Category Archives: Popular Culture

The Long View

If we can turn the cultural and political momentum around on gun grabbing, can we do it on big government, too?

We’ll find out. I think that Pelosi, Reid and Obama have awakened a sleeping giant. The “Silent Majority” is finally speaking up.

[Update a couple minutes later]

From a surprising source — liberals should defend the Second Amendment:

while liberals certainly do not argue for lawlessness, and will acknowledge the necessity of certain restrictions, it is generally understood that liberals fight to broadly interpret and expand our rights and to question the necessity and wisdom of any restrictions of them.

Liberals can quote legal precedent, news reports, and exhaustive studies. They can talk about the intentions of the Founders. They can argue at length against the tyranny of the government. And they will, almost without exception, conclude the necessity of respecting, and not restricting, civil liberties.

Except for one: the right to keep and bear arms.

When it comes to discussing the Second Amendment, liberals check rational thought at the door. They dismiss approximately 40% of American households that own one or more guns, and those who fight to protect the Second Amendment, as “gun nuts.” They argue for greater restrictions. And they pursue these policies at the risk of alienating voters who might otherwise vote for Democrats.

And they do so in a way that is wholly inconsistent with their approach to all of our other civil liberties.

Of course, true liberals (as opposed to “progressives”) have always supported the Second Amendment. But I can understand why those who want government to rule the people wouldn’t like it.

[Update a few minutes later]

There are over 1400 comments, most of them the usual (“but what about nukes and cannons?” dorm-room stuff), but I was amused to see a little side thread among some of the leftists about the relative virtues of .357 versus .44 Magnum, and carryability. Diversity!

Happy Independence Day

Sadly, I think that too many take our freedom for granted, and are too willing to trade it for government cheese. But I think that the past couple years have seen a reawakening of the principles on which the country was founded, as a backlash against the current political class, which to the degree that it isn’t entirely ignorant of them, seems to hold them in contempt.

Part of that backlash is two promising web sites, debuting today, Declaration Entertainment, and Big Peace, another Breitbart production. I wish them luck in their efforts to help restore the Republic.

No Sex Please

We’re middle class. Thoughts from la Camille. I thought this relevant to the new movie production venture:

The elemental power of sexuality has also waned in American popular culture. Under the much-maligned studio production code, Hollywood made movies sizzling with flirtation and romance. But from the early ’70s on, nudity was in, and steamy build-up was out. A generation of filmmakers lost the skill of sophisticated innuendo. The situation worsened in the ’90s, when Hollywood pirated video games to turn women into cartoonishly pneumatic superheroines and sci-fi androids, fantasy figures without psychological complexity or the erotic needs of real women.

Maybe it’s not too late to change that.