…of last night’s CNBC GOP debate?

“Even Brian Williams is saying he wasn’t there”
— Mark Okern (from Facebook)

I watched the first half of yesterday’s GOP debate, before I had to go do some family stuff.

There had been some hope that CNBC – an ostensible financial network – would ask some substantial questions about financial policy.  And there were a few, sort of, in a way.

But “are you an evil comic book villain?”

John Harwood came across as a Liberal snidely whiplash. Becky Quick…wasn’t very.   Carl Quintanilla sounded like he was hosting a cable access production of Jimmy’s First Debate.  And Jim Cramer?  I don’t know if he was on cold medicine or had taken a couple of shots to the head before he went on the air, but good lord, that performance will be taught in broadcast schools for decades to come as an example of how not to sound when reading off a teleprompter.

It’s entirely possible (except for Harwood) that they were just trying to come across as tough, hard-nosed “journalists” – an effect that lasts precisely until the phrase “evil comic book villain” came up.

But the hour I spent was worth it, if only for this; Ted Cruz’ jeremiad against the media was one for the ages:

Glorious.

“But he should have answered Quintanilla’s substantive question!” Er, did you catch the question? “Does your opposition to a “moderate” budget deal mean you’re unqualified?”

UPDATE:  As I put this morning’s piece together in my head last night, I thought – as I often do when matters of discerning bias in others come up – “Am I right, or is this just confirmation bias?”

Well, it’s not just me; Roger Simon torched the moderators pretty ruthlessly:

The big story — the A-story — on Wednesday night — the actual full blown case of seppuku — was CNBC.  The network will never seem the same.  Their moderators — Becky Quick, John Harwood, and Carl Quintanilla — were so obviously biased you would have thought it was a parody, if you hadn’t known it was real, a kind of black comic nightmare out of a leftwing theatre of the absurd.

I thought that very thing as I was sitting at O’Gara’s watching the show last night; “this is like an SNL sketch”.

And there was this bit, that I didn’t catch last night; as part of the moderators’ attempt to gut-shoot Rubio, the non-Trump front-runner, John Harwood doubled down on a lie he’d already apologized for:

But more than that, the debate revealed something I had thought about before, but never seen so clearly — how bias can affect the brain, almost make it dysfunctional.  I assume John Howard is an intelligent man.  He writes for the New York Times. (Make of that what you will, but I did write for that newspaper myself once upon a time, so mind your manners.)  Nevertheless, Harwood did something extraordinary.  He lied about Rubio’s tax plan in the exact same way not once but twice — once at the debate and once about two weeks before the debate.  What made it extraordinary was that Harwood had apologized for that same lie the first time on Twitter on October 14 and then lied again Wednesday night as if he didn’t remember his own apology and correction.   (The Federalist has the full story  with the tweet – Surprise! John Harwood Lied About Rubio’s Tax Plan…)

Simon continues – pervasive bias acts as a form of cognitive disorder, blotting out right and wrong in extreme cases.

It’ll never get in the DSMVI, but we all know it’s there.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Times change, slogans change.

A Democrat President once said “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”  That’s a Republican way of thinking expressed in the idiom “pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps.”

In contrast, Bernie and Hilary believe “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  Democrats are all socialists now, a European way of thinking endorsed by Karl, Josef, Fidel and the most famous National Socialist of all, Adolf.

Cue the liberal who writes in bleating “Naziism wasn’t socialism”.  Oh, go ahead.  Do it.  I’m ready for you.  You’ll lose.

Back to Joe’s email:

I’m curious – if we were to survey history for the last few millennia, which system has been more successful at raising overall prosperity?  Or is that factor no longer relevant, misery now being considered acceptable so long as it’s widely enough shared?

Joe Doakes

It’s not even a question for those paying attention.

So much of our society, of course, isn’t, and never has.

