THE WORD "IDEOLOGUE"

Since I seem to be on a rant about objective words that are commonly used as pejoratives, how about this one:  “ideologue.”

I hear this almost exclusively from the left, be they Democrats or Republicans.   (The terms, “Demopublicans” and “Republicrats” are becoming more common as the distinctions between the two parties breaks down.  I use the term “left” advisedly, meaning one who favors bigger government, higher taxes, more welfare and entitlements, and a general overthrow of the Constitution.  I use the term “right” to be the opposite of that.  In this context,  Republican and Democrat are not useful. We can discuss left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative, etc, but not here.  I have defined my terms, and will proceed as if people are actually going to read ALL of this.)

So, “Ideologue.”  I always like to start with some dictionary definitions.  I’m one that gives me the details of what an ideologue is, not his moral stature, intelligence, or political affiliation.

Merriam Webster’s online dictionary is utterly useless:  “An impractical idealist.”  “An often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology.”  MW loves to use words to define themselves, which is completely invalid.  They also throw in the highly judgmental words, “impractical…blindly partisan,” which is an evaluation of an ideologue, but doesn’t tell us what one is.  What horse hockey.

Google says, “an adherent of an ideology, esp. one who is uncompromising and dogmatic.  “a conservative ideologue.”  Well, that’s certainly not slanted or judgmental.  I won’t even dignify this drivel with a critique.  If this is the only definition you have, you’re in trouble.

To my surprise, freedictionary.com offered this simple, neutral definition, which they credited to  the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:  “a zealous advocate or adherent of an ideology”, and under the thesaurus section, offered this: “an advocate of some ideology.”

Finally, Cambridge.org gave what I think is the most succinct definition of the four: “a person who believes very strongly in particular principles and tries to follow them carefully.”

Between freedictionary and Cambridge, I think we have something to work with.  An ideologue is a person who believes certain ideas are correct, advocates them, and tries to follow them.  If I’m not mistaken, socialism is an idea, as are fascism and capitalism.  Some of us believe in the idea that individuals have rights and powers separate and distinct from those of government, and others believe in the idea that individuals should be subservient to the government.  Joe Biden believes in the idea that, if threatened with home invasion, one should step out on the balcony and fire a shotgun into the air, endangering innocent bystanders and telling the thugs where you are.  Some of us have pointed out the hazards inherent in this idea, but Joe clings to it with considerable tenacity.  He also clings to the idea that guns cause crime and that gun owners are pretty much the scum of the earth, an idea widely held and expressed with utmost savagery and hatred by the left.

Nancy Pelosi believes in the idea that it is acceptable to create laws without knowing what is in them, and she defends this idea with great obstinacy and passion.  A tiny handful of real conservatives in Congress held to the idea that socialized medicine and government-run health care is a very bad idea, and a large number of liberals held, with equal fervor and unmatched ad hominem, the opposite idea.

 

In truth, any conscious action or consciously spoken word begins as an idea. This is true for liberals and conservatives, alike.  When liberals call conservatives ideologues, they are, literally, accusing them of thinking and acting on their thoughts.  (Acting on one’s thoughts and ideas is a good basic definition of “integrity,” a term that actually has meaning, and defines a trait that was once considered a virtue.)

This begs the question that if acting on one’s thoughts and ideas is a terrible thing, worthy obscene vitriol and physical assault, what are the liberals acting on?   I wouldn’t want to accuse them of hypocrisy, so if they condemn acting on conscious thought, what in hell guides their actions?  I think we know the answer to that:  they are mindless twits who don’t have sense to pound sand down a rathole.  Why do I say that?

It’s just an idea I had.

Rebsarge

28 Dec., 2013

MORE CONTENTLESS 'ISMS

There’s a couple of terms in play here that are so ill-defined and so overused as to be worse than meaningless; they are emotionally weighted so that people not given to analysis of such things perceive them as verbal saps.

The first is “hate speech.”  Hatred is an emotion, it is not a form of speech.  The concept of “hate speech” involves attaching a motive to what is said, or addressing the speaker’s frame of mind. It does not even pretend to refer to the tone in which a statement was uttered.

Speech can be hateful, and it can express hatred, but the concept of “hate speech” is invalid.  We must deal with the words, not make assumptions about the emotional state of the speaker.  Consider this.  A man might say, “Homosexuality is a sin,” not because he hates homosexuals, but because his child is committing what he earnestly considers a sin, and his very heart is breaking into a million pieces.  His emotional state may very well be one of intense love and equally intense agony. Certainly we must consider the speaker’s intent and tone, but not as the core content of what was said.

