What I learned from yesterday’s Ask Me Anything was that overwhelmingly, Ricochet wants to know more about the history of the Huguenots and their relationship to the Second Amendment. (Or, at least, Tenacious D does.)
When Ben Carson suggested that an armed populace would have been better able to resist the Holocaust, he walked off the history cliff for two reasons. The first was his failure to appreciate what it took to defeat a modern engine of death like the Nazi war machine — one that rolled over armies comprised of millions of trained soldiers with guns, planes, tanks, and artillery in Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Romania, Serbia, Yugoslavia, and Greece, and often did so in a matter of days.
He also missed a chance to explain to Wolf that in all likelihood, the Founders were thinking about the extermination of a European religious minority. But that minority wasn’t the Jews — it was the Huguenots.
Continued on Page 49
#1
We all know the background. Very few Americans are aware of just how bad the religious wars of those times were, even if their own ancestors were among those trying to escape European savagery and migrating to take their chances dealing with the native American sauvages.
#2
Now, I confess that here my memory is failing me. I can’t remember when, exactly, the policy of disarming all but the Catholic nobility came into effect. But I do remember that it did. Does anyone on Ricochet remember? I know that it happened, but I can’t remember when.
So, the central point of the article is not referenced. And Huguenots were definitely not disarmed on St Bartholomew's Day..
And the rest of the article is pure homespun history as well.
#4
well the Huguenots of the 16th century did not have very good firearms but neither did their opponents
the first practical flintlocks date from the early 17th century
The Huguenots were overwhelmed mostly because their opponents were better organized, more numerous and more vicious - probably better armed too but that wouldn't have been decisive without the other factors
Posted by: lord garth ||
01/11/2016 12:16 Comments ||
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#5
The three musketeers figured in there somewhere....
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
01/11/2016 12:27 Comments ||
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#7
A super-accurate metaphor that most of the audience doesn't know about would have gone over worse than using the arm the Jews. Most people understand at the very least that even if the Jews would have eventually been slaughtered they would have been able take a few of the bastards with them. Folks understand that on a gut level.
I don't think it lost Carson a single vote. Those that complained about the metaphor weren't voting Carson anyway.
[NRTTV] As the urban war intensifies and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... finds itself unable to uproot Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighters from urban centers, frustrations among Justice and Development Party (AKP) officials, especially from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... , have become quite visible.
The main reason for this frustration is firstly because they are aware that their own policy choices in the last few years have made PKK fighters penetrate urban centers. As a result, sooner or later, they will be held accountable for empowering the PKK in the region.
Secondly, AKP officials, and Erdogan in particular, are aware that the international community is not on their side. In fact, from the US to Russia, the major players in the region have tried to help the PKK or its affiliates for their own interests.
Thirdly, Erdogan's conspiratorial mindset puts him in survival mode in which he believes he is subjected to constant conspiracies from international actors. Thus, he tends to relate every single development inside the country to this larger conspiracy that he imagines.
For instance, instead of looking at his insufficient yet overambitious policy preferences and poorly qualified advisers and babus bureaucrats who are naive enough to think they could deceive the PKK and its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, Erdogan tends to blame international actors for what is going on in Diyarbakir.
The combination of Erdogan's conspiratorial mindset and poor advisory team has made him extra vulnerable to unexpected and uncontrollable developments. As his vulnerability grows, so do his frustrations.
Demirtas a major threat
In addition, Erdogan is aware that Selahattin Demirtas if he is not removed from the leadership position of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), will sooner or later be the next leader after him. However, a woman is only as old as she admits... Erdogan wants to secure the system such that the AKP will always rule Turkey.
Erdogan's 2023 projects and new constitution plans are nothing but an effort to change the political structure to make sure the AKP will dominate the future of Turkey.
Thus, Erdogan wants to remove Demirtas from his post and make sure he will not be an obstacle before the 2023 plans.
Erdogan is aware that shutting down the Kurdish HDP would only help Demirtas strengthen his political position. Therefore, instead of targeting the HDP, as if the HDP is not part of the PKK-affiliated network, Erdogan is going after the leadership of the party and tarnishing their image as supporters of terrorism.