I remember back in the eighties, back when I used to occasionally frequent bars on University Avenue on the weekend, ducking into Big V’s, near Snelling.  Back then – long before the Turf Club became a hangout for music hipsters – it was a place to go if you were in the mood to crowd into a long, narrow room with a cement floor and a single row of ripped naugahyde stools and listen to a band that was on the floor three feet away from you, under the watchful eye of bartenders who could rip your arms out at the shoulders, and the men who loved them.

I haven’t been there in a while – which was why it was a bit of a shock to see that they were going to start closing down early because the area is getting just too dodgy.

I got this from a regular reader of this blog:

I was at Big V’s a few weeks ago and my friends and I were talking about this very topic- is the area less safe? I was saying it felt that way to me and others agreed, but we wondered if it was because we were now older, perhaps some of us more sober, so we noticed more around us.

You may be older and more sober – but there’s more to notice.

Up by my house, half a mile north of Big V’s, we’ve had two smash-and-grab burglaries and, a few weeks back, the first daylight armed robbery I can remember in 22 years on the block.

On the Hamline/Midway neighborhood Facebook page, there is of course the usual tension; those who believe that crime is on the rise, and think that the Green Line has turned into a commuter line for criminals, those who say there’s nothing to see here, move along, citizen.

I really want to believe that, but I know the Russian Tea House owners have noticed a decrease in sense of safety and now Big V’s.

Which is a good reminder; if you’re in Saint Paul on Friday, go to Russian Tea House for lunch.  You’ll thank me.  Then you’ll thank me again. It’s a neighborhood treasure.

And Metro Transit’s response? The increase in the number of service calls [reported by the Saint Paul police] doesn’t mean anything. Some of those numbers include “proactive visits” to the area. Right..because the cops are always running proactively to the safe parts of the city.

Light Rail lines nationwide tend to be commuter lines for criminals.   Expect the establishment in the Twin Cities to deny that has hard and often as they can.

Kevin Williamson, the most essential writer in American conservatism today, on the celebrity cult that dominates not only, well, celebrity, but increasingly public life:

As a fairly committed theater-goer, I like actors as much as the next guy, but I also endorse the traditional social ranking of them alongside prostitutes and tinkers, a few degrees inferior to mule-drivers and emancipated peasants.

Naturally, the whole thing is worth a read.

There’s an old saying, which experience as a conservative in a liberal city shows to be utterly true:  “Conservatives believe Liberals are wrong; Liberals believe Conservatives are evil”.

Further evidence:  Liberals are vastly more likely to unfriend social media contacts over politics than conservatives are.

I’d extend that;  conservative blogs, like mine, are highly likely to tolerate dissent in our various social media feeds; check and see how much dissent the likes of “Protect MN” or Sally Jo Sorenson tolerate in their online worlds when you’ve got time for an experiment.

A very brief experiment.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Another school, another shooting, more people dead, this time in Sweden where a young man wearing a Star Wars mask attacked a school.

No, the killer didn’t do the shooting.  The killer was stopped by a good guy with a gun.  Who shot him.  In a school.

And stopped him from killing more children.  By shooting him.  In a school.

So does that make this the Good Kind of School Shooting?

Joe Doakes

No.  It makes it the kind of shooting you never hear about in the American media – shootings like these – that interrupt the narrative that “gun violence” is out of control.

A friend of this blog writes:

I don’t know about you, but most of the people think of the bicycle lobby as the leisure class, so it is interesting that one of them is now admitting that we lower class taxpayers are indeed building this infrastructure for the elites.

The piece, on the transportation/transit site “Streets.mn”, is by our old friend Ken “Avidor” Weiner, who since the retirement of Michele Bachmann seems to have mostly vanished from view, but for the odd warm and fuzzy from a Twin Cities media that always seems to keep its lefty “eccentrics” in its orbit.

Its premise:  biking is becoming chic, and it’s up to the working-class rubes to keep up with the Joneses in Minneapolis, with their chic world-class bikeability rating, because of collective pride.  

