The Razor

The following originally appeared here. 

Race relations are far worse today than they were 5 years ago. In fact I would go so far as to say they are worse than they’ve been since the 1970’s but I lack the proof to back up the statement beyond my gut telling me. Obama has squandered an opportunity brought about by his skin color to heal the wound of racism on the American body politic, and instead has chosen to use race to further divide Americans for his own political gain in the pursuit of goals held by a small elite cadre of white liberals.

I’m not surprised. Although a product of an African and an American, Barack Obama has never been an African-American. Instead of being raised in the African-American experience from birth, he grew up in an unusual, sheltered environment abroad and living with his white grandmother in Hawaii. Instead of growing up in a black culture shared by many white Americans, he grew up in the white subculture of ultra-leftist academics, an elite which believes it understands blacks better than the blacks themselves. This culture sees African-Americans as a group that is completely devoid of responsibility for its condition and as a result incapable of governing itself, needing the intelligent white elite to do so. This elite also sees white people who do not belong to this subculture as evil, racists responsible for the legacy of slavery and for all the attendant problems of race in America. For example the administration has been silent on Black on black violence, except to use it to attack whites and their culture of “god and guns.”

This elitists viewpoint held by Obama and the white elite backing him is blind to the common experiences of whites and blacks today. African-Americans and Caucasians live together at levels unprecedented in our history. They share common goals such as decent schools for their kids and well-paying jobs for themselves. Their cultures intermix with white teenagers listening to black rap and cheering on black sports players, while African-Americans listen to country music stars and enjoy comic book hero movies with characters rooted in the white culture of the 1940s and 1950s. These commonalities are completely invisible to Obama and his backers; all they see is what they want to see: any black-white conflict that fits their pre-existing beliefs. When that conflict turns out to be a poor fit, like the Trayvon Martin murder case, they are forced to make up such racist idiocies as “white Hispanic” to squeeze the event into their belief system.

The irony is that the views held by Obama and his white elite backers are now more racist than the society they are trying to impose them on. Americans don’t want to be hyphenated and divided anymore: they want to be united in hope, and working together to build a better future. But the white elite rules, and America continues down the path towards ruin creating a mess that will take decades to clean up. What a wasted opportunity.

4 years ago a jury acquitted black man who acted in self defense, shooting a white teen.

There were no protests, no Springsteen songs dedicated to Christopher Cervini, no multi-city marches.

Because it didn’t fit The Narrative.

It was a simple need,  eight Philips head inch-long wood screws with a quarter inch diameter, but it proved beyond the capability of a $50 billion hardware store.

The Wife had purchased a Boos Block table with a metal base online. The purchase came in separate shipments with no instructions, templates or fasteners to put the two together. I thought this was a mistake and called the Boos Block company. They directed me to the online merchant who explained since they sold tables and bases that could be mixed and matched, they couldn’t provide hardware or templates to cover all possibilities. That seemed a bit of a stretch for your average homeowner willing to spend $600 on a 36 inch round of wood, but the customer service rep explained that the people buying these tables knew how and had the hardware to install them.

I laid the table top upside down on the floor and within an hour had measured and drawn a template that centered the cross-legged base with an X-shaped spider onto the wooden bottom. I then took measurements of the wood and spider’s thickness, and determined that I needed inch long wooden screws. The spider used up a quarter inch of that length and the table was 1.5 inches thick so the screws would embed half-way through the top. I checked my inventory and of course had no screws matching the need, so I stopped at the big box “home” store to find the screws while running errands in the area.

The older I get the less of a fan I become of these large stores. They are geared towards meeting the needs of the average home owner, selling low quality low priced items sourced from China. The moment you stray from the this formula you’re out of luck. Evidently as I age I’m becoming less average because I find myself either walking out of the stores without finding what I need or making compromises and buying what I don’t want with increasing frequency. Yesterday was no different.

The average store size of this retailer is 116,000 square feet. Of that they devote approximately 40 linear feet to screws. This may seem a lot until you realize how many types of screws there are. Wood screws. Sheet metal screws. Philips head, flat. Carriage bolts. Metric and imperial.  Because I had carefully measured the table and its base I knew exactly what I needed, but the amount of space devoted to wood screws was just a fraction of that 40 linear feet so it quickly became clear that I wasn’t going to find what I was looking for. A store associate saw my dismay and tried to help, but all he could offer was inch long wood screws with bolt heads. I hadn’t measured for the clearance a bolt head requires, but I bought the screws anyway hoping they’d work. It was another compromise purchase and like so may others I’ve made at the store it failed; none of the ratchets that fit the bolt would fit into the base’s holes. So I chucked the screws into a screw drawer and cursed my stupidity for compromising again.

This morning before work I stopped by the local hardware store, a family run operation with only a fraction of the big box’s square footage. The proprietor greeted me as soon as I walked through the door and I told him what I wanted. He walked me over to the screw section which took up a large portion of the center of the store, and found exactly what I needed. I was in and out within two minutes and $1.20 poorer but wealthier with the right screw for the job. Oh, and the screws were cheaper than the compromise ones I bought from the big box retailer.

For years I have been seduced by the size and supposed selection of the big box stores but no more. Every time a project has ground to a halt over a missing part or a broken Chinese-made tool the local hardware stores have been there for me, somehow managing to have exactly what I need in their tiny, crammed-to-the-rafters spaces. I’ll admit I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit this now at such a late age; I should have known better years ago. But as the Wife says, there’s no time like the present to stop being stupid, and like most of what she says, she’s right.

 

That sometimes “white Hispanic” men don’t murder black teenagers just as the OJ Simpson verdict proved that sometimes black men don’t murder white women (and their friends).

I should be pleased with today’s Supreme Court rulings supporting Gay Marriage since I support gay marriage. So why am I not happy with today’s rulings?

Part of it is the fact that today’s rulings do not end the government’s involvement in marriage. I believe that marriage is a purely religious institution and a secular government has no role in it. The traditional role of government in marriage is due to two reasons. First it provides a legal basis for the treatment of property particularly in regards to inheritance. This has been stretched to include the division of property in the case of divorce, but it should be remembered that until relatively recently divorce was uncommon and in many cases all but illegal. Secondly government involvement in marriage is to insure the nurturing and growth of future citizens – children. In the past marriage provided the economic means necessary to keep children out of poverty, and even today poor children are more likely to live in single parent homes than in homes with two married people. One of the best arguments I have heard against poverty is “If you don’t want to be poor, stay married.” It is a truism I have seen firsthand, and one that I take to heart whenever the Road of Marriage becomes bumpy.

