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...

Daniel

Howdy All,

I thought I would share a picture of the family as, even in a virtual hall, it's nice to know who your 'speaking' with.

Shelly, myself, Kaitlin, Emily, & Barrett

Decreased Violence. Moral Progress?

Decreased Violence. Moral Progress?

Division of Labour quotes from and links to a New Republic article (full article requires subscription) by Steven Pinker (I don't mean to subscribe but I'll see if I can find the print article this evening). The subject is a decrease in violence documented by "recent studies" - which I also mean to look for and look at when time allows. Right now I just wanted to provide the links to readers here.

This is obviously interesting in light of the opinion, shared by Grim and Daniel, that moral progress has not occurred and is not even possible. Something has changed our civilization from one in which cat-burning and bull-baiting were popular sports, into our own; something has changed slavery from a universal custom to a universal crime; something has changed our expectations of Soldiers, from predators to protectors. Perhaps these writings will improve our understanding of what that is.

This is interesting on the first half, of whether moral progress has occurred. The second half, of whether it can, will I think become moot as we learn to remake the species. But that is another story.

New Links

New Links:

Note please that the websites for Soldiers Angels and Project VALOUR-IT have changed. The sidebar has been updated with the correct information (under "Support the Troops").

Also, Joe's favorites section is now available. Karrde still hasn't sent me his. :)

Yep

Charcoal-Grilled Steaks:

Not just my menu from yesterday (plus Guinness, of course, given the holiday), but also the topic of a humorous article by Daniel Clark. I'm not familiar with the gentleman, but I will have to read more of his stuff.

The latest point of emphasis in the global warming movement is that cattle farming endangers the planet by producing too much methane. So now, steaks and hamburgers are classified as instruments of destruction, along with large vehicles, lawn mowers, and charcoal grills. It can't be much longer before cowboy movies, cigars and hockey are held to be enemies of the earth as well....

Wouldn't it be more plausible if a few items like styling gel, latte makers and tofu were said to destroy the planet as well?

The author has some valid points to make about the coalition-structure of the modern protest industry. There are quite a few people now making their livings doing this, and have been since the anti-free trade protests of the 1990s.

Thus, the global warming movement seeks to repress guyhood in order to perpetuate itself. If a guy is shown a picture of a sad-looking polar bear adrift on an ice floe, his first thought will be something like, "I've heard that bear steaks are tough, but maybe if you marinated them in beer, they'd turn out all right." At that point, the alarmists' emotional ploy is foiled.

Oddly enough, I've never eaten bear steaks. I think it may be one of the few edible animals I haven't eaten, either here or in China.

I like my elk steaks, and my venison, marinated in beer, fresh garlic, and hot pepper (cayenne or something simliar). If it's really tough, get a hotter pepper -- the acids break down the muscle fiber, but most of the "heat" of the pepper will cook out.

Wars of the Roses Trilogy at ASF

Wars of the Roses at ASF

The Alabama Shakespeare Festival has decided to show, all in one season, Shakespeare's plays dealing with the Wars of the Roses.

The problem this presents is simple enough - Richard III, the last play in the series, is one of Shakespeare's most popular; Henry VI, Part I is one of his worst and least popular (Joan of Arc is the villain). But showing Richard III by itself is dramatically incomplete, because the main characters all appeared in the previous two plays, and are continually making reference to them. Laurence Olivier's movie solved the problem by lifting a few speeches from Henry VI, Part III and simplifying the plot somewhat. The ASF solution was to collapse the first three plays into two, which they call "Henry VI, Part A" and "Henry VI, Part B." This evening, Mrs. W. and I went to see "Part B." It starts roughly in Act IV of Part II. There is some cutting and simplifying, but the best speeches are all there and the events make sense as presented.

I do recommend the production to those in striking distance of Montgomery - I would not cross the country to see it. Most of the performers pull it off. The costumes are a little strange (in particular, when fighting, the characters wear very obvious "white" and "red rose" emblems on their breasts). As of March 18, tickets are still available to all three plays (to talk to the box office, you'd think the productions were all packed; but we saw plenty of empty seats). I strongly recommend against attending the "bard talk" half an hour before the show; it contains very little to help a newcomer understand the play, the tone is condescending, and, worse, has a jolly-you-along flavor that detracts from the tragedy.

17 Mar

Happy St. Patrick's Day:

I've a post at BlackFive on the subject of an old song.

Ides of March

The Ides of March:

Today was my grandfather's birthday. He's been gone for quite a while now, long enough that I'm not really sure which birthday it would have been for him -- somewhere in the nineties. I'm going to put on his old Stetson, and repost a piece on the glory of Westerns from back in 2004. You'll see why.

Times change. The cowboy doesn't. While our culture might sell out; the cowboy stays true to his values (and his horse). Rock stars, rap stars, movie stars come and go--loudly. The cowboy remains--quietly. When our children watch the Twin Towers crumble on CNN, they worry for our security, our future, our very foundation. The cowboy represents that foundation, that self-reliance, survival instinct, and integrity. We know that he'll ride out of that dusty ruin and survive, and with the grace of God he'll get the cattle to Amarillo. There's a little bit of him in every American. That's why we need him.
John Fusco, Screenwriter; Hidalgo

My father liked to watch Westerns when I was a boy. He was a big television watcher when he was home, which was only on the weekends. His job had him up and gone before the sun rose, and the only time of the year you'd see him before sunset was the summer -- because the day was longer in the summertime. On the weekend, though, he'd be at home, working at home and car repair, and serving as a volunteer fireman, instead of doing his regular job.

