More vs. Less

I am sick and tired of all the continual arguments over whether we have too much or too little government. I think it's time we focused on making what we have work.

This is a "political essay" that I wrote recently when I was just writing freely in the vague hope that I'd get something out of it. It was too long to post as a meme and it lacked enough true focus to make it suitable as a blog post. But it proved difficult to edit down to a meme-able length, so rather than to just let it sit on my computer gathering digital dust I've gone ahead and put it up on the blog. (Obviously...you're reading it there.) I'll admit right up front that this isn't the most coherent thing I've ever written, but it is what is, so here it is.

Democracy is, by its very definition, all about the majority oppressing the minority. This sounds like tyranny...and when democracy works badly, it is. To prevent such excesses, we have adopted a type of representative democracy, or a republic, in which our elected representatives (in theory at least) act to represent our interests, not merely to do everything we say. Unfortunately, this imposes a kind of tyranny all its own, with representatives acting on their own cherished dogma or to benefit themselves financially and public benefit be damned.

This then is the vicious cycle of modern American politics. You cannot have too much government by representatives without the representatives thinking that the government belongs to them, not those they represent. They end up oppressing the people to serve their own interests. And you cannot have too much "government by the people" without the people oppressing each other over whatever differences, real or imagined, important or unimportant, never cease to divide us.

"Less Government!" is not the answer, partly because without the restraining hand of government to prevent it we would be brought back to oppressing each other, but mostly because there are things that need to be done that a government can do, should do, that if left to either the people or to "private enterprise" would either not get done properly or not get done at all. The mob has its own special kind of tyranny, and frankly I don't see us (we're the mob) as wise enough, not as a nation or as a group of people or as a group of groups of people, to avoid that kind of tyranny.

Nor is "More Government!" any better an answer. Being governed by the elected generally leads to being governed by government employees, who themselves are employed to do the work of the elected. These generally see themselves as being in the employ of "the government," not "the people," which in theory are one in the same but in reality have very different interests. Where the elected decline to rule, it is the bureaucrats who do the work; and they don't often need to worry about anyone seeing them do it.

And while the Left and the Right are fighting over whether we need less or more government, we are left with the government we have not working. I cannot believe that this was what the Founding Fathers wanted. They labored to create a government that could function under any conditions that might arise, but conditions have now arisen under which government simply can not function.

It comes down to this: there is no easy answer. It falls to each of us to try to craft the best government we can, and if we're going to elect people to govern us and in turn allow them to employ others to govern us then we have to keep them all, elected or otherwise, under close scrutiny even as we trust them to serve our best interests, lest they steel all the silverware.

The Blues Viking 

The opinions expressed herein are mine and if you don;'t lijke them you can get your own damn blog. 

"What's in a name?"

Our Venerated Iconic Leaders do not define us. Far from it; we often want to be nothing like them.

The big mistake that Conservatives make (one of them, anyway) is to justify their conservatism by wrapping themselves in the shrouds of Conservative icons such as Barry Goldwater, Dwight Eisenhower and their sainted Ronald Reagan. They fail to realize that the politics of these men is often at odds with the stated goals and ideals of "modern" Conservatives...often radically so.

Goldwater, for example, had a real problem with the intrusion of religion into politics, and said "Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [GOP] party, it's going to be a terrible damn problem." He also said something interesting that modern Conservative lawmakers should listen to, but won't: "Politics and governing demand compromise."

Eisenhower believed in feeding the poor, in Social Security, in labor laws, in farm programs, and he believed that Big Oil was trying to undermine these. He also spoke rather strongly against political extremism, which is something that the politics of today absolutely thrives on.

And as for Saint Ronald, whose name is guaranteed to come up in any discussion that touches on Conservative/Republican Superiority (and such conversations are ten-a-penny; you can't spend a day on Facebook without having or dodging half a dozen of them), the point on which he deviated the farthest from what is now the conservative norm is his stance on gun control. Reagan supported background checks and supported (signed into law, in fact) firearm restrictions that are considered nothing short of Liberal gun-grabbing by the modern Right.

But along with this particular set of political blinders, there's another position held by the Right, and one not without some historical justification: That the Left/the Democratic Party were not always the champions of the downtrodden that they claim to be, nor were the Right/the Republican Party always their foes. The problem with this view is that it treats the Left and the Democrats, as well as the Right and the Republicans, as monolithic entities who have always been, and always will be, what they are now.

The fact is that neither Conservatism nor Liberalism, neither Republican politics nor Democratic politics, have stood still. In fact, they have all moved considerably, and they have never moved in lock-step. The party of Lincoln was not the party of Nixon, which was not the party of Bush, which was not the party of McCain or Romney or Boehner. Nor is the Democratic Party still the party of Andrew Jackson, nor was that party the party of Franklin Roosevelt or that of John F. Kennedy or...well, you get the idea.

Ultimately, claiming kinship with such towering personalities from the past can be self-defeating, since the party of today would seldom look kindly upon the policies of its historic icons, and vice-versa. (And while I do see this in either party, I see it more in the actions and policies of the current Republican party.) It would be as incorrect to credit the modern GOP with Lincoln's great deeds as it would be to blame the modern Democrats for deeds done in an era when that party was so strongly influenced by the old Southern Democrats that championed Jim Crow and who had never gotten over the excesses of Reconstruction. 

We should never ignore our past or the words and actions of those who came before us, but we should never look into the past and say, "See? He's of the same party as me...I'm just like him!" because nine times out of ten we're not like them, would never want to be like them, would stand resolutely against anyone who dared to do or say such things now. We need to realize that our cherished historical icons were, perhaps, not the people that we want, even need, them to have been. We need to look at them anew, warts and all, and not ignore their faults or credit them with more virtue than they possessed.

Or, if your respect for history is so low that you can't let go of your idealized icons, then I suggest you go watch something on The History Channel about the aliens who built the Ark that rescued all the unicorns from Atlantis. You'll be happier.

The Blues Viking
The opinions herein expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.

The Continuing Plight of the Oozing Goo Creatures of Betelgeuse Four

This article was born during a night of insomnia and tends to be a bit rambling. This is what happens when my brain won't shut off and let my body rest.

Let us imagine a creature.

Let's say that it's native to Betelgeuse 4. (I have no idea if there is a Betelgeuse 4 but play along for a bit.) Let's call it the Oozing Goo Creature of Betelgeuse 4, not because it oozes goo but because it is itself made of goo that does tend to ooze. Quite a lot.

OK, now we've got the Oozing Goo Creature of Betelgeuse 4. Now let's say that it's intelligent. Not terribly intelligent, not a genius by any means, but smart enough to tie its shoes (if in fact an Oozing Goo Creature had any need for shoes, which it doesn't). Lets say that it can handle simple linguistic concepts like nouns and verbs and such, and let's say that it is quite happy in its Goo-friendly world, interacting with other happy Oozing Goo Creatures and happily doing whatever Oozing Goo Creatures need to do to make other Oozing Goo Creatures.

