Here is someone who tested it, just to see how bad things could get. How bad? Roughly as bad as Abu Ghraib in just six days, even though the people selected to be guards and the prisoners were rigorously examined and subject to a background check.

Even if you have limited sympathy for convicted felons, consider what being a guard does to these men. Read through the history of the experiment, and then answer me this: if this is what prison does to free men who have always chosen to be good -- guards and prisoners alike in this case -- would it not be better to return to the old method of capital or corporal punishment for serious felonies?

Long prison sentences are a recent invention of modern society, after all. We have only been doing things this way for a couple of hundred years or less; we could stop doing it.

An Ugly Reminder

An Ugly Reminder

This story from Texas illustrates an ugly reality. According to the story, a married woman called her lover while her husband was playing cards. The husband came home early, to find the two having sex in a pickup truck. The wife screamed "Rape!" The lover tried to drive the truck away. The husband shot the lover. A grand jury has indicted the wife for manslaughter, but not the husband.

I will not comment in detail on any criminal case based on press reports alone, especially not this early in the proceedings. But as described in the article, the result is correct. If you're confused about the "manslaughter" you might want to check the definition under Texas law. A person is guilty of manslaughter if he recklessly causes the death of another person. Yelling "rape" under those circumstances certainly has the potential to cause death, even though someone else fires the bullet; and it shows an extreme lack of care for another person's life, yet there is no specific intent to kill as required for a murder conviction. ("Provocation" has nothing to do with this case, as some readers might think; the husband has every reason to think his wife is being kidnapped, and will be taken away and raped or killed, and the story betrays no reason to think he could stop it with lesser force. This has nothing to do with revenge.) Without researching Texas law, I can see a case for calling it "criminal negligence," and I would not be entirely surprised if she received an offer to plead to the lesser offense.

The reporter seems to think this has something to do with "Texas justice" but the basic idea works in any state I know about. It is an ugly fact that, important as the right to bear arms is, it comes with a price. If millions of people are ready and able to shoot, as they should be, sometimes the wrong person will be shot. With open eyes let us accept it. Let us also remember that rape is a horrible thing, and "rape" is a life-or-death word, to be used without hesitation when it really happens, but never at any other time.

Violence / Morality II

Less Violence, II:

Joe promises to return to the subject he brought up last week. In the meanwhile, the Pinker article is now in the clear should anyone wish to read it in preparation for the discussion.

Adventures with bad horses

Adventures with Naughty Horses:

The horse company is down by the Etowah River, which forms a natural fence to one of the fields. At least it seemed to until this morning, when Mabeline the Bucking Queen decided to go for a swim.

We discovered this when a guy on the other side of the river started yelling at the owner's wife (really, she is the main partner in co-ownership). He said that one of her horses had swum the river, and was headed toward the highway. This information was relayed to me, along with a suggested crossing point ("If you go down by the middle field, the river is much less deep there.")

So I ran across the field, took off my boots, rolled up my pants, and began to cross the river. I discovered that it was not in fact very shallow at all once you got about halfway out. Still, I managed the crossing with no difficulty beyond being in to my upper chest. (Later, the lady herself wandered down to see if I had returned to the mare, in company with a young woman. She said, the younger lady reported to me, "Wow, I guess I was wrong. If he crossed here, he got soaked.")

The next piece of bad information turned out to be "toward the highway." The river is crossed by a state highway about two miles north -- it is audible when the big trucks go through. Anyone who had the slightest sense would, therefore, have intended "toward the highway" and "north" to be the same direction.

However, the road this guy lives on departs the highway to the south, then turns west and back north again, but terminates before returning to the highway. It is shaped like the letter J, with the highway making the top line on the J, and this fellow living near the end of the curved line on the side heading back up toward the top of the J. Being the sort of person who buys a house in the country and then apparently never goes outside, he had no sense of direction at all. He meant that the horse was headed in the direction that, if you were going that way on the road in your car, would eventually lead to the highway.

In other words, south.

And the guy was long gone.

It took about fifteen minutes for me to examine the area and determine that there was no evidence of a northbound horse, and very strong evidence that suggested it was unlikely: dogs in the area, fences she would have had to cross, and an older gentleman who reported having not seen any horses. He might have been napping, but he seemed to be busy with a woodworking project.

Moreover, there was no obvious sign of where Mabeline would have emerged from the river. She isn't shod, but she is a big girl. There should have been at least occasional tracks, but nowhere by the crossing point were any such evident.

