Just for once - don't be shocked! - I'm actually going to recommend a Michael Moore movie

In the past I've had very little time for Michael Moore and his deliberately confrontational, far-left-wing perspective, expressed in his movies (Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 being probably the best known).  I still disagree profoundly with his politics:  but I must, however grudgingly, doff my hat to his willingness to slaughter sacred cows in his latest documentary, Planet of the Humans.

The New York Post, hardly a left-wing rag, says of it:

Memo from Moore to those who think they are driving green: You may indulge your illusions if you prefer. But all you’ve really done is transfer your emissions from the tailpipe of your car to the smokestack of the local power plant.

Maybe you think solar power is the answer?

Moore treats you to a visit to a showy solar array that covers an entire football field. The power-company executive present admits that it can only power ten homes, and then only when the sun shines.

Powering the nearby city of Lansing, Mich., he says with a grin, would require 15 square miles of panels. You want to talk about “footprints?”

We follow local environmentalists as they hike up a mountain where a site has been clear-cut for 21 mega wind turbines. They deplore the destruction of the natural beauty of the landscape and the scattering of the wildlife it once supported.

The engineer in charge ticks off the hundreds of tons of concrete, steel, aluminum, carbon and other products that go into the construction of each and every mega wind turbine. Industry requires huge inputs of energy to produce such things, a total energy deficit that the spinning blades of the wind turbine will not begin to pay back over its projected lifetime.

Moore ends the segment with a shot of broken and rusted wind turbines littering the landscape.

We visit plants that generate electricity by burning “biomass” rather than fossil fuel. But as we see one diesel-powered machine after another felling, hauling and chipping logs for burning, the absurdity of the entire enterprise comes into focus. In the final scene we see a clear-cut forest and learn that we would need to burn every tree in America to power the country for just one year.

By the midpoint of the movie, Moore has already revealed that each and every form of green energy is a fraud, surviving on popular naivete, government subsidies and the products of industrial civilization.

. . .

He ... [takes] us to a green concert, where the organizer has just announced to cheers from the crowd that it is powered by “solar energy.” Going backstage, however, we learn that the tiny solar array is only for show. The actual power for the lights, amplifiers and electric guitars comes from a portable diesel generator.

Then he moves on to the big boys. He exposes the massive funding that the Sierra Club, 350 and other environmental groups receive from the energy industry, and exposes the connections between leading environmentalists like Al Gore and Wall Street financiers.

For now, you can still watch Moore’s epic take-down of “green energy” on YouTube, but you’d better move fast. There’s a campaign underway to remove it from that service as well.

If you do tune in, bear in mind that Moore is no friend of free markets or individual liberty. His “solution” to reducing humanity’s use of energy is a throwback to twentieth-century population control ... But you can fast forward through that part. Otherwise, it’s a joy to watch Moore skewer one “renewable energy” fantasy after another.

There's more at the link.

On April 21st, Moore put the movie on YouTube, free to watch for 30 days.  We're about halfway through that free watching period right now, so you've got about two weeks to see it at no expense, if you wish.  I highly recommend that you do.  Like the reviewer above, I don't hold with Moore's proposed solution:  but the documentary nevertheless provides an honest look at the frauds and confabulations of the eco-warrior clique, and shows how many of their most favored projects and plans are essentially nothing but frauds.  Meanwhile, of course, they're making a very great deal of money out of them.  "Follow the money" remains a very reliable method to find out what's really motivating almost any agenda or policy.

Here's a teaser trailer for the movie.

And here's the movie itself.  Enjoy it while you still can!

Kudos to Mr. Moore for his objectivity and honesty in this documentary.  Frankly, I wouldn't have believed him capable of it, based on his past movies.  I still don't agree with his progressive views, but I'll gladly give credit where credit is due.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 5

Another roundup of blog and social media memes that caught my eye this past week.

Click the next one for a larger view.

These last two didn't make me laugh at all - the contrast between them made me very angry:  so much for the First Amendment! - but they certainly make Mayor de Blasio of New York City laughable.  Click each one to be taken to the Mayor's original tweet;  then, if necessary, scroll up to read it (Twitter's pagination isn't always perfect).

