Things I've Said

Thoughts I've had from time to time

Why are People So Willing to Deceive Themselves?

by Leave a Comment

This is going around.  If you hate Ted Cruz, this is great fodder.  If you love Ted Cruz, you might want to suppose that the quote is somehow taken out of context.  But if you are even a little bit of a skeptic, you’ll ask yourself “Is it plausible that Ted Cruz said this?”.

And the answer is going to be “NO!!!”  It’s not even a little bit plausible.  Even if you hate Ted Cruz, you are fooling yourself if you don’t recognize that the guy is a brilliant speaker, a brilliant debater, and a brilliant public figure.  But if you hate Ted Cruz, you probably also hate everything that smells even a little bit like conservatism.  As a result, you will fool yourself into believing that the majority of the people to whom Ted Cruz wishes to appeal would be enthusiastic about that statement.  And if you have fooled yourself into believing that most of the likely Cruz supporters would think such a statement is positive, you do not understand the people of the United States of America.

How do I know this?  Because Ted Cruz never said this. And he never would say such a thing, because it is detestable to the staggering majority of those who affiliate themselves with either of the two major political parties in the United States.  Ted Cruz knows his constituents. Even if he did hold such ridiculous views, he wants to be president badly enough that he would never say something that would be so detestable to the voters.

http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2015/apr/08/facebook-posts/meme-facebook-says-ted-cruz-declared-no-place-gays/

http://www.snopes.com/cruz-no-gays-america/

Gun Laws and Gun Violence

by Leave a Comment

You’ve probably seen the 2014 map of the US from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (LCPGV) claiming that the highest gun death rates are in the states with the loosest gun laws, and vice versa.

I’ve taken it upon myself to transfer their grades to the chart below, along with the reported gun murder and gun death rates as listed in Wikipedia.

Of the ten states with the lowest gun murder rate, 6 are rated “F” for gun laws by the LCPGV (A = strict guns laws, F = loose gun laws). Of the ten states with the highest gun murder rate, 6 are rated “F”. Maryland has the third highest gun murder rate in the country, and is one of five states with an “A-” (no states are rated “A” or “A+”).

Gun murder rate and gun death rate are different.  So sorting the data by Gun Deaths per 100,000, we see that Washington, South Dakota, and Maryland are are ranked 12, 13, and 14.  Similar gun death rates, yet the grades from the Law center are C, F, and A- respectively.  Yes, Maryland, with the highest gun death rate of the three, gets scored as A-.

Now it is true that the states with the highest gun death rates are all given Fs.  Well, except for Alabama, which pulled off a D-, despite being the third highest in the country for gun deaths.  Meanwhile New Hampshire, with the 7th lowest rate of gun deaths, is also graded D-.  As previously mentioned, South Dakota gets an F at postion 13, while 11 states  with higher gun death rates are graded higher by the Law Center.

And it’s hard not to notice California.  California is rated A-, yet it has a higher gun death rate than 32 states, and a higher gun murder rate than 37 sates.

Here’s the wikipedia article

Here’s a link to the data in a spreadsheet, so you can sort it however you like

Here’s the WCPGV graphic

Land of the Free, Home of the Brave

by Leave a Comment

America.  The land of the free, and the home of the brave.  Where we recognize that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including (but not limited to) life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Where, despite the corruption of our own souls and the souls of all who lead this country, we still regard the right of individual liberty above the pleasure of comfort and the illusion of safety.

The US Government is not charged with the responsibility of providing individual needs. The government is not charged with the responsibility of preventing aggression against the individual.  Very few are the crimes that any government can prevent without abridging the rights of all citizens. Rather, the government is charged with the responsibility of defending the right of each individual American to provide for himself, to defend himself.  The government is responsible for prosecuting the thief and the murderer when a crime is committed.  It is we, as individuals, who are charged by our own nature with the responsibility to provide for and defend ourselves, our families, our friends, our neighbors, our countrymen, and perhaps even those past our own borders.  This is why we necessarily have a volunteer military, not a conscripted one.  It is the government’s responsibility to provide a vehicle of national defense, but it is our individual responsibility to choose the action of defense or not.

Our government is charged only with the responsibility of creating an environment in which the natural rights of human beings are respected, and providing recourse when those rights are abridged.  It is more and more the government itself which abridges, rather than defends those rights.  It does so by claiming authority it has not been granted. With those powers it steals both liberty and property.  It matters not if your rights are infringed for your benefit, or the benefit of others – an imposition on the rights of free men makes them no longer free.  It matters not if your property is taken from you for your own benefit, or for the benefit of others – if someone has the authority to take your property, you own nothing.

We are watching the individual rights of Americans erode at an ever quickening pace.  We must turn the tide and reawaken that dormant kernel of true freedom.  The freedom to pursue happiness, the freedom to take risks, the freedom to suffer for our mistakes, and the freedom to correct those mistakes.  The freedom to employ and be employed for a wage mutually agreed upon by both employer and employee.  The freedom to buy and sell goods at a price mutually agreed upon by buyer and seller.  The freedom to consume what we will, and the freedom to bear the consequences for our actions.  The freedom to defend ourselves against those who would do us harm.  The freedom to grow the food we want to grow in whatever manner we choose.  The freedom both from a government that interferes with our activities through over-regulation, and from a government that interferes with our activities through subsidies and welfare.

Let us honor those who founded this country with their own blood to assure that we have such freedoms.  Let us honor our ancestors who came to this country to throw off the bonds of servitude and assert their right to struggle for their own advancement, for their own pursuit of happiness.  Let us honor our ancestors who were brought to this land in chains, those who were driven from this land which had been inhabited by their forebears for uncounted generations.

We honor our parents, our ancestors, and the others who came before us by providing for ourselves and defending ourselves.  We honor our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, and all those around us today by producing things of value and engaging in free and honest trade.  We honor our children and all the generations after us by teaching them these same values, by leaving them with a world in which they are free to pursue their own interests, and not burdened by debt and ruin we create.  That is what it means to be in the land of the free and home of the brave.