He would usually find some time on Sunday afternoon to watch some television. The TV was always on when he was home, and it would usually show one of three things: a football game, a NASCAR race, or a Western movie. These were dependable features.

I had no time for Westerns -- I very much preferred Star Wars movies, more progressive, not mired in the past. We lived out on the edge of civilization, it seemed, although I knew that there was more civilization if you just kept going: run far enough from Atlanta and you'll hit Chattanooga. But there was a large swath of country that lay out beyond the uttermost suburb where you'd find cattle country and timberland. North Georgia ground isn't very good, so other forms of farming don't work well. But you can raise cattle, and you can raise short needle pine for pulpwood. This all felt very far from the action, to a boy; I recognized Luke Skywalker's complaint about being on the planet farthest from the bright center of things, and greatly admired Han Solo.

So, I would usually leave my father to his Westerns. I still spent a fair amount of time with him when he was home, though, helping him work on the cars and with other tasks around the property. He spent a lot of that time telling stories, one right after another. Almost all of them were about growing up with my grandfather, who had run a body shop and service station for long haul truckers on I-75. In the imagination of youth, it sounded a great deal like Mos Eisley: there was a cantina filled with dangerous, armed men where my young father sometimes had to go to get and carry back family friends, and which produced occasional fights and drawn guns. Hot rods as finely tuned as any starfighters had occupied my father's free time as a young man. Freightliners paused there to gas up, seeming like smugglers, hauling over their limit, often running on amphetamines as much as gasoline. High stakes poker games ran in the back, while mechanics fixed up the rigs in the bays.

In the center of it all was my grandfather, a great and heroic figure, always armed with his revolver, so fearsome that none of the dangerous men who occupied the fringes of the story ever dared to trouble him. This part of the story I knew to be perfectly realistic, for I'd met the man myself. He had no exact Star Wars comparison. Star Wars would have been a different movie with "Jack T." in it. He was big, and strong, and fearless, hard-drinking but not controlled by the whisky, dangerous but kindhearted to the weak. He took care of his family and his friends, kept the peace among those who were passing through, and ran off the ones who wouldn't abide by his rules.

I always wanted to grow up to be just like him. He was the best man I'd ever heard of or met, so I thought as a boy.

Of course you've realized by now what kind of movie features a man like that.

You never know, with stories, exactly how much is an expression of the great archetypes. A lot has been written about Star Wars archetypes: Han Solo the pirate, Obi-Wan the Wizard, Luke as the Young Hero. The most resonant fiction is built on these archetypes, which speak to the depths of the human heart.

It happens with true stories too, though. Jack T. was the Sheriff, or the Marshall; but the Sheriff in the Western is also the King. Like all of these archetypes, he can be good or bad. The Bad King is a tyrant. The Good King keeps order in the world, upholds and cares for the weak, looks out for the poor, drives off the vicious. He has the power to punish and to pardon, which is seen in every Western: the bandit is run off or killed, but the harmless town drunk is endlessly forgiven and helped in his times of particular adversity.

The world can be violent and cruel, filled both with lawful and the lawbreakers. But the stories tell us that it can also be a good place, a happy place, if there is a good King. If this is the story of the Western, it is also the story of the Beowulf, whose time as king is peaceful in spite even of the existence of dragons. His death brings wild mourning, and the folk expect both death and slavery to follow, even though the dragon was slain.

Americans don't want Kings, but we still need the man even if we don't want the office. We want a free-born man, chosen by his equals rather than by his birth -- and in this, it happens that we are following precisely in the footsteps of the Geats, whose kings were elected by the folk.

I inherited my grandfather's Stetson after he died. I wear it often, when I don't wear my own. I carry a revolver, legally and licensed in several states. I find, when I have time that I don't have to spend working, that there's little I want more than to settle in with a good Western. In this, I am just like many Americans, apparently including Doc. We are seeing in our own way the same, ancient things:

It was decidedly cool for Houston, a harbinger for the frost that would set in that night. Anyway, I was walking along in the cool of the evening with a Justin cowboy hat on my head, and Alice on my hip, when I looked up and I saw a most amazing sunset. It was all gold and burning over the rooftops. Little broad streaks of copper and gold clouds fixed high above in a sea of ultramarine blue, while I was drowned beneath in a cool breeze. It was just gorgeous. I paused from my errand for a minute, awed by a beauty that must have awed man in discrete moments throughout the ages, from ancient Greece to a greek eatery in modern Texas.

In the end, I suppose I did turn out to be just like my grandfather. I'm old enough now to know that he wasn't exactly the man who was painted for me. Having become him, I can see only too clearly some of the flaws he must have borne, which now I bear.

Also, I realize -- not quite too late -- that Jack T. was not the best man I've ever known. My father is. I wanted to be like his father not because his father was better than him, but because his father was the man he most respected and admired in the world. All I wanted was for him to respect and admire me just like that.

If the stories proved not to be completely accurate, they were nevertheless perfectly true. I may not always succeed at being a good man, but I know how. I know how to be a good man because my father told me. He told me about his father. Now I have a son, and I have to tell him. Nothing can capture the value of this gift, or the weight of this duty. I have heard only too often the laments of those who did not receive what I was given, who do not know how to pass on what I must.

The Western is our national epic. It is the way in which Americans, the ones who still remember how, pass on the eternal truths to the next generation.

Happy birthday.