Now, don’t get me wrong; I love biking.  I do a fair amount of it.  And I do appreciate the taxpayers of Minneapolis, building me all those nice paths (although less so those stupid downtown lanes, squished between the parking lane and the curb, and sometimes seemingly paved with broken glass, and always a slalom looking out for doors opening and people crossing to their cars.  Dumb dumb dumb).

I’m not going to quote Weiner – because I really just did explain the article; “build bike lanes because Yay Saint Paul”.

I mean, read it.  Am I wrong?

There was a mass killing over the weekend in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

This was the headline in the Traverse City Record Eagle, one of the local papers – a Michigan paper:

It’s a tragedy indeed, and a crime.

But there was no gun involved.   The four people were killed by an alleged drunk driver.

Remember: layers and layers of gatekeepers are what separate the credible mainstream media from mere bloggers.

UPDATE:  As God is my witness, I thought there was a Traverse City, Oklahoma.

But it’s Michigan.

Tomayto, Tomahto.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Attack a pastor during Sunday worship service and get shot . . . by the pastor?

Gives new meaning to the phrase “The way to stop a Bad Man with a gun is a Good Man with a gun.”

The police are trying to decide whether to charge the pastor for violating the Gun Free Zone (Michigan law doesn’t allow guns in church).

Save a pile of lives, go to jail?

Joe Doakes

It’s one of the ugly conundra of self defense; no matter how, er, righteous the shooting, you’re only as safe as the most zealous prosecutor is in the mood to let you be.

Last week, we noted that Heather Martens – leader of “Gun Safety” group “Protect” MN, and serial liar – demanded $1,500 to discuss “gun safety” on my show, with me, someone with at least some track record of knowing the issue in some detail.

We also noted that she did appear on KARE11 to debate “gun safety” with Andy Parrish, a GOP strategist, who is not noted as a Second Amendment activist or someone with an especial command of the facts of the issue (which is not to disparage him; I don’t know any of his areas of expertise, either).

Today comes confirmation that Martens did not ask, or recieve, $1,500 from KARE11.

Why, it’s almost as if Martens knows that certain Twin Cities media outlets will paint her toenails on the air, and she’s avoiding having to deal with anyone who can point out her chronic, vocational mendacity.

I said “almost”.

I have no idea why.

“Why do you allow commenters like “Dog Gone” to do their “Poop and run” commenting, leaving big, easily-debunked comments and never sticking around to defend their mendacity?”  I’ve been blogging almost 14 years, and had a comment section most of that time.  The goal of that comment section has always been to give readers a place to discuss what they think about what I’ve written.  In that time, my policy has always been to never ban anyone, unless

1. They write something that’ll get me in legal trouble
2. Their entire reason for being on the blog is to personally bash me.  Not an article, or my reasoning, but me, personally, over and over and over.

Between the two, I’ve probably actually banned half a dozen people in 14 years.  Many of you can probably name them.

I’ve always figured it was more important to have a discussion than an echo chamber – a sentiment the left doesn’t largely subscribe to, by the way – so I let most of it go.  On my show, in fact, liberal callers get on first.  It’s policy.

I do this because I still cling to the notion that discussion is a dying art in this country.

Am I getting tired of the “poop and run” style of commenting?  Sure.  It’s intellectually dishonest; using someone else’s discussion space to dump an argument that one never intends to (and, usually, can’t) defend is basically spam.

“Why do you oppose switching to the metric system?”  I don’t.  I oppose another extended, expensive government program to try to force the general public to use metric in their daily lives.

You ever notice how almost everyone in the Netherlands can communicate in German and English?  How most everyone in Belgium can do a sort of French and Dutch, and usually English to boot?   How Germans very often speak excellent English and decent French, and how Swiss are functionally trilingual?   And how often liberals sniff down their noses and say this is evidence of American provincialism?

It’s not; it’s because European “nations” are the size of US states – and these days, they have about the same barriers between them.   Can you imagine if Wisconsin, the Dakotas and Iowa all spoke different languages than Minnesota?  You’d have a lot of quadrilingual Minnesotans!  Fact is, Europeans need to get around in several languages – so they do.

