I am going to be “stealing” old  proverbs from The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Balthasar Gracian and posting them from time to time. The book  is a measly $0.99 but I managed to download it for free thanks to the early warning from Greg Ellifritz at Active Response Training who makes a point every week or so to post a list of free Kindle books.

BE MORE CAREFUL NOT TO MISS ONCE THAN TO HIT A HUNDRED TIMES.

NO ONE LOOKS AT THE blazing sun; all gaze when he is eclipsed. The common talk does not reckon what goes right but what goes wrong. Evil report carries farther than any applause. Many men are not known to the world till they have left it. All the exploits of a man taken together are not enough to wipe out a single small blemish. Avoid therefore falling into error, seeing that ill-will notices every error and no success.

Who said old Proverbs do not apply in today’s world? Heck this one works for Life in general and at the range.

This was sort of an experiment done during the Vietnam war.  I am going from memory here but IIRC, the scope is a Unerlt that was issued to Marine Snipers. In 1967, Carlos Hathcock made a 2,50 hundred yard kill with that configuration a record that stood unbroken until 2002.  I think the gentleman serving as spotter is no other than Jim Land who founded the new Marine Sniper course. Amazingly, no branch of the US military had an active Sniper course or snipers available until they were needed in combat and then they had to start from zero as the thought of snipers was not palatable to the Regular Military.

…Then It Tries To Silence Good…

Source: 90 Miles From Tyranny : Evil Preaches Tolerance Until It Is Dominant…

The Washingtonian magazine published a piece defending the culture and lifestyle of Washington DC.  They announced their article with this lovely tweet.

Being an ignorant hayseed who has the misfortune to have lived in both Flyover Country and the Deep South, I though I should read this article so that I could understand my intellectual betters, better.

Note to the people in DC: Yes, I can read.  My favorite book is about a character who attempts inveigle the book’s anonymous protagonist into consuming verdant breakfast foods.  It’s quite the nail biter.

First of all, the article was a compilation.  Each of the 13 reasons listed was a separate article written by a different author.

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Some were pointless:

I make no bones about how I feel about most of what is called art these days.  If Washington DC is not littered with bohemian, hipster, artists who work in poop-smears, that is actually a plus for your city.

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One missed the point all together:

OK.  The author found six federal employees in DC that actually do some good.  Four of them are scientists or engineers, not typical bureaucrats.  The federal workforce in DC measures at about 47,000 people.  Congrats on finding the 0.013% of federal employees who are worth a damn.  That leaves about 46,994 federal employees in DC who range from worthless to completely-obstructionist-to-normal-life (and yes, I am including POTUS and Congress in that assessment).

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But two of them really showed some deep and terrible insight into the culture of DC that is the worst combination of elitist and power hungry:

I think the great Milton Friedman said it best when he said “is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?”

My answer, of course is “no.”  Political self-interest is less noble than economic self-interest.  Why?  Because when I try to make it rich in business, I do so in a free market system in which trade is voluntary.  As a business man, I can’t oppress anybody.  I can’t force or coerce people.  I have to make a product or provide a service that people want, and want to pay me for.  I have to bring value.  I have to create and innovate.

As politician,  to make myself successful, I have to broker power.  To enrich my coffers, I would have to use the power of my office to hinder some at the request of others through regulation.  I create nothing, I only take from some and redistribute to those who support me.  I deal in favors.  My wealth comes from getting to chose who I step on and who I give handouts to.

Obsession with power is worse than obsession with money.  Obsession with power is obsession with control.  It’s the desire to rule over the lives of people.  To bend others to your will with force.  The obsession with money is the love of opulence.  I fear the man who wants to manage the lives of people far more than some mogul on a super yacht spraying his girlfriends with a champagne gun.

Ah yes, paternalism.  Nothing makes me feel more sympathy for my fellow man than my fellow man telling me that he’s smarter than me and that I should be forced to do what he says because he knows what better for me than me.

