Tombstone

Mistress At Arms emails to say that she saw my recent post with the clips from the film Tombstone, and that she and her husband visited Tombstone recently, and even found a Lee Enfield Ishapore rifle in a gun store there.  She attached some pictures, which she's kindly let me post.

Tombstone main street - photo credit: Mistress At Arms

Tombstone graveyard - photo credit: Mistress At Arms

Tombstone's chief industry is tourism, which they do with a convincing mix of gusto and camp.  We were there several years ago, and it was really great fun.

Gunfight at the OK Corral - photo credit Borepatch

Gunfight at the OK Corral - photo credit Borepatch

It's well worth a detour if you're in the Phoenix area - just 2 or 3 hours away.  Also only 2 or 3 hours from Phoenix in the other direction is the Grand Canyon, which is worth the journey.

Grand Canyon - photo credit Borepatch

It's a big country, with lots of places that seem strange and even campy.  Some of them are.  It's worth the journey.

Abuses and Usurpations

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

- Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

This document is uniquely American, and indeed defines what it it to be an American.  Unlike Europe's sad history of tribal allegiance, best described as blut und boden (blood and soil), to be American is a mental act.  It is an act of faith, faith in a mental construct.  The Declaration defines that construct, and indeed acts as our secular credo.

But people skip most of it.  Dusty with history, they race past the bill of complaint against His late Majesty King George, to the stirring parts.  The exciting bits.  The ones where the prose transcends the mundane, and sings to the American soul.

But the Revolution was indeed a revolution, and blood was spilled.  People were killed, killed dead.  The Declaration explains - offers facts to a candid world - why the founders felt obligated to spill blut onto the boden.

I've wondered what it might take to make me feel willing to do this - to declare that I and my fellows are, and of Right ought to be, free of the political bands that connected us with the old order.  It might be something very like this:

The Belgians have ramped up their organ harvesting campaign from euthanasia cases in Applied Cardiopulmonary Pathophysiology (15: 38-48, 2011) to discuss the harvesting of lungs.  I reported on this before, but there is more to add.

Note that one of the four killed and harvested had a mental illness, described in the paper as self mutilation.

When I read this, my first thought was this cannot be true.  But the magic of blogosphere linkage led me to the source, an article by Dr. D. Van Raemdonck et al. in the journal Applied Cardiopulmonary Pathophysiology:

The highlighted line is the epitaph for a mentally ill woman who was killed by the Belgian Government for her organs.  Like an animal put to death so that her body parts could sustain some other creature, she was disturbed enough to hurt herself and so was condemned to death.  She was just about exactly my age.

And Belgium, that historical exemplar of humanity, sent doctors to dissect her.  All for the greater good of society, don't you know.

I look on this situation, and wonder if the outcome would have been different if her family had fought for her.  Quite frankly, I don't know.  What I do know is that some Belgian Doctor killed her Dead Right There, and cut her apart.  I know that he did this with the full moral and legal approval of the Belgian State.

I don't know whether that kind of thing would ever take root on these shores.  I certainly hope not, although we're constantly told by our Moral Betters™ that we need to be more like the Europeans.  We were told that ObamaCare wouldn't blow the budget, or force people into Medical Exchanges, or kill private medical insurance for a lot of folks.  Maybe the people who told us that didn't really know what they were talking about, and we're just ending up that way.

And so maybe the people who will say that this sort of atrocity could never, never, never, ever happen here actually know what they're talking about.  Maybe they're not just a bunch of Statist Pricks drunk on their ideology of control.  Maybe they are, as they tell us, nicer than we are.

But here's the sticking point for me:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Life.  My credo tells me that it's an unalienable right.  That means that any contract I might make that would terminate that is null and void, just like any contract I might make to sell myself into slavery is null and void.  Unenforceable, by the terms of our credo.

And so I watch with nauseated fascination as the Europeans once again tread on forbidden soil.  Blut-soaked boden, you might say, but that would describe the better part of that unhappy continent.  So much for Belgium, and for a Europe that would not look twice at this.

The mentally ill are terribly, terribly vulnerable.  That illness is a scourge on them, and on their families.  I can understand why some would be willing to take drastic measures to put an end to that scourge, even desperate measures.  But there's only one word that describes a State that would not just stand by and let that happen, but which would officially sanction it.

Evil.

