I’m not going to ‘take everyone’s guns away’

An expectation of casual, cynical lying has taken over American political culture. Seldom has this been more obviously displayed than Barack Obama’s address to police chiefs in Chicago two days ago. Here is what everyone in the United States of America except possibly a handful of mental defectives heard:

Vox is wrong – we don’t have too many guns, we have too many criminals

One of my followers on G+ asked me to comment on a Vox article, What no politician wants to admit about gun control. I’ve studied the evidence, and I don’t believe the effect of the Australian confiscation on homicides was significant.  You can play games with statistics to make it look that way, but they… Continue reading Vox is wrong – we don’t have too many guns, we have too many criminals

Review: Gun Control in the Third Reich

Stephen P. Halbrook’s Gun Control in the Third Reich is a book that every advocate of “gun control” in the modern U.S. and elsewhere should read – but almost certainly never will. Most other historians have ignored or outright suppressed the role of weapons law and weapons confiscations in the Nazi imposition of totalitarianism on… Continue reading Review: Gun Control in the Third Reich

Pave the rainforests!

For decades – and I do mean decades – I’ve been saying that any environmentalist who is really serious about reducing fossil-fuel use and CO2 emission should be agitating to switch the power infrastructure to using nuclear plants for the baseload as fast as possible. But when the facts change, I change my mind. I… Continue reading Pave the rainforests!

The temptation to choose sides

One of the most unfortunate social behaviors of human beings is that in the presence of any dispute, they feel a strong need to choose a side. And then stick with it, even when their chosen side behaves very badly. I’m reminded of this with particular force in the aftermath of Ismaayil Brinsley’s revenge assassination… Continue reading The temptation to choose sides

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Worse than racism

Recently, in New York City, a man named Eric Garner was strangled to death on the street by police. It was all caught on video. It was a nightmare sequence that made me think of George Orwell’s description of the future in 1984: a boot stamping on a human face, forever. Eric Garner was black.… Continue reading Worse than racism

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Press silence, black privilege, and unintended consequences

A provocative article at the conservative blog Hot Air comments on a pattern in American coverage of violent interracial crimes. When the perps are white and the victims are black, we can expect the press coverage to be explicit about it, with predictable assumption of racist motivations. On the other hand, when the perps are… Continue reading Press silence, black privilege, and unintended consequences

Demilitarize the police – and stop flinging false racism charges

I join my voice to those of Rand Paul and other prominent libertarians who are reacting to the violence in Ferguson, Mo. by calling for the demilitarization of the U.S.’s police. Beyond question, the local civil police in the U.S. are too heavily armed and in many places have developed an adversarial attitude towards the… Continue reading Demilitarize the police – and stop flinging false racism charges

Hoping for the crazy

The biggest non-story that should be in the news right now, but isn’t, is the collapse of anthropogenic-global-warming “science” into rubble. Global average temperature has been flat for between 15 and 17 years, depending on how you interpret the 1997-1998 El Nino event. Recently GAT, perking along its merry level way, has fallen out of… Continue reading Hoping for the crazy

Evaporative cooling and AGW

Earlier this evening an Instapundit reference reminded me of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s insightful essay Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs, in which he uses a clever physics analogy to explain why cult-like groups often respond to strong evidence against their core beliefs by becoming more fanatical. Glen Reynolds used the reference to take a swipe at what… Continue reading Evaporative cooling and AGW

Have you no decency, sir?

I know it’s from 2001 and thus putatively old news but, sadly, this thread from Free Republic could have been spun yesterday – and it made my jaw drop open. It says so much about what’s wrong with both the left and right wings of American politics in this century.

Why Donald Sterling is not Brendan Eich

Because I objected to the scalping of Brendan Eich for having donated to Proposition 8, a friend has (perhaps jocularly) challenged me to defend NBA team owner Donald Sterling against an effort to push him out of his franchise for racist remarks and behavior.

Down the feminist rabbit hole

I fell down a rabbit hole today. By reading this: An Incomplete Guide to Feminist infighting. Bemused, I chased links and read manifestos and counter-manifestos for a couple of hours until the sources just began to repeat themselves. But in some respects my confusion was just beginning. As I was falling through all these diatribes… Continue reading Down the feminist rabbit hole

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De-normalizing dissent

I really hadn’t been planning to comment on the Duck Dynasty brouhaha. But conservative gadfly Mark Steyn (a very funny, witty man even if you disagree with his politics) has described the actual strategy of GLAAD and its allies with a pithy phrase that I think describes wider circulation – “de-normalizing dissent”. OK, let’s get… Continue reading De-normalizing dissent

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