Culture, Governance, Politics 2018, Responsibility

Leaders, Leaders Everywhere – Part One

July 7, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

America, or shall we say, the United States in particular, has severe leadership problems. We decry them in terms of politics as “partisanship,” but they are much broader than simply that. During our 100 years of industrialization we seemed to have a pretty good pool of leaders – business, industrial, scientific, mercantile, military, religious, philosophical and political. They weren’t deemed to be perfect by everyone, but they were relative giants in society and with their influences they appear to have set standards for others who would be leaders. A handful articulated this role, most simply lived it and comported themselves in what might be described as statesmanlike, in that they took larger views of life and growth, exploration and discovery, and responsibility, in their fields.

We have leaders among us now, of course, but… well, they’re different. And I mean no slighting of women in history, also of course, and the phenomenon of this devolution of leadership seems, unfortunately to have afflicted them, too. How to describe it? Or, how to describe a cause of it?

Let’s consider who a few of today’s “leaders” are. We know them: Trump and some in his administration; certain Democrat leaders including Mrs. Clinton; Congressional leaders, both majority and minority party; numerous “celebrities” from the entertainment industries – indeed, “celebrity” is a critical component of most “leadership,” today; ultra-wealthy business and financial leaders, like Federal Reserve governors and the Chair-man or –woman; the heads of corporations like Google, Facebook, Disney, Microsoft and a hundred more… maybe 500 more… maybe 5,000. But we hear of these business/industrial leaders usually with a descriptive term before their name: billionaire. Maybe, multi-billionaire. It’s a clue to what’s happened to leadership.

Money? Is that all that’s wrong with today’s leaders? They’re disoriented by wealth? Prudence would say, “no, not just money, but it’s a part.”

Leaders often have power. Charles Krauthammer had power as a “thought-leader” for example. Was he a celebrity? Somewhat, thanks to television, but he was a columnist and never described himself as a TV personality. No billionaire, certainly, but he had power for two reasons I can discern: 1) He was a well-read, well-educated observer of things powerful and political, who lucidly expressed his opinion with refreshing honesty, clarity and consistency, and 2) He was honest to himself and to his readers, a refreshing and rare quality from which his power derived. It has been a treat to be alive and literate during his lifetime. Most people under, say, 40, would not list him in their panoply of “leaders,” sadly.

Throughout history the most powerful, threatening, feared person has been in charge. He (occasionally she) could push people around, command their virtual, or real, slavery and surface fealty, and literally take the profits of their work. They could even “lead” them into battles but never were they “leaders” in the sense that they were going in directions that others wanted to go or felt “right” about going. That is to say, the mission driving the King – or kingpin – was not shared by those afraid to not follow him. Mission and Leadership appear to be of a set, virtually inseparable. Does this illuminate any of the apparent differences between leadership during “America’s” biggest century and now?

Intentionally or not, every leader, by default, has some kind of “mission,” possibly only because he or she has articulated what it is that has spurred his or her actions. Lo, and behold! That sudden mission is agreed-to, thanks to our being awash in communications, by a group of people who, in the majority of instances, know only a thin shell of what issues are at stake. But, they are behind “the leader” all the way. One might say that the “size” of the leadership is a function more of the extent of the communications about the issues than it is about the quality of the leader or of the importance of the issues… or of the “principles” that motivate the leader and the followers.

In earlier times, when it could take days for news to reach a significant number of readers – always readers – powerful, or strong-willed people, at least, would start their journey towards a big idea, big goal, big industry or discovery, more nearly alone. His (most often, his) “followers” numbered in the single digits or low tens. It required courage, then. There were no happenstance leaders during the big century. Right or wrong they were real, and honest to their missions. If they and the mission failed, they faced failure… sometimes failure that meant the loss of everything. Lincoln.

Morality has a way of guiding, cajoling, molding and even forcing bad actions to end and bad actors to leave the stage of public influence. In fact, morality is essential to the success of leadership. Even today, when institutions and agencies do their level best to remove themselves from moral judgment, every person who claims to lead this or that movement – even “flash” movement – first lays out some “moral” position around which the latest crowd of followers might rally. Something is wrong and thanks to this “leader’s” vision, that wrong has been exposed and with (your) help, and money, that wrong will be ended and “things” will be set right. Communications unlike anything humans have been exposed to throughout evolution, play a big role in two ways: 1) newsworthy crowds can be assembled in a moment and, 2) the “wrong” that unites them need not be agreed to by even a significant fraction of the nation’s population.
What is “right” and what is “wrong,” anyway? Leadership, historically, has generally been connected to “leaders” who exercise courage in defense of what is “right.” Clear examples were seen during the American Revolution. Not only were the patriots fighting the government they were born under, but fighting with guns and cannons and real bullets. Not all of their fellow colonists were with them, many helped to fight against them. But motivating Washington and every Continental soldier who endured with him and other officers, was the powerful belief that what they were trying to do would yield a greater “good.” They believed they were doing what was right – not just more comfortable or more profitable, but right in terms of freedom, independence and justice.

The “patriots” comprised not even half of the British colonists… not even a quarter. Their mission would have appeared futile in many instances yet they soldiered on. How? They were both blessed and cursed by the paucity of information available to them. Cursed because they did not know the nature or size or deployment of the forces arrayed against them; blessed because they, unlike their modern descendants, were not burdened by too much thinking about their circumstances or by too much planning of how to avoid failure.

That is to say, they didn’t “know enough” to stop believing in the rightness of their mission: bumblebees unaware that they could not fly. The combination allowed their belief and trust in Washington and others to not just maintain but strengthen, until they flew in the face of the greatest possible headwinds. Is that “faith?” Trust in something one cannot see? Leadership is connected to that ability of humans – to believe in something greater than one’s self.

Modern leaders are more likely to be constrained by a flood of information. Indeed, most of our current “leaders” are called so because of financial success. Nearly every move they make is “hedged” in half a dozen ways such that they, personally, cannot lose. Even if their leadership of great businesses “fails,” they have arranged for a “golden parachute” that lets them leave wealthy. Their “leader-ship” carries minimal risk… to themselves. Their “mission” is personal gain and not the gain of a people or of a nation. They may be giants, dollar-wise, but are mis-identified as leaders. More and more, “success” is a measure of mere wealth. Even top political leaders leave office with more money than they entered with, and many become multi-millionaires by selling their celebrity – or notoriety. Money.

Politics 2018, Taxation

Happy Days Are Here Again

July 4, 2018 Bob Wescott Leave a comment

The soft-head-long rush to legalize “pot” reveals a gigantic weakness shared across institutional and political leaders of every stripe. Much of the “leadership” each claims on this “complex” subject is craven followership, at best. At worst, and fairly common among political types, is the abject desire for money, regardless of source. “Drug Money” is perfectly good for society if the definition of mind-altering, stupefying drugs can be changed sufficiently as to make everyone believe a new thing. After all, the beautiful new taxes that may be collected will provide all of these “goods”:

1) We’ll pretend to give some to education, proving that official endorsement of brain-altering and brain-retarding substances will help children – not hurt them, no, no, no. There will be an age limit on their sale, too… see?

