Instead of cracking down using the Patriot Act, the next possible next step may in fact be gun control.

The left seems to be trying to turn this into a gun control issue. Gun control interestingly enough being one of the key battle grounds of the 3T.

So the left tries to enact extremely strong gun control nation-wide using the reason of acting against terrorist threats as the right used terrorism as a reason to push through the Patriot Act.

The right are more easily biased against foreign threats and find it easy to imagine a terrorist in every mosque but the left are easily biased against the domestic threats (i.e. the right wing nuts) and find it easy to imagine a Timothy McVeigh in every Tea Party rally.

The right-wing like to keep their guns because they don't trust the government and see gun control as an infringement on their civil liberties. Just as many on the left (and the libertarian right) see the Patriot Act as an infringement on *their* civil liberties.

One can argue about the humaneness of otherwise of guns and hunting and culture and tradition and whether it contributes to crime but I think the essence of the coming conflict is not going to be about those 3T issues going to be the left's fear of the right-wing nuts versus the right's fear of the government taking away their 2nd amendment rights.

Hence an attempt to use terrorism to win a 3T battle once again explodes into the issue of the People versus the Government and civil liberties with the left this time playing the role of the neo-cons and Bush and the right playing the role of the people fighting for civil liberties in a mirror image of what occurred after 9/11.

Where the public sympathy lies - with the left trying to take away the guns or with the right saying the exercise is a threat to civil liberties will be interesting.

This could be why some people (especially those on the left) are saying that the Obama speech reminds them of post-9/11. We could be in for another round but this time with the roles reversed. If that's the case I wouldn't expect the "unity" people are feeling right now to last too long given what happened post-9/11.

Sean, thanks for this - 'Common parlance on Facebook. "To Friend": to make/accept a "Friend Request". Just stayin' hip.' I take great pleasure, albeit a perverse one, in saying I did not know this. Befriend is a perfectly good word and does not sound as ugly. Using friend as a verb doesn't taste quite right to me, so I chose not to be hip (although, at my age, that word is usually used in conjunction with replacement).

Pax,

Dave Krein '42

I agree with my fellow DK--"befriend" would have done just fine, and would have had the additional advantage of being English. But as all the posters on my ignore list will tell you, I'm just one of those leftist totalitarian grammar Nazis.

Now Palin's use of "blood libel" did exactly what she had hoped: it got her second billing behind President Obama in all the stories today, including in the New York Times. She turned the incident into another attack on poor patriotic Sarah. She is also changing the way American politics worked. She taped and released her video, let it go viral, and refused either to take any questions about it from the press or to allow her minions to do so. I remember my father telling me, probably sometime in the 1960s, that everyone had feared, when tv came in, that it would create great demagogues, but that it had not--he assumed that was because you saw the speaker too closely. He was wrong--he didn't understand the difference between first and fourth turnings, even though he had lived through both. Now we are seeing how electronic media screens can be used demagogically. Radio, too (but McCarthy had done that.)

I am interested to see how long the effect of this incident lasts--I expect the answer is, not very. And I still think that Loughner's choice of venue and victims was indeed influenced by the current political climate.

Thanks to Eric for bringing up Wyatt Earp. I read a lot about him as a kid. The cow towns of the west were civilized, in the literal sense, by laws requiring cowpokes to check their guns when they came into town before they hit the bars. No one seemed to think that violated the Second Amendment. The Tea Party and company don't want just to go back to the 1890s, they want to go back to the 1850s.

I will when time permits review Copperfield's list of incidents.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

It's not easy, but it's the only way to get the guns off the streets and out of criminal hands. Let the police do their job. Reduce the criminal population, and the population of guns.

The way to perpetual violence, like in Tuscon Arizona and many other places: give up, assume there will always be lots of criminals with guns, cut off all rehabilitation and social programs (the Republican program iow), and allow everyone to carry guns and outgun the police. Do nothing except pack heat by your bed, fully loaded and ready for intruders.

That way doesn't work either. The guns are stolen by the criminals, or used by the owners no matter how law abiding, or used by friends and family accidentally.

Americans such as you D. need to decide sooner or later whether we ever want to live in a civilized society. Right now we don't apparently, to judge by comments by you, copperfield, and some others here; and yes James, by how too many Americans vote. And how few effective gun controls laws there are in the USA.