The same is true of “hate crimes.”  We have a judicial system that cannot or will not convict or imprison people for murder, which is a physical act – verifiable by fundamental sensory perception – you’ve got a corpse, for cryin’ out loud!  Because of this utter and contemptible impotence, we have invented a new species of wrong – the “hate crime” – that involves a motive, which can NOT be verified or observed.  Because there can be no iron-clad evidence of a person’s motive or frame of mind, the courts are confident in convicting and imprisoning people for things that can’t even be seen by others.  The twin lunacies of “hate speech,” and “hate crimes” testify to the intellectual laziness, at best, or intellectual cowardice, at worst, of those whom we have allowed to speak for us.  They are laws against a specific thought, which, in and of itself, hurts no one, and which, if the truth were known, has found lodging in the minds of every one of us at one time or another.  Hate, without an action, harms no one.  An action, with or without hate, may be a crime.  Are we really so engrossed in intruding into our neighbor’s minds that we are willing to call a thought a crime?

The second term is “propaganda.”  Propaganda is nothing more or less than information that is transmitted by some means – verbally, over the air, in print, or on film – that is meant to change the way people think about something.  All – that is ALL – expository speech falls into this category.  It is one of the most transparent and foolish of all double standards.  When I say, “Socialism is bad because it punishes achievement,” that’s an informative statement, but when someone else says, “Socialism is good because it gives the little guy a break,”  well, that’s propaganda!  The term is used by adherents to almost all ideologies when they want to make their opponents look evil or manipulative.  If someone says something that is wrong or misleading, such as, “Homosexuals just LIVE to sodomize little children,” that’s not propaganda;  It’s a damned lie.  Let us not pretty it up with a 4-syllable tribute to some professor of linguistic analysis who wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouth full of it.

The moment someone starts throwing around the terms propaganda or hate speech, it’s pretty certain they have no real rebuttal or answer to what was said.  They don’t like it, but are too immature, emotionally or intellectually, to admit they have been wrong.  Lacking a real answer, they throw out one of these terms.  Other similar terms that are used in precisely the same way are “ideologue,” “radical,” and “opinionated.” 

Think about it for a second.  Have you ever been accused of being an ideologue, a radical, or opinionated by someone who agreed with you?  Me neither.  Have you ever been accused of uttering hate speech or propaganda by someone who agreed with you?  Me neither.  I’d dearly love to see these kinds of polemic punji pits fall into disuse.

Rebsarge

27 Dec., 2013

DRIVER'S LICENSES FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS - ON EASY WAY OUT

In New Mexico, as of mid-December, 2013, there is a controversy in progress between the governor and American citizens on one side, and the legislature and illegal aliens on the other.  At one point, NM was one of three states to issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.  The reasoning for passage of this law was that it would allow them to buy insurance, which would “make our children safer.”  (Yes, there it is, the children card, second only to the race card in statist polemics.)

In addressing this controversy, I’m going to play a game called, “Go down a road to nowhere so you can see how stupid it is, then lay out a real solution.”  In the interest of preventing undue frustration, here is the last paragraph of this essay:  “As much fun as all of the above sounds like, it is totally, absolutely futile to even discuss ANY solution until the border is closed, and I mean closed tight.  So far, very few politicians in the US have the guts to even discuss  that, so all of this wrangling over driver’s licenses, voting rights, ID cards, Obamacare, free education, and so on is a painfully obscene waste of time.”

Now that you know where we’re going, let’s start this crazy ride.

Astonishingly enough, the liberal argument was flawed.  For one thing, many legal citizens in the state don’t have insurance, so one wonders why, if having a license guarantees drivers will get insurance, why is it so ineffective on them.  There is also the idiotic assumption explicit in the statist argument that having insurance will prevent accidents.  Our previous governor, Bill Richardson, declared the state to be a sanctuary, meaning that anyone who violates federal immigration law could find refuge here. (Why do liberals think it’s okay for a governor to refuse to enforce federal law, but have a screaming hemorrhage when a governor DOES enforce that law?)

Giving illegal aliens driver’s licenses made the NM driver’s license utterly useless as a form of ID because of the thousands of bogus ones floating around.  Illegal aliens were coming here from all over the country to get licenses, and there are documented cases of some enterprising individuals getting 20 or 30 licenses, and selling them in other states.  When New Mexicans travelled out of state and presented their licenses as ID, they were laughed at.

