Weekend Reading #77

Some longer or more involved reading:

•  Jon Low has posted his mid-month Defensive Pistolcraft newsletter. A few points I found especially notable:

    First, Jon has some comments regarding an article I had linked to about trigger control, which I will repeat in full (the original in regular type and Jon's comments in italics):

     ". . . I don’t think exact digit placement matters so long as you can pull the trigger straight back with each shot."  

[I disagree.  Consistency is accuracy.  The center of the trigger should be in the center of your fingerprint.  Everyone has a whorl, loop, or arch fingerprint on the pad of their trigger finger.  The center of the trigger should be on the center of your fingerprint.  If your trigger is not in the correct position for this to allow you to press the trigger straight to the rear, get a gunsmith to move the trigger for you.  Yes, as a matter of fact, a competent gunsmith can move the trigger on any pistol.  (Moving the trigger position on 1911's is especially easy by replacing the trigger.)  
-- Jon Low ]   

I think there is a bit more nuance to this issue. It has long been recognized that while the center of the pad works the best for firearms with a lighter trigger, the distal crease (i.e., the crease at the first joint of the finger closest to the tip) is best for heavy trigger pulls such as you will get when shooting double action. Massad Ayoob calls this the "power crease". This is why I prefer a smooth trigger face on double-action triggers. 

    A second item that stuck out to me were some comments Jon had quoted from Gabe Suarez about striking versus takedown/ground fighting in a street fight. Suarez's comments were in response to a piece from Pete Blair at Tactical Science arguing that police should use take downs because they present better to witnesses or a jury; and Suarez taking the position that in fights on the street, take downs are too dangerous because of the environment or the possibility of the suspect stabbing or cutting you while you are tied up with him on the ground. Jon agreed with Suarez, writing: "I agree with Gabe.  Don't grapple.  You will pick up all kinds of nasty diseases, fleas, lice, feces, urine, and such.  They will bite you.  They will scratch you.  (Yes, it happened to me when I was working in the hospital emergency rooms.)  Strike and twist to disengage.  Separate and weaponize." I've been told and read the same from other sources as well. Leaving out the chance of your opponent having a weapon, the street or sidewalk or parking lot is not the same as the practice mats at a dojo: a street fight presents a hard surface with curbs, rocks and other debris (possibly broken glass or other debris that will cut), with only the Lord knows what else. And if you assailant has buddies, going to the ground leaves you at risk of being kicked or stomped by them. 

    Third, Jon links to a short video that I think is important for everyone, but especially for women, older men, and boys, on fighting against someone that has you in a grip (for instance, grabbing your jacket or shirt or grabbing one of your arms). Jon summarizes and comments:

     Don't fight the grip, fight the face [gouge eyes, finger through the ears into the brain (Oh yes, your finger is long enough to reach his brain, if you are a petite woman your fingers are thin enough to get through his ear canal.  And if you've got long sharp glued on finger nails, well . . .  Can't imagine yourself doing that to a human?  Well, I can assure you that he can imagine raping and sodomizing you, and will.  So decide.), or cup your hands and clap over his ears to break his ear drums with air pressure].  Don't wait for him to hit you.  Strike first.   

    Finally, Jon comments about a video Massad Ayoob recently posted about speeding up your pistol reloads, where Ayoob recommended using the slide release instead of pulling back on the slide (the sling-shot method) to release the slide. Jon raises a good point:

     I disagree.  The reason you MUST rack the slide instead of hitting the slide stop, is because the slide might not be locked back.  You must always use techniques that work in all conditions, not just the pristine conditions of your air conditioned indoor range.   

I can affirm Jon's reasoning, albeit from a slightly different factual pattern. I had been invited by a friend to go to a shooting match and, since I didn't have a handgun suitable for such matches at the time, my friend let me use a 1911-style 9mm he had. Up to that point, I generally used the slide release; but the problem I quickly discovered when I did my first reload was that I couldn't quite reach the slide release with my thumb, so I had to resort to the sling shot method (and thank goodness I had enough experience I could make the shift smoothly and quickly). I think the advantage of doing it the same way each time outweighs the marginal time savings from using the slide release--especially if you find yourself, like me, under time constraints and suddenly discovering that using the slide release is not a viable option. 

    Jon has a lot more, so be sure to check the whole thing out.

• It's the weekend, so that means that Greg Ellifritz has another Active Response Training Weekend Knowledge Dump.  Lots of good stuff this week, so it has been hard to pare it down to a handful that particularly stick out. But here goes:
• I've grown to like some of the African hunting stories, but Greg links to one that is a bit unusual: an African hunting guide that used a MAC-10 submachine gun to deal with a large troop of baboons that had killed a village child and otherwise become a dangerous nuisance. 
• An article with good advice for concealed carry shooters entitled "Top 6 Things Every Concealed Carry Holder Should Know." Because there is much more to concealed carry than just knowing how to draw and shoot your handgun.
• But you need to be able to shoot accurately when it comes down to it as the tale of the mad dog illustrates. 
• A detailed article on getting appendix carry to work for men (or women, for that matter) with big bellies. 
• A good article explaining the difference between competition shooting and tactical/combat training. Key bit: "Tactical training isn't trying to win a match. It's trying to solve a lethal-force problem while minimizing unnecessary risk to yourself and others. A doorway on a competition stage is simply part of the course design. A doorway in a hostile structure may be a fatal funnel requiring an entirely different solution." However, if you don't care about winning a competition, you can approach it from a more combat oriented perspective.
• A detailed article from Swift Silent Deadly on putting together a more realistic bug-out bag. 
• A piece from Off Grid on the many uses for a triangular bandage. 

• And now for something completely different: "How Did the Tesla Roadster Fly? Here’s How It Works"--Motor Trend. From the lede:

The most staggering technology introduced on the new Tesla Roadster is a propulsion system pulled directly from SpaceX—the rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence company also owned by Elon Musk. In the Roadster shown at the event, four metal nozzles sit just above the rear bumper and look for all the world like the exhaust tips on your standard supercar (think C8 Corvette but spread farther apart). But this is an EV, so those pipes are not venting exhaust gases, but high-pressure air, primarily nitrogen, that’s stored in a massive black spherical tank that sits behind the roadster’s two front seats. The ball is a composite-overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV), and it’s connected by two pipes that feed the four nozzles, which function as cold gas thrusters (CGT).

• "Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter Is The Archetype The Right Must Embrace To Counter Left Wing Nihilism And Degeneracy"--Fandom Pulse. Not the character presented in the Disney movie, of course, but from Burroughs' novels. An excerpt:

    John Carter is a chivalric ideal, a man who embodies all the masculine virtues in their perfect Aristotelian mean—or at least comes close to it. He embodies duty but not weakness. He embodies strength but not cruelty. He embodies adventure but not recklessness. To put it bluntly, John Carter is a masculine hero in the truest sense of those words.

    He’s a man who knows what he wants and takes after it with every ounce of his being. He does not shirk from battle; in fact, he’s a fighting man. Battle is in his blood, and he’s called to it as his vocation. He’s a leader of men, at all times honorable and fair. He’s the kind of man who can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. You’d rather have no one else by your side and rather anyone else against you. John Carter embodies the archetype of the king, which I would argue is completely lost on the world today. 

    When was the last time you saw a man portrayed so favorably on television? When was the last time you saw a man like John Carter?

    Because I can tell you this, it certainly wasn’t in the John Carter movie.

    Now I don’t want to rag too harshly on this movie as he does still become the hero. But it does illustrate the trend media took over the 20th century. Our culture swung from strong men being strong men, to weak men becoming strong men, and finally to weak men being weak men. You can see this everywhere, even in Peter Jackson’s acclaimed Lord of the Rings movies. Aragorn is not a reluctant hero in the books. He doesn’t second guess himself. But for some reason, such a thing was incomprehensible to audiences (or rather Hollywood writers) in 2001. And it has only gotten far worse from there.

    You can visibly detect how masculinity has been increasingly portrayed more tragically as time goes on. When men are not outright evil, they’re to be demeaned as the fundamentally lesser of the two sexes. It is always the man who is less capable, less aware, less actualized. If the man is loving, he must also be bumbling and weak. 

