Do you believe?

Do you believe that blacks are more frequently killed by police than whites?

Police brutality and violence against minorities has become a topic of almost constant discussion. Most often reduced to the binary of black and white. No one seems to care much about police behavior toward Hispanics (it’s just assumed that they’re equally as barbaric in their actions), and Asians interact so infrequently with the police that there are no usable statistics. So we’re binary then, black and white.

And so the question remains: Do you believe that blacks are more frequently killed by police than whites? And the answer is: Of course you do. You believe it because it’s all over the news. You believe it for the same reason that you believe that 97% of scientists believe that human activity is the cause of “climate change” and that the result will be catastrophic. You believe it for the same reason that you believe that women make seventy seven cents for every dollar that a man makes. You believe it for the same reason that you believe that the “gun show loophole” or “on line” gun purchases allow terrorists to buy guns with no background checks. For the same reason you think the use of “black rifles” is driving the crime rate up. You believe it because there are people who have a vested interest in you believing it and the news media is on their side.

Joseph Goebbels, the noted NAZI propagandist and quotarian said this: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” So, the secret, passed on to us by a very experienced and successful shaper of public opinion, is to tell a “BIG LIE” and “TELL IT OFTEN”.

So what has Joseph Goebbels to do with potentially race related shootings in the 21st Century? It’s about the lie. The BIG lie. The OFT REPEATED big lie.

Recently Roland G. Fryer, Jr, a Harvard economist (economists are well known for collecting, analyzing, and explaining statistics) published a paper in the Journal Of Political Economy (June 2019, volume 127 number 3)titled “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force (a pdf can be had here: in the abstract it was stated that:

“On the most extreme use of force – officer involved shootings we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings.”

In an essay titled “When Arrests Go Bad”, Willis Eschenbach, using information compiled by the Washington Post also shows that there is no racial bias in police shootings, but what we have come to be informed by are uninvestigated press reports and dramatic cell phone video.

Immediately after the incident we were told by Dorian Johnson (Brown’s companion) that Michael Brown was a gentle person who would never hurt anyone and that he died on his knees,hands up, begging for his life at the feet of a murderous racist police officer. The Black Lives Matter movement was born. Professional athletes politicians, and celebrities of all kinds hitched their wagons to the story and even Eric Holder's Department of Justice took a seat at the table to make sure that things turned out the way they “should”. Justice for Michael Brown would surely be done. It was almost foregone. There was an eye witness standing right there. Only after weeks of other, contradictory eye witness testimony and an analysis of all of the forensic evidence, the Grand Jury determined that there wasn’t probable cause to believe that Officer Darren Wilson had committed a crime in the shooting, and the Justice Department didn’t see enough evidence of a civil rights violation to bring an action against the officer.

And yet you still hear athletes, celebrities, politicians, academics and their students putting forward the lie that Michael Brown was murdered by a police officer. With the facts in hand, the best, people you had respected as voices of moderation in the past will say “we may never know what really happened”. The worst will tell you that the facts of the case don’t matter, and call you a racist white supremacist for believing that anything other than a brutal murder took place, that brutal murders of minorities just like it are epidemic all over the country. Politicians, race hustlers, and news media feed that lie for their own personal gain.

In a recent column, Thomas Sowell, another well-known economist and social commentator wrote:

“Black votes matter to many politicians — more so than black lives. That is why such politicians must try to keep black voters fearful, angry and resentful. Racial harmony would be a political disaster for such politicians.
Racial polarization makes both the black population and the white population worse off, but it makes politicians who depend on black votes better off.
Hillary Clinton desperately needs black votes in this year’s close election. Promoting fear, anger and resentments among blacks — and, if possible, paranoia — serves her political interest. Barack Obama has mastered the art of keeping black voters aroused while keeping white voters soothed — thanks in part to the gullibility of much of the public, who mistake geniality and glib rhetoric for honesty and good will.
Obama has repeatedly put the weight and prestige of the presidency on the side of those who denounce the police before any facts are verified — and even after facts have come out, exposing the fraudulence of such claims as the claim that the “gentle giant” Michael Brown said, “Hands up, don’t shoot.”
When a career race hustler like Al Sharpton, with a history of hoaxes, is a regular visitor and adviser to the White House, that is a reality that whites and blacks alike ignore at their peril.”

We have, in this country today, cultural problems, many if not all of which were brought about or facilitated by the experimental socioeconomic policies instituted a half century ago by a mixture or well-meaning and cynical politicians. The minority community is in a shambles but lying about the men and women who have sworn to try and protect us isn’t helping.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.

