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.

–

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.

–

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).

–

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.

–

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.

I have finished my newest lightweight 20″ AR build.

If you don’t recognize the text, it is an ironic tribute to Woody Guthrie, and the way this sentiment has been adopted in the popular culture.

Woody Guthrie was known for being anti-Fascist.  He wrote songs titled “All you Fascists Bound to Lose” and “Round and Round Hitler’s Grave.”  The thing of it is, I’m not sure Woody Guthrie had any idea what a Fascist really was.

In a letter to his daughter, Guthrie wrote “Maybe I could talk to you about fascism…  It is nothing in the world but greed for profit.”

A biographer of Woody Guthrie stated “Guthrie envisions the fascist threat as an economic threat in the first place, which endangers American society through the illegitimate enrichment of an elite through the exploitation of the working poor.”

Woody Guthrie’s opinions on fascism sound a lot like Bernie Sanders’ opinions on Wall Street.  There is nothing in it about totalitarianism, government oppression, or any of the other political hallmarks of actual, factual fascism.  Guthrie’s antidote to fascism was labor unions and a collectivized work force.

“There ain’t but two sides, the working people’s side and the big bosses’ side.”

Keep in mind that the original draft of “This land is your land” by Guthrie was critical of the concept of private property.

“There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing;
This land was made for you and me.”

Guthrie’s long time friend and touring partner Pete Seeger said “You know, Woody was a Communist.”  A number of current pro-Communist and pro-Socialist writers have taken to touting Guthrie as a hero because of his folk status.  But don’t take their words for it, let Guthrie tell you himself what he believed.

“Every single human being is looking for a better way…when there shall be no want among you, because you’ll own everything in Common. When the Rich will give their goods unto the poor. I believe in this Way…This is the Christian Way and it is already on a big part of the earth and it will come. To own everything in Common, That’s what the Bible says. Common means all of us. This is pure old Commonism.”

Guthrie’s brand of fascism is of the “fascism is anything I don’t like” kind.

That’s how owners of private businesses became fascists, even though a state controlled economy was central to Italian Fascism and Nazism.

You see this today with SJW’s, BLM, Sanders supporters, and other leftists.  This is how conservatives who support limited government, gun rights, and economic freedoms are all fascists.  At least with these special snowflakes, they can claim the ignorance of being two generations removed from a time when fascists ruled countries.  Guthrie was in his prime during WWII, he should have known better.

So why would folksy socialist believe that a guitar kills fascists, for the same reason hippies believe that drum circles can fight the man.

It can’t.

History has shown us that political and economic freedom are intertwined.  It is impossible to control the economy wile allowing people to have other freedoms.

If Orwell’s vision of the future was a boot stamping on a human face – forever.  Than Guthrie’s was a Birkenstock stamping on a human face – forever.

This is also the difference between the BLM/SJW’s and Bernie supporters.  You’re gonna get stomped on, it’s just a mater of how folksy the stomping will be.

So what really killed fascism.  M1 Garands, about 5.5 million of them.  Also M1919s, 1911s, Thompsons,  P-40 Warhawks, P-51 Mustangs, B-17 Flying Fortresses, B-25 Mitchells, M4 Shermans, and several million more tons of other ordinance.

In the spirit of honoring real history, I put Guthrie’s statement on the one thing that really did stop fascism.  A gun.

Dear President Obama,

I grew up in Miami, Florida.  As you could probably imagine, many of my friends were of Cuban descent.  Most of them were second generation Americans, the grandsons and granddaughters of first wave Cuban exiles.  First wave, describes the Cubans who fled (or were driven out of) Cuba during and shortly after the Revolution in 1959 because of political reasons.  They are recognized as political refugees.

I remember quite clearly being told about the Cuban Revolution by my friend’s grandparents.  It struck a chord with my, a young Jewish boy in Miami, because what they described in Cuba sounded so much like what the Holocaust survivors who my grandparents knew up in Fort Lauderdale would describe.  The torture, mass killings, not knowing who you could trust, the horrors they they had witnessed first hand.  The fear and the sadness poured out of them decades later.

There is one story that sticks in my mind from the paternal grandfather of a friend, classmate, and next door neighbor.  He (the grandfather) was a young man, a teenager during the Revolution.  Politically curious, he attended an anti-Castro meeting in a warehouse in Havana with a friend.  It was raided by Castro’s soldiers.  They split up and ran, the plan was to hide for a while then return home.  After a little bit, my friend’s grandfather started to walk home when he came across the scene of a massacre where a number of anti-Castro meeting attendees had been stood up against a wall and shot.  He recognized the shirt on one of the bodies.  It belonged to his friend.  Fearing that he had been followed and not wanting to put his family in danger – it was well known that Castro’s soldiers would will the families of anti-Castro supporters – my friend’s grandfather went to the Havana docks and found a boat headed for Miami.  He left Cuba with nothing but the clothes he was wearing, having never said “good bye” to his family.

