Leftist NRA Hate Jumps the Shark and Goes METAL: Priesthood of Murder!

Cam Edwards of Cam & Company on NRA news brought up some Daily Kos diarrhea the other night, and I found it pretty informative as to what the left thinks.

The Daily Kos diarrhea is titled “If the NRA really cared about gun rights”, and can be summed up rather quickly by its opening paragraph:

If the NRA really cared about gun rights…they wouldn’t support policies that take away the ability of thousands of people every year to keep and bear arms because they’re f***ing dead.  By this simple fact the NRA reveals itself not to have any concern for gun rights or gun owners, but merely to be an advocate for the gun business – a quasi-criminal syndicate of shady industrial corporations for whom the deaths of their customers and innocent bystanders are actually more profitable than keeping them alive.

It gets stupider, but it’s all basically Tim Robbins’ speech from Team America:

As long as the death rate is low enough for people in general to still leave their houses to visit a gun store, murder is all profit for them: It perpetually sows the seeds of fear, insecurity, paranoia, alienation, and rage that bring more people to patronize their business.

Yeah, it’s pretty stupid.  In fact, it’s unintentional parody of the left.  And here we get to the best part:

The NRA and its fellow-traveler gun anarchy organizations have nothing whatsoever to do with Constitutional rights: They are a priesthood of murder fanatically committed to the promotion of human destruction and suffering, because at their core are businesses that depend on it, and that could not financially survive on the idle interests of hobbyists in a safe and secure America.

That a Daily Kos diarrheaist doesn’t understand natural rights isn’t a surprise.  That he (or she, or shim/he-er or whatever) thinks that their rambling “businesses=evil” rant accurately reflects reality is both funny and sad.  Funny because it’s ludicrous, sad because it displays such a narrow breadth of mind that’s completely devoid of any receptiveness to data that would disprove or at the very least give pause to such wild-eyed manic hatred and belief in the pure evil of the NRA and people who believe in the natural rights of self defense and the tools that enable those rights.  (Troubadour bolded that “Priesthood of Murder”, not me, btw.)

And this brings us to my real point here.  Criticizing Troubadour’s rant is sort of like criticizing a North Korean propagandist.  They’re either so woefully misguided that you have to pity them, or they’re so absurdly convinced of their own ludicrous crackpot nonsense that all you can do is laugh at them.  Besides, Cam already criticized it.

But in this case, Troubadour has unconciously made one of the most badass and fun critiques of the NRA, and totally for the wrong reasons.  Troubadour devolves into unwitting self-parody, but a self-parody that’s made utterly sidesplittingly hilarious to me because…

PRIESTHOOD OF MURDER IS SO INCREDIBLY METAL.

The entire diarrheaist diatribe is so over the top that every new phrase is worthy of an album title (or even a band name).

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So let’s explore the fictional history of the most metal of all civil rights organizations, the NRA.  \m/ d(-_-)b \m/

Priesthood of Murder is obviously the most metal, and the NRA’s signature album.  It was both a critical and commercial success, and marked the turningpoint for the NRA from just another metal band into the devastating metal powerhouse that they ultimately have become.

But the NRA’s badass discography doesn’t just begin there.  It starts way back with their low-budget garage releases when they first got going:

Those early days were marked with a distinct sound that the metal world hadn’t yet warmed to.  But the band stayed dedicated, despite some lineup changes as members settled into their roles and some dealt with the difficulties of a harsh tour schedule.

At least one of their later studio albums would recapture those intial sounds, going back to some of their older work that had matured out on the road, forging an album that showed the same spirit, but greater skill:

The DK criticism gets even more metal as it goes:

For decades this vile exercise in the banality of evil has driven murderous civil wars and genocides throughout the world without any sort of consequences blowing back on them, and now they have brought their agenda home.

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NRA, as happens to many bands, found themselves in a rough patch for a year after their harsh touring schedule.  After a short break, the band members realized that the regular world they’d returned to off the tour bus wasn’t for them.  The returned to the studio with a renewed look at the world after their resting period, and cranked out another of their early albums, now widely regarded as a technical advance for the band as their skills developed:

And their next release was after a very successful European tour, which garnered the band not only attention from an international audience, but spiked interest in the band back in the United States.  It included a 2-disc set, the first being the album, and the second being a collection of European-only singles that were previously unreleased in the US.