2) Some of the funds will be diverted to imaginary drug-treatment programs which will HELP the tiny minority of human brains that may be negatively affected – and there is no proof of this effect, but just in case – so that’s a new benefit legal drug sales will enable… see?

3) The funds will also go to repair our crumbling infrastructure, which will save lives and create good-paying, campaign-enhancing union construction jobs. This will make our roads and bridges safer, especially since drug-users will not be allowed to work on these vital projects when there are still some drugs in their system, no, no, no.

4) Experimenting kiddos who are caught with some marijuana won’t have a black star on their records that might interfere with their parents’ plans for their college careers – not just for one little mistake – so unfair, laws be damned. Besides, they’ll be 18 years old in college and a little pot won’t be able to hurt their brains a bit, there is absolutely no proof of that if someone told you otherwise, and who doesn’t need to relax now and then under the tremendous pressures of college, for Pete’s sake?

5) Finally, the corrupt racketeers in our many statehouses will no longer be perceived as mean, nor will their jack-booted police minions, who will now spend their valuable time chasing REAL criminals (unless they are illegal entrants) and we’ll all be safer. Safer!

Well, that’s all certainly a win-win-win-win-win. What possible reason was there for not doing this, decades ago?

The sixth great “good” has been described as “getting pot out of the hands of criminals,” which actually doesn’t happen, it turns out, and, even better from the glazed viewpoints of congenital regulatory types, “we’ll finally be able to regulate its purity and safety so that buyers won’t be getting other drugs mixed in with their legal pot.” That’s a big one.

What is equally as large a benefit in the eyes of pot buyers, is that legal growing has quickly facilitated development of much, much, much stronger variants of marijuana, and has permitted – wait for it – edibles(!). There are pot cookies, brownies, cakes, cake mixes, crackers, breads, gummy-bears (gummy bears?) and other candies, none of which will be sold to minors, not ever, no, no, no.

Nor will pregnant moms ever, ever use pot… except medicinally, of course, because just like there isn’t any evidence of pot harming anyone, ever, it certainly can’t harm the developing brain of a fetus. Besides, pot is far less dangerous than cocaine or heroin, so shove it. And, everyone knows it’s far less dangerous than (shudder) alcohol. Goodness gracious, look at all the drunk driving and people dying from cirrhosis and flying into angry outbursts when they’re drunk! You never hear of a cannabis user getting angry or, worse, hitting someone, no, no, no.

Just because that unfortunate David Njuguna fellow blacked out after enjoying his medical marijuana, and then murdered state trooper, Thomas Clardy – left his wife and 6 kids – on the Mass Pike, it certainly wasn’t the fault of the marijuana, no, no, no. The driver did it: he must have been taking other “medications” at the same time and made a bad choice to drive. Too bad he didn’t use a gun to kill the trooper; the gun would have done it, in that case. Only THC was found in his blood samples.

Did you know that George Washington grew “hemp” to make ropes and other products? So, shove it.

There used to be a fairly simple marijuana landscape: marijuana and hashish, which was stronger. Different sources of marijuana offered variations in how high a smoker could get, although some of that was marketing myth. Still, Hawaiian pot was better than mainland-grown, which was perhaps a little better than Mexican stuff, except that the Mexicans could flood the market and the damned narcs kept local weed in short supply.

Hashish was like living on the wild side, and if you smoked it the right way, could really separate a person from reality. “Assassin” derives from hash user: “hashishim.” Many assassination jobs were suicide missions and required that the perpetrator was not “himself,” as it were. “Pot” today is in a whole different realm.

Controlled cultivation has rendered some 120 strains of marijuana, most are 4 times stronger in THC concentration (the psychoactive chemical) than the weeds of even 15 years ago. It’s like trading a “beer” for four vodka nips and figuring that you’ve drunk LESS, since 4 nips don’t even fill half a beer glass. Yeah, well, better pot means you don’t smoke as much, man… so shove it. Besides, we don’t have to smoke it anymore, they’ve got tabs that dissolve under your tongue and they’re 80% pure THC, so shove it. And alcohol is way worse than pot, man, so your example isn’t worth… ahh, some bad dope, like.

In the interest of public health the many, many health agencies, the surgeon General, no less, and lots of PSA’s and subway posters have slowly driven down the number of TOBACCO smokers in the U. S., to the point that catching a whiff of smoke is uncommon, and all restaurants are now smoke-free as are most bars and lounges. By all measures the anti-smoking campaign has been a huge success, aided, no doubt, by the $3, $5, or $9 per-pack taxes and the billions of other dollars extorted from tobacco companies over the past 25 years. Those taxes were for health coverage for children, for goodness’ sake, and helped fund… well, education and infrastructure projects and, umm, ahh… oh! Helped fund anti-smoking campaigns of course.

However, with the significant decline in smoking there has been a dangerous decline in crucial revenues for childrens’ health coverage and stuff. Did you know that State Police officers can cash in unused sick days when they retire? Regardless, states were carefully spending their tobacco windfalls and simultaneously decriminalizing marijuana use: smokers are smokers, some we like, some we don’t, and there is no campaign we thrifty state managers can foresee that is going to reduce the number of pot smokers. Besides, all that tax revenue that legal pot produces will go to education, crumbling infrastructure, children’s health care and permanent housing for the homeless. Stop pot smoking? Over our dead bodies.

THC is readily absorbed by fat cells, which doesn’t make a lick of sense to a pot smoker but it’s true, and the largest, diet-proof pile of fat cells is a human brain. Funny. And it’s also a fact that purging toxins from brain cells is very difficult to do, since the nature of the body is to breakdown every fat cell it can find (if a person eats a low-carb diet and forces the body to shrink a little) EXCEPT brain cells. They tend to live long and die slowly and even, recent research shows, replace themselves, even building new neural pathways and synapses if properly stimulated. The disruption to brain development in youngsters who use pot is well known, especially in the realms of short-term memory, initiative, sports abilities and other things a growing child hopes to have.

It is not yet accepted that cannabis in the bloodstreams of older or elder humans will have any effect on healthy brain cells or on the new cells trying to grow. God forbid it has anything to do with Alzheimers, or the acceleration of Alzheimers. Let’s hope not as both become more widespread. May God also forbid any effect on the incidence of autism.

