Women’s Rights (a poem)

“Women’s rights!”, thought the man,

As he put on his latex.

“Women’s rights!”, he grinned,

As the woman lay down for him.

“Women’s rights!”, he smiled,

As he made her spread her legs.

“Women’s rights!”, he sneered,

As he entered deep inside her.

“Women’s rights!”, he chuckled,

As he entered deep inside her with his instruments of butchery.

“Women’s rights!”, he gloated,

As he dismembered the woman’s child,

Slicing and chopping and ripping and tearing

Until the baby was dead, dead, dead.

“Women’s rights!”, the abortion surgeon laughed,

As he pocketed his paycheck—paid in blood.

An Open Letter to Barack Obama

Mr. Obama,

Recently you made the arrogant and absurd claim that small town Americans are “bitter,” and that they “cling to guns or religion… as a way to explain their frustrations.” All you succeeded in proving is that you don’t understand God, and you don’t understand freedom. So allow me to enlighten you, Mr. Obama.

Regardless of what you’ve picked up from the theologically confused Reverend Wright, God isn’t just for when you’re frustrated or pissed off. He is for… everything. You see, when you truly have a relationship with God, He is always with you. When you are happy, He is there. Praise Him, give Him the glory He deserves! When you are sad, He is there. Cry out to Him, ask for the comfort only He can give. When you have sinned, He is there. Fall to your knees and beg for His forgiveness. When you are lost, He is there. Look for His guidance. When you succeed, He is there. Do not forget that He is God and you are not.

As for our guns, we keep them close not because we are frustrated, but because we love liberty. We know that disarmed peoples soon become the slaves of their governments. I don’t claim to know your intentions, Mr. Obama. Maybe you’re a tyrant in waiting, seeking to charm the masses into giving you unlimited power. Or maybe you’re just an utopian, incompetent fool. Either way, we don’t trust any government with absolute power, especially not one run by you. And any government that succeeds in disarming its citizens has gained absolute power. That will only happen over our dead bodies, Mr. Obama. 

A Fighting Chance: Part 3

So you’re stuck in a school shooting and all you have is a stabbing implement and possibly some pepper spray. What do you do? First of all, I want to emphasize that neither tactics nor weapons are the most important thing in a fight. The fighting mindset is. The British Major W. E. Fairbairn described the fighting mindset this way, during World War Two: “You cannot afford the luxury of squeamishness. Either you kill or capture, or you will be captured or killed. We’ve got to be tough to win, and we’ve got to be ruthless – tougher and more ruthless than our enemies.” Adopt this mindset, and nothing will be able to keep you from having at least a fighting chance for survival.

Now, about tactics. As soon as you hear gunshots, drop to the ground. From here, access whatever improvised weapons you have. If at all possible, crawl closer to the psychopath without being seen. You have two options with pepper spray. The first is to spray the psychopath, duck back under the desks, and MOVE, because he will almost certainly fire in your direction. Now crawl to a different position, from where you can charge at him. The second option is to spray the psychopath, move laterally (once again, in case he shoots in your direction), and then immediately rush him.

If you don’t have pepper spray, you might want to wait until the murderer is reloading or clearing a jam before you rush him. Then again, you might not: a lot of people could die while you wait. Once you begin your charge, surprise, speed, and determination are everything. A mass murderer is usually a coward at heart. He will not be expecting anyone to fight back. Take advantage of the few seconds he is thrown off guard, and close the distance. You may be shot. Ignore the pain. The majority of gunshot wounds are NOT fatal. Make sure that the wounds you inflict on the murderer ARE.

The best target for a stabbing implement (scissors, pocket knife, pen) is the neck. The windpipe, carotid arteries, and spinal cord are all located here. Hold your weapon in reverse (“icepick”) grip for maximum strength (especially with a not-so-sharp weapon like a pen, you’ll need to put all the force you can into your stabs). Stab into the psychopath’s neck. Don’t be satisfied with a surface wound, sink your weapon deep inside the scumbag. Once the weapon is buried in his neck, don’t just take it out, TEAR it out. Pull the whole length of the weapon toward you, so that instead of exiting through the entry wound, it creates a larger one. The overall attack should look like a clawing motion. While doing this, use your free hand to grab onto the scumbag and pull him towards you. You DON’T want him to break away and create distance, from where you won’t be able to stab him but he’ll be able to shoot you. Continue stabbing until he drops his weapon or stops moving.