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This is about as metal as it gets:

Now the American people are the grist for their mill, grinding human bodies of all ages to make their bread, and cavalierly dictating terms to the US government in the face of overwhelming outcry from 90% of the citizenry demanding greater regulation and accountability.

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It was then that NRA kicked out one of their most popular albums, considered by purists to be the truest-to-form NRA, and widely considered the last of their “early” albums.

That period of early albums was later revisited when they released a collection of studio jams and songs from out-of-print records:

Coming out only 9 months after “Overwhelming Outcry”, the NRA fiercely charged up the charts with their next album:

It just keeps getting better (or worse, if the clown wanted to be taken seriously):

No one is free while the manufacturers of arms can overrule and hijack the Constitution without the consent of the people whose lives they harvest like demons in business suits.  Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness cannot be protected in a state of deliberately cultivated violence.

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While “No One Is Free” proved to be a turning point in the early years with the band’s new guitarist…

…it was widely considered to be eclipsed by the return of their old guitarist from “Fanatically Committed” – but unlike some bands, NRA welcomed the older and kept the newer, though the next album’s title would be an inside joke about the guitar lineup changes:

After another tour, they released a solid live album, with tracks from various tours – both early and late, that was well-received by fans:

But little could prepare the metal world for the NRA’s most recent release, an aggressively badass studio album hailed by metalheads as staying true to form that had just revisited in “Sowing the Seeds of Violence” – and taking new steps from that album, yet again refining their sound:

There’s also been much talk of some alternate projects, including a punk album called “Anarchy Organizations”, and a collaborative effort called “Smirking at Irony”, neither of which have been discussed much by the band in interviews.  Rumors have circulated for years about a country-horror themed album called “Cold Dead Hands”, but right now the band’s focus is on their current tour.

Whatever the future may be for NRA, their impressive discography of heavy metal has dominated the charts for years, and shows no signs of stopping.  Rock on.

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So metal.

The Incessant Academic Argument For Tyranny and The Refutation of Freedom – Part 2

Part 1 here, mostly about food and people who want the government to dictate to them how they should eat.

And today, part 2, as we look at a Time Magazine piece titled “Tread on Me“.

America was born from resistance to tyranny, and our skepticism of authority is a healthy tradition. But we’re pretty free.

That’s good enough, right?  We’re “pretty free”.  It’s about time we move on in the Tytler Cycle and get back to bondage!  Woo-hoo!  Bondage!  The state will make us free from responsibility and dangers of the world!  They know what’s best for me!

the Don’t Tread on Me slippery-slopers on both ends of the political spectrum tend to forget that Big Government helps protect other important rights

Doesn’t work that way.  This is a question of whether people believe in more or less government control.  Americans believe in less government control, have traditionally always believed in less government control, and only ever believe in having government control them when they’ve been brainwashed and programmed.

But standby for incoming collectivist BS…

Like the right of a child to watch a marathon or attend first grade without getting massacred—or, for that matter, the right to live near a fertilizer factory without it blowing up your house.

There are no such rights.  To be free from danger is not only impossible, but even reduction of danger is not a right – it something paid for by someone’s work – whether it be the soldier, policeman, or factory manager and safety staff.

I guess you could call me a statist.

How about one who will lick the hand that feeds with his chains resting upon him, and someone who I would wish posterity would forget was my countryman?

Go ahead, quote the Ben Franklin line about those who would sacrifice some liberty for security deserving neither.

You forgot the last part – they deserve neither – and will lose both.

But what about the rights of 8-year-old Martin Richard, blown away after watching his dad finish the marathon? Who safeguarded the liberty of 6-year-old Charlotte Bacon, gunned down in her classroom in her new pink dress? What about Perry Calvin and Morris Bridges and the other victims of the West Texas explosion? Nobody read them their rights.

There are no such rights as to be free from danger – and there can be none.