Ohh, sorry. For a few sentences I went off track there, imagining bad side effects from the barely researched impact of the broad array of THC and other marijuana chemicals’ concentrations in the incredible, balanced biologies that enable human existence, development, survival and procreation. Glad I caught myself. There’s just no way potently psychoactive drugs have some “lasting effects” on human brains. Besides, with Suri, Alexa and what’s-her-name, plus GPS satellites talking through every phone and car, people don’t really need to remember all that much… or even learn it in the first place. So, shove it.

Back to brains: THC likes being in brains and the owners of the brains like its being there, too. The most active part of pot attaches to the same receptors as does heroin and fentanyl, but it’s not as strong. You may have gone by a billboard here and there that proclaims fewer opioid deaths in states with legal marijuana. There’s no direct connection between the two conditions, but like every other pot-related argument, the slightest case for justification (“alcohol is way worse, man” and “pot’s therapeutic”) is pure gold, the mountain of evidence of personal destruction ain’t worth… ahh, some bad dope, like.

Everything we ingest, however, has the potential of causing changes to our bodies. Some are foods, some are pharmaceuticals, some are pollutants, some are poisons. Some make us stupid in ways we find enjoyable; some cause us to forget or ignore our problems real and imagined; some, we think, make sexual relations more likely. Whatever, all of them have long-term effects.

Some are addictive. Pot users know that addiction is bad so they swear up and down that pot doesn’t “cause” addiction. Maybe we can pretend that, but regular users know fellow tokers who never miss an opportunity to get a “hit.” Pot may not “cause” addiction but, like so many, many substances, starting with sugar and caffeine, pot can create withdrawal discomfort when there isn’t a fresh infusion at an appropriate time. Users will go to a lot of trouble and, flailing governments hope, expense, to resolve their withdrawal anxieties. “Medical” marijuana can relieve anxiety. Call it what you will.

That terrible scourge, alcohol, is mildly psychoactive, much less so than original pot and way, way less so than the modern types. Still, ethanol can “teach” the brain to cause a lot of strange actions and reactions, hallucinations and psychoses, while it chemically damages cells in livers, kidneys, throats, blood vessels, hearts and other places. A certain fraction of humans is very susceptible to becoming addicted to alcohol, but many more can make themselves alcoholics if they work at it. Sugar can do the same to lesser degrees; heroin is fairly quick to train the brain to “need” it; cocaine in some forms needs but a single “hit” to turn on debilitating cravings. Pot, however, stands alone in its ability to interfere with dopamine receptors, like all psychoactives, and NEVER create dependency, no, no, no.

Like heroin and cocaine, THC affects many areas of the brain and consciousness, memory difficulties perhaps the best known (hypothalamus). But it also distorts time awareness, key to vast tracts of decision-making, not least of which may prove to be was there a car entering the intersection from the right just now or was that earlier? Otherwise, pot is much like alcohol in terms of motor skills, psychoses and lethargy, but waaay better than booze, as everyone knows, and you don’t wet your pants as much.

Like so many activities rapacious governments legalize for money, the comparison of this one with the stupid laws, and their poor enforcement, against stupid uses of alcohol is sufficient justification if the money and votes are there. Maybe pot doesn’t make a person as stupid as booze… observers of a side-by-side test of stupidness would be hard-pressed to choose a “winner.” However, alcohol can be metabolized while much of marijuana cannot; alcohol flushes from the system renally, much of pot does not, staying in fat cells for days and weeks somewhat cumulatively. From the clarion viewpoint of a pot user, on the other hand, the winner is obvious and that’s where the money is. And, from the corrupt viewpoint of government and wealth-seeking former politicians, two stupids make a lot of money.

Some smokers we like, some we don’t.
Curious? https://americanaddictioncenters.org/central-nervous-system/

Governance, Immigration, Representation, Trump

Citizen Unsettledness

June 16, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

If you’re anything like me… and I know I am, you try hard every day to see something happening globally, or nationally or, possibly just in your local town or city, that’s good or soon to be so. Yet, try as we might we can’t avoid a certain unsettledness. For every bright spot in the daily news stream there seem to be 5 areas that are risky, messy, worrisome or approaching dangerous crises. Common to most of these is the fact that every level of government suffers from two truths: 1) Government employees are paid exorbitantly in comparison to average taxpayers; and, 2) governments are running out of money.

In spite of the creation of the so-called, “Federal” Reserve Bank, which is neither federal nor a reserve, and in spite of Congress’ unlimited ability to borrow money, the U. S. government (which grants and loans “money” to virtually EVERY state and municipal government, law-enforcement agency and school district) continuously obligates itself to levels of spending that exceed all revenues AND the deficit it borrowed to fill during the previous year. Both political parties have proven feckless in their stated desires to achieve a “balanced” budget. What they have proven to be adept at is convincing enough voters that only the mendacity and inherent (pick all that apply: racism, hatefulness, homophobia, misogyny, Christian fundamentalism, ethnocentrism, open-borderism, sanctuary policies, liberalism, conservatism, fascism, socialism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Russian collusion, lookism, weightism, white privilege or xenophobia) of the opposing party is standing in the way of a well-regulated, egalitarian Shangri-la: A place where everyone, including the ignorant, the illegal, the unskilled and the drug-addled are happy, well-fed and well-respected… and perhaps better-smelling.

A simple increase in the “debt ceiling,” the “ceiling” aspect of which is a bigger lie than medical marijuana, is all that’s needed to protect democracy and guarantee the rights of every known victim group. It’s all unsettling.

To add to our concerns and feelings of helplessness, just as the continuing news of gang rapes and drug-related murders dims in our cerebral cortices, some clown shoots up a school somewhere and the fundaments of Constitutional republicanism are brought into question, non-stop, for about 120 hours. It gives a person worries. More kids die playing school sports every year than die from being shot at school, but that fact doesn’t seem to help… not that it should, really. Both are problems, but conservatism and, in particular, the unusual Mr. Trump, can’t be blamed for sports deaths. And there’s always the NRA. The perpetrator should shoulder most of the blame but he (virtually always “he”) is quickly exposed as a victim of something society or the unusual Mr. Trump and every Trump voter has done to him.

The abject failures of people in positions of authority, law-enforcement and so forth, are never the fault of anyone in particular and readily ascribed to a “lack of resources.”

Many of us, more women than men I’m convinced, deflect every opportunity to discuss political-economic issues because …”there’s nothing we can do about it.” A somewhat larger “many” refuses to discuss politics at all, because politicians all lie and even when the person who seems better gets elected, nothing changes then, either. What’s the point?

The casual observer is, naturally, unsettled.

The miraculous ability of elected (and appointed) officials to become quite well-off, if not wealthy, while sacrificing as “public servants” only adds to the general feeling among everyone else that things are upside-down in America, in the sense that “things” don’t make “sense.” Recently a number of (Massachusetts) State Police officials beat a hasty retreat to “retirement” before the various crimes they may (very likely) have committed while “serving” the public as enforcers of the law, were formally charged to them. Interestingly, as they retired they were gifted with huge (read: obscene) payouts in the tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars, CASH, for “sick” days they never needed and for “vacation” days they never took. The records of such non-takings and non-needings are never questioned.