As she crossed by a point where the Etowah has confluence with a small creek, I determined she must have gone up the creekbed. Unfortunately, as you will doubtless know, creekbeds going away from the river and into the upcountry branch repeatedly. These are stony bottomed creeks, and it's been very dry lately, but there were a few places of soft ground that could be examined for tracks.

I eventually determined her route, but it took more than two hours, and the route led straight into empty country. Calculating how far she could have traveled, I figured I ought to let people know where I was going before I went after her. So, I hiked back to the nearest road (recovering the young lady, who had been dispatched by the owner's wife to search near the road).

Fortunately, someone had thought to notify the sheriff's department, and they had put the word out to local farms. It turned out she'd wandered up on one a good ways south along that route, eventually coming back out into the pasture of another farm down the way on that side of the river. They'd stuck her in a barn until they knew who she belonged to.

So that is how I spent today: crossing rivers and tracking animals, trespassing on all sorts of people's land. I didn't find the horse, but I did find her trail; and also the prints of deer, one young male bear recently in the area, and coyote; saw several live frogs and birds and squirrels; and met a kindly old gentleman at his woodshop. I also ran across a historic still, and a witch's house in the forest (I gather from her license plate, marked "CRONE," and all the Wiccan stuff around the house).

In other words, it was a great day. These horses should get lost in the woods more often.

Com Check

Com Check:

Co-bloggers, drop me an email. There are a couple of things I'd like to discuss with you, and I want to make sure I have everyone's email address so we can do it all at once.

Webb & Gun

Senator Webb and the Gun:

I must admit to serious disappointment in the judgment of Senator Webb's "possee," as the New York Times put it. I'm not so much talking about the question of hanging a trusted friend out to dry.

What I find inexplicable is that one of these two Former Marines selected a 9mm handgun as his defensive weapon. That is a direct violation of Rule 24.

Denial

Denial & Scapegoating:

The Hoover Institute has an excellent writeup on several strains of depature from reality in Western politics. Plus also one real problem that people are running from as fast as they can.

H/t: The Castle.

Welfare Reform

How Not to Reform Welfare:

A cautionary lesson from the Philippines:

A day-care center owner armed with grenades and guns held more than 30 youngsters and teachers hostage on a bus Wednesday, then freed them after a 10-hour standoff that he used to denounce corruption and demand better lives for impoverished children.

We'll be more convinced of your sincere desire to improve the lives of children when you don't threaten them with grenades.

Ducat, a 56-year-old civil engineer who has staged other attention-grabbing stunts in the past, then put the pin back in a grenade, handed it to a provincial governor, Luis "Chavit" Singson, and surrendered as Singson held his arm.

"I accept that I should be jailed because what I did was against the law," Ducat said in an interview with The Associated Press shortly before the standoff ended.

Really, even if this didn't happen to be against the law, I'd still want you jailed.

Readings on Senatorial Perfidy

Readings on Senatorial Perfidy:

The best overall post on the subject is Cassandra's, which demonstrates how cleanly General Petraeus, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Pace, were ignored. General Petraeus in particular said what he would need at his recent confirmation hearings; the Senate voted to confirm him, and then to deny him those same resources.

"We would have 45-day gaps, which would mean that part of a territory would basically be vacated to the enemy and ... you would have to fight your way back in," Pace said.

In other words, your elected representatives are playing political games with the lives of our troops, and they will pay in blood. People will die pacifying Iraqi neighborhoods, then be forced to leave and the insurgents will come back. Then our troops will return and die trying to drive them out again while the Democrats complain that the war is unwinnable. Keep this in mind the next time you hear them talking about how they 'support the troops'. Sure they support us - they support our right to come home in body bags if it helps sweep them into office in 2008.

If they really 'supported the troops' they'd either demand an immediate troop withdrawal now and face the consequences at the ballot box (face it, there is no reason for another American to die if they don't intend us to win this war, and when you read this bill, it becomes quite plain that is the one thing the Democratic Party will not countenance) or honor up and get behind the surge.

Is it fair to call it perfidy (or treachery)? I think it is, for the reason Cassandra cites: not because they are trying to end the war, but because they are leaving people in place to die, knowing full well they will refuse those people the support they need either to win or to hold their ground. We had a long discussion at (former-pro war, now anti-war blogger) the Commissar's place not long ago (co-blogger Eric Blair gets mentioned toward the end).