This kind of high-minded utopian fantasy was cranked out back in the 1930s and 1940s by the FDR administration.  There were even oaths made to defend the freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Photo by ShortTimer

It is, by itself, nonsense.

Life? What ‘right’ to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What ‘right’ to life has a man who must die to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of ‘right’? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man’s right is ‘unalienable’? And is it ‘right’? As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.

- Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

You cannot legislate industrial accidents out of existence (unless you obliterate industry entirely – which is a goal of the left as a tool to fight Manbearpig).

You cannot legislate madmen out of existence.  You can forcibly disarm the populace, and leave them at the mercy of governmental ruler madmen like maniac cop Chris Dorner.  You can leave them at the mercy of government to make them “safe”.

You do all of those by destroying liberty, something that high-minded collectivist utopians have done in the past to construct human nature into what they want it to be – to “mold the world closer to their hearts’ desire”.

And it almost always looks the same in the end.

In contrast to those statist desires, you can safeguard the liberty of 6 year-old Charlotte Bacon.  You need a rough man ready to do violence on her behalf to safeguard that liberty – that liberty needs to be bought, but the left is terrified of the tools of violence to the point where they irrationally declare that to make the gazelle safe from the lion, you must strip the gazelle’s horns.

By the left’s logic, to make the child safe, you must leave her unguarded; and target those who would do her no harm but instead do seek to protect her.  There are people who are actively willing to put their own lives in harm’s way, but they are called monsters for demanding real security.  They are demonized for understanding the tools and nature of violence as defense and deterrent.

You can begin to defend the life of 8 year-old Martin Richard more by identifying the threat and dealing with the threat when it rears its head.  What killed him was islamic terrorism.  We know this.  We all know this, but our government denies it on the basis that their ideology rejects making that judgement.  By the response of the authorities in the Boston bombing case, there will be no more fatalities from those particular two terrorists.  The hundreds of lives saved, like the baker’s new suit in the Broken Window Fallacy, are easily forgotten because they never materialized.  There were no more terrorist attacks from those two because the terrorists were pursued (at a cost of life and harm) and stopped.

Yet there are still high-minded utopians who believe that if they just apologize enough, that if they are sensitive enough, they can stop people who chant for their deaths in the street through just well wishes.

And here’s where the Time writer gets worse:

Our rights are not inviolate. Just as the First Amendment doesn’t let us shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater, the Second Amendment shouldn’t let us have assault weapons designed for mass slaughter.

This is, as Jonah Goldberg would say, bonesnappingly stupid.

The First Amendment totally and completely does let us shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

If the government could mandate a white-noise generator that would specifically tune into the sound of a human voice shouting the word “Fire!” so that it could never again be said in a theater and the First Amendment were restricted, what would happen when there is a fire and no one can shout the word?  What happens when no one can give the alarm?  What happens when that lifesaving tool is denied?  It would result in people burned to death.

The Second Amendment totally and completely does let us have modern firearms.  I have yet to take or instruct a firearms class wherein I have taught or been taught to use an “assault weapon” for “mass slaughter”.  Sorry, just doesn’t work that way.

The Second Amendment protects the natural right of self defense.  It codifies it in the Constitution and ensures that the tools of self defense will not be denied.  It does the same in that sense as the First Amendment protecting the word “Fire!”.  It exists as the last full response against oppression, large and small, whether it be a lone criminal or the force of a dictatorial government.

If used improperly or abused, it’s a crime, just like yelling fire when there’s no fire.  If used properly, it’s a wholly necessary lifesaving right; and it protects tools that allow for lives to be saved.  And just like the loss of yelling “Fire!”, if it is taken away, it ends up the same – the result is people burned to death.

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To revisit this quote from the “Tread on Me” masochist:

Those of us who support aggressive government action to protect the public ought to acknowledge that it does, at the margins, limit individual rights—the rights of gun owners, the rights of business owners, the rights of the accused. Go ahead, quote the Ben Franklin line about those who would sacrifice some liberty for security deserving neither. But what about the rights of 8-year-old Martin Richard, blown away after watching his dad finish the marathon? Who safeguarded the liberty of 6-year-old Charlotte Bacon, gunned down in her classroom in her new pink dress? What about Perry Calvin and Morris Bridges and the other victims of the West Texas explosion? Nobody read them their rights.