It is a fascinating coincidence that a disproportionate number of people whose “contracts” with their State agency include the unique option to “cash in” sick days not needed, are among the healthiest state employees on record. Compare them to employees of, say, the MBTA in Massachusetts, whose union “contracts” include not only exorbitant pay rates but a generous number of “sick days” without the cash-in options, who are found to be among the least healthy. Very highly paid bureaucrats are employed to hire the two groups of workers and one would think that some of the ultra-healthy might accidentally be placed with the MBTA, but, not evidently. For work-a-day tax-payers it is… unsettling.

Locally in the Merrimack Valley we are learning that the unfortunate city known as the Town of Methuen whose immediate past mayor left office much beloved, has realized that in that mayor’s last years in office, in concert with an elected City Council, contracts with their police were signed that raised pay scales this year to $400,000 or so for CAPTAINS, and grants the once-embattled CHIEF an $86,000 raise, bringing his pay to $300,000 country. Just think of the pensions. Can they cash in sick days?

Finally, it’s unsettling how many elected and sworn officials spend more effort and time “representing” illegal entrants: border-jumpers, in effect. Even judges are infected with greater concern for non-citizen defendants, freely releasing them to commit additional crimes inside the United States in contrast to citizens who, had they committed the same crimes that engendered the court appearance, would be incarcerated. Fortunately said “judges” have lifetime appointments, else they’d be kicked out post haste or, perhaps, kicked period. Imagine. Still, it’s unsettling.

Culture, Economics

Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker

June 7, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

The Colorado baker whose case the Supreme Court finally heard, has won only a reprieve and not quite a victory. “SCOTUS” ruled on the improprieties of how the Colorado Commission on Discrimination treated baker, Jack Phillips, during its proceedings and the ruling that followed, not on the right to withhold certain aspects of his services on the basis of religious belief. The larger fight looms.

Another case may be decided this month, as well, concerning a florist who refused to create bouquets and other floral displays for a same-sex wedding.

Then there is the “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” case where the family-operated bake shop was unmercifully attacked, boycotted and broken-into after a lesbian couple was denied a custom wedding cake. Oregon chipped in with its own punishment by fining the Greshams, themselves, $135,000.

So far, the arguments have been religious in nature and they, it seems Prudent to say, will eventually fail. The anti-religious, or, at least, anti-spiritual socialist power structures in place in the U. S. and the various states, cannot accept religious belief as the basis for any public act, since it can’t be touched, tasted or seen… or taxed. Through the looking-glass, however, these same happily accept the self-declared conditions grouped under “LGBT” even though they are equally un-provable beyond the declarations of adherents. Prudence finds it difficult to discern the logical distinctions; aside from the political.

The winning arguments, and those which may be legally definable – codifiable – will have to follow this path: public accommodation can be satisfied by requiring any retailer to sell its generic products to anyone who wishes to buy them; retailers will be allowed to retain their right to deny application of their artistic skills that would customize products for purposes they find offensive.

That is, no government should be able to COMPEL anyone to exercise creativity, imagination, or hard-learned and long-practiced skills unique to that individual. For skills and abilities that are widely held in the area of trade a store represents, it is reasonable that products produced thereby may not be restricted from sale to anyone who is able to pay for them. How the new owner of a product then decorates or uses the product – cakes or otherwise – is no concern of the original fabricator… or baker.

Culture, Governance, Race

Po Boys and Indians

April 29, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter 1 Comment

At Book Club the other night we discussed a disturbing, true story from the 1920’s about the only partly resolved multiple murders of Osage Indians and the origins of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.(1) Following the final forced relocation of the Osage to what looked like useless land in northeast Oklahoma. Beneath that land, it was soon learned, lay a gigantic pool of oil and the Osage owned all rights to it.

Subsequently whites were declared to be “Guardians” of Osage “rich redmen” ostensibly assuring that they handled the contracts and ownership of their great wealth properly. Instead, most took financial advantage and many, probably dozens, took part in both slow and quick murders of Osage families such that control of the oil and the leases would wind up in white hands. The FBI finally got to investigate a handful of the murders and to convict a couple of conspirators and murderers, whereupon victory was declared. In fact murders had occurred prior to those the FBI investigated, and continued past that time. Sordid, and disturbing; dozens of Osage Indians were murdered but, in the views even of lawmen of the time, “they were only Indians.”

Prudence has always required that Nazi Germany be soundly condemned for treating a class of citizens and neighbors as something less than human and needful of extermination. One wonders how so many Germans could have followed Hitler, accepted the “Final Solution” or actively ignored it, even as trainloads of Jews passed by and as gas-chambers and ovens processed them nearby. Lo and behold, hundreds of Americans coexisted with, if not participated in, systematic murder of the Osage, even whole families, for no more than financial gain. The membrane between Judeo-Christian ethics and societal murder schemes, is very thin.

So, the whole chapter might be buried in our national memories as something that we have moved beyond and would never, in our enlightened state, today, be repeated. A bit more reflection is in order.

Following King Phillip’s War, or the French and Indian War, American colonists clarified their perception of the new continent as theirs for the taking, lacking only a few courageous men and women to push the frontier further and further and a little further. The sometimes peaceful “Indians” who already lived on it were deemed uncivilized or even savage, and therefore lesser beings, a perception proven over and over as “Indian” land, waters and hunting grounds were “settled” by colonists, French, Spanish and English (as well as Germans and others), and the occupants lashed out in the only ways they knew, killing and brutalizing many “whites”. It became easy to kill those indigenous “savages” since they were lesser and God clearly had provided “America” for the colonists.

Natives couldn’t seem to handle their liquor, either. Frontiersmen quickly learned that “Indians” could be weakened and controlled with alcohol. The fact that “firewater” was a problem for Indians was reinforcement for the idea that they were lesser humans and their problems were due to their own flaws – get rid of them. Some Osage had those weaknesses, at least some did, and despite their remarkable assimilation, were perceived as not quite worth a white person and flawed, as shown by their ignorance of white people’s connivance and thievery. Thank God we have moved beyond such arrogance and prejudice. Not.

One need look only at the last 55 years(!) of federalized welfare policy and effect to see that the “Osage” of that period are simply mainly inner-city blacks, today, but also Hispanics. Their flaws, in our liberal sympathies, are evidenced by poverty and worthy of welfare programs too numerous to count. Instead of stealing their oil we steal their opportunities by trapping them in failed ghettos and failed schools, failed health-care and failed economics, partly because of political advantage, but partly, Prudence dictates, because of a never-admitted belief that the inner-city demographic is not as capable of success as “normal” people. This attitude is “proven” by the statistics of gang warfare and high murder rates.