And so I think on our land, and our credo.  What would it take for me to follow in the path of our Founders?  Because it is true what they said, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

This might do it for me.  I'm not a violent person - indeed, I see myself as a citizen who is (and of right ought to be) part of the social order.  This society deserves people like me to actively support it.

But if the Moral Exemplars™ who are convinced that we need to be more like Europe send Men With Guns to my house to take one of my family members away for vivisection, well then the social order is a little different.

Like I said, I don't know that things would come to this pass.  I don't know if the Men With Guns would show up to claim my family member's organs "for the Greater Good".  If they did, I don't know whether or not I'd do everything in my power to make sure they didn't go home that evening fully staffed.

What I do know is that my last thought as I lie dieing will not be that Men With Guns came for my family, and I didn't do everything I could to stop it.

I like Europe, and Europeans, but my ancestors all came to these shores because they made a choice to embrace that credo. 

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Amen.  I will not - ever - embrace this abuse.  This evil.

Postscript: While I don't think this is likely to come to pass on these shores, I'm not at all sure if this post would have resulted in Men With Guns coming to visit me, and taking my guns away - as this post demonstrates that I'm clearly "not suitable" to own guns.

Via Secondhand Smoke via Pseudo-Polymath.

In which I get well and truly pissed off

I've worked hard to keep this blog G-rated (OK, PG-rated), and the biggest part of this is watching my language.  It's not just striving to be family friendly (I doubt many kids read this; certainly mine don't.  Much).

Rather, it's because the coarsening of our social discourse is not just a shame, it's cheap and easy.  I may have my shameful moments, but cheap and easy is nothing I aspire to.

And yet, I have steam coming out my ears, an hour after I queued up a rant for tomorrow's posts.  I get my Wookie suit on, exhibiting full frontal wookie.  But I wrote this an hour ago, and I'm even angrier now than when I started.

Government derives its just power from the consent of the governed.  This is an axiom that should strike terror into the heart of today's Progressives.  Should.

And so back to the concept of shame.  This is a desirable social trait, which ensures cohesion of the entire society.  As this is broken down - always in the name of "Progressive norms", of course - at what point is society justified to jettison the Progressives, for the sake of social cohesion?  After all, it's all about What's Best For Society, Not For Individuals?  Right?

Right?  Bueller?

We're always told by out Betters™ when a Republican gets caught in a sex scandal that it's all about the hypocrisy®.  Okay, fine.  So what happens when a Progressive's ideology gets caught in a web of hypocrisy?

[crickets]

And damn whoever gets hurt by Progressive hypocrisy.  That's why I'm fuming, and why I'm thinking that Progressives are a bunch of thieving, hypocritical  bastards that couldn't tell their asses from a hole in the ground because they're so blinded by their Moloch ideology that they will prostitute their body and soul for a cheap tumble in the sack with any old pretty Progressive face, as long as he flatters their sense of Moral Righteousness™.

They're so slutty and easy.

Back to the regular PG-13 rating tomorrow, albeit with a full on Wookie-suit rant.

Raising Boys v2.0

#2 Son wore his Army JROTC uniform to school yesterday.

But it made me think of this.

Pop Warner, 2004.  I think this was the first uniform he ever had.  But it represented the same ideals of his current one: pride, teamwork, striving to be better than he thinks he can be, sacrifice, doing what needs to be done no matter the weather, and (hopefully) the taste of victory.

The Romans had a set of manly virtues, which they used to grind their enemies to dust.  I still see these in the new generation: Dignitas, personal pride. Disciplina, fealty to their military oath. Firmitas, tenacity. Honestas, respectability. Industria, an ethic of hard work. Severitas, self-control.

There are times that I despair for our nation, and offer up a heart-felt prayer.  God save this Honorable Republic.

Days like yesterday make me think that sometimes the Lord hears, and answers.

New Adobe Flash patch

Here we go again:

Adobe Systems has issued an emergency update for its ubiquitous Flash Player that fixes a critical security vulnerability that attackers are actively exploiting to hack end user machines.

...

The Flash vulnerability affects versions 10.3.183.7 and earlier for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris and Flash 10.3.186.6 for Google's Android operating system for mobile phones. Those using recent versions of Flash on Windows or Mac OS X can install the upgrade automatically after being prompted by an auto-update mechanism, or they can upgrade manually by installing a file downloaded here. In some cases, those using Flash with multiple browsers must update more than once. Those wanting to know what version they're currently running should visit this page.