The Bill of Rights is there to limit government.  Governments create oppression.  In a state of nature, there may be terror, but there is no all-encompassing institution that can deny you your natural rights.  The Constitution is there as a contract of free men that created a limited government with the intention of protecting all of our natural rights possible while providing us tools to ensure greater protection for all as well.

I’ve been told that invoking the death of innocents is an emotional appeal rather than a logical argument. And I do admit these tragedies make me angry. But I think it would be logical for our government to try to limit these tragedies in the future.

The author thinks wrong.  There have been a million individual tragedies that are easily forgotten by their magnitude that were undertaken by free men (and sometimes conscripts) to preserve liberty, not to have it thrown away because some statist submissive grovels to beg for tyrants to enslave us all because he is a sniveling coward.

You want to protect people, do it yourself.  You want to prevent tragedies, do it yourself.  You want to tread on me because you’re a coward?  Then you become an oppressor, Mr. Grunwald, and you are trading bought-and-paid-for liberty for security that is not only fleeting, but wholly nonexistent.

We already sacrifice liberty all the time—our right to automatic weapons, our right to walk through airport security with our shoes on, our right to run our businesses however we please.

The writer is an amoebic poltroon who kneels before the might of the state.  We shouldn’t sacrafice our right to automatic weapons, our right to walk through airport security with shoes on, or our right to run our businesses however we please.  Excluding abuse of our rights, which infringes on someone else’s natural rights, it’s not the place of the government to do anything.  Just because the government has abused rights in the past, doesn’t mean we should tolerate it any further.

The rights of the next Martin Richard and the next Charlotte Bacon matter, too.

Yes, and the next Martin and the next Charlotte may be killed by leftists with utopian wishes who demand schools be gun-free zones, ensuring that only criminals and madmen intent on mayhem will be armed.  The next Martin and Charlotte, if they survived being left in a defenseless free-fire zone for 12 years of mandated government schooling, may not like being x-rayed by government lackeys who see them nude any time they get on a plane.  They may not like that when they go to start a business, that their government demands so much from them that it’s easier just to not start the business, that their freedom has been curtailed so much that they don’t have options for a business.

But they may grow up thinking they’re “pretty free”, because there’s always something worse.

The next Martin and the next Charlotte are not one or two children, they are millions of children who will grow into adults in a nation where they are less free.  The next boy may be bashed for being gay because he’s left disarmed against a mob, the next girl may be another Amanda Collins, who was raped because she was disarmed by government.  The next boy may have developed the motor that runs on static electricity, but will never make it because the government has regulated him into oblivion.  The next girl may not want to have her privacy violated by government every time she enters a private contract with an aircraft company to fly her somewhere.

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There are no shortages of people demanding destruction of liberty.  From Cass “We Must Dominate You For Your Own Good” Sunstein, to any of the intellectuals Thomas Sowell criticizes as dominating sheperds who demand you be their sheep, there is never a shortage of men who wish to dominate and control their fellow man.

There is always a question of how many people believe that becoming sheep is noble, and how many reject that destructive notion of bondage.

2 Chainz to Play ATF Agent on Law & Order: SVU?

From Twitchy:

The gentleman on the left recklessly pointing a gun at his head is vulgar rapper 2 Chainz. The gentleman on the right is rapper Ice T, a.k.a. Detective Odafin “Fin” Tutuola from the TV drama “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”

I don’t know if he’s “vulgar” – at least moreso than anyone else in his genre – nor does that really make a difference in this context.  His music to me sounds like well-produced modern rap, but nothing terribly exciting.  In general, I tend to like rap that carries a certain style of heavy beat, is more hip-hop and funk than rap, is intentional parody that’s funny, or is so bad it’s funny, or else inexplicably in Russian, so it all comes down to taste.

But even if his style of rap isn’t to my taste, let’s give credit where it’s due – I think this is a pretty good spontaneous potrayal of an ATF agent.  Not bad, 2 Chainz.

