America, compared to the European and Asian countries, might be just a babe-in-arms, but we are trying and succeeding in “a noble experiment”. Democracy means the majority rules, and if you change the word “majority” and replace it with “mob”, it means the same. In a 1947 exchange of letters with Ludwig von Mises, journalist, war correspondent, and novelist Rose Wilder Lane wrote: “As an American I am of course fundamentally opposed to democracy and to anyone advocating or defending democracy, which in theory and practice is the basis of socialism. It is precisely democracy which is destroying the American political structure, American law, and the American economy, as [James] Madison said it would, and as [Thomas] Macauley prophesied that it would do in fact in the 20th century.”
The United States is one of the few, I believe, where the private citizen can own as many guns as they are capable of buying, and of course that goes for the ammunition as well. Our Second Amendment is crystal clear on that score and anyone, or anything, that attempts to befuddle it is simply barking up the wrong tree. It may not say anything about semi-automatic weapons, but the intention is there. While on the subject of weapons, and this IS a blatant “plug”, you should look up something called Project Appleseed. If you’re looking to “get into” getting familiar with guns, this is for you. Project Appleseed is a rifle marksmanship clinic that focuses on teaching traditional rifle marksmanship from standing, sitting/kneeling, and prone positions over a two-day weekend shooting clinic for what is termed an “Appleseed”. Reach them at this link: https://appleseedinfo.org/. It bugs me no end to read about ALL the THOUSANDS of gun control laws already on the books, and they haven’t stopped a single shooting…and the gun-free zones haven’t either.
Autonomous. A funny word, and the first part is auto, which brings me to my next thing that bugs me. Autonomous means “having the freedom to govern itself or control its own affairs.”…and when you apply that to a speeding automobile, it’s downright scary. There you are, going down the Interstate at a reasonable speed, when you take notice of the car next to you…and you immediately see that there’s no driver! At that point, if it’s me, there’s going to be a screech of brakes and getting off the road in a big hurry. Maybe a hundred years in the future they’ll have perfected that technology, or not…but right now with it being in its infancy, please do not share the road with me. Years back they talked about driverless cars, but it was an entirely different system. Those of you that played with slot-cars will understand this. The future roads had “slots” embedded in them and cars had a sort of “handle” underneath, that fit into the slot. No driver was needed because there was no changing of lanes or turning off the road until you came to a “fork” and if conditions were right(and your onboard computer would know), you’d be allowed to change lanes or get off the road.
Okay, now what bugs me is “the younger generation(s)” because it is obvious to me and a lot of folks like me, that we’re raising a couple of generations of useful idiots. Oh, don’t know what that is? In political jargon, a useful idiot is a derogatory term for a person perceived as a propagandist for a cause, the goals of which he or she does not fully comprehend, and who is used cynically by the leaders of the cause. So, here we have, literally, thousands of young people in high schools and colleges across the country who have no idea of “government”. They don’t know what it does, how it does it, who pays for it, and so on. For most of their educational life they’ve been spoon-fed a one-sided view of America, and not a good view at that. At what point in our political lives did we decide that if a person had a different opinion, it was alright to beat them up, maybe kill them. Where does it say that wearing a certain hat earns you being ostracized, beaten, or worse. Not EVERY Democrat is a lefty loony, but most of them seem to be. Not EVERY Republican is a gun-toting, Bible-thumping, conservative, but most of them seem to be. The part that bugs me about that is that we immediately brand everyone and put them in a pigeon-hole and that’s where they have to stay.
My military service is a source of pride to me. Never in combat, or even close to it, but “veteran” is what it says on my papers. It bugs me no end that we treat our veterans so shabbily. A homeless veteran? That’s a source of severe embarrassment to me and it needs to come to a screeching halt. Where is the conscience of our Congress that it can help people that are here illegally and ignore the plight of men and women that have fought FOR this country and, some, have come home crippled. We need to be for OUR people before anybody else gets a dime!
Parting shot: Nobody goes through life without SOMETHING bugging them, and maybe we touched on a few things today. Any suggestions from you folks out there in OUR America?
