Two British muslims ran over a British soldier, Lee Rigby, with their car in broad daylight, hopped out, and beheaded him. Then they crowed about it on camera.

I’m not surprised. Hopefully we’ll preserve our collective outrage over this, but I suspect this kind of thing’s already becoming blasé in our jaded and media-saturated culture.

Amid all the outrage expressed in the blogosphere and on social media, I’ve noticed a theme that needs correcting if we’re going to keep the right perspective. My fellow conservatives often express their fury with epithets like “animals” and “subhuman scum” when they refer to the evil men who saw off non-muslim heads in the name of a “merciful Allah.” It’s understandable to use those labels, but it’s not right because it lets these evil muslims off the hook for their actions. We feel anger when we find out about these slaughters precisely because these evil men are more than just animals. They’re people, and that means they know better.

When a cougar mauls a child, we hunt it down and kill it without much passion because it’s a dumb animal with no sense of morality. Young children, dementia sufferers, and certain insane people can’t distinguish between right and wrong, so we don’t hold them to a high moral standard. But when grown men shoot fleeing children in the back or saw off the heads of helpless civilians, they earn our undying enmity because they know they’re committing evil and they do it anyway. Evil acts can’t be waved away with a concerned expression and a sadly-spoken “oh, that’s just sick.” People choose to do evil things, and some choose to do great evil. They aren’t all insane, they haven’t all been browbeaten into it, and they aren’t all merely misguided. People commit evil, for which they deserve punishment.

For you left-leaning readers who feel uncomfortable with arguments based on right and wrong, think of this from a legal perspective. The Model Penal Code (which forms the basis for many states’ criminal codes) breaks down most crimes into four categories, asking whether the perpetrator committed the crime negligently, recklessly, knowingly, or purposefully. If a man fires a gun through a flimsy backstop in his backyard and the bullet accidentally kills his neighbor’s child, we’ll likely prosecute him for negligent homicide. But we hold him less culpable than the man who recklessly fires his gun into the air and kills the child playing in her yard two streets over. Worse still is the man who fires his rifle over a crowd of children, knowing he’ll probably kill someone. Worst of all is the man who fires a bullet into a fleeing child’s back for the purpose of killing her. Even our legal system emphasizes degrees of culpability and the importance of the perpetrator’s state of mind. It’s about as close to moral condemnation as our relativistic legal system ever gets.

The moral approach and our inherent sense of right and wrong provides the strongest foundation for holding these evil muslims responsible as people who consciously choose to do evil, but you might find the legal approach more comfortable. Either way, intentions count for a lot.

I continue to try extra hard not to understate the depths that these men have sunk to. I don’t call them animals or subhuman scum; these muslim death cultists are evil, and that’s why I’ll smile when they die violent and painful deaths.

I hope you’ll do the same.

–

5/24/13 Update: The Brits have become men without chests. We’re headed down the same road, sadly.

We do not have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.

I’m sick of pretending I don’t think it’s weird that people are still wigging out over the idea that some people are attracted to the same sex, and are still pushing some sort of “political” agenda about this, like we need a governmental fix to discourage homosexuality.

Homosexual attraction may or may not be genetic (and thus unavoidable). Actual homosexual conduct is avoidable. Its harmful public health consequences are well-documented. Open homosexual conduct’s corrosion of a society founded on the nuclear heterosexual family is also well-documented.

Further, government has a rational basis for encouraging childbirth, as maintaining the population of contributing members of society allows that society to continue (duh). Since it’s well-documented that children raised by married monogamous heterosexuals turn out better/healthier/more productive/more peaceable than children raised in other environments, government has a rational basis for encouraging monogamous heterosexual marriage.

Gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transexuals, and whateversexuals will put their naughty bits where they want to. Government can’t stamp that out, nor should it try (there are too many more important tasks for it to accomplish, tasks which it currently neglects). But at a minimum, government should refrain from subsidizing, celebrating, or normalizing such socially corrosive conduct.

If you choose to warp this argument into “teh creepy Jesus peoplez want to round up teh gayz!!!1!” … well, I can’t stop you. I can sure as hell ridicule your intellectual foolishness, though.

The American electorate appears determined to join the Free Shit Army™, while preening in the mirror over its collective refusal to recognize corrosive conduct for what it is. So be it. Spendthrifts will eventually run out of money, and libertines will eventually reap the whirlwind of chaos. We social conservatives will be here to rebuild once reality’s finished pimp-slapping some basic sense back into y’all.

Let it burn.

Sec. 2923.171. (A) No person shall knowingly possess or acquire any assault weapon.

…

(D) As used in this section, “assault weapon” means an automatic firearm that has not been rendered permanently inoperable, a semi-automatic firearm capable of accepting a detachable magazine with the capacity to accept ten or more cartridges, and a semi-automatic firearm with a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept ten or more cartridges.