I didn't like westerns when I was a kid, and I don't like them in real life in heartland America today.

I know, if I speak my mind, I am close minded. If you speak your mind, you are not. That is perfectly logical.

But not that there is anything wrong with you speaking your mind. That's what discussions are for. I welcome it. Best wishes to you in gun land. Be careful, if you can; it's very dangerous. Happy trails.

My God, Eric, have you no clue what authoritarian ***holes many cops are?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Wow, interesting article. I only wish the Earp Brothers were back to enforce their gun laws. Shootout at the OK Corral happened in HER district! That's ironic too considering some of my earlier comments about it. That's what you JPT and Galen and copperfield etc. idealize, and even Giffords, out of political expediency no doubt.

No, I don't want to go there. That doesn't mean I think all the people there are bad, James. Overall, the culture of the place and many more like it (I'm sure the places Galen visits among them), does not appeal to me. When I decide to travel, I'll go to Europe or Asia instead. Far more interesting than the OK Corral, thank you very much. How utterly boring!

Eric, the reason why I even got into this discussion was not because I support gun rights, but rather to clear up some misconceptions you and possibly other out there have of heartland folks and people who hunt. The OK Corral? Really? Wow! I get the feeling you envision us like the Hatfields and McCoys standing guard in front of our homes ready to shot anyone who passing by in fear they might step on our property. The Heartland a dangerous place? Rural America a dangerous place? Hardly.

To be perfectly honest with you, I feel safer in those tiny little farm towns than I do any other place in the country. Why? Because people look out for each other there. We actually know our neighbors. The people have good values. They believe in hard work, taking care of their children, friends, families and neighbors. They value their children's education and a lot their social activities center around the school. Joining the PTA and volunteering just goes along with having kids in school, and Friday night high school football games are a big deal. The whole town shows up for them. Crime is pretty low in these towns. When we lived in my hometown (5 years ago) we never locked our door. As far as economic class divide goes, it's just really not there. Kids from poor homes play along side with kids from rich homes and no one thinks anything of it. Even today my friends in the town I live in run the economic spectrum. As you probably know, my husband travels extensively and is gone out of the country for months at a time. I'm here with my two boys in this old house where something is constantly breaking down. How do I do it? Well, I have a great support system, my friends and neighbors. I'm not saying we don't have our problems here, but high crime is not one of them.

I think of a comment my brother made years ago. He lives in Chicago. We were driving down the road in our (rural) hometown and we passed by the government subsidized housing. My brother said, "You know if my car broke down in the projects in Chicago, someone would probably come out and rob me. If my car broke down right here, someone would probably come out and help me change my tire." I think that pretty much sums it up.

You have also made comments that guns are more dangerous than drugs. I strongly disagree with that. I've seen more lives ruined by drugs than by guns. I'm much more worried about my boys getting involved with drugs than I am them going out on a hunting trip. Hunting accidents are very rare. If they get involved with Meth or Crack, their lives are pretty much destroyed. The incidents of that happening are much more common than a kid getting accidentally shot by a gun.

Originally Posted by Galen

Yes, the universal solution ban it and lock everyone jail.

We already imprison more people per capita than any other nation on Earth. Is there any chance that this one sentence yours, substituting anything else for guns, is the reason that our society is getting more violent. After all if they resist then men with badges will show up and shoot them but because the government it doing it, well that’s just peachy.

Oh, I get it, you are just against freelance violence.

Both the Democrats and Republicans are guilty of this.

The inherent violence of the State he obviously has no problem with.

Originally Posted by ASB65

Eric, the reason why I even got into this discussion was not because I support gun rights, but rather to clear up some misconceptions you and possibly other out there have of heartland folks and people who hunt. The OK Corral? Really? Wow! I get the feeling you envision us like the Hatfields and McCoys standing guard in front of our homes ready to shot anyone who passing by in fear they might step on our property. The Heartland a dangerous place? Rural America a dangerous place? Hardly.

