Gun Trusts

Gun Trusts

A friend has come to me for help setting up a gun trust. There are lawyers, I know, who specialize in this kind of thing. I wondered if anyone here had ever done one. As I understand it, the idea is that some kinds of weapons or associated paraphernalia (in this case, specifically, noise suppressors) are so restricted in their transfer that it can be a good idea to put title in a trust whose multiple trustees are the whole group of family or close friends that are likely to be using or even temporarily possessing the weapon. Use of a trust also makes some aspects of the initial licensing process more convenient.

This sounds like a skill I need to learn. Perhaps we all have someone special in our lives who would like to receive a gun trust for Valentine's Day.

Angels & Devils

Angels and Devils

From Neal Boortz via the always reliable Maggie's Farm, this clip from "Family Feud," where I guess the setup is that they ask 100 people in a shopping mall how they would complete a common phrase, and the contestants win money if they guess the most common answer. Here, they're asked for "something that you would be likely to pass around," and two contestants offer a suitable and an unsuitable answer. How do you stack up against mall-going America, readers?

Luxuries

Luxuries

The Maine Family Robinson site continues to serve as my own personal mouthpiece, in "10 Luxuries We Don't Do Without." Well, that is, except for the part about TV, which I still watch, so sue me. I'm really liking the new show "Justified," for instance. How can you go wrong with Timothy Olyphant and Elmore Leonard?

But about luxuries, Greg Sullivan recommends things like a real fire that doesn't use an on/off switch, sleeping according to one's need for rest, and actual food. His kids, he says, "aren't rousted like vagrants and put on buses before the sunrise because it suits the public school teachers." They wake up when they're rested, and then his wife starts to teach them.

You Just Maht Be a Historical Revisionist!

In the 1950s and '60s, there were still states that outlawed birth control, so I started funding court cases to challenge that. At the same time, I helped sponsor the lower-court cases that eventually led to Roe v. Wade. We were the amicus curiae in Roe v. Wade. I was a feminist before there was such a thing as feminism. That's a part of history very few people know.

- Hugh Marston Hefner

Or maybe it's just a part of history few people will admit.

Birth control, abortion, no fault divorce, the sexual revolution: these are the four horsemen of the American apocalypse. And we all know who is to blame for these blights on traditional morality: feminists. We know that because we see feminists blasted 24/7 on conservative blogs. So let me ask those of you who are so sure that all of society's ills can safely be laid at the door of women's liberation: when was the last time you saw a conservative blogger taking Hugh Hefner to task? Surely if we regret admitting these four horsemen into our midst, we ought to recognize that feminists were hardly the first - or the only - ones holding open that barn door? They were hardly the only ones to advocate free love at the expense of marriage and fidelity:

Hefner’s friend Burt Zollo wrote in one of the early issues:

Take a good look at the sorry, regimented husbands trudging down every woman dominated street in this woman-dominated land. Check what they’re doing when you’re out on the town with a different dish every night...Don’t bother asking their advice. Almost to a man, they’ll tell you marriage is the greatest. Naturally. Do you expect them to admit they made the biggest mistake of their lives?

This was strong stuff for the mid-fifties. The suburban migration was in full swing and Look had just coined the new noun “togetherness” to bless the isolated, exurban family. Yet here was Playboy exhorting its readers to resist marriage and “enjoy the pleasures the female has to offer without becoming emotionally involved”—or, of course, financially involved.

What fuels the selective outrage against feminism? Is it principle, or personal pique? Keep in mind that Playboy began bashing marriage in the 1950s - years before Betty Friedan wrote the book that launched second wave feminism. No fault divorce and Roe v. Wade were still decades away and birth control was still illegal in many states. Yet somehow, evil feminists found a way to go back in time and brainwash poor Hugh. Who knew they had such power? His Their message was a simple one: chumps settle down with one woman and raise families. Real men demonstrate their sophistication and manliness by ducking marriage and wallowing in commitment-free sex:

According to the writer, William Iversen, husbands were self-sacrificing romantics, toiling ceaselessly to provide their families with “bread, bacon, clothes, furniture, cars, appliances, entertainment, vacations and country-club memberships.” Nor was it enough to meet their daily needs; the heroic male must provide for them even after his own death by building up his savings and life insurance. “Day after day, and week after week the American hubby is thus invited to attend his own funeral.” Iversen acknowledged that there were some mutterings of discontent from the distaff side, but he saw no chance of a feminist revival: The role of the housewife “has become much too cushy to be abandoned, even in the teeth of the most crushing boredom.” Men, however, had had it with the breadwinner role, and the final paragraph was a stirring incitement to revolt:

The last straw has already been served, and a mere tendency to hemophilia cannot be counted upon to ensure that men will continue to bleed for the plight of the American woman. Neither double eyelashes nor the blindness of night or day can obscure the glaring fact that American marriage can no longer be accepted as an estate in which the sexes shall live half-slave and half-free.

