Déjà vu

Well that didn’t take long. But as we have learned in the past, statists and aspiring tyrants like to feed on the bodies while they are still warm. And so, as predictable as the springtime return of short skirts to the Tuileries, as ubiquitous as the jambon buerre, as inevitable as an SNCF strike, Paris now brings us calls for restrictions (is it t0o soon to say “containment”?) of free peoples’ civil liberties as the only possible means to avert even more attacks. 

Everyone, it seems, wants a bloody mouthful. French President Hollande wants his 12-day "extraordinary powers"  – which include warrantless searches and detentions, and prohibitions of certain gatherings – extended for three months now and then written into the French constitution in a way that eliminates that onerous consultation with Parliament.

Here in the US, we probably shouldn’t be surprised that the FBI director wants private use of encryption restricted. But you have to admire the bureaucratic ambitions of the chairman of the Federal Communication Commission – last I checked, not a law enforcement agency – calling for more wire taps. Fortunately for them, these members of the Executive Branch needn't worry overmuch about pesky checks and balances by the Legislative Branch. They'll have enthusiastic support from lawmakers like Diane Feinstein, who never met an exercise of state control she didn’t want to take home and take to bed -- including state control over the cooperative playing of Mario Cart.

But then, we are talking about a government – at least here in the United States – that seems more than a little fuzzy on notions like the free exchange of ideas. How else to understand Secretary of State John Kerry’s facile and frightening distinction between last week’s Paris attacks – which he considers thoroughly unjustified – and the January murders of journalists at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which murders he described as “legitimate, er, rational, um, particularized.”*

We’ve talked about this before, this tendency for hard facts to make bad – usually grandiosely named -- law. But the danger is that you might want understand this impulse only as the sort of paroxysm of desperate, ex post facto panic that leads even a liberal Montessori mom to spank her toddler after he’s run into the street. But this is not an emotional overreaction by an otherwise liberty-minded set of leaders. This is no aberration.**

Rather it is inherent in the nature of the state always to expand its power and always to seek to expand. At its core is an understanding that, to ever expand, rulers must “never let a crisis go to waste.”*** As soon as, and every time that, events make the people a little less vigilant of the state, the state will take advantage.**** So while you're keeping an eye out for Daesh, spare one for Washington.

* OK.  I admit it. That paraphrase isn’t precisely perfect. But the link will take you to what he actually said, which was, frankly, worse.

** For this, I like to quote Robespierre: "The principle of the republican government is virtue, and the means required to establish virtue is terror."

*** Rahm Emanuel said it recently, perhaps revealing more than he meant to about his particular team strategy. But the concept by no means belongs to progressives alone. The quote is originally attributed to Winston Churchill (aren't they all), no progressive he, but quite the fellow for expanding state power, as many a dead Irish patriot could tell you from his grave.

**** And here we mean "take advantage" in the precisely same way a father means it when he warns his daughter before prom "not to let that boy take advantage."

EOW 11-10-75 (Redux)

On the fortieth anniversary, redux.You’ve heard of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Mighty Fitz was a Great Lakes ore boat and, at more than 700 feet, among the largest of her kind. Thirty-five Forty years ago, in a raging late-autumn storm, she broke in two and found the bottom of Lake Superior , taking 29 men with her. You’ve heard of the Edmund Fitzgerald because Gordon Lightfoot wrote a song about her. But you’ve never heard of my Uncle Bill, because no one ever wrote a song about him.*

Bill was a cop’s cop and a detective sergeant in the Cleveland suburb of Bedford Heights. That Monday he and his partner, James Toth, visited Blonder’s Paint Store with books of mug shots. The store had been robbed five weeks before, and there still was no arrest. Bill was a sweet man, but that kind of thing pissed him off, so he was going to work the case until something broke.

Nobody was in the front of the store, so Bill walked through to the back. Michael Manns was waiting for him, hiding behind a bathroom door, because he was robbing Blonder’s Paint Store again. Manns and his crew had the employees held hostage in the back room. The moment Bill came through the door, Manns put a pistol to Bill’s neck and pulled the trigger, blowing out Bill’s spine and carotid artery. Bill fell flat to the floor, shattering the big glasses he always wore -- except his official photo.