Not bad at all, 2 Chainz.  But you have to do it with less actual thought as to what you’re doing.  It’s evident your finger’s off the trigger, and a real ATF agent would keep his finger on the trigger.

If you’re scratching your head with the muzzle all Plan 9 From Outer Space style and the trigger just is a bit out of reach, that’s cool.  Remember, it’s got to be casual stupidity and carelessness, not intentional.  Acting is sometimes hard, 2 Chainz.

Our friend Katie Pavlich pointedly pointed out that pointing a gun at one’s own head (and one at the camera) is rather foolish and promotes “reckless and dangerous gun culture in America” and got the kind of response you’d expect from someone who can’t take criticism.

Sure, maybe a serious chastisement punctuated in such a manner as to drive the point home a bit wasn’t something that Ice-T was expecting and that might have put him on the defensive because… well, it’s really stupid and indefensible jackassery.  But it seems “F off B” is all he could come up with.  Manning up to the criticism and saying “yeah, we were being reckless jackasses” is probably a little bit tougher to do than saying “F off”.  Looks like the point was made and it stung a little bit.

However, Twitter really isn’t a venue that’s conducive to explaining how the image of flaunting the danger a firearm by placing it to one’s temple is sometimes seen as a display of courage, albeit a profoundly stupid one.  That might be best left to anthropologists to examine why other masculine avenues to prove courage have faded in the last few decades – not only in the rap subculture, but in broader culture as well.  To turn this completely on its ear, it’s worth asking why is this considered a good idea or a cool pose?  What led to that cultural conclusion?  (And again I note that it does exist in broader culture as well.)

To 2 Chainz credit, his finger is off the trigger – good for safety, bad for playing an ATF agent -… though pretty much every other firearms safety rule is ignored.

While we’re on gun safety and bad examples, it’s worth considering that he may be the only one professional enough in that room to carry that gun.

Or maybe 2 Chainz has been learning firearms handling from good ol’ Tex Grebner.

Mike Bloomberg, Liberal Fascist

From Michael Walsh at PJ Media:

That’s New York City’s nasty little fascist mayor, the ersatz and erstwhile “Republican” who used the party to sneak into Gracie Mansion in the wake of the Giuliani administration’s successful war on street crime, and then double-crossed the GOP in his bald-faced but successful attempt to subvert term limits, lecturing David Gregory in his Boston honk that he knows what’s best for New Yorkers — and us.

Yes, it’s the Soda Jerk himself, tossing his pint-sized weight around as he attempts to remain politically viable after his reign as the successor to such corrupt and incompetent wretches as Jimmy Walker, William O’Dwyer, Abe Beame and David Dinkins mercifully comes to an end. Let’s unpack a little of what the Terror of Tinytown had to say.

We’re not banning anything.  All we’re saying is, we want to show you just how big the cup is. If you want 32 ounces, take two cups to your seat. If you want 64, carry four. But our hope is, if you only take one, you won’t go back.

If you believe that, Bloomberg has a bridge to Brooklyn to sell you. And to which the only proper response — the one that until New York turned into a city of Upper West Side conformist sheep he would have justly received — is (to quote Kurt Schlichter) “bite me.”

It’s a good post, worth reading, though he had to go back and update it to make note of Bloomberg’s new $12,000,000 anti-gun ad campaign, all for your own good.

It’s a campaign against individual autonomy and the freedom to live your life – all for your own good.

Biden’s Song: “Buy A Shotgun”

Only Cops Should Have Guns

He’s like Mark Russell, but funny, and for the Second Amendment.

The Girls on FOX News

Cass Sunstein: “It’s For Your Own Good!”

From the New York Review of Books, Obama’s Regulatory Czar Cass “Our-Wish-Is-Your-Command” Sunstein writes a wonderful piece on a book title “Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism”:

Many Americans abhor paternalism. They think that people should be able to go their own way, even if they end up in a ditch. When they run risks, even foolish ones, it isn’t anybody’s business that they do.

The whole piece is a justification for coercion, as the title says, and a justification for destroying individual citizens’ rights to live their own lives.  This is an anointed elite deciding that he will change the world so that his will can be forced onto you, the disgusting inferior thing that can’t make good decisions.

