Hiatus

Been on an extended AFK during the summer, when it seems like my writing should have been most prolific. Lots of stuff going on at the moment, but pulling twelve hour days has me not interested in writing at the moment.

It's safe to say I'm definitely still a "ring wing extremist" and hopefully I'll get to make some more comments in the coming weeks.

Things I Like -- Shooty-wise

In response to Caleb's post I thought I'd compare my list to his of about the same categories of shooty stuff that I enjoy.

1. 1911s. Period. Single action masterpiece of John Moses Browning(PBUTH). There is no more recognizable or customizable weapon in the world. I prefer mine in the flavors of .45, 5" barrel and series 70. There are times when I think I'd like a 4.25" length barrel, but as Stephen Stills said once - you gotta love the one you're with.

My Para SSP, despite being series 80 is still the finest firearm I've ever shot. I know you can pull out your series 80 parts, but since it's my carry gun and my competition gun so I can't do that.

2. Trapezoid Sights. The sights that come on the Steyr M9-A1, of which I am also an owner. These sights can be just as accurate at 50 yards at they are at 5. They're super fast and there's never any question about your sight alignment. My next 1911 project is going to have a set of these. Not the crappy imitation sights, but the real thing.

3. Double Stack 1911s. The new ones built on the Fusion STI-esque frame may be the sexiest firearm I've ever seen. Yes I know the purists will wail and gnash the teeth but come on that has to be one of the sexiest pair of pistols I've ever seen.

4. Really nice over-under shotguns. I love the pumps and semi-autos for home defense, but for trap you have to have a really sexy over-under. I've shot a couple of full-house Perazzis before - most amazing shotgun experience ever.

5. Kydex IWB holsters. I use a Blade-Tech IWB holster. Living in Florida and dealing with all the humidity causes me to lean this way more than to leather, which can soak up sweat and humidity. It's not unconfortable for me either since the 1911 holster is thin enough.

6. Watching Todd Jarrett reloads. Is he human?

Late Term Abortion Doctor Assassinated

Story here.

Now - I am disgusted by the concept of late term / partial birth abortion. It's a concept that repulses me to no end. By that point the obvious choice for the mother is to seek adoption services. That, however, is a discussion for another time. That being said I can in no way condone the seemingly cold-blood murder of this doctor. Last time I checked pro-life applied to currently living human beings, too. This kind of extremism is on par with any of the current crazies out there.

New Favorite Blog - Women of Caliber

I've been catching this website on my reader for some time. Kellene has some great articles about shooting and self defense for women. However, the central message of almost all her posts are uber-valuable to anyone interested in lawful self defense - man or woman:

Be aware - confident awareness goes a long way to preventing an attack by a predatory goblin.
Be prepared - not only with the right equipment for lawful self defense, but also with the training and mindset to do so.
Cheat - There are no rules when your life is at stake. Fight to win, do whatever you must to stop the threat.
Win - see above, in a violent / deadly-force encounter you must win, you must stop the threat.

Fascist?

Last night on the Glenn Beck Program on Fox (one of the only TV shows I watch anymore) Glenn interviewed Thomas Sowell. When discussing the nature of the US economy as it stands today Beck asked Dr. Sowell: Do you think we're a capitalist nation anymore?

Fascism? While I don't think we meet all the requirements of the textbook definition of fascism - in a way it does make sense to me. The more I watch the news and the more I see the attempt to expand the power of the executive branch - the more I think he could be right.

Ugh

I beg forgiveness for the light posting of late. Career direction being in flux has made me less than enthusiastic about most things of late. Going to make an attempt to resume today. Lots of stuff of interest has been going on in the Second Amendment realm as well as the freedom realm.

Gonna shoot for some commentary today.

The Self Image of a Soldier

Reproduced here in full without comment. Original to be found here.

Sarah Albrycht

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

~ Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

A few nights ago, I walked a quiet mile with hundreds of other service members. It was a clear night in Bagram, Afghanistan. Although it was late, the birds were singing, perhaps roused by the unusual occurrence of people walking under their trees at the late hour. Soft voices broke the solemnity, but no words were discernible. Suddenly, as if on cue, soldiers, airmen, seamen, marines, broke off the sidewalk and lined the road, spacing themselves regularly and assuming a position of silent watchfulness. The honor cordon had formed.

Heads began to turn right as flashing blue lights appeared far down the road. As the vehicles neared, one by one, service members assumed the position of attention and rendered the hand salute. In the back of an open truck sat eight military members, and between them, at their feet, was a flag draped casket.

As I rendered my salute, I thought about the fallen soldier. I did not know his name, his unit or his home. I never saw his face or spoke to his family. I did not know why he volunteered for the Army or what he was doing when he was killed. But there was much I did know. I knew he had fought and died in an honorable cause, a cause that had little to do with our policy on Afghanistan. This soldier had volunteered to put his very life on the line in service to his nation and his brothers-in-arms. I see no more honorable cause that that.

In a column, Mr. Putney has again raised the debate about the sacrifice of America's "sons and daughters" in uniform. Some have argued that we must continue the fight to honor their memory "so that they have not died in vain." Others argue we must stop the wars to save soldiers from this fate. I think an essential understanding of what motivates those of us in uniform is missing in this debate.

We are not your sons and daughters, whom you must protect and defend. We are your sword and your shield. We are men and women who volunteer to place our lives on the line so you do not have to. We do not decide when or where we will be sent. We go. You are our advocates, not our parents.