OK, got all that?

Now let's talk about God.

Now I don't believe that there is a God, but many of you do, so if you can also accept the existence of Goo creatures then you have to accept one of two concepts.

Either the god you worship does not consider Oozing Goo Creatures to be in any way inferior to you, or the god you worship considers either you or the Oozing Goo Creature to be superior. The latter concept is the more difficult to wrap one's mind around, since as stated it implies no prejudice but practically speaking most human people will opt to consider themselves the superior of the two. 

And therein lies the question. Are you capable of accepting a lump of goo as an equal?

While you're working that one over, let's expand things a bit. Let's say that the universe isn't just made up of people and Goo-people. There's the Stick Figures of Aldebaran 6 and the Falling Leaf Things of Proxima Centauri 3 and the Slime Molds of Ursa Major and the Infectious Fungal Choir of Rigel 5. Then there's the Really Tall and Attractive People of Wolf 359 and the Genius Supermodel People of Bernard's Star. Let's say that there's a universe full of all kinds of intelligent creatures, some of them dull and disgusting and easily dismissed as inferior, and others not so much.

Does this complicate the issue? Should this complicate the issue? Your basic choices are still the same: You can either accept them all as equals in the eyes of God (though I have never seen any evidence that God does in fact have or need eyes) or you can consider that some of them may be inferior in His sight and some superior.

The third option, the one I suspect most people will opt for either openly or secretly, is less supportable: that we are God's chosen, meant to rule over all, and all the rest unworthy of God's attention. (Or at least, unworthy of so much of God's attention that he might loose track of his Favorite People, the Humans.)

There is ample historical precedent for this. When Christian Crusaders first invaded the Middle East, they refused to recognize Muslims as human, and even went so far as to cook and eat them. (I'd hate to think that they ate them without cooking them...that would be uncivilized.) And during WWII, the Nazis slaughtered Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, and whatnot on a grand scale, going so far as to render their bodies for soap and making kitsch little knick-knacks for the home out of their tanned flesh. And all of these were people, and it didn't matter.

In a world where "man's inhumanity to man" has extended to such depravity, can we be at all sanguine about our attitude toward whoever/whatever we find in the Great Beyond? (And do I need a better example of "man's inhumanity to man" than the implied sexism of that very phrase?)

If, like me, you reject the whole idea of divinity then you don't believe in any ultimate reward or punishment, and the whole concept of God's displeasure doesn't even come up. For the rest of you, however, it's something you need to consider, and something you probably haven't given enough attention to.

Because in all likelihood we live in a universe full of millions of billions of trillions of quadrillions of "people" of shapes and designs that we can't even conceive of, people we may one day meet and interact with, and whether you believe in Divine Judgment or not there's always the judgment of these alien peoples, and we can't rely on a sympathetic judge or jury.

Which brings us 'round again to how we treat each other, all the other members of the human race that we consider inferior, peoples whose land we steal and whose homes we wreck and whose bodies we poison and who we allow to prey upon others of those we perceive as less than us. If you're someone that believes in Divine Judgment, then such judgment is something you should definitely be afraid of.

As an atheist, I believe that God is a concept of human invention, but I'm not going to try to sell anyone else on that idea. I am, however, going to explain a bit of what I believe. It seems to me that we created an omnipotent, omnipresent god back when our universe extended no further than we could walk in any direction. Creating such a god was easier then, because we had no concept of there being so damn much for a god to lord it over. And the more we learn of the universe, the larger our universe effectively becomes, the less the concept of God fits it. (Or perhaps the less well we fit the concept of God.) And I don't believe that a concept that needs to be periodically reshaped to fit the universe, as our knowledge of it expands, is a concept worth hanging on to.

Like I said, this article grew out of an inability to sleep and it's already morning. The sun is now fully up and the cat wants to be fed. And I need to give this "sleep" thing another try, if for no other reason then because my leg doesn't hurt when I'm sleeping. If I don't have much of an ending, remember that I started out without much of a beginning. There's certainly more I could say, but none that I am going to say. At least, not now. G'night.

The Blues Viking

The opinions herein expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.

The endless tunnel...

It's a bit odd, but my current health problems are contributing to the rebirth, or as I'm sure some would say after-birth, of this blog. It's easier to write a piece like this over the course of a day than it is to sit and do a bunch of memes. If the structure suffers a bit from the disjointed nature of my writing right now, so be it. I still feel the urge to produce something...anything...and right now this works for me. Enjoy. Or not. Whatever.

That we ended the Cold War without virtually exterminating each other is one of humanity's greatest triumphs, but that much of humanity still lives under the threat of nuclear weapons is one of its greatest failures.

Something came up today in a discussion of the old Cold War. 

'Tis said: "If a failsafe system fails, it fails by failing to fail safe."

Well, the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction came up today, and I was wondering: If Mutually Assured Destruction fails, does it fail by failing to mutually assure destruction? Or does that policy fail by succeeding in assuring mutual destruction?

Frankly, I always thought that guaranteeing the end of civilization was no way to prevent the end of civilization, but maybe that's just me...

And before someone says "Well, it worked, didn't it?" I have to ask: did it?

We, as a world dominated by two massively armed superpowers, collectively stepped back from the precipice and said, "This is nuts!" but the fact that we could have gone over at any time but didn't in no way negates the fact that we should never have been dancing that close to the edge. But now we have a world where the major nuclear powers, while no longer facing each other and saying, "Grrrrr...", still possess massive nuclear arsenals, are in a position to easily provide, if not the weapons themselves or the necessary fissionable material, the technical experts and know-how to produce the damnable things.

(I am not talking just about the threat of the evil that nations may do in the name of expediency, but also the evils that anyone may do in the name of Nation or God or Prophet or profit.)

Overall, the Arms Race and the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction that spawned it did not contribute to the safety of the world, or ultimately that of the two superpowers whose mutual mistrust fueled it. As it happens, though we managed to avoid blowing ourselves up before one of the superpowers collapsed, there are so many remnants of the Cold War about to make nuclear war a threat that our children will yet have to live with.

People forget, or never knew, the terrible threat of nuclear war. I grew up in an age in which the threat was very real. I remember duck-and-cover drills in elementary school and government-printed pamphlets on fallout and bomb shelter design and signs indicating where the public shelters were. "Civil Defense" was not just a concept to us. But all of this gave one the impression that a nuclear attack might be no worse than a tornado, and the information we were given was, in many cases, woefully inaccurate. (Seriously..."duck-and-cover" as a defense against nuclear attack?) I am so greatly relieved that we never found out how inadequate our preparations were, and at the same time terrified that so many people around the world may yet live to discover the true scale of the dilemma.

Nor is the nuclear threat the only threat we (and by "we" I mean all of us) face; the Cold War has left us a legacy of chemical and biological weapons as well as the science needed to create them and the frightening simplicity of the technology to deliver them. And, once again, the know-how involved is a readily traded commodity.