If you have a heavy, blunt improvised weapon like a Maglite, grip it with both hands. Aim for the sides of the skull. Hit as hard as you possibly can: your goal is to CRUSH the skull. A single solid blow should at least stun the murderer, but continue hitting until he drops his weapon or stops moving.

The plan of action I recommend here is neither the safest nor the most legally appropriate way to deal with, say, a mugging. It is ONLY for when you are faced with a psychotic individual determined to commit mass murder. You will probably never be faced with such an individual. But if you are, I hope that you WILL stop him.

A Fighting Chance: Part 2

The first rule of a gunfight is to have a gun. But if you absolutely can’t have a gun, then having some less effective weapon is better than having no weapon at all. Of course, most of our “gun free” universities are also “weapon free” universities. But there are weapons, and there are weapons. A car, for example, has the potential to be a deadly weapon– but universities tend not to ban those. What anti-weapon policies prohibit are things that are designed to be weapons: guns, swords, fighting knives. What that leaves us with is improvised weaponry. An improvised weapon is something that is not made to be a weapon, but if used as a weapon, would be more effective than your bare hands. Baseball bats, kitchen knives, pocket knives (by which I mean a folding knife with a blade of less than four inches), hammers, screwdrivers, sharp scissors, pens, pencils, and heavy duty flashlights (like a 4 D-cell Maglite) are all examples of improvised weapons.

Of course, not all improvised weapons are suitable for carry in the classroom. Pens, pencils, and scissors will probably be the most suitable. Pocket knives and Maglite flashlights will generally be acceptable, but may get you in trouble with the more draconian school administrations. Overall, the best compromise between political correctness and effectiveness is probably a sturdy pair of pointed scissors with blades of at least three inches and a handle you can get a good grip on in reverse grip (sometimes called the “icepick grip”, where the blade protrudes from the bottom of your fist). Carry one in your backpack, purse, or briefcase.

Pepper spray, while designed to be a weapon, is nonlethal and therefore permitted by almost all universities. Get one that has a range of at least 12 feet. Range is useless when dealing with a mugger, but could be the difference between life and death when dealing with a school shooter. Practice firing a can of pepper spray at least once before carrying it, and replace a can every one or two years (all aerosol cans slowly leak, this causes the range to decrease). Pepper spray should never be counted on to stop an attacker. Its purpose is to partially blind an attacker from a distance, giving you an opportunity to then do something to stop the attack.

Scissors and pepper spray. Will you still wish you had a gun if your school becomes the next Virginia Tech or NIU? Yeah. But caught between oppressive administrators and murderous psychopaths, we have little choice but to make the best out of a bad situation.

Going off on a somewhat relevant tangent, the weapons of Okinawan Karate are the result of political oppression. Forbidden by the Japanese to own swords, the Okinawans practiced self-defense with rice flails, sickles, and poles used to carry buckets of water. The names of these farming implements are, respectively: the nunchaku, the kama, and the bo.

A Fighting Chance: Part 1

A concealed firearm will usually be your best bet for surviving an encounter with a homicidal maniac. But we don’t always get dealt the best hand, or even a halfway decent one. In fact, sometimes we’ll be holding a bunch of cards that really suck. So what if the worst case scenario happens? What if between a murderous psychopath and his unwitting accomplices in the government and/or school administration, you find yourself sitting in class, unarmed, and being fired upon?

The first thing to do is drop to the ground. While desks and chairs will not stop a bullet, they will make it harder for the murderer to see you. Now you have several options: fight, flee, hide, or play dead. Hiding is probably the worst option, since the murderer already knows you’re somewhere in the room. Playing dead may work, but only if many of your classmates have already been killed (that way you can lie next to a dead classmate, maybe smear some blood on yourself, and then play dead). If you intend to flee, first sneak as close as possible to the nearest exist, staying out of the murderer’s line of sight. Make your final dash out the door when he is looking the other way, reloading, or clearing a jam. If you are fired upon, running in a zig-zag pattern makes you harder to hit. There won’t, however, be enough space to do this in most classrooms.

But before you decide on running, hiding, or playing dead, I would ask—no, beg—that you consider fighting back. Murder is tragic, but massacre is horrific. Death, after all, is part of life. But for a few to murder many with complete impunity; for the victims to not just die, but die without even trying to stop the ones who would victimize them… that is so twisted, so unnatural, so wrong that it makes me sick to my soul just to think about it.

Running away may in some circumstances be more conducive to your chances of survival. So what? You may live, but will you be able to live with yourself? Will you be able to look in the mirror again for the remainder of your life without remembering that you played dead while your friends were murdered around you? For your sake, I fervently hope that you will not.