Now professional sympathizers and the employees of the welfare industry will scream that I am racist because I think that poor “folks” are guilty of being poor when it is really my racist attitude that keeps them stuck in welfare. The opposite is true. There is a large bloc of people who earn elections and financial power off the backs of welfare recipients… but it isn’t comprised of conservatives. Prudence suggests that a clear-minded examination of the last 55 years of inner-city problems and failures reveals that those awful conditions could never be sustained, maintained and profited from unless it fulfilled some over-arching purpose. And, if not an articulated purpose, at the very least, an over-arching belief!

Fifty-five years is a long time, even for an all-intrusive government with unrestricted debt-creation power, to accidentally allow millions of its citizens to live in failed circumstances while trillions of dollars in entitlements are sent to them or spent on them.

While “Indians” have a flawed relationship with alcohol, for inner-city populations it is drugs. Fortunately, in someone’s decades-old view, drugs also provide a source of income for blacks and Hispanics and they do, after all, mostly kill one-another, gang members, somewhat bad neighbors. Just make ‘em vote correctly and leave the suburbs alone and, in fact, the rest of us can leave them to their miserable daily existences. It’s a de-facto policy that has worked for over 50 years! Who’s the cynic… or the racist?

Unionized social work and current public policies are certainly not the solution. Dominant philosophy holds that these people are unable to break out of poverty because “government” – right-wingers, primarily, won’t provide “the resources” to make it happen. Failing schools, by the way, also unionized public services, use the same logic. Rapid growth in expenditure-per-pupil have failed to reverse declines in educational achievement; more “resources” will fix the problem. Worse, now that pharmaceutical companies and sales companies have expanded addiction into the suburbs, the dependable drug trade that has kept blacks and others from being too restive in the inner cities is causing wider concern about drugs and the whole corrupting profit-structure may collapse leaving ghetto-dwellers in a tough spot. Only a racist would want that to happen.

President Trump has begun a decades-overdue process of review and undoing of welfare programs that have failed continuously. What will make that actually “stick,” if any of it may be accomplished against the welfare bureaucracy and politics, is a change in philosophy, attitudes and beliefs, starting with belief in black abilities as equal to those of any whites. Maybe this is the last generation that treats inner-city residents like children or, worse, like “Indians.”

(1) “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI”
by David Grann

Governance, Representation, Trump

Land of the Free

April 14, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

The current turmoil in our “American Community” is constantly laid at the feet of Mr. Trump. He, of course, can’t avoid making his own contribution to our dis-ease… it is how he got himself elected. But, we appear to be living out the future long forecasted: that we will destroy ourselves from within, and not be conquered from without. Trump is a symptom of the poor health of our self-government experiment, not the cause.

A list of “major” components of modern American life will, topic by topic, immediately bring to the reader’s mind his or her own ideas – opinions – and perhaps knowledge of what is out of balance, if not dangerously wrong in each arena. See if you agree that the following are the “major” components:

1 K – 12 public education 2 Higher education

3 Religious institutions 4 Religious faith

5 Law enforcement 6 Courts and judges

7 Race relations 8 Legislatures & representation

9 Energy 10 Bureaucracy

11 Politics and campaigns 12 Banks and money

13 Families and children 14 Small business

15 Big business 16 Globalization

17 Taxation and licensing 18 Illegal entrants

19 Welfare 20 Drug abuse

21 Health care 22 Health insurance

23 Transportation 24 Pollution and waste

25 Global climate 26 Internet

27 Television, communications 28 Morality

29 Constitution and law 30 Sexuality

31 Nationalism and patriotism 32 Civil rights

33 Culture 34 Language

35 Science and ethics 36 Computers and Artificial Intelligence

Prudence indicates that everything “major” in terms of the molding, functioning and survival of society can be found among and within these topics. This is not to say that “animal rights” and pesticides are not important, as are diet, obesity and vegetarianism. But with some thought every advocate of almost anything can find his or her prime concern under one of these umbrellas… I think.

The unfortunate reality is that we, all of us, almost automatically, today, turn to our federal government, that thousand-headed Hydra, to take dominion over all of these topics or problems. Simultaneously we turn to lawyers and litigation to restore balance when we feel unfairly treated by… well, anything and anyone. “Freedom and Responsibility” have been replaced by “Comfort and Litigation.” Responsibility for one’s freedom is a lot of work.

What, now, shall we do? Your mind has recalled something about almost all of the listed topics, mostly problems and how you’d “fix” them if you ran the zoo. There aren’t enough electrons to paint an LED screen with the “solutions.” We are in debt to our great-grandchildren, each of us having benefited in some degree from that theft, no matter how succinctly that theft may be apportioned to other groups. We got here by being human and we can get out of the morass by human means, too.

It is a mistake to believe that some perfect candidate for whichever office, is going to correct ANY part of ANY of the topical problem areas following his or her election. It happens occasionally, advertently and inadvertently, but we have humanly caused to develop several systems of elective and appointive governance that are most effective in enriching those so elected and appointed, and least effective at solving true problems or injustices.

The operating logic of the Constitution is that representatives of the people would be the least corruptible locus of federal power. They would be just like the farmers and tradesmen they left behind: suspicious of executive authority (like that from which the “Revolutionary War” had lately freed them) and responsible not only for designing and compromising on the legislation they wanted to have signed by the President, but also for holding the Executive departments in check, with ultimate oversight of their actions.

However, to further check the possible coalitions of emotion or temporary economic conditions, the Founders also included the Senate which members were selected by the several states’ own legislatures to, ostensibly, represent the states’ interests as sovereign states that had relinquished a measured amount of that sovereignty to enable the common defense of them, all. Legislation that got “through” the House of the people’s Representatives, must, Constitutionally, ALSO be passed by the Senate with its own interests addressed, specifically those of their respective states. Legislation had to please a lot of people to finally get to the President’s desk.

Of course, Senators have their own ideas and it is and was from the beginning, rare that a bill originating in either chamber will survive negotiations in the other without important changes. As a result, two committees are formed, in effect: one from the House and one from the Senate, who sit together as a “conference” committee. Their task is to iron out the differences between the two versions of the legislation. If they can, with lots of back and forth with their respective chambers’ leadership, then the compromise “bill” is re-voted by each chamber (dual passage not guaranteed) and, if passed by both, finally sent to the President.

The theory at work was that the “people” would hold a check on their representatives; the Senators would hold a check on the passions of the people’s representatives; the House, and the Senate, sometimes together, would hold a check on a President and his administration. Should work, right?