But this traditional involvement for the “sake of the children” has been corrupted by Leftists who have seen the success of other institutions like the Catholic Church in successfully inculcating its values in the young under its tutelage. All Communist  and Socialist political parties have “youth wings” whereby the State or (or state-wannabees if the socialists have yet to take power) indoctrinate children in party ideology. In the United States and Europe Leftists have been successful at turning public education into youth indoctrination camps which is why children fear global warming more than car crashes even though they are more likely to die or suffer serious injury in a car wreck than the consequences of rising global temperatures. Libertarians have traditionally opposed state sponsored education, and this indoctrination is one reason why, so that chops at that leg of support for government involvement in marriage.

As for property there is nothing in existing law that couldn’t handle that separately from marriage. All that is required is that one must be of legal age to participate in a contract. If a New Zealander decides to marry his ewe, he must find a church willing to accept such an arrangement, but he won’t be able to leave his house to Bessie and the minute he touches her he will be subject to animal cruelty laws and existing laws against bestiality. But if a man decides to set up a household with his two wives from a Muslim marriage, so be it. He can enter into a property contract that specifies who gets what when the household is dissolved according to civil (not religious) law. As for spousal rights granted by marriage, we already have Power of Attorney, a contract that specifies who is responsible for someone in the event they are disabled or unconscious. If a lesbian wants her lover to decide whether to pull the plug on her in an ICU, then so be it, as long as there exists a power of attorney. The State has a traditional function as the enforcer of binding legal contracts that is separate from marriage, so removing itself from the “marriage business” will not impact that function.

So without these two supporting pillars the State has no reason to be involved in marriage. Expanding the definition of marriage to include gay people isn’t going to change that . Perhaps in the long run it will accelerate the disentangling of the State from the religious basis of marriage, but in the long run we are dead to quote Keynes.

The Supreme Court rulings also serve as a distraction from the scandals that are threatening the very foundations of our government, providing the Obama Administration breathing space with which it can build barriers to protect itself from further scrutiny. The domestic spy scandal, the IRS scandal, Benghazi – all become  yesterday’s news as the President and his minions bask in the media limelight of the ruling, portraying themselves as great protectors of gay rights (in the US only; the administration is silent over the oppression of homosexuality elsewhere) while continuing to undermine rights such as the right to bear arms, freedom of speech, religion and the implied privacy right granted by the 4th Amendment.

For some reason, likely a shared ideological worldview, the American press simply refuses to hold this administration accountable for anything. Under this administration Iraq has unraveled, the economy limps along in a zombie-like state neither dead and showing few signs of life, Afghanistan has been lost and it’s only a matter of time before the Taliban return to power and pull girls out of school. The intervention in Libya where America “lead from behind” has turned North Africa into a well-armed nest of insurgents. Dithering over Syria and a nuclear armed Iran has encouraged America’s enemies and demoralized our allies. Obama’s constant stream of nagging, threats and harping in speeches have proven American threats to be worthless to its adversaries. Threats are no longer backed with force and therefore are ignored. The only enemy the Obama administration seems willing to engage are the Republicans and journalists who defy to propagandize the Administration’s narratives, forcing Victor Davis Hanson to opine “if only our foreign enemies were Republicans.” Republican leaders are corrupted, spurned or out-maneuvered as they have been on “immigration reform” and journalists like Michael Hastings and Andrew Breitbart are found dead under suspicious circumstances. If only the same happened to the likes of Bashar al Assad,  Hassan Nasrallah, or the Ayatollah Khamenei. Instead this administration entertains one of their representatives in the White House.

Thank heaven for the British press which, while even more Socialist than most Democrats, is willing to “speak Truth to Power” to use one of those Bush-era slogans one no longer hears these days. After all it was the Guardian, an outfit that makes Pravda look as right wing as the Wall Street Journal, that broke the Snowden  Affair. It is also the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail that continue to report on the scandals deviling the administration, making the UK a window for opponents of this administration by exposing the group-think politically correct atmosphere that has corrupted American journalism.

So hoorah gays can now get legally married! Meanwhile this country continues its slow descent into totalitarianism, it’s Fourth Estate castrated and sedated, and people who challenge it either are audited by the IRS or end up dead. Congratulations,  but forgive me if as a wedding present I send the Bill of Rights – even though by the time it arrives it will have been shredded.

James Taranto writing in the online Wall Street Journal:

A more abstract form of this parochialism is the multiculturalists’ frequent insistence that “only white people can be racist.” In this view, racism is perhaps the greatest moral failing of which human beings are capable—but nonwhites are absolved of moral responsibility for their racial prejudices.

But moral responsibility is the essence of humanity. It is what sets Homo sapiens apart from other animals. Assigning moral responsibility to whites while denying it to nonwhites is therefore a way of dehumanizing the latter. Multiculturalism turns out to be a disguised form of white supremacy.

I’ve personally found multiculturalists to be incredibly intolerant while rural Southerners, pilloried by the media and intellectual elite, as much more laid back and accepting of all kinds of differences. I think it’s because the poorer rural people are forced by necessity to get along with those of different ethnic, religious and ideological backgrounds because they can’t afford to live in like-minded, monocultural enclaves like Cambridge MA where NPR reigns (Speaking of which: I would bet that NPR employs more minorities than actually listen to it. Ever catch the names during a public radio pledge drive? Not a Jackson, Patel or Dominguez among those donating cash for coffee mugs and tote bags.)

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson who said ““The wise man shows his wisdom in separation, in gradation, and his scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as nature. The foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every man is as every other man,” except in this case, the multiculturalist prides him/herself as being more equal than others.

So the LA Times reports a Pew Study finds gun crime has plunged even while American perceptions of it assumes it has risen. Setting aside the obvious issue of what is driving Americans to one conclusion while the facts lead to another, the study raises some other, less obvious issues.

If guns are to blame for violent gun crimes, one would have to assume by the study that the number of guns in American hands have fallen. Yet the opposite appears to be the case, with the highest per capita gun ownership in the US, with roughly one gun for every American man, woman, and child. Over the past four years guns have flown off the shelves, and it is likely there are more guns in private hands today than there were four years ago, although the exact number is difficult to know since such records are not kept. But gun manufacturers are working overtime to fill order backlogs, and the most popular weapons such as AR-15 “assault rifles” are hard to come by. Gun prices have risen as demand has outstripped supply, yet fewer of these weapons are being put to criminal use.

Why?

Because as gun rights supporters have been saying for years, guns don’t kill people, people do. If the opposite was the case American streets should be awash in blood, but they aren’t as writer Barry Snell notes. As as the Pew Study shows, American streets are safer today than they were a generation ago.

So while the Pew Study punctures the liberal myth that guns cause violence, it also pokes a hole in the conservative myth that the breakdown of the traditional family is the root of violent crime. During the same period of the study, the number of out-of-wedlock births has risen. Non-traditional marriages such as those between homosexuals have become more accepted. There are record numbers of people cohabitating. If the breakdown of the family was supposed to lead to a more violent society, it hasn’t.

