Category: Harsh But True

Well, to be honest, in a ‘free country’, I’ve never thought that the police could prevent any crime. That requires an authoritarian Police State the likes of which would be on par with North Korea. The poor people who always believed this, were always wrong, and that’s what’s sad; they were delusional

Confidence in Law Enforcement to Prevent Mass Shootings Plummets

A new poll from Convention of States Action and the Trafalgar Group shows Americans no longer trust local and federal law enforcement to stop mass shootings. This outcome should be no surprise after a long string of mass shootings where law enforcement knew the perpetrator before the tragedy.

The tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, is the latest example. However, school officials and law enforcement were aware of the risks posed by the shooter in Parkland, Fla., and the other mass shooting tragedies since then. It seems the left’s preoccupation with social justice rather than criminal justice prevents law enforcement at all levels from taking proactive action to prevent violence. The social justice push ended stop and frisk in New York City and ensured red flag laws in Illinois and New York were useless.

These examples may explain why a majority of voters report they are not confident local authorities can prevent a mass shooting before it happens. Sixty-two percent of voters say they are not sure their local law enforcement or federal agents could identify and stop a violent person before they started a mass shooting. More than a quarter (26.9%) report they are not confident at all. Only 9.8% indicated they are very confident in their local authorities’ ability to prevent a mass shooting.

Uvalde officers not immediately and aggressively confronting the gunman in the elementary school was reminiscent of law enforcement failures in the Parkland shooting. “Americans watched in horror as an active shooter was permitted to rampage through a school while the police stood outside and did absolutely nothing. Over and over again, citizens are given the clear message that—when it comes to protecting loved ones—you’re on your own,”  said Mark Meckler, President of Convention of States Action.

Americans are painfully aware of the tragic results in these situations and believe in the “good guy with a gun” more than the gun grabbers would like. According to the poll, a plurality believes their fellow citizen with a firearm is the best protection for them and their family in a mass shooting situation. Almost 42% of voters believe that an armed citizen would be their best protection if they were caught in a mass shooting event. Local police retained the confidence of 25.1%, and 10.3% had the most faith in federal agents. Almost one-quarter said none of the above.

Results indicating how many respondents feel they will best protect themselves and their families would be an interesting supplement. Democrats appear the most fatalistic, with a plurality of 33.9% saying they do not trust anyone to protect them and their family in a mass shooting event. But, they are still the party pushing for strict gun control. Meanwhile, 70.4% of Republicans trust armed citizens the most, while only 16.8% and 1.6% trust local or federal law enforcement.

Yet, somehow, our leaders in Congress think more gun laws are the answer. The recent bi-partisan gun law does little to prevent these tragedies, especially in an environment where citizens are losing trust in law enforcement. “At the same time, we’re told guns are the problem, and we should give up our right to self-defense,” Meckler noted. “Voters are not stupid. They understand that responsible citizens offer the best means of protecting our schools, homes, and communities in this country. Pursuing such policies is not only bad politics, it puts all of us at risk.”

As if to prove the point made by a plurality of voters, an armed citizen stopped a mass shooter in a mall food court in Indiana yesterday. According to law enforcement, the gunman shot three people fatally and injured two Sunday evening before a good guy with a gun shot and killed him. The shooter entered the mall with a rifle and several magazines. Greenwood Police Dept. Chief Jim Ison said, “The real hero of the day is the citizen that was lawfully carrying a firearm in that food court and was able to stop the shooter almost as soon as he began.” The poll ended before reports of this shooting appeared in the news cycle.

A legally armed citizen recently thwarted another mass shooting in West Virginia. A woman used her pistol to shoot a man who had returned to a graduation party with a rifle. He had been in a verbal altercation with the partygoers earlier in the day. “This lady was carrying a lawful firearm,” Lt. Tony Hazelett of the Charleston Police Department said. “A law-abiding citizen who stopped the threat of probably 20 or 30 people getting killed. She engaged the threat and stopped it. She didn’t run from the threat. She engaged it preventing a mass casualty event here in Charleston.”

Examples like these may be why states like Texas, Georgia, and others are passing open and constitutional carry laws. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed constitutional carry in March of this year. As of July 1, no legal gun owner in Indiana is required to have a carry permit after passing the required background check. That law may have made all the difference for the Hoosiers in the mall on Sunday.