Manns knew exactly whom he was killing when he murdered my uncle. Bill hadn’t wanted to startle store employees fresh from the prior robbery, who might be jumpy at someone coming through the door unannounced. So he’d called out “Sgt. Prochazka, police department!” as he walked through.

After firing the shot, Manns fled with his accomplices, George Clayton, Dwain Farrow and Duran Harris. Store employees, now having seen the robbers twice, were able to identify them and Clayton, Farrow and Harris were arrested within a day or so by Cleveland police. Manns was on the run for several weeks, until police caught up with him in Detroit.

The funeral procession drew police cars from 49 states, every province of Canada and most of Northern Mexico. Bedford Heights was a small department, but despite all the other lawmen there, the BHPD  wouldn’t let anyone else stand honor guard over the coffin, day and night, until they put it in the ground.

Bill, with his twin brother Bob – also a cop – was the youngest of ten brothers and sisters. He left my Aunt Loretta, a daughter and three sons. Over the days of viewing, I saw the strongest people I knew – the strongest people I thought there could be – reduced to mewling, groveling beasts by their grief. During the service, someone played “Amazing Grace” on the piano. Bill’s youngest boy stood before the coffin and saluted, exactly like John John in Stan Stearns’ iconic photo.

All four men were convicted of aggravated robbery and murder. Our family had people at every day of trial. On the day each man was sentenced to death, all eight of Bill’s surviving siblings, and dozens of cousins, nephews, and nieces stood witness. Not long after that, all of the death sentences were commuted to life in prison when a court ruling banned Ohio’s death penalty. Harris was granted parole and freed in 2003. Corrections officials had failed to inform the family of the parole hearing, so no one was there to oppose his release. Now, as the other men’s hearings periodically arise, someone is always there – led by Bill’s son Robert, a cop in Willowick, Ohio.

However much we love or are loved, however deep our connections to our wives and husbands and children and friends, there is a sense in which we each travel through life aboard a ship with a single passenger. Even shared experiences are felt uniquely, individually. Standing in the same storm, each of us hears the thunder at a slightly different moment, feels the wind from a certain, personal angle. So it was that, drenched in sadness that entire miserable, sleet-soaked funeral week – and although I loved him so much – I did not cry for Bill.

I was too busy making an acquaintance of hate, whom I hadn’t occasion to meet before then.

Twenty-nine sailors, a good cop and a teen boy’s faith all died that day thirty-five forty forty-five years ago, to be buried under steel gray waves, or brown earth, or black despair. I said I was through with God that day, and for twenty years I made good on that vow, except to make war on Him from time to time. But He wasn’t done with me. So today I can pray for Bill, and for his family – and even for Manns, Clayton, Farrow and Harris.

But that’s another story.



*Actually, as it happens, I wrote a song about him -- which amounts to the same thing.

1,000 words

If there was any chance you still have not come to understand the simple, self-delusional, criminal idiocy that forms the foundation of the "gun free zone," then this image ought finally to convince you.

Except, of course, that it won't.

If you were ever capable of believing that a man already set on murder, as was, evidently, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, would be deterred by a sign, then I think we have to admit to ourselves that while you are capable of believing anything, you are capable of learning nothing.

If you ever endorsed the efficacy of the "gun free zone," that means you were possessed of the sort of spectacularly limber imagination that George Lucas or Walt Disney could only envy. Because you were able to picture, in your mind's eye, a disgruntled ex-employee or a seething jihadi or a garden variety madman -- heedless of the laws of God and man that have ever prohibited murder -- being pulled up short by silhouette of a gun and null sign. You could script an internal conversation that went something like this:

"Well. I had planned on annihilating everyone in the place, before sending myself to join them in hell or paradise. But whereas I don't care how many of my fellow men have to die to (satiate my rage) (satisfy my theology) (silence the voices in my head), I am certainly not going to stoop to taking a gun into a building that is quite clearly labeled to bar such conduct.

Why, that would be wrong.

I suppose I'll just go home."

A mind that can contain that depth of imagination has its merits, but it's not the sort place terribly hospitable to facts.

If you ever argued that "gun free zones" make anyone safer from anything or anyone, then you are either a hoplophobic fool or -- and this, I fear, is too widely the case -- the sort of heartless ideologue for whom truth is a mere speed bump on the way to the tyranny you desire, and for whom today's events in Chattanooga are nothing more nor less than another crisis not to be wasted.