Americans are so damned relieved to have shaken off the threat of a nuclear war that they are all too willing to ignore just how real a threat it remains to much of the world. Worse, they don't seem to recognize that we, as the superpower still standing, present a threat (whether it's merely a perceived threat or a genuine one) to the smaller nations of the world, nations that may or may not already have nuclear weapons themselves but may be scrambling to get them. If we think that it makes them respect us, maybe it does...but it also makes them fear us. And frightened people can act irrationally. And, as I have pointed out, nuclear war is the ultimate irrational act.

We find ourselves in a tunnel that indeed seems endless, and if we all managed to get of the Crazy Train in mid-tunnel well and good but we are still in the freakin' tunnel! Do I need to tell you to beware of that bright light ahead?

The Blues Viking

The opinions herein expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.

"Say the secret word, and win a hundred dollars..."

The specter of religion is haunting me again. Well, 'tis the season...

Today's word is, "proselytize." Which the dictionary thingy on my computer defines thusly: 

"Convert or attempt to convert (someone) from one religion, belief, or opinion to another; advocate or promote (a belief or a course of action)."

I will never cease to be amazed by the number of people who think that their religion will make perfect, irrefutable sense to me if only they explain it clearly enough. Or perhaps slowly enough.

OK, one last time...

You may think that by flaunting my Atheism I'm disrespecting your religion. But while I freely admit, proudly, that I am an Atheist, I don't try to convert anyone to Atheism. I talk about it, certainly, and I make no apology for that, but I tend to avoid using my Atheism like a cudgel to beat you into submission and I do not proselytize. If I did, I would certainly be disrespecting your faith and you would probably find that annoying, to say the least.

Please recognize that I have enough respect for you to not try to convert you, and please have the same respect for me.

Yes, this is specifically aimed at a couple of people, and no it probably isn't you. (I've told them this was coming, so if I haven't told you that...) Not to any great degree, at least. But every time my life crashes someone thinks I need them to "save my soul," and it's getting tedious. Look to your own damn soul, people, and let me contemplate my own soul's nonexistence in peace.

If I'm to be expected to show some degree of respect for your faith, then please have some respect for my lack of same.

Oh, and by the way: Please don't try that old argument about how I should tolerate your proselytizing because it's what your religion requires: the Thugee used to strangle people because it was what their religion required, and I do seem to recall that the British were rather intolerant of it. In other words, that dog won't hunt. I'm not going to continue to put up with your proselytizing to my annoyance just because you say that this is what your God requires of you. I require a bit more respect from my friends.

Now, granted, I'm not going to mobilize the Indian Army against you: I don't actually have one, anyway. But I do have other resources...

The Blues Viking

The opinions herein expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.

This is no time for anyone to rejoice.

I don't claim to be any kind of authority on what the Republican Party should do now. The problem is, neither is the Republican Party.

My efforts to cease blogging have once again been thwarted by my long-winded nature, and once again I've written something that's just a bit too long for a meme. So it's another blog post for me. For you, too.

(A bit of background, if you need it: The Republican Party's attempt to hold the entire government hostage hasn't worked. In fact, it has failed dismally. The Republicans are looking for anyone other than themselves to blame, while the democrats are gloating. I can't speak for the Republicans, but the Democrats shouldn't be lighting the fireworks just yet.)

A friend posted a cartoon today on Facebook; a cartoon of a donkey serving an elephant that elephant's own ass on a platter. The symbolism was obvious, and I don't especially object to it; after all, that's pretty much what happened. (Actually, I thought that the cartoon was quite clever.) But the cartoon isn't what I wanted to talk about.

What I want to talk about is a comment that was made on that post. More precisely, I want to talk about an attitude that I see quite often now among people on the left, an attitude that I don't think serves either the Left or the nation. And at the same time I want to make an observation or two about the Right.

Along with the cartoon, there were a few "comments." And among said comments was this:

"I hope we can repost this after the 2014 elections. I hope the republicans get crushed to the point that they completely dissolve."

I responded, but I felt that my response needed a bit of clarification. So here we go. This is my (expanded) response:

Actually, I don't hope for that at all.

I've said that I hope that the Tea Party continues to boil until they float away in a cloud of their own steam, but that's just hot air on my part. In truth, I think that the US is best served whenever reasonable voices of dissent are fully given their forum, and fully participate in the government. Unfortunately, the Republican party of late has abandoned reason and instead has chosen to govern by forcing the government to deal with one manufactured crisis after another, reason be damned.

The thing is, this strategy hasn't worked (not this time, anyway). I'm sure that the Republicans thought that the Democrats would cave in like they've repeatedly done in the past, but this time they were buoyed by a President that finally said, "This far, and no further" and lent them the resolve they needed. I'm sure that the Republicans expected to win this conflict. I'm sure that the Democrats' failure to meet Republican demands sent the GOP reeling in disarray. And that's where they now find themselves.

(Please remember, this is a "card carrying" Liberal talking here. I really feel that the Republican Party, in all of the policies that led to this mess, was entirely wrong, but that isn't the point. The nation is far better served by a government of and by both Liberals and Conservatives. If a certain degree of mutual antagonism has evolved with the system, if not actually built into the system, then we also require a certain degree of cooperation to make it work. And while I see the Republicans as having been the more obstructionist of the two major parties, I can't hold the Democrats entirely blameless.)

The Republican Party's stance (and in particular the stance of the Tea Party Republicans), which started out to be over Obama's health care laws but morphed into something unrecognizable and formless as it became clear that the Republicans weren't going to get their way on health care, has cost this nation dearly. The phrase, "the full faith and credit of the United States" means far less today. But along with that, it has cost the Republican Party just as dearly. The approval ratings of the Republican Party are lower now than they have ever been. This debacle has put the Democratic Party within reach of controlling both the Senate and the House. (I don't think that's all that likely, but one more mess like this and that could change.)

But the worst thing about all this is the likelihood that they're going to try it again in a few months, when this "temporary" agreement to fund the government and suspend the debt limit expires. I can only hope that the Republican party abandons this costly and ineffective uber-confrontational practice, and sees that reasonable discourse is a far better way to achieve their ends.

But I don't think I'll hold my breath.

The Blues Viking
The opinions herein expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.


Oh, by the way, here's the cartoon in question:



EDITED on 10/19/13 because one damn sentence was bugging the hell out of me.

"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny..."

No politics tonight, no call to action, no liberal rants. Instead, a question: To what extent do we control our destiny, and to what extent does our destiny control us?

As you may have noticed, I don't blog much anymore. There are several reasons for this, none of which I am going to go into now. I prefer to do memes these days; if nothing else, they encourage brevity. But of late my memes have gotten longer, and this one just plain got away from me; my brevity has deserted me. So rather than edit the shit out of this piece, I decided to dust off the old blog. I suppose that in the future I'll continue to post memes to Facebook and occasionally post something to this blog, as the mood strikes me.  