Christina Pushaw & Mollie Hemingway shred ‘disgusting and evil propaganda’ from WaPo editorial board

There are many people who have been waiting for a reckoning for public officials, politicians and others who destroyed lives, harmed students and wrecked the economy all in the name of “safety” during the pandemic. If MSM outlets such as the Washington Post have their way, the truth of what really happened, why it happened, and who was horribly wrong and misguided will never be told. Christina Pushaw spotted the WaPo still going out of its way to flog those they consider Covid heretics:

The corporate media will have the backs of Fauci and Dems (mostly) no matter what facts come to light in the wake of the pandemic and the disastrous responses:

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The evidence keeps pouring in showing the utter failure of all COVID mandates.

Since March 2020 I have repeatedly written that the response to the Wuhan flu was an utter mindless panic that had little to do with the facts. Right off the bat, the facts, not the models, suggested the virus would resemble the flu most of all, a possible mortal threat to the sick and elderly but generally nothing more than a short sickness to the general population, with it being almost utterly harmless to the young.

Nothing that has happened since has really changed these early conclusions. I have compiled below a collection of recent studies and reports that illustrate what we have learned following the epidemic and the panic that accompanied it. Sadly, that panic did little to stop the virus, but it left us with destroyed businesses, a crushed economy, many uneducated and damaged children, and a broken Bill of Rights.

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Biological Sex Isn’t Up For Debate

Regardless of what the mainstream media and Democrats might want you to think, no one can change their biological sex, regardless of the hormones or surgical procedures that they might undertake to attempt to do so. We are at a moment in time where up is down and down is up, and it’s a dangerous precedent if we allow it to foment itself as a cultural norm and standard. If I were to die today and someone dug up my bones hundreds of years from now, they would know through well-defined science that my remains are those of a male. The same applies for women, and yet now we’re seeing a movement from a very small but vocal community attempting to convince the entire nation otherwise. Unfortunately, we’re slowly falling for it.

If a grown person who has gone through the hormonal ups and downs of puberty and is of sane mind wants to permanently alter themselves, that’s their business, and, frankly, I couldn’t care less, as long as their personal choices don’t infringe on my civil liberties. However, this fringe group of people is trying to force everyone to change their gender norms — norms that have been defined by years of science and civilization — to make some feel better about themselves. We must all object to such coercion.

Today, we’re literally being told that men can menstruate and have periods. We’re told that birthing people have babies, not women. We’re told that people are men, instead of men just being men. All of this is because of a pervasive movement in this country to undermine gender norms and to glorify the transgender community. Women have worked for over 100 years to get better pay and to accomplish groundbreaking achievements, only to have those things diminished by transgender women. Young girls and female athletes are now losing competitions against biological men who are competing against biological women because they have chosen to identify as a woman or girl. It no longer matters if a young girl or woman worked hard for her accomplishments in her given sport because it won’t be good enough to defeat a biological male who is naturally stronger and faster. Yet, we now live in a dystopian society where we’re supposed to believe that these new norms are OK. Well, they are not, and we must stand against them.

To be clear, opposing the idea of biological males who become trans women competing against biological women isn’t synonymous with being against people who are different or who are trans; again, that’s their choice or personal journey. However, what it does mean is standing against forcing the overwhelming majority of society to accept something that science tells us simply isn’t the case. We now live in a society where parents have to worry about their children learning about sexuality at young ages, something Florida just recently prohibited in recent legislation that “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” I am hopeful that people are waking up and pushing back against this nonsense.

Cultural norms and standards are a definitive guide to our role in society and for a society’s continued success. Men and women are different, and that is OK! Nature has designed us that way for very specific reasons, and we shouldn’t ignore nor tamper with it. Yes, there is a fraction of the population that struggles with or is going through a gender identity crisis. That’s their personal journey, and I feel for their struggle. However, they lose my support the moment they begin to tramp on women’s rights or infiltrate our schools with gender discussions at inappropriate ages or attempt to redefine what it means to be a woman or man. These personal struggles are now infringing on the lives of everyone else, and we have a right to say something about it.

Why do these things matter, some might ask? Well, norms and structure matter because they define and regulate our society and help keep it civilized. They help us process and define things. They assign value and identity to things. Can they change over time? Yes, of course they can. But some things in particular that science has clearly defined, such as gender, are not up for debate.

No matter how much some may say that men have periods, a man can never have a menstrual cycle because this requires ovaries and a uterus, which biological males do NOT have. It doesn’t matter if some say birthing people because only women can have babies. These may be hard truths for some, but they are the reality, nevertheless. And there’s nothing that a single person can do to change science and reality.

