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Unholstering "The Maverick"

Posted by Citizen Carrier on Sunday, February 24, 2008 11:04:45 PM
I was thinking of a way to illustrate what it is like to read people who stubbornly insist on sticking with a candidate who has less than 30 delegates or people who claim they will simply not vote because their first choice didn't get the nomination.
 
Imagine it is the Korean War and I am in a trench line facing an oncoming human wave of Chicom "volunteers". My primary weapon is the Thompson [pun intended here] submachinegun. On my hip is a pistol.
 
Next to me is a guy armed with the Browning Automatic Rifle he's nicknamed "Pauline". He also has a back-up pistol, but he just really loves that BAR. We're ankle deep in mud and the Chinese are coming. He opens up, I open up, we manage to hold off a few successive waves of Chinese. During a lull the Chinese stop to regroup and come at us, but we have run out of ammunition and there is no chance of resupply.
 
Realizing my Thompson is out of ammunition, I cast it aside and sweep out the pistol. I've nicknamed the .45 caliber gun "The Maverick" [you're catching these awful puns, right?], because every once in awhile it jams. Not frequently, but just once in awhile. I'd rather have the Thompson. "The Maverick" doesn't hold as many bullets, has a shorter sight radius, shorter effective range, and yes, those occassional stovepipe jams. But I can clear those jams if I pay diligent attention.
 
So I'm up out of the trench and letting them have it center mass as I grimly give ground. If I can live and make it back to the next defense line, there is a quad-.50 on a half-track that will probably save me. With "The Maverick", I might get there. Unarmed, I'm a dead man.
 
But what do I see when I look back? My partner refuses to draw his pistol. So stubbornly attached to the BAR, he insists on pointing the empty weapon at the Chinese and loudly yelling, "BANG!"
 
In the instant he is bayoneted, I avert my eyes in order not to have to replay that image in my mind for years and years.
 
So I ask you, which one of us was the rational human being and which was the fanatic?
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A Broken Glass Republican

Posted by Citizen Carrier on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 5:43:20 PM
That is how I describe myself. What it means is that on Election Day I would willingly crawl over 300 yards of broken glass in order to vote for the Republican candidate. Doesn't matter too much to me at that point who it happens to be.

No, not even even if it is Rudy Giuliani. If that is who garners the majority of primary victories, that is who I'm going to vote for.

Of course, he isn't my first choice. Or second. Or even third. Still, here in Ohio I'm just one guy with one vote in the primary. Just because I want Thompson doesn't mean the others in my state are going to side with me. I should mention that I am morally--perhaps even physically--incapable of not voting. I voted for Perot in 1992, my first election, so do not try to sell me on the virtues of making a statement by voting third party.

The ability to smugly say, "Don't blame me, I voted for Perot!" was absolutely NO solace for the entire years of the Clinton Administration.

I'm a Broken Glass Republican because I want to win. Period.

And I don't want some penny-ante 51% to 49% win. Something where state supreme courts have to step in over recounts. Something where liberal whiners spend the next 7 years claiming they were robbed because that is the only scenario in which their arrogant minds can conceive of the American people rejecting another of their coastal, blue state elitist candidates.

No, after 7 years of "he stole the election" and "selected not elected" and "Ken Blackwell handed him Ohio", I want to send these idiots down the road talking to themselves.

After 7 years of hearing and seeing the words "Hitler" and "Fascist" thrown around with the frequency of rice at a wedding, I want it to hurt so bad some of them actually DO move to Canada.

We can fix the important stuff after the election, provided we at least have a starting point. A common ground. Even with the least conservative of the Republicans, we have that. Not so with Clinton, Obama or Edwards.

We're the ones who stopped the amnesty bill. The Dubai ports deal. The Harriet Miers nomination. The renewal of the assault weapons ban. All of that had far less to do with who we elected rather than how we made our conservative voices heard. At the very least, we must have a Republican. I prefer one that destroys the competition in the election. Reagan may be dead, but we should not despair of ever recreating the landslides he pummelled the Democrats with.

After that, it is largely up to us.  
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Advice to Disciples of Paul

Posted by Citizen Carrier on Wednesday, November 14, 2007 9:04:02 PM
Supporters of Ron Paul often seem astonished or perplexed when people exposed to his wisdom, either from him or through his surrogates on the internet, fail to become converts.

This is usually accompanied by demanding to know just where my opinions deviate from those of Paul and why. The conceit being that only a lack of proper understanding or my questionable conservative credentials could be the reason.

To be brief, Paul lost me at "It's our fault".

Wisely, Paul has not repeated those words very often since he gave Giuliani the opportunity to look incredulous for home audiences. But his surrogates on the internet have not received the memo.

Paul could announce that he will burn down the IRS Building and disband the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, but that would have no effect on me. When you blame the rape victim for the crime because her skirt was too short, I won't be jumping on your bandwagon anytime soon. Actually, never.