So please, for the love of God, fight back! Of course, you may never need to. Indeed, I hope you will never need to. But if and when you need to fight back, you will not have time to ponder. Now is the time to decide. Promise yourself that if the unthinkable should happen, you will not passively watch as those around you are slaughtered. Promise yourself that you may be murdered, but you will never be massacred. Promise yourself that if you are ever faced with a homicidal maniac, you will end his rampage, even if it’s the last thing you ever do.

18 Shooting Victims at “Gun Free Zone”

Four people have been murdered and at least another fourteen have been injured at the “gun free zone” of Northern Illinois University. How many more people have to die before legislators and school administrators realize that “gun free zones” are really just shooting ranges for mass murderers? To the state legislators of Illinois, and to the administrators of Northern Illinois University: Shame on you! Shame on you for disarming the law-abiding students in that lecture hall. Shame on you for ensuring that none of them had the means to quickly and relatively bloodlessly resolve the situation: a concealed firearm. The incident today could have ended like the shootings at the Colorado Springs New Life Church, or the Appalachian School of Law, or Pearl High School in Mississippi. Instead, through your idiotic anti-self-defense policies, you chose the path of Virginia Tech and Columbine. Only the relative incompetence of the murderer spared you from double-digit death figures. So shame on you. And shame on every person who would deprive individuals of their basic right to self-defense.

An Analogy for Abortion

My prior post was intended primarily to describe what I believe to be the foundations of the pro-choice movement. It was not, by any means, what I consider to be the best analogy for abortion. Here is what I do believe to be the best analogy.

You are on your own boat, in the middle of the ocean. A nearby boat begins to sink. Legally, you have no obligation to sail over and try to save the survivors. (Morally, of course, you’d have to be a monster not to try.) However, one of the survivors swims towards the nearest solid object: your boat. He climbs onto your boat. Is the boat your private property? Yes. Does private property normally include the right to exclude others? Absolutely. Can you throw this trespasser off your boat, and let him drown? No. It would be murder.

The first objection will probably be that sharing your boat with someone isn’t nearly as bad as pregnancy. Let’s make the scenario a little worse. Let’s say this person is absolutely filthy, and stinks to high heaven. The nearest dry land is months away. Your boat is so small that this filthy person’s body is pressed against yours. He’s coughing, and may infect you with whatever disease he has. (Assume, however, that it is not a deadly disease, because I do believe that abortion should be legal when the mother’s life is in danger). You have enough food supplies to keep both of you alive until you reach land–but barely. You’ll be on the verge of starvation for the entire time. What now? Do you now have the right to throw this person off your boat? Still no.

What about rape? Let’s modify our scenario a little more. Let’s say your mortal enemy had flown by in a helicopter and fired a few rockets at you. Fortunately, they missed. However, he then fired his last rocket at the nearby boat, with the express purpose of forcing you to live with the filthy survivors of that boat. How does this change things? Well, as far as the legal and moral relationship between you and the person on your boat is concerned, nothing has changed. You now have a major grievance against your mortal enemy, and if he is ever caught, he should be punished to the full extent of the law. But the wrong done to you has not given you a right to perform an equally great wrong by taking this poor person, who is a victim of your mortal enemy just like yourself, and throwing him off your boat.

Abortion and Slavery

After much interaction with pro-choicers, I have decided that abortion is modern America’s version of slavery. Allow me to explain. Both abortion and slavery started with a perfectly understandable desire. In the case of slavery, it was the desire to live a life of luxury, without having to work for it. I personally empathize strongly with that desire. A life of comfort, without responsibility! Who wouldn’t want that? In the same way, abortion is motivated by a similarly understandable desire: the desire to have sex without any possibility of pregnancy. I freely admit that I really don’t like the idea of having children. (I pretty much agree with Shrek’s description of babies: they cry when they poop and they poop when they cry.) And I can only imagine how much worse it would be to actually have to go through pregnancy.

In both cases, the perfectly understandable desire grew and grew, until it completely broke the bounds of morality. Plantation owners and pro-choicers reached the point where they were willing to do anything to get what they wanted. Nothing, and no one would stand in their way. For plantation owners, this meant the enslavement of blacks. For pro-choice women, this means the killing of unborn children.

And in both cases, they came up with excuses to justify their behavior. I’ll say it again: excuses. While I will in future posts address why abortion is morally unacceptable from a philosophical viewpoint, I think it is important to remember that ultimately most pro-choicers support abortion not because they believe it to be morally right, but because they believe it will grant the desire of their hearts: pleasure without consequences.