I can guarantee with near metaphysical certitude that if you hear this on the MSM, it’ll be spun to appear as racist as possible.

Experts Say the ‘Defund the Police’ Movement Led to a Massive Spike in Black Murders.

The immediate aftermath of the murder of George Floyd saw a dramatic increase in violent crime across the country. But the political movement Floyd’s death spawned — “Defund the Police” — ended up creating a massive spike in the murders of black people as law enforcement pulled back from policing black communities in what’s referred to as “The Ferguson Effect.”

The left sniffs at the Ferguson Effect because it, in essence, blames their coddling of violent protesters for the spike in crime. But given the anecdotal evidence from every large city about the reality of the effect —some police making a conscious effort not to get involved — it would seem that the Ferguson Effect can certainly be included among any causes for the increase in violent crime.

The year 2020 may have been unique because of the pandemic and conditions surrounding the lockdowns.

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It’s called ‘supply and demand’ and the poorest people are the ones who will starve.

Hungry people who can’t afford higher prices for food have been the leading cause of more violence and revolutions than other causes. Just ask Jim Taylor about the riots in Mozambique when the goobermint had to raise the price on imported rice.

How Russia’s Ukraine War Will Make Bread Unaffordable In The Middle East.

The war in Ukraine, if it continues for several weeks more, will also prevent Ukrainians from planting the wheat, while the sanctions imposed by the West will prevent Russia from selling its produce. As a result, the prices of grain will continue to rise steeply, causing sharp rises in the prices of bread, milk, meat, and other products.

Is a “Wheat Crisis” Next as Ukrainian Grain Shipments Halt? Chinese officials warns that nation’s winter wheat condition could be “worst in history”.

BLUF:
War – check.
Pestilence – check.
Famine – This looks like the next horseman lining up to make an appearance.

But the good news: No mean tweets. We can take comfort in that.

While oil prices are exploding, and petroleum products are certainly a necessity in modern life, there is a potential developing crisis that could impact the global economy even more than energy.

As Russia continues to pound Ukraine, it is important to note that the region is responsible for about 1/3 of the world’s grain supplies.

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Try this in Missouri  – and several other states besides, and odds are you’ll be taking another ride -straight to the morgue – because around here with our permitless carry laws, if it looks like a gun, someone is going to assume it’s a gun and TCOB.

Several People in Chula Vista Attacked by Airsoft Gun in Latest Social Media Challenge
CVPD says people are doing drive-by shootings with airsoft and Orbeez toy guns

Chula Vista Police said nine people have been attacked in what appears to be the latest social media challenge.

“It’s very stupid. This could have very tragic consequences,” warned CVPD Lt. Dan Peak.

He said they’ve received nine reports in the last year of Chula Vista residents being shot in a drive-by-style attack involving airsoft guns or toy guns that fire Orbeez balls. Orbeez are small colorful plastic pellets that expand when placed in water.

“It’s considered assault with a deadly weapon. So, these juveniles may think they’re doing a prank, the next thing you know they’re going to be in Juvenile Hall,” explained Peak.

“It was a very cowardly act,” said a Chula Vista man who asked to be identified as “Bogey”.

“Kids shouldn’t be going around pretending they’re doing drive-by shootings of people,” added Bogey.

The man said he and his wife were shot last Sunday near Eastlake by a group of teenagers or young men in a four-door car.

“Stops right next to us. We look. Instinctively as we start getting hit with something in the face and our body, we covered our face,” described Bogey with his hands over his face. “The fact that kids are doing this and thinking this is funny; it’s not a joke and there’s going to be consequences.”

Lt. Peak said the attacks appeared to be the latest challenge issued on social media platforms. He said CVPD has also received 41 calls in the last year from people witnessing similar attacks.

“There’s a lot of proud protective Momma Bears out there in Eastlake who, when they get you, you’re going to wish the police got you first,” warned Bogey. “If they’re old enough to drive and do this in cars, they’re old enough to comprehend this is not a joke and this is not okay.”

BLUF: Who is John Galt? Now we know.

Truck Drivers Are the Atlas that Finally Shrugged

Trucks lined up at the Blue Water Bridge that connects Port Huron, Michigan, and Sarnia, Canada, in Port Huron on February 10, 2022. - The Canadian trucker protest has temporarily sidelined a key auto industry transport route, adding stress to a North American car industry already pinched by low inventories …

Anyone familiar with my scribbling knows that I separate modern society into two categories: World Turners and The Useless.