The "slaves" in this utopian manifesto were married men and traditional family life was the enemy of happiness and fulfillment.

This is not to say that second wave feminism, which became prominent well over a decade after Playboy began touting its siren song of self uber alles, did not have its own part to play in the dissolute and rootless culture we live with today. But to blame feminism first and foremost is to put the cart before the horse. Looking back at the world Hugh Hefner and his cronies worked so assiduously to destroy (and conservatives praise so long as no one expects them to adhere to the "prudish" moral code that made it possible), one can't help but wonder at the blind folly of human nature:

It was a world largely constituted by what he calls “desire”—desire chastened by deliberation, restrained by prudence, constrained by self-respect and rendered noble by a concern for the welfare of others. Since the 1960s, thanks to “the democratic project”, we have lived to an ever increasing extent in a world constituted by what he calls “impulse”, passion liberated from restraints and constraints, unchastened and utterly irresponsible.

The founders we love to quote understood the difference between freedom and license. They also understood that without personal responsibility, freedom is short lived.

What if feminism were only one part of a sweeping shift in morality that was fed by many sources: the civil rights movement, activists like Hugh Hefner who funded landmark court cases and worked tirelessly against traditional morals and traditional marriage, progressives who sought to maximize individual freedom while transferring individual responsibility to the State? And yes - feminists?

What if life didn't lend itself to simple answers where the other guy (or gal) is always - and conveniently - at fault? There's no question about it: we live in Hef's world now. If only I could figure out how those durned feminists got him to do their bidding.

Free Space

Free Space:

Skip to about three minutes in -- past the familiar ranting about the problems of large government agencies, and to the part where he begins talking about what private actors are doing right now.



That's some good stuff.

Fair

Be Fair:

The man says, "I didn't raise taxes once." PolitiFact says that's false.

Be reasonable, now. There must have been once that he didn't raise taxes.

Park, Out of The

Park, Out of The:

Dr. Althouse puts one over the bleachers. She has a couple of other posts on the subject as well, but that one is a very strong point.

Impossible

"Impossible"

From the NYT:

It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal.

Well, no. "Impossible" is clearly right out. The point is that the... ah, discipline... that you participate in is untethered from reality. I believe that was T99's point from a day or two back.

That doesn't imply that nothing it says is ever of any use at all. It does suggest that we ought to be very careful in granting it standing -- only in special cases, or on especially good evidence in a particular case.

GOProud

Sarah Palin & GOProud:

I don't care if anyone goes to CPAC, which garners no interest from me in the first place; but the question of how conservatives (in general) should relate to homosexual groups (in general) is a good one. Sarah Palin provides a fairly moderate suggestion.

[P]erhaps what it is that you’re suggesting in the question is should the GOP, should conservatives not reach out to others, not participate in events or forums that perhaps are rising within those forums are issues that maybe we don’t personally agree with? And I say no, it’s like you being on a panel shoot, with a bunch of the liberal folks whom you have been on and you provide good information and balance, and you allow for healthy debate, which is needed in order for people to gather information and make up their own minds about issues.

I look at participation in an event like CPAC or any other event, along, or kind of in that same vein as the more information that people have, the better.

That seems reasonable to me. You're all familiar with my own positions on the two largest "gay" issues, gays in the military and gay marriage; obviously I'm opposed to both. The reasons for being opposed are different in each case, but have to do in both cases with the bedrock status of the institution. There's a great deal of room for social experimentation in America, but that room lies within the walls guarded by the military, kept firm by the family. I must oppose anything that appears to weaken either institution.

That isn't a condemnation of homosexuality -- for example, there are probably a lot of extraordinary people who nevertheless have no business in the military. To say that they do not have any business in the military is not to condemn them as human beings. By the same token, to point out that their unions are not creating new kinship relationships across generations is merely to state fact, not to condemn what they are doing. It is a bedrock feature of my philosophy that there should be room for many different kinds of human beings.