One of the greatest concerns of the writers of the Constitution and of the Federalist Papers, was the possibility of “faction.” Faction is best translated as “Party,” political party. What part have we, each of us, played in the virtual destruction of our constitutional republic? How much of our decision-making at election times derives from anger towards or fear of, candidates from the wrong “party.” Why has this become the marker for political “involvement?” What has hatred got to do with self-governance? With America?

How did we become subjects of the government “we” formed? How did “we” allow the Departments of War, State, Treasury and Navy, plus an Attorney General, become a consuming, barely recognizable monster of 200, 400, 500 or more Departments and Agencies, Offices and Committees who govern us through regulation, fine, penalty, taxation and threats? How did the nation that took on the world’s greatest empire at the time, turn into a population that can’t be trusted by the government it formed to choose what it eats, drives, takes for vitamins or thinks about faith or life, itself? We are not trusted, even, to think about freedom.

Education, Guns, Right?

Poisoning America’s wells

March 30, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter 10 Comments

Students are on the march. They have taken aim, so to speak, with a blunt political weapon, egged on by liberal, which is to say, leftist educators and a leftist press. Interestingly, these kids’ targets are placed before them specifically for them to “shoot” (their protests) at: the National Rifle Association, conservatives, Republicans, right-leaning news outlets, writers and columnists, anyone who defends the Constitution and, of course, Donald Trump. Left out of the group of targets are incompetent law-enforcement officers, organizations and bureaucrats who prefer to not enforce laws that already restrict guns and owners. Left out are liberal policies of “mainstreaming” the mentally ill and the lawyers and psychiatrists who will bring Hell-fire upon anyone who presumes to restrict any psychopath who has demonstrated the will to kill or injure and who has stated a desire to do so, even when the intended target so referenced is a school.

And so they march. Their weapons are their youth (so excessively revered in modern society), crafty signs and posters, memorable slogans and non-stop publicity through like-minded broadcasters and publishers. What do these school-age pawns believe will be accomplished?

Well, they want “more gun control laws.” After all, if (name the psychopath) could not have obtained his (99% ‘his’) “assault rifle,” those dead students would not be dead today. It’s as plain as the noses on our faces. There is a raw, unattainable truth to their simple demand. Unfortunately, that truth cannot be realized without rewriting the Constitution (of which most people under, say, 40, know very little), and the institution of police tactics intended to confiscate virtually every gun held by legal and, one would then hope, illegal gun-possessors in the country. There would then need to be imposed truly draconian restrictions upon every port of entry and airport to prevent the entry of firearms into the country. Maybe we could start with the illegal gun possessors without shredding the Constitution.

Ain’t gonna happen.

For those on the leftist spectrum, the dis-arming of the civilian population is an essential step toward creation of a more perfect nation. For Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin and Stalin, and every current far-leftist, disarmament appears vital to their ability to maintain control of the lesser civilians who are harnessed to support their governments. Now, being harnessed to support a domineering government is something Americans understand more than our founding fathers ever could have feared, but no dictator has ever encouraged private gun ownership. This might be instructive, were we possessed of eyes to see, ears to hear and sufficient historical knowledge to appreciate.

Our agitated students have not been so blessed, and happily accept some hours out of school and bright publicity on weekends as they perform the blathering their leftist mentors could never do.

Let’s suppose, children, that AR-15’s and other scary-looking rifles were banned tomorrow and quickly confiscated by the New American Gestapo. How much “safer” would you be, in your gun-free zones? Suppose some pathological idiot wanted to solve some twisted problem he feels the victim of, by shooting some kids at his school. He would be reduced to bringing 2 or 3 semi-automatic handguns and some extra clips – relatively easy to hide – and secreting them in strategic places where he could get to them on the fateful day.

The dark day comes, on his sick calendar, and he grabs a handgun and starts shooting. Does the fact that he’s not employing a rifle make a damned bit of difference? Wouldn’t you be praying for someone to shoot him? Would you be comforted by the confiscation of millions of citizens’ lawful firearms, some of whom would have resisted, being killed or criminalized and incarcerated on your behalf? After a few minutes of open season on students will you feel better when the police finally kill or arrest the wielder of a handgun rather than the wielder of a scary-looking “assault” rifle?

If the rifles were painted red and the handguns painted blue, would the absence of red guns make the recipients of blue guns’ bullets less dead?

To you the obvious response is to ban those kinds of guns, too. You are being raised as fools. Your excited demonstrations make clear your incomprehension of the exceptional origins of this nation and of the freedoms you enjoy. I hope you become more broadly educated after the public schools are done with you.

Trump

Jerry Wescott’s thoughtful thoughts on Trump

March 17, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter 1 Comment

[RESPONDING TO “(WORD)HOLE REDUX” from Jacksonville, Florida]

Shortly after news of his foul comments surfaced, Trump tweeted, “It is my duty to protect the lives and safety of all Americans. We must build a Great Wall, think Merit and end Lottery & Chain. USA!” Now, I have no problem with a president finding it his duty to protect us – of course it’s his duty, he’s the top cop, and the enforcement of the law is a tough job, one that requires a firm hand. I do not agree with the idea of a physical wall though. I realize that Israel has a wall, but so did East Germany and China. Those walls have been destroyed or compromised, and they cannot function to keep people from crossing. They represent old technology and in this world, they cannot be as effective as an electronic one. Trump is good at building walls, both physical and financial ones, but his walls are only as good as the technology that monitors them. Better mice defeat once-better mousetraps though, and as technology improves, the physical obstruction of a wall across our southern border becomes less and less useful until it becomes useless altogether as all the prepositions are applied to make it so. Drugs and illegal aliens will still come into the country, but by other means.

“Think Merit,” he says. If “merit” is a term only applied to foreigners, then I agree. They should be properly examined, and they should be willing to become good, productive, law-abiding citizens of our country, and they should do so in the right way, with all the documentation in order, and all the pertinent research on their personal history complete. But what if we turn the merit-seeking microscope around and examine Donald Trump. The rest of America and the world know his (every) thoughts – even the crude and thoughtless thoughts. He puts (them) all out there on Twitter without shame. Every so often, I see the worth of what he says, but I rarely see the value in the way he says it. One of my favorite quotes from the Proverbs of Solomon is, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” If Trump acknowledged this concept, I might call him a statesman. If he honored the Creator’s determination of nations, or God’s love for each human being, I would consider him worthy of leading our meritocratic government. I see little merit in him, and his willingness to use profanity to describe global political and social situations in which the rest of mankind exists, repulses me. His careless and childish practice of name-calling not only dishonors the despised places and their leaders, and humiliates the millions of unfortunate people living in them, but the mud slung splashes back on Donald, his office, and his own people!

