For any who didn’t catch news of the band last year, when Robert Fripp assembled 7 of us for a new lineup, the members of the band are:
Robert Fripp: guitar
Jakko Jakszyk: guitar and vocals
Mel Collins: flute, saxes
Bill Reiflin: drums, synth and vocals
Pat Mastelotto: drums
Gavin Harrison: drums
Tony Levin: bass, stick, vocals.
If you are not into Prog Rock, you may not understand the awesomeness of this event. The amount and quality of musicians that played under the banner of King Crimson through the years is simply amazing and many went to become legends themselves. They were the Zeus and Athena of the Prog Rock Pantheon.
And besides the music, we got one of the iconic album covers in Rock history from a time there was such thing as Album Art.
I recently spoke with 11 respected experts and instructors in the defensive firearms community to get their take on which of these ideas and myths they believe are the most damaging. Here’s what they had to say.
As my self-imposed duty, I went on to check my least favorite club of Gun Control “advocates and found Congressman Charles Rangel fishing for a Twitter Townhall Meeting of sorts. Of course, I HAVE to share with you guys and ladies.
Just in case, I went to check other Facebook pages and found him again courting the Moms:
Interestingly enough, he did not leave an invitation on the Brady Campaign page or Everytown’s.
So, what are you doing tomorrow? Care to join me in Twitter and give Representative Rangel ( @CBRangel ) our ideas on “Gun Violence”? We can always ask him about taxes and Ethics for fun and giggles.?
One of the recurring attacks/criticisms/insults levied against gun owners, especially concealed carrier permit holders, is that we (including the women) have small penises. In an attempt to feel better about ourselves, we carry a gun as a de facto prosthetic phallus, and if we were more secure in our manhood (including the women) we would not feel the need to carry a gun. This regular insult usually comes with a side order of other belittlement – that guns owners are fearful, cowardly, etc., which then comes back to us being phallicly insecure.
Well… rather than dispute the anti-gunners, I’m going to embrace my small penis (metaphorically speaking).
A large penis was considered grotesque and comical, a sign of barbarianism and being uncivilized. The Greek god Priapus is portrayed as having a large phallus. Priapus was thrown off of Mount Olympus by the other gods for his ugliness and foul-mindedness, and is often associated with rudeness and braying donkeys.
Now what does this have to gun ownership? One word: civilization.
Part of the Aristotelian idea of civilization was art (aesthetics), another was virtue. Classical philosophy was big on virtue. There are four classical Cardinal Virtues: Wisdom, Justice, Temperance, and Courage/Fortitude. This spawned the Roman ideals of virtue, which expanded on the Cardinal Virtues to include Virtus (manliness) and Pietas (duty to others), among others. Ancient cultures recognized that civilization could not exist without duty, justice, strength, and manliness.
Back 2007, MunchkinWrangler wrote a piece titled “The Gun is Civilization.” I invite you to read it. (Proper attribution here)
He makes a good point, but I feel compelled to add something that he implied but needs to be said overtly. A gun is civilization when in the hands of civilized people. Only a person with the virtues of restraint, justice, courage, and strength of character can wield a gun for good. We see far to much violence from people without virtue who wield a gun with malice.
Recently online, I have come across to articles from polar opposite sources, Slate and The Federalist, on the murder of Kevin Joseph Sutherland on a DC Subway in front of a group of bystanders who did nothing.
Call them beta males, call them sheeple, but what we saw was the result of a lack of virtue. Not one person had the courage or fortitude to due his duty to help his fellow man and a murder occurred. Barbarism won over civilization that day.
The laws of DC may have physically disarmed them but the culture emotionally disarmed them. Only cowards carry guns. Only the insecure feel the need to be armed. That’s what the CSGV tells us. But the unarmed, and presumably well endowed, men (and women) on those trains didn’t “man up” to helping one of their fellows. They bravely hid in the corner and averted their gaze.