This definition includes most pistols and rifles, and some shotguns. Notice that they don’t seek to ban “high-capacity” magazines, but rather any guns that accept them. If you’re a gun grabber and want to get rid of Firearm X, you need only build a ten-round mag that fits it (hire a machinist, baby!), and ta-daaa! It’ll be illegal to possess or acquire that gun in Ohio.

Also note that there’s no grandfather clause for current owners of so-called “assault weapons,” nor for collectors of vintage firearms.

Read the bill and you’ll also see a broad provision for a new “firearm and ammunition transactions database” too.

Sec. 109.5731. The attorney general shall prepare for the establishment and operation of a firearm and ammunition transactions database that will be maintained by the bureau of criminal identification and investigation. The attorney general shall establish the database in conformity with the requirements of any act that is enacted by the general assembly.

I wonder why the state government might be interested in who buys, sells, and owns guns and ammunition? First comes registration, then comes confiscation.

The state senators responsible for this disaster are Shirley Smith (D – Cleveland), Nina Turner (D – Cleveland), Mike Skindell (D – Lakewood), Eric Kearney (D – Cincinnati), Edna Brown (D – Toledo), and Charleta Tavares (D – Columbus). Get on the phones, people. Stop this before it gains momentum.

–

7:00 AM Update: More from the Buckeye Firearms Association.

–

7:15 AM Update: This is a Madsen-Rasmussen M1896 Self-Loading Rifle. It’s 117 years old.

Under S.B. 18, this rare antique would be defined as an illegal “assault weapon” in Ohio.

Hail to the Virtual Chief!

Same ****, different day. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, and don’t believe your lying eyes.

Mark my words: either the Obama White House and the Department of Defense will claim success by lowering the standards for women, or they’ll do it by lowering them for everyone and claiming everything is now “fair.”If woman and men are not different in any meaningful way, why are there no NFL linewomen? If such a creature could be created, don’t you think that the cold, calculating capitalists running those franchises would jump at the opportunity to employ her? Think of the merchandising opportunities and priceless P.R. to be had. The glaring and obvious absence of women from the NFL — not to mention the NBA, NHL, and MLB — should tell you something about human biology, and in professional sports death on the job is about as common as a unicorn fart.

The physical strength and endurance standards required for close combat participants to survive and accomplish their missions have been well-known for generations. Women can do some things better than men, and a few of those things are physical. Women are often more flexible than men, can fit into tighter spaces, and tend to have better fine motor skills. Unfortunately such abilities do you no good when the task at hand is muscling 155mm artillery shells into the breech of a howitzer. Or replacing a section of tread on an M1A1 tank that just threw a track. Or throwing a frag far enough to reach the enemy and not hit your buddies when it detonates. Or using a fireman’s carry to bring a wounded and screaming 230 pound soldier wearing 50 pounds of gear out of the line of fire. Or humping a full ruck and a weapon through the Hindu Kush for a week on patrol. Or climbing a collapsible boarding ladder up the side of a hijacked supertanker. Or … well, you see my point.

In close combat, you don’t get to call a training time out when things get difficult. You don’t get to stop the patrol to change out a soaked maxi pad. You don’t get special consideration from the enemy when your monthly cramps and hormonal mood swings hit. You don’t leave your unit and head back to the continental US just because you find you have a kid on the way. You live in filth, blood, grime, heat, cold, rain, and snow, all while the enemy gets regular and unscheduled opportunities to try to kill you. You don’t let drama, emotion, sex, dating, or any of a million other distractions interfere with your core mission of killing the enemy, breaking his stuff, sapping him of the will to fight, and persuading his supporters that they have better things to do than oppose you.

At least, if you hope to limit friendly casualties and be an effective military, you don’t. If your goal is to provide career opportunities for people with two X chromosomes, then you do what we’re starting to do now.

During my nine years of military service, I watched many a military female capitalize on her sex to skate by. It was tacitly encouraged (just look at the different scoring scales for physical fitness tests in the military, for starters). Rare is the active duty male commissioned officer who will voice his confirmation of my own first hand observations, lest the Screeching Harpies of Diversity and Tolerance™ eviscerate his career. Pour encourager les autres.

Are there women who actually can meet the physical standards? Presumably. I suppose there may be ~0.05% of the military-age female population who can. Of those, I suspect the majority do not want to be in a close combat unit. And even if a tiny cohort of women are both willing and able to meet the physical standards of close combat, we still must ask if the negative effects of their presence in such units — and the cost involved in making accommodations for their biological needs — are worth the expected benefits.

The overriding question to address whenever we consider a change to our policies on close combat units is: “Is it more likely than not that this change will help the unit kill the enemy, break his stuff, crush his will to fight, and sap his supporters’ commitment?” If the answer is anything other than an unqualified YES, then the proposed change should be scrapped. Period.