IT's A BAD IDEA

All of this nonsense started sixty years or more ago. First came the idea that little boys needed to be feminized to keep them from growing into brutish louts. I never thought of my parents as being particularly trendy, but none the less they bought me a doll, a little farmer doll with blond hair and blue bib overalls, so that I could explore my nurturing side. I guess my cursing and beating my older sister WAS getting a little out of hand. In any case I suppose they wanted to give me at least the chance to grow into a normal genteel person. It seems as though I may have fooled them.

Then in the early to mid-60s you started to read that there was really no difference at all between boys and girls, that any apparent differences were simply a matter of socialization. Never mind the fact that boys eventually grew up to have broad shoulders, beards and penises while women seemed to almost always prefer broader hips and vaginas. I’m still a little bit amazed that people didn’t put their feet down and call this out as the hogwash that it was. I suppose it was easier to ignore the evolutionary niche that each sex had developed over millions of years to occupy than to struggle against the pipe smoking intellectual elites. After all, one doesn’t want to actually seek out situations where one can be mocked for being uneducated and made to look foolish for the offense of pointing out the obvious. It happens often enough as it is.

And later came the studies that showed that when confronted with a seemingly insurmountable barrier that small boys were more apt to seek a way over, around or through while young girls were more apt to stand at the barrier and cry for help, or if in groups to have a meeting and discuss a course of action. This was presented as evidence of the difference between boys and girls and men and women. It was used to illustrate women’s superior reasoning abilities. I always just let it go, because my doll had helped me to be genteel.

Then the “Women’s” movement seemed to overtake all rational discussion. Soon women could do anything men could do, which of course they can’t, not because of any mental short coming, but because of the size of their muscles and bones. Men and women have evolved over millions of years to perform different functions. This is an undeniable statement. Men evolved to hunt, fight, protect, and move furniture for their former spouses, women to gather, make the nest, and to care for the children. It’s evident in the way our brains are wired.

Now, in our modern world (try not to use clichés), where we are not so far removed time wise from our evolutionary predecessors as we might like to think, of course women can do most of the things that men are required daily to do. Even men have it pretty easy these days. There are professions of course where very few women are physically up to the task. And studies have shown time and time again that women have a tendency to choose jobs that allow them more time to nest build and care for children.

Which brings me back around to current events. The United States Senate, apparently, has approved a defense appropriations bill that includes an amendment that will require women, of a certain age, to register with the selective service which would expose them to military conscription should it ever come to that. This, of course, is the direct result of the Obama administration’s pushing for all military roles to be opened to women which has been pushed by women’s rights groups in the name of fairness and equality.

Perhaps the hardest, the most physically and mentally demanding of all professions is being a combat soldier. Can some women do this job? Certainly, but precious few. Are there women who WANT to do this job? Again, certainly, but precious few and it seems like most of those are mostly concerned with requirements that they serve in combat units in order to advance their careers. Should they be allowed to serve, and to advance? The knee jerk reaction is that it seems unfair not to allow it. But the result is this: If the military draft is ever reinstated, there can be no choice. The names become numbers and the numbers are used to fill military units. And it’s a hard fact that a combat company composed of 50% women cannot be as effective as one composed of all men. It’s like claiming that an average man and an average woman can lift together as much weight as two average men. It has nothing to do with desire, or dedication. It all comes down to the fact that boys grow up to be bigger and physically stronger than do girls.

Selective service registration for women is a bad idea that grew out of flawed thought processes 60 years ago, and that train has already left the station. May as well sit back, rest easy, and wait for the bad things to start happening.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.

Outrage At Correctness

We have once again had our constitutionally guaranteed rights to free speech limited by political correctness. We mustn't say anything that would offend ANYONE. Our children play in sports leagues where there are no winners or losers and go to school where there are no grades lest we damage their little psyches with reality. Our award shows no longer have winners, only recipients lest the people who entertain us think that they are less beloved than some other. People who are in the country in violation of the law are no longer illegal aliens, but must be referred to as "undocumented persons" so as not to stigmatize them. And now.... now we are being told that we may no longer refer to convicted criminals as convicted criminals, we must now refer to them as “justice involved individuals”.

A nation of 300 million people has been required again and again to give up bits of our guaranteed freedoms in exchange for what? What do we get for a "cooler", more compassionate tone in our political discussions, one where no one is "whipped up" by language? I can tell you what we get: We get a 20 TRILLION dollar national debt; we get an ever expanding and unaffordable entitlement society; we get an America that is neither a trusted ally nor a feared enemy in the world community; we get an America that finances and facilitates the United Nations and it's globalist shenanigans, and we get an America where the disregard for the rule of law is accepted with a resigned nod because we don't want to offend anyone with an argument or to appear (rightly or wrongly) to be bigoted, xenophobic, transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic, or racist in any way. We also get a slowly growing sense of frustration and powerlessness to effect the insanity which leaves us vulnerable to demagoguery of all sorts. Well I call "Bullshit!!" This is Bullshit, and I'm not having any thanks just the same.

