Monday, December 28, 2015

A Few Thoughts for the Deep Breath Before the Plunge...

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 

If you take nothing ore from this quote, take this…"If…if…we didn't love freedom enough…"

THE ONE AND ONLY REASON POLITICIANS, BUREAUCRATS, AND POLICEMEN WANT TO TAKE YOUR WEAPONS AWAY FROM YOU IS SO THAT THEY CAN DO THINGS TO YOU THAT THEY COULDN'T DO IF YOU STILL HAD YOUR WEAPONS. 
— L. Neil Smith

Violence is misunderstood. There's no such thing as senseless violence. All violence makes sense to someone. Nor is violence ever entirely random. The perp chose to be where he was, when he was. Not random. We say the victim was "in the wrong place at the wrong time," meaning where and when the perp was. Bad luck, but not a random event. We can't know the "when" until it's too late, but we can recognize the "where" with some reliability. There are places it's wrong to be, at any time. The principle is simple: when violence occurs, be somewhere else...

-- 


8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dang Michael, what gave you the heartburn?

Anonymous said...

I suspect it's current events.

DamDoc said...

Anonymous at 5:31 AM... No real lover of freedom doesn't have heart burn now. Kidding, right?

Anonymous said...

In behalf of my slaughtered ancestors, I offer this: "Больше никогда!"

Life Member

Michael Bane said...

Actually, Anon, I have an answer…from the great Thomas Sowell: "Reality does not disappear because we don't see it. It just hits us like a ton of bricks when we least expect it."

mb

Anonymous said...

Only this time, were seeing it (reality) and we're expecting it.

Life Member

pigpen51 said...

Thank you Michael, for your unwavering stance. May your days be long and your courage be strong!

kmitch200 said...

What would things have been like....

I hope nobody has to ever ask themselves this question. I would hope that every American KNOWS what it would be like. Pajama boys be damned!