This is the regime that you are going to baseball games with.  This is the regime that you are nodding along with when they criticize America.  This is the regime you “agree to disagree” with on human rights.

Is that the strongest condemnation you have for a regime that stood people against a wall and shot them because a family member dared to listen to a speaker disagree with Fidel?

You are willfully ignoring the greatest act of oppression and mass murder in the Western Hemisphere in the 20th Century for a photo-op.

Mr. President, you are being shown a Potemkin Village and you are asking if you can buy a time-share in it.

This is an affront, not just to the American ideal of liberty, but to basic human decency.

This is unbecoming of the President of the United States.

-J.Kb.

I am going to argue for a shift in social policy.  I know the immediate reaction to it from many (if not most or all) of my readers will be “J.Kb, are you crazy?  Did you hit your head and become a socialist?”  No I haven’t gone crazy, or become a socialist.  But I want you to bear with me for a moment, and let me argue my point.

I have become in favor of publicly funded daycare, as part of the public school system.

This came about as the result of some conversations I had recently with my tax guy and my son’s daycare.

Let me explain why:

In principle, I am not against the government spending money.  It needs to.  What concerns me is how much money the government spends and on what it spends the money.  One of the things I believe in is that the government should not be in the business of direct wealth transfers.  The government shouldn’t take money from Citizen A and give it to Citizen B, because A has more then B.

I am in favor of spending (in reasonable, sustainable amounts) on institutions that benefit the country and citizenry as a whole.

The military to defend us.

Law Enforcement to protect us.

An impartial judicial system (courts, prosecutors, public defenders) to maintain justice and order.  This is critical for a strong economy, where legal protection is vital in maintaining business contracts.  Without courts to enforce civil law, our economy would crumble.

Infrastructure that is used for the transportation of goods and services that support a thriving economy.  The Federal Interstate Highway System is perhaps the greatest economic endeavor of any government since the fall of the Roman Empire.

I will add to this list, public education.  It is a benefit to the nation that its citizenry is educated.  It benefits all of us when our population is literate and can finish school with the skills necessary to work and contribute to the economy (We can debate the effectiveness of this later, I’m talking about principles).  This is one of the things that separates 1st world from 3rd world countries, mass education.

Given this, I think that public daycare would be a public benefit.  The children of the poor and working classes are at a disadvantage to the children of the middle class.  We can talk about many reasons why, but one of the biggest is that middle class kids are better prepared for school.  Middle class parents read to their kids.  Poor parents don’t.  Part of that is just a matter of time (hours put in at work), and part of that is cultural.  This is also seen over summer vacation, where poor kids don’t get intellectually stimulated and fall behind while middle class kids go to camp.

Publicly funded daycare would provide an education floor for poor kids before they started school and during the summer, giving them the benefits of a more middle class upbringing.

Yes, I am absolutely advocating educating the generationally poor out of their generational poverty.

I’m already paying for publicly funded daycare, so are you.  Both at the state and federal level.  This is the exact type of direct wealth transfer that I am against.  Going to a publicly funded system would come with ending the daycare subsidy.  This transitions the money the government spends on daycare from a direct wealth transfer to a public benefit available to anybody who wants to use us.

Yes, I know, public daycare will cost more than the subsidy, so how is this better?  Well, this is where conservative pragmatism comes in.  By providing public daycare, we can reduce other direct wealth transfers a well.  Daycare is expensive, even with the subsidies.  There is the common argument that for many parents, daycare isn’t worth the cost.  They just don’t make enough money to justify daycare.  I can tell you from personal experience, this one is true.  We moved for my job.  My wife didn’t work for a while because if she went out and got a retail job, she would’t make enough to cover the cost of daycare.  It wasn’t until professional job came along that it became financially worth it.

By removing the cost of daycare entirely from someone’s budget, now a minimum wage (or better) job is a money making venture.  For poor families and single mothers, this means more income.  More income means less other benefits.

Let me be brutally honest: “Now that your daycare is publicly funded, like public school, you have no reason not to get a job, so go find work because we’re gonna reduce your welfare.”

Given the rate of welfare abuse (including daycare subsidies*) and the inefficiency of government wealth transfer programs, the additional cost to the public for daycare should be offset by the reduction in other benefit programs.

*Growing up in Florida, with my family owning a small business that employed a lot of part time workers, I witnessed first hand how grandma could get approved as a daycare and collect the daycare subsidy for watching her own grand kids.

More people working is also a benefit to the public as more people are involved in the production side of the economy and become tax payers.

Now I know one of the arguments against this is just how bad the public school system is.  Yes, I am aware of that.  But part of this program is that I support a voucher system – which I also believe in for public school reform.  Pick your daycare (licensed ones only, no more grandma), and the credit follows you.