We tend to use words like destiny and fate to excuse ourselves for the things we do that we are driven to do by our baser natures. When the consequences of acting on these natures would otherwise overwhelm our conscience, we tend to claim that such things would have happened anyway, that they are the result of forces beyond our power to control and we cannot be held responsible for them.

This is, of course, bullshit. We invoke such nonexistent "powers" to avoid taking responsibility for the consequences of whatever we felt we had to do to achieve an end, an end that we then claim as our destiny to achieve, regardless of means.

The truth, the truth that we so often deny, is that there are no "forces beyond our control" acting to create the harm that may result from our actions. Or rather, it is we ourselves that constitute a force beyond our control. And that's the problem; we do not control our actions because we have created the concepts of fate and destiny to excuse ourselves. In other words, we have no control because we refuse to take the responsibility for controlling ourselves.

If we are to wrest control back from whatever unseen nonentity to which we have surrendered it, we have to first admit to ourselves that we are solely responsible for our actions, that we are beings of free will and we ourselves must bear the blame, and make whatever restitution may be necessary, for any consequences that may arise from the things we do.

Fate and destiny, if they indeed exist, will happen whether we want them to or not. I have seen no evidence that anyone knows them in advance, and when people talk about them it tends to be as an excuse for doing something that is necessary to achieve their desire, hang the consequences, and whether they admit that desire or not.

Perhaps it is such desires from which we truly need to free ourselves. Perhaps the best way to avoid doing harm with our headlong rush toward this "destiny" thing would be to control, if not conquer, whatever desire is driving us. Perhaps we should let fate and destiny look after themselves; they will, in any case. 

The Blues Viking

The opinions herein expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.

"What's the buzz? Tell me what's happening..."

A quick word about the birds and the bees. Well, the bees anyway...

In case you haven't been paying attention, here's what's happening. Bee colonies around the world are facing a severe die-off that has been labeled Colony Collapse Disorder--a fancy sounding name for something that we do not fully understand. (And I never will understand the human need to properly label things that we only dimly understand.)

Must of you have seen the memes blaming pesticides ("neonicotinoids") or perhaps laying the blame on the principal manufacturer of such pesticides, most of which comes from Bayer (though Monsanto seems to be getting most of the blame, as Monsanto is actually inserting the stuff into seeds it produces, but mostly because they're Monsanto.)

Not surprisingly, the question isn't so simple as to have a single cause. Other causes, including viral, bacteriological, and parasitic causes, appear to be at least contributing factors in CCD and their role in the problem may be more important, perhaps even as important as neonicotinoids. (Probably not, but the possibility is certainly there and it would be foolish to ignore it.)

While neonicotinoids are certainly a major cause of CCD, perhaps even the major cause, they're not the only factor involved. Not by any means. What appears to be happening is a terrible collision of catastrophic issues, causing a sort of "Perfect Storm" supercatastrophy that we have labeled Colony Collapse Disorder.

That said, I favor banning neonicotinoid pesticides, since the consequences of banning them and then having such suppositions turn out to be wrong are inconsequential compared to the consequences of not banning them and having such suppositions turn out to be right. (My, that was a big sentence, wasn't it...)

The Blues Viking

The opinions herein expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.

Beepocalypse Redux: Honeybees Are Still Dying - and We Still Don't Know Why (Time)

90 Percent of corn Seeds Are Coated With Bayer's Bee-Decimating Pesticide (Mother Jones)

Nionicotinoid pesticides tied to crashing bee populations, 2 studies find (US News, March 29 2013)

Neonicotinoid on Wikipedia

Between Iraq and a Hard Place, or Syria's Moonlight

I am not really happy about doing another blog post; I thought I was finished with this. I was spending way too much time dealing with other people's expectations, and I thought that the best way to deal with other people's expectations was to not deal with other people's expectations. In a way, my attitude was much the same as what half of the American people seem to want of their government right now. So when I was asked directly how I felt about Obama and Syria, I was forced to confront said feelings in a way that defied posting in a meme. But I chose not to post that, and instead to simply answer the question asked.

I am not sure that what Obama is doing in Syria is right...the problem is, I'm not entirely sure it's wrong, either.

When nations behave in such a way that can only be called extremely reprehensible, is it the responsibility of other nations--all of them--to hold the offending nation responsible for their actions? And if other nations surrender this responsibility, does that relieve us (or any nation) of the responsibility to act? Do either of these points even apply here?

My problem is that I am not sure, and I cannot be more sure ahead of the UN Weapons Inspectors' report on the situation in Syria. Which could take weeks yet, by which time any punitive action on our part will lose the name of action. The Syrian government (or their military) may have, quite literally, gotten away with murder.

And it's not proper to say "we don't want to do this because we're tired of war" because Syria is unlikely to change their behavior just because we're tired of intervening in Middle Eastern conflicts. Nor is it proper for us to say "it is not our place to police the world" because it is the world's place to police the world, the world that we are part of, and our responsibility to do so does not diminish just because no one else is prepared to step up to the plate. 

Two questions simultaneously confront us: "Should we intervene?" and "How can we not?" You can't answer one without confronting the other, and frankly I am not sure how to answer either of them.

Obama is definitely between a rock and a hard place, but he wanted the job and he's going to have to live with the responsibilities. In his place, I cannot honestly say what I would do.

I vividly remember when we, as a nation, were led down the garden path by Bush II et al, into a war that had no true purpose, no clear goals beyond replacing a couple of unfriendly governments. That hasn't worked out so well. In the current case, I am at least encouraged by Obama's promises that our involvement will be limited, that our  ultimate goal is not one of regime change...but I am fearfully aware that history does not favor having him adhere rigidly to these self-imposed standards. That's the history of the office of President, by the way, not just Barack Obama.

It comes down to this: The People (that's all of us, by the way) elected Obama to use his judgment, and whether you agree with that judgment or not, whether you voted for him or not, we the people can do little more than hope that his judgment is sound. Regrettably, that is going to mean waiting for the judgment of history. And it is the nature of history that its judgment always comes after the fact, when it's too late to effect the outcome of anyone's actions.

Frankly, I am afraid. I am afraid that the US will be dragged into another war in the Middle East. I am afraid of undefined goals and dubious intelligence and of the Government acting on its own behalf and trying to fit their explanations to the facts later. In short, I am afraid of all the bullshit that GWB left us with. I can only hope that Barack Obama, while he looks more like George W. Bush every day, is still far enough from being GWB that he won't drag us all into the same sort of Middle Eastern perdition.

The Blues Viking

These thoughts are mine. Get your own.

A final word about blogging: I am no longer enthusiastic about it. I object to the fact that people were expecting me to perform, like some guy who cranks out awful, repetitive music while his trained monkey amuses the audience. If I wanted to be that guy, I'd have learned the accordion. Ohwaitaminute...