More likely it’s demographics. Crime spiked in the 1960-80 period as the Baby Boomer generation reached their teens and twenties, the peak time for criminality. As people age they become less impulsive and their criminal behavior is either held in check or condoned in jobs like Federal Reserve Chairman or Goldman Sachs executive. Of course the demographic news isn’t entirely good. While the Baby Boomer generation is less criminal, it is older and requires the smaller cohorts of younger generations to support it in its old age. So younger people might have less chance of being mugged in New York City than their grandparents did, but they’ll be mugged by the taxman. This could explain why suicide rates are spiking among middle aged Americans – proving that guns don’t kill people, aging hippies do.

Six years ago I wrote about how conspiracy theories were alluring, thereby attracting attention of some conspiracy theory believers in the comments section of the post. In the days since the bombing attacks in Boston I have watched the conspiracy theories blossom into full flower, something that two of my friends noted.

D starts off the conversation (WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT AT LINK BELOW):

I can’t help myself. The whole thing seemed off from the beginning. Tell me I’m losing it?
http://buelahman.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/are-you-just-a-believer-or-do-you-think/

My response:

We have an administration that lies to the people and tells them their lives have never been better. You have a media that repeats these lies over and over. Yet people look around them and ask themselves whether or not this is true and realize that their lives aren’t better and that they are being fed a constant stream of lies. This is made worse by the administration’s trumpeting of itself as the most transparent in History when the opposite is the case.

Is it any wonder that conspiracy theorists are going crazy over this event?

I founded my blog to counter the conspiracy that thrived after 9-11. Today we are witnessing a similar blossoming of such theories made more potent by the toxic political environment Obama and the Democrats have created during his tenure.

People such as the poster of the article aren’t crazy, D, not with this administration in place. I still believe Occam’s Razor and even Carl Sagan’s statement that “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof” proves his/her argument is wrong, but he or she isn’t crazy and neither are you for considering such things in our poisonous political atmosphere.

My friend J chimes in:

The conspiracy theory is the perfect example of confirmation bias because if you’re looking for it you’ll find it. That being said, something still stinks about this whole thing. Did these guys shoot the MIT police or didn’t they? Did they rob that 7-11? If you just committed a terrorist attack why would you do either of those things, let alone stay in Boston? And what about the Saudi national that was in the hospital under armed guard that is suddenly being deported, especially since there are pictures of agents carrying a spool of det cord out of his apartment?

And another thing…Chechens? Since when do they give a shit about the US, they terrorize their own people (Beslan, opera house)..and its not like we’re Putin’s BFF.

These guys are some of the best analysts and managers I’ve worked with in the banking industry, and neither one of them is stupid by any stretch of the imagination. The three of us also read Zerohedge, and the comments over there remind me of the intellectual free-for-all that followed 9-11 when the attack became a giant Rorschach test. Anti-government libertarians and anarchists see the attack as a “false flag” operation with the Tsarnaev brothers puppets pulled by strings controlled by Obama (if you’re a Republican), the Koch Brothers (if you are a liberal), and the Jews (if you are an old-school asshat.) Some of these people are clearly nuts, but the vast majority of them don’t trust their government or the media.

It’s difficult to trust an administration that conducts “Operation Fast and Furious,” a program by which the federal government provides guns to Mexican drug cartels in exchange for dead border patrol agents and gun control in the USA. Or an administration that refuses to investigate the death of its own ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi Libya or even allow the survivors of the attack to speak to Congress. Or an administration that demands more gun control laws while refusing to to prosecute gun crimes in Chicago, one of the country’s most violent American cities. Or the billionaire mayor of New York City who states after the Boston attacks, “(Y)ou’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.” As one commenter put it,

“We’re going to suspend your rights to protest, bear arms, privacy, and trial by jury.”
“Why?”
“To protect you from terrorists.”
“Why do we need to be protected from terrorists?”
“They hate you for your freedom.”

Evidently Bloomberg forgot Franklin’s quote “Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” Perhaps since liberals long ago stopped teaching about “dead white men” like Franklin, Bloomberg never learned that.

Are people being paranoid when they question the official narrative when the administration is full of people who use terms like “narrative” to describe factual events? As if there was no Truth, just a made up story that everyone agrees upon. How very relativist.

Henry Kissinger is credited for the saying “Even paranoids can have enemies,” and while I still personally believe the facts will prove the Tsarnaev brothers are guilty of the attacks in Boston, the behavior of this administration, its media handlers, and the Wall Street kleptocrats that keep it in power makes me at least somewhat sympathetic to the conspiracy theorists’ seemingly outrageous plots and cherry picked evidence. The Tsarnaev brothers may have committed this terrorist attack, but there are other crimes that are being committed today in the halls of power that are going unpunished and ignored, and that behavior becomes the fertile soil in which conspiracy theories will continue to germinate and thrive.

Update: Questions about the attack linger. For example, it turns out the surviving Tsarnaev was unarmed while he was hiding in the boat. If so, then how did he shoot himself in the neck? And how could there have been a firefight? He hid in a fiberglass boat, one that was shot to pieces by authorities using .223 caliber ammunition. I own a .223 rifle, and its round can perforate tree stumps 2 feet thick. The boat offered as much protection as a newspaper. Either the authorities can’t shoot worth a damn or the Truth has yet to be exposed. As my friend J says, something still stinks about this whole thing.

In 2008-9 our country experienced an unprecedented meltdown of its financial system brought on by the cosy relationships between government regulators, politicians and bureaucrats. In response the Federal Reserve embarked on a program whereby the it stole money from the bank accounts of 98% of the country and shifted it to the wealthiest of American society through depressing interest rates paid to savers on their accounts below the rate of inflation, meaning that for every $1,000 in your bank account you lose $30 every year to inflation. This subsidized those with money by providing them with low borrowing costs, allowing them to leverage their wealth for even greater gains in the stock market. It’s not good enough that a billionaire invests $100 million in the market; no, he must use that $100m as leverage to control a billion dollars worth of stock. The stock market has become a casino where small investors are left to chase nickels in front of steam rollers while the government funds the wealthiest segment of society. Worse, the Cyprus Model has put paid to the idea that bank savings are property and protected by the law. Instead savers have become “speculators” and their savings “investments” to be wiped out whenever banks need a bailout. It must not be forgotten that the initial bank bailout, the first put forward by the European Union, looked to steal 6.7% of guaranteed savings below 100,000 Euro. The European Union isn’t exactly communist China or Soviet Russia yet it completely ignored its own law of guaranteed deposits (the EU FDIC) and took the money. Is such an event possible in the United States? Yes. Unlikely perhaps at this point, but still possible.