As I have said and said and said - Robert's Rule holds that gun free zones aren't.

But then you knew that, didn't you?

On Our Knees*

UPDATED

It’s one of Robert’s Rules, and one of the saddest, that Facts Pursue Narratives - Narratives Flee From Facts. Perhaps it has always been this way, but we see the Rule writ especially large in an era of 24-hour, multi-channel blather, where every agenda has its ardent proponents, all of whom are far more quick and ready to push their party line than the reporters in the field are quick and able to dig up and disseminate actual information. So literally before the bodies in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church had begun to cool, you could find commentators, politicians and shills of every stripe using those murdered believers as a fulcrum to raise this or that particular agenda just that bit higher.

The coming hours and days will doubtless produce more facts, and they’ll doubtless be slipped into and hammered onto and wedged under the narratives we all have come to expect -- however fast those narratives flee from facts that don't suit. But instead of speculating on what those facts may prove to be, I want to talk about what we knew before that first shot was fired yesterday, what is true in the harsh light of morning, and what will be true no matter what facts we learn in days to come.

+ + +

Before the first shot we knew that Emanuel AME was some variety of persistent miracle. To begin, the church was founded in 1816. Let that date sit with you a moment, because that’s 47 years before a presidential order that finally said that black human beings like those who founded that church could no longer be owned by other human beings. In the two tempestuous centuries since its founding, Emanuel AME has survived upheaval, violence, persecution, prejudice and even –  in South Carolina? –  an earthquake. A man named Denmark Vesey, was – just six years after helping to found the church – tried in secret by a kangaroo court and hanged for his role in a planned revolt of human beings who wished no longer to be owned by other human beings.

Thus we knew Wednesday that the believers of Emanuel AME had survived great horrors before and had prospered and grown and loved their church to the glory of God even so. After the last echo of the last shot has passed, I think we know that they will do the same. We know that with the prayers and love and shared tears of believers and people of good will, Emanuel AME will persevere as it has persevered. We know that if this killer thought to strike down this church –  let alone the Church – he has already failed, as even worse men have failed, as even the Gates of Hell must fail.

I knew Wednesday, and I know today, and nothing to come will make me doubt that God does not abandon His people. I knew Wednesday, and I know today, that only He can lift and comfort those who mourn. I knew Wednesday, and I know today, that people of Emanuel AME are my brothers and sisters in Christ and that He hears my prayers for them.

+ + +

But there's something else I knew Wednesday, and still know today.

Before the first shot, I knew that the black folks I talk to were feeling more insecure than at any time since we all became adults. And let’s be clear, the black folks I talk to are mostly people of means and position – even of power. They own and run businesses and law firms; they direct the doings of governments; they carry badges and stethoscopes and resumes filled with degrees. But I knew Wednesday that despite all these friends have accomplished; despite all the influence, recognition and prosperity they have earned; despite – not for nothing – the presence of a black man in the White House, they are troubled and angry and, yes, afraid, like I have not seen before. I know that today those doubts and fears can only be worse.

What I did not know Wednesday and do not know today is how definitively to fix that. But I refuse to be paralyzed by that, to let the absence of the perfect be the death of the good.  I did and do know that, at the very least, we have to talk to each other. We have to talk in frankest possible terms, about the most difficult things, in fearlessness and love. We have to be robust. We have to be slow to take offense and quick to forgive the inadvertent slight. We have to examine ourselves and let our hearts of hearts be examined. 

Two hundred years after those brave believers founded Emanuel AME, human beings are dying in America because of the color of their skin. I don't know if the nine at Emanuel AME were among them –  that seems likely, but we don't know yet. [# Update below] (Perhaps they died because they were Christians. Thousands do nowadays, despite the echoing media silence about that.) But even if, by some chance, these nine didn't die because of their color, too many of our countrymen, of our fellow human beings, do. And –  God forgive us –  200 years from now, unless we now take on that fact with brutal honesty and powerful love, that will still be so.

+ + +

And, despite the thundering din of the Narratives fleeing the facts as fast as they can, there's something else we knew on Wednesday, that hasn't changed this morning –   however efficiently America’s great cynical hoplophobic industrial complex churns out its lies, slickly tailored to capitalize on the deaths of people about whom it cares not one jot.