It works the same with measurement systems.  Just as Belgium and Canada have two languages, America operates, unofficially, with two systems of measurement; one for scientists, engineers, a few people in foreign trade and the military, and one for the rest of us.  Any American who needs to be fluent in metric, is – and translates between the two, if not fluently, then functionally; three kilometers is two miles, a kilogram is 2.2 pounds, a liter is 1.1 quarts, 2.5 acres to a Hectare, an inch is 2.5 centimeters, a meter is 1.1 yards, a foot is 304 mm – it’s just not that hard, and for those translations that are too hard, Siri and Google can calculate even if doing it on a calculator or spreadsheet is too complicated.

There.  I just saved the taxpayer millions of dollars.

“A Good Guy with a Gun is teh falesy!”:   Well, no – it‘s not.

“You are teh Christeean.  You hate teh SCIENCE cuz you believe teh Earth is 4,000 years old!”:  Well, no.  The notion that the Genesis story is literal fact on par with empirical observation is very, very new; its’ only been accepted by parts of Christendom for less than 200 years.  The idea that the earth literally formed in seven days and that the listing of generations in Leviticus and Deuteronomy is, literally, a family tree that more or less precisely dates the universe would have seemed bizarre to Augustine and Aquinas.

There is, literally, nothing about an allegorical reading of the Genesis creation story that is at odds in any significant way with science.

Which is why critics like the ones I “quote” above – who are largely from the “lapsed Catholic with daddy issues” school of militant atheism – spend so much time bashing the “literalist” straw man.  It invalidates the one little thread they connecting them to that feeling of superiority they crave.

“Often, you seem to come across as arrogant and condescending”:  Toots, if I did bother wasting my precious time being arrogant to you, you’d be the last to figure it out.

“You say you’re a libertarian conservative – but there is no such thing!  You must pick one or the other!”:  No, I mustn’t.

American conservatism is built around several important ideas – including the idea that “new ideas have to pass a fairly stern burden of proof”.

Two of the ideas that American conservatives believe have passed that burden:

1. Individual liberty is an intrinsically good thing.
2. Without order, freedom is impossible

It’s one of those things that makes true intellectual conservatism so difficult; those are contradictory.  True conservatives recognize the conundrum that exists between the two, and fight constantly to navigate it as unobtrusively as possible.

Without liberty, order is just tyranny.  Without order, liberty is impossible – because to paraphrase Martin Luther King, the moral arc of history bends is long, but it bends toward barbarism.

That truism – and the conundrum – are the theme of a certain book that is on the market even as we speak!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Wretchard, writing at The Belmont Club:
Just read it.
Joe Doakes

I won’t quote from it; you really just need to read every single word of it.  It really is the most complete indictment of the Obama Administration’s failures I’ve seen in one place – and, more importantly, their most likely consequences from this point on – that I’ve ever seen, from someone who knows foreign policy better than just about anyone in the American media.

After three years of trying to attack the NRA, what’s happened?

The NRA is more popular than Hillary Clinton or President Obama.

This is really pretty much me:

Summing up Heather Martens’ (and KARE11’s) disingenuity.

Fight Cuban trash collection in Bloomington.

Today’s music playlist. ♫

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air! I will be on live from 1-3PM today!

Today on the show, we’ll be taking about KARE11’s new job as the PR flaks for gun control, Saint Paul’s superintendent problem, plus much more.  Also:

• Devin Foley of Better Ed joins us us.

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1570, and Brad Carlson has “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 1-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

In the wake of the “debate” between Heather Martens – liar for hire and leader of a gun grabber “group,” sort of – and…

Andy Parrish?  The former Michele Bachmann staffer and campaign manager of the abortive Marriage Amendment, who is famous for many things, not including having an extensive portfolio as a Second Amendment activist?

Nothing against Andy, with whom I’m a nodding acquaintance – but why in the name of all that is holy would anyone select him to be the face of Second Amendment Human Rights issues?