I'm waiting for him to tweet equally contradictory and divisive messages to Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains . . .  Hey, he's Mayor of New York City.  Why not be biased one way or another towards every sect?  It's the New York state of mind!

Peter

Sunday morning music

I'm obliged to The Feral Irishman for putting up this video clip from Pink Floyd's  1995 album "Pulse" the other day.  It's David Gilmour's composition "Sorrow".

I hadn't known that the album had been re-mastered and re-released.  I was pleased to find it through Irish's blog post.  For fans of Pink Floyd, perhaps the most technically accomplished rock group ever, here's the re-mastered album.

No numbness there, comfortable or otherwise!

Peter

Saturday Snippet: a hero who outraged the military establishment

Michael Calvert is one of the greatest figures in military special operations history in any nation.  He rose from obscurity to Brigadier's rank in the British Army during World War II, twice being awarded the Distinguished Service Order (the equivalent of the US Army's Distinguished Service Cross), as well as the US Silver Star and other medals.  He led his forces from the front with courage and drive, in some of the most vicious fighting of the Burma campaign;  yet he continually outraged the military "establishment" because he rejected, and refused to adhere to, their long-standing customs and prejudices.  They had their revenge after World War II, bringing about his court-martial and dismissal from the service on charges that may well have been trumped-up.  The situation was made worse by his public exposure as a homosexual in an age when that was simply impermissible in both the military, and civil society at large.  Distraught and troubled, he sank into alcoholism and poverty, a tragic fate for such a man.  He died in 1998.

I can offer Brigadier Calvert no higher recognition than to say that I'm seriously considering his life as the pattern for a protagonist in a novel, that may grow into a series of novels.  He was an extraordinary person, with conflicting and contradictory elements of personality that defied convention, but were instrumental in forging him into a warrior in the classic style.  He would have been right at home, one feels, standing with Horatius Cocles on the bridge at Rome, or with Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae.  He was a hero who helped define that term by his life, and his men followed (and almost venerated) him as such.

In his 1962 autobiography "Fighting Mad" (long out of print, but available at reasonable prices as a used book), he described some of the events of his career.

This morning I'd like to concentrate on some of his earlier exploits, showing how they helped forge the warrior and inspirational military leader he became.

Calvert first ran afoul of the "establishment mentality" while serving as a very junior Lieutenant in the British garrison at Hong Kong before World War II, where he was tasked with raising a force of local Chinese to serve with the Royal Engineers.

Our local paymaster was a rather peppery major nearing retirement, the sort of officer that young subalterns normally tried to avoid.  But I had to see him once or twice about general pay matters for the unit and when a special problem arose over one of my men I plucked up courage and asked for another interview.

"Well, what is it?" he barked, after I had saluted as if he were the Governor himself.

"It's about one of my men, sir."  I hesitated.  The night before I had rehearsed exactly what to say and how to say it, brisk and to the point, but now I funked it and played for time.  "About... about his marriage allowance, sir."

"Well, what about it, man?  He gets one, doesn't he?  If not there's a perfectly simple form you can fill in for him.  Can't you write?"

"Yes, sir," I said hastily.  "The trouble is... I was wondering... I mean, can a man have two marriage allowances?"

"Two marriage allowances?"  The major turned red, then purple and for a moment seemed incapable of further speech.

I carried on quickly, "You see, sir, one of my chaps has two wives and he finds it very difficult to keep them on one allowance, so I wondered if there was some special regulation..."

"Get out."  The major had found his tongue again but was using it with difficulty, judging from the strangled way he was speaking.  "If you think I have nothing better to do than worry about one of your over-sexed coolies then you must be more stupid than you look, which is difficult to believe."  He waved his hand in angry dismissal.  "I shall report this to your commanding officer."

Luckily my C.O. was a different type altogether and in the end I managed to get the man with two wives some sort of extra pay, though it was not recorded as a double marriage allowance!

Pre-war Hong Kong had a fair smattering of awkward Regulars like the old paymaster, but there were plenty of really good officers too, the sort who considered their men's welfare first and their own last.  They were firm disciplinarians but they were fair and even kindly, when kindness was needed, and the troops would have followed them anywhere.  These were the men I tried to emulate and many of them went out of their way to help me along.