Before the first shot, we knew – if we were honest with ourselves – that there exists no piece of gun legislation we can craft that would matter to or deter a man who is otherwise willing to take the lives of nine or dozen a other human beings. Before the first shot, we knew that when men so inclined decide to match action to inclination, they almost always seek a place where they know their intended victims will be unarmed.** I knew Wednesday – as did many of my co-coreligionists – that if the flock is going to be protected on a Sunday morning or a Wednesday evening, then some of the shepherds, and some sheepdogs, have to stand ready to put down the wolves. 

  

* Note that you get on your knees only to pray – or possibly for gardening. Roberts Rules for Armed Robbery and Hostage Taking are explicit:

• Never let them put you on your knees.
• Never let them put you in another room.
• Never let them put you in a car.

Long and bitter experience has proven that each of these is a prelude to murder. At that point, whatever the odds, fight like one already dead.

** Among other things, the shootings in Aurora, Fort Hood and Sandy Hook all had this in common.

# UPDATED: Given the reported words of the killer -- whose name will gain no fame here -- and given what has been learned about him in the past 24 hours, there now seems to be no doubt that he was acting out of racial hatred.

Sommes-nous Charlie?

In the wake of global jihad’s sudden realization that there are safer places to take up the cause than a Texas art show, there has been a wave of hand wringing, sympathizing and second guessing all around the notion that Pam Geller and those in attendance at her event – while not exactly “asking for it” – were imprudently courting the sort of violent response the two erstwhile terrorists hoped to mete out. If you suspect someone may react violently to your speech, the "reasoning" goes, then the onus is on your to refrain from such speech so as to prevent the violence.

This call has come from some surprising places.* For example, in the view of two Charlie Hebdo editors, while the slaughter of their coworkers for drawing cartoons of Mohammed were appalling, it turns out threats of violence to others who draw cartoons are very different, however much the same they appear to those of us in the non-cartooning hoi polloi. It’s not clear if the distinction rests on the quality of the cartoons.** But the upshot was: For-profit French cartoons of the Prophet are OK; non-profit American cartoons of the Prophet, are not OK.

And here I naively thought je suis Charlie.

Mind you, those folks at Charlie Hebdo had better be careful not to get too comfy in the saddle of their high horse. Yet another cartoonist, who has made a living for 45 years by giving offense, seemed to think the fellows at Charlie Hebdo – while not exactly “asking for it” – were out of line, too, and should well have expected what they got.

Now, I have written before about how nuanced the world is, how much is grey, how little absolute. But I've also always maintained my Whitman Contradiction License.  So let me go ahead and lay down an absolute Robert's Rule: Speech is speech. Violence is violence. 

Even the most offensive speech you can imagine -- that Westboro gang's hateful three word signs at soldiers' funerals, dunking crucifixes in urinals, 90% of all the anonymous comments everywhere on the internet -- does not justify even the least violence you can imagine. The only acceptable response to speech, presuming you don't simply ignore it, is more speech. Orations, blogs, stage plays, anthems, epic poems, sky writing, sculpture, tracts, pamphlets, bumper stickers -- all are good to go. You can employ condemnation, vilification, expressions of loathing, mockery, satire, sneering contempt and the thumbing of your own nose. Have at it.***

But you do not get to raise a finger against the speaker, and an inquiry into his motives -- which are damned tricky to divine, even if Juan Williams seems to believe he can -- cannot amend the Rule.

Here's a diagnostic you can run on yourself. If you think a speaker is "provoking violence" by speaking, then you utterly fail to understand the difference between speech and violence. Violence can often justifiably provoke violence -- assault someone and he has the right to defend himself; assault him with deadly force and he has the right to end your life. But speech cannot justifiably provoke even a slap in the face. This is the law. But more than that, it is a founding principle of this nation. 

The wonderful thing about speech, even of the vilest sort, is that it leaves everyone free to engage in more speech. Violence, on the other hand, leaves only the winners free to engage in more violence. And as a recent pair of would be jihadis learned the hard way, that violence thing doesn't always work out quite like you're expecting it to.

* I'm not being sarcastic here. I was honestly surprised, although I know I shouldn't be.

** The Geller event was no Armory Show, but I sure hope that's not the key criterion. I drew the picture above on MS Paint and it is not a very good drawing at all.