Okay – I believe I know what I’ve led you to think. You have me down as a bleeding heart who wants everyone to trample our borders. No, I don’t. It is not lost on me that God has created our nation as well as those which have been spat upon by the bully who has become president. He claims that we must “end Lottery & Chain.” I understand the problem. I don’t think we should simply end it, just modify it in a sensible and responsible fashion. We should have handled the repeal of Obamacare more intelligently as well. Sometimes it seems like he needs to smash things just so he can erect a new tower in the history books with his name on it. Never mind that – I know I can be too down on Trump sometimes. The point is, he needs to be more thoughtful about what he says. He needs to be way more careful about how he says it. A thug threatening you with a knife will not get the respect he craves, only fear. Respect has to be earned, and, as I see it, all he has earned is money. The fear he has generated, and the foolishness with which he presents himself, and us by proxy, has turned a global community with problems into a pending disaster. Believe it or not, I can cope with that because I expect that all of this is setting the stage for the end of the age. I’m gonna’ get un-engaged from this outrage.

Sorry – didn’t mean to rap. I don’t even like rap. I consider it to be rather … end-times stuff. It’s a destructive force that tends to tear society into subcultures and fragment any remaining sense of community that we might still have as a nation. Yes, I believe in a rapture of the saints and a seven-year tribulation period when the Antichrist arises to global power and wherein the nations of the world are judged. So the Donald is age-appropriate, after all.

Culture

Weathering the Worst

March 17, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter 1 Comment

So it’s snowing today – might get two feet. The wind is blowing from the northeast and everyone is upset that it’s less than a week since the last windy snowstorm. Even worse, lots of us lost power last week, and that is the worst affront possible to our connected, screen-addled selves. I mean, no TV? What the heck? No INTERNET? What the _ _ck?? Worse than all of that… if that’s possible, this terrible weather is all – our – fault!

We live in a remarkable political environment. We’re in deep debt, welfare costs are too high, drugs are killing more people than ever, President Trump just fired Rex Tillerson and the White House seems to be in chaos, illegal entrants are being released after committing crimes so the “Feds” can’t deport them and a college education costs more than $50,000 a year, if you can believe that. Besides, North Korea and Iran have nuclear weapons and missiles and China is building sand islands with military airstrips. Let’s not even mention Venezuela and the Dakota Access Pipeline. What are we supposed to do?

None of that stuff is worth a hole in the snow… well, except the snow, which is all – our – fault! Wait until this summer, when there may be some hot days, 94 degrees, even. Those will all be our fault, too. This winter is the first time in the history of history that there has been more snow than municipal budgets allowed for… except for the past 40 years’ budgets or so. Actually it’s not the first winter there has been 3 snowstorms in one month, either, but when I was a kid and everyone thought the world was cooling a little, they weren’t my… our… fault, although I had to shovel the stuff.

There isn’t a single problem, of terrorism, opiates, debt, taxes, wars, trade, education, politics, Constitutionalism or school shootings, that is as serious or as threatening as global warming. If you had paid attention you’d have learned that all of the problems, unhappiness, dysfunction, trans-genderism, murder and genital herpes is CAUSED by global warming! Where have you been? Wait! What’s that? OMG!

Global warming is so ummmnh… so, ahhh… so 2010; I knew that. All of those problems are caused by Climate Change… not global warming. Meh! What’s the matter with me? But, it’s still our fault and something we should be proud to recognize and proud to alter our lives over and pay taxes to put a STOP to. It’s the best damned invention of the early 21^st Century, for Heaven’s sake. For the first time since the discovery of salt it’s possible to control the lives of EVERYONE on Earth, while we all sacrifice with a smile. It’s better than religion ever was and church services are every minute of every day.

There are even sacraments. Ten years ago a Prius was sufficient, but now it’s vegetarianism, and not just any vegetables, either. If they’ve been touched by Monsanto or harvested by Con-Agra or Cargill or distributed by Nestle’, don’t eat them! No siree. You want only foods grown by real people who don’t make a lot of money or vote Republican, and who use good fresh shit to make them flourish. If you eat meat you are taking food from the mouths of baby polar bears… or baby wolves, you ungrateful civilizer, you. And all you people who earn a living raising animals and speaking harshly to them can just switch to carving souvenirs from windfall wood – memorials to places people once lived.

And if you can’t plug your car in and drive with no emissions, don’t come crying to us at the World Preservation at Every Cost Foundation. We won’t have any hatred left for you: it’s all applied to the damned power plant operators who are making Climate Change worse for polar bears. The next rally is being crowd-sourced on our freshly-charged dumb-phones, made in candle-lit factories. You’re on your own for hatred, pal.

Man… oops, sorry, I mean two-foot. Two-foot, I wish I believed it all – hate would be so much simpler, less distinctive. I do believe in global climate change, though, since science shows us that it’s been going on since before history and even earlier than that. In a way it’s somewhat reassuring that the forces that have shaped the earth are still with us.

The climate we really liked for Earth is a mix of good and bad times blended into that perfect day in, um, some state or country that has no bad storms or droughts, some time before Ronald Reagan became president. We want to keep Earth right like that, that day… probably a 24^th or 25^th of April, and if it takes not driving to work or Disney World to achieve it, it’s a small price to pay.

And don’t worry about having nothing to do. Get a pot prescription. Text me. We’ll do hunch.

Education, Family, Guns, Right?

Eau to be gun free

March 5, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

“School Shootings” are among those events that tear people apart and, roughly, along the widening “liberal-conservative” divide. Certainly adults in both frames of belief have children, send them to school, love them dearly and do what they possibly can to keep them “safe.” How is it that they can’t agree on how to do so? Again, both types of parents love their kids.

The same divide produces separation on “rights” of a thousand kinds, on the role of governments in individuals’ lives, on the role of education, itself – particularly so-called “public” education, and even on the role of parents, themselves! Into these widely divergent sets of opinions let’s inject the subject of guns and of the Second Amendment. After all, many fear that the greatest threat to children’s well-being is of being shot inside their gun-free schools. A wide divergence, indeed.

Along with other divisions between the two generic groups there seems to be one along military lines. There are a thousand nuances, but in general conservatives are more in favor of military training, discipline, duty, honor and bravery, than are liberals. Liberals are more in favor of government in its own right, more inclined to favor extremely personal “rights” to be codified, protected and even enforced by government, and to that degree, liberals also favor police in their roles of enforcing “civil rights,” a somewhat malleable term.

Conservatives also honor police but rather more for their quasi-military structure, honor and daily bravery. At the same time conservatives see police as potentially threatening to constitutional rights, even twistable by “government” to control populations rather than to protect them. Many questions arose as part of the Valentine’s Day school shooting in Parkland, Florida: questions of policing, of guns, of safety, of parenting, of news… and of government.

