Sipsey Street Irregulars: Land Mines: The Political Class Risks Soldiers’ Lives to Feel Good

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Land Mines: The Political Class Risks Soldiers’ Lives to Feel Good

The sort of “human rights advocates” were always ready to impose an obligation on the civilized West, and always ready to make excuses for the barbarous East, have long been agitating for the elimination of land mines. You may remember it was a favorite cause of that well-born but empty-headed blonde twit, Princess Diana, the Paris Hilton of her day, famous for being famous, and well informed about nothing whatsoever.

2 comments:

Paul X said...: I must say I'm a little doubtful of the "we use mines right" line in this article. However much that may be true, the US government still causes vast amounts of unnecessary death and mayhem through its wars; so the quibbling about mines is a bit silly. If the aim is to save soldiers' lives, a good start would be to stop invading other countries.; July 2, 2014 at 8:18 PM
Anonymous said...: Interesting that sparky is all butt hurt about banning PERSISTANT land mines, but won't tell you that 50% of all the AP "sleeper" mines ever employed are still in the ground and that 98% of the people killed or wounded by them are civilians-mostly small children and most are killed or wounded decades after the war ended. But hell that's OK ; they're just zipperheads right sparky?; July 2, 2014 at 9:04 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Land Mines: The Political Class Risks Soldiers’ Lives to Feel Good

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