Hey Ken,

I liked your guy Kim's site a lot, some excellent advice about guns. I disagree with his verdict on the Glock 9mm (I just bought one!), but a self-described curmudgeon has to be allowed his curious opinions.

Also, as usual, I disagree with your fixation on stereotyped 'liberals' (any worry about a burgeoning theocracy?), but blah blah blah you know that already.

Hope you're staying above the flood water,
Charles

Which Glock? The NYPD police issue or the baby Glock? I forget the model #'s. My second gun will almost certainly be the baby Glock 9mm. Great conceal weapon, plus with an extra belt clip (gun on right, clip on left), one has 24 rounds for defense.

You know, it's interesting about theocracy. I am not at all worried about it, mainly because I believe there is a broad class of American who might be called a "secular christian". I am working up a bit of an essay on it. A secular christian, or small-c christian, is a Christian in deed, but not in faith. Or perhaps better put, perhaps a Christian of faith but not one espousing extreme fundamentalism or evangelicalism. Many, many Bush supporters are just this type of person. www.rogerlsimon.com is an agnostic Jew and Bush supporter. Kim and Connie du Toit are agnostics. At least one of the guys at www.powerlineblog.com is a Jew. www.vodkapundit.com is an agnostic I believe.

If you know me (and you do pretty well), I hunger for grand displays of freaks and homos. I want legalization (and strong resulting education peppered with appropriate, ie, very limited, regulation and taxation) of drugs, gambling, and prostitution. Consensual and/or victimless crimes as it were. But I also want a strong national defense, strong (yet selectively penetrable) borders, free trade, and free markets. Hardly a classical conservative.

I do not agree with Bush on many things: his border policy, his rampant expansion of government programs and spending, his stance on reproductive rights (yes, I am pro-choice, but as I grow older, I struggle for a workable definition of "indefensible" abortion. I am not happy about healthy babies, er, fetuses, being aborted three weeks from term. Thomas Sowell (you can find him at townhall.com), a staunch conservative, proposed an interesting solution: how about a brainwave test? Detect brainwaves, no abortion allowed. This is the direct and logical analog to the "death test"). But on national security, there was no choice, period. In today's world, no other issue trumps national security.

I gotta run. I've got an essay in the works on Africa as well.

Ken

Cool about the essays! Keep writing!

The risk isn't so much that vast swaths of Americans _want_ a theocracy, or even that all Bush supporters want one, just that the Republican party, and especially Bush, is beholden to them. Hence the theatrics over Terri Schiavo, faith-based schooling/social programs/war justifications, the jury being 'out' on evolution (according to W), etc. They don't need your cooperation, just your complicity.

To me it also feels like '1776' sort of patriotism has largely been supplanted with this "with us or against us" sort of patriotism, that is: jingoism. Especially when anyone who questions the president is slandered as a traitor-liberal-blame-america-firster or some such. Believe me, I don't like that I equate red, white and blue ribbons with this sort of BS either. So many happy memories of July 4th and the Bicentennial ruined...

There's actually a Glock between those two, that's the one. Model 19 (http://www.glock.com/te_g19.htm). I was a little nervous about getting a Glock because they're such fucking bullet spewing machines (light trigger pull, internal hammer always cocked), but the price was right and they've got a good rep (even Kim had to give them some props between dishing them for being "pig-ugly" and "foreign made"). Plus mine came with two high-capacity clips :-D. Now I just have to wait six months for my fricking permit to go through...

nicfit212
(almost armed, almost dangerous)