Fox4kc.com:

The Missouri state legislature is trying to accomplish something that’s never been done: pass a law that will not only let residents own a machine gun, but also arrest federal agents if they try to take it away.

According to CNN, the Missouri Governor’s press secretary said there is a small provision in House Bill 436 that would make this possible, although it’s unlikely.

Meh.  I doubt that the Missouri legislature has the balls to do it, and even if they do, they won’t pass it with enough votes to override a veto.  Furthermore, since the state police report to the Governor, and since Governor Nixon is a collectivist, he won’t use the power of the state police to enforce such a law.  The next step in Missouri is replacement of their sorry-ass governor.

But it’s nice to dream, no?  I’m still waiting for the first federal marshall or ATF agent to be arrested and thrown in with the general prison population for enforcement of unconstitutional gun laws.  One day.

Or so they say:

A study by the U.S. Forest Service has concluded rifle ammunition may be to blame for wildfires across the west.

The Forest Service commissioned a research team based in Montana to investigate the link between fires and rifle ammunition, after several reports cited Utah wildfires caused by bullets during 2012.

The study started last year with the first test run in September. Scientists tested 16 different bullets composed of steel, copper and lead, totaling 469 rounds fired.

“We designed an apparatus that consisted of a steel deflector plate and a box at the bottom called a ‘collector box’ that we could fill with various materials that could be tested for ignition,” said research forester Mark Finney.

They found once certain bullets fragmented, they would ignite the moss in the collector box.

“The bullet by itself isn’t very hot until it strikes something very solid,” Finney said. “The process of deforming it….is what heats it up.”

Finney said this test is the first to provide proof rifle ammunition could be the cause of fires. So far, the team has only tested bullets in a controlled environment, which emulated dry conditions.

7NEWS Reporter Lindsey Sablan asked Finney if the research being done may one day have an affect on shooters on federal land. Finney said he was not responsible for policy change but said “I would hope people would just consider ignitions from target shootings as one possibility to watch out for.”

In June of this summer, the Bureau of Land Management in Utah banned “steel-core or steel-jacketed bullets” along with exploding targets and tracer bullets. Colorado BLM Director of Communications Steven Hall said they “certainly took a look at it.” He went on to say they chose not to impose an outright ban this summer because, “we have different situation and conditions in Colorado.”

The full report is found here.  It seems to me that they focused very heavily on steel core ammunition, which most shooters don’t shoot down the barrels of finer weapons (I understand the Eastern Bloc ammunition shot from Mosin Nagants is different, and I also know that we can purchase green tip ammunition for AR-15s, which I wouldn’t shoot for target practice anyway).

Nonetheless, I read some of the report, but I noticed that of the four authors, not a single one is a registered professional engineer, and so the work lacks a PE seal.  Thus, I see no reason whatsoever to read any further or lend any credibility to the report.

You can do with it what you want.

KCUR:

Several police departments and organizations around Missouri are speaking out against a bill that would bar enforcement of federal gun laws if they interfere with a Missourian’s Second Amendment rights.

St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch says House Bill 436 would in effect end cooperation between local and federal law enforcement agencies.  He cites a recent traffic stop where his officers apprehended two armed men wanted for different crimes.

“Typically we would take that case to the federal authorities, because (the criminals would) get a lot more serious prison time than you would on a state charge,” Fitch said.  “If this law is passed, it basically takes away the opportunity for us to do that.”

[ … ]

In addition, St. Louis city Police Chief Sam Dotson, Kansas City Police Chief Darryl Forte, and Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum co-wrote an op-ed piece strongly opposing House Bill 436.  It reads, in part:

As police officials we are concerned about this legislation because it would make it a state crime for our federal partners at the FBI, ATF, and other agencies to do their job of enforcing federal gun laws in Missouri. The prospect of Missouri officials trying to arrest federal agents is unimaginable …

Fitch is a liar, and that isn’t the reason he opposes the proposed law.  The real reason is that while it is unimaginable to the authors of the letter that they would actually hold the collectivists accountable for their crimes (because they are themselves collectivists), it is quite imaginable that they strip their own people of their God-given rights.

So there you have it.  The benefit of things like this is that it allows liberty lovers in that neck of the woods the opportunity to see what their LEOs are really made of, and remove them from office, however hard that may be and however long that may take.

On to what is always an interesting read, PoliceOne.