Of course, Flash is what puts the You in Youtube.  So head on over for some security goodness.  You know that guy who got hacked by the new Flash exploit that's going around?  Don't be that guy.

Security ProTip: Hack your GM car

GM seems to think that a couple extra bucks from sleazy Insurance Companies is worth more than their customer's good will.  Ooooh kaaaay then.

Everyone, it seems, is posting about how OnStar® collects your location and speed data, which GM shares with the government and sells to other companies.  OnStar® essentially is a spy tracking device in your car, with no way for you to opt out.

Except, of course, the OnStar® SpyTrackR™ is electronic.  It needs power.

Security ProTip: if you unplug the power to the OnStar® SpyTrackR™ it won't spy on you.  ASM826 shows you how to do it.  Looks like it will take you 15 minutes, with basic tools.

Hack your car.  You'll be glad you did.

And speaking of Steam Punk ...

... what could be better than Charles Babbage's steam powered Analytical Engine?  Why, a bunch of blokes who are planning on building Charles Babbage's steam powered Analytical Engine:

So, it's not without trepidation that I say that it's time Britain built the Analytical Engine. After the wonderful reconstruction of the Difference Engine we need to finish Babbage's dream of a steam-powered, general-purpose computer.

...

Am I mad? Would you donate to make the Analytical Engine an oily, steamy, brass and iron reality? Can we live up to Lovelace's words when she wrote: "We may say most aptly, that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves. "

PS A commenter asked about pledging money to the project. I'm not quite ready to start accepting cash! :-) But people can pledge by either sending me an email or simply writing a comment here. That'll give me an idea of interest in doing this.

PPS UPDATE. Please visit Plan 28 for more on this topic.

It may be madness, but it is superb madness.

What Computer Security looked like in the 1970s

Wow.  Just wow:

Click to embiggen, and get the entire delicious thing.  Me, I want the ray gun, and the very Steam Punk Atomic Age computer console.  In fact, I want a fusion Steam Punk/Atomic Age computer console that guards my house while I'm parking my helicopter.

And a ray gun.

What first aid kit for TEOTWAWKI?

TOTWTYTR brings it.

This is a really, really good idea for a second range bag.  Hopefully nothing goes wrong, but if it does, it goes really wrong, really quick.

I also think that with as many EMT folks who are also gunbloggers, a (say) one-hour first aid refresher at a blogshoot is a particularly useful idea.  It won't make the rest of us EMTs, but it will give us an idea about what to do if something goes really, really bad.

RTWT, and bookmark it.

Shut up! The Science is settled!

Man, it's getting harder and harder to be an Orthodox Global Warmer Defender of the Scienciness™:

Oh dear, now we have three peer reviewed papers (Lindzen and Choi, Spencer and Braswell, and now Richard P. Allan) based on observations that show a net negative feedback for clouds, and a strong one at that. What will Trenberth and Dessler do next? Maybe the editor of Meteorological Applications can be persuaded to commit professional suicide and resign?

Me, I think that the next step is that Michael Mann and Phil Jones will send in the Spetsnaz, or something.



Take that, Denier Scum!

TheOnesDay® No. 14

It's Wednesday, mockery time for the LightBringer.  I was going to add my weekly snark, but I find that I already have.  That dude is so toast that Mussolini could beat him.

And don't give me any backtalk about Mussolini not having a birth certificate.  Neither did The Won.  Or being dead - The Won's chances are hanging upside down, too.  And he's not nearly this good without a TelePrompTer ...



Now that's a guy who can give a speech.  In front of classical columns, in fact.


Duce! Duce! Duce! Duce! Duce! Duce! Duce! Duce!

Raising boys

Foseti ponders how to raise boys.  It's an interesting post, and more pensive that Foseti usually runs to.  You should RTWT.

Ten years ago, I would have had a lot to say on the subject.  A typically Borepatchian post, filled with references both ancient and obscure, a hat tip to one of the great quotes from out Western intellectual tradition, and an excess of self-assuredness.  Then the last decade happened, and I learned the real meaning of the saying If you want to hear God laugh, just tell him your plans.