[snip]

    Dissident literature, if it is to stand against Leftwing art, it must be uplifting to the soul—and especially to this masculine spirit. The heroic must awaken in men again. And while this does not mean all men are called to be warriors, all men are called to be as virtuous as John Carter, and as a man, to live life with that same vitality in whichever vocation he is called to. 

Read the whole thing. 

A Sad Reminder Of Hollywood's Hypocrisy

Hollywood types love to lecture the rest of us about needing to be more diverse, caring, inclusive, etc., but then we come across news articles like this--"‘Breaking Bad’ star RJ Mitte claimed Hollywood didn’t want him on screen in heartbreaking texts before death at 34"--and it again reminds us that Leftists are just a bunch of hypocrites.

If you don't know who is RJ Mitte, he played the handicapped son of the character "Walter White" in the show Breaking Bad.  Mitte reportedly took his own life a few days ago. The article relates:

    RJ Mitte was frustrated at having a hard time finding work following his success on “Breaking Bad,” his personal text messages reveal.

    The actor died Monday by suicide, Page Six confirmed. He was 34 years old.

    Mitte, who had cerebral palsy and was a disability rights advocate, said he was facing obstacles from landing meaningful acting gigs in text messages to a close friend obtained by the Daily Mail.

[snip]

    In a text message from April 2022, Mitte wrote, “Looking for interesting stuff to do, getting a lot of scripts where I would be a prop and they don’t want to give any depth, 3 lines if that. I’m writing my own s—t now.”

    The situation didn’t improve four months later, when he wrote, “Just doing animation, no one wants me on screen… it’s annoying as f—k.”

    He also detailed getting overlooked by casting directors because of his disability.

    “When I go for a part, they sometimes tell me that it’s not a character with a disability, and I’m like why can’t the character be disabled?” he wrote in April 2017.

    “They get real uncomfortable when I say that,” he added.

    He also called some casting agents “a—holes” who “won’t even look at me.” 

Diversity Is Our Greatest Weakness

If you were to Google whether diversity is a strength or a benefit, you would find countless articles indicating that diversity improves efficiency or output or is otherwise beneficial. But a recent paper published in the journal Theory & Society debunks that claim. The paper is entitled "The diversity hypothesis: A rapid scoping review of diversity and scientific output and impact in the natural and social sciences," and the author conclude: "Based on over 100 scientific articles, we find that only between 15% and 28% of results reported in the literature are consistent with the hypothesis, with the balance of the results not being consistent with it. Based on this, the scientific evidence implies that the Diversity Hypothesis should be rejected." That is, studies that had considered diversity based on sex, nationality, race, age, LGBT, institution, and geography, overwhelmingly were inconsistent with the diversity hypothesis--that diversity is our greatest strength. The only type of diversity where it did not hold true--but even here showed mixed results--was diversity of disciplines. 

Wilder: Truth, Beauty and Good

John Wilder's latest explains that there are universal standards of beauty, truth and good no matter what the ugly, lying, leftists tell us. But the leftists reject objective standards of truth "because before Evil can rebuild, it has to refute that there is something True." It's one of the reasons that leftists are constantly prattling on about their feelings. 

The Latest Wilder: Marinating In Collapse

    I've heard from various sources that the average Roman wasn't aware that the Empire was collapsing even while living through it--they just assumed that the Empire would always be there because it always had been. But that doesn't mean that all Romans were ignorant of what was happening: there were complaints about the decline within the Empire and it is my understanding that many Romans even emigrated from the Empire to surrounding barbarian controlled areas to avoid the punitive taxes. 

    John Wilder's latest piece--"Collapse, You’re Soaking In It"--shows that he is perfectly aware of what is happening, and that we are currently living through the collapse of Western Civilization and, perhaps, even that of the United States.  And to illustrate that collapse, he casts his eyes on such diverse topics as the Cloward-Piven Strategy, feminism, unbridled immigration, and the riots in France. 

    A point to keep in mind is that collapse is rarely instantaneous. In retrospect, Rome's decline took roughly two to three centuries, generally marked by the Third Century Crises as the beginning and ending with the sack of Rome and, a few decades later, the deposing of the last Emperor in the 5th Century. The more dramatic Late Bronze Age Collapse is generally considered to have taken place over a period of 50 years for its acute phase--but while some empires disappeared completely, Egypt continued to limp along and some of the smaller powers actually prospered after the more generalized collapse. The British Empire began its collapse with WWI--over 100 years ago now--and accelerated in the decade after WWII, and appears to still be continuing as we see both separatist movements growing in Scotland and Wales, and the UK being overrun by invaders from the third world. I guess my point by all of this is that even if we are in a general collapse of the West, we must still continue living our lives, for we do not know what course events take and what will be the end.

Don't Mistake The Left's Evil For Stupidity

Over the past six months, I've seen various articles reporting that professors with the University of California system have called for a return to using standardized testing for college admission. For instance, in late June, Campus Reform reported that "[o]ver 1,500 STEM faculty across the University of California system, including 53 department chairs, have signed an open letter to university leadership calling for the university system to reinstate standardized test requirements in the admissions process, citing students’ lack of competency in high school math concepts." 

    “Basic mathematical fluency is analogous to literacy; without it, success in university-level STEM becomes structurally unattainable for students,” the letter reads. “We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields.”

    The letter attributes the decline in student readiness to the University of California admissions system’s 2020 decision to eliminate standardized testing requirements, arguing that test scores provide a critical measure of student ability, particularly at a time when applicants can use artificial intelligence to assist in writing their college essays.

    Accordingly, the letter calls for school administrators to implement several changes to the admissions process—including reinstating test score requirements for prospective STEM students and giving STEM faculty a larger role in determining standards for student readiness.   

But Leftists are pushing back. For instance, George Leef cites to a New York Times editorial by Miriam Pawel that argues that California does not need the SAT. Leef explains:

    [Pawel] acknowledges the criticism that has recently been lodged by faculty members throughout California that large numbers of students are entering college with ridiculously weak academic backgrounds—so much so that professors must teach basic high school math. Professors in the University of California system are pleading for the restoration of the SAT to screen out students who are terribly deficient in mathematics preparation. 

    But to Pawel, the low level of math preparation is not important. What is important, she argues, is getting “underrepresented” students into top universities and through to their degrees. The problem with the SAT is that it screens out many of the “diverse” students she thinks are vital. Admitting “underrepresented” students makes the university more diverse and that, according to progressives like Pawel, is a key element of social justice. The SAT, she believes, gets in the way of inclusivity. That view fails to consider the students who are excluded.  

Leef points out the obvious: admitting "one student because his or her ancestry has been deemed 'underrepresented,' ... also means that another student must be excluded because his or her group is not one that adds 'diversity.'" He argues that "[t]here is no justification for labeling some students as 'diverse' (and therefore beneficial) and others 'non-diverse' (and therefore dispensable)"; but that "[i]nstead of seeking 'diversity' and 'inclusiveness,' it would make far more sense for universities to figure out how to identify applicants who have both the academic aptitude and the desire to study what they offer." 

    Leef's comments make sense and, in comparison, Pawel's seem foolish or stupid, even. But it would be a mistake to assume that just because Leftists advance ideas and policies that are (to any normal person) stupid, that the Leftists themselves are being stupid. In his piece, "Correctly Understanding the ‘Stupidity’ of the Left", Greg Salsbury warns against underestimating Leftists or giving them an excuse for their destructiveness, explaining:

    We don’t tend to think of stupid people as evil. Perceived stupidity neutralizes perceived intent and, to some degree, perceived blame. “Stupid” is not the word that comes to mind for figures like Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, and it would have done us no favors to describe the Axis powers in World War II as merely stupid or crazy.

    Calling an adversary’s actions crazy or stupid implies those actions produce an outcome fundamentally different from what their architects intended. But what if the opposite is true? What if the policies are producing precisely the disruption their architects sought? 

 In that regard, he reminds his readers: 

    As has often been the case with radical leftist movements in the United States, their stated objective is to dismantle existing American institutions, traditions, and governing structures in favor of a fundamentally different social order. Put simply, they despise America as it currently exists. Once you understand this premise, their positions look less like harebrained, stupid, illogical, or unworkable ideas, but as carefully conceived, sometimes ingenious tactics, intended to advance that larger objective.