Both houses of the state legislature are heavily dominated by liberal fascists who have swatted down our governor’s efforts to repeal the Make a Mockery of New Mexico’s License Law three years running.   The debate now is whether the governor should just give up and let it happen, or keep fighting.  A large majority of the legal citizens of the state favor fighting it out, and an unknown percentage of illegal aliens want her to leave them alone.  So far, the latter have had much more influence on the legislators than have the former. 

I personally favor fighting it out, and getting as nasty and immoral as the opposition if necessary.  (Illegals have threatened mob violence and even threatened violence against specific citizens over this.  Given the fact that unknown thousands of drug cartel enforcers are in our midst, those threats have serious cred.)

We have come to a point where there are no easy solutions.  We have taken the easy way out for so long, there are no more easy ways left.  We have two choices.  First, we can close the border, strike down all amnesty and sanctuary laws, and go to work cutting the illegals out of the crowd. Or we can throw open the border, strike down all immigration laws, and let anyone and everyone come and go at their pleasure, with no restrictions or penalties.

If we try to take a middle course, it will be a road to madness.  For example, let’s say we declare anyone who has been in the US for ten years with no felony convictions a citizen, or automatically eligible to take the citizenship test.  Every one of those tens of millions of people is going to say, “I’ve been here more than ten years and have no felony convictions.”  Well, you know sure as anything that some of them are lying.  But which ones?  How do you determine which ones really are eligible?  We don’t want to deport people who really do meet the criteria we have set, so we are morally obliged to figure out who is eligible and who is lying.

To make such a determination, there must be a hearing – for every flippin’ one of those 30-million or however many there are.  Every hearing must have a judge who knows the law.  Every judge must be duly sworn, have an office, a staff, a courtroom, a bailiff, a telephone, a computer, a hammer, and so on.  How many such judges will it take to hear all 30 million cases?  How about appeals?  Is anyone silly enough to think some of these people – the criminals among them, at least – haven’t figured out how to game the system?  They will appeal and appeal and appeal.  It will take a cadre of a thousand judges a hundred years just to hear the cases!  But it’s not over yet.  Let’s say Judge Brown tells some guy he has to get out of the country.  Do we take the guy into custody right then?  If so, it will require a bailiff or sheriff, a jail, a bus, a driver (with all the overhead that entails).   Knowing the guy will appeal, we either have to release him on the spot or shortly thereafter.  In the appeal, the accused will have a lawyer, which means the state will have to have a prosecutor, and every prosecutor will have to have all the same things the judges need except a hammer.  We must already be up to many thousands of government employees.

Now consider this.  You’ve got a guy who is in the country illegally, but who has figured out how to get along and be invisible.  You’ve sentenced him to deportation, so he knows exactly what you have in mind for him.  Then you’ve turned him loose - released him into a countryside that is saturated with 30 million others like him.  How do you propose to find him in order to enforce the deportation order?  How many more government employees are we talking about, now?

And all of that is assuming all 30 million of these people voluntarily take themselves to the courthouse so they can run the risk of deportation. I would imagine that at least some of them will say, “Screw that,” and go dark, which means we’ll have to find them, and how do you do that without shredding the Constitution?  You can’t just go rounding up anyone who looks like a Mexican, because if you snag one of my Marine Corps brothers whose family has been here since before Jamestown was founded, you’re going to have to fight me, too.  Besides, not all illegal aliens are Mexicans!

So.  You’ve got to find them, try them, keep track of them through the appeal process, and either kick them out or let them go.  You’re going to need tens of thousands of people and many, many years.  Oh, and don’t forget that with the border standing open, they’ll be coming in faster than you can process ‘em out!

As much fun as all of the above sounds like, it is totally, absolutely futile to even discuss ANY solution until the border is closed, and I mean closed tight.  So far, very few politicians in the US have the guts to even discuss  that, so all of this wrangling over driver’s licenses, voting rights, ID cards, Obamacare, free education, and so on is a painfully obscene waste of time.

Rebsarge

19 Dec., 2013

OUR MISS BROOKS DOESN'T HAVE TO BE A STONE KILLER

Just idly wondering about the correlation between those who say only police should have guns and those who go nuts when a cop busts a cap on someone.  I'm thinking it's probably pretty high, but certainly not 100%.

In the article about the deputy sheriff in Colorado who stopped the shooting at the school last week, some of the remarks from readers pointed out that the deputy was trained professional, and highly skilled in the use of arms, as opposed to teachers and janitors who are hopelessly and eternally unskilled.

Before I write another word, I want it understood that I am NOT impugning the dedication, integrity, or courage of police officers, in general.  Yes, there are a few who shouldn’t be in uniform, but that is only because we are limited to choosing our officers from the human race, a notoriously un-omniscient population – which is actually trenchant to this essay.