#1 Son and #2 Son are doing just fine, thank you very much.  Grown (or growing) to Honorable Manhood.  I suspect more of their own doing than of mine.

And so I'll just offer this to young fathers: Your sons are always watching you, and learning from you.  I suspect that this applies to daughters, too, but have no direct experience in that.

When the hair on the back of your neck stands up, you'll know that you understand me precisely.

Kalil Gibran said it better:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

When the hair on the back of your neck stands up, you'll know that you understand him precisely.

You're welcome.

Mussolini could beat Obama next year

So just how bad are Obama's chances next year?  So bad, that the media that shamelessly covered for him in 2008 are running bits like this now:

That's John Stewart, brutally and repeatedly mocking the Administration in general, and Obama and Biden in particular.  Repeatedly.  Stick a fork in it.



Mussolini will absolutely bury these losers.  I predict he'll take 44 states.

Via Michael Graham.

The Force is strong with the Corgi

I LOLed.

Via Theo.

The Evans Rifle

I may start a new meme here.  In researching my recent posts using scenes from the film Tombstone, I ran across an odd and wonderful old rifle: the Evans Repeater.

(Image source)

I grew up in Maine, and went to school there (as did friend Weer'd Beard).  Warren Evans was a dentist in Thomaston (on the mid coast, near Camden).  He designed a more or less typical rifle on the late 1860s, but with one marvelous oddity: the stock contained a magazine that held 30 rounds.  It wouked like an Archimedes screw.

(Image source)

Only instead of raising water, this raised cartridges.  Each time you worked the lever action, the magazine screw turned a quarter turn, feeding a new cartridge to the chamber.

Evans incorporated the Evans Machine Rifle Company in 1871, setting up a manufacturing facility in Mechanics Falls, Maine (known today for really not much at all).  He hoped to interest the Army because of the massive magazine capacity - possibly illegal in some states today.

Alas for Mr. Evans, it didn't work out.  The Army thought the rifle too heavy and clumsy, and subject to jamming from dirt and dust.  You also reloaded it the same way you shot it - One round, cycle the lever action, load a new round, cycle, lather, rinse, repeat.  He got a nibble from the Russian Army, but it was too little, too late.  His company folded in 1880.

But the rifle made an appearance in the film Tombstone.  Of course, it's in Red Dead Redemption.

So new meme - firearms trivia.  And with some old thing from Maine (no comments that I'm some old thing from Maine, if you please).  If folks like it, I'll do another.  But a ProTip just between you and me, don't go betting cash money on your firearms trivia against Tam.  Just sayin'.

I'm your huckleberry

While looking for the video for yesterday's post, I ran across some collections of Val Kilmer's performance in Tombstone.



I'd forgotten just how fabulous his performance was.  The scene where he and Johnny Ringo speak in Latin is worth the entire price of admission, just by itself.

The first rule of anything

Sometimes it's easier to not do something stupid than it is to do something smart.  Boy, howdy:

Did you catch that? Sowell said that
(a) the market recovered from the crash of '29 just fine, This is highly believable based on the quick recovery from the depression of 1920, and Harding's complete lack of governmnet response.
(b) that government action was the (whole? primary?) cause of the great depression, (c) that the primary legislation responsible for the start of the great depression was a set of import tariffs...which cost the country hundreds of thousands or millions of jobs -- because that's what tariffs do.

This will make you think, which is a good thing (RTWT).  It has major, major implications for what's happening right now.

For extra credit, analyze the Euro crisis using this framework.

But the Elite is smart enough to fine tune the economy

And fine tune each of our lives.  But it seems that there's "smart", and there's smart:

Olson showed back in 1982 that modern macroeconomic theory was basically worthless in developed stable countries.  Macroeconomics posits a free market in which wages and prices adjust dynamically.  That applies to an ever-smaller sector of the U.S. economy.  We have a rapidly growing governnment that directly or indirectly employs more than one third of our workers, many of whom are unionized.  We have a health care system that consumes 16 percent of GDP and is staffed with doctors who restrict entry into the profession via their licensing cartel.  The financial services sector is about 10 percent of the economy and they now tap into taxpayer money to keep their bonuses flowing in bad times.  The automotive industry kept itself profitable over the years by successfully lobbying for import tariffs.  When the profits turned to losses, they successfully lobbied to have taxpayers pick up those losses.  A university-trained macroeconomist might be able to predict what will happen to babysitters in a depression, but not the price of cereal, the wage of a manufacturing worker, or the fate of those Americans who collect most of our national income (e.g., Wall Street, medical doctors, government workers).

