Yet another Voltaire moment.

You pissed off yet today?  No?  Then stop reading.  You won't remain that way for long.

Via Radley Balko, we learn of two more cases of a disgusting trend that is becoming more and more common:  the State not only protecting its enforcement thugs from anything resembling accountability (this now being so common it's passe), but rewarding them with trophies, over the dead bodies of those they "protect and serve" to death.

No, I'm not making this shit up.  Yes, nobody would believe it if it weren't true.  But here ya go:

Cop shoots, kills unarmed Pace University student. Months later, he gets the police union’s “Cop of the Year” award.

and

Two Las Vegas police officers who shot and killed Erik Scott in the controversial Costco shooting last year have received honors in a national officer of the year award.

In that latter case, how about this zinger?

“I don’t see it as a controversial shooting,” he said about the Costco shooting. “What potentially could have been a bad situation they brought to an end with no citizens being hurt.

"no citizens being hurt".  Roll that thought around in your mind for a little bit.  If you weren't pissed off yet, betcha are now. (Told ya.)

And so we arrive at today's Voltaire moment.  The relevant quote is "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities," but we're just so past that now, apparently.

Atrocities are happening now, every day, against ordinary people like you and me.  (Yes, many of them are a lot more "just like you and me" than you may know.  Erik Scott, as just one of hundreds of examples, only got reclassified as a "non-citizen" when he became a non-human, on account of being shot to death for...oh, who the hell knows what the reason is today?  As Pete at WSRA says, "Do you understand yet?"

And so, perhaps the Voltaire quote needs to be updated:

Those who want you to believe absurdities, have already committed the atrocities.

For a well-adjusted human being, that should probably produce an instant Condition Orange situation.

Claire Wolfe on Atlas Shrugged, Part I

Once again, Claire simply nails it.

And how did so many media folk, including movie reviewers, get the notion that Ayn Rand and the Tea Party are in bed with each other? Probably 1/3 of the negative reviews make that connection. Yegads. Rand? and the Tea Party? That’s so shallow and simplistic it’s more like a cartoon than an actual thought.

Of course it is.  Talismanic incantations of "Tea Party" affiliation are simply the newer, hipper way of saying "9-11 changed everything".  Instant absolution continues to get cheaper and cheaper.

Claire's article, as usual, is worth the read in full.  She insists that it is not a "review" itself, but rather a "review of reviewers";  whatever it may be, it's indispensably relevant, and just might pick up your day.

'An Armed Society Is...' by Joel Simon

Many thanks to Joel at TUAK for re-posting something I don't think I'd read before--it's from a few years back--except that you can also read it in most of the things that Joel says now.  (That's gratifying.)

From The Libertarian Enterprise, the article is worth the read in full.

I'll offer a teaser, but with a hitch:

And so at the very spot on which I had been welcomed to the town decades ago, I was welcomed back in the exact same manner after many wandering years.

Afterward I walked downtown for a while and thought about Heinlein's Dictum, that an armed society is a polite society. He was right as far as he went, but he didn't go far enough. The statement implies that armed people are polite because they are afraid of each other, and that's wrong.

An armed society is a friendly society. The people there can afford to be friendly, because they have nothing to fear from each other.

Now that gets right to the core of why so many don't get it.

The hitch is simply this:  the best writing is before that.  Joel has a gift for both writing, and for reflection.

Go.  Read.  Enjoy.