“Dark Leviathan.” A darkly cynical look at Ross Ulbricht, Silk Road, the Darknet, and what the author believes is the inevitable fate of libertarian ideals. Someone needs to give this article a great fisking.
F*c*b**k blocks a fundraiser to help a father reunite with his son. (Hint: the reason is G-U-N-S.)
Dog is shot twice but still stops home invasion. (H/T MR) This was a freelance home invasion. Had the thugs been wearing badges, presumably they’d have used large enough calibers to off the pesky mutt.
Don’t miss the latest by Nicki Kenyon (on the most recent hoplophobic idiocy out of New York) and Y.B. ben Avraham (on the revival of a sadly stubborn European tradition) while you’re there.
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.
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)
In the rage over Islamist attacks on the west and western values, let us not forget that the worst and most helpless victims are Muslims and those who live in Muslim countries.
Lovely, starkly designed cabins from around the world But who lives in these things and how do they get by without bathrooms?
Three more hopeful looks at Western-Islamic relations: An imam says Muslims must reject violence and governments must change course; Glenn Harlan Reynolds points out that Muslim leaders are finally realizing that their “brand” is tarnished by the acceptance of intolerance; author Irshad Manji is optimistic about the future between Islam and the West.
Again, this is the opinion of a friend who wishes to remain anonymous. The following is not by me.
—–begin anon message, part II—–
I am not Charlie Hebdo, because I know that free speech is a lie. The Constitution is a dead letter, and I am a coward.
Charlie Hebdo published offensive speech that was found by a court of law to be worthy of protection. The speakers were killed.
Anwar al-Awlaki published offensive speech, and was killed. He was denied a day in court, and simply murdered.
I don’t want to be killed. I want to work for peace, but I’m not going to stick my head up and invite extremely well-armed people to shoot at me, no matter what costume they wear.
I did not write the following. It was sent to me by a friend who has concluded that free speech is now such a myth that anonymity is the only protection. These are my friend’s opinions. Because they’re long, I’ll split this into two parts and run them on successive days.
All the years since 9-11, I’ve scrupulously avoided and condemned the jingoistic notion that all Muslims are fanatics and terrorists. There’s a billion of them and most are pretty much like you and me. But. The strain of barbarism poisoning the Arab/Muslim world is growing more putrid by the moment.
Since the slaughter at the World Trade Center, I’ve been waiting and wondering when the peaceable moderates of Islam would rise up, condemn, shun, defund, and de-legitimize the monsters among them. Well, those moderate voices have been way, way too moderate — when they’ve spoken at all. And they’ve been 100% ineffective. The savages are triumphant.
Now we have these obviously well-planned, expertly (and ruthlessly) executed murders at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Over cartoons. Over satire. Over free speech.
And every sign says that the murders were perpetrated by Islamic terrorists.
Governments have proven utterly incapable of protecting people against these murderous loons. Our own government repeatedly categorizes slaughters by Islamist nutjobs as mere “workplace violence.” Now, believe me, I don’t want governments to go looking for terrorists under every rock — partially because we’re already seeing how ugly that kind of society looks and partly because … well, in the U.S. “the authorities” find it more politically correct to go after militia members and guys in NRA hats than after people who post “Allahu Akbar!” on their Facebook pages before going off to kill their neighbors and co-workers. I assume other countries would also choose convenient non-Islamic targets. And it would be as wrong as ever to consider all Muslims to be potential terrorists.
But these barbarians must be stomped into the mud and muck of history, and I think the primary people responsible for doing it are … other Muslims. Yes, yes, I’m aware that Islam is a distributed religion. It has no pope. It’s as fragmented as U.S. Protestantism. It has no mechanism for acting from one central source, or even to act reliably in concert. Nevertheless, we’ve got a world full of well-trained Islamist thugs who increasingly believe they can simply cut down (sometimes literally) anybody who disagrees with them. And IF most of those tens of millions of other, innocent Muslims — and their imams and their ayatollahs and their cultural, intellectual, and military leaders — really, truly are against this savagery, if they really, truly believe in the rights of their fellow human beings, then it’s time for the whole Muslim world to bring all its philosophical, economic, social, and moral might down — hard! — upon the putrid savages within their midst.
Individual Muslims aren’t to blame. But their religion is. It fosters savagery. They need to address that.
Meantime, a world of innocent people — not to mention those who were already as much at risk as the Charlie Hebdo editors, cartoonists, and writers — ought to be getting better armed — even if nobody gives them permission.
A Review The Testament of James
By Vin Suprynowicz
194 pages
December 2014, Mountain Media
The Testament of James begins, as good mysteries often do, with a death. Actually, TToJ begins with an imposing figure in a black cape sweeping in through the door of a rare book dealer, which may be even better.
The death? Well, that may have been from natural causes, though in unnatural circumstances. The caped, cultured Mediterranean man enters the scene to inquire about a book. A book that may have had something to do with the death. A book that may or may not even exist.
Well now, this is encouraging. Teenagers commit civil disobedience to protest a proposed new history curriculum that would de-emphasize strife and civil disobedience:
Hundreds of students walked out of classrooms around suburban Denver on Tuesday in protest over a conservative-led school board proposal to focus history education on topics that promote citizenship, patriotism and respect for authority, in a show of civil disobedience that the new standards would aim to downplay.
Yeah, yeah, I know that school curricula have always been political playthings. I came through prison school in one of those “shut up and obey” eras. Learning only the positive, patriotic, authority-respecting version of history and “civics” was oppressive and dishonest — and led anybody with a brain to distrust people who felt such a need to hide reality.
Actually, the propaganda of “my day” was about as oppressive and dishonest as all politically driven schooling inevitably is, whether “right” or “left.” Curricula have swung in all manner of weird directions since then.
And yeah, yeah, I know the answer is get rid of government schooling. But in a country that was born in defiance of law and authority, I still can’t help but think this is a smile-worthy development.
Irony. While Obama asks Ferguson, MO, police to quit attacking journalists, press-freedom advocates ask Obama to do the same.
In the “decline of civilization and common sense” department, two women are so terrified of an angry cat that they call 911. And this was their own cat, not some potentially rabid stranger. (H/T SC)
“The Soros Put.” The savvy, super-connected billionaire bets $2.2 billion (17% of his assets under management) on a coming stock market crash. H/T to Silver, who also comments.