Pretty smart, right there.

Via Isegoria, so you know it's smart.

Range Report - Lee Enfield No. 4 Mk. 1

The Lee Enfield No. 4 was a variant of the Short, Magazine, Lee-Enfield (SMLE) of World War I fame.  Most of the modifications were to make it easier to manufacture - a critical advantage in 1939 when it was adopted.  His Majesty's forces carried this as they first stared Hitler's Wehrmacht down, and then took the battle to the Continent.

The rifle's name is the combination of the names of James Paris Lee (designer of the Bolt) and Enfield, the town in England where the Royal Small Arms Factory was located.  In keeping with Lee's original 1879 design, the magazine is removable, but was only removed for cleaning and maintenance.

All in all, something like 19 Million Lee-Enfield rifle variants were made.  All used the same bolt action and ten-round internal magazine.  The action has the reputation as the fastest bolt action ever made in a battle rifle, and the Tommys all trained for the "Mad Minute" - sixty seconds where the soldier was expected to put a minimum of 15 aimed rounds into a 12 inch target at 200 yards.  That was the minimum passing score, and well-trained troops would typically double that.  Since the rifle was loaded via 5-round stripper clips, that means that four stripper clips would have to be loaded during that 60 second interval.





That aimed shot every 2 seconds meant that a company of British infantry could put 3000 aimed rounds down range in a minute.   German troops in 1914 reported that they ran into machine gun fire; it was actually a regiment of soldiers firing this.

It fired the rimmed .303 British round, shown here next to the .45 ACP for scale.  The .303 cartridge is rimmed (like a revolver round), adopted in 1888 for the (Black Powder) Lee-Metford rifle.  Later, cordite replaced the black powder, which was ultimately replaced by smokeless propellant.  The round was the standard British battle cartridge from 1889 until the 1950s, seeing service under Queen Victoria, Kings Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, George VI, and Queen Elizabeth II.  Quite a run.  While still widely available, it's a bit spendy (I paid $18 for a box of 20 and thought it was as good a deal as I'd likely find).  You might want to consider reloading these.

It has quite a bit of splat, and I found myself improvising a recoil pad after the first ten rounds or so.  It's certainly not impossible to shoot, although it's is said that the Jungle Carbine variant (with a shortened barrel) kicks so hard that it was issued with a rubber butt plate.  The M1 Garand has a positively soft recoil in comparison.

The sights are clearly designed for a battle rifle.  The older SMLE didn't have the peep sight behind the chamber; rather, it had a U-sight mounted in front of it.  You can flip the sight up, and the sight can be adjusted for ranges from 100 yards to way, way out past "Fort Mudge" (1300 yards - at least the scale goes to "13").  You adjust the range by turning the top knob.  Each click from turning the knob is a very fine adjustment - it seems like ten yards or so.  It takes a lot of clicks to get the sights up to 1000 yards.

The problem, as long time readers have been anticipating, is not with the rifle.  It's with my marksmanship.

Eighteen rounds down range at 100 yards.  The first 3 were low off the paper because I expected the rifle was zeroed at 100 yards.  Walking the impacts upwards got the rest on the paper, although I can't say that I'm very pleased at my groupings.  The red circles are each 3 inches in diameter, and were quite difficult to see with my (mumble-something aged) eyes.  There's a decent chance that most would go into a 12 inch black target (the "Mad Minute" target), although then you'd need to put it at 200 yards.

The trigger is outstanding - an eighth inch of take up, but then with a crisp break after a heavy pull.  My marksmanship was in no way hampered by the trigger.

The bolt works very smoothly.  It is based on Lee's locking design patented in 1879.  The design is "cock on close", where pulling the bolt back ejects the spent case, and then closing the bolt both chambers the round and cocks the weapon.  There is a cocked indicator, sticking out from the back of the bolt below here.  You can also see the safety lever sticking straight back towards the butt stock (in safe position).  Rotating it upwards and forwards will ready the rifle to fire.

 

The bayonet is the "pig sticker" spike, which replaced the traditional sword type.  I didn't shoot with the bayonet on, as my marksmanship can't take any more challenges.  Still, this is likely lighter than the sword type, and you'd still get your stabby-stabby with this in place.