*** Certainly lots of folks have done just that with the tirelessly self-promoting Ms. Geller,

You'll taste the rainbow, and like it

Here follows the only approved manner in which to eat Skittles. 

Tear a corner off of the package so as to be able to control the flow of Skittles. Pour one-third of the package onto the surface of your desk.*

Separate the Skittles by color, then eat in the color order below, according to the following system:

Eat Skittles of the same color two at a time. If there is an odd number of same color Skittles greater than one, then eat same-colored Skittles two at a time until three Skittles remain, then consume the three remaining same-colored Skittles together. If a given pour contains only one Skittle of a given color, eat that Skittle by itself. If a pour contains only three Skittles of a given color, eat them all together.**

Color order: You will consume the green Skittles first. (Alternatively, the green Skittles can be thrown into the trash because they are nasty.***) Eat either the yellow or the orange Skittles second. Eat either the orange or the yellow Skittles third. Eat the purple Skittles fourth. Eat the red Skittles last.

Once you have consumed all the Skittles from the first pour, pour out the second third of the package and repeat. Then complete the same process to consume the remaining third.

Now, I eat Skittles this way because that’s how I like to eat Skittles. But you will eat Skittles this way because it is policy that Skittles will be eaten this way. You cannot be trusted to decide where your children go. You cannot be trusted to decide what your children eat. You cannot be trusted to express your contempt for your local bureaucrats. All this is evident just from today's news. I shudder to contemplate what fits of radical non-conformity tomorrow may bring. So eat your Skittles as you are damn told.

Please know that if you question my Skittles policy I will not engage with you on the genesis of the policy, nor will I discuss its merits. The policy is the policy, as anyone -- particularly groveling left-wing statists -- can tell you, and policies are there to be obeyed.



* This applies to the 2.17 ounce package of Skittles. The 11 ounce family size Skittles is consumed in exactly the same way, but is poured out into 15 sub-portions, rather than three.

** Yes I know. There is an irresolvable contradiction contained in this part of the policy that arises when a given pour contains three and only three Skittles of a given color. Tough. The policy is absolute and you must conform to it perfectly, even where it contradicts itself.

*** Personally I always consume the green Skittles because: 1. Wasting food is a sin; and 2. They enhance my appreciation of the delicious Skittles soon to come. At present, the consumption or discard of the green Skittles is not a matter of policy and Skittle consumers are free to make their own choice in this regard. Yay, liberty!

Say my name

You have been told over and over again – and by some awfully important and powerful folks – that the gruesome outrages committed more or less daily by ISIS and Boko Haram and Al Shabaab – and, most recently, some random Muslim refugees in a boat – are “not about Islam.” Some fairly well-informed and studious people seem to disagree with that. But, I get it. We live in an age where it’s much more comfortable to discuss workplace violence instead of terrorism – even when we’re talking about the same event. (Indeed, some folks, like Ben Affleck, are so disinclined to engage uncomfortable facts that their passionate denial about the roots of the terrorism is exceeded only by their desperation to deny their own personal roots.)

So let’s spare ourselves the whole mess about what is Islam and what isn't. Let’s not talk about whether ISIS, or Boko Haram, or Al Shabaab, or Hezbollah, or Al Qaeda – or some random Muslim refugees in a boat – were motivated by Islam to act as they did. Let’s put the perpetrators’ motives aside and focus merely upon the identity of the victims.

Those random Muslim refugees in the Mediterranean tossed overboard and drowned those who, as terrified as they were, called out to God and prayed with their hands folded. Al Shabaab, at the Westgate Mall and at Garissa University College, employed the simple expediency of asking potential victims if they were Christian or not. Boko Haram saves itself the trouble of even asking by simply attacking Christians at worship. ISIS on the Libyan beach expressly warned that beheading was the fate all Christians will face if they do not convert.

So if we cannot say these scores and scores of brutal, terror-filled, agonizing deaths have got to do with Islam, can we acknowledge  – for pity’s sake can we at least say out loud – that they incontrovertibly have got something to do with Christianity?*

And more than say it in this space, can we hear it from the one fellow from whom we most need to hear it? Here is the Administration statement from last night, issued by Bernadette Meehan, the spokesperson for the National Security Council.