President Barack Obama used warm, glowing rhetoric and spoke of the "forces" that divide and unite us. Bullshit! What separates us whether most people understand it or not is the ideological divide between Federalists and Progressives. Federalists are FOR the Constitution and a smaller government with limited power OF, BY, and FOR the people. Progressives favor an all-powerful government OF the people BY the educated elite. As early as 1838 Abraham Lincoln complained about what he called "the silent artillery of time" destroying the pillars of the temple of liberty and called for a reverence for the Constitution. Its progressive detractors claim, and have for over 150 years, that it's an antique, a quaint historical document that has little bearing on the events of the current day. But the beauty of the Constitution is that it was designed for change and adaptation, but that change is not easy. It was designed to be the foundation and framework of a government BY the people and changes have to be approved both at the federal and state levels. The people have to WANT the change. But the people are not smart. Not educated. Not enlightened and so we don't change the constitution. We don't change what were agreed to as the rules at the beginning, we don't add to the official rules in the agreed to manner. Instead, men and women in expensive suits with expensive educations meet behind closed doors and speak in amicable terms, change the meanings of the words, then explain to use “what the founders REALLY meant”, and decide for us what the new rules will be. I call Bullshit!!

Federalists want to conserve, refurbish and reaffirm our constitutional form of government. Progressives by definition want to move away from that. ANY compromise with Progressives means that a little of the birthright of our freedom has been sacrificed.

But that's just what an average guy thinks.

Personalizing The Costs Of Gun Violence

So I remember some discussion a while back where someone was accusing someone else of wanting to privatize gains while socializing risks. I’m pretty sure it was about banks, but it holds for what I was thinking about recently.

A lot of the discussion lately has been of gun violence, and how to stop it. Chicago is often held up as a good example of how very restrictive gun laws don’t have their intended effect. Of course progressive control minded types like to say that the guns are coming in from out of state, which I suppose they must be, but I have to wonder: since it’s so much easier to buy guns in other states, why isn’t the murder rate high there? Why isn’t the gun homicide rate universally high? Why is it only in the large metro areas? Gangs? Drugs? Gangsta Rap? Welfare mentality? Single moms? Absent dads? Chem trails? Who knows, but here we are. We don’t know why it happens, but the statistical proof is almost beyond denying that the more you restrict lawful gun ownership (which is the only gun ownership that you CAN restrict) the more helpless common citizens are. Criminals may be dumb, but on the whole, they know how and when to exploit an advantage.

The framers of the Constitution, which is the blueprint for our government, the authors of our very way of life, were distrustful governmental power, some of them so much so that that they insisted on the inclusion of the first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights) so as to make it very clear what the rights of citizens were and what the government could not take away unless the citizenry got together and OFFICIALLY took a right away from themselves. The 18th amendment is a perfect example of this procedure. 1) Stern, bossy woman gets people all riled up. 2) Convinces them that they themselves are not to be trusted. 3) Convinces them to amend the Constitution and deny themselves the right to self determination. 4) People sober up and realize they made a terrible mistake. 5) They again amend the Constitution reinstating the very right that they had taken from themselves previously. It’s not hard to do. But it’s like the Hokey Pokey….. there are rules. There’s a procedure. You just can’t start shaking your right hand all about. There’s an order of operations that has to be followed.

So what do we do about gun violence? There ARE laws but certain types of people (criminals mainly) don’t seem to be obeying them. So let’s use speeding as an example. What works there? Let’s say there’s a stretch of road and the speed limit on that road is…… oh, say 70 mph. But a certain percentage of the people don’t want to drive 70, they want to drive 80. Does it make sense to change the speed limit to 60 mph? The same bunch of people are still going to want to drive 80, so the only people really effected are the law abiders. Okay change the speed limit to 50 miles per hour. But the 80 club is still going to be prone to drive 80 and the rest of the people have now become law breakers because they don’t want to and won’t drive 50.

So the question is: why don’t we simply enforce the laws we already have on the books? Or strengthen them? Increase the fines for speeding to the point where the 80s club just can’t justify the risk or the cost of the fines any longer?

It’s the same with guns. By not adequately enforcing, or strengthening current gun laws, the government and the courts are subsidizing gun violence, and in so doing are socializing the costs of that criminal behavior when what they should be doing is PERSONALIZING the costs. Instead of illegally restricting rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment they should be strengthening and enforcing gun laws to the point where criminals would know, and FEEL the true cost. “Use a gun to commit a crime, go to jail for a long time”. “Do it again and you’ll live to wish you hadn’t”. And of course then you have to make prison a place to be avoided with some earnestness. Difficult, but doable.

And of course you can’t stop crazy. About the first time someone drives through a fence wreaks havoc on a crowded playground there’ll be an attempt to outlaw four wheel drive trucks because no responsible driver really needs one.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.