Yet another article that I never intended to write...

THIS POST HAS BEEN REMOVED.

Seen in the light of day, the things we did the night before often are revealed as less of a good idea than  they appeared to be in the dark. Last night's post came from a very dark place indeed, and upon reflection I think it's beast if I just delete the whole damn thing. Well, not delete exactly, but I have removed that post while saving a copy in case anyone who feels they have a need/right to see it wishes to (family members of the parties involved and such, and providing I agree that they actually have a need to see it).

Speaking of need...I needed to write that article and I'm glad I did, but most of you have no need to see it. I probably should have trusted my instinct not to post it. I apologize form any confusion this may have caused. Admittedly, my forbearance could have been timed more conveniently, but that is what it is.

My sincerest apologies to all. We now return you to you regularly scheduled confusion.

MSR

In other news, hell just froze over... UPDATED AND WITH A RETRACTION

UPDATE: 4-19-13 - As I'm sure most of you have heard, this legislation got its vote, and was defeated. More on that later; I am still too furious to be very coherent on that topic. 

But I need to point out that I have received some interesting email as a result of this post. Specifically, one email message that I would really like to respond to on-line. However, since it came to me as a private email message I don't feel that I can respond in public without that person's permission, on which I am waiting (but, be fair, I only just sent this person email about this). Stay tuned.

RETRACTION: 4-19-13 - One thing I will respond to is a complaint from one of my oldest friends, and I hope I can still refer to him as such. The comment was the "Valmet/postal worker" crack that I made toward the end. I heard from the former postal worker in question, and he objected to my attempt at humor. And well he should...in retrospect, I have to admit that it was thoughtless, tasteless, and damn near humorless.  Or, as I wrote to him:

"That 'Valmet/postal worker' crack of mine was done purely for a joke, albeit a tasteless one and at a friend's expense, and for that I sincerely apologize, both for this use and for any previous reference."

And to you, my readers, friends and otherwise, I do make a similar apology, both for my misuse of a friendship and for my horrible overuse of the comma, both in this sentence and the last, and as well in the next.

Against all odds, against the steadfast and bitter opposition of the NRA, against the wishes of some of the most hard-line Conservatives in Congress, and in spite of threatened filibuster, it looks like new gun control legislation is coming to a vote. It looks that way, anyway...but at least there's reason to hope it might be so.

Think about what this means. Specifically, think about what this means for the NRA.

For years, the NRA has stood as a stalwart bastion of gun rights for all Americans. At least, that's what the NRA wants us all to believe. In actuality, the NRA has continually taken gun rights positions that haven't been supported my their membership. With support for things like universal background checks running overwhelmingly high even among NRA members, the NRA firmly opposes them.

Clearly, the NRA is not responding to the wishes of its membership. Strange behavior for an organization that claims to be working on behalf of that membership. It has to be admitted that the NRA no longer concerns itself with its members; they have, in fact, become nothing more than a lobbying organization for the firearms industry. And until now, a very effective lobbying organization. Until now.

Now, their political control is slipping. Take the NRA's famous "rating system," where legislators are given a letter-grade indicating how NRA-friendly their voting record is. This "grade" is often used like a sledge hammer against pro-gun-control politicians, but of late is being used against legislators with a high NRA "grade," Republican or Democrat. This is new. Basically, if you're not campaigning in Texas or the deep south, having an "A" rating from the NRA isn't as likely as it once was to help a politician, and is often detrimental.

For years the NRA has relied heavily on those who would steadfastly support the NRA no matter what, despite that organization's unwillingness to actually represent its membership. As long as the NRA continued to favor the needs of gun manufacturers over gun owners, and as long as gun owners were wiling to put up with this, the NRA's dominant position seemed secure.

That appears to be changing. The NRA's membership seems to be waking up to the fact that the NRA's leadership is hopelessly out-of-step with its membership while being in lock-step with the firearms industry that it truly represents.

Example: Background checks. With every new poll on this issue, it becomes more apparent that most of their membership, as well as the public at large (80% to 90% of all Americans, as low as 74% among NRA members), supports universal background checks while the NRA itself remains utterly opposed to them. Of course, the NRA and pro-gun advocates say the polls can't be believed, but as far as I have heard they don't say it in any way that holds water.

I had a discussion over Facebook with a conservative friend (yes, I have conservative friends) who expressed the opinion that such polls could not be believed, since (as he'd read) such polls are conducted in urban areas where support for stricter gun control runs higher than in more rural areas. Leaving aside the fact that he provided no factual support for this position, and I don't know that he could (I have looked, and found nothing), I found his argument self-defeating. If the polls say that a vast majority of the people polled support a position, but you contend that that is only true in the limited geographical area of the survey, your argument falls apart if that limited geographical area encompasses most of the population.

(And, sadly, that's the most reasonable argument against believeing the polls that I have heard. But I don't watch Fox, I don't listen to Limbaugh or O'Reilly or Hannity or any of the other Conservative voices so prevalent these days...not regularly, anyway...and I'm willing to admit that there might be something out there that I haven't heard, some gem of wisdom that will convince me of the error of my ways and that all polls actually are products of the liberal-biased left-wing media. Unlikely, but hey it could happen...so if you think you can argue me out of my position, please give it a try. Post a Reply to this article (see the link at the bottom) or reply to my blog post on Facebook. Please. If you have a reasonable argument, I really want to hear it.)

Having the NRA "outed" as the lobbyists they are seems to have loosened their grip on Congress. I can only see this as a good thing, as gun owners and sportsmen haven't been truly represented by the NRA for a long time.

Oh, and before you accuse me of being a typical anti-gun liberal, I'll ask you to note that I haven't made one anti-gun statement in this article, not expressed one opinion that is in any way a threat to your second-amendment rights. I have, however, been very anti-NRA. The NRA would have you believe that that's the same as being anti-gun. I don't believe that.

I didn't even say that I thought new gun legislation was a good idea; I merely said that letting it come to a vote was a good thing. That having a public debate on this issue was a good thing. That letting Democracy work was a good thing. I never let on just where I stand.

Just to put the record straight, however, I am going to tell you where I stand. I am a gun owner and a recreational shooter. I currently own several rifles and a shotgun. I once owned a handgun, and I once owned what is commonly referred to as an "assault weapon." (COMMENT RETRACTED - SEE ABOVE) I support universal background checks and cannot see any reason to oppose them. I am less certain about an "assault weapon" ban but I think that may be an idea whose time has come, and if the majority want it then we should have it.

But, like I said, if you think you can change my mind by all means give it a shot. So to speak.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed herein are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.


Does the NRA Represent Gun Manufacturers or Gun Owners? (The Nation, December 2012)

Leffingwell says NRA members support background checks of all gun purchasers (PolitiFact)

Gun Owners Poll (Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, July 2012)

Mayors Against Illegal Guns will counter NRA grades of congresspeople with its own report cards (Daily Kos)

A Doctor Who moment...