    In this light, things like defunding the police, draconian regulations and carbon taxes, mothballing coal and nuclear plants, wide-open borders, turning a blind eye to Medicaid and NGO fraud, supporting genital mutilation of minors, opposing voter ID, massive expansion of entitlement spending, lowering combat readiness standards in the military in the name of gender equality, and support for adversaries like Hamas can be understood not as disconnected examples of incompetence, but as elements of a broader ideological program. If it does damage to America and hastens the great realignment, they support it.

    Whether one agrees with that interpretation of any particular policy is a separate question. The important point is that conservatives shouldn’t automatically assume destructive policies are the product of stupidity. 

In that light, the objections to using standardized tests in admissions is not stupid if you realize it is part of an overall strategy of undermining the Unites States and the economic futures of white Americans. 

Deathworks and Narnia

Gavin Ortland asks whether "Narnia Among the Deathworks." Ortland explains:

It was Carl Trueman who introduced me to the idea of a deathwork, though the concept is Philip Rieff’s. According to Rieff, a deathwork is an assault on something that is hallowed to an established culture. It isn’t a critique or argument that the culture is untrue, but a means of profaning something that is sacred in order to make it seem ridiculous or repulsive. Trueman summarizes it as “the act of using the sacred symbols of a previous era in order to subvert, and then destroy, their original significance and purpose.”  

He uses a couple of examples to illustrate the concept:  Andres Serrano’s repulsive 1987 photograph "Piss Christ", which immersed a crucifix into urine in order to recast "[t]he sacramental ... into the excremental." Another are "priests who wear the LGBTQ rainbow when carrying out their liturgical duties," which profane the symbol of the rainbow--a symbol of God's faithfulness and promise. That is, "The priests and ministers who perform them are simply helping the church become just like our world: a place where the sacred symbols that give church life meaning are degraded and parodied until nothing but chaos remains, and the things intended to remind Christians of God’s faithfulness become objects of ridicule."

    Deathworks go beyond just the sacred. I've noted over the years the penchant of Hollywood to take a beloved story, television series, or movie and remake it but in a way that mocks the original, often turning into something ridiculous or contemptible, for no other reason than to destroy its popularity. The earliest example I remember of this was how The Brady Bunch television show was made into a movie that mocked and derided the television show. The Star Wars sequel trilogy is also a great example. That series of movies was designed to reduce, minimize, and kill off the Han Solo and Luke characters from the original trilogy--i.e., the strong male characters. It is telling how reviled is the sequel trilogy that all the advertising that you see about Star Wars still uses imagery from the original trilogy. But it also did its job in that there seems to be little interest in Star Wars among the youngest generation. 

    But is is not just those examples. Earlier this year, I watched the latest He-Man movie which similarly did the same to the old He-Man animated television series, taking what was supposed to be an inspirational cartoon for young boys which taught morals in each episode, and turned into a long series of crass joke and demeaning scenes for the main character. The latest (perhaps last) Indian Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, was similarly designed to diminish the titular character so he could be replaced by a strong female "Mary Sue" type of character. Ditto for the most recent James Bond move, No Time To Die. And I don't think I need bring up the Amazon television series, The Rings Of Power. 

    The Critical Drinker often describes such movies as not treating the source material with respect, but I think the characterization of "Deathworks" is appropriate because the remakes are often so terrible that it kills audience interest in the original material. And that is the goal. Christians and young white men are no longer allowed to have heroes and role models. 

    And this brings us back to the upcoming Narnia project. Ortland points out the upcoming move, The Magician's Nephew, offers us a gender-bent version of the lion, Aslan, voiced by a woman (Meryl Streep) and intended to look like David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust down to multicolored eyes and a red stripe down the face. This is a problem because, as anyone that has read the Narnia books knows, Aslan is supposed to be a Christ type figure.

    Not surprisingly, Narnia lovers and purists were dismayed by this gender-bending of Aslan, and with Gerwig’s tampering with a beloved character and story. Samuel James argues that it is essential to the character of Aslan that his voice evokes a father; Pierce Taylor Hibbs explains that Aslan must be male because Aslan’s maleness is essential to the story Lewis wrote; Anne Kennedy says Gerwig “is taking a thing of sublime beauty that opens a door of the soul for Christ to step through to heal and restore what is broken and wrong” and says Gerwig herself is the one desecrating it. 

 [snip]

    So how might a glam, rainbow, gender-bent Aslan be like Jesus? The simple answer is that he can’t be. Gerwig has reframed Aslan so that one of several things must be true: either she no longer means for him to parallel Jesus, she reinvented Jesus and then created her version of Aslan to match him, or she failed to think in Lewis’s theological categories. Whichever it is, this Aslan is not and cannot be the Aslan of the books. Perhaps Gerwig means to convey that there is nothing essential to Aslan (and therefore to Jesus) that depends upon his being male. Yet as the critics have made clear, that’s not the case, and Aslan is and must be male, for his voice must evoke fatherhood. I might go a step further to suggest that this Aslan is aligned with today’s cultural ethos, and therefore opposed to the Bible’s ethos, in appearing to be both male and female or, if you prefer, neither male nor female. He may be a Bowie-like character, but he is not a Christ-like one. 

Again, however, that is the point. For some, they will be drawn into the idea of a gender bent Christ like figure. Others will be disgusted and turn away. But if the movie performs badly enough--like some of the examples I've cited before--it will not only cripple interest in the source material, but virtually guarantee that no one else will try producing a Narnia movie or television series in the foreseeable future. 

This Is The Future If Dems Win The Mid-Terms

Being a bar that caters to mentally unhinged, woke leftists is not a good business model per this New York Post article, “Massachusetts lesbian bar nearly bullied out of town after lifting mask mandate — for one night a week." The gist of the story is that a lesbian bar--The Last Ditch--has been struggling financially, with the owners in debt and having difficulty paying themselves or their employees. So, in order to try and boost business, the bar--which up to now still required patrons to wear the stupid Covid face masks--announced it would go mask-optional one evening per week. The patrons went berserk:

    Some critics dramatically likened the decision to a “mass disabling event,” a “eugenicist” attack and a host of other hot-button terms that escalated to threats of violence.

    “I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ablists [sic],” one commenter wrote on the western Massachusetts bar’s post announcing the change, the Boston Globe reported.

    “People like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience,” wrote another, while a third said, “Just say you’re being complicit in a mass disabling event and get it over with.”

There's more, but you get the drift. On top of this, a group of patrons organized a boycott of the business.  

    The business soon found its divey barroom bare on what used to be busy nights, as irate customers banded together to boycott.

    Sales had already been slumping due to the bar’s floundering business model that includes rules like, “Nobody will be barred from entry due to lack of funds,” and “Poor and unhoused people are welcome in the space.”

 [snip]

    Metallian [one of the owners] has fallen behind on rent, and the bar’s landlord was demanding $3,900 by the end of September.

    And the fateful mask-optional Saturday nights haven’t helped, with the barroom all but empty each weekend despite drink deals and DJs that used to attract dozens of customers. 

 So, soon, the disaffected will have no where to go when the bar shuts down and the space becomes filled with another vape shop or pay-day loan business. But consequences don't matter to liberals. 

     The problem for normal people is that the people destroying this bar are cast from the same mold as those increasingly running the show for the Democrats. Which is why a poll from the Center for Strategic Politics recently conducted a poll showing that 59% of Democrats support a military coup against Trump,  68% believe we need “more immigrants”, and 69% want the Democrats to pack the Supreme Court. But they won't be just going after Trump, as the author continues:

     All of these are proxies for you personally, Dear Reader. When they say they want to see Trump die on television, when their rank and file celebrates the anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s brutal livestream assassination, it’s just a proxy for Republicans more generally. Given the opportunity, they’ll fill the gulags with Wrong Thinkers like you and me, take our wealth, and give it to an army of third world immigrants.

    I don’t think Curtis Yarvin was even slightly exaggerating when he forecasted what a 2028 loss to Democrats would look like during a recent appearance on the Michael Malice podcast.

    “Number one, they’re going to do a full January 6 assembly-line prosecution of everyone. There will be some random bullshit charge,” he said. “Everyone they can find, just massive, massive prosecutions.”