This is Orwellian newspeak tyranny used to create a Huxleyan Brave New World where the only life available is the one that the master decides.

For example, many of us show “present bias”: we tend to focus on today and neglect tomorrow.  For some people, the future is a foreign country, populated by strangers.  Many of us procrastinate and fail to take steps that would impose small short-term costs but produce large long-term gains. People may, for example, delay enrolling in a retirement plan, starting to diet or exercise, ceasing to smoke, going to the doctor, or using some valuable, cost-saving technology. Present bias can ensure serious long-term harm, including not merely economic losses but illness and premature death as well.

People also have a lot of trouble dealing with probability.

Translation: You’re stupid and short sighted and need to be dominated.

Emphasizing these and related behavioral findings, many people have been arguing for a new form of paternalism, one that preserves freedom of choice, but that also steers citizens in directions that will make their lives go better by their own lights.  (Full disclosure: the behavioral economist Richard Thaler and I have argued on behalf of what we call libertarian paternalism, known less formally as “nudges.”)

The amount of contempt I have for Cass Sunstein at this point is difficult to convey without using colorful metaphors.

Liberal used to mean that one favored liberty, it favored the greatest amount of freedom.  Somehow liberal has come to mean an expansion of the state.  Here, word-twisting corruptor of truth Cass Sunstein says there is “libertarian paternalism”, which goes into his idea of “choice architecture”.  He, the almighty anointed dominator of men, simply changes the rules so the only choices are state-approved choices.  There is the illusion of choice, but there is none.

It has nothing to do with liberal, liberty, or libertarian.  It has everything to do with twisting words and changing the language so that evil deeds can be couched in what used to be good words.

This is even more sinister because it deletes alternatives – it reduces choices and then convinces people they have the freedom to choose.  It creates willing slavery.  Do you want to work in the field or the house?  They’re both “good for you”.

And those are your two choices.

Default rules are merely one kind of “choice architecture,” a phrase that may refer to the design of grocery stores, for example, so that the fresh vegetables are prominent; the order in which items are listed on a restaurant menu; visible official warnings; public education campaigns; the layout of websites; and a range of other influences on people’s choices. Such examples suggest that mildly paternalistic approaches can use choice architecture in order to improve outcomes for large numbers of people without forcing anyone to do anything.

Just slowly dissolve the “bad” choices until the master conveys his will to the serf.

You want to smoke?  Tax it, reduce the places you can smoke, ban it outright, then the “good” choice is made.  Individual choice is meaningless – the master has made his decision.

You want to own a gun?  Tax it, reduce the places you can shoot, increase the regulations and restrictions on where you can and when you can use it and own it, make it a difficult right to exercise, and then ban it, and the “good” choice is made.  Individual choice is meaningless – the master has made his decision and enforces his will.

You want to have sex?  Make it shameful, make one type acceptable, another type not.  Increase the social stigma, create blue laws and the like, and then only the “good” choice is left, so only the “good” choice can be made.  Individual choice is meaningless – the master has made his decision and the only choices left to the serf are to do as the master wishes.

For another example of “choice architecture” and the destruction of choice a bit more specifically, Thomas Sowell often notes that he and his wife didn’t have the money to pay for the birth of their first child, so the hospital put them on a payment plan for services.  He joked with his wife when the bill was paid that they finally owned their child.  Destruction of private health care options and mandating insurance drove prices up and took away the option to simply pay the hospitals directly.  Replacing direct payment with health insurance and created higher costs, but it mandated “good”.  Replacing optional health insurance with mandatory employer health care created higher costs, but mandated “good”.  The “good” of single payer has been created as other choices that worked better for individuals were slowly deleted.

Conly is quite aware that her view runs up against widespread intuitions and commitments. For many people, a benefit may consist precisely in their ability to choose freely even if the outcome is disappointing. She responds that autonomy is “not valuable enough to offset what we lose by leaving people to their own autonomous choices.”

Your right to live your own life isn’t valuable.  Your freedom isn’t valuable.  Your freedom to live your own life means you might not make all the best decisions, so you must be dominated into the correct decisions.  Subtly, but you will bow to the master.