In this particular incident, the officer never fired a shot, so his skill or lack of it is not even a matter for discussion.  In fact, the very presence of an armed person stopped the attack.  Just the PRESENCE of an armed person.  How much skill and training is required to be PRESENT?  This fact is actually consistent with another statistic you won’t hear in the news:  Americans use firearms in defense of themselves or others at least 3 million times a year.  As much as the dipsticks in DC and the media would like us to believe we shoot 3 million of our neighbors every year, I hope it is obvious that we don’t.  That means that in millions of instances, firearms are used in the defense of life WITHOUT A SHOT BEING FIRED

See?  When you are speaking the truth, it can be verified from other perspectives.  I have been in at least a half-dozen situations in which my being armed prevented an assault or worse, without having to fire a shot – usually without even having to draw my weapon.  Just having it gave me the presence and the confidence to stand firm in the face of a threat.  No, that’s not true.  Just having a weapon did nothing, and if that’s all there were to me, I’d be a hazard to myself and others.  A more accurate statement is that having a weapon and knowing that I know how to use it effectively gave me confidence and presence, and I got that knowledge by spending a lot of time on the range with some great coaches.

Police officers are not a specific sub-species of humanity.  They are just men and women who have a fully-developed sense of duty and honor, and anyone could achieve that with the requisite effort.  Police officers have neither a gene nor an implant that gives them superlative powers of perception and tactical sense.  Nothing makes them infallible in any way.  They make mistakes of judgment.  They make mistakes in tactics.  They make mistakes when firing their weapons.  How many times in the last few years have NYPD officers shot innocent bystanders?  (It has been said that due to the ammunition shortage, NYPD has set a limit of five rounds per innocent bystander.)  That’s a vicious and demeaning joke, but it is not without reference to fact.

I started shooting a Colt 1911 pistol when I was 17 and borrowed my mom’s .38 Super.  I continued to learn in the Marines, and even though the pistol wasn’t officially my standard arm, I qualified expert with it.  Since I got out of the Marines, I have probably fired 10,000 rounds in concentrated practice.  I could count on one hand the number of state or city police officers whom I have met who have fired half that much.   The training plans for metropolitan departments devote orders of magnitude more time to filling out reports and sensitivity training than to focused marksmanship and gunfighting.  (And there’s a huge difference between those two!)  I personally know career officers who fire their weapons less than 100 times a year.  I have seen them turn their backs on potentially armed suspects.  I saw one take a pistol from a homeowner who had called about a burglary in progress, then lay the pistol on the hood of his car, in full view of that woman, and walk away!  I have shot next to them at target ranges, and observed that a lot of them couldn’t hit a bull in the butt with a bass fiddle.  I have heard them utter the most idiotic ideas about how guns and bullets work.

There is no reason in the world why any citizen possessed of normal intelligence and physical strength and coordination could not be as tactically savvy as the vast majority of police officers, and a hell of a lot better shot.  They will need training, and I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut the NRA would provide it for free.  I know I would gladly participate in that effort!  There is no question that it takes a special breed to become a hardened professional gunfighter.  There is also no question that few police officers fit that description, and even fewer teachers.

But it doesn’t matter.

We aren’t talking about turning Our Miss Brooks into Bonnie Parker or Annie Oakley.  We are talking about giving her enough training to protect herself and her students one time in her life, and the odds of any one teacher being called upon to do that are nearly zero.  We have the resources to train them.  Front Sight, in Nevada, has a 4-day defensive handgun course that would make any graduate a better, more savvy, more skilled gunfighter than the majority of professional police officers.  We have the resources to comfort and nurture and heal them if they ever have to shoot someone.  I submit that the resources we have spent on therapy for Sandy Hook survivors would have paid many times over for the training of a single teacher who might have put a stop to that outrage, and for any counseling or therapy she might need afterward.  Getting roses and apples and hugs from all those little children she kept safe would probably help as much as anything.

Here’s another little contradiction in the hoplophobe’s vast array of contradictions.  They say the lack of training prevents average citizens from competing with criminals in gunfights, but…  wait a minute… WHO TRAINED THE DAMNED CRIMINALS?  Criminals are, for the most art, mentally unstable and stupid.  That’s why they can’t work out their lives in other channels.  They are not gifted with superlative skill at arms any more than are police officers.  For the most part, they are not trained, at all.  Some, like the Aurora theater shooter, have gained some skill by playing violent video games for thousands of hours, but that doesn’t make them infallible.

Most significantly, it doesn’t make ‘em bulletproof, and THAT is where we can defeat them.

Rebsarge

17 Dec., 2013