Doctor Who may have been caught up in the intricate, mind-bending complexities of time and relative dimensions in space...but I was really in hot water.

Let me set the scene.

I was in my living room, relaxing with a cup of hot chocolate with my hearing aid in place, watching the season premiere of Doctor Who. The action on the TV had come to a particularly dramatic point; The Doctor and his new assistant/companion were facing a rampaging Wi-Fi-enabled robot threatening to download them, as all the lights in that neighborhood are being switched on while the lights in the rest of London are going out. Not to mention the out-of-control airliner that was heading right toward them. And over all, a high pitched sound can be heard, something between a scream and a train whistle, a sound that added significantly to the drama of the scene, growing in pitch and volume until it reached a crescendo just before the commercial.

Then came the commercial. And the screaming didn't stop.

I experienced a moment of near panic. What could be making that sound? My imagination raced to any number of fanciful conclusions while my rational brain immediately dismissed each in turn. (I may have been watching Doctor Who, but I wasn't that far into a Doctor Who mindset.) Still, it caused me no small amount of concern; just what was that sound?

My first rational conclusion was my hearing aid; under the right conditions, feedback in that device makes just such a sound. I reached up to the hearing aid and switched it off...and the screaming did not stop. I tore the hearing aid out of my ear. The screaming did not let up.

Starting to get somewhat frantic, I looked about my home seeking the source of the screaming. The smoke alarm didn't normally make such a sound; nevertheless, I pulled it from the wall and removed its battery. The screaming continued.

I checked the carbon-dioxide alarm. No, the CO2 alarm wasn't going off. I checked my computer; it was off. Thinking that something must be wrong with the TV, I turned it off. The screaming continued.

I wasn't standing on the cat's tail. My radio was off. My car wasn't running. And the screaming continued.

Something of a frenzy had by then set in. I began to knock things from the table to the floor and dig among the piles of cloths, books, papers, and old dishes in a frantic search for something--anything--that might be causing that sound. Nothing.

Then, just as my frenzy was giving way to a full panic, I burned my hand on the stove.

I had left the stove burner on.

The burner under the tea kettle.

The tea kettle with the whistle-thingy that was intended to say, "Take me off the burner, fuckhead, I'm boiling already!"

Damn, I am dumb...

The Blues Viking
The opinions herein expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled curmudgeon...

Approaching this blog again after such a long absence is rather daunting. 

As any of you who have followed my tribulations of late will realize, it's been a bad winter. For me, anyway. I haven't felt like blogging, so I haven't. For the last three months. I like short, fragmentary sentences. Like this. I really do. Honest.

I'm getting back into it, obviously. Here I sit at my keyboard, hoping inspiration will hit me and I'll be able to wow my dozen or so regular readers with my keen sense of political reality and my rapier-like wit. Well, I can dream, can't I?

By this time it should be apparent that I'm struggling a bit. I am faced with that old question: What the hell do I write about? You might think that I had accumulated topics of interest while I was busy enforcing my enforced silence, but you'd be wrong. In that cavernous void that is my mind, wherein I compose my thoughts before I commit them to the typewritten word (no, I don't actually use a typewriter) there are precious few new topics on hand. Most of what I find there are old issues that have been done to death, issues upon which I really have nothing to add, issues upon which I have continued to heap nothing until the nothing is so high my thoughts appear lofty. I am hesitant to do that again.

For example, there's gun control; a topic that both I and the nation have done to death but that no one seems to be tiring of. In the political world, it was generally accepted that following Sandy Hook this subject would burn brightly in the public square for a while, but would soon run out of fuel (as it had so often in the past) and politicians could go back to taking soft money from the NRA and doing nothing about what the public actually wanted. That isn't happening now; the fire is still burning. Maybe that's because the NRA keeps throwing fuel on it. I think people are finally waking up to the fact that that the NRA is no longer primarily concerned with the rights, the needs, the desires of its membership; that it has become a bunch of lobbyists for the firearms industry and is doing their will. But all this has been said before, time and time again, and adding my voice to such a discordant cacophony will not help.

(Extra points to me for using a redundant tautology. No extra point for that one, though.)

Another example: gay rights. I'm not sure I have the credentials to speak about gay rights, not being gay myself. That hasn't stopped me in the past, but in  reviewing my blog archives I find that I haven't often spoken on this topic. I did once comment on California's Proposition 8 (at the center of much of the current controversy) as a constitutional issue, but beyond making a general statement of support for gay rights I have been mostly silent. Again, as I am not gay myself I'm not sure how much relevance my comments would have; all I can do is reaffirm my support of gay rights and say that I stand with them in their struggle (damn, that sounded condescending) and since I just did that... (I have changed my Facebook profile pic to one of those nifty "=" thingies; a pathetically small gesture, I'll admit, but a sincere one.)

I could always talk about Congress' inability to get anything done, and this is something that hasn't yet been talked to death (it still hasn't died). I could talk about how the Republican effort to oppose and/or veto literally everything has completely stalled government and turned the democratic process into a grotesque parody of what the Founding Fathers intended, that this isn't helped by the unwillingness on both sides (but honestly I see it more from the Right) to give up enough to reach a compromise on any issue, that our fates are being determined by ideologues who are more concerned with serving their ideologies then they are in serving the public (a situation far from ideal), but I don't see any way to get a joke out if this so I'm not gonna.

There's always the "fiscal cliff;" I could do an article about having gone over it, a sort of "view from the bottom" thing. The problem with that is that we're still falling, and we won't know how badly we've injured ourselves until we actually hit those jagged rocks we've been promised. So that one will have to wait.

Then, of course there's a trick I've used in the past to get around writer's block; just to sit at the keyboard and type free-form in the hope that something coherent and article-like might come out of it.

No, that'll never work...

The Blues Viking
The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.

The Defense of Accordions Act of 2013

Yes, I know, I’ve been away from this blog for months; I’d say “I’ve been busy” but the opposite is the case. You don’t need details, and I really don’t want to give them, so I’m going to start out with a subject near and dear to my heart…accordions.

I had a ruder-than-usual comment about the accordion today. Not about my playing itself…this person has never heard me play, nor do I care to play for them…but about the accordion in general. Actually, I don’t think this person knows that I play one myself, and I really don’t take their comment as a deliberate insult, but I think it deserves a response.

Here’s what was said: (paraphrased a bit) “Why would anyone play the accordion? It’s not like it’s a musical instrument or anything.”

No big deal, really; I make rude accordion jokes myself all the time. Quite known for them, in fact. Usually when I get something like this I just take it as the good-natured comment it was intended to be. Besides, most such comments come from people I know well and get on with, and they’re people I know and that I know wouldn’t say anything deliberately rude or hurtful. And, in truth, this was hardly hurtful.

But I must admit that that “not a musical instrument” crack, coming as it did from a near stranger, got to me.