To Mill’s claim that individuals are uniquely well situated to know what is best for them, Conly objects that Mill failed to make a critical distinction between means and ends. True, people may know what their ends are, but sometimes they go wrong when they choose how to get them. Most people want to be healthy and to live long lives. If people are gaining a lot of weight, and hence jeopardizing their health, Conly supports paternalism—for example, she favors reducing portion size for many popular foods, on the theory that large, fattening servings can undermine people’s own goals. In her words, paternalism is justified when

the person left to choose freely may choose poorly, in the sense that his choice will not get him what he wants in the long run, and is chosen solely because of errors in instrumental reasoning.Because of her focus on the means to the ends people want, Conly’s preferred form of paternalism is far more modest than imaginable alternatives.

At the same time, Conly insists that mandates and bans can be much more effective than mere nudges. If the benefits justify the costs, she is willing to eliminate freedom of choice, not to prevent people from obtaining their own goals but to ensure that they do so.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

Conly is right to insist that no democratic government can or should live entirely within Mill’s strictures. But in my view, she underestimates the possibility that once all benefits and all costs are considered, we will generally be drawn to approaches that preserve freedom of choice. One reason involves the bluntness of coercive paternalism and the sheer diversity of people’s tastes and situations. Some of us care a great deal about the future, while others focus intensely on today and tomorrow. This difference may make perfect sense in light not of some bias toward the present, but of people’s different economic situations, ages, and valuations. Some people eat a lot more than others, and the reason may not be an absence of willpower or a neglect of long-term goals, but sheer enjoyment of food. Our ends are hardly limited to longevity and health; our short-term goals are a large part of what makes life worth living.

According to him.  He will decide what your life is worth.

All of this is contrary to natural law, all of this is contrary to the dignity and rights of mankind.  Of course the tyrants love it, though.

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From a practical standpoint, there’s also this:

True, people may know what their ends are, but sometimes they go wrong when they choose how to get them. Most people want to be healthy and to live long lives. If people are gaining a lot of weight, and hence jeopardizing their health, Conly supports paternalism—for example, she favors reducing portion size for many popular foods, on the theory that large, fattening servings can undermine people’s own goals.

Sunstein’s shared view with Conly that food must be controlled because people are too stupid to eat what’s good for them fails not only because it insults the individual (and no amount of his weaseling changes what his intent is); but also because from a purely practical standpoint, deprivation leads to binges, denial leads to excess.  There are some nutritionists who’ve outlined this quite clearly – one of the reasons that diets fail is because people deprive themselves and don’t eat what their body wants them to – eating either too little or too much.

Case and point, somebody who eats 1556-calorie meals:

When there’s an authority figure engineering your choices – even when it’s your own mind through a diet, you tend not to respond so well.  The human body doesn’t want to starve itself, and doesn’t like it when it’s forced to starve itself.  The body responds no matter what the mind wants.

At the point that she decides not to try to control everything, she can just eat a burger without caring, without budgeting calories, and just eating when it’s right.

The soft tyranny of paternalism, manipulation of language, and destruction of free will ultimately lead to destruction of the individual – like all leftist plots, it requires more and more power and domination and subjugation to succeed.  That’s the only way it can succeed in its own goals – and at that point, the master has decided that slavery is for your own good.

Welcome To Wyoming

… and just like moving to any state, that means assimilating.

Rabid leftist activist Rev. Audette Fullbright wrote demanding that Wyoming submit to her newcomer “educated” demands.  State Representative Hans Hunt replied in the best manner possible.

Via the Blaze:

Dear Representative,

I hope you are taking care of yourself during this busy session. I know it is a challenging, compressed time.

I am writing to express my grave concern about House Bill 105. Ample evidence has shown that schools and guns do not mix, and in particular, guns in the hands of amateurs/non-professionals is extremely dangerous, especially in any highly-charged situation. to expose our children to greater risk in their schools by encouraging more guns on campuses is something that we cannot allow.