Don’t take my word for it, take thiers:

“Yes, [DC Bureaucrats] stock-in-trade is abstractions: statistics, seminars, social science. But those abstractions—that out-of-touchness, if you will—are the very things that help our technocrats rise above parochialism. They don’t worry about the effects of policies on their neighbor or on the business around the corner. Sure, our wonks have a point of view, an ideology even. But they cast their arguments in terms of the national interest, and they mean it. If Washington were allowed to make policy—without the heartland and its parochialism getting in the way—we might actually fix this place”

I am a big believer in the value of expertise.  Expertise in a subject is obtained through the combination of education and experience.  Call me cynical, but I had a hard time believing that a bureaucrat in a non-profit, ideological, special interest, think tank; has expertise in whatever field they are trying to regulate.  This is how you get leading presidential candidates pledging to do things that are scientifically impossible.

These people are not experts, they are erudite elitists.  If they really were experts, they’d of been able to predict how changing lending and banking regulations would have resulted in a financial bubble and bust that took out one-third of the money in the economy…and… it’s gone.

The think tank experts told us that we need to stimulate the economy to save jobs.  Turns out the think tank experts were wrong.  The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.

Sure, the track record of these people is atrocious.  Sure, as soon as you give them the ability to regulate your business (for your own good), they are going to go after your big gulps and texting habits too.  Because they know better.

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You know what, if the best defense that DC can muster against DC haters is “were power mad, elitists, who want to micromanage your lives, because we’ve gone to a handful of expensive colleges that have told us we’re smarter than everybody else.”  I’m pretty sure that justifies all the hatred DC gets… and more.

When students at Emory University headed to classes Monday morning, they were greeted with a sight that a number of them couldn’t stomach: Numerous chalk messages around the Atlanta campus supporting Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump.So about 40 students gathered later that day at the school’s administration building to protest the messages and demand help from university officials over feeling “afraid” and “in pain” due to the political messages.

Source: College Students Say They Felt “Afraid” and “In Pain” After Seeing Presidential Campaign Graffiti Chalked On Campus – Daily Headlines

I know that we complain about what is gonna happen to the future, but if you have kids and think about it, they are going to be more than OK. They will probably be in the top rungs of the Future. Why? Well, how are you raising your kids? Precious and delicate snowflakes or self-assured individuals? They are probably polite and taught not to start a fight, but to finish it once it starts. If When the shit hits the fan, it is not going to be the fetal-position-assuming college graduates that will step up to the plate, but those who were taught right from wrong and to do what it takes to protect family and country. Hell, even if we end up a banana country, who will have the balls to start slapping triggered little jerks and tell them to be proper serfs?

There is no such thing as assault with a deadly whine. And “Safe Spaces” ain’t bulletproof.

“Three days ago, there was a gesture of war, of destruction, in a city of Europe by people who don’t want to live in peace,” he said. “Behind that gesture there were arms manufacturers, arms traffickers, who want blood, not peace, who want war, not brotherhood,” he said.In a reference to the Brussels attackers, Francis condemned “those poor creatures who buy weapons in order to destroy brotherhood”, comparing them to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who the Bible says betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.

Source: Pope condemns Brussels attackers, arms makers at Holy Thursday rite

I can give many people a pass for not knowing the history of Muslim aggression against Christians since Mohamed was pumping goats and 10-year-old girls in the desert, but that the head of the Catholic Church just memory-holes more than a thousand years of facts is beyond redemption.  But that is what you get when Cardinals play the “Whose Turn Is Now To Wear The White Hat” game and we end up with a Che Guevara in robes.

Via Michael Blane.

3).  A terrorist event is not a self- defense shooting.  I cannot understand why so many who should know better insist of treating an event like this…like the Charly Ebdo, the Paris Attack, the Mali Attack, the Jakarta Attack, the San Bernardino Attack…and now Belgium like it was a mugger in a parking lot.  Once the bad guys open the game, in an event like this you are permitted to take it to any level of violence you wish without any concerns of legality or liability.  Say nothing at all…make no announcements…keep calm and shoot them in the face. If you don’t think you can do that, then please get on the ground and out of the way of those who will at least try.

Source: SUAREZ INTERNATIONAL BLOG – ON TERRORISM IN BELGIUM

Go read the whole thing.

Take heed of this advice. There are events that will set you in a position where the standard rules of living in society simply do not apply. Preservation of Life is the main goal and the niceties of a civilized society disappear during this time-frame.  It does not only have to be a terrorist attack, but also a major collapse of social services and the rule of the law such as full-fledged riots that Law Enforcement cannot simply control.

Shit… charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500.
Captain Benjamin L. Willard. Apocalypse Now.