Look, if you don’t like accordion music I’m not going to try to convert you. If you just can’t stomach the sound of the thing, nothing I can say will suddenly make you love them and I’m certainly not going to try to accomplish that. I am not going to engage in such a fruitless exercise. Tell ya what I will do, though…

Below are three web links to Youtube videos of a guy named Remco Sietsema. He’s from The Netherlands and, you guessed it, he plays the button accordion. Well. Very well, in fact.

(Yes, I already posted a clip of Remco to Facebook; in that clip he was playing beside Mark Söhngen, another accordionist from The Netherlands but one that favors Cajun/Zydeco music.)

All I ask is that you give at least one of these a listen. Just one. (Unless, of course, like me you just have to hear them all.) Once you have done that, I challenge anyone to claim that the accordion isn't a musical instrument. I challenge anyone to claim that the sound it makes is not musical. If you don't like it, fine, you don't like it; there's a lot of accordion music that I can't stomach, either. But once you've listened to it, I dare you to call it unmusical.

And before you ask...no, I can't play like this. There aren't many that can. I am not in Remco's league; if I may extend the baseball metaphor a bit, Remco is in the All-Star game and I am barely playing sandlot. 

But enough about me; here's Remco Sietsema.

"All That Jazz," a jazz improvisation 

"Reggae Improvisatie"

"African Rock"

And, for good measure, here's that Cajun jam with Mark Söhngen that I posted to Facebook a couple of days ago.

If you still don't like the accordion, fine. If you can't abide the music, or the instrument, or anything else about it, fine. The accordion may indeed be the Rodney Dangerfield of musical instruments ("...It don't get no respect! No respect at all!"), but do not sit there and tell me it isn't music.

(Oh, and those accordion jokes, memes, and pictures? Keep them coming. If you haven't noticed, I post a lot of these myself.)

We now return you to your regularly scheduled political ranting.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.

(ADDENDUM: I should add that Remco Seitsema has a presence on Facebook; I've been to that page but it's mostly in  Dutch and no one in my family has spoken Dutch since the British showed up in New Amsterdam with their guns, saying "Right, you lot; you're all British now an' we're callin' this place New York!" Here endeth the history lesson.)

Guns, guns, guns...

I haven't been blogging for a while, as you may have noticed. My car is down (no brakes) and I don't have the money to have them fixed professionally but I've got an old friend of my brother's working on them, as and when he can, so they're coming along slowly. In the mean time, I am going stir-crazy just sitting in the house staring at the TV all day. Or sleeping all day, which is what I've been doing since noon. I didn't hear about the President's proposed gun-control measures until just now (almost midnight) so I only just saw what he'd proposed. (Thanks to Chris Simmons for posting to Facebook a piece from the Wall Street Journal outlining what Obama has called for.) (Damn, that was an awkward sentence...)

I haven't heard any comment on this, from either side, but here's a couple of thoughts. (The synopsis of any of the President's proposals comes directly from the Wall Street Journal article.)

Mostly, it's nothing much beyond common sense, and centered mostly on making background checks easier and more uniform. I don't have a problem with background checks, but most of the Right seems to. They believe that any background checking will only lead to more information in their secret government file, which will be used eventually to take their guns away. Oddly, the Right has called for keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill; how they expect us to identify the mentally ill without checking the mental health background of gun buyers I haven't heard explained.

This I like: "Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign." I remember when I was a boy (nine or ten I think) I attended a gun safety course held at a local high school. It centered on resoponsibility, both for the gun user and the gun owner (though everyone in the class was far too young to buy a gun). It was informative, fun and not in the least anti-gun. Doing something like this on a national scale strikes me as a very good idea. I expect the Right to scream, "Political indoctrination!" at this proposal, but having been through such a class I don't feel the least bit politically indoctrinated. Since the idea has only just been proposed, their fears are as yet unjustified. It seems to me that the best way for the Right to keep this campaign from becoming overly political would be for them to become involved in the process, having some say in what the proposed campaign eventually becomes, but they appear to be more interested in knee-jerk condemnation than participation.

Something that I also expect the Right to object to: "Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations." I expect the Right to object to increased Police interest in their guns' histories. Even if the government is only interested in the guns recovered after they've been used in a crime; I think that the Right will claim that we should all fear what the government will learn about the movement of guns in our society. They're right, of course; that's the whole point. I don't have a problem with that.

One thing is sure to cause problems: "Nominate an ATF director." Even with the Republicans blocking every Presidential appointment as a matter of policy, blocking the appointment of an ATF director at this juncture will be hard to justify. The matter is made worse by the general distrust of the ATF that exists in the public mind (and that distrust has been well and truly earned, it must be admitted). But it seems to me that the ATF cannot be controlled without a director who can be held accountable to the legislature and the people; how can the lack of a director possible accomplish that kind of control?

This brings us to the most interesting point: "Provide incentives for schools to hire resource officers." I'm expect one of two things to happen because of this; either the Right will rise up in defiance over this unwarranted intrusion of the government into the lives of our children, or they'll rise up in celebration of their winning this point since armed-guards-in-schools was what they wanted all along. But rather than embrace their victory, I expect most of them to adopt the former stance. They're like that.

(While we're on the subject of the Right, does it bother anyone that I seem to be increasingly referring to the Right--and note the capitol R--as a monolithic entity? It bothers me.)

There's also a lot in this about mental health. I don't really have a problem with any of this; I think that mental health, like the mentally ill themselves, is a topic too much ignored by American society and I applaud the effort to alter this.

But the elephant in the room is the call to return the assault weapons ban to American law (also large capacity magazines and such). This is the thing that the Right seems most afraid of. They claim all sorts of evil and frightening things that this ban will bring on. But we had such a ban from 1994 until 2004; essentially the same ban Obama is now supporting but with a few more enforcement teeth. What I have to ask the Right is this: which of those "evils" came about after the 1994 ban? How was the nation damaged by it? Didn't the previous ban prove that such a thing is something we can live with? Until the Right addresses these questions, I don't see how their position can be taken seriously.

(On an historically correct note, it must be said that the previous assault weapons ban, while not as terrible as the Right claims, wasn't terribly effective either. It didn't do all that much to make such weapons unavailable, and it didn't do all that much to stem crime, according to most sources. That's why I don't much care if this part of the bill doesn't get through the House, as it may not. I think the rest of Obama's proposals are far more important. I do support such a ban, as I don't see any legitimate reason for ownership of them, but realistically I cannot expect great wonders to be performed buy it.)

One item that I have a problem with: "Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence." I'm not sure that this is a proper  use for the CDC. I'm not sure that the CDC's resources should be expended in this fashion. Nor do I think that they're the proper entity to perform such a task.

What I really do like is the speed of all this. Obama had originally called for a report from Vice President Biden outlining the situation and position options, to be delivered no later than the end of January; last week Biden promised something no later than the fifteenth. This took the Right by surprise; their anti-Obama media blitz was barely rolling. But then Biden beat that new deadline and delivered his report yesterday. The Right was caught off guard again. Obama could have taken a few days to mull it over, but he didn't. He delivered his position today.