To be perfectly honest with you, I feel safer in those tiny little farm towns than I do any other place in the country. Why? Because people look out for each other there. We actually know our neighbors. The people have good values. They believe in hard work, taking care of their children, friends, families and neighbors. They value their children's education and a lot their social activities center around the school. Joining the PTA and volunteering just goes along with having kids in school, and Friday night high school football games are a big deal. The whole town shows up for them. Crime is pretty low in these towns. When we lived in my hometown (5 years ago) we never locked our door. As far as economic class divide goes, it's just really not there. Kids from poor homes play along side with kids from rich homes and no one thinks anything of it. Even today my friends in the town I live in run the economic spectrum. As you probably know, my husband travels extensively and is gone out of the country for months at a time. I'm here with my two boys in this old house where something is constantly breaking down. How do I do it? Well, I have a great support system, my friends and neighbors. I'm not saying we don't have our problems here, but high crime is not one of them.

I think of a comment my brother made years ago. He lives in Chicago. We were driving down the road in our (rural) hometown and we passed by the government subsidized housing. My brother said, "You know if my car broke down in the projects in Chicago, someone would probably come out and rob me. If my car broke down right here, someone would probably come out and help me change my tire." I think that pretty much sums it up.

You have also made comments that guns are more dangerous than drugs. I strongly disagree with that. I've seen more lives ruined by drugs than by guns. I'm much more worried about my boys getting involved with drugs than I am them going out on a hunting trip. Hunting accidents are very rare. If they get involved with Meth or Crack, their lives are pretty much destroyed. The incidents of that happening are much more common than a kid getting accidentally shot by a gun.

This difference in culture ought to be very important to the gun control discussions. The amount of gun control required and beneficial is different in rural areas than in the cities. The temptation is to try to find a one size fits all set of gun laws which works equally well in urban and rural areas. Not so easy. What is needed is very different.

Yet the laws are written at the federal and state level. It would be very difficult to legislate something that would keep everyone happy. One might consider allowing cities to write local ordinances, but if folk can just drive a little bit to get weapons and ammunition this wouldn't be overly effective.

Thus, I would expect rural people to continue to advocate for laws that work for and are appropriate for a rural environment, while the city dwellers advocate for laws that would work in their environment. I can hardly blame either group for this.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/c...2cf98426e.html

ST. LOUIS • Lowell Aughenbaugh was polite during his brief appearance Wednesday in U.S. District Court in St. Louis.
"Yes, sir," "No, sir," "Correct, your honor," he said, while waiving his right to a pretrial hearing.
With a trim haircut, fit figure and thick, black-rimmed glasses, his neat appearance belied his reason for being there.
Aughenbaugh, 48, is scheduled to go to trial March 2 on charges that involve threatening to kill his wife and three children and blow up the Police Department in Rolla, Mo., where his estranged wife was staying.
Aughenbaugh allegedly made the threats in a Dec. 31, 2009, phone call to his 23-year-old son and to his wife, who was divorcing him. He also faces multiple charges of manufacturing and possessing weapons illegally and making threats across state lines.
Court documents and testimony paint a portrait of a ticking time bomb.
Federal agents say the Rolla native believed he was part of a sleeper cell militia and bought up manuals on guerrilla warfare and military explosives. At his father-in-law's Rolla home and in two nearby storage units, federal agents say, Aughenbaugh kept drums of rice and water and survival gear such as flak jackets, ready-to-eat meals and a shirt that read "Sheriff's Department." Agents also say Aughenbaugh had the makings of a pipe bomb, 300,000 rounds of ammunition and 150 assorted guns — 15 of which were fully-automatic.
At the home in the northeastern Illinois town of Odell where Aughenbaugh lived with his wife, agents say they found knives stabbed into walls, masks and lingerie strewn about, and a note on the window that read, "If you come in, this is a warning I will know who you are."
Aughenbaugh, who was arrested on local charges in January 2010, was released from the Phelps County, Mo., jail on a $100,000 bond.
Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives filed a criminal complaint in federal court in St. Louis the next month. But when they went to arrest Aughenbaugh at the waste oil-refinery plant he owns in McCook, Ill., a west Chicago suburb, the case got stranger.
Agents say Aughenbaugh forced them into a 12-hour standoff that involved megaphones, robots, tear gas and a fire hose. The standoff ended when agents cut a hole through the wall of the on-site apartment where he was holed up.
He told agents the standoff had been "fun" and allowed him to catch up on sleep, according to court filings. He added that the standoff gave him an opportunity to recruit more members to his militia, which he said was needed in case of an invasion by Canada. He has been held since the standoff.
Aughenbaugh's defense attorney, Adam Fein, declined to comment on the case. But in a detention hearing in March, he noted that most of the weapons — and in particular, the fully-automatics — were stored at the father-in-law's home or in a storage unit that Aughenbaugh's 23-year-old son rented. Federal agents said the son rented the unit for his father and the now ex-wife purchased many of the guns because Aughenbaugh's Illinois firearms identification card had been revoked.
Fein also suggested during the detention hearing that Aughenbaugh's wife was having an affair and had financial motivation to lie given the divorce and the $6 million value of Aughenbaugh's business. He said the reason it "took some time" for Aughenbaugh to surrender was his fear that federal agents would shoot him.
Prior to the January 2010 arrest, Aughenbaugh had been convicted on misdemeanor charges of stealing, domestic assault, damaging property and illegal firearms use.
In ordering in March that Aughenbaugh be held until trial, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Ann Medler pointed to his criminal history and the "clear and convincing evidence that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the community if the defendant is admitted to bail."
She wrote: "A $300,000 bank clip was found in the defendant's car; he was prepared for survival (in) ... the woods; he threatened those who came after him. He left a 'warning' in his former residence and stabbed knives into the doors and walls. Defendant's 12-hour standoff cannot be seriously referred to as 'taking time to come out.'"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41046787...orld_business/