One might argue that Christianity requires us to condemn homosexuality; I am not sure that I agree. There seem to be two approaches to this argument, both of which are doubtful. The first is the clear condemnation in the Old Testament; but it is not clear to me that the Old Testament's laws for the Jewish people are meant to apply broadly to all humanity, rather than being supplanted by the Great Commandment for Christians.

The second approach argues from St. Thomas Aquinas' three part test for sexuality: that there are three goods that God intended sexuality to fulfill, and therefore the moral kind of sex will be that which fills all three. These are: (1) generation, (2) a deepened union between the man and woman joined as 'one flesh,' and (3) mutual pleasure, which is a good of a lesser kind. Homosexuality clearly cannot fulfill the first two (being neither capable of generation, nor a tie across the sex divide that would allow deepened understanding between a unified man and woman), and the first of the three is given special importance by Aquinas.

The logical error here is this: if a thing is "good" in the eyes of God, then it is good. If mutual pleasure is the only good being achieved, still it is a good! Aquinas may be correct to say that the best kind of sexuality will achieve all three -- that seems correct to me. It does not follow that the only good kind of sexuality will do so. As long as greater goods are not being set aside in its favor, I'm not convinced that logic requires us to condemn it from these principles.

In any case, this is the long way around saying: by all means let us speak with people with whom we have some disagreements, and other agreements. In some sense that captures all of humanity, none of whom will agree with us about everything -- I suspect that several of you will disagree with me just over the material in this post! Yet I regard you still as my friends and companions, and think it is an excellent thing that we should debate and discuss both what we agree upon, and what we do not.

What Am I Missing Here?

This is a question for the men, but perhaps also for the women (because I'm inclusive and tolerant like that). What is the deal with men complaining that they don't get to have everything 100% their way anymore?

Once upon a time, the world belonged to men.

Literally.

Because men had exclusive power in both private and public life, they controlled their surrounding environment and the way in which space was designed and decorated. Consequently, the world was once a very masculine place.

Fair enough. I'd say a world where women are actively excluded from most public spaces could fairly be called "a very masculine place". It's lines like this that send me scurrying for the nearest liquor cabinet:

... we’ve made progress in the area of gender equality and women have brought their influence to bear in both the home and the workplace. However, as with many other areas of modern life, the pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other;...

Has it really? Funny - I would have sworn on a stack of Betty Friedan novels that the polar opposite of: "Once the world belonged to men" isn't "... but then we decided to share". I would have thought it was something more like, "Now the world belongs to women.

Except the world doesn't belong to women, does it? We don't control everything, or even most things. Come to think of it, I can't think of a time in history when women ever held "exclusive power". I can't think of a time when we could exclude men from the workplace, from commercial businesses, or from voting booths. The truth is that Mr. McKay has never actually experienced the 'opposite extreme' of this metaphorical pendulum. Things haven't moved to the other extreme at all, but rather to some middle ground between one pole that has persisted throughout most of human history and an opposing fantasy scenario none of us has ever witnessed.

That middle ground, apparently, can be a bleak place:

...instead of creating a world that’s friendly to both male and female space, we’ve created one that benefits female space at the expense of male space.

It seems remarkable to this wife and mother that men gave up absolute control over the world peacefully. This is a thing that hasn't happened often in our history - confronted with demands from women that men give up some of their power and share control over the world we both live in, men decided (for whatever reason) to do so voluntarily. I would hope that every man who loves his wife or mother or sister - every man who has young daughters - would rejoice at this miracle that was accomplished, not at the point of a sword but at the ballot box.

The truth is that no one is keeping men out of the workplace. No one is keeping them out of bars. As McKay admits, women were first accepted in bars during Prohibition. When it was over, no law forced bars to continue admitting women. For over 30 years my husband has had his hair cut at a barbershop. Never, even once - in any state we've lived in - has he elected to patronize a unisex salon. But more importantly, never once has he had the slightest trouble finding a barbershop. If there were sufficient demand - FROM MEN - for single sex hair establishments, there would be more barbershops.