This is great fun to shoot, and attracted a small crowd at the range.  While it would do fine on deer (or larger game, like Kudu), you need younger eyes than I have if you're going after anything further than 100 yards or so.  Or a scope, but bubba-ing a great old piece of history like this would be a shame.  It was the rifle of Empire, from the days when the sun literally never set on the British Empire.  The Empire's day has passed, and this rifle has passed with it, but for those who appreciate the poetry of rifles (as opposed to the stark utilitarian prose of modern designs), this rifle brings it in imperial gallons.

The standard disclaimer:

I'm not any kind of gun or shooting expert. I like shooting, and shoot a fair number of different guns, but I'm really a dilettante. Your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, do not remove tag under penalty of law.

I don't do scientific, repeatable tests. There's no checklist, although that's not a bad idea. I write about what I like and don't like, but it's pretty much stream of consciousness. Opinion, we got opinion here. Step right up.

I'm not a shooting teacher, although I do like to introduce people to shooting. Maybe some day I'll take the NRA teaching class, but until then, you get a dilettante's view. You'll get opinion here, but if you get serious about shooting, you'll want to get someone who knows what he's doing to give you some pointers. It can help.

And oh yeah, shooting things is fun.

Why are Progressive politicians so short-sighted?

(Image source)

The greatest chess players think many moves ahead.  Rather than focusing on the current move, they (likely intuitively) analyze what the impact of this move will be in four, or six, or ten moves in the future.  Computers have essentially replaced humans as the best chess players, because they've become powerful enough to plot all possible moves, for twenty or thirty moves in the future.  Then it's a simple sort routine to rank the most useful moves at the top.

Progressive politicians sure don't seem to be doing that.  Offered for your consideration, as Exhibit A for the case of the (Thinking) People v. Progressives, the fiscal disaster that is ObamaCare:

Speaking of ill-considered financial decisions made by politicians intent on their policy priorities, new emails revealed by the AP show that the administration was warned that parts of ObamaCare were a financial disaster--but plowed ahead anyway.

...

The administration seems to think that it can fix the program--but the only workable fix appears to be making the thing mandatory rather than optional, which is hardly what they said when they were  passing it.

There are two possibilities here: they might have been incompetent, which is what most people are assuming.  Or this might have been the plan all along, to get the Country into a "Oops, we need this because it's a crisis" situation.

Quite frankly, it doesn't matter for this discussion.  The important question is this: What did they think would happen when people find out?

Offered as Exhibit B: Australia's economy-destroying Carbon Tax:

Firstly there’s the anti-democratic nature of it: apparently [Prime Minister] Gillard is doing things that are considered utterly beyond the pale in other nations. Ergas suggests that by granting “property rights” she is threatening to make the cost of removing her legislation all but insurmountable. (For all the world, it appears she’s determined to stop the opposition offering the people the choice to remove the carbon tax. Could it be, that for the sake of an advantage in the next election campaign she’s tossing the country down the nearest black hole?)

Secondly, the Australian Carbon Tax is a freakishly large sacrificial offering: Australians will be hit for  $391 for every man, woman and child, and that’s just the first year (according to the government estimates). Compare this to the EU. There in the land-of-exploding-economies,  each good citizen has had to fork out  the vast grand sum of (wait for it)  … one dollar fifty cents each (yes, $1.50). And, it gets worse, (how do you satirize this?)  — that’s the cumulative total since the EU started trading in 2005.

Maybe they'll pass it, and maybe they won't.  Maybe it'll be too insanely expensive to unwind once passed, or maybe it won't.  That will be a topic for another day, but the question at hand is the same as for the Democrats here Stateside: What do they think will happen when people find out what it does to them?

Both of these seem, quite frankly, as verging on the suicidal.  There's a new New York Times/CBS News poll out.  It's very interesting.  Here are some answers to the question "What do you think is the most important problem facing he country today?"

Healthcare: 3%
Environment: zero percent (yes, zero)
Economy: 27%
Jobs: 32%

Admittedly, this is the US public, not the Australian public, but I'll happily bet cash money that polls are similar with the Aussie public (please leave all wager offers in the comments; the ammo fund is running low here at FOB Borepatch).