    “And then you’re going to see mass migration,” he continued. “8 figures and up. Per year. Very very easy to work the system so they’re allowing 20 million third worlders in every year.”

    “Of course they won’t be citizens right away, but then the Democrats are going to be doing everything possible to facilitate ballot stuffing and all of their favorite little, undiscoverable things.”

• Related: "Leftists’ masks are coming all the way off — revealing the ugly truth"--New York Post.

Weekend Reading #73

Some longer or more involved reading:

• Jon Low has his most recent newsletter available at his Defensive Pistolcraft blog. A few points that stood out:
• Because I live in Idaho, this caught my attention:

     If you ever find yourself in the Idaho State [History] Museum in Boise, Idaho, ask to see the Elmer Keith Commemorative .44 magnum revolver.  Donated in 1985 A.D.  The gold inlaid engraving is fantastic.  

     If it's still on display when you get there, it will be on the bottom level of the museum.  Walk down the stairs.  There will be a glass enclosure displaying many things.  Front and center you will see the revolver.   

If you like weapons, you should also go to the Old Penitentiary which has a museum on the grounds with a large collection of historical weapons from roughly the Renaissance through WWII on display.   

•  Jon linked to this article--"The Apprehensions Women Have About Carrying a Firearm — And How Training Helps Overcome It"--which caught my attention because, like many of the articles aimed at women, it tries to create a false dichotomy between male and female shooters. In this case, the author begins: "For many women, carrying a firearm is not about politics, power, or recreation. It is about wanting the ability to defend themselves and the people they love if they are ever faced with a dangerous situation." What a degrading attitude toward men! Sure there are the exceptions (which seem to only show up in the comments online), but I don't personally know any men that daily carry for reasons of politics or power or recreation. Because daily carry is a pain in the butt, the people who carry daily, day-after-day, are motivated by defending themselves and the people they love. The article goes on to describe various fears that women have--fear of having an accident, making the wrong decision, fear of being judged or criticized by family or friends--but these are also concerns of most men. It is why so much ink is spilled on topics of safe gun handling and the law (and practicalities) of self-defense. I suppose the fear of criticism is perhaps less with men simply because men are not as driven by competition for social affirmation. The rest of the article continues with the false dichotomy because many of the concerns will be common to men who have no past experience with firearms and/or older men or men that suffer from physical disabilities. As I've mentioned before, when I see this false dichotomy, it seems primarily to be a marketing ploy to convince women that they need a female instructor. 
• Jon has some commentary about Cooper's rules of gun safety, including the following about Rule 1: "All Guns Are Loaded".

     This rule is not saying to treat all guns as if they were loaded.  This rule is commanding you to keep all guns loaded at all times.  

     If you don't understand this, please read "The Modern Technique of the Pistol" by Gregory Boyce Morrison https://dokumen.pub/qdownload/the-modern-technique-of-the-pistol-0962134236-9780962134234.html Page 8.  

     Instructors who teach "Treat all guns as if they were loaded." Are telling you to PRETEND the gun is loaded, even if you know that the gun is not loaded.  Col. Cooper is telling you to BELIEVE, not pretend, that all guns are always loaded, because you keep all guns always loaded, as a matter of safety.  

     So the "safety" rules of the IDPA matches, the USPSA matches, and the NRA courses that require you to unload your pistol when not actually shooting create horrible training scars, that you must be 
aware of.   

Later he adds:

That means always keep your gun loaded.  That means a round in the chamber.  This is a safety rule.  With a loaded gun, you can defend the safety of yourself and your loved ones.  With an unloaded gun, you cannot.  No, as a matter of fact, you will not have time to chamber a round.  No, as a matter of fact, you won't have a support-side hand available to chamber a round; you'll have to chamber the round one-handed, possibly support-side-hand only.  As we saw in the above cited incident.  You can do that, right?  Because you've had training and practice regularly (weekly at least).  

     Last week, I stopped to eat at the In And Out burger shop in Twin Falls, ID.  It was all cleaned up and running smoothly.  We did notice 3 discreetly armed private security officers and one private security office with a full duty belt rig.  All were directing traffic and patrolling around the parking lot.  

     I also noticed that the two ladies behind the counter were carrying concealed.  Well concealed, I had to look carefully to see.  Idaho has the best gun laws in the country, according to the anti-gun group EveryTown.   

 Check out his other commentary on the rules.

•  I had recently linked to an article by Greg Ellifritz on the downsides of evacuating after receiving a bomb threat, with Greg specifically discussing a recent incident involving a high school in Tennessee. Jon adds some additional thoughts:

     I have taken classes in which we were taught to never move people into well defined (as in written in a plan) rally points.  Rather the instruction was to disperse them / send them home / send them to another site, etc.  

     It's hard to get a big bomb into a building.  It's easy to get a big bomb into a parking lot.  So drive the car or truck bomb into the parking lot and cause an evacuation into the parking lot.  Lots of documented cases of such.  So, if the plan is to evacuate to a well defined (written in a plan that the enemy knows, one must assume spies) rally point, the planners are idiots and should not be trusted, because they are not competent.  In such cases, tell your children to run away, run home, run away and call you to pick them up.  Tell your children to NEVER hang out in a well defined rally point.   

This goes hand in hand with another terrorist tactic which is to set off a bomb, then, after first responders show up, set off one or more other concealed explosives outside the original target in order to kill first responders and people that have been evacuated. As Jon says, get out of defined rally point. 

•  And in defense of engaging in competition, Jon explains:

      Disparaging competition shooting as not relevant or counter-productive to combat shooting because it is not realistic, is not intellectually honest.  All training is not realistic.  Because civilian trainers cannot tolerate 3% casualties and 1% fatalities in their classes.  They actually strive for 0% casualties, including heat casualties.  (See Greg's article elsewhere in this blog posting.  "Two Contemporary Training Issues to Ponder" by Greg Ellifritz)  

     Even in our U.S. Armed Forces training, where 3% casualties and 1% fatalities are tolerated in combined arms exercises, the training is still not realistic.  Because in combat much higher casualty and fatality rates are expected and tolerated.  In the U.S. Navy, the surface warfare fleet expects a ship to continue functioning, being combat effective, with 50% of the crew dead.  Sorry, that's just reality.  

     When I was young and stupid, I was working intel for an exercise.  We told the command staff that the winds were too high and advised them to abort the jump.  Lt. General Klingston ordered the airborne paratroopers to jump.  Every Lieutenant aboard every aircraft ordered their men to jump (as would be expected of any officer).  They suffered 3% casualty, 1% fatality.  Now that I am older and smarter, I understand how essential such training is.  Failure to train realistically ensures defeat in combat.  

     But the civilian self-defense industry would never tolerate such.  Look at who attends your classes.  They are predominantly there for entertainment and to have fun.  It is rare to have a student who has recently survived a traumatic event that motivates her to learn to defend herself, because she knows that her life depends on the skills to be learned.  

I believe it was Massad Ayoob who noted the competition shooting was as close to shooting under pressure that most of us will ever experience until we are involved in an actual defensive encounter.

 Anyway, Jon has a lot more, so be sure to check out his newsletter.

• Next up is a new Weekend Knowledge Dump from Greg Ellifritz at Active Response Training.  Some of the links which were for one reason or another notable to me:
• "Terminal Ballistics 1: How Pistols 'Stop' Bad Guys". The author emphasizes:

Because of this I would like to stress (over and over and over again) the importance of accuracy to win a gunfight. Marginal hits with any caliber cannot guarantee a stop. Period. Full stop. Nor can marginal hits with “magic” bullets guarantee a stop. The latest, greatest hollowpoint - or now the “external hollowpoints” - cannot guarantee a stop without hitting something vital. To guarantee a stop, we must hit something that matters. Most of the human body is fairly unimpressed with handgun bullets. Someone shot with a pistol - unless hit in one of a few small areas - can continue to be a deadly threat to you for quite some time, if they choose to be. 

Similarly, he notes, just because you are shot does not mean that you are going to be out of action.