Likewise, single sex gyms have largely given way to co-ed ones. The success of Curves (which, by the way, is nothing like a full service gym) is a testimony to the free market's ability to meet the demand for single sex workout emporiums... as is the rise of male-only gyms like Cuts and Blitz.

As a woman, I can't begin to imagine what it must be like to marinate in nostalgia for some magical time when the law of the land guaranteed me the "right" to exclude one half of humanity from places of employment. And while I don't much care for forcing legally mandated inclusiveness upon private organizations that accept no public funding, I can't help noticing that the bulk of McKay's examples involve neither force nor operation of law, but rather gradual shifts in public sensibilities: the inevitable changes in outward form that follow changes in the function of our social institutions.

No law today prevents men from negotiating private space in their own homes or spending their leisure time with male friends. Men (and now women, too) have full access to the courts and the voting booths. They have both the freedom and the ability to influence and even change the laws we live under. In today's world a man is even free to, as one of McKay's commenters so aptly phrased it, "act without consideration":

The decline in male space also correlates with a decline in male empowerment. I am 52 and my father did whatever he wanted without consideration of my mother. I get to do about half of what I want with my wife disallowing the other half. My sons will I am afraid get to do nothing they want, unless it includes and is approved by the wife.

Question for the day: are we talking about empowerment? Or entitlement?

Martyr

A Martyr:

This is the kind of thing that might make you question the mission in Afghanistan; but the man himself should be seen for the inspiring figure he is, in spite of the circumstances.

National Debt

National Debt

Assistant Village Idiot's son's friend has produced a 90-second video about the national debt as part of a contest. You can watch all five of the videos that made the finals and vote for the one you like best. His son's friend's entry is winning so far.

Superbowl Ad

Superbowl Ad:

I imagine you've all seen this advertisement:



It reminds me of a story. Way back when my son was one year old, my parents bought him a toy remote control tractor. He was much too young to understand about remote controls, or to have operated it in any case, but he liked the tractor so they bought it for him. For about two years, he played with that tractor toy as you would play with an powerless toy car.

So one day, when he was about three, I got out the remote control and stood in the kitchen. I watched him play with it for a while, and then when he backed away to do something else, I had it follow him. As soon as he turned to look, I stopped it.

Then he started forward, and I had it back away. He said, "It did do it!" Then it followed him around the room for quite a while, before I showed him how it worked.

I suspect the rest of his life has been a disappointment after that. We live in a world where there isn't much magic left, and people seem resolutely determined to drive out what remains. These people are blind, and have missed the true story: everything we think we understand is really magic, and is hiding secrets we don't yet dream of behind its mask.

Catholics & Mormons in the Lead

Catholics & Mormons in the Lead:

That sounds like the introduction to a joke, but it's the thesis of an article by a jealous evangelical Protestant. He argues that there are two reasons: theology for Catholics, and culture for Mormons.

It's an interesting question.

Dolor Occultus

Dolor occultus

An article that takes up where the recent expansion of the official list of psychiatric disorders left off: Asymptomatic Depression: Hidden Epidemic and Huge Untapped Market.

The author proposes a binary approach to diagnosis and treatment. If the patient acknowledges depression, he is treated with drugs that have a variety of unpleasant side effects, the severity of which convince him of their power to alleviate depression. If the patient does not acknowledge depression, he is diagnosed with "putative axiomatic biochemical imbalance" and treated with the same drugs, until the side effects induce a more classical presentation of depression symptoms, after which he can be treated as usual for depression.

H/t Maggie's Farm

Wikileaks & Public Service

Wikileaks & Public Service:

Although the transfer of secret diplomatic documents to Wikileaks was an act of treason, it is not the only betrayal that the episode has revealed. The betrayal of our British allies by this administration does not quite rise to the level of treason, since we cannot commit treason against any country but our own. Nevertheless, it is shocking to the conscience.

The Obama administration plainly dislikes the British, but the rest of us Americans have warm regards for the mother country. We had our disputes at first, but have been strong allies since coming to terms on our independence. That is reasonable, as the British idea of freedom and human liberty -- not the French doctrine, which served as the root of so many of the early democratic movements -- is the root of the American ideal. We have often fought together in defense of our mutual ideals, across many wars and the entire world.

How Bad is This?

How Bad Is This?

Georgia is my home state, so when I see a political story located here I have to take notice. What a doozy this one is!