Quite distinctly, liberals believe that one or another form of “gun control” will make school shootings and other crimes where guns are employed, impossible. This is not unlike liberal beliefs about governmental programs like public housing projects, in which residents of such projects will become more responsible toward themselves and others by virtue of having a decent place to live. The same could be said of liberal attitudes toward most welfare programs. In a generic sense, liberals believe that government in its great wisdom and goodness will make better citizens – better humans – than develop naturally or, incredibly in their view, by the hand of God.

Conservatives tend, generally, to see guns as protective devices in at least as great a degree as they might be offensive. Almost automatically conservatives respect and honor the Second Amendment and the civil right of gun bearing. Where liberals think that guns are the problem, conservatives think that criminals are the problem; where liberals fear guns, increasingly as they appear “scary;” conservatives respect their power and uses. Where liberals are frightened of and purposefully ignorant of guns, conservatives see mechanisms that may be learned, understood and mastered with a set of skills. The demands for “solutions” to school shootings following the Parkland “snafu,” exist in two separate universes.

Liberals want government to modify humans by legislating limits on their rights and actions: ban certain guns (scary ones), raise age limits for gun ownership and more. Conservatives want a form of the “Guardian” program¹ where sovereign individuals accept the training, risk and responsibility to protect themselves and others by arming themselves – including in school environments – and being willing to confront bad people using guns, and other weapons, offensively.

Liberals, including most teachers these days, fear guns, themselves. They see the gun as inseparable from the person wielding it. That is, the gun: metal, machining, grip, trigger, sights, barrel, caliber and bullets it holds – is as evil as the criminal prepared to use it against innocents. No way can a liberal accept having that evil object anywhere near a school. “Guns in classrooms? That only puts us and our students in greater danger!”

Conservatives tend to be quieter about guns. They don’t fear them but they do feel that it’s necessary to learn about them, get trained to use them¹, get trained to deal with active threats, and, in general, they feel that concealed carry by a trained individual is a wise, sensible response to armed threats. In other words, they believe in deterrence rather than response.

Response is a problem in every shooting incident. Effectively, the only good response to an armed, crazed potential murderer is an armed challenger who is prepared to fire in the moment. Schools could be turned into vaults with armored doors, metal detectors, and even Kevlar backpacks, but waiting for the potential murderer to arrive to a gun-free zone like a school and responding by hiding, simply means that it might be a tad more difficult for the killer to kill, but not at all impossible. A couple of minutes are all it takes, whether firing an AR-15 or a 9 MM pistol, to kill a dozen or two defenseless kids and nearly helpless teachers. In 3 to 5 minutes armed police could be on site, but those minutes are all that are needed to complete a tragedy as we too recently witnessed.

If first responders then fail to act in the most defensive, responsive way possible, then the number of dead will be greater. There is no alternative… in the moment.

In order for gun bans to make a difference in actual school safety, there will have to be an enforced confiscation. With millions of guns in private hands this presents the likelihood of resistance to such an action. Will police then shoot at citizens who have never committed a crime with a gun except to own it? Can such an ex-post-facto offense legally be imposed? Can the right to bear arms be subsumed by popular emotion and civic policing? It would seem that both eventualities are impossible. But the demand for them fits the essential liberal opinion of guns, gun-owners and the Second Amendment. All three are equal, and evil.

Liberals hate guns and, given their automatic equivocation of guns and owners, they often sound as though they hate their owners, too. This fits with liberals’ disrespect of any who fear government more than guns. Most of the “statistics” that gun haters cite are untrue, as are most crime statistics, themselves. Gun advocates are just as ready with inflated statistics of their own. We have reached a point in the national debate over guns and rights and of wrongs and rights, when gun haters owe it to themselves and to the nation… and to schools and children, to grasp some realities about private gun ownership and their positive impacts on crime and social order.

The vast, vast majority of gun owners are not criminals. There are more than 70 Million gun owners and more than 210 Million guns. Among the 210 Million about 6 Million people own half of them. Many gun owners have one, two or three, a rifle and a couple of sidearms. A large subset of gun owners are active hunters and they may own 5 to 10 weapons: a shotgun or two, three to five rifles and two or three handguns. Millions of guns are old, collectible, rarely even handled, much less used for anything. A significant number are antiques.

But Americans own a lot of guns… gun ownership is part of America, part of our founding and heritage, written into our constitution and a legal, civilian right, like other civil rights, in fact. Part of the chasm between beliefs is an urge and effort to, in effect, “un-do” America. Our Judeo-Christian fundament and all the laws and traditions that flow from it, are, today, offensive to this group. The definition of words and terms that describe the ideas and nature of “America,” are being changed daily. There is a large and apparently growing segment of the United States that desires to “fundamentally change” America. Those are they for whom “sovereign citizenry” is an affront, believing that a benevolent, socialist government is the only locus of trust in our society, never a sovereign individual.

Guns and self-defense are part of U. S. citizenship. The more stupidly we deal, socially, with this fact the more times defenseless people will be victimized. If we follow the concept of banning certain guns, now, upwards of 200 “types” of firearms, the net improvement to the safety of defenseless groups, most specifically and almost most defenseless, schoolchildren, will be approximately zero. In a weird way the next school shooting is almost looked-forward-to by some rabid segments of leftists, for it will help ratchet up the demand for greater restrictions on the ability to own as well as buy or, likely, even manufacture certain types of guns. The intended eventuality is a gun-free America.

That is to say, a non-American America, their ultimate goal.

Extreme defenders of the Second Amendment exclaim numerous statistics that are just as extremely “debunked” by anti-gunners. Reviewing numerous studies over the past two decades one can learn that there are many, many thousands of instances of crime prevention thanks to civilian, legal gun possession. There are probably not a million a year or two million – that is unknowable since most events are not newsworthy or even part of police reports. But, there are thousands. Even the Clinton administration, in studies² opposing guns, found upwards of “1.5 million” yearly armed self-defense incidents. Even “simple” female self-defenses against sexual assaults number over 100,000 events per year.

Let’s consider that there are, say, 400 thousand such events of various kinds. That’s in the order of 1,100 events per day –a significant quantity. A certain fraction of those would have resulted in physical assaults and murders… perhaps what, 1 in 20? 5% of crimes? Are those lives not also of value? Is it the position of anti-gun advocates that people have an obligation to remain defenseless, accepting rapes, beatings or worse while police are either on their way or, more likely, totally unaware of the event?

Is not self-defense of oneself and family the most fundamental of civil rights? Can that be truly equated with the utter failure of law-enforcement in the matter of the Parkland massacre? Or of the Fort Hood shooting? Or even of Columbine where the weirdness of perpetrators was well-known in advance?

Anti-gun advocates need to recognize that there could barely be a civil society in the U. S. WITHOUT private gun ownership, guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

¹http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/05/30/the-guardian-program/ ¹http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/03/26/shooting-back/

² Gun Control Fact-Sheet 2004 / From Gun Owners Foundation, 8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102 Springfield, VA 22151

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