A simple analysis of Erdogan's rhetoric would easily show that Erdogan continually criticizes Demirtas and holds him responsible for the urban warfare rather than PKK leaders. He constantly attacks Demirtas to make sure Demirtas has no role in Turkey's future.
Most recently Erdogan called on Parliament to lift the political immunities of Demirtas and his deputies, accusing them of supporting terrorists. He further argued that those who support Lions of Islam should be barred from politics.
Once he sees that he could stop Demirtas with court trials, there is no doubt he will go ahead and do that.
For now, unless he has an early election in mind, it is not logical for Erdogan to put Demirtas behind bars.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2016 00:00 ||
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[Breitbart] On the Sunday broadcast of "The Cats Roundtable" on New York City's AM 970, host John Catsimatidis spoke about the upcoming 2016 presidential election with economist Arthur Laffer, a former member of President Ronald Reagan's economic policy advisory board.
Laffer not only predicted a victory for the GOP, but he would be "surprised" if they did not take as many as 47 of the 50 states.
"I would be surprised if the Republicans don't take 45, 46, 47 states out of the 50," he said. "I mean, I think we're going to landslide this election."
"I think Donald Trump is phenomenal, I think Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has done a great job, I even like Jeb Bush. I think Jeb Bush is great, he did a wonderful job in Florida. Chris Christie -- phenomenal," Laffer added.
He later said Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's "day is over."
"I don't think Hillary's going to win this election no matter whom she runs against. I mean, Hillary's day is over."
1)These policymakers are typically blind...to the fact that the Saddamist regime in Iraq and the Assad regime in Syria were the way they were for a reason.
2)It was a predictable outcome with which policymakers are woefully ill prepared to deal
#2
The west forgot what it took to keep them in line before and no longer has the spine to be that brutal now. Best to find alternatives to oil, support Israel and perhaps Kurds, and otherwise let the region rot.
#3
Best to find alternatives to oil, support Israel and perhaps Kurds, and otherwise let the region rot.
But we can't "let the region rot". That region will spawn dozens of threats, nuclear and otherwise. We have to find the spine to actually *lead*, and then back that leadership up with overwhelming force.
Only when dissent is crushed can "hearts and minds" come into play.
h/t Instapundit
If they think about Prohibition at all, most Americans probably accept Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter's conclusion that it was a farce, a "ludicrous caricature of the reforming impulse," an ineffective albeit financially costly moral crusade imposed on a reluctant populace.
Decades later, Harvard University historian Lisa McGirr is here to tell us that not only is this widespread view misguided, it has led us to believe wrongly that the threat and consequences of Prohibition were trivial and short-lived.
#1
I seldom pay much mind to the opinions of academia regarding politics or the evils of society.
National Socialism was not birthed in the ranks of the Wehrmacht. It's origins are found in academia where attempts were being made to find alternatives for capitalism and communism.
#2
Anything can be overthought. The results are never pretty.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/11/2016 9:10 Comments ||
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#3
For a minority of people, ethanol is an addictive drug. For the rest, a mild euphoric. Imposing the protection of that minority on the majority provided an object lesson on human mature.
Bartender, another please.
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
01/11/2016 9:59 Comments ||
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#4
One of the large steps in the growth of centralized, federal gov't power.
#5
What the author left unsaid is that, with the decline of mainline protestant churches, the Left and the Democrat party appropriated the mantle of moral authority and are declaring the Prohibition of guns, "bad-think". and the public statement of "hurtful" truths.
#6
IIRC, one of the key steps before passing Prohibition was to pass the income tax. Before the income tax, excise taxes on liquor were a major source of revenue for the Feds. They passed the income tax, then passed Prohibition. After Prohibition was repealed, the income tax stayed. It became a major source of income, and gave the Feds great power to manipulate society, by rewarding "good" things like home ownership. It has recently become a tool to silence political opponents.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/11/2016 16:15 Comments ||
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Chris Muir at Day by Day has a comment on whether men, particularly the white men of Europe, should ride to the rescue of the wimmin. I don't agree with his take, but it's food for thought.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/11/2016 00:00 ||
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#2
But women claimed they didn't need men to do that. I'm just waiting for them to step up to the plate.
I'm also waiting for them to ask why they're not doing 50% of the dangerous dirty shitty jobs with inflexible hours and low pay.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[NRTTV] As the urban war intensifies and 