Predictably, the Right is fuming, screaming "Tyranny!" to anyone who'll listen. But since most of this screaming is being done through their standard media outlets, Fox News and their legion of bloggers and paranoid web sites, they're mostly screaming at each other and not acheiving much. Most of the rest of us are saying, "Look at those people screaming!" without taking much note of what they're screaming about.

Like I said, I expect the reaction to the President's gun proposals to be downright nasty and not a little unreasonable. I have come to expect this of any gun proposal, and of any proposal made by Obama. I do note that every Right-wing site or blog that I've checked says that the more "controversial" of these proposals, like the assault weapons ban, will never get through the Republican-controlled House. But these are the same people who said Obama would never win a second term, so they can hardly be considered authoritative. In spite of my doubts, however, they may be right. In any case, it's going to be a fight.

The Blues Viking
The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.


List: Obama's 23 Executive Actions on Gun Violence (Wall Street Journal)

Why gun groups say 'no way' to assault weapons ban (U.S. News)

Pushback on Obama's plan to stem gun violence (CNN)

Was the last assault weapons ban effective? (U.S. News)

The Big Lie of the Assault Weapons Ban (Los Angeles Times, 2005)

Some truth from the Right, some inflammatory rhetoric from the Left...

...and yes, I just said that.

As some of you may know, I'm in the habit of fact-checking articles that other people post to Facebook.  Mostly Right-leaning articles, I'll grant, but that's just because most of the people I know hereabout are Conservatives and that's what Conservatives post.

So when a conservative friend of mine posted a link to a blog called Guns Save Lives, I was expecting more of the same. Which I got...and which I didn't get.

The article was titled Iowa Columnist Says NRA Should Be Labeled Terrorist Organization an Its Membership Killed; I just assumed that it was more Right-wing exaggeration and didn't take it seriously. But I looked into it.

The article was far better than most of its ilk, being well supported with full in-context quotes from the Liberal anti-gun piece in question, even if it started out a bit colorfully. (Well, it's a blog post after all; what else did I expect?) It also linked back to the original article in The Des Moines Register.

So I looked at the article in The Des Moines Register.

There I found a piece by Donald Kaul, a semi-retired former regular columnist at the Register. I read his piece carefully, and compared his piece to what had been written (uncredited - no author was given) at Guns Save Lives. I used Google to try to find other opinions, and while I got numerous other hits that merely repeated what Guns Save Lives had posted (usually verbatim) I also found an link to this story at MSN.

(I also read the original source on the Right, which was of course Fox News. While I found the Guns Save Lives blog post to be well supported and mostly free of inflammatory rhetoric, exaggerations and standard criticism of the "Liberal Left-wing media," I cannot say the same of the article from Fox. The blog post read more like a news story than the piece from Fox, supposedly a news agency, which read more like a typical Right-wing blog post. Fox: if you're going to expect to be taken seriously as a news source, we expect better of you.)

(That was the obligatory Fox-bashing that I am required to do as a Left-wing blogger.)

To be frank, I expected to find what I usually find when fact-checking articles from the far Right: crap. I expected to find that the Right-wing blog post was yet another example of the Right being long on rhetoric but short on facts, as most such far-Right blogs tend to be. What I found was unexpected: Donald Kaul really did say those absurd things, really did call for the NRA to be labeled a terrorist organization, really did call for the NRA to be outlawed, and as for calling for the killing of NRA members...well, I'm going to give Kaul the benefit of the doubt and assume that he didn't actually mean what he said, but that's what he said.

(Here's a choice cut or three from what Kaul actually wrote, quoted directly from The Des Moines Register: "...I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner...to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light....If people refused to give up their guns, that 'prying the guns from their cold dead hands' thing works for me....And if that didn't work, I'd adopt radical measures." I shudder to think what Kaul would call a "radical measure.")

Yes, there is a point that I'm trying to make here, and this is it: Extremists ultimately serve no one but themselves. Whatever your cause, it isn't helped by pandering to the extremists who happen to share your values. Calling for murder or mayhem isn't going to endear anyone to your cause. (No one you want to endear to your cause, anyway.) I'm talking about Liberal extremists, Conservative extremists, Muslim extremists, NRA extremists, and anti-Muslim or anti-Liberal or anti-Conservative or anti-NRA extremists. All extremists. But wait, there's a catch...

I could say that it's time to expunge the extremists from the national debate, but this is a free country and extreme opinions, like all opinions, are protected by our Constitution. And rightly so. Like it or not, even extremists have a voice in the national debate and I am not going to advocate taking it away from them. Our country prides itself on the fact that everyone has a voice; that's free speech. But calling for murder (if that's what Kaul was doing) isn't free speech, it's suborning murder. And no one has a Constitutional right to suborn murder.

Free speech is a tricky thing. On the one hand you can say anything you like, but on the other you can't use speech that is intended to cause deliberate harm. The rule-of-thumb is: You can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, just to cause a disturbance.

And that's the problem: you could argue, to use the right-to-bear-arms issue as an example, that the violence in our society constitutes a "burning theater" and you have a right to shake people up by yelling "Fire!" But the law says otherwise: It's how a reasonable person would interpret your actions that determines whether you are within your rights to yell "Fire!" And I don't see a reasonable person saying that the theater is burning.

And I don't see a reasonable person saying that Kaul's remarks are themselves in any way reasonable.

Just to let you know where I'm coming from: I'm not anti-gun by any means. I come from a long line of hunters. I've owned rifles, shotguns, an automatic pistol, a black powder revolver, and even an assault weapon. (Depending on how you define "assault weapon;" it was a semi-automatic 5.56-caliber Valmet M56, built on the venerable AK-47 pattern and capable of taking 30-round magazines as well as a drum. I sold it to a postal worker.) I do support reasonable restrictions on the ownership of some weapons, including what are generally called "assault weapons." I don't consider such restrictions as the first step on the slippery slope that will have us all sliding inexorably toward banning all guns. If we are on that slope, the first step was when Og told Grunt that Grunt couldn't bring that club into Og's cave.

It's as a card-carrying Liberal that I write this: Donald Kaul is an extremist, and his extremist writings came awfully damn close to breaking that shouting-"Fire"-in-a-theater rule; the article in question was ill-considered, ill-worded and, frankly, made me ill.

In this case, a Right-wing blog was absolutely right.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Kaul's original article: Kaul: Nation needs a new agenda on guns (Des Moines Register)

The pro-gun blog post in question: Iowa Columnist Says NRA Should Be Labeled Terrorist Organization and its Members Killed (Guns Save Lives)

Their source article from Fox: Des Moines Register publishes gun-ban column advocating dewadly violence against NRA, GOP leaders (Fox News) (Well, be fair: they did.)

Columnist calls for repeal of 2nd amendment, razing NRA (msnNOW)