Other than a very few extreme genetic outliers, women cannot meet the current physical standards required of infantry/armor/artillery/SOF troops. Mark my words: either the Obama White House and the Department of Defense will claim success by lowering the standards for women, or they’ll do it by lowering them for everyone and claiming everything is now “fair.” If they hold women to the same standards that men must meet today, all the way through January 20, 2017, I will donate an additional $5,000 to the Wounded Warrior Project. My $5,000 is safer than Barack Obama’s college transcripts, and you know it.

This will not end well, and it will get American troops killed who would otherwise have lived.

—-

10:25 PM Update: More commentary below, from guys who’ve been in it up to their eyeballs (and even one gal).

Let the games begin!

A Lovely Parting Gift

Panetta throws open doors to combat for women

Women Cleared For Combat

The Harsh Reality of Women in Infantry Combat

Get Over It! We Are Not All Created Equal by Captain Katie Petronio, USMC

—-

10:40 PM Update: Let’s take a look at NASA’s comparison of female vs. male muscular strength.

Note: Female strength as a percentage of male strength for different conditions. The vertical line within each shaded bar indicates the mean percentage difference. The end points of the shaded bars indicate the range.
Reference: 16, p. VII-50; NASA-STD-3000 204

But hey, let’s not let uncomfortable reality get in the way of boosting female self-esteem to even more stratospheric heights.

—-

1/24/12 5:30 PM Update: Heather MacDonald reminds everyone of the obvious.

Feminists routinely deny Eros — except when it suits them to exploit their sexual power. Only someone deliberately blind to human reality could maintain that putting men and women in close quarters 24 hours a day will not produce a proliferation of sex, thus introducing all the irrational passions (and resulting favoritism) of physical attraction into an organization that should be exclusively devoted to the mission of combat preparedness. Reported “sexual assaults” will skyrocket, and of course it will only be the men who are at fault. Any consensual behavior leading up to the “assault” — getting in bed with your fellow grunt drunk and taking off your clothes, for example — will be ignored, since in the realm of sexual responsibility, women remain perpetual victims, at the mercy of all-powerful men. Expect a windfall to the gender-sensitivity-training industry, which will be called in both before and after the entry of women into combat units to eradicate endemic male sexism.

It’ll be just dandy for unit cohesion, don’t you think?

We. Do. Not. Have. A. Revenue. Problem.

Our alleged “budget hawk,” US Senator Rob Portman voted “yes.” From our US House delegation, John Boehner, Bob Latta, Bill Johnson, Steve LaTourette (outgoing), Steve Stivers, and Pat Tiberi all voted “yes” to increase your taxes. These gentlemen all deserve to be primaried out of office when they stand for reelection in 2014.

Kudos to Ohio’s Republican US Representatives who stood strong and voted “no.” That would be Steve Austria (outgoing), Steve Chabot, Bob Gibbs, Jim Jordan, Jim Renacci, and Jean Schmidt (outgoing).

I’ll post the text of the bill once it’s available. You see, Congress also violated its pledge to post all legislation for public review online for 72 hours before voting on it.

Is it any wonder that Congress has a 5% approval rating?

Guess what? It is. This is the modern version of the Cloward-Piven Strategy:

First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven (both longtime members of the Democratic Socialists of America, where Piven today is an honorary chair), the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

…

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when “the rest of society is afraid of them,” Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would “the rest of society” accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven’s early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. “Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,” Alinsky wrote in his 1972 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system’s failure to “live up” to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist “rule book” with a socialist one.

In 2009, President-Elect Obama wasn’t kidding when he said he wanted to fundamentally transform America:

Now, he’s getting exactly what he wants.

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

When we get socialized medicine, we get this:

One doctor has admitted starving and dehydrating ten babies to death in the neonatal unit of one hospital alone.

Writing in a leading medical journal, the physician revealed the process can take an average of ten days during which a baby becomes ‘smaller and shrunken’.

…

Bernadette Lloyd, a hospice paediatric nurse, has written to the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health to criticise the use of death pathways for children.

She said: ‘The parents feel coerced, at a very traumatic time, into agreeing that this is correct for their child whom they are told by doctors has only has a few days to live. It is very difficult to predict death. I have seen a “reasonable” number of children recover after being taken off the pathway.

‘I have also seen children die in terrible thirst because fluids are withdrawn from them until they die.

‘I witnessed a 14 year-old boy with cancer die with his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth when doctors refused to give him liquids by tube. His death was agonising for him, and for us nurses to watch. This is euthanasia by the backdoor.’

These are born children, intentionally starved and dehydrated to death by government bureaucrats trying to cut costs.

Behold progressivism. Obama fans, this is what you voted for.