You can see from what I have said that I am not advocating that Congress may not re-enter the field; I do not argue that the President has authority to wage war forever, and they may not say otherwise.

I have said specifically that they may use their Art. I powers to rescind the authorization and demand an end to the war. That isn’t explicit in the Constitution, but I think it’s a fair reading.

All I have asked is that we not cut off forces in the field from their support. If we aren’t going to support them, we should bring them home. If we aren’t going to bring them home, we should provision them.

You say the political class owes them nothing, but I disagree. They are owed something by every American, and the political class most of all. They are the ones who, when called, answered. They are the ones who left home and family, slept in dust storms, who have bled and died in the service to the will of the political class.

If that debt goes unanswered, there will be a price to be paid by our society. I do not know, in all truth and honesty, how to begin estimating it.

If that debt is not merely unpaid but denied — if people come to believe, as you have suggested, that the debt does not even exist — the price will be higher. The faith of a people in their nation reaps a beautiful interest in every endeavor that nation undertakes. A failure of faith, especially among that class that might be willing to volunteer for service, likewise exacts a usury that our nation will be sorry to pay.

The Senate has chosen to ignore that debt of honor. It intends, instead, to leave men in the field, but cut off their reinforcements. This is a dishonorable act, and a failure of faith. This is not what our fighting men deserve.

"They are men who give service and loyalty to us. I will return their service by serving their interests; and I will return their loyalty with my own, as fiercely as they have given."

Not the slender majority of Honorable Men and Ladies in the United States Senate.

Ribs

On "Texas" Ribs:

Any recipe that calls for a Phillips-head screwdriver can't be all bad.

UPDATE: Six hours later, I can report that the recipe is a good sight better than "not all bad."

This sounds like an interesting book

This Sounds Interesting:

Boomsday, a novel in which younger people refuse to pay Social Security benefits for the Baby Boomers, on the grounds that (a) such payments would be ruinous, and (b) the Baby Boomers were probably, in aggregate, the worst generation in American history. Point (b), at least, is true -- but only in aggregate. Some of the best people I've known in my life have been Boomers, whom I'd hate to see cast into the Outer Dark of age without the help they've relied upon in their budgetary forecasts.

So, here's my own "modest proposal" -- let's individually take care of those Boomers to whom we feel a personal debt, either as parents or teachers or for other good reason. Otherwise, let's end Social Security with the last of the WWII generation. Any Boomers who neglected to serve the next generation well enough to have loyal friends in it can fend for themselves, since it was only themselves they were ever interested in to begin with.

I'd say that was a reasonable compromise.

CMSA

Grim's Been Quiet. What's He Up To?

Why, watching things go bang:



Click on that image and look at the 'tracers.' Those are the fragments of a wax bullet in .45 caliber, loaded into the brass for a .45 Long Colt. That cartridge is special in another way: no powder, but a shotgun primer. The result is an explosion with enough force to spit the wax bullet out and fragment it, but only to drive the fragments for a few feet.

That means you can bust a balloon with it, but it's no threat to anyone more than a few feet away. Just the thing for a bit of Cowboy Mounted Shooting.

If you're familiar with rodeo, this is most like barrel racing or pole bending. The difference is that you've got to unload two single action .45s while you race, with a five-second penalty for each missed shot.

It's a timed event, so riders get a move on:



There are ladies too, like this grinning girl:



The ladies competition is in a different class, but this is one of those sports where men and women can compete fairly closely. The best lady riders I saw ran only a few tenths of a second slower than the best men, but the gun penalties they incurred meant they were rated as having run five or ten seconds slower. Still, if they could manage the guns well enough to get a 'clean run,' they wouldn't have been that far off from the top scores.

Here's a picture of some of the tack for one horse, named for Forsyth County Georgia's own "Junior Samples" of stock car racing and Hee-Haw fame. Note the Yosemite Sam conchos:



Junior is a smart horse, which is why his rider didn't do very well. Roy Roger's horse Trigger was billed as "the smartest horse in the movies," but a smart horse is a danger. The problem is that they think for themselves, and come to conclusions about the proper course of action that are different from their riders'. As a result, they do something other than what you expect, which is a good way to get hurt.

All the same, with some argument, Junior finished his course.

It was an enjoyable weekend. No, I didn't do any such riding -- it was my first encounter with the event, and I have no horses trained for it. You want to be sure your horse is very comfortable with guns going off by his ears before you try to ride him in an event like this, I assure you.