On Saturday in Tucson, Jared Lee Loughner allegedly used a Glock 19 — a lightweight, $500 semi-automatic commonly carried by law enforcement officials — to kill six people and injure 13 more, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. In 2007, Cho Seung-Hui used the same gun, along with a Walther P22, to kill 32 people at Virginia Tech before committing suicide. And Giffords herself boasted to the New York Times in 2010: "I have a Glock 9 millimeter, and I'm a pretty good shot."
For a company that has been doing business in the United States for only a quarter century — one of its competitors has been in business in America since 1852 — Glock has been remarkably successful. Glock declines to provide specific sales figures, but the company is the leader in handgun sales to American police departments — indeed, a whopping 65 percent of them use Glock guns. On top of that, it has considerable global sales and remains popular with the private citizens who buy most of the guns in the United States.
The Austrian manufacturing company was founded in the 1960s and expanded into the weapons business in the '70s and '80s. In 1986, led by the enigmatic Gaston Glock, the company won the right to start selling its guns in the United States. (The United States has rigid regulatory requirements for gun makers and sellers.) At first, the Glock guns, initially designed for the Austrian military, caught on in police departments. There were two main selling points, according to Patrick Sweeney's The Gun Digest Book of the Glock. First, Glock manufactured — and still manufactures — unusually light guns, made out of plastic and other synthetic materials as well as metal. That makes them easy to carry, manipulate, and shoot.
Second, and more important, Glocks held more ammunition than the standard-issue guns usually did at the time. With gang-driven gun violence rising, police departments decided to give the guns with the extra rounds a try. They caught on and then gained popularity in the consumer markets. (They also developed a particular cachet among criminals, then broader cultural recognition, including numerous citations in rap lyrics.) By 1996, Sweeney writes, Glock had sold more than 1 million guns in America.
As Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported in an excellent 2009 story on Glock, the company's success might also be due to some questionable business practices. The company has come under fire, in a manner of speaking, for making secret political contributions. It has also been accused of dodging taxes and regulations through shell corporations. (Because the company is based in Europe and is privately held, it does not need to disclose nearly as much sales or legal information as a public U.S. company.) Corporate intrigue and violence are part of the picture, too. Gaston Glock's former business associate, a man occasionally known as "Panama Charly," is currently incarcerated in Luxembourg, convicted of taking out a hit on his boss in 1999. (The hitman was a former professional wrestler and, bizarrely, the attempt came not with a handgun but with a large rubber mallet to the head. Glock survived.)
Still, Glock remains a main player in U.S. gun sales, and the Glock 19 popular. The company boasts that it is "safe and ingeniously simple: Contrary to conventional, the trigger is the only operating element. All three pistol safeties are deactivated when the trigger is pulled and automatically activated when it is released." Thus, it is quick to shoot — and can shoot a lot. Loughner, for one, reportedly used an extended magazine carrying 31 rounds. (Congress outlawed such magazines in 1994, but let the ban lapse in 2004.)
So will the incident dampen sales of the Glock guns? Unlikely. In fact, Bloomberg cites Federal Bureau of Investigation data showing that in Arizona, one-day gun sales were 60 percent higher on Monday than on the Monday before the incident. Several other states showed a significant sales bump. And national sales increased about 5 percent. All in all, Americans—not military or police, mind you, but private citizens—own more than 270 million firearms, about 85 guns per 100 people. No other country has such high rates of gun ownership, or absolute numbers of guns in the general population.
So how profitable are companies like Glock? Again, we don't know, because it keeps such information private. But the BusinessWeek story says Glock estimated its "profit margin per pistol" at 68 percent. And consider a major Glock competitor: Massachusetts-based Smith & Wesson, established back in the 1850s. The company's last annual report cites a gross margin of 32 percent.
The company does cite two big hurdles to business, though. The first: federal and state laws. "Compliance with all of these regulations is costly and time consuming," the company writes. "Although we take every measure to ensure compliance with the many regulations we are subject to, inadvertent violation of any of these regulations could cause us to incur fines and penalties." The second: lawsuits. "We are currently involved in numerous lawsuits, including a law suit involving a municipality, a securities class action lawsuit, and two purported stockholder derivative lawsuits," it notes, dryly. That seriously cuts into the bottom line.
Still, the business looks OK as long as demand remains high. And despite (or because of) tragedies like last weekend's in Tucson, Americans aren't likely to end their love affair with their guns—all 270 million of them.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Here's a well-informed anti-hunting argument, I think?
HOW DEER HUNTING INCREASES THE RATE OF DEER STARVATION