Don’t expect any change in local enforcement of New York’s SAFE Act following recent comments by Gov. Andrew Cuomo … Schoharie County Sheriff Tony Desmond said he has no intention of enforcing the law, and that his office won’t do anything that would cause law-abiding citizens to turn in their weapons or arrest them for possessing firearms.

Good for the Sheriff, but the more interesting thing is the comments to the article, as it always is at PoliceOne.

I support laws limiting magazine capacity in the United States. Let’s say 7 rounds at most. Carry as many of those 7 round magazines as you want.

Law enforcement officers, due to the nature of their work, are excempt (sic) from these limitations.

The reasoning is this. There have been numerous situations in Law Enforcement where higher round magazines have been necessary to do what they do. It’s the nature of the job.

There is no evidence that a non law enforcement person needs a higher magazine capacity to protect themselves. It doesn’t exist.

And next:

Officer Discretion! It doesn’t matter what laws are passed, or what crooked politicians think. I can enforce or not enforce laws however I see fit. Its called officer discretion. I would hate to live/work in an area where LEO Officers feel they have to enforce every law, no matter what the circumstances. If you work for a city/county/state/federal department, you may not have discretion. Fortunately I work for the Office of the Sheriff, and (with the Sheriff’s Blessing) I make the decisions to charge/not charge the people I deal with.

The first commenter is easily answered by one name: Mr. Stephen Bayezes.  But the more involved answer pertains to how poorly trained and ignorant he is, as well as raising the question why police departments hire such badly qualified candidates.

LEOs can use weapons for only one reason according to the SCOTUS decision in Tennessee versus Garner: self defense.  Nothing more.  So whatever applies to LEOs applies equally to citizens who aren’t LEOs, that is, self defense isn’t unique to LEOs, and there is no compelling legal argument for allowing weapons in the hands of LEOs that aren’t in the hands of others.

The next commenter is a little more level-headed in that he would refuse to confiscate weapons, at least according to him, but just as ignorant in that he elevates discretion to the point that it overrides the law.

This makes for corruption in the ranks of enforcers just like it does in the ranks of law-makers, who sometimes feel that they can make any law they want for whatever reason they want.  Neither is true.  The constitution constrains us all, law-makers and LEOs alike.  The officer doesn’t have discretion to ignore enforcement of a law that is constitutional, and it is the very fact that a gun confiscation law is in fact unconstitutional that gives him the latitude to refuse to enforce it.  There are rules for all of us; our actions are circumscribed by higher law, first the constitution, and finally, God Himself.

So as you can see, LEOs are still having extreme difficulty dealing with the political and cultural crises in which we find ourselves.  I only expect the dilemmas to get worse for them.  They had better put on their thinking caps.  Right now they’re acting pretty stolid and dense.

Lily Tang Williams writing at National Review has a must read column entitled Guns Against Tyranny.  It has become almost amusing to watch as the collectivists hyperventilate over claims that we make about right to guns having nothing to do with hunting, and everything to do with ameliorating tyranny.  But what Ms. Williams has to say is sobering and gives existential and emotional import to what is for us sometimes all about doctrine.

I was born in Chengdu, China. When I was growing up, the Communist Party controlled everything. There were no choices of any sort. We were all poor except the elite. The local government rationed everything from pork to rice, sugar, and flour because there were not enough supplies. We were allowed only a kilogram of pork per month for our family of five. We lived in two rooms, without heat in the winter. I got impetigo during the cold, humid winters. There were eight families living around our courtyard, and we all had to share one bathroom (a hole in the ground) for males, one for females. We had only government-run medical clinics, where the conditions were filthy and services were horrible. I was afraid of going there because I might get some other infectious diseases.

As children, we were brainwashed in school every day. We chanted daily: “Long Live Chairman Mao, Long Live the Communist Party.” I loved Chairman Mao. I was so brainwashed that I could see Chairman Mao in the clouds and fire. He was like a god to me. The powerful government watched us very closely, from the Beijing central government to our Communist block committees and local police stations. We had no rights, even though our constitution said we did.

It was frightening that local police could stop by our home to pound on the doors at night and search us for no good reason. People were arrested without court papers and locked up for months without trials.

Citizens were not allowed to have any guns or they would be put into prison, or worse. Chinese people were helpless when they needed to defend themselves. I grew up with fear, like millions of other children — fear that the police would pound on our doors at night and take my loved ones away, fear that bad guys would come to rob us. Sometimes I could not sleep from hearing the screaming people outside.

