- Are mass shootings due to “entitlement culture”? Don’t say it; we all know they’re due to the individual murderers. And yes, the article is anti-gun in a so-soish sort of way. Nevertheless, interesting article that makes good points.
- Beware, beware of the “commonsense” cry to prevent the mentally ill from owning firearms. ‘Cause since 2013, crazy has been the new normal.
- Twenty photos that put the Holocaust in a different light. (H/T Y.B.b.A.)
- That DEA surveillance program I linked in the last post? It is/was aimed in part at gun buyers. Even the usually anti-gun ACLU is alarmed.
- The anti-
Second AmendmentFirst Amendment crowd wants Emily Miller to be fired. Sign the petition to say no to this crass attempt to silence a journalist. (H/T 12) - “Je suis Charlie” — except when it suits Mr. Zuckerberg to be otherwise.
- At what age do creative minds peak? Subjective, of course. But still fascinating.
The entitlement culture… Well, that’s a start. Lots more to it, of course. As I’ve said so often, the “culture” of accepting external authority rather than self ownership and self responsibility is what spawned the “entitlement” thing, and so much more.
If you want to get an in depth treatment, read the book by Thomas Szadz called “The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct . http://tinyurl.com/baddjar
Well, I spelled that wrong. Thomas Szasz… tricksy fingerses.
Finding Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) — an ironic acronym, that — through the internet begs the question of how they go about finding it.
All ISPs and computers would have to be monitored for usage, all websites monitored for traffic. Would all psych (and doctors’) offices have to be hooked into their patients’ computers and phones? All schools hooked into students’ mobiles, tablets, and phones? All businesses hooked into databases? (All church-goers hooked into God?)
Of course we know this is what they’d like, and are planning, and trying to put into practice, starting with databases. A universal Village — shades of “The Prisoner”.
My head reels with the implications…
Pat, two things to consider there. One, there are a whole lot more of “us” than there are of “them.” Therefore, such monitoring and tracking isn’t even remotely possible without some level of cooperation and even approval from those being tracked and monitored. Once people truly accept self ownership, that none of “them” have any legitimate authority, the problem will begin to unravel. “They” can’t actually do anything “we” don’t let them do in the long run.
I agree that the ultimate “wish list” for government is the type of omni-surveillance you describe, Pat. (ML’s reference to The Prisoner is chillingly apt.) But I don’t think that’s (yet) the point.
More likely a few “sticking out nails” come to the attention of a few government hammers, then those get labeled with the imaginary mental illness of the week. Or people under emotional stress seek help — and find themselves in a database, labeled with spurious “disorders.”
I think the long-term scenario (at least where victim disarmament is concerned) goes like this: impose universal background checks for gun buyers; extend the definition of mental illness until it covers the majority of the population (especially those dangerous white males!); make sure everybody’s health records get fed into central databases; voila! a huge number of harmless people become prohibited persons.
Of course there are plenty of other benefits for government in having vast percentages of the population considered “sick” or “disordered.”
Well, I’ve been reading too much news lately, I guess; I don’t have much faith in “us” any more.
The WH/bureaucrats, etc. don’t give a S**t, they go right on doing what they please, daring the rest of us to object; Congress is having so much fun fighting itself, it can’t see anybody else in the picture; some of our own alleged “allies” (e.g. gun-rights groups) compromise daily, giving the enemy constant hope and renewed energy; so much is going on behind our backs by the Alphabet Kids (FBI, ATF, DEA, CIA, IRS, NSA, etc. ad nauseum) that we’ll NEVER learn about and don’t have the power to stop when/if we ever learn. You get the picture. I’m just thinking that databases and designer diagnoses are the first step; the rest will follow suit over time.
It’s been a bad day here, cold and damp and grey. Maybe I should just shut up and go to bed.
Read something today which I hadn’t previously heard about the concentration camp system.
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/01/27/ugly-precursor-auschwitz-hitler-said-have-been-inspired-us-indian-reservation-system
In re. ODD, among the symptoms:
Yep, that’s a problem, right there, alright.
Oh, as long as I’m responding, I enjoyed this response to the viral speed-archery thing that’s going around. I saw one of those videos probably over a year ago, and thought the speed was impressive. Other than that, I hadn’t much thought on it at all. But I’m not an archer. I sometimes think I ought to learn it though. Post-SHTF, if it comes, that’d be a valuable skill.
I left this comment on the first article:
——
In a population of 300 million imperfect individuals, you are going to have an occasional example of someone running amok – along with many examples of other kinds of not very desirable behavior. What bothers me is not these low probability events (we might as well worry about getting struck by lightning) but the tendency of people such as the author to want to “fix” people. People are what they are, and should be left alone to live their own lives. They don’t need fixing!
“What then, is the common denominator to which all forms of socialism are reducible, and what is the bond that unites them against natural society, or society as planned by Providence? There is none except this: They do not want natural society. What they want is an artificial society, which has come forth full-grown from the brain of its inventor… They quarrel over who will mould the human clay, but they agree that there is human clay to mould. Mankind is not in their eyes a living and harmonious being endowed by God Himself with the power to progress and to survive, but an inert mass that has been waiting for them to give it feeling and life; human nature is not a subject to be studied, but matter on which to perform experiments.”
— Frederic Bastiat
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Thanks for linking those 20 photos, Claire.
I don’t care about license plate readers, or classifications of mental illness, or any of the rest of that crap. All I care about is taking some of the bastards with me if they decide to attack me. Kinda simplifies things…
The main aim of government databases is not to collect information, but to make people fear the ruling class. Don’t do it.
a huge number of harmless people become prohibited persons.
I presume you define “harmless” as people who aren’t a threat to other people, and not people who aren’t a threat to the government.
In re. ODD, among the symptoms:
Wait until one of the symptoms of ODD is “Wants to possess weapons.”
One point from the entitlement essay:
“As the saying goes: ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter.’”
No. Wrong. Freedom-fighters do not purposely blow up buses full of children, or steer plane-loads of civilians into tall buildings, or cut the heads of people who disagree with them. Terrorists do that.
Calling them freedom fighters is usually just the apologist’s way of making him/herself feel better about his/her own, misguided political and/or social beliefs. Other times, it’s more nefarious.
[Freedom-fighters do not purposely blow up buses full of children, or steer plane-loads of civilians into tall buildings, or cut the heads of people who disagree with them.]
You forgot to add, bombing cities from high altitude, as the US government did in WWII, or occupying other countries and installing puppet regimes, which has been a constant theme of the US government.
It’s hard for honest, decent people to justify war, isn’t it? As Edward Abbey put it, “There never was a good war or a bad revolution.”