Me? I’m no World Turner. I’m one of The Useless. What I mean is this: If everyone who does what I do for a living stopped doing it today, the world would keep right on turning. Society would roll along just fine without me and mine — maybe better. Sure, a few people might miss my musings, but only for a little while. And the same is true for anyone who makes a living spewing their half-assed opinions (especially Jonah Goldberg).

In fact, you could wipe society’s table clear of every writer, artist, actor, musician, professor, dancer, reporter, tastemaker, producer, influencer, teacher, lobbyist, politician, everyone on TV, everyone who doesn’t get their hands dirty, and our world would keep turning just fine. Would we miss things like the newest Marvel movie? Sure. Those things are the spice of a life as bountiful as ours. But that doesn’t change the fact that our world would keep right on turning.

Now try to live without the World Turners, those sneered at by America’s left-wing elite, by the CNNs and Morning Joes and NPR — the working class. Try to imagine your life without mechanics, farmers, coal miners, oil drillers,  plumbers, roofers, electricians, pest control, the people who stock the shelves, who make our steel, police our streets, put out our fires, pave our roads, dig our ditches, haul our garbage, and plow the snow. Within a month, our world stops turning. Within six months, welcome to dystopia. Within a year, we’re eating one another.

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The number I’ve seen is that it is estimated that the lockdowns prevented on average  0.2%  – that’s “Maybe Two (2) out of a Thousand” – deaths in comparison with just trusting people to do the right thing.
Sorry, that small of a number is statistical noise, which means that there is no evidence the lockdowns did anything but disrupt our entire economy and empower the tyrant authoritarians. Which, to be frank is the silver lining because they’re now exposed to the world for future action.

Johns Hopkins Analysis: ‘Lockdowns Should be Rejected Out of Hand.’

The aura of “expert” has lost its luster during Covid, as our supposedly bigger brains have been proved wrong repeatedly.

Two of these have been Ezekiel Emanuel and Anthony Fauci. Both were enthusiastic proponents of societal lockdowns as a means of preventing deaths and the spread of Covid. We now know from a Johns Hopkins blockbuster meta-analysis that “shutting it down,” in Donald Trump’s awkward phrase, did very little to prevent deaths.

It’s a long, arcane, and detailed analysis, and I can’t present every nuance or statistic here. But I think these are the primary takeaways. From the study:

Overall, we conclude that lockdowns are not an effective way of reducing mortality rates during a pandemic, at least not during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results are in line with the World Health Organization Writing Group (2006), who state, “Reports from the 1918 influenza pandemic indicate that social-distancing measures did not stop or appear to dramatically reduce transmission […]

In Edmonton, Canada, isolation and quarantine were instituted; public meetings were banned; schools, churches, colleges, theaters, and other public gathering places were closed; and business hours were restricted without obvious impact on the epidemic.” Our findings are also in line with Allen’s (2021) conclusion: “The most recent research has shown that lockdowns have had, at best, a marginal effect on the number of Covid 19 deaths.”

Why might that be?

Mandates only regulate a fraction of our potential contagious contacts and can hardly regulate nor enforce handwashing, coughing etiquette, distancing in supermarkets, etc. Countries like Denmark, Finland, and Norway that realized success in keeping COVID-19 mortality rates relatively low allowed people to go to work, use public transport, and meet privately at home during the first lockdown. In these countries, there were ample opportunities to legally meet with others.

Worse, the lockdowns caused tremendous harm:

Unintended consequences may play a larger role than recognized. We already pointed to the possible unintended consequence of SIPOs, which may isolate an infected person at home with his/her family where he/she risks infecting family members with a higher viral load, causing more severe illness. But often, lockdowns have limited peoples’ access to safe (outdoor) places such as beaches, parks, and zoos, or included outdoor mask mandates or strict outdoor gathering restrictions, pushing people to meet at less safe (indoor) places. Indeed, we do find some evidence that limiting gatherings was counterproductive and increased COVID-19 mortality

What lessons should be learned (my emphasis)?

The use of lockdowns is a unique feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns have not been used to such a large extent during any of the pandemics of the past century. However, lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects. They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best. Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument.

To which I would add another: We can never squelch free discourse and debate on public-health issues again.

People who argued against the “scientific consensus” about the lockdowns were stifled, censored by Big Tech, denigrated by the media, and mocked by establishment scientists. That was essentially “anti-science.” The scientific method needs heterodox voices to speak freely if it is to function properly.