• A link to an article about the Federal 8-pellet FLITECONTROL buckshot load for self-defense. It is hard to find these in my area. I had a source that carried them for a while (for those of you in the Boise areas, it was the bulk ammo store on 5-Mile between Franklin and Emerald streets, in the old Eddy's bakery building) but the last few times I've been in there, they've only had the 9 pellet version. Greg recommends as an alternative the Hornady Critical Defense because it also uses the same wad. But the problem with those is that (i) the pellets are bare lead rather than the plated shot in the Federal load and (ii) there is no buffering powder between the shot. They don't open up as bad as cheap buckshot ammo, but they do open up faster than the Federal rounds and the deformation of the pellets further increases the spread.  
• Caleb Giddings tests some defensive rounds in .38 Special from different guns with different barrel lengths. 
• An article on what makes a good holster. One thing in particular caught my attention:

Starting with the most important, a holster needs to safely hold a handgun in such a way that it cannot be inadvertently fired when in the holster. An object that won’t do this is not a holster as far as I’m concerned. It might be a very nice, tooled-leather gun-holder thingie you put on your belt, but a holster it ain’t. “But, Tam,” you say, “A lot of classic revolver holsters back in the day had cutaway trigger guards! For speed!” I think we can safely say we did a lot of things in those days that weren’t very safe in retrospect, like chain-smoke while pregnant or dump raw sewage in rivers. Let’s not do those things anymore.

In defense of the holsters with cutaway trigger guards, I would note that they are perfectly fine for the single-action revolver because with such weapons the exposed trigger does not enable the firearm to be fired inadvertently, assuming, of course, that the hammer is down. (The downside to such holsters is that they more easily allow dirt and grime to enter the action). Just don't use them--the holsters--with more modern handgun designs. 

• An article that asks the question: "Does Temperature Affect Bullet Point of Impact?" The answer is "yes" because temperature can affect the burn rate of the powder. Unfortunately, the test outlined in the article only tested the temperature of the ammo, but not the ambient air temperature which can also affect point of impact because cooler air is more dense than warmer air. (See, e.g., "How Air Temperature Changes Bullet Trajectory"--Ron Spomer Outdoors). 
• A very detailed article with advice on choosing a carry gun. One point in particular that stood out to me was the advice on portability because it runs contrary to what you often hear from people that should know better:

Like cost, portability is sometimes viewed as a secondary consideration. I think this is a mistake, because it is one that I have made. It's often said that a carry gun, "should be comforting, not comfortable." I disagree. I have too many things competing for my energy and attention to endure an uncomfortable gun. As a result I didn't actually carry very much when I chose guns that were too large. I have tried to carry hardware that was too large, or too uncomfortable. After a few months when the novelty wears off it becomes very easy to talk yourself out of shoving that big holster in your pants and lugging two pounds of steel around all day. 

• Finally, it is a well known maxim that the average gun fight takes place at 3 yards, last 3 seconds, and expends 3 rounds. It has been noted by John Correia, after watching thousands of security footage of armed encounters, that he has never seen a civilian self-defender have to reload their handgun. But, although the odds may be incredibly rare for the civilian, there are still the outlier cases, some of which have been collected into an article, "Self-Defense and the Law: Cases Where Magazine Capacity Limits Cost Lives."

 Greg has a lot more, so be sure to check it out.

• John Wilder has some funny memes for you, including a video of an Indian woman acting, well, like an Indian. Also, my selection of loadout if I was being hunted by an unknown cryptid would be "D". I almost went with "A" but decided I would rather have a small pack of attack dogs for the extra eyes, ears, noses, and teeth. 
• "The Mommy Standard"--According to Hoyt.  Key part:

    Some — dear Lord — 20 years ago, Libertarians who were friends of mine became very alarmed that our standard for who was human and a life worth keeping had changed. Now, it had effectively become “You’re human if mommy says you are.”

    No? Look at when a pregnant woman gets killed. Whether the child gets counted as another homicide depends on whether the child was wanted or not. A lot of states have not only abortion till birth but, like Colorado — COLORADO! — you’re allowed to kill the baby for some time after birth with no consequences.

    You’re human if mommy wants you.

    If mommy doesn’t want you, you stop being human even as labor pains start. She can say “My body, my choice, I want the fetus terminated.” If mommy wants you, on the other hand, she’ll send your sonograms at two months around with “Look at my baby. He has my nose.”

    And that decision can change in a minute. Sometimes on a dime.

    This is not tenable. It is particularly not tenable for a secular humanist society. (Religious societies have their own answers to abide by. That’s different.)

    It’s not tenable because “humanist” rests on “humans” and if what a human is depends on the whim of the woman (and usually a woman who is stressed, hormonally off-ballance and possibly exhausted and ill) the foundations of the society crumble.

Secular humanism rests on a Christian moral foundation, but that is a topic for another time. 

•  "Have You Ever Kippled?"--Chicago Boyz. This article is mostly about the enduring popularity of Rudyard Kipling and his works--at least among normal people. For one of the more interesting parts of the article was this comment:

This topic was brought to my mind when I commented on David Fosters’ Amelia Does Kipling post – that admitting to a liking for and knowledge of the prose and poetry of Rudyard Kipling is a kind of secret conservative/libertarian handshake, by which we recognize another of our kind. Recognizing and readily quoting something like The Gods of the Copybook Headings, or When the English Began to Hate, The Sons of Martha, or The Dane-Geld, and being familiar with his vast and varied body of work is something which goes bone-deep among us but also leaves those of a woke inclination utterly cold. ...

Weekend Reading #72

Some longer or more involved reading:

•  Greg Ellifritz of Active Response Training has a new Weekend Knowledge Dump posted with links to interesting stuff and some commentary too. Several that I found notable:
• An article on the difference between social aggression (e.g., the "monkey dance," "educational beatdown" and similar) and asocial violence (violence that does not serve a social function such as to reshuffle the pecking order). 
•  A look at whether a light trigger assists in accuracy and it can (certainly an overly heavy trigger can degrade accuracy as anyone who has ever shot a double action handgun can attest). 
• An explainer on the different FEMA search markings and what they mean. The author also raises a couple cautions about trying to utilize a fake marking after a major disaster.
• A discussion of the pros and cons of using the high ready position with a rifle. But as Greg points out:

    There are way too many egos involved in the shooting industry.  Each claims that their methodology is the one true way.  It’s all bullshit.  Let’s stop being dogmatic. 

    We want to point our weapons in the safest direction we can in every different location.  Sometimes that is up.  Sometimes it is down.  Lighten up a bit. 

 And an excerpt from the article:

 

    Now observe 3 or 4 shooters in a straight line (one behind the other) and have them flow through a doorway, peeling off on alternating sides and driving their muzzles to the corners of the room. What you will notice, as they pass through the door and turn towards their corner, is that they will lean forward to be able to drive the gun. You will actually see a gap created at head level as they peel off left and right before you see a clear space below torso level into the room. This gap, or “Cut,” is what is being exploited by using the High Ready.

    Instead of waiting for the last part of a person’s body to move out of the way with the Low Ready, assaulters found that it was much faster to hold their rifle muzzles up and just drop the rifle down in the torso/head gap (created as the guy in front of them started peeling off left or right). This method proved faster than coming up from Low Ready, where you’re waiting on the lower body to clear. The increased speed of dropping down from High Ready can only be measured in fractions of a second, but in close quarter battles, that is a lot of time. 

•  An article that looks at clues you can pick up from empty shelves and missing items at the grocery store. The author notes that you should be looking not at a single item, but categories of items, particularly if it persists over several days or weeks. For instance, empty canned vegetables on one day might just mean a missed truck or a stocking crew running late; but persistent lack of items, cheaper products disappearing, or being replaced with other items is probably a signal of a breakdown in the supply chain.
• A piece from John Farnham with defensive tips should you find yourself stuck in a car at a drive thru as some found themselves at the recent In-N-Out shooting in Idaho.  
• An article about carrying with an empty chamber and its downsides, to which Greg adds the following comment:

     And speaking about the Idaho active killer attack, one armed citizen attempted to intervene, but he was carrying a pistol with an empty chamber.  He took a round into his primary gun arm before he was able to draw his gun.  When he eventually got the gun out, he was unable to chamber a round due to his injury.  How would you like to be that guy right now, knowing you could have stopped the killing, but you didn’t do so because you were unwilling to get enough training to feel comfortable with your loaded carry pistol?

    If you don’t feel it’s safe enough to carry a chambered striker fired pistol, you need more training.  If you are unwilling to seek training to become competent, you should be carrying a revolver.