I'm not terrily sure about that one, Rani. Really, most of the arguments boil down to hunters not taking the right kinds of deer, leading to more deer of the wrong kinds being born than would have been. Realistically, though, while hunting may be inferior to some sort of more optimal killing-program (and in that respect, may "increase" rates of deer starvation over what 'would have been', under they hypothetical counterfactual), it's pretty clear that a no-killing regime would just make the complaints in that article worse.

So what we have is: No hunting ---worsethan---> Hunting ---worsethan---> Hypothetical kill-program.

And then the ideology of the group writing the results up leaves out everything but the "Hunting ---worsethan--->" and treats that as if it were a conclusion.

(the only real exception to that is their point 8. Although it assumes that deer hunting and deer-predator hunting are completely separate matters. They're not. One happens when the other happens, except in areas that don't allow deer hunting. So stopping hunting deer is just a way to make things worse here, too.)

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

I agree with my fellow DK--"befriend" would have done just fine, and would have had the additional advantage of being English.

Except that "befriend" has a different meaning from "friend". The former is significantly more personal and involved, whereas the latter is much less so. I'd argue that the words existing in English to describe levels of closeness and acquaintance were only adequate to describe the full scope of possible human interactions prior to the invention of this new interaction-regime that we're using right this second. New modes of interaction are encountered, therefore new words must come about.

One of the nice things about English (hell, about any language without an Academie keeping it ossified) is that people are able to continue to precisely express with it pretty much any new thing that arises. When one encounters an unfamiliar word, therefore, one's first reaction should not be to reject the word, but to consider whether the word simply means a thing which he has not yet encountered (or at least, not tried to precisely communicate).

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...ds_108521.html

Philip Roth wrote that these murders "transport" the victims out of the "longed-for American pastoral" and "into the fury, the violence, and the desperation of the counterpastoral--into the indigenous American berserk."
Americans are not a uniquely violent people. We suffer crime rates that are similar to those of other wealthy nations. But American violence is uniquely deadly.