My hunch:   because he’s the only Republican that anyone at KARE11 has talked to, lately, and, perhaps, someone at KARE11 figured it’d be a fair fight.  Martens going up against Andrew Rothman or Joe Olson or David Gross of GOCRA, or Bryan Strawser or Rob Doar of MNGOPAC, or even lil’ ol’ me would be a massacre.  A turkey shoot.  Like shooting fish in a barrel on a plate.

Anyway, KARE11,  I’m all about the help.  So I’m here to suggest some equally-appropriate matchups of “expert spokesperson” and issue:

There you go, KARE. Don’t say I’ve never done anything for you.

UPDATE: Bryan Strawser of MNGOPAC is responding to KARE11:

Letter to KARE-11 TV – October 2015 Gun Control Debate by Bryan Strawser

So, I think, will I. More later.

Kevin Williamson:

There’s a great deal of talk about elitism in American politics lately, most of which misses the point: The problem isn’t that our media and our policy debates are dominated by elites—of course they are; that’s what elites do—it’s that our elites aren’t very good. Our elites do not effectively perform the social function of elites. On some very important issues, such as crime and the economic struggles of the lower-earning half of American households, the discussion is dominated by elites whose members don’t have much useful knowledge to contribute to the conversation.

On quite a few major issues, our “elites” are dumber than the mid-range general population.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Ads for used exercise equipment generally say things like “never used it” or “just gathering dust.” Not a compelling reason for me to buy.

Better ad copy would say “Lost enough weight to meet my goal, don’t need it anymore.”

Same applies to candidates for President. “Never held a real job but eager to run the entire economy” doesn’t move me to donate to you, but rather to hide my wallet.

“FREE BEER” used to be a joke so you’d listen to the real message. Now, it’s Bernie’s entire campaign slogan. No wonder he’s winning.

Joe Doakes

Well, winning among people who are inclined to vote for Bernie Sanders.

Which, unfortunately, given the devolution of our society, is a hell of a lot of people.

After my go-around earlier this week with Heather Martens – where she seemed to challenge the Twin Cities media to hold the Gun Rights movement’s factual feet in the fire – and my attempt to send a letter to the Strib accepting that challenge, I figured it’d be fair to try to actually have that “conversation about guns” with Ms. Martens.

Y’know – to let her win that cataclysmic victory of fact over superstition that she seems to think the media will conjure up when questioning the Second Amendment movement.

So I called “Protect MN’s” phone number – and got through to Heather Martens.  For the first time.

And I invited her to appear on the Northern Alliance with me on Saturday.  Or next Saturday. Or any Saturday – live in studio, or via phone.  Or if Saturdays don’t work, we could record an interview in studio or via phone any time, 24/7, at her convenience.  Or, for that matter, I could come out to wherever she wanted to meet and tape an interview.

She said she’d get back to me.

Which, to be fair, she did, in about 15 minutes, via email, saying she’d be happy to do the show…

…for a $1,500 fee.

Of course, we don’t pay for interviews.  Nobody does.  Presumably Martens knows that asking a fee for an interview is a polite-yet-condescending way to say “F**k you” to an interview request – as well, in Martens case, as an admission that she doesn’t pack the gear to a point anywhere but an echo chamber where the media is painting her toenails.

The truth remains:

• I invite any significant Twin Cities gun control activist to appear on my program, at a time of their choice.
• I challenge any Minnesota gun control activist, “gun safety” leader or lobbyist, or anti-gun politician to a public debate, on neutral turf, with an audience, with mutuall-agreed rules.  I keep challenging them; their continued avoidance simply means none of them is up to defending the indefensible.
• Heather Martens has never, not once, said or written a single, substantial, factual thing about the gun issue.

This isn’t over.

Back during one of the previous crime waves in gun-hostile Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the legislature – with the help of gun rights groups – passed a pretty significant tool for prosecutors to use against gun crimes; an up-charge for committing a crime with a firerarm, with a mandatory five year sentence.