. . .

I was in Colonel Barchard's office one day when Jones came up on yet another charge.  This time he had laid out three military policemen.

"Now look, Jones, there's got to be an end to this," the colonel said severely.

"Yes, sir."

"It's no good just saying 'Yes, sir'.  That's what you say every time.  I give you twenty-eight days [i.e. in punishment barracks] and as soon as you finish that you're back here again.  Something has to be done to stop it."

"Yes, sir."

The colonel looked at him grimly.  "I should have you court martialled as an incurable troublemaker.  But I'll give you one more chance.  Are you willing to accept my award?"

Jones, whose big frame had stiffened at the mention of a court martial, managed to look relieved without moving a muscle of his rather battered face as he stood to attention.

"Sir."

"Right," said Colonel Barchard.  "From now on you'll be my batman.  I'm always getting into trouble myself and it'll be your job to keep me out of it."

"Yes, sir."

. . .

I learned much about my profession from these colonels and other officers of the same type who were ready to throw the rule book out of the window when their judgment told them it was wrong.  I tried to put into practice the methods they used.  Getting to know men who are naturally suspicious because of the pips on your shoulder is hard work.  As in everything else, there are times when it just doesn't work out and that can be depressing.  But at the other end of the scale an officer gets a tremendous feeling of satisfaction and pride in knowing that he has the confidence and loyalty of the men serving under him.

Calvert witnessed the Battle of Shanghai and the aftermath of the so-called Rape of Nanking, which made him one of the very few officers in any Western army to understand and appreciate Imperial Japan's military abilities.  He was to put that early knowledge to good use during the Second World War.

Because I could speak Cantonese I was chosen on occasions to go out with the Chinese forces as an observer.  I did not realize it at the time but, looking back, I consider that was when World War II started for me.  I saw as much fighting in the few months that the Shanghai battle lasted as I saw throughout the rest of my army career.  It was a continuous and bloody struggle between two enemies with a plentiful supply of the main essential for a land battle:  troops.  The number of casualties was fantastic.  The Japs lost about 200,000 men and the Chinese a great deal more than that.  As a baptism of fire the slaughter of Shanghai was all that the hungriest adventure-seeker could want and a lot more besides.

I also learned much about the Japs that stood me in good stead later on in Burma.  Not the least of the lessons was that a well-trained Japanese soldier was a man to be reckoned with - cunning, tenacious and often very brave.  I have made my share of mistakes, and probably more, but after Shanghai I never made the fatal error of underestimating the Japs;  too many men who did are now dead.

. . .

I watched the Japanese invade Hangchow Bay, using a fleet of boats of a type that I had never seen before.  They appeared to be flat-bottomed, because they could get almost out of the water on to the beach.  Their sides were high and presumably armor-plated or protected from bullets in some other way.  But the most interesting point of all was that, when they could get no nearer the shore, their flat bows opened downwards like a drawbridge over a moat and the troops poured out of them on to the beaches.

These were landing craft, and as far as I knew the British Army had nothing like them.  The Japanese took them close inshore in a whaling ship, then dropped them from the stern;  their value was obvious and I could hardly contain myself.  I wanted to leap out from my protective covering ... and run all the way back to camp to tell my superiors what I had seen.  As it was I stayed watching these marvellous new craft and made copious notes about how they worked, how many troops they carried and so on.  My report on this outing would make the staff boys sit up!

There was plenty of enthusiastic reaction among my immediate superiors in Shanghai and my report went through to Major-General Telfer-Smollet, the Shanghai area Commander.  I was told that he had sent it on to London and we waited for the reaction;  perhaps there would be a request for more information or for clarification on one or two points.  We heard nothing ... In fact that was the last I heard about landing craft until three years later, after the war had started.  We were beginning to build them then, but for another year or two they were in short supply.  We could so easily have been well stocked if a few staff officers had taken more interest in 1937.

During the Norwegian campaign in 1940, Calvert was assigned to blow up installations and facilities to slow down the German advance.  The only explosives available were naval mines and depth-charges.