There were many stories of local people defending themselves with kitchen knives and sticks. Women were even more helpless when they were attacked and raped. I was molested as a college student once while walking home at night. It was common then.

When it came to dealing with the Chinese government and police brutality, there was nothing we could do. They had guns, while law-abiding citizens did not.

And thus does it go in collectivist hives where the government controls even your right to self defense.  The power brokers couldn’t care less whether the people can ensure their safety – they care merely about subjugation of the common people under the yoke of bondage.  Ms. Williams eventually made it to the U.S., and has this important observation.

I tried so hard to come to the U.S. for personal freedom, including the freedom guaranteed by the Second Amendment: the right to keep and bear arms, which makes me feel like a free person, not a slave. I felt empowered when I finally held my own gun. For the first time in my life, I truly knew I was free.

I think the Founding Fathers of this country were very wise. They put that in the Constitution because they knew that a government could become either powerful or weak and that the citizens’ last defense is the ability to bear arms to protect themselves against tyranny and criminals. The guns are not just for sports, hunting, and collecting; it is our fundamental right to bear arms and use them for our self-defense.

Having previously lived under a tyranny, it seems clear to me that the U.S. government is going to try to infringe my Second Amendment right. What happened in China could happen in America. If the government can tell us what arms to bear, where to bear them, and how many shots you need to use to defend yourself, we might just become slaves.

It’s already happened, Ms. Williams.  And if you haven’t noticed, at any time your local police department – or any of a multitude of federal departments – could send in a SWAT team on a misguided mission, destroy your home, kill your beasts in front of you, endanger your family and even kill members of your family, and no court in the land will hold them accountable for so much as the misdemeanor of littering.  We are already headed down the path about which you warn because they don’t care about the Fourth Amendment.

And that’s what makes the Second Amendment so important, no?  And it means that eventually we must be willing to act on our own behalves because they won’t.

David Codrea:

Per The Omaha World-Herald, “Bruning was one of 18 state attorneys general who signed a letter sent by the National Association of Attorneys General, urging the Senate to confirm Holder’s nomination.” He also, per that report, declined to talk about Fast and Furious “gunwalking” that happened on Holder’s watch.

“Mr. Holder is a known quantity to some of us,” the 2009 letter sent to then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and then-Ranking Member Arlen Specter stated, as if that was a good thing, especially considering Mr. Holder was indeed a known quantity to gun rights proponents at the time the letter was written.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning is in the middle of a controversy – he always seems to be – on the denial of weapons rights to a long standing legal Mexican resident.

This is a detailed and involved articled by David, one that you really need to read, both to be educated and to understand my response.

First of all, the NRA has absolutely got to do better at ranking politicians than they do.  On the other hand I have talked to them via phone and to their credit they do a fair to good job of keeping abreast of issues and politicians.  Oftentimes a politician is disingenuous and cites an NRA ranking that was done well before a given candidacy in which they claim that it applies.  So the NRA needs to do better (of course they do), and politicians need to stop lying (like they ever will).

Now let’s get to the issue of guns and Mexicans.  If you read David’s prose and the accompanying comments from well-educated readers, you will see that they all support gun rights for legal residents.

Here is a news flash.  So do I.  I wonder from time to time about going abroad on short term mission trips and also lament the fact that most of the locations to which I would go do would not allow a weapon to be brought into the country.  And then I think hard about my God-given duty to protect myself.  Ultimately, if you do something like that you must be cognizant of the fact that you are sustaining a certain risk that you cannot ameliorate.

In fact, I even favor the restoration of guns rights for non-violent felons, and I do not believe in the rehabilitative power of prisons (indentured servitude is the best way to pay debts, since a debt is not to society but to individuals).  But I need to discuss some caveats.  God gives us our rights, the state merely recognizes them.  One commenter observes that the Second Amendment nowhere says that it applies only to citizens.  True enough, that’s beside the point.

The Second Amendment doesn’t grant us a right.  It says that the federal government cannot impinge on that right.  And it doesn’t speak to state governments.  That’s why – in my opinion – listen carefully here before you ascribe to me something I am not saying – state constitutions also need clearly to outline a man’s right to weapons, and the local laws clearly need to support that doctrinal stand.  As advocates of states’ rights and tenth amendment advocates, we need NOT to turn to the federal government for delineation of our rights, even on the state and local level.  The constitution and bill of rights doesn’t delineate our rights, it restricts the federal government from impinging on certain rights.  Those rights also must be protected at lower levels of government.  Here I strongly recommend reading Clarence Thomas And The Amendment Of Doom.

