The Democrats are in trouble.\u00a0 Obamacare is tanking, and the economy is “growing” at a pace that would have been considered a disaster were Barack Obama, the vessel of the left’s hopes and dreams, not President.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And despite a concerted media attempt to black out the bad news, people are starting to talk.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And so the left is doing its best to get people to talk about…other things.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Any other things.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So when my Twitter feed (actually a tweet from one-time SITD commenter “TimInStP”, one of the most incisive liberal minds ever to comment in this space) screamed “The GOP Just Named its Hot New Innovation Lab After a Nazi Pistol”, I figured it was worth looking into.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It wasn’t.\u00a0 I mean, it was from Gawker<\/em>, which is to national liberal media what Minnesota Progressive Project<\/em> is to Minnesota; ergo, not worth the time it took, to look into.<\/p>\n But as a view into the lengths the deranged left will go to to try to slander dissenters, it’s instructive anyway:<\/p>\n The Republican National Committee today excitedly announced the launch of a new startup lab to bring techies and creatives together, Silicon Valley-style, to get Republicans elected. Oh, and they named it for a Nazi gun, a type of ammo, and a philosophy that puts war before peace.<\/p>\n Welcome to Para Bellum Labs, America!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Para Bellum?\u00a0 Why, I took enough Latin to know that means “prepare for war!”.<\/p>\n And Gawker <\/em>got that part right.\u00a0 Sorta.\u00a0<\/p>\n In fact, it’s part of an old Roman cliche, “Si vis pacem, para bellum”\u2014if you seek peace, prepare for war. That’s been quite an inspiring little phrase through history, at least to militarists. It was especially inspiring to Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken, the German government’s arms manufacturer from the late imperial era to World War II.<\/p>\n DWM started using the “parabellum” phrase as a name for its signature guns\u2014first, the light machine gun used by the Kaiser’s best during World War I, and then its most iconic gun: the Parabellum Pistole, or the Luger pistol…Yep, Nazi parabellum!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So let me get this straight:\u00a0 Because the Republican startup used a phrase that was also <\/em>used by, among hundreds or thousands of others,\u00a0a German company\u00a0(in corrupted form)\u00a0in 1908 to describe a pistol that was used, 30 years later, by a regime that wouldn’t even start to form for fifteen years, the GOP “named its lab after a Nazi gun?”<\/p>\n Oh, it gets better.<\/p>\n The gun was so popular in the Third Reich that its ammunition\u2014one of the first to use a slug that was 9 millimeters in diameter\u2014became known as “9 mm parabellum,” which you can find now at your local gun store.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It was nowhere near “one of the first” 9mm rounds (and if you walk into your gun store and ask for “9mm Parabellum”, the clerk will know you learned everything you know about guns from video games; it’s “9mm Luger”, or “9×19”).\u00a0 And the “Parabellum” pistol (usually called a “Luger”, or a “P-08” in German) was so popular among the Nazis that they phased it out of production in favor of the Walther P-38, which was simpler to produce and easier to maintain in the field…<\/p>\n But wait!\u00a0 P-38\u00a0was the same designation as the plane flown by America’s top fighter ace, Superior Wisconsin’s own Richard Bong!\u00a0<\/p>\n Richard Bong was a\u00a0Nazi!<\/p>\n (Calms down).<\/p>\n Oh, yeah – most police in America today carry 9mm pistols.\u00a0 Are they also Nazi sympathizers?<\/p>\n Gawker <\/em>is like a lobotomy that you don’t have to pay for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Democrats are in trouble.\u00a0 Obamacare is tanking, and the economy is “growing” at a pace that would have been considered a disaster were Barack Obama, the vessel of the left’s hopes and dreams, not President.\u00a0 And despite a concerted media attempt to black out the bad news, people are starting to talk.\u00a0 And so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lefty-alt-media","category-slander-files"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41620"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41642,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41620\/revisions\/41642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}