The United States condemns in the strongest terms the brutal mass murder purportedly of Ethiopian Christians by ISIL-affiliated terrorists in Libya.  We express our condolences to the families of the victims and our support to the Ethiopian government and people as they grieve for their fellow citizens.  That these terrorists killed these men solely because of their faith lays bare the terrorists’ vicious, senseless brutality.  This atrocity once again underscores the urgent need for a political resolution to the conflict in Libya to empower a unified Libyan rejection of terrorist groups.

Even as terrorists attempt through their unconscionable acts to sow discord among religious communities, we recall that people of various faiths have coexisted as neighbors for centuries in the Middle East and Africa.  With the force of this shared history behind them, people across all faiths will remain united in the face of the terrorists’ barbarity.  The United States stands with them.  While these dehumanizing acts of terror aim to test the world's resolve – as groups throughout history have – none have the power to vanquish the powerful core of moral decency which binds humanity and which will ultimately prove the terrorists' undoing.

That’s not nothing, I suppose.** As best I can tell, by acknowledging even barely that the victims were Christian, and were victims because they were Christian, it's a first of sorts. But it is not enough by miles.

Because I have to wonder. The President, in an act of staggering sophistry, used the occasion of the recent National Prayer Breakfast to state: “Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”*** Now, as the death toll of Christians killed for being Christians mounts around the world, can't he simply say their name?****

* Yes. I know. ISIS and its ilk kill many, many Muslims as well. The killers in those cases would tell you in no uncertain terms that those killings are all about Islam, that as takfiri, they are condemning and justly punishing apostate traitors to Islam. But just for now, just for this space, since so few folks seem to want to, we’re going to talk about Christians.

** I’m sure Bernadette Meehan is a fine and important person.

*** Let’s be clear: He hardly needed to reach back 900 years for some awful behavior by Christians. On the most fundamental level possible, Christianity is about people so sinful, vile and evil that they all are damned to hell – except for the Grace of Jesus. And even those who claim Him and have received that Grace are, necessarily, sinners in the present tense.

That sin is not theoretical. It’s entirely too real, and all too often it’s even associated with the faith itself. That Midwestern gang of homophobic thugs who like to picket soldiers’ funerals and have the words “Baptist” and “church” right there in their name. Pedophile clerics are likely to go after the convenient lambs in their own flocks. No Christian deserves praise or even deference merely for being a Christian. Any Christian who would expect that hasn't really paid attention to his own theology.

**** It is rare -- in fact, I think unprecedented -- for this blog directly to criticize the President, I find the greatest danger is that some reader might imagine I support those who oppose him.

Remember, please Robert's Rule of Binary American Politics: Team R versus Team D is really just an intra-squad scrimmage by players from the same team, staged to distract the cheering fans from noticing that the stadium is on fire and their cars are being stolen from the parking lot.

Battle Road

As the rising sun pierced the billowing gun smoke that April morning 240 years ago this Sunday, I suspect the British regulars were thinking something along the lines of “Well, that’s for them.” The truth is that the “Shot Heard Round the World” echoed over an inauspicious field abandoned by a beaten militia in full flight. The only would-be rebels who remained on the Green did so because they were dead or dying.

So British Colonel Francis Smith might well have thought that, with one lot of traitors shown conclusively who was master, well begun was half done and the day portended well for King George III. It must have been with more than a little confidence that Smith turned his troops down the road toward Concord, where Tories and spies had reported the nascent rebellion had a large cache of weapons.

But neither Smith nor his executive officer, Major John Pitcairn – much less King George – had heard American Captain John Parker addressing his militiamen just before dawn. The rebels had waited through the night to see if the British foray into the countryside was just another reconnoiter in force, or something more sinister. Paul Revere and his fellow riders assured them the regulars were on their way intent on disarming the budding rebellion.  As the British entered the green, the militiamen assembled from Buckman Tavern and elsewhere to face them. Parker reminded them that while their foremost purpose was to merely demonstrate their resolve, more than that might well be demanded of them. 

“Stand your ground and do not fire unless fired upon,” Parker ordered. “But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”*

Faced off across a space no larger than a football field, Parker and Pitcairn each commanded their respective forces not to fire. Pitcairn had every reason to expect to be obeyed; British regulars did as they were ordered and Pitcairn’s force of elite light infantry were some of the best troops of the best professional army in the world. Parker, commanding farmers, merchants – and a slave named Prince Estabrook – likewise expected to be obeyed, if for no other reason than because his men had families close at hand, some watching from just off the field.  Greek governmental theories, philosophical abstractions and offenses such as the Intolerable Acts may have driven rabble-rousers like Sam Adams and his Sons of Liberty. But for the militiamen on Lexington Green, their homes and farms and livelihoods were all too tangible realities, all too close at hand.