One day a German fighter patrol came over while we were fusing some of our mines and depth-charges in a culvert on a road about halfway up the Romsdal Gorge ... we heard the rapid clatter of machine-guns, and I remember putting my arms around my head in an automatic gesture of protection ... In a moment or two the German fighters had zoomed over our heads and the ear-shattering clatter of guns stopped ...

I was furious at being the helpless victim of attack, unable to strike back.  As I cursed out loud at the German race in general and these pilots in particular I suddenly had an idea.  It seemed crazy, but it was better than doing nothing.  I grabbed the sergeant by the arm.  "We'll try and bring one down with a depth charge." ...

Quickly we fused the charge and I sent the sergeant away to shelter below the level of the road.  Then, as I heard the German planes beginning their dive, I lit the fuse and raced for cover myself.  Just as I flung myself down I heard the stutter of machine-guns again and almost at once the depth charge went off with a heavy crrrump.  The machine-guns stopped abruptly and for one wonderful moment I thought we had got one of the fighters.  But then I heard his engine as he throttled up to climb away and I could see as I lifted my head that he was undamaged.  However, the Germans flew off and did not return.

We were pretty pleased with ourselves ... I have often wondered since what that particular pilot would have said if he had known what had gone off under his tail that day in Norway.  He probably thought one of his bullets had hit a mine we had laid under the road and set it off.  In fact he was almost certainly the only fighter pilot ever to be attacked from the ground by an anti-submarine depth charge!

During the British retreat from Burma in 1942 after the Japanese invasion, Calvert led a small team in fighting delaying actions against their advance.  One day, while swimming in a river, he had a lethal encounter.

On the beach, as naked as I was, stood a Jap.  A pile of clothes lay near his feet and in my first startled glance I took in the insignia of an officer on his bush shirt ... I was baffled.  If I yelled for help the Jap patrol would hear me, as well as my own.  There were twelve of us but there might be twenty or thirty of them;  in that case their superior numbers would give them an advantage if it came to an open fight in the confined cove.

While I was still thinking hard the Jap officer stepped into the river and came towards me. I think his mind must have been working much like mine;  he could see that I was unarmed but if he used his gun it would bring both patrols running and he did not know our strength ... he wasn't taking any chances on an open fight which would needlessly risk his men's lives.  He preferred to tackle me with his bare hands.

He knew his ju-jitsu and the water on his body made him as slippery as an eel, but I was the bigger and stronger.  We fought in silence except for an occasional grunt, and struggled and slipped and thrashed around until we were at times waist deep in the swirling river ...

I had come to admire this game little Jap.  He had all the guts in the world.  He could so easily have called up his men and let them fight it out but he had chosen to protect them by taking me on alone.

Now he was putting up a tremendous show and I was hard put to it to hold him.  I pulled myself together.  Brave or not, I had to kill him.  Or he would kill me ...

I managed to grab the Jap's right wrist and force his arm behind his back.  And I buried my face in his chest to stop him clawing my eyes out.  Then, as he lashed out with his left arm and both feet, I forced him gradually under water.  My boots gave me a firm grip and I shut my eyes and held him under the surface.  His struggles grew weaker and weaker, flared again in frantic despair and then he went limp.  I held on for a few seconds longer before releasing my grip.  Slowly I opened my eyes and for a moment could see nothing except the eddies of water caused by his final efforts to break free.  Then his body emerged on the surface a couple of yards away and floated gently off downstream.

. . .

Some sensational Press reports have said that I killed more Japanese single-handed during the war than any other British or American soldier.  I don't know if this is true;  but I do know that I felt like a murderer that afternoon over that particular Jap.

Even now, so many years afterwards, the memory of it is too clear and comes back to me too often.

Calvert went on to a stellar war career, only to fall afoul of the military "establishment" during peacetime.  They never accepted him, because he would never conform to their expectations.  He's hardly alone in that, of course.  Throughout military history, the "fightingest" of fighting men have seldom gotten along with the chair-warmers, bureaucrats and administrators.

All I can say is, to those who served under him, Calvert was always an inspiration and a hero.  You can read more about him in his own words in his autobiography, or in a later biography by David Rooney (still in print) titled "Mad Mike: A Life of Brigadier Michael Calvert".