Regarding illegal aliens (or residents if you want to call them that), I strongly oppose such rights (that is, right to have guns).  Just as God grants them a right to self defense, He grants us a right to protect our borders.  His right to self defense doesn’t outweigh our right to national sovereignty as long as there is a remedy available to him that doesn’t also impinge on any other rights, i.e., becoming legal.  These are carefully thought-out stipulations and explanations – do you need to read them and think about them again before reacting?

These are all controversial issues, but ones that we needed to discuss.  You may disagree with my take on the Second Amendment (and believe that it speaks to states), and I accept that disagreement.  But if you turn off your interest knob after reading the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, I continue my interest to the State Constitutions.  I have more work to do than you.  But I strongly believe that governance is best when the political fight happens first and foremost at the local and state levels.  Our founding fathers saw a much weaker central government than do we, and the notion that they would have had to turn to a national document to show their rights is preposterous.  Our founders believed that they were stipulating behavior and framing in the centralizers.

I was noticing the nice, new weapon this Syrian jihadist was toting around, and especially that high powered glass he is sporting.

If I was a Muslim jihadist, who has vowed to slaughter Christians once the U.S. “liberates” Syria and who likes to kill babies, maybe I could get some of that U.S. taxpayer love Obama has promised.

Instead, I’m a Christian.  But I sure would like to have another gun and some high powered glass, so I’ll have to work and pay for mine myself rather than use U.S. handouts.  Somebody has actually got to work and hold down a job these days.

Business Insider:

Bad idea: holding up a store clerk who happens to be proficient in firearms.

Worse idea: holding up a store clerk who is not only proficient in firearms, but who also happens to be an Iraq war veteran and a former prison guard and private investigator.

Jon Lewis Alexander, 54, is no ordinary store clerk. He has worked several “high risk” jobs and served four tours of duty in Iraq during his 30 years in the U.S. military.

And his training shows.

Video surveillance from Saturday night captures the moment a would-be thief entered the Marionville, Mo., store where Alexander works. The thief hesitates for a moment and pulls a gun — but not fast enough to dissuade Alexander from pulling his own Walther PPX 9 mm handgun and sticking it in the hapless thief’s mouth.

[ … ]

Alexander said the man walked in smoking a cigarette, which he was promptly told to put out. The thief then reached for his gun and demanded “all the (expletive deleted) money,” News-Leader.com reports.

The veteran reacted quickly, throwing down the thief’s arm. Alexander then drew his own weapon and, according to the report, threatened to “blow his (expletive deleted) head off.”

Pistol at his side, the thief backed away slowly and then bolted from the store. The store clerk remembers being amused by the fact that he “didn’t even bother holstering his weapon.”

Seriously.  In the dude’s mouth.  “Here boy.  Taste the business end of the gun.”  On a serious note, he responded very quickly to the threat.  His actions were seamless, fast, determined and confident.  I hope I react the same way to any potential threat.

David Codrea:

Two women have been brutally gang raped “by a group of 10 to 12 black male juveniles” in a Wilmington, Del. park, CBS Philly reported yesterday. “According to police, the suspects, who range in age from 12 to 17-years-old, remain on the loose.”

Councilmember-at-large Maria Cabrera was quick to size up the content of their character and state the obvious.

“The new criminal we’re seeing, they’re bold, they’re brazen, and they have a total disregard for life,” Cabrera admitted.

Continue to read David’s piece to see what remedy Cabrera advocates (hint: it is ostensibly religious based, but since it relies on statist solutions her religion is collectivism).

I document instances of morally obscene advocacy for going to the extreme even of allowing your own children to be killed rather than take another life, which is presumably the opposite of statism but with the same theme of religious-based malfeasance concerning protection of man’s life.

A New Yorker gives us his view of gun control, and it’s worth reading.

“I tell the kid I don’t want no trouble. I open the door to start getting out. But then I make a big mistake. When he reaches through the window to grab my keys, I grab the keys before he can get them.

“He says, ‘I’m gonna pop you, man!’ I look into his eyes and they’re black as death. Then BOOM!