But the problem isn't just Paul. It's those supporters of his who constantly speak of America as an "empire". A meddlesome, holier-than-thou empire that should retire from the scene after offering a spate of apologies to the world at large for ever having the arrogance to think of ourselves as making a positive difference.

The problem, the thing they don't realize, is that guys like me cannot discuss "America" as some sort of abstract thing. I cannot discuss America in the third person. As if I am detached from it.

When you lampoon or criticize America, you do the same to me. When you complain about Iraqis murdered, you are calling me a murderer. I personalize it. I internalize it. I would do this even if I weren't a soldier.

I've grown accustomed to Persons of the Left speaking this way. I'm not supposed to like them anyway. And I don't. But when I hear people who also believe in limited government, tax cuts, and gun rights ALSO speaking indistinguishably from the most rabid disciple of Noam Chomsky...I cannot stand it.

It is too late to win me back, but I suspect that was never your purpose either. This is about venting, not about persuading.

My advice: Drop the "America is the bad guy" stuff. Drop anything that could even be remotely construed as such. For you cannot win an election without us. We could probably do it without you.
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Chickendoves...Assemble!

Posted by Citizen Carrier on Thursday, October 25, 2007 3:33:38 PM
Here on Townhall.com we are daily treated to the ad hominem fallacy of refuting somebody by referring to them as a "chickenhawk". Somebody who advocates war or desires success in Iraq without ever having served in the military or expressing a desire to serve now. For many liberal posters, this is the end all and be all of refutation. Even a column about farm subsidies can be distorted enough to allow somebody to make the charge of "chickenhawk!"

For those who make this charge, I have a question.
 
Why aren't you in jail?

Jail is the likely punishment you will receive for refusing to pay your federal taxes. This leads to the next question.

Why are you still paying your taxes?

For if you really believe Bush is no better than Hitler, that he lied, that this is an illegal war, that the blood of thousands of Iraqis is on our hands, that this is just about oil, or impressing Bush Sr., that our Constitution has been destroyed, that we are the new Evil Empire, then aren't you morally obligated to stop funding it? To engage in at least some form of civil disobedience? Your Democrats don't have the guts to de-fund the war, so it is up to you.

Thoreau did it to protest the Mexican War, why can't you? Modify your tax witholding so that you end up owing the government money every April. You should be doing that anyway. And when April comes around, don't mail that check. Mail out a letter explaining why you are holding your money in escrow. Tell the IRS, Congress, and the President they won't get that money until after the troops are withdrawn.

Those of you who are self-employed as owners of pottery barns, used book stores, pita wrap sandwich stands, or antique stores in Vermont can stop paying any federal taxes whatsoever. And you could enlist some serious heavy-hitters! Imagine Barbara Streisand and Michael Moore REFUSING to pay capital gains taxes from the profits they make trading in Halliburton stock! We're talking serious money and a definite message sent to The Decider.

Of course, there are both upsides and downsides to this course of action, as opposed to joining the military as you demand chickenhawks do.

Army Downside: Joining the military would provide you with a paycheck twice a month, but you may have to go to war.

Prison Upside: You get to experience the utopia epitomized by our gun-free prison system. Those of you who hate gun ownership can experience firsthand a society completely free of gun violence.

Prison Upside: You will not be put in charge of Abu Ghraib prisoners and ordered to break their morale by various means prior to interrogation.

Prison Downside: Somebody in prison may make you wear a dog collar and form a nude pyramid with other inmates.

Prison Upside: You can probably catch reruns of "Dharma and Greg" on the prison communal TV and friends on the outside can smuggle in your dvds of the 1st season of "The Saundra Bernhard Experience".

But April is a long way off. Once you've made the decision to put your money where your mouth is, you can start lifting weights and studying jujitsu. Come on, it's more practical than that yoga stuff you've been doing anyway. By the time a federal judge passes sentence, you could be one bad dude. Or dudette, depending on your alternative lifestyle choices. Shave your head. Get some tattoos. All the smokes and companionship you could desire.

Hillary will pardon you anyway, so don't sweat it! If they pardoned the FALN terrorists who conspired to bomb several of our cities, they can certainly pardon you guys! You'll be the most popular icons on the left since "Billy Jack" or the Weather Underground.

You may not have to go to jail at all! It would probably just take about 200 of you per state to overload the court and prison systems.

No longer must your bad manners masquerade as legitimate, effective protest. You can actually do something substantive. Something real. You can shut down Gitmo. Close the interrogation/torture prisons overseas. Put Cheney in his place. Stop our Hitler in his tracks.

Unless of course, you can't be bothered with having your lifestyle interrupted in order to oppose something you daily describe as the most evil stuff you've ever witnessed. My guess is you'll just go back to calling people "chickenhawks".
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