–

H/T: Red State

–

1:35 PM Update: No, I am not exaggerating about the National Health Service in the UK. Socialized medicine will kill you.

Things are going to get much, much worse. We need to look at the big picture here. So pardon me as I duck into this cloud bank over here …

–

3:45 PM Update: The press and the educational establishment and Hollywood have transformed enough of the American people into progressive drones that they outnumber us. The progressive movement started a “Long March Through The Institutions” about a hundred years ago, and they crossed the finish line yesterday. At this moment, I think the republic is mortally wounded.

These fools we call countrymen will refuse to consider the consequences of utopian statism until they are forced to. That will only happen when this society implodes. Notice I said “when,” not “if.”

Hopefully Mark Levin can convince me otherwise tonight, because I doubt anyone else can.

–

7:00 PM Update: Hour 1 is done. Hour 2 should get into some real meat. Here’s the live stream.

Don’t fall for the lie. Get your butt to the polls and vote Obama out.

… or progressive tyranny.

Choose wisely. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good.

If the unborn is a human being, then the rape exception says it’s acceptable to kill a human being if her father raped her mother, or if her existence causes her mother emotional distress, or both. Following this logic, a mother of a three year old girl conceived in rape may kill her daughter for the same reasons.

If the unborn is not a human being, then no special exception for rape is required. Mothers may freely abort for any reason or no reason.

To resolve the controversy over abortion in the case of rape, simply answer one question: “What is the unborn?”

Whichever way you answer that question, there is no moral difference between the two fetuses in the photo above. They’re either both human beings, or they’re both not.

Rape is evil. Period. Murder is evil. Period. Murdering an innocent third party using rape as an excuse is evil. Period.

When you shut down your ability to reason your way through a problem, and rely instead on your emotional responses, you risk making a horribly wrong choice.

Clear away your emotions for one brief moment and think. If the unborn is not a human being, then the rape exception is unnecessary. But if the unborn is a human being, then the rape exception is unjustified.

So go answer the most important question.

–

10:15 Update: Even a pro-choice atheist gets it. C’mon, you people are embarrassing the pro-life cause.

–

10/30 Update:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Whether you call it “progressivism,” “liberalism,” or any of a hundred other names, the worldview of the modern Left is rooted in a history of genocidal violence. The Democrat Party has boldly embraced this ideology, and more than a few Republicans have quietly followed suit. They believe human nature is malleable, that utopia can be achieved, and that they are morally justified in bringing it to pass. To achieve their goal, they have become statists.

When statists take control of a national government, that nation always starts down a path toward mass murder. Unless the statists are removed from power, this is what happens:

… is a blatant false flag scam by Obama supporters.

–

10/14 Update: As predicted, this was a lefty thug wearing a Palin-bashing t-shirt.

I’m only surprised that they fudged the numbers so blatantly. I thought they’d at least try to be more subtle.

The U-3 unemployment number doesn’t tell the whole story. But don’t just take my word for it. James Pethokoukis explains:

Yes, the U-3 unemployment rate fell to 7.8%, the first time it has been below 8% since January 2009. But that’s only due to a flood of 582,000 part-time jobs.

…

The broader U-6 rate — which takes into account part-time workers who want full-time work and lots of discouraged workers who’ve given up looking — stayed unchanged at 14.7%. That’s a better gauge of the true unemployment rate and state of the American labor market.

The labor force is collapsing. Confused? Look at it this way.

8% unemployment

8% unemployment (technically)

When the BLS plays with the number of people it designates as “discouraged workers,” then you see results like today’s report of 7.8% unemployment. The Obama BLS is cooking the books to make Obama look better.

Scroll back up to the top of this page. Look underneath the banner for a link labeled “Unemployment 101″ and read what’s there a few times until you have a good grasp on the accounting tricks you’re being fed by the Obama BLS.

–

12:05 Update: Yet more accounting tricks, this time with government jobs vs. private sector jobs.

–

12:25 Update: The total number of unemployed and underemployed people reveals another aspect of the BLS’ deception. Look how it jumped today.

–

12:55 PM Update: They forgot to cook the rest of the books to hide the trickery.

–

1:10 PM Update: Busted. Caught red-handed. Utter bullshit.

–

1:15 PM Update: Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

–

4:05 PM Update: If the economy really created 873,000 jobs last month, why isn’t Obama crowing it from the rooftops? Because he knows it’s utter bullshit, that’s why.

–

4:20 PM: Nope, nothing fishy going on. Nothing to see here. Move along. The first positive news for September employment among 20-24 year olds — ever — is completely legit.

Sure, every other September sees these college-aged kids going, y’know, back to college. But not in the 4th Year of Our Lord Barack Obama. Forward, comrades! All is well!

Wanna buy some sweet oceanfront property in Arizona? I can sell it to ya cheap.