“The next thing I know, I wake hooked up to all kind of wires in the hospital and the doctor is telling me how lucky I am. The bullet hit me in the right shoulder and passed out the left armpit — just missing my heart.

“That was three years ago, but I’m OK now. I guess it wasn’t my time to go.”

I was spellbound by his story and the matter-of-fact way he told it, but his story grew more fascinating when he told me how he now is breaking the law to protect himself and his family.

“In New York,” he said, “the gun laws are so strict, the majority of people who have them are the criminals. Maybe if you’re a small-business owner or have some other valid reason for protecting yourself, you might get a permit to carry. But if you’re a regular guy like me, forget about it.

“But I live on the Brooklyn-Queens border, and in that part of town there’s only one way to protect yourself — you got to let the punks know you’re packing heat.

“So I bought myself a street gun that I carry with me everywhere. Lots of the decent people in my neighborhood are carrying illegal guns. It’s the only thing we can do.”

The fellow knew what he was talking about.

A Cato Institute study found that 60 percent of criminals would not attack if they knew a potential victim were carrying a gun.

That’s the end result of people who for whatever reason, religious based or otherwise, force common folk into a position of impotence when it comes to self defense.  People deal with the moral obscenity by ignoring the law, turning innocent people who want means of self defense into criminals.

This is what they do in New York, it’s what they do in Chicago, it’s what Ms. Cabrera advocates, it’s what some ignorant religious folk do, and it’s what the collectivists want.  And it’s morally obscene and they will be judged for it.

So let’s deal with objections right up front.  If chemical weapons aren’t adequate justification to attack Syria, then they weren’t justification to attack Iraq either.  Right.  And I didn’t agree with or support Operation Iraqi Freedom Phase I, while I did support OIF II and OIF III because I watched as 80-100 jihadists per month crossed the Syrian and Jordanian borders to fight us inside of Iraq, and because leaving would have had catastrophic consequences once the eggs were broken.  Briefly said, once there we had to stay and finish the job, however horrible it was.

But the horror of chemical weapons is being trotted out as justification for degrading Syrian capability to make those weapons, or deliver those weapons, or something.  It isn’t clear.  How that horror is different from what preceded it, I wonder?  Bashar Hafez al-Assad and his father before him were and are brutal dictators who rule by the use of fear.  Torture, beheadings, imprisonment of political opponents, assassinations and all manner of horror has been perpetrated on the Syrian people for many years.

And even now, anti-regime terrorists in Syria (our would-be allies) are actively working their horror (via Mike Vanderboegh).

Al-Qaeda linked terrorists in Syria have beheaded all 24 Syrian passengers traveling from Tartus to Ras al-Ain in northeast of Syria, among them a mother and a 40-days old infant.

Gunmen from the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and Levant stopped the bus on the road in Talkalakh and killed everyone before setting the bus on fire.

According to media reports, the attack was carried out because the passengers who were from three different villages in Ras al-Ain, supported anti-terrorist Kurdish groups which were formed recently to defend Kurdish population against anti-Syria terrorists.

Bodies of a mother and her 40-days infant were also seen among the dead, which were recognized by their relatives.

So what about chemical weapons?  Michael Fumento gives us the straight scoop in a different context, i.e., the chlorine attacks in Fallujah, Iraq, in the spring of 2007.

Insurgents launched three more chlorine truck attacks in Al Anbar province on March 17, killing two and sickening an additional 350. Is this a disturbing new trend? No. Had those trucks been filled with high explosives, each could have killed around 100 people. Instead, combined, they killed two. Probably all those sickened will recover with little or no lasting damage, as opposed to losing limbs and eyes. Chemicals have never lived up to their reputation as weapons.

That’s why even though the Germans invented Sarin gas, which is vastly more deadly than chlorine, they decided not to use it. Hitler didn’t forego its use because he was a nice guy. Rather, his generals convinced him that high explosives are far more effective in causing deaths, not to mention that all the poison gas in the world can’t destroy material objects. That said, gas is a good terror weapon because most people have a more innate terror of being gassed than of being blown up or shot. But that’s primarily or exclusively because gas is such a rare threat. The more the terrorists use chlorine, the less the terror effect will be.