Calvert died in 1998.  You'll find his obituary here, and an article about a memorial service for him here, including more details of his court-martial and dismissal from the British Army - a tragic episode, in the light of our more tolerant times.  He deserved much better from the nation he had served so well.

Peter

"How do you build a city for a pandemic?"

That's the question the BBC asks in an intriguing article examining how the size, structure, layout and systems of our cities may contribute to the spread of disease, and how they might be changed to prevent that.  It's a long article, and has a lot of "green" propaganda in it, but it also has some interesting suggestions.  Here are a few excerpts.

Modern cities weren’t designed to cope with life during a pandemic, and this upside-down way of living has turned them into “a disorganised array of disconnected bedrooms and studios”, says Lydia Kallipoliti, assistant professor of architecture at The Cooper Union in New York. This layout might have made sense when cities were internationally connected hubs filled with millions of people working, commuting, sightseeing, drinking, dancing and hugging one another without a second thought. But that world seems a long way off now.

The 21st Century has so far seen Sars, Mers, Ebola, bird flu, swine flu and now Covid-19. If we have indeed entered an era of pandemics, how might we design the cities of tomorrow so that the outdoors doesn’t become a no-go zone, but remains a safe and habitable space?

. . .

So making different use of our current spaces, implementing further sanitation and transitioning toward more room for pedestrians are all going to be key features in a pandemic-resilient city of the future.
But one of the biggest changes to our cities won’t be so visible as a fancy new building or a big new park, according to Davina Jackson, author of Data cities: How satellites are transforming architecture and design.

“Cities of the future are going to have to be designed to deal with completely invisible flows [like a global virus], and that’s where the data mapping comes in.”

She gives an example which brings us back to the urban gut of a city: researchers at the Senseable City Lab at MIT placed sensors into sewers to detect concentrations of illegal drugs and harmful bacteria in specific areas. A city built for a pandemic would likely be filled with hidden sensors to help map the spread of disease.

Another important aspect in building a city resilient to pandemics is thinking about how to source food ... She suggests that to reduce risk, our cities may need to become more localised and self-sufficient in the future. “If you had a city, for example, that could feed itself ... It’s not like each place has to be an island, but that there’s some kind of sense of balance and sustainability that you can see within your own settlement.”

There are already examples of urban farming feeding millions when there is little other choice. During World War Two Americans planted 20 million household vegetable plots, producing nine million lbs of produce each year and amounting to 44% of the US harvest, but the challenge of building a self-sufficient city is still a huge one.

. . .

Our homes will need to change too. In an effort to make them more energy and heat efficient, many workspaces, flats and apartment blocks don’t have operable windows. But if we are to going to be spending more time indoors, our houses will need to be better ventilated and offer more light, according to the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture’s Kallipoliti. She describes the need to avoid something called “sick building syndrome”, which is what happens “when buildings [are] entirely sealed and start recirculating pathogens through their systems”.

There's much more at the link.

I think a large part of the solution may be a greater emphasis on working from home or in regional centers, as we discussed yesterday.  If jobs can be done without requiring people to be concentrated in big cities and city centers, I think a lot of people will jump at the chance to move to smaller towns with a lower cost of living and better quality of life, and telecommute to their jobs from there.  That might be inimical to the "green city" advocates, who want everyone to occupy minimal space, use public rather than private transport, and be "less of a burden on nature" . . . but it'll be very practical.

Peter

The pandemic, free speech, and censorship

Famed journalist Matt Taibbi speaks out about the danger of silencing dissenting or contradictory voices in the current crisis.

Earlier this week, Atlantic magazine – fast becoming the favored media outlet for self-styled intellectual elites of the Aspen Institute type – ran an in-depth article of the problems free speech pose to American society in the coronavirus era. The headline:

Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal

In the debate over freedom versus control of the global network, China was largely correct, and the U.S. was wrong.