In a subsequent crime wave, it was noted that the Ramsey County attorney at the time, the useless Susan Gaertner, had pled the upcharge out in every single case in which it was offered.

We also noted, in relation to last summer’s shooting of an armed robber by a citizen with a gun in Saint Paul, that the Ramsey County Attorney’s office had declined to use the statute to charge Laurentai Broadbent’s accomplices.

Now, MPR – in a piece by Brandt Williams – notes that  it’s a statewide trend; it’s the exception rather than the rule that prosecutors use the upcharge for gun crimes. MPR notes that the sentence is applied in only 42 percent of applicable crimes.

I’m going to speculate, here; those 42 percent come disproportionally from Greater Minnesota, most likely districts with conservative majorities or pluralities.

I’m going to try to find the numbers involved, and see if there is some sort of geographic correlation to this discrepancy.

JoeDoakes from Como Park notes the same thing I did yesterday:

Global warming alarmists lie with statistics to panic the public, hoping they’ll react in fear instead of reason.

This article from Powerline explains how to make a chart look scary by changing the scale.

I think gun controllers do it, too. I’ll look for examples.

Joe Doakes

You can pretty much name the issue:  “war on women”; “Obamacare will lower the deficit”; Obama has added less to the debt than any president since the War; more gun laws equal less crime; the science is settled.

The Big Lie is a key part of the Democrat Party’s approach; to make up an alternate reality for their low-information base, without fear of being “fact-checked” by a media that is their PR agency Praetorian Guard.

As we noted earlier in the week, the left is just dying to get the NRA out of its way.

And they have been since I started following this issue – in probably 1980.

It seems that lately, the left has taken to a three-tiered strategy for fighting the Second Amendment Human Rights movement:

1. Lie About Everything.  Everyone from the President to the hapless Heather Martens, and the entire media class in between, has spent the past couple of years relentlessly churning out easily-debunked lies; no, Mr. President, we’re not the most violent nation in the world, and states with tight gun laws aren’t safer.  And it seems to be working – while violent crime in general and gun crime in particular has plummeted over the past 20 years, most people don’t know it.
2. Refuse To Engage the Second Amendment Human Rights Movement Directly:  They always lose in open, head-to-head debates based on facts.  Always.  There has never in history been an exception, and there never will be.
3. Appeal to Magic:  The NRA is going to go away!   Someday!  You just gotta believe!

This blog has spent nearly a decade and a half engaging points 1 and 2.  Today, it’s all about the 3.

The National Boogeyman Association:  As I pointed out earlier in the week, the NRA is both vital and irrelevant; while it’s a juggernaut at federal lobbying, it’s mostly a bystanding helper at the state level, where most of the actual legislation happens.   But the left – being a fear-based institution – needs a big, centralized boogeyman.  And for this, the NRA serves their purposes.

And let’s be frank; organizations come and go (although the NRA is, and remains at, a peak of numbers and power).

 Adam Winkler – a UCLA law prof who’s popped up on this blog before, and not as an idiot – wrote an op-ed in the WaPo (reprinted earlier this week in the Strib, Read It And Weep:  The NRA Will Fall.

Before I respond, let me establish something.

Baselines:  When I first started covering the battle for Second Amendment human rights, about 30 years ago, the gun grabber movement used to wave around a Gallup poll showing that 85% of the American people favored gun control.  While that number dropped sharply as the poll got into specifics (even then, near the nadir of the Second Amendment’s fortunes), it showed where The People were at regarding our right to self-defense.

But thirty years later, things have changed; a distinct majority support the right to keep and bear arms.

All by way of saying – peoples’ attitudes change over time.

Changes:  I won’t quote extensively from Winkler’s piece – which is based on the idea that the NRA, and the Second Amendment movement, are doomed by demographics; that Latinos, African-Americans, urbanites and women are much less supportive of the Second Amendment and the NRA than rural white males.