To support this stock market bubble the federal reserve has flooded the markets with currency yet denied such actions, euphemistically called “quantitative easing”, are inflationary. Government bureaucracies such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) manipulate employment statistics to make it appear as if good times are here to stay by excluding the long-term unemployed and those who have given up on finding a job, meaning that if your wife is working and you’re looking for a job, our economy will improve by you staying at home and watching daytime TV since your household will go from 50% unemployment to 0% unemployment. Similarly the BLS manipulates inflation rates by discounting the volatility of food and fuel, the largest categories all but the very wealthiest people spend their money on besides taxes and housing, and making “qualitative adjustments” that hide inflation. In addition companies are passing on higher production costs to consumer through stealth inflation, providing less product for the same money. The profusion of dollar stores are proof of the success of this strategy since shoppers at these stores believing they are getting a bargain while in reality they are paying more per unit of good than at other stores. 4 loads of Tide for a $1 might seem a deal until one goes to a supermarket and finds a 40 load box of the detergent for $7.

Not one person from the banking crisis has been indicted or prosecuted by the Obama administration or Congress, a fact that spawned a PBS Frontline show “The Untouchables.” Could this be because the federal government would be prosecuting it’s own? Former SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro resigned and has taken a position at Promontory Financial Group, a bank consulting group, but promises not to lobby the government she once worked for. That has led to Forbes wondering what other of her qualifications Promontory is willing to bill $1,000 – $10,000 an hour for. She’s among numerous ex-federal employees at her new digs. Check out the nifty graphic at ZeroHedge listing Promontory employees and their former positions in the government. Yet we are supposed to believe this revolving door between regulators and those they regulate is free from moral hazard. In the comments at ZeroHedge someone calls the place a “high end whorehouse.” It it were taxpayers wouldn’t be the ones being screwed.

Banks like JP Morgan-Chase and investment firms like Goldman Sachs are considered too big to fail, taking their “skin” out of the game and replacing it with the American taxpayer’s. If JPMC or Goldman’s risky investments turn out well, it’s “capitalism” and their corporate managers and shareholders are rewarded; if they bomb it’s no big deal. The shareholders or managers are still rewarded as they were in January 2010 when banker bonuses were “bigger than ever” according to the New York Times even after the economic collapse of 2008-9. The American worker will simply work a few hours to provide the taxes the firms need to be bailed out, that is if she has a job. It’s a great system if you are Lloyd Blankfein GS’s CEO who earns upwards of $100 million a year at Goldman Sachs. It benefits Democratic politicians like Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Obama too since Blankfein is a large donor to the Democratic party.

Then there’s the debt. To call it a “mountain of debt” is to betray a shallow awareness of the world’s topography. Here are some neat visualizations of our debt in $100 bills, and an impressive sounding statistic that’s hard to visual: a line of $1 bills would stretch from the Earth to Uranus. We’ve reached a point where analogies lose their meaning, although the current debt being greater than the country’s entire output in 2011 must be at least a bit sobering to even the drunkest Keynesian economist. The best way to consider the debt is by making it personal. Since 2008 the debt has expanded by $26,000 per person. Multiply that number by those in your household and ask yourself if you feel that amount richer over the past 4 years. That would mean an extra $78k for my household, enough to drop the Wife’s med school debt by 40% or replace our aging cars, each with over 150k miles on them, as well as buy a new car for the Kid. If you don’t see that money, where did it go? Ask yourself: are you better off today than you were 4 years ago? Then ask Lloyd whether he is.

The system is corrupt yet we do nothing about it. We are told happy days are here again, that the stockmarket is at record highs, yet those of us who dabbled in the market prior to 2009 have still not recovered from the losses suffered then, leaving us on the sidelines of this rally. Small investors piled into the market and out of the market late back then, proving they were the “greater fools” and some are doing so today as the market skyrockets and smart money looks for the exits. Sure our 401K’s are expanding, but the numbers are meaningless for anyone other than those planning to retire in the coming months before this bubble bursts. Self employed people and contractors like myself don’t have 401K’s, we just have our wits and an ever sharpening skill set that we use to stay employed, but both are slowly being eroded by time as we age and the younger cohorts below us grow hungrier and more competitive. Time will unravel us, and when it does we will be poor and destitute, remembering the hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxes paid that could have gone, should have gone, into our retirement funds but didn’t. At that point we’ll be on the side of the 47% who don’t pay taxes, but by then the government will be completely broke. We shouldn’t expect any sympathy from the generations coming up in our shadows, since both Left and Right are in agreement that theirs will be the first generations to have lower living standards than preceding generations. It doesn’t help that we’ve sent them to substandard schools whose sole purpose seems to be to employ Masters of Education degree holders instead of actually teaching our children the skills they need to succeed in life.

The collapse of our education system is proof of our sick society, one that raids the education budgets for the young to pay for the guaranteed pensions of the old, one in which the only people who treasure marriage these days are gay and everyone else hooks up like a shed-full of feral cats in heat, with an increasing percetage of the products of these unions are on ADHD medication. I’d need to be medicated too if I was forced to sit still with a body full of hormones and brimming with youthful energy, taught by teachers who, like the children of Lake Wobegon, are all above average, all 98% of them. Conversely, Walter Russell Mead points out ”only 78.2 percent of American students graduated high school in 2010. Sixty-seven percent of all fourth graders could not read at grade level in 2009. And only 32 percent of eighth graders and 38 percent of twelfth graders were reading at or above grade level that same year.” Of course if we measured education aptitude by the number of body piercings and tattoos we’d lead the world.

David Stockman, former Reagan budget director, is getting beaten up in the press for his book The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America. Journalists, products of the Masters of Education employment entities described above, look at the highs of the Dow and discount Stockman’s thesis that the system we have today is more akin to the monopolies and crony capitalists that spawned the progressive movement over a century ago rather than some Randist free market anarchic paradise that they instinctively fear. The treatment of Stockman is similar to that shoveled out to Bob Woodward for daring to criticize President Obama game of chicken with the sequester, as J-school graduates leaped in defense of their icon in the White House attacking Woodward with various ad hominems that any of the profs would have failed them for had they used them in class (or rather, a class where failure was an option – evidently a rarity these days where students can pass without actually studying.) Watching Woodward, a man whose politics I disagree with yet whom I respect for helping pull off the greatest journalistic story of the century, being attacked by the likes of Andrew “I’m here, I’m queer, blah blah blah” Sullivan was like watching a fine thoroughbred horse attacked by a swarm of flies fresh from their home in a dung pile. But such is the fate for anyone who dares call “shenanigans” in the current climate where anyone who can’t continue deceiving themselves is lampooned, debased, or in the case of Woodward, threatened.

Our problems aren’t just economic either. The Obama administration has fled the Middle East and attempts to appease Iran by refusing to support the rebellion against the Assad regime in Syria.