So we see not just a minor miscalculation, but a situation where the math is off by a factor of ten.  Something is going on here, with supposedly intelligent and canny politicians burning (with Carbon Offsets for the Australian Labour Party, no  doubt) serious political capital.  To the first glance, anyone with two brain cells to rub together would say Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Immodestly, I'd like to suggest an answer to this conundrum.  It's Gramscian Damage once again.  As Progressives came to control all of the intellectual institutions (especially the Media and the University) in the Post-War years, they gradually squeezed conservative thought from "legitimate" discussion.  Of course, nature abhors a vacuum, and so it was replaced by a lot of twaddle.  A year ago, I described what happened next:

The Long March Through The Institutions is complete, but the results are not what were expected:

• American's trust in the news media has been falling since 1976.
• Newspaper circulation has been falling since 1990.
• None of the top dozen highest grossing Hollywood films has been made in the last 25 years (counting in inflation-adjusted dollars).
• Previously respected initiatives like the Environmental Movement are no longer respected.
• Trust that the Government will do the right thing has been falling since the early 1960s, from a high around 80% to the mid 20% range.

But the Progressive Politicians are indoctrinated members of the intellectual institutions, fully steeped in the dogma that Progressive politics is a one-way ratchet (every now and again a new shift leftward; never a shift back).  And so their eye is on the lookout for that ever elusive moment when the ratchet can be tightened another click.  Who really cares about the consequences, because it's a one-way ratchet, right?

Except it's not:

The deal was that the government would buy social peace. The problem for the people who make up the government is that the way to make a name for themselves is with bigger, more visionary projects. Let's take a simple example: city planning. The first really big advance was a Cartesian grid pattern for streets: north/south avenues and east/west streets. So what do you do if you're the next urban planner? Maybe radial grand avenues (like in Paris), but this isn't as useful. What if you're the 426th urban planner? The biggest wins are at the beginning.

And so with social programs. Bismark and FDR plausibly did save industrial capitalism, by helping to ameliorate people's fears of future poverty. It was actually a near thing, too, as a study of post-War Britain shows. So how does a new, ambitious politician make a name for himself? Go big, or go home.

But if you go big, you spend big (or you inflate big, which doesn't win in the long run). And so back to the deal: social peace in return for industrial capitalism. If the politicians have a different view of social peace than population, then there's your contradiction. Remember, the early gains are always the biggest. The biggest gains in people's perception of safety against future poverty were handled by Bismark, FDR, and LBJ.

Which puts Obama, Pelosi, and Harry Reid in a deep hole of contradiction. The health care bill is very unpopular, in no small measure because most people are generally happy with their health care program. Sure, some are not covered, and people with pre-existing conditions are screwed, but we're talking most people. And so you see a ratcheting up of the scare talk (it's a crisis!) at the same time that the details of the program are hidden (vote for the bill so we can see what's in it), and people aren't buying it. It's the Bismarkian Welfare State that's scaring people now.

It's been said that Gramsci's goal was not an intelligentsia that could argue more effectively against counter-Progressive ideas.  Rather, it was an intelligentsia where counter-Progressive ideas would not be able to be formed in the thinker's mind.

And so we look at ObamaCare, or the Australian death-by-Carbon-tax proposals and ask what did they think would happen when people find out?  They look at you with uncomprehending eyes.  It's a one-way ratchet.

Most people are happy with their health care, but the Progressive State may have to take it away because of the coming fiscal crisis (interesting that so many provisions only kick in after the 2012 elections).  Health care only concerns 3% of the population.  Global Warming doesn't even move the meter (zero percent), and yet Australian families are staring at $1000+ a year in taxes.

So what's coming?  A reckoning*.



The Dinosaurs became so closely adapted to their climate that, while dominating the ecosystem, they lived on the very edge of the abyss.  Today's Progressives have used a Gramscian strategy to adpat themselves very closely indeed to a top-down world dominated by a philosophically monocultural elite.  But the Elite sees the meteoric glow of the Team Party in the gloaming, and wonders what it might mean to their one-way ratchet.

The Dinosaurs sniff a change on the breeze, and roar their defiance.

* I suspect that your Gormogons are behind this (always a good starting assumption, actually).  Not only is this cunningly subtle intellectual misdirection, Doc Holiday is their Huckleberry.  Coincidence?  I think not.