And there you have it. Real cowardice vs. GSCV cowardice. Watch a man die vs. jump in and help.
If having a small penis (metaphorically speaking) is the price I pay for civilization, all accept that. Because the alternative is to be a braying jackass.
Damn. They came and brought friends.Well I have friends, too. I told the guys on the driveway that I’d be right down, and then I loosed the Dogs of War Low-Intensity Conflict onto the deck to bark at them and let them know that I also had minions. Then I rustled up a shirt and a shoe, and headed down to the driveway to meet them.
Lagniappe’s Lair is one of my favorite blogs to read (OK, mostly because of the dog stories, we love the dogs, him we sort of deal with, heh heh). He recently had an issue with the local Power Company going Agent Orange on his green stuff and after a major bitching, they sent the right guy to explain which unfortunately is a rarity in today’s world.
Except on those documented and published cases where people saved their lives or the lives of others using a firearm?
This is Pre-Internet propaganda tactics. They are from an era in which the Gun Control groups had absolute control of what the media would put out in terms of information. Clue: Dear Gun Control Activists, you are no longer in control of the signal.
Anybody with a computer. tablet of smart phone is now a fact checker. Ten seconds on your favorite search engine and you will destroy statements like the one above. So why do it? Why write such stupid headlines that can be proven wrong by the simple application of common sense? I have two answers, not necessarily explain the whole thing, but I figure close enough.
-They do not know how else to proceed. – We go again with the absolutism. Since its foundation, the Gun Control movement has been radical in its stance: No guns for the Proletariat. They will come out and say “Well, we really do not want to ban all guns, but nobody really needs…” and “We don’t want to ban guns, but we think we need more laws about….” while moving the goalpost constantly. Of course, if a major event happens, the masks fall and they go rabid demanding house by house search and confiscation. And when the waters return to normal, they will go “Don’t be silly, we really didn’t mean that” bat their eyes and try to steer the conversation away from the subject.
So basically, they cannot radicalize any deeper short of start sending gun owners east packed in boxcars (not for lack of wanting in some cases as I covered here) The view on Gun Ownership and the Second Amendment has turned increasingly favorable and that would mean for Gun Control to be forced to accept it which it would begin a slide down a path they know it would lead to their eventual disappearance. They rather much you die than they accept such way: Remember, for them compromise means we give up now and then again later until they are satisfied.
-They need to keep their core base of followers excited and active. And they can’t do that by telling the truth. Fanatics feed on Absolutism and the Gun Control Groups need to produce their Soylent Green constantly. Faux studies are one of the appetizers thrown to their followers and they eat them like a Mako gorging on chum thrown by a Discovery Channel boat filming for Shark week. Most groups depend on donations from their fanatical base who will not accept any deviation of the established dogma. When they are forced to accept some compromise, they will blame God, Country, the NRA, Gun Owners, Military-Industrial complex and the local Boy Scout Troop. At this time, a sorrowful email will be sent from Gun Control HQ telling the base “Hey, we need money to fight the good fight. We are facing very rich gun manufacturers! SEND ME MONEY!” And they comply happily so Josh and Shannon and the rest can get their Soy-non-cream-half-caf-sugar-free-caramel frappucino.
If this is the best that Everytown can come up with, we are not in such a bad shape. Surely they will be referenced by the Traditional Big Media as gospel, but it is not the first time and it will not be the first one either to eventually dissolve itself into irrelevance…which they already have a good head start with crap like this.
ORLANDO, Fla. – A Florida man accused of shooting at George Zimmerman during a traffic encounter is accused of urinating on a neighbor’s door. Seminole County prosecutors charged Matthew Apperson with disorderly conduct last month after the incident.
According to a Winter Springs Police report, Anthony Woods was cleaning the apartment complex’s pool when he said he heard Apperson “yelling obscenities” in the direction of a female neighbor’s home. She was not inside at the time. Woods told officers Apperson then urinated on the door.