“I think that the United States has not taken a more active role in Syria from the beginning because they didn’t want to disturb the possibility, to give them space, to negotiate with Iran,” Javier Solana, the former European Union foreign policy chief, said Monday at a Brookings Institution discussion about this week’s talks. Solana, who was a top negotiator with Tehran in the nuclear program until 2009, added, “They probably knew that getting very engaged against Assad, engaged even militarily, could contribute to a break in the potential negotiations with Tehran.”

As Walter Russell Mead notes this could be a catastrophic mistake.

If Solana is right that this policy has been driving the White House all along, this is Obama’s initial Iran failure—remaining silent during the 2009 Green Revolution—on steroids. Weakness doesn’t win you the friendship of bullies. And if this dispatch is right, we should expect some ugly repercussions from the Sunni Arabs, the Israelis and the Turks. All these powers want to see Iran’s claws clipped and they want Assad to go; all of these powers chiefly view the value of their US ties at the moment in the light of the confrontation with Iran. If they come to feel that the United States is willing to throw the Syrian lamb to the Iranian tiger, their trust and confidence in the United States, and consequentially America’s power to get things done in the region, would go into a deep eclipse.

Things don’t look any better on the other side of Asia with North Korea promising to attack the United States. So far the US response has been mild, yet that hasn’t stopped the press from asking White House spokesman Jay Carney if that hasn’t provoked a communist dictatorship whose people are being starved to death on a steady diet of leftist propaganda and grass. But their carbon footprints are tiny, for now. How much carbon will be released by a nuclear strike on Osaka or Guam? Quite a bit I suppose. In any event we soon might find out if North Korea acts on its threats.

A whole industry is set up to use imagery and fantasy to modify our behavior so that we buy something, yet somehow a related industry employing the same techniques but for entertainment purposes ie exempt from responsibility when an admittedly sick individual dresses up as villain of the violent movie being shown to the audience he then commences to massacre. The Roman Catholic Pope is labeled as an extremist for calling abortion murder while a doctor who performs late term abortions and keeps the tiny feet of his victims in a jar as memento mori is lauded as a hero. The billionaire mayor of New York City makes it his personal mission to rid the city of large soft drinks while the city’s crime rate rises and the city becomes less friendly to all but society’s richest and poorest.

But when all is said and done, who is to blame for this mess that we find ourselves in? We are.

We didn’t demand for the bankers to be tarred and feathered (well, we did but failed to hold our elected leaders accountable for allowing the bankers off scot-free.). We continually vote in the politicians who offer us platitudes instead of common sense and plunder the public purse for the benefit of the monied elite regardless of their party affiliation. We engage in bitter fights over issues that don’t impact us directly (I’m not gay, on medicaid and I can’t get pregnant, so honestly just how worked up can I get about gay marriage, social programs and abortion?), yet ignore the issues that unite us and affect our daily lives. We vilify other Americans for their differences yet are willfully blind to the commonalities. Intellectual laziness encourages us to accept stereotypes and straw men built by those who feed on hatred the way a maggot feeds on the flesh of an open wound instead of putting ourselves in the other’s position, or to use an old cliche, “walking a mile in the other man’s moccasins.” We have Obama himself saying, “It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” accepting a stereotype and succumbing to a form of elitism and intellectual laziness by belittling his opponents instead of attempting to understand them and winning them over. We’ve accepted the low standards of education because we’ve been trained that “fighting city hall” or in this case the school board is futile. So our kids read less than we do, they can text faster and know the special combo to beat the god Zeus in the “God of War” video game. They’ll be alright. Right? We keep our heads down, do what we are told and hope that our dreams come true, the way they do on TV between the ads for drugs to help men get it up and women feel not so down.

We should be ashamed for what we’ve done, or more importantly, not done, expending the effort to fight for accountability from our elected officials and receiving their heads in baskets after they ignored us 4 years ago. Today the problems are even worse, the threats greater, yet we continue on the way we did before the 2008 financial meltdown and on September 10, 2001, fighting among ourselves without giving the other the benefit of the doubt or the dignity our opponent deserves. To paraphrase my late mother-in-law, we chose this path, and we did so because we are idiots.

Chicago is considering a law requiring seatbelts or other type of restraints for pets in vehicles. The reason for this is the distraction unrestrained pets can cause drivers behind the wheel. Such a law strikes some as common sense, but not everyone.

I drive with unrestrained pets in my car. As someone who loves all animals but especially dogs I am aware of the risks. I’ve had a flying lab-border collie mix and a min pin missile inside the car during sudden stops, and recognize the potential danger I put these animals in whenever we “go bye-bye.” Restraining them properly in the vehicle is in their best interest, and because of that I am going to change my behavior, not because the State threatens to fine me. The guilt from the pain I’ve caused one of my animals is much worse than any fine the State can levy.

But the purpose of the law isn’t the danger people like me put their animals in: it’s the danger to others caused by distracted driving. My problem with the law is there are many different types of distracted driving. Recently a young man in my area was killed after he reached for a bottled water that rolled between the seats. Are we going to ban unrestrained drinks? Perhaps billionaire Mayor Bloomberg might, but I believe there is a better way. The law is a blunt instrument: legislators cannot foresee every possibility to adequately address each in a law, and therefore the law might make a few people believe the government is doing something while all it is doing is causing trouble for otherwise law-abiding citizens who get pulled over and fined while driving with an unrestrained beagle zonked out in the backseat after a “tutor” appointment at the vet.

The problem isn’t unrestrained dogs or unrestrained water bottles in cars: it’s distracted driving. Now it would be nice if every driver could be free from every possible distraction, from barking lap dogs to billboards, text messages, cute girls, cell phone conversations, intense arguments with passengers, loud music or deep thoughts. But drivers will never find themselves in a perfect distraction-free bubble, so why fight it? We are wasting our time trying to prevent distractions, and worse by legislating against them. For one thing, one of the worst offenders of distracted driving has always been billboards, yet the outdoor advertising industry has successfully killed legislation banning them. For another there will always be cases where something is distracting to some but not all.

I’ve been thinking alot about Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book Anti-Fragile, and how to apply it to daily life. For those unfamiliar with the book or the concept of anti-fragility, think of it as the old Chinese maxim, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Stress breaks fragile systems, but makes anti-fragile systems better. Our immune system is an excellent example of an anti-fragile system. Every virus you’ve been exposed to, whether through childhood immunizations or illnesses you’ve suffered, just make you less likely to become seriously ill from those or related viruses.

Is there a way to apply the concept to driving? We already do: through experience. As the parent of a new driver, one of the challenges I’ve faced is teaching the Kid how to react when driving gets unpredictable. Some parents try to startle their kids to help teach them to react by shouting “STOP!”, others simply drive with their child long enough so that he or she faces unforeseen events such as another driver cutting him off or running a red light. Our experiences behind the wheel teach us to become better drivers through the close calls we’ve had that we never forget. Like nearly falling asleep at the wheel on Interstate 55 in the middle of Illinois, or beginning to accelerate at a light as a car with no lights runs the red light at high speed and misses t-boning my car by mere inches, or zoning out in a day dream and failing to see the lady stopped just ahead.

We can’t pass 500,000 miles of driving experience to our kids, but perhaps we could train them to better handle distractions as in this Farmer’s Insurance commercial highlighting the trouble caused by distracted driving. We should be teaching drivers how to handle distractions while behind the wheel, how to maintain focus no matter how bad the distraction. Are you allergic to bees? What if one stung you while driving? How would you react? Could you remain focused enough to pull over to the side of the road safely? Perhaps instead of banning certain distractions we should be revamping our driver’s education curricula to handle distractions. Driver’s education courses geared towards experienced drivers would also be good, the payoff being lower insurance rates. Such courses would focus on maintaining concentration while driving, teaching how to prioritize attention so that driving always remains at the top, and learning how to avoid slip-ups like reading a billboard that catches the eye or a pretty girl walking down the sidewalk seen in the rear-view mirror, even texting and eating while driving. What matters is not the distraction but maintaining the concentration necessary to drive safely. In that respect the scenario shown in the Farmers Insurance commercial isn’t far off the mark.

Our society has become so legalistic that it’s almost inevitable the solution to a problem becomes a proposed law. Whether it’s something minor like unrestrained dogs in vehicles or tragic such as the Newtown School Massacre, a segment of the populace usually demands somebody do something, usually “for the children,” and our lawmakers are only happy to oblige. But the solution to every problem should not be a legal one; there are far more effective ways of achieving the goal of laws without resorting to them if we as a society only allow ourselves to do so.

Philadelphia Magazine looks at what it’s like being white in the city (“Being White in Philly“), the bedsheet wearing racists. Since I’m a racist for opposing Obama, and racist for believing that people should not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, I figure it’s only racist of me to pass along this article to all my racist readers. If you haven’t viewed my racist article on race “You Can’t End Racism By Being Racist,” do so now. If you don’t, you’re a racist.

Last night the wife and I were outside on the deck, listening to the spring peepers while allowing her to decompress from her stressful day as a rural family physician. That often includes brief deprogramming sessions after she listens to NPR on the way home from the practice. During the drive she heard a story about the shooting death of a young black girl in Chicago who had performed at the President’s inauguration. I am lucky to be married to one of the smartest people I’ve ever met who doesn’t realize it, so she already knew that the gang violence behind the murder of Hadiya Pendleton had nothing to do with lawfully owned guns or “gun culture”.

She recognized as an intelligent person and doctor in one of the poorest parts of the country that gun culture isn’t the root of the violence, something else – something that when said leads to knee-jerk charges of racism even though the vast majority of poor patients my wife attends to are white. Douglas Ernst, writing in the comments section at the Colossus of Rhodey, says it best: “I’ve said for quite some time that we don’t have a “gun culture” ... we have a “having kids out-of-wedlock” culture.”

The Wife also happens to have a degree in anthropology. She couldn’t think of any culture that has been studied that allows boys to grow up without fathers or father figures. She believes, and I agree, that raising a boy without the guidance and discipline of an older man in his life is like letting a wild animal loose on the streets. Like stray dogs, these children eventually form into packs and establish a hierarchy of their own, but one parasitic on society instead of contributing to it. The gang takes the place of the father, the grandfather and the uncles.

I come from a broken home myself, but one that was broken by a massive heart attack on the job site. For years I drifted and experimented with things I probably shouldn’t have – and wouldn’t have had my father been around. But I was lucky: I was white and geeky and attending Catholic schools where the only gangs were of the nun or Jesuit variety. Had I been another color and in another place I could easily have ended up differently. Still, growing up without a father made me swear that I would never subject my child to divorce. I even cut out tobacco and later alcohol because I wanted to stay around to provide guidance to my son that I had lacked from the age of 11 onward.

If we want to stop gang violence or the violence of young men that gun down innocents for no reason, then we need to face the reality that there are limits to single parenthood and consequences that are borne by everyone. We have created, and even celebrated the single mom in media even though a child born to a single mother is more likely than any other to be born into poverty. I realize there are good, solid reasons for divorce, but we need to recognize and admit that we are raising a generation of “wild boys” without morals or conscience and then setting them loose into society where they end up in prison, unemployable and marginalized by society before entering an early grave.

A generation ago the fictional character Murphy Brown became pregnant and was lionized by the liberal media elite as a brave example for American women to follow, even though unlike the fictional character most women had a fraction of Brown’s earning power. The family values crowd was pilloried mercilessly for their criticism of the character. Now we have entire cities where the majority of boys are being raised by their mothers, grandmothers and aunts. Maybe, just maybe, the family values crowd was right after all.

Where the family values crowd is wrong, though, is on abortion. After all, single mothers who carry their children to term are lauded by the family values crowd. One would think that society would benefit if these mothers had opted for abortion instead; it’s hard to argue that the world would be a better place had the thugs who gunned down Hadiya Pendleton ended up in a medical waste incinerator. The family values believers would retort that fighting abortion is simply the first step on a path that ends up in marriage and a stable family, but such an argument is hard for me, one of their sympathizers, to understand and find possible in modern society. I simply think we’ve gone too far away from the traditional family to return to it.

Is there anything that could replace it?

There are cultures where the saying “it takes a village to raise a child,” is more than an empty slogan. Some traditional cultures in the Amazon and in Africa live communally and boys are raised by all the men in the village not just their fathers. Similarly in Scandinavia I’ve learned of unrelated people who live in separate apartments but share common spaces such as kitchens and living areas. In such an environment it could be possible for boys to be raised by completely unrelated men. What’s important is not bloodline but that a man serve as a role model for a boy while helping to set expectations and responsibilities for him in the general community to give him a place within it and to create within him a sense of belonging. Such a sense is only found in criminal subcultures today in the US, Russia and other nations suffering from “having kids out-of-wedlock culture,” so it’s worth considering any situation that could make boys into productive men in society.

But first we must recognize our society’s failure, that by encouraging women to have children out of wedlock and brainwashing them into believing them they can raise boys just as well as girls, we have created an entire caste of maladjusted young men who are violent, narcissistic and parasitic. This has nothing to do with race, but it has everything to do with half-baked psychological theories, ill-conceived but often well-intentioned government policies, topped off by a post-feminist culture that views men as a disease that needs to be drugged with Ritalin, predators that must be jailed or helpless oafs to be brainwashed until they are infantilized.

After introducing a plan to ban 150 different types of guns and high capacity magazines, Sen Diane Feinstein tweeted, “The bill will NOT affect hunting or sporting firearms. Instead, the bill protects hunters and sportsmen.” Congressman Rick Nolan (D-MN) , speaking on Face the Nation, defended the legislation, saying he didn’t need an assault rifle to shoot a duck. Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) also supports the legislation saying hunters don’t require assault rifles to kill game.

I’m always somewhat bemused when gun control advocates talk about hunting, as if the 2nd amendment is the right to eat meat, while the word “hunt” or “hunting” does not appear anywhere in the Bill of Rights. In fact by that logic one doesn’t need any type of gun to hunt; a bow and arrow or a flint-tipped spear can take down a deer just as effectively. The 2nd Amendment has absolutely nothing to do with hunting; it is much more powerful than that.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Never has a single sentence caused so much controversy. The late SCOTUS Chief Justice Warren Burger once criticized the amendment on the MacNeil-Lehrer news hour, claiming it was poorly written and a disaster for the country. Like many liberals he believed the amendment applied to organized state militias such as the National Guard. The original Bill of Rights lays out the rights granted to the People of the United States by the Creator, it does not give rights to government, whether state, local or federal. As for the definition of militia, Buckhorn provides reference to Title 10 United States Code section 311:

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard. (b) The classes of the militia are – (1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

So if you are a male American between the ages of 17 and 45, guess what? You’re part of the militia, and while Title 10 USC Sec 311 defines the National Guard and Naval Militia as “organized,” the 2nd Amendment does not begin “A well organized Militia.” Besides the “unorganized militia” is just a class of militia according to Title 10 USC Sec 311 so we don’t have a situation where one group of people bears arms and another does not. And better yet, like all the Bill of Rights the “right of the people” derives not from government or any sovereign, but from God – just as the rights to assembly, free speech and freedom of religion do. That undermines the idea put forward by gun control advocates that the term “well regulated” grants power to the government to control arms. The word “regulated” today isn’t the same as it was in 1789, and replacing the Framer’s word with  modern usage would make the amendment nonsensical. How could a right granted by God be controlled by a government of man?  A better modern word would be “trained” or “provisioned”, but it’s unfair to blame the Founders for failing to anticipate the evolution of English after they have succeeded in creating a document that has withstood the test of time so well.

Reams of paper have been produced supporting or disparaging this or that about the 2nd Amendment, and brighter men than me have argued both for and against it, but my view is that the Founders of the Republic had a nation like Switzerland in mind. While gun control advocates are keen on comparing the US to the UK, Canada and Australia, nations that ban guns in most cases, they tend to ignore Switzerland. Switzerland does not have a professional army and instead relies upon civilians to participate and train in a militia. The Swiss are issued an assault rifle, currently the SIG SG 550, a fully automatic weapons that even US gun nuts can’t easily get their hands on*. The Swiss also have a very weak central government, something I believe the Founders preferred but became an idea that got lost after the North won the Civil War.

So the purpose of the militia isn’t to hunt, it’s not target-shooting, or even self-protection: it’s to level the playing field between the People and a tyrannical regime. This is something I hadn’t even realized myself until recently. In the past I’ve argued in support of gun ownership on the basis that self defense is a human right. I even have a bumper sticker on my car to that effect. But the 2nd Amendment is much more sublime. The amendment does not specify what kind of threat requires an armed population. It doesn’t say it’s necessary to protect against a foreign power, Indians, or the forces of mad King George V. It simply states that a militia is necessary for the security of a free state, and freedom is thread that is consistent throughout the documents of the period from the Declaration of Independence through the Articles of Confederation and finally, the Bill of Rights. That free state is so important that is requires a well trained and provisioned militia to secure it.

Could that threat be the tyranny of our own government? Why do you think the Founders placed it so high up in the Bill of Rights? They weren’t fools. They knew that tyrants often take power through democratic means. They recognized that power corrupts and over time any government can be corrupted from within, presenting a danger just as great as invasion from without. The 2nd Amendment therefore provides Americans with a “reset button,” allowing its citizens to resort to force of arms to remove any tyrannical government that comes to power. Such a government would possess the means of the state – billions of dollars, tanks, warplanes, and other tools of war to subjugate the citizenry, but as the American Revolution proved, and as shown by every counter-insurgency the US has participated in from the Philippine Rebellion of the 1920’s to Vietnam of the 1960’s and Afghanistan of today, superior men, arms and material do not in themselves guarantee victory.

The reality of this statement means that Americans would be fighting Americans. It wouldn’t be the first time; the greatest calamity ever to befall our nation was the Civil War, killing 620,000, the equivalent of 5.2 million Americans today, and setting the development of our nation back decades. The idea of Americans killing Americans repulses me in a way that is hard to describe. The extremes of Right and Left both celebrate the idea for the advancement of their own particular causes, and yet the very thought just makes me want to puke.

The best thing about having a “reset button” such as the 2nd Amendment is that it makes such scenarios unlikely. As my good Watcher’s colleague Joshupundit pointed out in a personal communication, extremists like Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam demand gun control because it makes it easier for them to impose their will on the majority of Americans once Americans are disarmed. “He (Farrakhan)  likes the idea of gun control because the [Nation of Islam] has it’s own channels to obtain firearms if they need them.” Ditto the American Communist Party. The masses will be disarmed but the extremists, whether inside the government or at society’s fringes, won’t be and their path to power will be unobstructed.

This reset button comes at a price. Every year Americans die by guns who would otherwise not, and it would be a grievous insult to comfort a parent who has lost a child to gunfire by saying that his or her life is the price we pay to guarantee freedom. But if we are to consider those lost by gun violence today, we also must consider those who would die under dictatorship. The 2nd Amendment minimizes the losses and insures our government’s, and by extension our society’s stability by making any serious attempt at destroying our democracy impossible due to the hundreds of millions of guns in the hands of 80 million Americans who bear them responsibly and vigilantly.
———————-

*
Most people who aren’t familiar with guns don’t understand the difference between automatic and semi-automatic weapons; at least I didn’t until I started educating myself about guns and owning them. An automatic weapon is one that continuously fires until the magazine is empty after the trigger is pulled once. A semi-automatic fires one bullet each time the trigger is pulled. Assault rifles can be semi-auto or full auto, but those under consideration for banning are semi-auto because full auto versions are highly restricted.

Automatic weapons are for all intents and purposes banned from private ownership in the US. While it is possible to get a license for one, the guns are expensive and highly regulated. Most of those I have seen in action are rented at gun ranges by guys with more testosterone than sense. Want to blow $30 in 5 seconds? You can by firing an AK-47 at full auto. In the process you’ll pretty much hit everything BUT the target you are aiming for which is why I don’t see a need for a fully auto weapon. A gun on full auto will pull up and controlling it becomes like wrestling a python, but some guys like to show off at the ranges by making noise. It makes a lot of money for the ranges and ammo manufacturers, but honestly I prefer the maxim “One shot one kill,” myself. As a result I don’t believe a ban on them tilts the playing field towards tyranny the way a ban on assault rifles would.

At the ripe old age of forty-something I’ve discovered motorcycles. A few months back I bought the kid a 125cc four stroke Yamaha dirt bike to have fun with over the summer. He ended up riding it for a few hours before he resumed his routine of skyping and playing multiplayer Minecraft. Now I’m the one riding the thing all the time.

I’m also a lifelong NFL fan, and I miss the old days of smashmouth football when big men used to collide into bigger men carrying an odd-shaped ball and yellow penalty flags were rare. Today I’ve become so accustomed to penalty flags that when I watch a baseball game and someone crosses home plate I wait to see if there’s a flag on the play. Seriously. I was also bored stiff half the time I watch baseball, hoping the basemen charge the mound and sack the pitcher. Yes the months are indeed long between Super Bowl and the pre-season.

I’ll admit I don’t wear any helmet while riding the dirt bike on my property. I recognize it’s extremely dangerous and because of that I have yet to put the bike down or fall. I’ve had a scare or two as recently as last night when I took a turn too sharp and braked too quickly, nearly catapulting myself over the handlebars. My son, on the other hand, has wrecked a few times but does so wearing gloves and an expensive motocross helmet. I realize it’s silly to generalize using such a small sample size as two, but I’ve talked to my son and watched him on the bike and it’s clear to me that he pushes the bike too far and takes a lot more risks wearing the protective gear than I do without it. Is it possible the same thing occurs in other sports like football?

In the Seattle-Chicago game on Dec 2, Seattle’s Sidney Rice took two shots in the head (video), one by Bears’ defender Major Wright and another when his head banged the ground as he scored. Now imagine the same play with both players wearing little or no protective gear. Would Wright have tackled Rice in the same way? I doubt it. Earlier in the game Chicago’s Earl Bennett got hit by two Seahawks and cartwheeled into the end zone. He walks away without apparent injury, but  given what we are learning about concussions in the NFL the damage does not come from a single hit but results from repetitive hits each of which may seem completely harmless at the time.

American football is a multi-billion dollar industry. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of people rely on it for their income. But the more I watch it the more I wonder how long it will be around. The murder suicide of Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jevon Belcher is no surprise for NFL sports fans who have become numb at the high price paid by players of the game. According to the New York Post, Belcher struggled with pain, prescription drug abuse, and alcoholism caused by his playing the game, and he eventually snapped. Bob Costas used his position on the air and blamed the 2nd Amendment instead of the nature of the sport that pays his multi-million dollar salary, nor the fact domestic violence resulting in death doesn’t always involve guns. Belcher was 6’2” 228lbs. He probably was twice the size of his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins and could have killed her with his bare hands had he wanted to. Bob Costas has a lot of nerve airing his liberal opinion about guns all the while collecting paychecks from the blood sport.

Courtesy: Instapundit

Is the problem prevalence guns or the nature of the sport? American football is unique in sports due to the amount of physical contact between players. Baseball players rarely run into each other, rushing home plate being the exception and the concussion danger of this play is now increasing calls to ban it. Hockey has a lot of physical contact as well and Canadian neurosurgeons are calling for a ban on body checking to protect against concussions. I simply do not see how we are going to be able to make football safer for players without making it a non-contact sport.

In the meantime people excuse the danger by saying players know the risks and are paid handsomely to take them. That’s little comfort to Belcher’s mother who watched her son kill himself or to the parents of Kasandra Perkins. The NFL will add penalties and increase pads, and the players will do what my son does when he’s on the dirt bike, push themselves even further to the point where injury is inevitable. I would like to see teams at least try to play the sport without all the protective gear to see whether linebackers and tackles dialed it back a bit before sending somebody into next Tuesday, but I’m not hopeful that would end the danger either.

So we will see men kill themselves off the field quickly like Belcher or on the field slowly all for our amusement. I enjoy the sport but my conscience is stirring and I won’t be surprised if my lifelong love the game turns into a remainder of life regret for the carnage I’ve witnessed on countless Sunday afternoons.

To put it crassly, nothing motivates a man better than getting laid, especially when that man is in his late teens through late thirties. Men will do anything, risk anything, pay anything for a piece of tail – just ask Gen. David Petraeus, former Congressman Anthony Wiener and President Bill Clinton. I have followed women across continents, done deeply embarrassing and stupid things, and even built a career and sobered up because of a woman. Women are great motivators, or at least they were. Now I’m not so sure.

I look at the women in Generation Cupcake, the latest generation to follow the selfish Baby Boomers, the cynical and sarcastic Gen-Xers and the Millennials (what are they known for other than coming of age after Y2K?) and I feel sorry for straight young men today. No wonder they aren’t having sex as some studies have found if women like Sandra Fluke and Senator-elect/Squaw Elizabeth “Whines with Fist” Warren represent the state of feminism these days.

I’ll admit I’m old fashioned. I expect women to work and make at least as much as I do if not more. They don’t have to handle the housework, cooking or child rearing I’ll handle that – as well as spider-removal duty, fixing anything that breaks around the house and maintaining the cars. I realize that while men are smart enough to cook women are obviously not mechanically inclined as proven by number of great chefs and dearth of female mechanics and pest control workers. But a woman can whip up a Gantt Chart just as good as any man, and lawyering and doctoring? Well I’m married to a doctor – a good one I might add – and have hired female attorneys who were just as much sharks as mob defense attorneys.

But I am a feminist of sorts. I was born in a household full of women; there was so much estrogen in the air I’m still amazed I made it out of the house straight. To me feminism means independence and self-reliance two attributes that were missing from the traditional view of women. Yet while these attributes are key to adulthood but have evidently been lost by today’s women. Instead of independence they have become dependent on their parents and the government for support. Likewise self-reliance is lost and they are forced to doing what any kid does when he wants something that he can’t get himself: he whines.

Sandra Fluke whined for someone to buy her the Pill; Warren whined for a senate seat. Both got what they wanted and are content for now, but both lack the ability to set a goal and reach it independently. They will want something else and they will whine and stamp their feet until someone provides it to them.

Is this what the suffragettes fought for? Is this what the thousands of women who worked in munitions plants supporting their sons and husbands fighting in World War 2 suffered for? Is this what women want, to be coddled by proxy-parents like rich men or the government?

That isn’t freedom, it’s living in a cage albeit a gilded one where your parents buy your wine and your government pays for your pills. It’s like the most selfish generation of people unleashed on this country, the Baby Boomers, have spawned a generation even worse than them. Luckily I’ve raised a son who got so turned by women that he’s found other pursuits that aren’t “psycho” or “selfish” the way he puts it. The neuroticism and selfishness displayed by girls his age is good news for a parent who isn’t keen on seeing his son sexually active at a young age, but I can’t help but wish that women his age were a little more free and “normal.” Women can be inspiring creatures when they are mature and sane, but the women of Generation Cupcake clearly are neither.