The arguments created in support of abortion are shockingly similar to the arguments in support of slavery. Consider the following. “Negroes are subhuman, inferior. They’re little better than animals! Of course they have no rights.” “Of course a fetus isn’t a person! It’s just a blob of cells! Obviously it has no rights.” “Negroes need the guidance of us white people. Without us, they’d be lost! It’s for their own good.” “If we don’t abort now, this child will be born into an impoverished environment and an unloving family. I wouldn’t want a life like that! Abortion is for the fetus’s own good.” “Free our slaves? That’s outrageous! That’s a violation of our property rights!” “You can’t force me to carry to term! That violates my right to privacy and bodily integrity!” “Can you imagine what would happen to our society without slavery? Our economy would collapse! Our states would be financially and socially ruined!” “Can you imagine what would happen if abortion was outlawed? You’d have back-alley abortions! Women would be dying by the thousands!”

And like the struggle against slavery and later racism under Jim Crow, the war against abortion may take a long, long time to win. But as the defining song of the civil rights movement goes, we shall overcome. We shall overcome. We shall overcome, someday.

Alternatives to Imprisonment

The modern American penal system has essentially adopted imprisonment as a one-size-fits-all punishment, placing an unnecessary burden on taxpayers while accomplishing fairly little. I believe that there are ways to achieve everything our current system can achieve and more, while spending less, through more intelligent sentencing.

The great irony of imprisonment is this: the criminal has committed a crime, and the government responds by punishing law-abiding taxpayers! Why on earth should good, hardworking Americans be forced to give up their income to pay for the feeding, housing, and recreation of convicted criminals?

Now, I admit that some criminals simply must be confined so that they cannot again hurt anyone. But it is absolutely absurd to use imprisonment as a punishment for, say, nonviolent theft. Here’s a far more intelligent punishment: force the thief to pay back twice what he stole! (And yes, that was also the Old Testament law. Exodus 22:3-4). Alternatively, the thief could be forced to pay back what he stole to the owner, and then forced to pay an equal amount to the government, as a fine. What if the thief does not have enough money? The Biblical law was to sell him into indentured servanthood, which could last for a maximum of six years. Today, we may have an easier way to achieve the same goal: we can automatically deduct a portion of the thief’s income until he has satisfied his debt. (If he is unemployed, we can seize his welfare benefits).

Even many violent criminals do not really need to be locked up. Is the average person convicted of battery really a predator who must be kept away from his would-be prey? I don’t think so. I suspect that many of them may be generally good people who simply lost their tempers. To throw them in jail seems unnecessary. A far better solution would be corporal punishment. Twenty lashes (carried out in a public place, to add humiliation to pain) should be enough to teach someone not to get into drunken barfights, while letting him go back to his home and his job—letting him get on with his life—almost immediately. Cruel and unusual? Compared to prison, it’s positively humane!

Concerning Jamie Lynn Spears

So apparently Britney Spears’ 16-year-old sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, has gotten pregnant. I’m sure plenty of people will be bashing her for her irresponsibility, or decrying the immorality of American teenagers, or some other self-righteous nonsense like that. Well, you’re not going to hear any of that from me. The truth is, I admire Jamie Lynn. You see… she’s keeping the baby. Despite her age, despite her boyfriend’s age (he’s 18 or 19 and may be prosecuted for statutory rape), despite the fact that her pregnancy was unplanned and came as a shock to her, and despite living in a death-obsessed culture where pregnancy is viewed as a disease and abortion portrayed as the cure, Jamie Lynn is not going to abort her child. And that, in my book, borders on the heroic.

I suppose that places me at odds with many social conservatives. I would humbly suggest that they have their priorities all wrong. Is premarital sex bad? Yeah. Jamie Lynn admits that: “I definitely don’t think it’s something you should do; it’s better to wait.” But she, like many other teen girls, made a mistake. Now what? To condemn pregnant teenagers, to stand in judgment of them, will serve only to drive them into the bloodstained arms of abortion surgeons. And that is the last thing any social conservative should want.

Listen to Jamie Lynn explain why she’s going to keep her baby (and if you can’t at least feel some respect for her, I’m afraid you’ve gone very far down the path of Pharisaism): “I put myself in this position, an adult position, so I have to act like an adult and take responsibility for what I did.” Wow. Why can’t we all adopt that mindset? Jamie Lynn, you are more of an adult, and more of a lady, than most women twice your age.

http://www.ok-magazine.com/news/view/3425