    But none of the chamber-empty carry folks will ever carry a six-shooter, even though it’s a far more capable weapon than a chamber-empty semi-auto.  A revolver doesn’t look cool enough.  What does that tell us about a person like that? 

    They are unwilling to take a couple of days worth of training to be comfortable carrying a semi-auto with a loaded chamber.  They are unwilling to carry a revolver with a heavier trigger that is less likely to be accidentally pulled.  Those folks just want to feel like a badass carrying a gun. They don’t have either the mindset or ability to use the gun to save lives.   The gun for them is some kind of a magical talisman that prevents evil acts from occurring in their proximity.   They are more concerned with appearing capable than actually being capable.  I find those folks to be worse than worthless in an emergency.  Contemptible, actually.

•  John Wilder's "Liberty Without a People, a Border, or a Moral Center Is Just a Corridor" which I mentioned this morning, which is mostly a critique of libertarianism (but also socialism and globalism). An excerpt:

    Libertarianism fails because it calls collective self-defense “collectivism” when America is being assailed by collectives of Indians and Mexicans and moslems and other groups that all have a collective strategy to protect themselves at the expense of the rest of society.  If you try to get a job in certain sectors of the economy, if you don’t speak Spanish, aren’t a Brahmin, don’t bow to Allah, or don’t go to synagogue, well, you’re never going to get that job.  They’ll pick people more like them.

    Markets really are the main engines of prosperity, but random, chaotic markets aren’t the predictor of economic success, it’s the people.  In Sweden, all adopted (non-European) foreign children perform well below the norm on IQ tests.  Except the Koreans.

    Go figure.  People make a difference.  I’d rather live in socialist all-Dane Denmark than in multicultural Johannesburg.

    Libertarianism fails because it cannot generate or defend the particular social order that limited government requires.  Full stop.  The Founding Fathers didn’t spring forth from a Libertarian Eden.  Nope.  They were forged in plain-old British values. 

•  Rod Dreher: "Demon On A Plane? Jonathan Cahn’s Story. And: The Aztecs Really Were Unspeakably Evil." You may have seen news stories about the crazy plane passenger that had to be duck taped to his seat. Well, Cahn was the passenger seated next to the crazy guy and discusses how the guy went from normal to crazy at the flip of the switch, like he was possessed, when he realized that Cahn had written a Christian based adventure novel called The Altar Of Pergamon. And the topic of that alter led Dreher to ruminate on the evil that was the Aztek Empire. He included this excerpt from a review of a book about the Azteks (aka Mexica):

That empire was not gentle. Few empires are, but even by the sad standards of human history, the Mexica were extreme. I’m not speaking here about their legendarily creative and inventive ways of humiliating subject peoples,² I’m speaking about the human sacrifices. No, these were not exaggerated by the colonizers, as some revisionist historians would have you believe.³ If anything, the Spaniards lacked the conceptual framework to fully comprehend the industrial-scale, ever-so-civilized and bureaucratic evil of the Mexica, and so they inadvertently downplayed it. The reality, as Clendinnen brilliantly documents, is that human sacrifice was not an occasional or incidental religious custom for the Mexica, like an extra-spicy church service for the people who only show up on Christmas or Easter. No, the mass-butchery of wailing, pleading captives of both sexes and all ages was the core activity around which their entire civilization and society revolved. Their art, their music, their poetry, their approach to warfare, their entire economic system, their kaleidoscopic array of holidays and festivals, all were singularly dedicated to the killing (often preceded by inventive torture) of helpless human beings. And everybody had their role to play:

The killings were not remote top-of-the pyramid affairs. If only high priests and rulers killed, they carried out most of their butchers’ work en plein air, and not only in the main temple precinct, but in the neighborhood temples and on the streets. The people were implicated in the care and preparation of the victims, their delivery to the place of death, and then in the elaborate processing of the bodies: the dismemberment and distribution of heads and limbs, flesh and blood and flayed skins. On high occasions warriors carrying gourds of human blood or wearing the dripping skins of their captives ran through the streets, to be ceremoniously welcomed into the dwellings; the flesh of their victims seethed in domestic cooking pots; human thighbones, scraped and dried, were set up in the courtyards of households — and all this among a people notable for a precisely ordered polity, a grave formality of manner, and a developed regard for beauty.

The scale of it boggles the mind. The Mexica record with pride a single festal occasion on which over twenty thousand victims were sacrificed, the blood rolling in a slow curtain down the steps of the pyramids as four lines of manacled slaves trudged along the great processional ways towards their doom. It was the job of special priests to greet the captives as they entered the city and to explain in detail the honor that was to await them. And it was always human beings. Many primitive cultures have practiced forms of animal sacrifice. The Mexica were neither primitive, nor interested in animals. There was also no “othering” at work here. The Mexica knew that they were killing people who thought and felt and dreamed and loved as they did. Indeed, that was the entire point of it. They constructed an efficient and well-run machine that had as its sole purpose delivering living, breathing, conscious and informed human beings to the killing-stone or the furnace. A whole battery of sophisticated psychological techniques were employed to ensure the compliance of the victims to the end.⁴ Yes, the Spaniards lacked the vocabulary to describe it, but we who live in the aftermath of the twentieth century do not.

Read the whole thing.

• And in light of the actions and words from the female Lindsay Clancy jurors and their supporters: "The Return of Witchcraft, Part One: Understanding the public reappearance of hexing" by Tara Thieke. 

Here is an army willing to do battle against any moral restraint on itself. Copycat killings emerge; the TikTok goddesses pursue their line of thought without remorse. The Sisterhood rebukes the concept of examination of conscience, preferring therapy which validates one’s grievances. It is a massive, massive cultural shift imbuing all human relations, even the mother to child, with its conflation of any self-giving with persecution (both Clancy and her copycat killer described their small sons as being “the antiChrist” or “devil”). The rise of this Sisterhood in tandem with the growth of the “women can do no wrong” belief has life or death repercussions.  

Never Forget: 9/11 in 2026

It is the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, so it time to once again remember what ultimately led to the disaster and the endless Middle-Eastern wars: diversity and globalism.

The 9/11 attacks were, in a very real sense, the result of a liberal, globalist outlook, that believes that every person is the same (or, more accurately, interchangeable). John Wilder recently noted that globalists (as well as a couple other ideologies) depend on Homo Economicus:

What’s a person?  Well, one Homo Economicus is very much like another.  So much so, that they have the same desires, the same wants, the same potential, the same value.  In extremes of this viewpoint, they even have the same intellectual potential. ... 

But to achieve this "perfect" economic human unit, certain constraints must be removed. Wilder lists these as "family, religion, tradition, ancestors, culture, border, community, and hierarchy." It is because of these globalist views that we got the inane comments from our leaders following 9/11 that "Islam is a religion of peace" and similar statements downplaying any suggestion that Islam was evil or barbaric. In his article "What Mohamed Atta Was Trying to Tell Us," Ayaan Hirsi Ali points out that after 9/11:

... President George W. Bush stood at the Islamic Center of Washington to insist that “the face of terror is not the true faith of Islam.” Following Bush’s lead, after later atrocities in Paris, Brussels, Manchester, and elsewhere, Western leaders repeatedly said that the killers had “nothing to do with Islam.” At the same time, the notion of “Abrahamic faiths” was revived or normalized, as though Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were merely variations within one spiritual family, separated by temperament more than by theology or civilizational ambition. 

But such suggestions are ludicrous. The America political scientist Samuel P. Huntington had stated well before 9/11 that Islam had bloody borders, because it is an inherently violent, conqueror culture and people. 

    In fact, 9/11 (or something like it) probably was no surprise to Huntington who had, in 1996, released his prescient book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.  In it, Huntington explained that rather than the end of the Cold War signaling a victory for a global liberal order, the collapse of a bi-polar power structure would cause nations to revert to competition and conflict based around civilizations. And, in that vein, he predicted in broad strokes the conflict between Russia and the West in Ukraine (which is divided between the West and Russian civilization), the competition between China and the West, as well as conflict between Islam and everyone else. 