So there you have it.  I want to make daycare a public benefit.  The two reasons are:

1. Educate the bad habits out of poor kids.
2. Gives me an excuse to cut welfare/direct wealth transfers.

Let me put it to you like this: I have Netflix.  Some people can’t afford Netflix.  I’d rather pay a little more to add to the DVD collection at my local public library (which I can borrow from as well) than to pay for other people’s Netflix.  Public benefit vs. direct wealth transfer.

Hopefully my justifications are enough to allow me to keep my conservative credentials (especially No. 2).

There are two quotes from George Orwell’s magnum opus, 1984, that have been sticking in my mind the last few days.

“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

“The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy — everything.”

When I read 1984 in high school, and then again in college, the idea of a free nation turning into a totalitarian state was treated as a top down movement.  Of course 1984 was based on the rise of Stalin in the Soviet Union, and that very much was a top down power grab.

It rocks me to my core to see so much of what Orwell warned us against coming to life, as a bottom up, populist movement.  I read 1984, firm in the conviction they I never wanted to have the boot in my face.  I am a die-hard supporter of the Second Amendment because our founding fathers wrote into the principle document of this nation, a way to get the boot out of our faces if all other means fail.

I watch the Social Justice activists, BLM agitators, and people at the anti-Trump rallies, and for all their bloviating about how they are oppressed and they want to end oppression, their goal is quite clear.  They want to wear Orwell’s proverbial boot.

The extent to which they want to carry out the act of becoming the oppressor class makes me wonder if either Orwell was perhaps the greatest prognosticator of the 20th century, or Social Justice has read 1984 as a how to manual.

–

“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life.”

There is a quote by H.L. Mencken “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”  Social Justice activists have succeeded in taking this to the extreme, by finding any opportunity to denounce someone else’s fun as racist and shut it down.  They have used the term cultural appropriation as an excuse to stop all intellectual curiosity or cultural cross pollination.  These people have be able to find the racism and oppression in taco night, carnival games, cafeteria sushi, yoga, popular literature, weak reasons to go drinking, exploration of classical art, and pretty much everything else in the known universe.

–

“Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy — everything”

Social Justice is a movement that states that it is for tolerance and anti-racism.  The level of open, naked, antisemitism it displays is something that Western Civilization has not seen since Europe in 1930’s.  Top colleges like Vassar, Oberlin, and the UC system all but offer degrees in Jew hatred.  Even people who would normally be embraced for being “stunning and brave” by Social Justice, find themselves under attack for being associated with Jews.

They have fought to change or ban the names of libraries, academic titles, school crests, and school names, with near ISIS desire to purge history that does not conform to their ideology.

They turn the most pedestrian of activities into an excuse to earnestly advocate for ethnic cleansing and genocide.

They use racial animus and hate to swell their ranks and demand undeserved restitution form others.  They do not try to better society.  I have never heard, seen, or read a discussion on White Privilege that sought to improve the lives of black Americans, only to make the lives of White Americans worse.  It is the politics of scapegoating all of a group’s ills on another, and then exacting retribution.

–

Social Justice is no stranger to shouting down people and opinions they disagree with.  But what they have done in this election season is beyond the pale.  I am no fan of Donald Trump (and I have no interest in the comments to this post turning into a defense of Trump), but I adamantly believe in the principle I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Using riots, violence, and the promise of civil disobedience to try and shutdown the campaign of a politician is the antithesis of democracy.  Threatening people with violence for supporting a political candidate is the fastest way to end liberty.

This is populist totalitarianism.  This is an attack on the core principles on which America was founded.  This is the lacing up of the boot.

This we cannot abide.

If you want to support a candidate, that is your right.  Donate to their campaign.  Stump for them.  Go to the polls and vote for them on election day.

DO NOT try to silence the opposition and intimidate your opponent’s supporters.

I promise you, that will not end well.  That is not a threat, not yet, that is a warning.  I do not want to have to recount to day to my children when I witnessed the American kristallnacht, at the hands of those who proclaim to be for Social Justice.

Never again.  I mean it.

There are many of us, millions of us, who do not want the boot in our or anybody else’s faces.  We don’t care who wears it, an elected official, petulant children, social activists, or an angry mob.  We want only to breathe deep of the sweet air of freedom.  To paraphrase MLK, we want everybody to drink from the river of prosperity, freed from the thirst of oppression.

The very first flag hoisted by this nation was emblazoned with the words DONT TREAD ON ME.  A dozen score years later, we still bear that motto proudly.

Since this is the hashtag generation, let me put this in words that you will understand #FuckYourBoot.

A 17 year old black youth, named Trevon, was shot under dubious circumstances in Miami.

It seems that young Trevon had broken into the wrong home.  The home owner was alerted to the break in by her security camera, rushed over to the home, and shot the youth after a confrontation as we was climbing out of the back window.