We trust you to care for our families, to hold our jobs, pay for our equipment, salary and medical care and yes, to honor our sacrifice. We trust you to vote for good political leadership, to speak out against bad policy decisions and to demand public accountability. However, we do not count on you to explain the honorable character of our service. We are ennobled by the very fact we serve.

Our "high moral cause" is one of service to a nation whose principles we believe in. We miss the point of political debate when we distill it down to numbers of service member deaths. Debate should be about the policy that leads us in or pulls us out of war. I, as a soldier, am personally insulted when debate about war becomes not about policy, but about deaths, because it implies that my service is at best uninformed or ill-conceived, and at worst valueless.

I know my life is in the hands of others because I choose for it to be that way. I am not your daughter, a child who must be guided. I have made my choice and pledge my honor to it. I will thank you to remember that because we serve our nation, none of us dies in vain, regardless of the cause; end of debate.

Every day a new Marine enlists or an airman puts on her uniform is a reminder that our defenders come from people who still believe in our nation and the values it aspires to, as flawed as we sometimes are. War does not make our sacrifice honorable, death does not make our service honorable; service itself is our honor.

We, your American service members, do not see the cause for which we may give our last full measure of devotion, as our nation's goals in Iraq or Afghanistan, and perhaps that is the difference. Our cause is our nation, in all her beautiful, imperfect glory.

So on a dark night in Afghanistan we stood under a velvet sky of a million stars to honor one man who lay under 50. We never doubted what he died for. Pfc. Patrick A. Devoe II died for you, the United States of America. That, Mr. Putney, is no goof.

Sarah Albrycht is a Bennington native serving in the Army in Afghanistan.

Angry Angry

Wow, I like liberty girl. Check out her rant here.

Primers

Welp, I'm now using CCI 350 magnum primers in .45 acp. Seemed to work ok over the chrono. Going to be able to back my loads down to 4.5 - 4.6 gr of titegroup and still be slightly above PF. No failures to ignite.

You Can't Label This Mess

After an interesting, but brief exchange with someone I don't even know on facebook I came to realize that this economic mess in the United States is so convoluted and so wrong that all the quintessentially "evil" labels that have been used to identify it are all right, but also all wrong.

The conservatives, libertarians, and the spectrum of capitalists call this unprecedented expansion of government socialism and communism. Glenn Beck just recently said that's all wrong and it's the shiny, happy veneer of fascism with a chewy communist center. (Not really, but that's how I interpreted it. *tongue in cheek*)

However as I re-read a lot of the concepts of both socialism and fascism I realized that what's happening in America at this point in time is really neither. Without being overly technical - fascism seeks to influence the market by forcing a seemingly free market to act in the "public interest" by coercing firms through threat of penalties under law or some other equally compelling yoke. There are elements of this at work in the system now, as Timmy Geithner petitions Congress for the power to intervene into the operations of any firm whose failure would gravely cripple the existing financial system. The coercion part is evident as we see the government seeking to impose salary limits on bailed-out corporations or mandating restructuring as conditions of receiving public money.

However, fasicm is generally considered to be an ultra-nationalistic, totalitarian system. Where a dictator or other totalitatrian-like entity decides what the "public interest" is that the market will act toward. Ultra-nationalistic imagry is commonplace - often to the point of bigotry and scapegoat-ism. Glenn Beck makes the argument that the totalitarian isn't a single person such as dicator, but instead the leviathan that is the United State Federal Government. While this could be partially true because of the single party control of both houses of the legislative branch as well as the executive branch - it doesn't match the classic definition of dictator-driven policy, and it has the possibility to be changed through elections. Also, the policy of the US administration seems to be pushing towards a more global market / government which would more readily fit the classic socialism rather than fascism.

Socialism, and ultimately communism, dispenses with the charade of a seemingly free market and is completely reliant on a central nation-state entity to control production. Fortunately our government has not been so bold as of yet. However, the state does own 80% of one of the largest insurers in the world. Through it's aquisistion of Freddie and Fannie it owns the debts of a frightenly large percentage of US mortgages. Economically the government doesn't seem to be embracing the pure socialist philosophy the Russians fell prey to insofar as production is concerned. Socially, however, the state is seeking to redistribute wealth from the producers to the proletariat through an unfair and oppressive tax system and numerous welfare programs - which was one of the cornerstones of the communist manifesto.

In fact, I've decided I'm not going to continue to give examples, I'm going to list what Marx said was necessary for a state to transition to a completely communist society and you, the reader, will fill in examples from within the borders of the US:

10 Conditions For Transition To Communism (All Links -- Wikipedia)

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equal distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c.^[6]

How many of those either exist in some form now, or are being formulated in legislation? I think the discussion of that will be a post for another time, but I know for me it's far to many -- terrifyingly so.

What does all this mean? The common thread among both these systems is government control either through outright ownership of production or by coercion using the deadly-force option that only the government may bring to bear. The government is expanding, and the fact that it shares as many characteristics as it does with either of these systems should terrify you. As this government expands it is bloating, and become more costly. As it becomes more costly the government will seek to wring more revenue from you and me. As this cycle continues it will become more and more oppressive until there is only government and government-reliant subjects left.

The fact that either of these systems can be mentioned in the same breath as America is appalling. The really depressing thing is , as I mentioned to this person I didn't know on Facebook, that as our federal government progresses down it's current path it is neither fascist nor socialist/communist, has none of the perceived benefits of either, and all of the hindrances of both. Should I be impressed or appalled that our current federal government can fail so terribly at government philosophy that it can't even be a fascist state or a communist one?