    But our elites have ignored this to our ultimate ruin. Going back to Ali's article, he explains:

    After centuries of religious war, the West had concluded that privatizing faith was the price of stability and progress. Religion would become hobby, heritage, or private consolation; politics would be conducted in the cooler register of interests. Having made that bargain, Western societies forgot that secularism and pluralism were local settlements, not universal defaults, and so assumed that every rival civilization must ultimately favor the same compartmentalization. When confronted by an adversary for whom the public order was explicitly theological, and for whom the separation of sacred and political authority was itself an offense against God, the West did the only thing its own intellectual settlement allowed: It translated theology into categories it found more manageable.

    As a result, for a quarter-century, America and the West have chosen to enmesh themselves with dysfunctional Muslim societies, with the goal of rectifying “what went wrong.” Simultaneously, they opened their doors to mass Muslim migration, taking in millions of refugees from war-torn societies that had notably failed to be transformed by the influx of American money, democracy experts, and boots on the ground. ...

    As it turned out, the prediction that a large-scale encounter between the populations of the Western nations and Muslim lands might bring about a meaningful social transformation was correct. What Western optimists failed to imagine was that their own societies would be reshaped in the image of the newcomers they sought to evangelize. ...

    Stated differently, if America and the West went to war against an elite vanguard of Muslim extremists who used terrorism as its principal tool, it ended 25 years later with a self-inflicted defeat caused by misdiagnosing the enemy and importing culturally incompatible demographics that could be utilized by that vanguard, as well as by other political vectors, both domestic and foreign. After failing to defeat Muslim terrorists abroad, the West now finds itself fighting the same enemies at home, while watching their own countries transformed by the mass immigration of people who decidedly do not share the common Western fantasy that religion and culture are the source of merely superficial differences. The idea that there are barbarians who live outside the gates has long been part of the Western inheritance. The idea that bringing the barbarians inside the gates might result in the destruction of Western civilization was equally part of that inheritance, even if it was now forbidden to think it. 

Thus, I have to agree with some of the comments from Kurt Schlichter in his article from yesterday, "How 9/11 Changed Everything." He points out:

In the week of the attacks, America understood that 9/11 had to be answered with the full weight of American wrath. Many of us still understand it. If there is one overriding failure in the war on terror, it is that we did not kill enough of the terrorists. Instead, we focused on turning savages into civilized human beings. Our forebears had it right when they dealt with barbarians, whether Roman or British or whoever was disciplining the primitives. It was time to dust off the punitive expedition: go into the territory of the people who attacked you and cause so much damage that the savages use your name to scare their children for the next hundred generations.

And:

... Islamic radicals attacked us not because we like Israel, and not because of some bogus gripe, but because we will not submit to their primitive desert cult. That’s a hard truth for people who cannot conceive of America being in the right. We were in the right. We remain in the right. As for the violence we inflicted in return, they forgot a basic truth: violence must be met with violence. Too many in the West believe the schoolmarm mantra that violence never solves anything. History teaches the opposite. Violence solves everything. 

The problem is that we didn't fight like that. If we had, after Al Qaeda was driven back to the Tora Bora mountain complex in 2001, we would have dropped a strategic nuclear weapon on their heads. That would have given them a story with which to terrify their children. Instead we coddled the savages with the idea that we could win "hearts and minds" which was the Middle-Eastern equivalent of rolling over and exposing our bellies. 

    Niccolò Machiavelli wrote in The Prince it is ideal to be both loved and feared, but if a choice must be made, it is safer to be feared than loved. That should have been our philosophy. So when Schlichter complains about the people that are tired of the forever wars in the Middle-East, he should consider that perhaps that they are not tired of our killing Muslim terrorists but, rather, that they are tired of a leadership unwilling to win quickly and decisively. 

    But on a more basic level, we can only win by returning to our roots including a strong, muscular Christianity and civilizational pride. Restoring those constraints identified by Wilder: "family, religion, tradition, ancestors, culture, border, community, and hierarchy."

Weekend Reading #71

Some longer or more involved reading:

• Greg Ellifritz has a new Weekend Knowledge Dump at his Active Response Training blog.  Some of the more notable items:
• Greg links to the most recent Range Master newsletter, which itself has several items of interest including the drill of the month, some comments about the importance of institutional memory (i.e., history of techniques), and why 00 buckshot is the best buckshot size for self defense.
• Speaking of institutional memory, Greg notes that over the course of his career, he has "seen how the events encountered in historical police gunfights have completely changed training doctrine and equipment use for both police and armed citizens alike," and indicates that he is going to start a series discussing some of the most important law enforcement shootings and events that changed police training, gear and doctrine. In that vein, he links to an article about the Norco Bank Robbery. 
• Something that we may need to think about is whether to get involved in the defense of a stranger. Greg links to a piece that raises the issue of whether we are best serving our family if we do so.
• A historical article on combat using a Bowie knife. In the 19th Century, there were schools of fencing across the United States that specialized in teaching how to use this weapon.
• A review of Federal Punch in .22 LR as a defensive round. Short take: "But the .22 LR Federal Punch round stands above [other .22 LR rounds] in terms of performance and delivers penetration approaching the levels of .22 Magnum or even .380 ACP."
• Lucky Gunner's testing of ballistics from varying barrel lengths shooting .300 BLK. The testing didn't show much gain from using a longer 16" barrel over the short barrels. Conclusion: "The real advantage of .300 Blackout is flexibility rather than raw ballistics. You get solid performance inside 150 yards, it’s easy to run in a suppressed, short barreled rifle, easy to switch between subsonic and supersonic ammo without changing anything else about the gun, and there’s no shortage of factory loads for either." 

• John Wilder muses about "The Passing Of The American Empire?" First he lays out his case that the United States really does preside over an empire. Then he provides thoughts on whether we are in an empire in decline and where we are at on that path. 
• A long video (41 min.) rather than a read: "How cartel drug smuggling actually works, according to a trafficker"--Business Insider. 
• "Jim Corbett: Eradicator of Man-Eating Tigers & Conservationist"--Shooting Times.  If you like reading about the great dangerous game hunters, you've probably heard of Jim Corbett. If not, Corbett was tasked with hunting man-eating tigers and leopards in colonial India and became a bit of hero. But he also championed preservation of the big cats, with a national park in India named after him. And his caliber of choice was the 7x57mm Mauser (aka, .275 Rigby)--something that would probably be considered underpowered for hunting the big cats in this era. This article give a short biography of his life.  A couple more articles about Corbett:
• "Edward James Corbett - Hunter Turned Conservationist"--Nature Safari India. 
• "Inside Hunter Jim Corbett’s Legendary Showdowns With History’s Scariest Man-Eating Big Cats"--All That Is Interesting. 
• "Inside the disappearance of Hollywood starlet Jean Spangler that saw Kirk Douglas dragged into investigation... after mysterious note bombshell"--Daily Mail. An interesting article if you like true crime stories:

    In Hollywood's golden age, Jean Spangler was just one of countless young starlets dreaming of a fairytale rise to fame.

    With her porcelain doll looks and willowy 5ft8 frame, along with a resume of film bit parts, Spangler seemed destined to make some kind of mark in Tinseltown - even if it was not with her name in lights alongside darlings Betty Grable or Olivia De Havilland. 

    Tragically, the fame Spangler would so desperately seek would not come from her onscreen appearances, but her haunting disappearance in 1949.

    All Spangler left behind was a ripped purse, a mysterious note and a young daughter who never knew why her mother failed to come home. 

    The vanishing of the 26-year-old even saw megastar Kirk Douglas dragged into the fracas.

    Theories swung wildly - from her death during a botched abortion to Spangler leaving LA with gangsters.  

The article also notes that "Spangler disappeared just two years after the heinous murder of Elizabeth Short, who is immortalized in true crime history as the Black Dahlia. Spangler's striking resemblance to Short, combined with her work at Florentine Gardens, owned by Short's acquaintance and murder suspect Mark Hansen, saw police wonder if she was another victim of the killer." Unfortunately, Spangler's case has never been solved and remains open.

Wilder On Jason Arday's Demise

John Wilder's latest is "Narcissism And Jason Arday." If you don't know who is Arday, he was appointed as the youngest black professor in the history of Cambridge University based on what turned out to be plagiarized academic papers and an unbelievable background. And after it was all exposed, he committed suicide. Wilder goes into more detail on all this, but I think he hit the nail on the head in his explanation of why Arday was able to pull the wool over eyes of Cambridge, the BBC, et al.: "... it appears that the only impact [Arday] had, at all, was in allowing liberal white ladies over the age of 40 to virtue signal when they were around him." 