Does seem like fun, though. Rodeo with guns. Not bad.

A Ray of Hope in Palestine?

A Ray of Hope in Palestine?

One of the reasons I support the democracy project in the Middle East is the idea that most peoples (broadly speaking), given the chance to choose their leaders, will not elect governments that support terrorism and aggressive war. Another is that, if any voting public does support these things, democracy gives the public a way to stop them when they tire of them. Any war stops when someone's will to fight ends: the Soldiers', the military leadership's, the civilian leadership's, or, in a democracy, the voting public's.

So far, the results in Iraq and Afghanistan have been hopeful in this regard. The depressing counterexample has been the Palestinian Authority. Given the chance to form whatever political parties they pleased, and vote as they liked, the Palestinians threw virtually all their support to Hamas and Fatah, terrorist parties both. Yesterday, James Taranto linked to this story about a new Palestinian party, one that supports Israel's right to exist, and does not demand the "right of return." This party is explicitly Islamic, and may draw support that secular centrists cannot.

I haven't seen much commentary on this yet, and of course this new party hasn't been tried in elections, but I call it a ray of hope.

Some Links

Some Friday Reading:

Steve Dillard, better known here as Feddie of the now-retired Southern Appeal, has a letter in the American Spectator. In it he explains why Fred Thompson is his candidate of choice for 2008. I still prefer Duncan Hunter, but I appreciate the introduction to a candidate I knew little about.

I recall that some of you are young, unmarried men who might be curious about what impresses women. Fuzzybear Lioness answers your question, once and for all.

The new webcomic links include some good reading. I've been going back through the archives of Schlock Mercenary. The 4 August 2000 strip is priceless.

Since we just watched Zulu, you might be interested in several links about the British in the Coalition, and vice-versa.

Zulu

Zulu!

So. What did you think?

I'll start with this: does it make any difference that Hook was really a model soldier? An excellent film that takes unfair liberties with the life of a good man is still a remarkable work of art: but is it a moral act to make such a movie?

Discuss. :) Plus anything else you like.

"Peace" Rally in Portland:

In the comments to a post by BlackFive's Uncle Jimbo, documenting an attack on an Army recruiting center in Milwaulkee, Papa Ray left the following link. It is to some pictures of so-called peace activists burning a US soldier in effigy. Also an American flag.

I don't hold it against anyone that they're opposed to the war, for strategic reasons; I don't hold it against honest Quakers and other pacifists that they find war morally awful. Too, I am sure these idiots are a minority among the people who were demonstrating against the war -- part of that professional class of agitator, I expect.

They're using displays of this sort to try and stir up divisions among Americans, so that some of us will be mad and some of us will feel obligated to defend the behavior. The minute somebody who wouldn't burn a flag or a soldier's effigy pipes up in defense of those who did, rather than see the pro-war crowd claim the moral high ground, that burning becomes a little more acceptable in American society.

Let's not give them that. I'll respect honest differences with decent Americans who oppose the war but love the nation; in return, let's unite in condemning these scum.

Bumperstickers

Bumperstickers:

Dr. Helen has a post on bumper stickers as personality tests. This reminds me of a story.

I once drove my wife's truck into D.C. for a meeting. On the way out of town, a woman on I-66 slammed right into the back of the truck. She wasn't paying any attention at all. It wasn't a hard hit, so I climbed out and glanced down at the bumper to see if it was hurt. No obvious damage.

That done, I walked back to the other car -- a nice Lexus SUV filled with nervous, well-dressed, overweight people -- and inquired as to whether anyone was hurt.

"What?" the lady driving asked, with fear-filled eyes.

It seemed odd to me that they were so visibly frightened by a minor accident, but I put it down to adrenaline. "Is anyone hurt?" I repeated.

"No! No!" she said.

"Then let's just forget about it," I told her with a smile, and turned around to walk back to the truck.

As I was doing so, I noticed the bumper sticker my wife, in a moment of oddball humor, had plastered right across the back:

KEEP HONKING -- I'M RELOADING.

I suspect that was a lot funnier with a little brunette driving, instead of me. :)

New Links II

New Links:

Karrde has sent me his list of links, and I've re-re-fixed FbL's link to Project VALOUR-IT. With this newest set of links, I'm starting to think we may need to break out a separate section of links to online comics. Maybe I should dig up the link to Foamy the Squirrel...