Not all of the details are in yet.  The home owner has not been charged and is cooperating with police.

I’m not going to rush to judgement on this case.  Could she have been attacked during the confrontation, making the shooting justified?  Maybe.  Could she have shot an unarmed teenager snaking out of her home?  Equally likely.  What I do know is, as a citizen with a gun, it’s best to avoid this type of situation all together.  It’s one thing if you are home when the break in occurs.  If your alarm goes off and you have security camera footage of the burglar, let the cops deal with it.  Not just as a mater of law, but you don’t know if the intruder is armed.  Don’t go looking for a fight.

That said, sometimes the loved ones of the victims make it very, very hard for me to sympathize with them at all.  Trevon’s aunt is one of these people.

“It’s no reason she should have waited until I think he walked out the yard to try to shoot him.  If she called the police already why would she shoot him? You have to look at it from every child’s point of view that was raised in the hood.  You have to understand… how he gonna get his money to have clothes to go to school? You have to look at it from his point-of-view.”

Hold on a minute.  Let me see if I got this right?  Because your nephew was raised in the hood (Liberty City, FL), it is OK for him to break into home and rob them in order to obtain the legal tender necessary to purchase necessities?  Burglary is an acceptable form of occupation?

I’m trying to remain objective here, waiting to for all the facts to come in, and if need be call a bad shoot a bad shoot.  Now I have to try an ignore the crap that came out of your mouth.  Auntie, please, STFU.

E.J. Smith is a Firearms Instructor in Charleston, West Virginia.  Mr. Smith is extremely butthurt by West Virginia Senate Bill 347, for permitless concealed carry.  See, Mr. Smith teaches a concealed carry safety course out of his garage.  Seeing his source of supplementary income drying up, Mr. Smith opened his big, stupid, butthurt mouth to the media.

“Has this state gone crazy? Eighty percent of the people who go through my program are doing all kinds of things wrong…Now you want to turn everyone loose with a firearm without any training at all? Not another state will touch us for reciprocation other than Arizona. We WILL lose the 34 states that currently do reciprocate!  I can’t believe that the NRA would want this…This is ridiculous and will lead to all kinds of accidents and Old West-type crimes. It will not be safe to live here anymore. When we upped the age (for conceal carry permits) to 21, I said, thank God. Think about how irresponsible and hot-headed you were at 18. Now they ALL can carry concealed without training!…I love my gun rights too, but this is irresponsible to the limit. Law enforcement has their hands full already. You are about to see them flee their jobs in droves. I would…The process is good…Almost no one is denied a permit. When they are, it’s for a reason, like domestic violence or a previous felony. Do you really want these people now carrying?”

Not once, but TWICE!!!

“We want our guys to feel safe and knowing that anyone can carry a gun just isn’t going to do that.”

There are currently seven states that have constitutional carry: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Maine, Vermont, and Wyoming.  West Virginia has passed constitutional carry (over the veto of the governor), but the law has not gone into effect yet.  In all of those states, especially the ones that have passed constitutional carry recently recently, I have not heard of any rampages, fender-bender gunfights, or other doom-and-gloom that is predicted as the result of any increase in the right to carry.

Why?  Because it is always the same bullsh*t straw-man, arguments:  A state goes from having no CCW provision to CCW and the streets will run red with blood.  A state goes from may issue to shall issue and will become Dodge City.  A state adopts Stand Your Ground and paranoid shoot-first gun owners will blow away every (usually black) person that twitches.  A state approves campus carry and drunk frat bros will shoot up professors over pop quizzes.  Has any of this ever happened?  No, but why let that stand in the way of hysterics.

At least the miserable turd came clean as to why he is against WV constitutional carry.

“There is not going to be anybody coming out to take a class and spend the money, besides maybe a few people who want their youngsters to learn to shoot or something.  [His business] certainly won’t be thriving, and the more likely event will be that I just close to doors on it.”

Here, let me summarize Mr. Smith’s sentiments for you.  “Screw your rights, I gotta get paid.”

The harpies over at MDA have picked up on Mr. Smith’s quote, using if for their own nefarious purposes.

If you are serious about gun rights, you don’t give ammo to the antis.  It’s a simple principle.  One that E.J. Butthurt has violated in the worst way.  And what caused this transformation to anti-gun Judas?  The potential loss of an at-home gun safety business that I’m pretty sure he’s not making a living with.

I’ve never been to WV and I don’t foresee myself going there any time soon, but I am incredibly thankful that the WV State Senate overrode the governor’s veto to pass constitutional carry only because it’s gonna hit Mr. Smith right in the bank account.

With friends like this… never mind.  E.J. Smith isn’t a friend of the gun community.  His belief in gun rights ends with his ability to make a buck.  He’s a slimy, sellout, turncoat, quisling.