    But we are not supposed to notice any of this because Arday was black, and, therefore, to notice his fraud was racist. Thus, we have this headline from Breitbart: "Cambridge Scandal: American Academic Who Exposed Alleged Jason Arday Plagiarism Suspended by Own University Over ‘Discrimination’ Probe." The Breitbart article relates:

Philosopher Dr Nathan Cofnas has been suspended by Ghent University in Flanders, Belgium as they launch a “preliminary disciplinary investigation” and decide whether there are sufficient grounds to refer him “to the competent disciplinary body” after the death of former Professor Jason Arday, who died last week at his London home days after he resigned from the University of Cambridge over a plagiarism scandal.

Making the University’s position clear, Ghent said:

    Over the past few days, Ghent University has received many enquiries following the death of Cambridge professor Jason Arday… we wish to be clear about the values we uphold as a university.

    Ghent University stands for respect for human dignity and opposes discrimination, hatred and racism. We attach great importance to academic freedom and to open academic debate, even when views are controversial. However, that freedom is not unlimited. It goes hand in hand with responsibility and may be restricted in order to protect the rights of others.

While the allegations of academic misconduct including plagiarism, embellishment, and even claimed authorship of non-existent books are understood to have been reported to Cambridge years ago, from the time in 2023 when Arday was proclaimed as the University’s youngest-ever black Professor, they weren’t widely publicly known until they were published by Cofnas this year. It is alleged that until the matter entered the public sphere Cambridge had moved to prevent discussion about their hire, that those looking into the matter were smeared as racists, and that police were even set onto journalists working on the story. 

Arday is the archtype of DEI--"Didn't Earn It"--where his research and backstory was a complete fabrication, but we were all supposed to ignore that the emperor had no clothes. Except in this case, rather than the conmen perpetrating their fraud because no one wanted to be thought a fool for pointing out the obvious, the conman here succeeded because no one wanted to be thought "racist" for pointing out the obvious. 

    Thus we have articles like this op-ed by Afua Hirsch at the Guardian entitled "Jason Arday is now the stick the right will use to beat back racial equality. Don’t let that happen." Hirsch acknowledges that Arday fabricated much of his qualifications, and that it had already raised concerns with other scholars, but still blames the press for noticing:

The media cannot conceal its excitement about his transgressions. Arday doesn’t need to be a fantasist to be the kind of man commentators would rather not see at a university like Cambridge – being black is enough. For them, the fact that he made stuff up is simply a massive bonus. Which explains why they have moved so quickly from identifying mistakes he has made to indulging in an orgy of delight at the prospect of smearing all black academics. 

This is a theme picked up in other media. For instance, this article from Al Jazeera: "Thousands mourn Jason Arday in London, blaming ‘racist’ press for his death." The BBC reports that Cambridge University's chancellor, Lord Chris Smith, also condemned what he described as a media "feeding frenzy." It also relates that  more than 90,000 people "signed a Good Law Project petition seeking an inquiry into media coverage of Arday." In other words, make sure that the media never again reports on something like this. 

Wilder: "Know Your Enemy"

    The latest migrant outrage from the UK is that the government is planning on moving 1,200 single adult male asylum seekers into Linton-on-Ouse, a rural village with only 600 inhabitants. It's not the only place getting this treatment: the village of Piddington, with a population of approximately 350, will be receiving 1,250 single adult male asylum seekers. But the UK leadership doesn't care:

    Residents held a symbolic independence referendum in which 96 percent voted to leave the United Kingdom in protest. Children wrote letters pleading with the Prime Minister not to destroy the only home they have ever known. Parish council chairman Tim McNally has repeatedly warned that the scale is neither fair, safe nor responsible.

    Prime Minister Andy Burnham has responded by doubling down. He insists that “all parts of the country need to play their part” and that middle-class and leafy areas can no longer be shielded while poorer communities carry the load.

    Borders minister Anna Turley has defended the approach as creating a “more fair and equitable system,” even while acknowledging that concentrating arrivals in deprived areas previously fuelled “civil unrest.” 

    All of this brings to mind how  Anonymous Conservative begins his daily news briefs with the following, which I have rephrased as a question: "have [you] wondered how we got flooded with migrants we did not want, how our money is sent to causes overseas we do not care about, why our leaders, who should want to curry the favor of the citizens in order to get elected, do not care a whit about what we want or the well-being of our nations, or why our nations perpetually teeter at the brink of civil wars[?]" 

    Because our ruling class want it. Rod Dreher recently reposted an X-post featuring a video of one of the leaders of the largest far left political parties in France. Key point:

    Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the biggest far-left party in France, explains why the alliance between progressives and Muslims is necessary.

    “If you’re counting on white Christian workers to bring about socialism in France, it won’t happen. But our Muslim brothers and sisters will.”

    This is the same playbook being used by the left in all Western countries. 

 And its true. But it doesn't have to only be Muslims. For instance, the Left in the United States supports mass immigration from Latin America for the same reasons as European and British Leftists support mass Muslim migration: because those populations are already primed to vote for socialism. The only difference is that we know that the Muslims will eventually turn on their putative masters. 

    John Wilder's latest, "Know Your Enemy," discusses those who hate and wish to destroy all that is good and beautiful: those he (and many others) term the GloboLeft and the GloboLeftElite. Their excuses for this invasion varies. Jean-Luc Melenchon, as noted above, wants the flood of migrants to advance socialism; as John makes note in his piece, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wants them because it is worth nearly $200 million to flood our country with them and Utah Senator John Curtis ostensibly wants them here to undercut American wages. 

    The point, though, is that none of the forgoing elites represent or even care about the common man and woman of their respective countries. As John writes:

    The GloboLeft and the GloboLeftElite are not tied to the countries they live in.

    Instead, they are tied to their class.  A professor from Boulder can glide into a conference in London or Paris or D.C. and feel exactly the same:  the same polite applause, the same correct opinions, the same network of people who went to the same schools, read the same journals, and never once had to fix a carburetor.

    The nice hotel room, the brandy, and the bacon-wrapped shrimp taste identical whether the view is of the Flatirons, the Thames, or Islamabad on the Seine.  These people deal almost exclusively with other members of their class.

 And "class" is the correct word to describe them. As Angelo M. Codevilla explained in his seminal article, "America’s Ruling Class—And the Perils of Revolution," explaining why the elites on both sides of the political aisle held such disdain for the "Tea Party" (bold added):

    Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat” was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.” Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.

    Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.

    The two classes have less in common culturally, dislike each other more, and embody ways of life more different from one another than did the 19th century’s Northerners and Southerners — nearly all of whom, as Lincoln reminded them, “prayed to the same God.” By contrast, while most Americans pray to the God “who created and doth sustain us,” our ruling class prays to itself as “saviors of the planet” and improvers of humanity. Our classes’ clash is over “whose country” America is, over what way of life will prevail, over who is to defer to whom about what. The gravity of such divisions points us, as it did Lincoln, to Mark’s Gospel: “if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”

But rest assured that they do not represent or care about the common people. In the article, "Inequality All The Way Down"--a discussion of Peter Turchin’s book End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration--the author relates (bold added):

... If you have money, you can easily influence the public opinion, by pushing your narratives in the media. Also, you can invest in lobbying and buy your access to politicians directly. There is an extensive piece of research about this by the political scientist Martin Gillens. He gathered thousands of policy issues between 1981 and 2002. For each of those issues he checked what was ultimately decided and how public opinion was thinking about the issue. He found the political outcomes in the United States only aligned with the interests and wishes of the richest 10 % and their interest groups. Everybody else’s preferences were simply not reflected in national policy decisions. ...

And, as John explains in his post, the elites don't want their preferences challenged:

The GloboLeftElite need the middle class to comply, and they need the anarchy from below to justify their own continued existence as managers of the chaos.  The violent and the non-productive are their power base and their enforcers while the middle class represent the last pool of money they haven’t sucked up.  After they’ve done that, they’re desperate to replace you. 

Read the whole thing.