Harvard's David Hemenway and UCLA doctorial student Erin Richardson studied 23 wealthy nations. The United States had one-third the total population but accounted for eight in 10 firearm deaths.
"Everyday the United States has lots more accidents with guns, murders with guns. Thus it's not crazy that we have these massacres," said Hemenway, who directs the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. "Every country has crazy people; we just give them easy access to firearms."
This is the armed American berserk. He murdered 32 at Virginia Tech in 2007. He killed five at a Minnesota Amish school the year before. He killed at Columbine in Colorado, and the myriad school shootings that echoed it. Older Americans recollect tragedies of earlier eras, the Austin rifleman who killed more than a dozen in 1966.
We met the same killer Saturday in Arizona. Six dead. A dozen others shot. The apparent target, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, fights for her life in a hospital bed.
Political assassinations are uniquely jarring. A singular nobody strikes down a powerful somebody. They confine democracy. More security follows and with it, a higher wall between elected representatives and citizens.
The Arizona shooting reminds us of a half-century of political assassins. Most of these men lacked any coherent political motive--recall the shooter of Bobby Kennedy, George Wallace and Ronald Reagan. We still debate Lee Harvey Oswald's sanity and cause.
"Can there be any American of our century who, having failed to gain stature while he was alive, now haunts us more?" Norman Mailer wrote of Oswald. Some version of Oswald's ghost forever haunts us: the lone-disturbed gunman we now see in Jared Loughner. Sociologists fail to explain these gunmen, while political pundits foolishly try. In a nation so large, one crazed man changes American politics. It's inexplicable and yet familiar. We've watched this American berserk in films from "Taxi Driver" to "In the Line of Fire." But we rarely consider the hard question: what is uniquely American about this berserk?
"We don't seem to have more crime, when you look at the crime victimization rates compared to high-income countries, except for gun crime," Harvard's Hemenway said.
RealClearPolitics analyzed the most recent United Nation's data to better understand American violence. The assault rate in Scotland, England, Australia and Germany is more than twice the US-assault rate, at times far more. Yet the US-murder rate is at least four times the rate of these developed nations. America's murder rate ranks 53 among 153 nations. No other developed nation ranks within the top half. The comparison between assault and murder rates is rough; an assault is not always reported or discovered. Both rates are however based on criminal justice sources from 2003 to 2008. And the comparison, for all its imperfections, captures an important fact: Americans are not exceptional for their violence but exceptional for their extreme violence--murder.
American violence has known far worse days. In 2008, the national homicide rate reached its lowest level since 1965. But there are still about 12,000 gun related murders annually. Guns are involved in two-thirds of American homicides. The US firearm-murder rate ranks among third-world countries. It's about ten times the rate of Western European nations like Germany.
But guns are not the entire story. People kill people, as the gun lobby line goes. All Swiss able-bodied young men are required to have a government-issued rifle at home. Switzerland has no standing army, only a militia. It has known firearm tragedy; a gunman killed 14 people there in 2001. Yet the Swiss homicide rate remains significantly below England's and roughly equivalent to Germany's, two nations with far fewer guns per capita. The US murder rate is about seven times that of Switzerland, despite broadly comparable gun ownership and recreational gun culture. Swiss public arms are however largely rifles. It has a small population (equal to New York City's). It's homogenous, stable and has a robust social safety net. It also appears to generally struggle with violence less than the United States. The Swiss assault rate is half the US rate.
Experts agree, regardless, that guns don't solely explain the American homicide rate. But they disagree over what else does. Some experts note that this nation was born in revolution. Yet France's revolution was far more violent. America's violent past is surpassed by the history of other developed nations (see Germany). The cowboy psyche is uniquely American, but Argentina and Australia have similar history and lore. We have a vast wealth gap. But destitution is not destiny. Poverty has increased with the recession, even as crime has declined.
What we do have is a Second Amendment. Guns represented the last recourse of American democracy. Many Americans hold tightly to that original belief. Democrats have learned the hard way that gun control is a losing issue in American politics.
Loughner used a Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol with a high ammunition magazine, enabling him to fire about 30 bullets in seconds. That magazine was illegal until 2004. The will be discussion, perhaps public policy, concern keeping troubled individuals from arming themselves. There was after Virginia Tech. But that's likely the limit of viable policy recourse. Public support for gun control is at its lowest point in decades. Even the Columbine massacre, according to Gallup, only led to a fleeting uptick in support for stricter gun laws.
There is an unspoken willingness to tolerate our share of murders. American hyper-capitalism makes a similar tradeoff. We subscribe to social Darwinism to a degree unseen in Western Europe. It's one reason our economy is the fittest. But it also explains why the wealthiest nation in the world has a weaker social safety net than other developed countries. The conservative equation of freedom: lower taxes and fewer regulations on guns, equals more freedom. Liberals adhere to their own zealous formulation of American freedom. The left has won more civil rights for the mentally ill, but those rights will sometimes risk the public's welfare. It's this most-American value that Jonathan Franzen explores, within the ordinariness of middle class daily life, in his recent novel "Freedom."
The National Rifle Association has long understood that guns are best defended as tools of that value. It ran a multi-million dollar ad campaign to defeat Al Gore in the 2000 election. NRA billboards read: "Vote Freedom!"
As Franzen wrote in his novel, "The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage." The Arizona tragedy is not an inevitable consequence of freedom. But the nation has accepted its American berserks as one of the prices of that freedom.

