Category Archives: Social Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

The Second Amendment

Of course it secures the right to carry a gun. It’s astounding that anyone would argue otherwise.

[Update a few minutes later]

Eugene Volokh analyzes the ruling:

I think the Ninth Circuit majority’s analysis is correct on this, and the dissent’s is mistaken. The dissent keeps stressing that the case should be about whether the California ban on concealed carry is constitutional, and that Heller says that the concealed carry ban is indeed constitutional. But the California ban on concealed carry is part of a general scheme that bans the great bulk of all carrying in public for self-defense (unless one has a permit that the police may choose not to grant). It is this general scheme that violates the Second Amendment, even if a ban on concealed carry that left people free to carry openly would not do so.

The California ban was just an attempt to get around the Second Amendment, and even the Ninth Circuit recognized that.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

My Twitter Battle With Anil Dash

1 Comment

I had one of the dumbest back and forths of my life last night, in response to this post.

I simply pointed out that he was being sexist, which quickly devolved into non sequiturs and straw men, and ultimately resulted in my being accused of lying and being “threatened and insecure.” It was pretty funny, actually.

[Update a while later]

This seems related somehow: thoughts on the sexism (and other “isms”) of Robert Heinlein and Orson Scott Card:

With Resnick and Malzberg the backlash was faster and louder and even a lot of their number thought (privately) that they were off their rocker. With Card, I think only the choir thinks he’s “a fascist.”

And with Larry… There is no word for this. It’s like a Chihuahua trying to hold onto a car by the back bumper. They have not only bit off more than they can chew, they’ve bit off more than they can… bite. In tactical terms it’s getting involved in a landwar in Asia or going up against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

But wait, there’s more. The other reason they’re getting crazier and crazier and trying to enforce group conformity more and more is that they are no longer in possession of the bully pulpit. It used to be due to quirks of distribution and culture in NYC that got get bought and properly distributed you had to be a darling with a “not Baen” house. Oh, Baen had bestsellers, but they were more a midlist house.

So advances with other houses were bigger, and prestige was immeasurably higher.

Well… The times they are achanging. The collapse of the chains; amazon; the internet where people can find out about books that were publishing put paid to the cozy gentleman’s arrangement of yore. Even when these people are getting published, their advances are smaller, and they have to compete with all the great unwashed for sales. They no longer feel their own specialness.

Yup.

Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Fate Of The Republic

23 Comments

Have we already lost it?

Decades from now, it’s possible that historians will look back and conclude that the American experiment, which began with its declaration of independence from and defeat of Great Britain, ended sometime between 1999 and 2014. As with Rome, the pivotal event isn’t obvious, and the list which follows isn’t all-inclusive.

The failure by the U.S. Senate to convict Bill Clinton after his impeachment by the House was the first signal that the rule of law might not matter any more. These days, the law seems to be whatever Barack Obama and Eric Holder want it to be.

President George W. Bush’s formation of the mammoth Homeland Security Department and mission creep at the National Security Agency after the 9/11 terrorist attacks consolidated awesome and disturbing powers in very few hands. Now both outfits are out-of-control monsters.

The 2007-2008 crackup in housing and mortgage lending would be a leading candidate for the pivotal moment prize if one believes that it was the result of decades of conscious effort. Evidence that it was, including the Community Reinvestment Act and HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo’s 1990s housing discrimination directives, both of which forced banks to make loans to vast numbers of borrowers who couldn’t repay, is compelling. Compounding the problem, government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “routinely misrepresented” the quality of both the mortgages they packaged for the securities markets and those they kept on their own books for 15 years. The amounts involved were in the trillions of dollars.

It would have been painful in the short term, but the nation’s economy would likely have recovered, as it always previously had, from that Cloward Piven-like attempt to collapse the system if a frightened George W. Bush administration, opportunistic Congress, and conflicted Federal Reserve hadn’t intervened in the fall of 2008. But they did, and heavy-handedly. Congress passed TARP, despite citizens’ overwhelming opposition. Bush’s Treasury Department then used it to “put a gun to the head” of big-bank CEOs, forcing them to accept government “investment” and de facto control, which the Dodd-Frank legislation solidified two years later.

All the while, the Fed engaged in a massive, undisclosed bailout of domestic and even foreign banks, followed by what became known as “quantitative easing.” And $4.1 trillion later, our central bank’s tiny cadre of suits and skirts now has the ability to almost instantly send the economy into a tailspin any time they see federal government policies or actions they don’t like. Don’t think for a minute that the three branches which nominally run our government don’t know this.

Historians may conclude that the presidential election of 2012 was the last chance to undo the authoritarian encroachment. Pervasive Obama administration harassment of political opponents by its Internal Revenue Service, serial lying about the September 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack, and the mother of all 21st century lies — “if you like your health care plan, doctor, medical provider, and drug regimen, you can keep them” — inarguably delegitimized its result.

Something that may be rectified this fall. The biggest problem, though, is a low-information electorate. And a government and media that wants to keep it that way.

[Update a few minutes later]

Is peak Orwell sustainable?

Well, Ron Fournier is getting tired of having to defend ObamaCare, so maybe not.