On the one hand?  That may be true – today.  Just as it was true of 85% of the people – thirty years ago.  Attitudes change.  Are they changing for or against the NRA and the Second Amendment?  All evidence is anecdotal; the fact that Minnesota has well over twice as many carry permittees today as were ever forecast before the passage of “Shall Issue” reform might be a hint that the swing might actually be in the NRA’s favor.

Are Latinos more favorable to gun control?  Perhaps.  But Latinos aren’t a monolithic bloc; while Latinos in general vote Democrat, those who’ve been in the US longer than 2-3 generations are much more likely to vote GOP.

Asians, Winkler notes, support gun control – but again, they’re hardly monolithic; Koreans and H’mong are actually fairly likely to be shooters (if not “NRA supporters”).

Women tend to be pro-gun-control. They are also the fastest-growing group of shooters in America today.

How will these changes shake out over two decades?  Will policy be dragged to the left, reflecting these minorities’ left-leaning politics?  Or will they, too, evolve?

I know what I’m working toward.

(Let’s also not forget that most of the anti-gun minorities live in states like California, New York and Illinois, that are already relatively hostile to gun ownership).

Omens:  But let’s say Winkler is right; that minorities, new Americans, women and urbanites’ current attitudes will stay static over time.   It is a fact – noted by the estimable Kevin Williamson – that many of our minorities have vastly different perspectives on the concept of risk and freedom than white, middle class Americans do.

So if New Americans and minorities-who-will-one-day-be-the-majority don’t support the Second Amendment, is that going to be a problem for the NRA?

Who the hell cares?  It’s going to be a problem for the whole idea of “America” as a place built on the ideal of freedom.  And by “freedom”, we mean the traditional American founding interpretation – life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, protection of private property, freedom of speech, conscience, religion, press, assembly, keeping and bearing arms, security in your home, trial by jury with representation, equality before the law, the whole shebang – as opposed to the “freedoms” the Democrat party is pushing these days; the “freedom” from consequences, the “freedom” to force other people to make you free of want, the “freedom” to have government force others to give you stuff at gunpoint and enforce an arbitrary, politically-motivated concept of “fairness”; the freedom to abort your fetus and wave your privates around in public.

If the Second Amendment collapses because a majority of “Americans” don’t understand what it is to be “American” or what “America”, indeed, is, then the demise of the NRA will be the least of our problems, because there will be nothing to prevent the rest of the Constitution, and the freedoms it ostensibly guarantees, from being shredded much, much more comprehensively than it already is.

Many thanks to Dr. John Lott – partly for his piece in National Review yesterday expanding on the work that is rapidly ripping the guts out of the left’s meme that “a good guy with a gun” doesn’t save lives and that gun free zones are anything but safe-criminal areas…:

But the deterrent and life-saving effects of concealed-handgun laws on mass public shootings aren’t just anecdotal. Bill Landes of the University of Chicago and I gathered data on mass public shootings from 1977 to 1999. We studied 13 different types of gun-control laws as well as the impact of law enforcement, but the only law that had a statistically significant impact on mass public shootings was the passage of right-to-carry laws. Right-to-carry laws reduced both the frequency and the severity of mass public shootings; and to the extent to which mass shootings still occurred, they took place in those tiny areas in the states where permitted concealed handguns were not allowed.

…and partly for giving me a solid half-dozen more cases of “good guys with guns” that have interrupted mass shootings, to add to this blog’s rapidly-expanding “Good Guy or Gal With A Gun” page.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

On October 14, Dayton told people in St. Cloud that Democrats are dead-set on transforming Minnesota into a Third World state and if White people don’t like it, they should leave. The governor explicitly endorsed White Flight as a solution to racial tension. 

At last we can answer the perennial question: “Why are so many talented people leaving Minnesota?” Because you told us to. Can’t wait for real estate values to come back enough that I can afford to take him up on it. 

Joe Doakes

Well, to be fair, his ancestors moved from Dayton’s Bluff to Kenwood…