Originally Posted by David Krein

Sean, thanks for this - 'Common parlance on Facebook. "To Friend": to make/accept a "Friend Request". Just stayin' hip.' I take great pleasure, albeit a perverse one, in saying I did not know this. Befriend is a perfectly good word and does not sound as ugly. Using friend as a verb doesn't taste quite right to me, so I chose not to be hip (although, at my age, that word is usually used in conjunction with replacement).

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

I agree with my fellow DK--"befriend" would have done just fine, and would have had the additional advantage of being English. But as all the posters on my ignore list will tell you, I'm just one of those leftist totalitarian grammar Nazis.

Yes, "befriend" is an existing, acceptable word. But two things -- first, as strange as this may sound, many on Facebook request/accept "friend" status from acquaintances. The person "friended" may not actually be a "friend" or made a "friend" in the usual sense, thus not "befriended"; rather the act was, strictly speaking, a matter of using the "friend" function.

Second, whether right or wrong in some other context, that is just the term used on Facebook. To use "befriend" would sound either condescendingly pedantic (and therefore anti-social) or just plain weird.

Language evolves my friends. Someday I may be irked when some young whippersnapper pronounces "tute" instead of "dude" (perhaps following Grimm's Law or something)- which may be all the rage among Homelanders c. 2030 (as a hypothetical example).

FWIW.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Except that "befriend" has a different meaning from "friend". The former is significantly more personal and involved, whereas the latter is much less so. I'd argue that the words existing in English to describe levels of closeness and acquaintance were only adequate to describe the full scope of possible human interactions prior to the invention of this new interaction-regime that we're using right this second. New modes of interaction are encountered, therefore new words must come about.

One of the nice things about English (hell, about any language without an Academie keeping it ossified) is that people are able to continue to precisely express with it pretty much any new thing that arises. When one encounters an unfamiliar word, therefore, one's first reaction should not be to reject the word, but to consider whether the word simply means a thing which he has not yet encountered (or at least, not tried to precisely communicate).

I missed this.

And what Justin said.

Originally Posted by Zarathustra

I missed this.

And what Justin said.

Great minds and all that, tute...

Originally Posted by Poodle

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...ds_108521.html

Thanks for the article Wally.

Do you believe our gun culture accounts for our high homicide rate?

http://wallysdoghouse.blogspot.com/2...-and-guns.html

Originally Posted by Zarathustra

Thanks for the article Wally.

Do you believe our gun culture accounts for our high homicide rate?

We've got a culture where it is difficult to admit failure, or back down without loss of face (borderer warrior culture/Born Fighting). This is also why everyone must demonstrate religiosity.

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

I could see how you may like or dislike the content of the article if you believe that Political Ideology is only Us or Them, and that to be against Us, equates to supporting Them.

Are all Political ideologies so cut-and-dried? The author even tried to throw-in the Conservative/Liberal Paradigm.

There were two lines that I liked, though:

"How the hell are we supposed to point out the problem if we can't mention the issue for fear of being charged with political exploitation?"

"Or are we not supposed to make the most obvious points so that we don't offend the other political side's delicate sensibilities?"

They are both very valid IMO.

Can you put yourself in the POV of the other Side?
Can you put yourself in the POV outside of both Sides?

PoC67

PS:"How the hell are we supposed to point out the problem if we can't mention the issue for fear of being labeled a ________?"

