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Lovely Trip, Shame About The Nazis

Travels

The Daily Mail’s Bel Mooney writes:

We took a rare holiday, on the River Danube, cruising from Passau to beautiful Budapest. It seemed amazing that in one week we could set foot in Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary – flying visits, of course, but fascinating nonetheless.

Among many memories, two things stand out in my mind. First, near Linz in Austria (which Hitler considered his hometown) is Mauthausen Memorial site. This was one of the most brutal and severe of the Nazi concentration camps; prisoners suffered not only from malnutrition, overcrowding and constant abuse and beatings, but also from exceptionally hard labour.

We saw the terrible quarry where they were broken and killed, the gas chamber, and the heart-breaking ‘Room of Names’ honouring the thousands of dead: political enemies of the Nazis, Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and (of course) the Jews, who were treated with the worst brutality.

You might think that doesn’t sound like holiday fun, and you’d be correct. But we need to bear witness to what can happen in plain sight of ‘innocent’ communities all around. Extremism and collusion can happen all too easily within societies. Mauthausen made me weep and rage – the only possible response. I shall never forget it.

It’s happier to recall the national pride of guides in (especially) Bratislava and Budapest. We heard how students and workers rose up against the Soviet oppressors and how the end of Communism enabled Slovakia and Hungary to be reborn.

I loved their delight in their own culture, their wish to protect it, and the welcoming patriotism that made me suspect they were rather sorry for us tourists – born elsewhere. It was genuine, unforced and I couldn’t help but wish we had more of it here.

I had precisely the same reaction upon visiting Dachau, outside Munich — tears of rage and sadness, even though it came in the middle of an otherwise-idyllic vacation in Austria and southern Germany.

I think it behooves us, every time we travel abroad, to take a day off from the museums and bistros and rub our noses in the history of the place.  Otherwise, we are just tourists and not travelers.

Reaction

Anti-Gun Nannies, The Gun Thing

It is a well-known fact of sales and advertising is that if you want to create demand for a product, you show it, extol its features and wonders, and then say, “…but you can’t have it.”

I have a similar reaction to a product when someone might want to prevent me from owning it:  I get one.

Longtime Readers will be only too familiar with my attitude towards the AR-15 poodleshooter and its varmint ammo — the executive summary would be that I despise the frigging things.

However, the more that the anti-gun brigade wants to ban them as eeeevil assault rifles (“only the military”, “designed not to hunt but to kill humans” etc. etc. etc.), the more I think that every American citizen should own one (or more, as the urge takes).

Which is a long way of saying that I am really, really glad that I now have one:  not because of any love I may have for the thing, but because now that I own one, I’m never going to give it up to any government agency, no matter what laws or restrictions the government may pass to make them illegal.

Were the Nanny Hoplophobe Set not so keen on banning them, I wouldn’t own one in a month of Sundays, because let’s just say that I might happen to have alternatives that I would consider far more effective in the AR-15’s purpose.

But regardless, I’m glad that I have a poodleshooter… simply because some asshole doesn’t want me to own one.

And it appears that as many as 15 million Americans feel the same way that I do — and very many likely for the same reason.

So while news items like this are very welcome, we sure as hell don’t need to have some super-lawyers (e.g. the USSC) explain the Second Amendment to us.  We know what it means, regardless of what they think or how carefully they may parse penumbral meanings out of the Constitution.

As for the would-be gun-banning types:  FOAD.

Reasonable Suggestion

Shootin' Time

I was struck by the attitude of this woman (as linked by Insty), who feels that Trump supporters should be put in a large room, like a gas chamber.  (She doesn’t actually advocate dropping the Zyklon-B crystals, of course;  she just wants to see Trump supporters wail and grovel.)

Of course, she’s living in some benighted delusion, unencumbered by the reality of what she’s suggesting.  It’s actually laughable, for all the right reasons:

  • That’s a big-ass room she’s talking about.  Even something the size of, say, Madison Square Garden would only hold about 25,000 people — of approximately 60 million Trump supporters.  I suppose she’d want to round up Trump supporters on a piecemeal basis, which leads us to:
  • Who is the “we” she’s talking about?  Who, exactly, is going to do the rounding  up?  The police?  The Army?  Has she considered the possibility that Trump’s support among these agencies might make them reluctant to go to a Trump-supporting household and politely ask us to go on a little one-way journey?  Of course, that reluctance may also manifest itself in fear for their lives, because of the next point.
  • We Trump supporters, by and large, may constitute the single-largest group of armed civilians on the planet, and would probably decline the offer of a trip to MSG from some ill-defined  Totenkopf agents.
  • Clearly, some kind of universal disarmament program must first be enacted, which in itself would be somewhat interesting.

Really, what she wants to see is Trump supporters cower in fear.  I wonder if she’s ever considered that we, as a group, are not especially fearful people?

So here’s my simple suggestion.

Even for someone as deluded as this AWFL, some testing needs to be done first, to ascertain the feasibility of what she’s advocating — a sample study, if you will.  Let’s see how disarmament and deportation to Madison Square Garden works out for them.

I will quite happily sign on to be one of the sample group.  In other words:  start with me, bitch.

Of course, what her little tirade shows is the actual depth of hatred these people have for us conservatives.  Fine:  let them hate away all they want.  But she and all her little cohorts need to understand that hatred alone will not be sufficient to enact what she’s suggesting.

But reality was never a strong suit of leftism, anyway.