Authored by a pair of law professors from Harvard and the University of Arizona, Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane Woods, the piece argued that the American and Chinese approaches to monitoring the Internet were already not that dissimilar:

Constitutional and cultural differences mean that the private sector, rather than the federal and state governments, currently takes the lead in these practices… But the trend toward greater surveillance and speech control here, and toward the growing involvement of government, is undeniable and likely inexorable.

They went on to list all the reasons that, given that we’re already on an “inexorable” path to censorship, a Chinese-style system of speech control may not be such a bad thing. In fact, they argued, a benefit of the coronavirus was that it was waking us up to “how technical wizardry, data centralization, and private-public collaboration can do enormous public good.”

Perhaps, they posited, Americans could be moved to reconsider their “understanding” of the First and Fourth Amendments, as “the harms from digital speech” continue to grow, and “the social costs of a relatively open Internet multiply.”

This interesting take on the First Amendment was the latest in a line of “Let’s rethink that whole democracy thing” pieces that began sprouting up in earnest four years ago. Articles with headlines like “Democracies end when they become too democratic” and “Too much of a good thing: why we need less democracy” became common after two events in particular: Donald Trump’s victory in the the Republican primary race, and the decision by British voters to opt out of the EU, i.e. “Brexit.”

A consistent lament in these pieces was the widespread decline in respect for “experts” among the ignorant masses, better known as the people Trump was talking about when he gushed in February 2016, “I love the poorly educated!”

The Atlantic was at the forefront of the argument that The People is a Great Beast, one that cannot be trusted to play responsibly with the toys of freedom. A 2016 piece called “American politics has gone insane” pushed a return of the “smoke-filled room” to help save voters from themselves. Author Jonathan Rauch employed a metaphor that is striking in retrospect, describing America’s oft-vilified intellectual and political elite as society’s immune system:

Americans have been busy demonizing and disempowering political professionals and parties, which is like spending decades abusing and attacking your own immune system. Eventually, you will get sick.

The new piece by Goldsmith and Woods says we’re there, made literally sick by our refusal to accept the wisdom of experts. The time for asking the (again, literally) unwashed to listen harder to their betters is over. The Chinese system offers a way out. When it comes to speech, don’t ask: tell.

. . .

We do actually have to talk about this. We can’t not talk about it out of fear of being censored, or because we’re confusing real harm with political harm.

Turning ourselves into China for any reason is the definition of a cure being worse than the disease. The scolders who are being seduced by such thinking have to wake up, before we end up adding another disaster on top of the terrible one we’re already facing.

There's more at the link.

I couldn't agree more.  I, too, have noticed the Atlantic becoming more and more dictatorial in its approach, more prescriptive to society, less willing to tolerate independent thought, dissent, and contrary opinions.  I don't know why, but I suspect there's more than a little outside money involved.  "Follow the money" is usually a pretty accurate indicator of why something is happening.

When you silence dissent and conflicting opinions, you take away freedom.  It's as simple as that.  Without free speech, you are no longer free as an individual, and the society in which you live is no longer a free society.  Two quotes attributed (falsely) to Voltaire, but which do accurately express his philosophy, sum it up:

I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.

They say a mouthful!

Peter

The whole USA may be "Virginia'ed" on gun laws

Those of us who value the United States Constitution and its Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, were profoundly depressed, earlier this year, to see the speed and efficiency with which left-wing and progressive forces in Virginia rammed through a swath of anti-gun legislation within weeks of taking office there.  They ignored the wishes of almost half the electorate, dismissed out of hand protests, declarations of "Second Amendment sanctuaries" and other objections, and shoved through a series of laws that emasculated important parts of the right to keep and bear arms.  They haven't finished yet, either - expect more such laws to come down the pike within the next year or two.

I have friends who are in a position to follow developments there "behind the scenes".  They informed me this week that Michael Bloomberg (who bankrolled the Democrat electoral victory in Virginia) and his anti-gun organizations have taken their victory in that state to heart.  They told me that, according to their sources, anti-gun lawyers are drafting national legislation that's intended to be rushed through Congress and the Senate as soon as Democrats have (they hope) taken control of both houses early next year.  Basically, they'll reshape US federal law concerning firearms in the image and likeness of what's already been done in Virginia - and just as quickly, if not faster.

