Category Archives: History

War is cruelty

Posted on November 11, 2015 | 1 comment

I look at the case of Ensign Wesley Frank Osmus and wonder if Americans would ever be forgiven, as the Japanese have been, for doing something like that to a POW.

Then I think of the Rainbow Division’s encounter with the SS guards at Dachau, promptly lining them up against a stone wall and executing them after discovery of the dead stacked like cord-wood and the emaciated, yet surviving, slave laborers in the Nazi’s oldest concentration camp. Outside the Nazi Party’s original stomping ground of Munich. My Dallas cousin Jerry Stover helped liberate Dachau, but if he participated in the executions I never heard about it.

Not precisely equivalent, of course, but similar. My Lai more to your taste? Wounded Knee? My atrocity more profound than yours, theirs, etc.? The head-choppers of ISIS? The RF-PFs I advised in the second half of 1969 routinely executing NVA prisoners? Complained about it; nothing was ever done.

Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman:  “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.”

1 Comment

Posted in History, The Culture, Troops, Viet Nam

Tagged

At Mizzou it’s all about powah

Posted on November 11, 2015 | 8 comments

The protesters have it. The powah. Temporarily at least. Having ousted a university president. And they intend to hang onto it and remake the University of Missouri into Ferguson II.

A few local sportwriters I generally respect and one I consider a friend have written in support of the mostly-black Mizzou football team’s boycott threats, but I doubt even they won’t feel the need to retreat if this thing keeps getting out of hand.

Whatever the protesters believe, this ain’t the 1960s. That was so 45 years ago. And penny-ante bad words and possible hoaxes aren’t going to turn anyone into their allies forever. Even powah is fleeting. Ask any politician who’s ever had it for a while.

But, really, none of this is surprising. The American university died long ago. Done in by political correctness, micro-aggressions, and, increasingly, full-bore anti-Semitism.

UPDATE:  Tennessee law prof Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, would raise the voting age to 25. I’d go for thirty, except for those in military service who could vote at 18.

MORE:  Then they threw another tantrum when the Paris massacre drew media attention away from them. I’m sure they’ll be able to explain away the Muslim slayings.

8 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, History, Obsessions, The Culture

Tagged , ,

Yeats channeling the future

Posted on November 10, 2015 | Comments Off on Yeats channeling the future

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.”

William Butler Yeats channeling Wormtongue (our Barry Hussein), long before his earness’s birth.

Via Miriam’s Ideas.

Comments Off on Yeats channeling the future

Posted in Blogosphere, History, Obamalot, Scribbles, The Economy

Tagged , ,

Gun control in Weimar

Posted on October 17, 2015 | 2 comments

“The Weimar Republic’s well-intentioned gun registry became a tool for evil. The perennial gun-control debate in America did not begin here. The same arguments for and against were made in the 1920s in the chaos of Germany’s Weimar Republic, which opted for gun registration. Law-abiding persons complied with the law, but the Communists and Nazis committing acts of political violence did not.

“In 1931, Weimar authorities discovered plans for a Nazi takeover in which Jews would be denied food and persons refusing to surrender their guns within 24 hours would be executed. They were written by Werner Best, a future Gestapo official. In reaction to such threats, the government authorized the registration of all firearms and the confiscation thereof, if required for “public safety.”

“The interior minister warned that the records must not fall into the hands of any extremist group. In 1933, the ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power and used the records to identify, disarm, and attack political opponents and Jews. Constitutional rights were suspended, and mass searches for and seizures of guns and dissident publications ensued. Police revoked gun licenses of Social Democrats and others who were not ‘politically reliable.’”

Moreover, “The countless books on the Third Reich and the Holocaust fail even to mention the laws restricting firearms ownership, which rendered political opponents and Jews defenseless. A skeptic could surmise that a better-armed populace might have made no difference, but the National Socialist regime certainly did not think so—it ruthlessly suppressed firearm ownership by disfavored groups.”

See why American gun owners don’t trust the government? Any government?

Via PJMedia & National Review

2 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Guns, History

Tagged , ,

Krackpots in Kyle

Posted on October 15, 2015 | 3 comments

Kyle, just down the road from the rancho, used to be a fairly sensible little Texas town. Nowadays, of course, it’s a bedroom community of Austin. And with its growth have come the leftist crackpots of public education.

Hence, at Lehman high school, which once might have been the scene of pickup trucks of youthful hunters in the parking lot with rifle racks in the back window, is now a haven for delicate little buttercups from California and elsewhere

So when one of them mistakes the word “gum” for “gun” the professional educators swing into action. “Because we are conducting the PSAT, we were able to hold students in their extended class periods to investigate the concern with little to no disruption to their schedule,” said principal Michelle Chae in a letter to parents.

On the other hand, why send a letter home if there was no problem? Why, to make sure the parents of those little buttercups don’t get the idea that they’re expected to act like real, independent, rational Texans.

3 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Guns, History, Obsessions, Texana, The Culture

Tagged ,

Jewish Day At The Range

Posted on October 14, 2015 | 5 comments

The growing anti-Semitism in the world, particularly in Europe and on American college campuses, has helped spawn a new interest among some Texas Jews in the care and use of firearms. Hence The Jewish Rifle & Pistol Club of Central Texas.

The club is sponsoring the first annual Jewish Day At The Range on the 25th at the Best of The West shooting range in Liberty Hill, up the road from the rancho. I plan to attend to see how many times I can put a .22 bullet from my new Ruger SR22 in the center of a paper target.

Some laugh at the little .22, but, as one SR22 user has commented, properly aimed, a .22 will kill you just as dead as a .45 ACP cartridge banger. And .22s are a whole lot easier to shoot (with almost no recoil) and the cartridges are much cheaper.

As Dr. Carson wisely said not long ago (to the inevitable chorus of denials by the usual leftist news media suspects) there would never have been a Holocaust if more Jews had been armed and competent in the use of firearms. I don’t think that’s going to be a problem from now on.

5 Comments

Posted in Guns, History, Texana, The Culture, The War

Tagged ,

X-Ray Specs

Posted on October 13, 2015 | 1 comment

Remember them? I wanted to believe. How I wanted to believe I could put them on and see through a girl’s clothes. Ha. If they had worked I’d have only seen her bones.

Never had the money to send away for them. Fortunately. Finally decided it was baloney, anyhow. As it certainly was.

Via Mouth of the Brazos & Ace.

1 Comment

Posted in Blogosphere, History, Obsessions, The Culture

Tagged , ,