So no one was meant to fire a shot, but as it as has time and again throughout the years, the shot nevertheless was fired** and then everyone on the field let loose. It was over in minutes and the outcome, with many rebels killed or wounded, and only one of his own men hurt, couldn't have surprised Pitcairn, who couldn't have had much doubt about how the rest of the day would go.

But it was only dawn. And he hadn't heard Parker.

Pitcairn couldn't have understood at that moment that he hadn't just been a part of a police action or some noisy civil disturbance. Because he hadn't heard Parker, because he didn't know who these Patriots really were, Pitcairn didn't know then that he’d really been a participant in the first skirmish of a remorseless war. But he was soon to learn.

By the end of that very day, after the desperate running fight down the Battle Road, as the blood ran from the North Bridge to stain the Concord River, Pitcairn could not help but to have had a better understanding of what war with real Americans would mean: All told the rebels had lost 88 men killed and wounded. The butcher’s bill for the most feared and powerful military force in the world was nearly twice that, at 147. By the very next morning – without the aid of Facebook or a single cell phone –  15,000 men of what would eventually*** become a victorious Continental Army were outside of Boston.  

This nation was born of blood and smoke and outrage and an abiding sense that "Enough is enough, damn it." It was born when a secure and prosperous people finally decided that their liberties were more dear to them than their comforts. I am convinced that Americans -- or, at the very least, enough Americans -- still fear blood and smoke less, and love liberty more, than they love their comfort. I believe that Americans still know their way to the Battle Road. I believe this, I confess, in part because I must believe it, or else despair.

* Indeed, many of the militiamen may not have heard Parker, either. Her suffered from tuberculosis and had trouble mustering enough breath to speak.

**Theories vary wildly about who fired first. The best evidence, I think, suggests that it was one of the spectators, townsmen arrayed around the green, but not under Parker’s command.

*** "Eventually" in spades. In the eight years, four months and 15 days from that day to the Treaty of Paris, there would be some 150,000 casualties, suffered overwhelmingly by the Americans and their families, fighting on their own doorsteps.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

United States Senator Chris Murphy (Team D. - Connecticut) is afraid. What, you ask, in a world wracked by terrorist attacks, unbalanced by a resurgent Russia, alternately frozen by polar vortices and simmered by global warming frightens Sen. Murphy? Of whom, you wonder, in a world populated with the likes of Donald Sterling, Abu Bakr al-Bahgdadi, and  Kanye West is Sen. Murphy afraid?

Well you might ask. Because the answer, if you happen to own a full-sized pistol manufactured in the past 80 years* or so, turns out to be . . . you.

I know this because The Hill reports that, after what we must assume was careful and objective analysis (i.e., asking a couple of anti-gun lobbyists what they thought), Sen. Murphy is throwing his support behind the push for a new federal law banning magazines that hold more than 10 rounds because, he says

. . . he has not met “a single hunter or a single person who hunts for sport” who needs more than 10 rounds [and] those who wanted high-capacity magazines were more interested in “arming against the government.”

Now, I'm not going to engage in a political assessment of the bill's chances for passage. (Which are, in the words of Dean Wormer, zero-point-zero.) Rather, let's address this notion that the reason folks want to own modern firearms is to take arms against the government.

Because, now that you mention it, Sen. Murphy . . .  um . . . yeah. Sorta. If you insist.

I've pointed out before that when it comes to the founding philosophy of this nation, there are some absolutely essential bits that get all too conveniently forgotten -- or intentionally ignored -- by the fellows who consider themselves to be in charge nowadays. Because a belief that men have God-given rights that other men cannot take is a fine and a true and a worthwhile thing. But what it isn't, in and of itself, is any sort of justification for even a punch in the nose, let alone bloody revolution against one's duly emplaced leaders. Not by a long shot. If you want to wage war against your own government -- precisely what the Founders did for eight and a half deadly years -- you're going to need something more. You're going to need to to keep reading:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

That was the justification upon which Americans committed what most viewed as a grave sin and abolished their until-then-lawful government. And if it ever becomes necessary to do so again, the justification for such an awful event will be precisely the same.