Georgia Republican state Rep. Bobby Franklin (of gold-standard-wannabe fame) has introduced a bill to change the state’s criminal codes so that in “criminal law and criminal procedure” (read: in court), victims of rape, stalking, and family violence could only be referred to as “accusers” until the defendant has been convicted.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee says:

Burglary victims are still victims. Assault victims are still victims. Fraud victims are still victims. But if you have the misfortune to suffer a rape, or if you are beaten by a domestic partner, or if you are stalked, Rep. Franklin doesn’t think you’ve been victimized. He says you’re an accuser until the courts have determined otherwise.

To diminish a victim’s ordeal by branding him/her an accuser essentially questions whether the crime committed against the victim is a crime at all. Robbery, assault, and fraud are all real crimes with real victims, the Republican asserts with this bill.

Rep. Franklin surely is aware that the crimes for which he believes there are no victims are disproportionately committed against women—and are disproportionately committed by men.

It is a reasonable point that the victim of a rape has suffered emotional damage, and the court should give attention to the question of not inflicting further damage. It's fair to ask that the court use language that will not cause insult or offense.

Where I differ with the DLCC is here: that interest in protecting the victim has to be balanced against the bedrock legal principle of presumptive innocence. That may be of particular importance in cases where one of the questions before the court is whether a rape did, in fact, take place -- either because of disputes about consent, or questions of whether or not there was really sex at all. The court has to be careful not to prejudice the jury in either direction. If those interests cannot be balanced completely, shouldn't we err in favor of the bedrock legal principle that is protecting someone who is in jeopardy of losing freedom or life?

Perhaps not! There may well be cases when the presumption of innocence is a facade that no one can really keep up; frequently in criminal court everyone is quite sure of the guilt of the accused because of numerous past offenses. In those cases, the court may do the minimum necessary to keep up the facade for the sake of the jury, and no more than is required. Certainly in cases where there is no dispute that a rape occurred -- where the accused is merely disputing that he was the one who committed it -- it would make no sense to force the court to refer to the woman as "an accuser" rather than a victim. In cases where there is reasonable doubt, though, and where the fact of the rape is in dispute, it may be necessary for the court to consider the issue of language to ensure a fair outcome.

The issue is surely a complicated one; it is probably best be left to the discretion of the judge, rather than handled with an across-the-board legislative remedy. I agree that this attempt is clumsy and ill-advised. I'm not convinced that the motivating sentiment is immoral, or that a bill aimed at this matter should be taken as prima facie evidence of bias against women.

Permitorium Hell and Waiver Heaven

"Permitorium" Hell and Waiver Heaven

Laws that theoretically allow citizens to conduct their lawful business, but in fact leave the regime's political enemies exposed to the the whim of a bureaucrat who can refuse to grant a permit. Laws that theoretically compel all citizens to adopt an unpopular and ruinous course of business, but in fact leave the regime's political friends a loophole via waivers. None of it is consistent with free citizens co-existing with a properly limited government.

Look at the flap over the Planned Parenthood videos. People who believe in the importance of granting young women unrestricted access to what they call "reproductive healthcare" are alert to the dangers of imposing too many regulations on abortions to minors, such as parental consent requirements. Over-regulation in that context clearly undermines the essential freedom guaranteed by the law, right? Imagine how they'd react to the idea of a law "guaranteeing" the right to abortion by either subjecting it to a permit process, or outlawing it subject to the possibility of a waiver.

Lottery

The Lottery:

A voluntary tax on the stupid, it has been called; but that may be too strong. It is merely a voluntary tax on the innumerate. Just how much this is true is revealed by the statistician who broke the code:

After analyzing his results, Srivastava realized that the singleton trick worked about 90 percent of the time, allowing him to pick the winning tickets before they were scratched.

His next thought was utterly predictable: “I remember thinking, I’m gonna be rich! I’m gonna plunder the lottery!” he says. However, these grandiose dreams soon gave way to more practical concerns. “Once I worked out how much money I could make if this was my full-time job, I got a lot less excited,” Srivastava says. “I’d have to travel from store to store and spend 45 seconds cracking each card. I estimated that I could expect to make about $600 a day. That’s not bad. But to be honest, I make more as a consultant, and I find consulting to be a lot more interesting than scratch lottery tickets.”

So, in other words, if you're good enough to beat the lottery? You can make more money doing honest work.

A Pheasant Pie:

Served with a good brown ale.