This subsequent look-back shows why. To a large degree, those with the officially disfavored views–such as the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration—were correct on this matter.

Will we learn the lesson? Yes, if our goal is to ably discern and apply the best policy options, which can be a messy process. No, if the point is to allow those in charge of institutional science to exert societal control.

Comment O’ The Day

Yes, yes, more!!! I feel terrible for this woman and her daughter but every single normie who voted for Biden because of Trump’s mean Tweets need to see up close and personal what the Left is really like.
No compassion, no civility, just constant aggressive political churning all of the time.
The need their noses rubbed in it like a puppy who pooped on the floor.

NRA Members Meeting Aftermath

From NRA’s Twitter:

New NRA president Charles Cotton: “The proceedings in Charlotte were an amazing celebration of NRA fellowship and freedom. Under the direction of Wayne LaPierre, the NRA is strong and secure – well-positioned to chart its course for the future.” An. Amazing. Celebration. of. NRA. Fellowship. A whole 126 people were able to attend, thanks to NRA leadership having taken care to keep everyone away! And a third of the board stayed away — at an annual meeting session! Neither has occurred in NRA’s recent history.

Here’s that “amazing celebration,” and look at all the empty chairs, despite the reservations webpage telling members that every seat had been taken:

If that weren’t enough, the tweet goes on to guote LaPierre saying “The NRA is focused and energized” — when the roof of headquarters is failing, membership is down by over a million, and NRA recently filed for bankruptcy, and lost, and that “I am honored by the trust placed in me by the NRA board of directors.” Yes, no dinner for me.

The board vote was 44-2 to re-elect LaPierre, and the vote was by secret ballot. I can only explain it as a mass delusion. Those do occur, particularly within tight groups where ostracism is a painful penalty. They believe, in mass, in something because they want to believe it. The punishment for not believing is too painful, so they convince themselves. We are winning, the accusations are all lies, NRA is doing well, we will prevail against the New York AG. Don’t look at the data, just believe and you’ll be happier.

Update: The New York AG will of course use this in her lawsuit to dissolve the NRA, as even more proof that the board cannot be expected to deal with the corruption, it has endorsed it, and the members cannot save NRA because the board and leadership have found ways to strip the members of power. She just issued a statement: “”The NRA’s decision to re-elect Wayne LaPierre and other top leaders yesterday despite the detailed evidence of repeated fraud and self-dealing we have laid out in our lawsuit and during the bankruptcy trial underscores that board governance is broken and that the rot runs deep at the NRA.”

Some good new, though. Frank Tait is running for the board, by petition. He needs 477 signatures, by voting members, to get on the ballot. Here is his posting, with a link to a printable petition.

It’d amazing how being born in Russia and seeing the Leninist revolution can shape your world view.

Quote of Ayn Rand.

Defiance, not obedience, is the American’s answer to overbearing authority.

The majority of those who are loosely identified by the term ‘liberals’ are afraid to let themselves discover that what they advocate is statism. They want to keep all the advantages and effects of capitalism, while destroying the cause, and they want to establish statism without its necessary effects. They do not want to know or to admit that they are the champions of dictatorship and slavery.

Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.

The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.

Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman’s tool is values; the bureaucrat’s tool is fear.

Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.

If you surrender everything to the government and give it total power to plan the whole economy, this will not guarantee your economic security, but it will guarantee the descent of the entire nation to a level of miserable poverty–as the practical results of every totalitarian economy, communist or fascist, have demonstrated.

There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.

The freedom of speech of private individuals includes the right to not agree, not to listen, and not to finance one’s own antagonists.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities, and the smallest minority on earth is the individual.

The source of the government’s authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

Since there is no such entity as ‘the public,’ since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that ‘the public interest’ supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.

The government was set to protect man from criminals-and the constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed at private citizens, but against the government-as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.

America’s founding ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more-and nothing less. The rest-everything that America achieved, everything she became, everything ‘noble and just,’ and heroic, and great, and unprecedented in human history-was the logical consequence of fidelity to that one principle.

There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept ‘just a few controls’ is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government’s unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement. As an example of this process, observe the present domestic policy of the United States.

Capitalism has been called a system of greed—yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.

The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.

America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.

Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation’s troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.

The necessary consequence of man’s right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative. If some “pacifist” society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it.

There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by means of logic, have always resorted to guns.

If a society is to be free, its government has to be controlled.

When it is established that government by right can take wealth from some and give it to others. When a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men will use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they have passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket.