Vox Popoli

Brits learn, to their astonishment, that people managed to kill each other in large numbers before guns were ever invented:

The power of the knife is its banality. Guns are illegal (in most circumstances), serial-numbered, maybe not hard to obtain in London or Manchester, but you have to know the go-to guy. Guns are good for only one thing. But how can you legislate against knives when, for every 528 seized by Operation Blunt2, there are a gazillion more in kitchen drawers? After amnesties, sabres and machetes, switchblades and flick-knives are displayed in triumph. Yet you can kill with a £3 fruit parer from Sainsbury’s.

The reason knife crime is more likely to get out of control than gun crime is threefold. The first is that guns are the great equalizer in more than one sense; one man defending himself with a gun can hope to stand off a greater number of attackers than a man defending himself with a knife. The second is that knife attacks are far less likely to draw immediate attention; it’s a lot harder to notice the sound of a lung being punctured than the sound of a .44 magnum going off. The third is that the use of guns doesn’t appear to connect as naturally to the wolf-pack beating mentality as the use of knives does. The transition from punch to stab is much easier than the one from punch to step back, draw, and fire.

Britain would be wise to bring back the guns. That will put an end to the recent spate of stabbings in a hurry. And if a few would-be murderers get their heads blown off while trying to stab someone to death for kicks, so much the better.

It’s wonderful how migrants are able to contribute so colorfully to the multicultural vibrancy of the community:

British girls as young as 12 are being forced into prostitution by migrants in a new crime of ‘internal’ people trafficking. Children from ordinary families are groomed by older men posing as boyfriends before being pimped around the UK to have sex up to 20 times a night.

They are raped and often drugged, according to police.

Officers have identified ‘syndicates of Iraqi men throughout the UK’ behind the exploitation. A Government report said ‘internal trafficking’ was an ’emerging issue’ and it should no longer be assumed young victims of sex exploitation were smuggled from abroad.

Culture abhors a vaccuum.

This paints a somewhat romanticized view of homeschoolers, but it sums up the discomfort felt by others reasonably well:

Indications are that home schooling is working well for the kids, and the parents are pleased with their choice, but the practice is coming under increasing suspicion, and even official attack, as in California.

Why do we hate (or at least distrust) these people so much?

Methinks American middle-class people are uncomfortable around the home schooled for the same reason the alcoholic is uneasy around the teetotaler.

Their very existence represents a rejection of our values, and an indictment of our lifestyles. Those families are willing to render unto Caesar the things that Caesar’s be, but they draw the line at their children. Those of us who have put our trust in the secular state (and effectively surrendered our children to it) recognize this act of defiance as a rejection of our values, and we reject them in return.

I used to find it annoying, but now I’m mostly amused by those who get their noses out of joint simply because I don’t live my life the way they do. I’ve found the easiest way to end the hostile questioning is to simply ask “why do you care about this anyhow?” Somehow, I think the homeschoolers will somehow find the fortitude to survive their rejection by the mostly maleducated masses.

This is just my list of personal favorites from the electronic game era; I think it’s problematic to make substantive claims about the superiority of one very good game over another, especially games from different technological eras. I rate them primarily on the basis of how much I liked them at the time, with some nod to their influence on subsequent games. Series games reflect my favorite in the series. I’m sure I’m missing a few that should be here, so this will probably get revised a bit.

1. Akalabeth
2. John Madden NFL Football ’92 (Sega Genesis)
3. Doom
4. Wizardry
5. Wing Commander
6. Castle Wolfenstein (Apple II)
7. World of Warcraft
8. Quake
9. Autoduel (Apple II)
10. Ultima III
11. U.S. Ski Team Skiing I(Intellivision)
12. Swashbuckler (Apple II)
13. Fantasy General
14. Donkey Kong (arcade)
15. Total War: Medieval
16. Heretic
17. TIE Fighter
18. Crash Team Racing
19. Ms. Pac-man (arcade)
20. NCAA Basketball (Super Nintendo)
21. Combat Mission: Operation Barbarossa
22. Mechwarrior
23. Call of Duty
24. Space Battle (Intellivision)
25. Front Page Sports Football Pro ’95

I don’t think there’s any question that Akalabeth is the greatest game of all time. I still play it every now and then. I haven’t played enough GTA IV to have an opinion yet; Age of Conan may also merit a place on this list once I play a big more of it. There’s no question that Mario Karts 64 is better than Crash Team Racing on the PS/1, but I have sentimental reasons for preferring the latter. And if you’re noting an absence of RTS games on this list, that’s no accident. I despise them. And while there are some undeniably excellent games missing from this list, like Tetris, Super Mario Bros. and SimCity, I just never happened to particularly enjoy them.

Unsurprisingly, a journalist simply can’t get it through his head that newspapers don’t make you more intelligent. And it’s arguable that being misinformed is actually better than remaining in ignorance:

My lament this Fourth of July is to ask readers to see newspapers as not just another casualty in the churn of business. Sure, reporters say stupid things and write idiotic stories. Everyone stumbles. But on its best days, a newspaper is a marvel of style and wit, of small-type discoveries and large-type overstatements, a diary of our deeds. We may still prove Jefferson’s preference wrong: perhaps a nation can function without newspapers. But it would be a confederacy of dunces.

It’s not a question of “stumbling”, it’s a question of repeatedly, regularly and reliably getting the facts wrong while operating on a predictive model that is proven to be fraudulent, all the while presenting a blatantly dishonest picture about obvious biases and motives. Why should anyone place trust in a lapdog that insists on describing itself as a watchdog even as it is cuddled and caressed by the very entity it is supposed to be watching?

The New York Times makes the usual predictions of blood in the streets that are made whenever gun rights are honored or carry laws are passed:

In another sharp break with its traditions, the court struck down parts of the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. After seven decades of holding that the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms is tied to raising a militia, the court reversed itself and ruled that it confers on individuals the right to keep guns in their homes for personal use. The decision will no doubt add significantly to the number of Americans killed by gun violence.

Note that “significantly”. In 2004, 29,569 people were killed by guns. In 2005, 30,694 were killed, a 3.8 percent increase. According to the natural progression, there should be about 35,633 firearms deaths in 2009 even without the recent supreme court decision; let’s assume that a “significant” increase would be at least twice the expected rate of increase given population growth, to say nothing of the economic downturn and global warming. So, if the prophetic skills of the New York Times is to be trusted, gun fatalities should rise to at least 40,000 in 2009.

My view is that they won’t get anywhere near that level, unless, of course, Obama gets elected and decides to govern in the conventional African manner.

John Scalzi may be a lefty, but he is that rare and dangerous breed of lefty, the kind who actually pays attention:

Over the last seven elections, the superior military service is 1-6 in presidential elections. If McCain is hoping his service record is going to matter much in this election, he might want to look at the historical record.

I’ve never quite understood the “war hero” candidacy concept, especially given the fact that the USA hasn’t fought a popular war capable of producing public heroes in my entire lifetime. As Scalzi points out, if history is a reliable guide, then John McCain, USN, ret. is toast.

What’s the over/under on flavor in an Obama cabinet anyhow? It will be interesting to see if the usual lamentations about “a cabinet that doesn’t look like America” will resound throughout the land if there are more than two blacks or less than three Hispanics.

To a certain extent, anyhow. I’ll provide my own answer, but Joe Carter’s is too funny to not highlight:

1. Tummy aches are a form of harm being done to the physical and/or psychological well-being of a sentient creature.
2. Harm is evil.
3. God–an omniscient, wholly good being–would prevent evil.
4. God did not prevent my tummy ache
5. Ergo, there is no god.

This argument is a type known as the evidential problem of evil, the primary remaining form since the logical problem of evil has been solved.*

As I’ve noted on numerous occasions, I find the entire concept of theodicy to be completely ridiculous. Since I reject the concept of omniderigence, I have very serious doubts about the non-Biblical concept of omniscience, and I believe in the existence of free will, the “problem” of evil as related to God’s existence and/or character is nonexistent. And it’s ironic that it continues to arise, considering that its the materialists of all stripes who face a far more serious problem of evil in their own right.

Now, Bearded Spock describes his argument thusly:

My argument was that Job’s god is so different from the New Testament God, that they cannot both be the same…. Job’s god is as different from the NT God as Allah is.

This is logically fallacious. Job’s god and the New Testament God are both described as beyond human comprehension and human judgment. Therefore, even any apparent dichotomies – I do not admit to them, but I do invite Bearded Spock to delineate them – cannot be given any significant import because they do not provide a sufficiently comprehensive understanding of the deity’s/deities’ character(s). I don’t see two descriptions as being very different at all, but then, I take serious exception to the “god of personal love for everyone” that Spock appears to be imputing to the New Testament god. However, that’s a pretty big tangent, so let’s leave it alone for now.

My further argument that neither the Book of Job nor the NT are legitimately authoritative is secondary.

Fine, then we can leave it for now. I merely note that no one who describes the Bible as “hearsay evidence” with a straight face has a sufficient grasp of either the rules of evidence or archeology for their opinion about legitimate authority to be of any import whatsoever.

IF YOU ATTEMPT TO DEFEND GOD BY REDEFINING EVIL, THEN YOU ARE REALLY DEFENDING EVIL.

Spock appears to be forgetting that he is the one redefining evil; the cited Biblical definition of evil long precedes him. I have no qualms about defending much of what Spock and others call “evil”, be they tummy aches or tsunami; they are in fact nothing of the kind. Now, I don’t know if Spock is an extreme rational materialist or not, but if he is, then he has no logical claim to even make use the word evil, much less quibble over definitions outside of his realm of competence. Spock’s failure here is to understand that God alone is the yardstick; only the creator has the right to define what is good and what is evil according to the rules of his game. In His case, and in His case alone, might does quite literally MAKE right. But this holds only in that might was (presumably) required in order to create; the mere possession of might does not suffice in itself.

Spock shows the inherent danger of arguing by aphorism; when one does not think the matter sufficiently through, one frequently errs by improperly applying the pithy quote.

Why are we supposed to be shocked or upset by this? Why are we even supposed to be surprised by this? The American and European rape epidemics are the direct and predictable result of the West’s open door policy towards Third World migration; migration always changes the culture of the territory more dramatically than it changes the character of the migrants. The theoretical arguments of the equality crowd are being blown away in real-time by the rapidly accumulating empirical evidence.

It is an indignant, heartbroken, outraged father who speaks with us. “My daughter was raped at the Midi Station. In Brussels. Capital of Europe. In complete impunity.”

It was June 12th. “My daughter came back from Waterloo station. It was 9 PM. Upon exiting the train, she walked to the Bancontact.” A transit place. And it was there, of all places, that the drama unfolded.

“In the midst of a train station. How is this possible?” continues the father of Lola, 21 years old. “Two man reproached her for not wearing the veil. My girl is pretty. She’s blonde and has blue eyes.”

Everything then happened very fast. “One of the aggressors took out a knife. My daughter was forcibly put against a wall in Bancontact. Knife under the throat, one of the guys raped her. The other one watched.”

It was 9 PM. It was still light out and the station was far from being empty.

This is but a harbinger of the crime-ridden society that the liberals, left-wingers, and multiculturalists of the West have chosen. They shouldn’t complain about the unintended consequences, but rather, take the famous advice of Bobby Knight, relax, and enjoy it. Those who rejected the civilized traditional culture of Western Christendom in favor of a mythical “equality” of one sort or another – socialism, feminism, and multiculturalism all stem from that basic premise – merit the full fruits of that rejection. It’s a mark of the spineless secular suicide of the modern West that the proposed response to a violent attack on a strong, independent woman is… more cameras at the train station.

BH sees more silver lining than cloud in the Heller decision. Or, at the very least, the potential for it:

I read with interest your assessment of the recent Heller decision, and the careful language of Scalia in the majority opinion. I was concerned with the dicta you cited, as well as Scalia’s assertion that there existed “sensitive places” where the lawful carrying of arms could be prohibited.

The reality is, dicta notwithstanding (because while dicta informs, it does not set precedent), that the Court was only considering a very narrow issue, that of the possession of functional, readily available arms within the home. The dicta touched upon keeping and bearing consolidating into a single right, but the holding did not address the lawful carrying of arms outside the home. As you know, SCOTUS does this all the time, allowing the gov’t to cling to unaddressed ultra vires behavior as long as possible. There is a hole in this holding, however, into which a wedge can be driven in our favor, regarding the People’s progenetive right to alter or abolish tyrannical gov’t enumerated in the DoI. Scalia addressed the Miller holding, only partially stating what it really meant. While his language regarding Miller eviscerates the “collective right” absurdity advanced by statists, it seeks to eliminate military pattern small arms from the designation “in common use” intimating that sporting and hunting arms (there were no such distinctions at the writing of the BoR, as you rightly noted) are those to which Miller referred. I submit (as should any competent lawyer) that military pattern semi-automatic firearms, both pistols and rifles, are contemporarily “in common use”, and could be brought into service if needed in any militia activity, because their ownership and lawful use is widespread (i.e. “common”), and the only reason they aren’t more common is inane federal, state and local restrictions preventing them from being so.

So, while I understand and agree with your skepticism, I see light at the end of the tunnel. As you are well aware, these issues must be pursued one a time, carefully and skillfully – such is the state of our jurisprudence. However, Scalia, in seeking to limit the type of arms the keeping and bearing of which are protected, by placing heavy emphasis on the “common use” language in Miller, has actually opened the door. Now, all we have to do is to stick our foot in it to keep it from closing.

I certainly hope he’s right. World events don’t always go as poorly as one expects; the recent nationalistic intransigence in Ireland, Poland, and even Germany demonstrate that. But, I’m not as convinced as most conservatives that Scalia is as ferocious a defender of gun rights as he’s been painted, and considering the narrow majority that even subscribe to the individual rights “interpretation”, I don’t see how the worms will fail to come out of the opened can that is Heller or that a mere foot in the door will be enough.