My husband and I moved to Wyoming not too long ago. We believed it was a good place to raise children. With the recent and reactive expansion of gun laws and the profoundly serious dangers of fracking, we find we are seriously reconsidering our decision, which is wrenching to all of us. However, the safety of our family must come first. We are waiting to see what the legislature does this session. I know of other new-to-Wyoming families in similar contemplation. Your choices matter. It would be sad to see an exodus of educated, childrearing age adults from Wyoming as a result of poor lawmaking.

sincerely,

Rev. Audette Fulbright

And the response from Hunt:

Rev. Fulbright,

I’ll be blunt. If you don’t like the political atmosphere of Wyoming, then by all means, leave. We, who have been here a very long time (I am proudly 4th generation) are quite proud of our independent heritage. I don’t expect a “mass exodus” from our state just because we’re standing up for our rights. As to your comments on fracking, I would point out that you’re basing your statement on “dangers” that have not been scientifically founded or proved as of yet.

It offends me to no end when liberal out-of-staters such as yourself move into Wyoming, trying to get away from where they came from, and then pompously demand that Wyoming conform to their way of thinking. We are, and will continue to be, a state which stands a head above the rest in terms of economic security. Our ability to do that is, in large part, to our “live and let live” mentality when it comes to allowing economic development, and limiting government oversight. So, to conclude, if you’re so worried about what our legislature is working on, then go back home.

Sincerely,

Hans Hunt

Representative Hans Hunt

House District 02

There has been a slow migration of the leftist “educated” elitists who demand that their ideology be accepted as the only choice.  They leave some decrepit state that they’ve thoroughly corrupted and destroyed (like California), then move to a free state (like Colorado), and slowly, progressively destroy it.  Then they move on to the next state, demanding that the leftist ideology that destroyed their last state be implemented in the new one.

Fulbright is a leftist political activist who’s demanding that Wyoming bow to her will and adopt her leftist ideology.  She comes in with the smug attitude that she and her “educated” ideas be adopted.  She posits that guns are bad and that defenseless schools are somehow a good thing – something that people from Wyoming have learned over generations is utter foolishness.  Yet she insists that her “education” dominate their ideas.

Kudos to Representative Hunt for standing up for Wyoming – and I say that as a former resident.

For those unaware, Chris LeDoux, who’s considered the musical voice of Wyoming, wasn’t a native – he assimiliated.

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The Casper Tribune, in the usual vein of media everywhere (they certainly aren’t the Greybull Standard), screws things up from almost the first sentence in their own story:

CHEYENNE — A Newcastle state lawmaker is refusing to apologize after telling a Cheyenne minister that her and her family should leave the state if she doesn’t like Wyoming politics.

Those aren’t Wyoming politics, those are Wyoming virtues.  The Equality State doesn’t play favorites.  It doesn’t disarm people to make them “safe” because that doesn’t work.  Wyoming stood up for the citizen so much that it’s now one of only four states with constitutional carry.  Wyoming residents remember things like the Johnson County War.  They know that guns have utility, for good or evil.  Disarming people makes no one safer.

They also know not to trust environmentalists who claim that no one else knows anything about science… especially when that science, as in the anti-fracking case, is backed by political entities opposed to certain industries.

People from Wyoming have seen what happened to Colorado – how the swarm of Californians who moved there with their “great ideas” have turned the once-great state into a pot-smoking basketcase that hates any freedoms other than getting high, led by representatives that want women to be raped rather than letting them defend themselves, and are driving businesses out of Colorado.

The left poisons an environment with its own failed, destructive ideology, then individual leftists move, fleeing the wastelands they leave behind to infect other free areas with their love of oppression of the individual and elevation of the state.  They leave one “utopia” that’s an unliveable hole and go to create another.

One astute commenter paraphrased leftist Fulbright’s demands:

“I moved here, to a place with a different culture, both civil and political, but expect you to kowtow to MY different preferences and change YOUR culture to suit ME. I shouldn’t have to adapt to the way things have been here for generations, I should be able to impose my will, standards and beliefs upon you backwards hicks, because I’m smarter than you. I’m EDUCATED.”

Thank you Representative Hunt for standing up to this.

Musical Interlude

Some folks will probably recognize this tune’s opening riff, even if they’re not familiar with Social Distortion or Mike Ness.