We have already assumed the position?

I make a small hobby of reading survivalist and Armageddon novels. One of them I missed long ago and recently read is a 1971 work called Vandenberg by Oliver Lange.

It's a real stinker with one saving grace -- its premise that Americans have allowed themselves to be conditioned to accept any tyranny so long as they are permitted their accustomed creature comforts. This lets Lange get away with a vast plot simplification about the genesis of America slavery in the late decades of the 20th Century. The Russians destroy Washington, then promise the rest of us three hots and a cot, beer, and plenty of games. We shrug acceptance, even of the concentration camps for the serious non-conformists where the treatment is merely undignified rather than brutal.

After this many months of Obamanization, I do not find Lange's premise incredible.

EDIT: It didn't begin with Obama, of course. He's just the most recent messiah of c'mon c'mon and get happy....

Golden Oldie -- New York gun laws

to wit:

"...That every able-bodied Male Person, being a Citizen of this State, or of any of the United States, and residing in this State, (except such Persons as are hereinafter excepted) and who are of the Age of Sixteen, and under the Age of Forty-five Years, shall, by the Captain or commanding Officer of the Beat in which such Citizens shall reside, within four Months after the passing of this Act, be enrolled in the Company of such Beat. . . . That every Citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within three Months thereafter, provide himself, at his own Expense, with a good Musket or Firelock, a sufficient Bayonet and Belt, a Pouch with a Box therein to contain not less than Twenty-four Cartridges suited to the Bore of his Musket or Firelock, each Cartridge containing a proper Quantity of Powder and Ball, two spare Flints, a Blanket and Knapsack; . . ."

An act of the New York state legislature, April 4, 1784

Big Pow Wow on Plains

SUNDAY, AUGUST 16, 5:30 p.m. -- GUNS, STEAKS, AND A BIG ROOM FULL OF GOOD FOLKS

Time for the Prairie Land Area annual Friends of the NRA banquet for any of you in southwest Minnesota or northwest Iowa. We hold this shindig at the Hunt Club north of Lakefield, Minnesota, and it just keeps getting larger and larger.

The advance price of $30 gets you a T-bone, a handful of lottery tickets, and an ownership hunk of our pro-shooting work in both states. The profits go toward shooting ranges, youth firearms programs, and wildlife habitat.

We here at the Travis McGee Reader don't ordinarily flog causes other than pure anti-idiotarianism, but the TMR chief propagandist happens to like this bunch of people, so an exception is being made.

I mean, the hair is bad enough

I wouldn't deviate an inch from my path to greet Sen. Orrin Hatch,* as vile an authoritarian theocrat as ever trod the sacred sands of Provo in New Zion. But at this moment I feel kindly enough toward him to make a campaign contribution.

He has just made the wise Latina look the fool on incorporation. No one following the issue can now fail to believe Sotomayor thinks Heller is irrelevant. Under the "rational belief" standard she loves, Heller would apply nowhere except Washington D.C. It is a permissive standard and could sanction your city council banning firearms because of a public health danger to to citizens' hearing. All you have to do is get a petri dish full of politicians and a few Schumeresque judges to agree deafness is bad and there oughtta be a law preventing it.

Hatch did let her off a little too lightly on her conviction that arms possession and use is not a fundamental right.

Not that it will do any good. Barring evidence of cannibalism, she's in. Since I need to look at her the rest of my life, I just wish Ms. Justice Sotomayor would quit getting her hair done at the barber college.

*Namedropping: I've worked with him, however briefly. His personality is as repulsive as his politics.