The Founders knew that to be true. And, having just thrown off one tyrant, they did not imagine for a moment that there were no tyrants left.  Indeed, they recognized in themselves and in each other the human inclination to tyranny -- what Frederic Bastiat calls "A Fatal Tendency of Mankind" -- and they were determined to guard against it. That's why the Constitution creates three co-equal branches of government. And that is at least one reason why, when they set out the Bill of Rights, they put the Second Amendment second.




* I make a distinction here between revolvers and pistols, and I arbitrarily picked 80 years because that is the year John Moses Browning's second most-famous pistol made its appearance, seven years after his death, but incorporating important improvements he wanted to make to his more famous 1911. The Browning Hi Power -- or P35 for its first year of manufacture -- had a magazine capacity of 13 rounds in 9mm and set the trend, still followed today, for pistols to carry as many rounds as conveniently fit, given the grip size and caliber.

Construction

Let's establish at the outset that I am no fan of Ted Cruz. I think he's a buffoon and, as a key player on Team R, instrumental in the most dangerous intramural scrimmage ever played. But it turns out I am even less of a fan of sanctimony and race-baiting and the tyranny of orthodoxy -- equally so the left-handed variety as the right.

Race, certainly, and even ethnicity are, to a large degree, just social constructs. If you tell 50 people in a room to stand up and arrange themselves from darkest to lightest, you'll get some pretty funny looks* but you also get to observe an interesting phenomenon: Reduce someone's literal place to the single signifier of his skin color, and the light begins to dawn about how much more complex the concept of race really is. Just as interesting -- especially in the United States -- is to ask someone about his ethnicity and listen to the second order algebraic equation that follows. 

There's nothing wrong with this, so long as you let people do it for themselves. Our own idea of our race and ethnicity helps us to fix ourselves in the great, centuries-long parade of human kind. It gives us a context and place from which to view the world. It gives a list of foods we really like. 

Now, I cannot speak in detail to the race or ethnicity of Amy Louise Bardach, who recently posited that Ted Cruz doesn't get to call himself Hispanic because of his politics. But Bardach doesn't sound** especially Latino, and neither -- if that happens to be a married name -- does Amy Louise.*** So I am left to wonder: Where does she get the nerve?

This kind of reductive, aggressive, third-party imposition of identity is beyond offensive. It is the worst variety of the Theory of Ubiquitous Polarity. It is just another stripe of telling people what they are allowed to believe and, in the hands of a powerful institution like The New York Times, or the federal government, or the Central Committee, or the Gestapo****, or any other tyrant, it's damned dangerous.

My wife is white (well, really this kind of amazing cafe con leche color) but clearly Latina. ("Latino" versus "Hispanic" is another discussion.) My boys are white (well, one's sort of tanish-white and the other is a little more beige) and medio-latino. I'm white (well, OK, sorta ruddy, blotchy, freckly white) and half Irish, half German (albeit I was raised in an entirely Czech family, and so identify there as well). None of that changes depending on how any of us vote, anymore than it does if one of my sons suddenly decided he didn't like beans and rice.***** And no editorial writer gets to tell us - or Ted Cruz, for that matter - otherwise.

Doubt me? Here's a simple exercise. Imagine a Wall Street Journal editorial positing that Barack Obama is not really black.

But maybe, before you try that thought experiment, you'd better put on a hard hat.

* I know because I have done exactly that, rather to make this very point to a classroom full of folks who were -- because of another social construct -- largely inclined to do as I asked.

** Como el único gringo en una familia de 150 cubanos, y como residente de 25 años de una de las ciudades más latino en los Estados Unidos, me siento que puedo hablar con experiencia, si no con la autoridad perfecta, sobre el tema. Pero cualquiera que sea mi conjeturo, yo soy de ninguna manera que sugieren que podría o debería imponer una etnia a la Sra Bardach, ni privarlo de su derecho a reclamar lo que uno - o los - ella afirma . De esa manera, somos muy diferentes.

*** And in any event, if it seems offensive to you that I'd speculate at all about her ethnicity, maybe go ahead and check your irony meter for full function.

**** What good is to have Godwin's Law if we cannot break it from time to time?

***** Consider it an argument ad absurdim.