These may have been valid questions and may have raised some sense of guilt and self-examination as you so obviously intend, but that would be a long long time ago. Long before my recognition that the other side has been totally consumed and now driven by a value system model after a sociopath -
http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/s...postcount=1744

A very small percent of the people that hold these values do so fully aware, and with glee, as they strip not only the wealth but the spirit from this country. However, the vast majority who hold these values do so in a deep semi-conscious state as being the primary cultural meme ("greed is good") that they have heard for most, if not all of their entire lives. They are the sociopaths' true sheeple.

For them, it is first a motivation to "just keep going - not be a loser" as they desperately cling to the hope of a obtaining or continuing a middle class existence in a world increasingly made nasty by the gleeful sociopathic 'supermen' on top. But they also cling to it as their defensive rationale to justify the necessity of their own mini-me superman nastiness that they have most-assuredly injected into the world as they struggle in their pitiful lives.

While never so with the gleeful small percent of the sociopaths on the top, I do on occasion take pity on the majority of mini-me wannabe Randian 'supermen' (and women) - whether practicing Social Darwinians, nihilists, or just the morally complacent - I understand how they got there. However, I'm pissed that they remain there at the detriment to not only their own lives but to our country. Tough love is what is required - hopefully rhetorically blasting them out of their lethargy to begin to really examine the stupidity of wanting to be a caricature of a true sociopath.

What I have really grown tired of, however, are the enablers of these wannabe sociopaths. Folks that don't hold these sociopathic desires, but really believe that all one needs to do is to hear them out, join hands and reason together - that, well, gawl-darnit there just may be a nugget or two of wisdom to be gain from sociopathic thought if you just be nice to 'em.

-- don't think so.

Originally Posted by Zarathustra

Yes, "befriend" is an existing, acceptable word. But two things -- first, as strange as this may sound, many on Facebook request/accept "friend" status from acquaintances. The person "friended" may not actually be a "friend" or made a "friend" in the usual sense, thus not "befriended"; rather the act was, strictly speaking, a matter of using the "friend" function.

Second, whether right or wrong in some other context, that is just the term used on Facebook. To use "befriend" would sound either condescendingly pedantic (and therefore anti-social) or just plain weird.

Language evolves my friends. Someday I may be irked when some young whippersnapper pronounces "tute" instead of "dude" (perhaps following Grimm's Law or something)- which may be all the rage among Homelanders c. 2030 (as a hypothetical example).

FWIW.

It's the same way "microwave" became a verb after the introduction of microwave ovens.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I would like to think you are right, there. To a great extent I think you are. As deeply partisan as we are on these forums, one can find evidence of similar partisanship in other places. The disgust at both political parties by more and more people seems to be mounting. I also believe that The People will continue voting whatever party is more or less in power out of power so long as the vague 'something is horribly wrong' feeling persists.

People are aware that the system is broken. What we haven't got is an articulate advocate with fixes that can attract enough followers to matter. Said individual or group has to care more about America and the people who vote than power or money or becoming part of the elite.

I don't care at all for the Tea Party's policies. I don't care for the aspect of the Tea Party that hints at violence. I don't care for the aspect of the Tea Party that wants to cut taxes more than it wants to balance budgets.

But the anger at Washington I can entirely appreciate. I sense a similar anger among my liberal friends, on line and off. It is getting rather obvious that there is a need for a Hercules to come along and clean the stables.

But there is no common vision for what ought to replace that which needs to be torn down.

Very well said, Bob. I think the bolded part is why so many long for a "grey champion" type. Someone who comes in, claims 'enough is enough' and then establishes a path most can follow. We're desperate for such a leader, at this point.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

It's the same way "microwave" became a verb after the introduction of microwave ovens.

Pretty much.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

It's the same way "microwave" became a verb after the introduction of microwave ovens.

Or "Xerox" for photocopy.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

It's the same way "microwave" became a verb after the introduction of microwave ovens.

Oooohhh.. Good one.

---

-edit-
You too, Jenny.

Originally Posted by Odin

My God, Eric, have you no clue what authoritarian ***holes many cops are?

Odin, I am afraid that you left out the corrupt and self-serving. I lived in a town where the cops were the drug dealers. I avoid interacting with law enforcement because no good will come of it.