You know, and I know, that this is unlikely to be constitutional, particularly in the light of the Heller, McDonald and Caetano decisions.  Lawsuits against the new Virginia anti-gun laws have only just begun wending their way through the courts, and won't be decided for years yet.  Nevertheless, I'm informed that the anti-gun forces in this country have been greatly encouraged by their "success" in Virginia, and are determined to follow it up on a national scale by the same sort of swift legislative fiat that they accomplished there.

I'm informed that this will probably happen regardless of who wins the Presidential election in November.  I understand the calculus is that, if a Democrat wins, the laws will be signed without difficulty (certainly, Joe Biden's policy positions on guns are enough to gladden the heart of the anti-gun movement, and presumably any other Democratic presidential or vice-presidential candidate will adopt them or something similar).  If President Trump wins re-election, but the Democrats win control of the House and Senate, he'll be confronted with an ultimatum:  sign the new anti-gun laws, or risk seeing every one of his policy priorities ignored or rejected by the legislature unless and until he does so.  My correspondent pointed out that Mr. Trump is a New Yorker at heart, and has never felt as strongly about the Second Amendment as many other Republicans.  Who knows if this sort of pressure might not lead to some sort of political accommodation, where at least some gun rights are sacrificed on the altar of other legislative priorities?

Such laws will, of course, criminalize a large swath of Americans.  Similar anti-gun legislation has been largely ignored in states that tried to enforce it;  in New York and Connecticut, to mention recent examples, owners of so-called "assault weapons" have very largely ignored the legal requirement to register their firearms.  I'm sure civil disobedience like that will occur on a national scale if such legislation is passed;  after all, the promise of such action is partly responsible for Virginia Democrats deferring (but not taking off the table altogether) their own proposed assault weapons ban.  Nevertheless, those citizens who react by exercising civil disobedience will have made themselves felons according to the letter of the law, simply by standing up for their Second Amendment rights as they see them.  If they get into trouble with the law for any other reason, that will almost certainly be used as a reason to prosecute them for firearms "offenses" as well.  After all, won't their "deliberate defiance of national laws" in one area be argued to be proof of their basically criminal nature in other areas?

I think this may be a make-or-break moment for gun rights in America.  I have little doubt that many of our fellow citizens will talk a good fight, but relatively few will be willing to take action - just as the vast majority of the original colonists did not actively participate in the American Revolution, despite their passive support for it.  Those who are prepared to actively resist such laws, no matter what the cost, will be relatively few.  Will they be enough to make a difference?  I don't know.

What I do know is that talk is cheap.  "Actions speak louder than words", to quote the old idiom.  If you value your Second Amendment rights, you've got the rest of this year to do something to express and protect them before the crunch comes.  Express them by buying what firearms you need, plus enough ammunition to keep them fed and yourself in practice.  (In particular, I'd encourage you to buy one or more of the sort of firearm likely to be proscribed by such laws, plus enough ammunition and accessories to make them useful.  Vote with your wallet!  Also, I'd take steps to dispose of at least some of the guns you own that are recorded in your name, in favor of guns that are "off-paper".  Private sales or swaps are still entirely legal in most of the country.  If anti-gun authorities don't know you've got it, it's a lot trickier to trace it or demand that you surrender it.)  Protect your rights by allying with other gun owners to put pressure on our politicians to defend the Second Amendment against such attacks, and to elect those who will uphold it.

One important point:  in allying with others, choose your friends wisely.  I no longer regard the National Rifle Association as worthy of support.  Wayne LaPierre and his cohorts at the head of the NRA appear to have converted it into a benefit society for themselves, at the expense of its mission and its members.  They are utterly discredited.  Unless and until they have departed, and the NRA has been entirely cleansed of their odious influence, I shall no longer support it in any way.  I'd rather work with more honest organizations such as (on a national level) Gun Owners of America or the Second Amendment Foundation.  I recommend both to your attention.

Finally, look to your local politicians, law enforcement agencies and officers, and local regulations.  Most of the counties in Virginia have declared themselves to be Second Amendment sanctuaries.  I'd like to see a lot more of that.  Without local cooperation, regional and national gun regulation and confiscation will be a lot more difficult.

Peter