I remember this vividly since my son was deployed in Fallujah in 2007.  When the Marines finished taking over the industrial area of Fallujah from al Qaeda in the summer of 2007, they found many thousands of gallons of chlorine, all unused – unused because it was completely, tactically ineffective.  And I am on the record concurring with Michael’s assessment here and here.

If your desire is tactical effectiveness, you use conventional ordnance.  In other words, as horrible as it sounds, you blow people and things up.  And it is horrible, just as horrible as killing far fewer of them with chemical weapons.  And it is just as horrible as your supposed allies in Syria shooting and/or burning infants to death.

I have my own views of the administration’s case (or lack thereof) for any strategic value in Syria, but whatever else one may believe about the situation, the use of chemical weapons as justification for military action is either ignorant or disingenuous.

Matt Bracken is said to be a write of dystopian fiction, but more about this in a moment.  Western Rifle Shooter’s Association had a piece up publishing some of Matt’s most recent work, “Alas, Brave New Babylon.”  Matt’s story follows one man’s journey who intends to begin it by hiking part of the Appalachian Trail, but soon finds himself on a far different path than the one he intended.

In time, our friend finds himself gazing into the distance to see what signs of life were there.

The one-time history teacher turns reflective at one point and gives a dispassionate assessment of the causes or genesis of the collapse in which he finds himself.

Soon after the screens went black, the pharmacy-dispensed medications ran out as well, the cold-turkey withdrawal pouring more fuel on our raging social fires. Our Brave New World featured Huxley’s “Christianity without the tears,” until the Soma was gone. A gram is better than a damn, until there are no more grams left but plenty of damnation to go around—and people are damned mad when they’re starving.

If you ask me, looking back, our society went mad long before the Rupture. Who could honestly believe that modern first-world economies could continue to borrow half their annual operating costs from their own future generations, and from foreign banks and foreign governments that were likewise borrowing from their future generations? When in history has that sweetly delusional practice ever lasted more than a few generations before cracking up? Never, that I am aware of.

Frankly, for the rapidly diminishing minority of us left who were neither mathematically nor historically illiterate, the years before the Rupture were like living on the slopes of Vesuvius around AD seventy-something, while sniffing the stink of sulfur on the wind. What’s all that smoking and rumbling? a few of us asked. Smiling mainstream media news anchors answered: We’re not sure, but rest easy. Top government experts are studying it, and they will have a full report ready soon.

In the meantime, pop another Soma and switch back to Celebrity Nation. A gram is better than a damn, so why not make it two? Who needs old-fashioned morality when we have fashioned a brave new reality better suited to our own modern tastes? New and improved, by Ford! Just Google it. Remember Google? Gone with the wind.

I’m just a former world history teacher, but I believe that the edifice of Western Civilization was already rotten and hollowed out long before the final collapse—and it was an inside job by cultural traitors. The final toppling required only a light touch. By the end the Fabians’ disciples in politics and education had rendered Western man impotent, emasculated, ridiculed for his very maleness. Men were unneeded and unwanted by the brave new world’s brave new mommies.

And what of modern woman? Increasing numbers were too busy with their newly unleashed career opportunities and personal ambitions to have children. Or they were simply too busy partying through their fertile years to bother to produce a next generation.

I said that Matt was considered to be a dystopian fiction writer.  This is fiction, true enough, but it isn’t make-believe.  If you think this cannot happen, then you must believe that our unfunded liabilities don’t matter; that we can continue to print money to pay for the usury on our national debt; that we don’t need the gold standard; that half the nation can continue to bilk the other half of its wealth without consequences.

You must believe that those cities going bankrupt are just a fantasy, and surely there won’t be more to come; that Greece was just bad management by the financiers and governors; that regardless of what else happens, there will be an endless supply of electricity, gasoline, food, money, medical care and habitable domiciles.

You must believe that you can be your own God, making laws that comfort you while they dishonor your creator; and that at death your body cools to ambient temperature and you cease to exist.

And if you believe all of those things you are to be pitied.  Matt’s story is interesting, and perhaps in the future Matt will send me a pre-publication copy for review.  His prose is inspiring, fascinating, and completely mesmerizing.  It’s difficult to turn away from it, and that’s the end to which what any good writer aspires.

But belief in the false things that appear to be the cause of the rupture is pitiable not just because those things are wrong.  And wrong, they are.  The house of cards that is our monetary system will not last forever.  Greece will quickly turn into America, except on a much larger scale and longer timetable, when something sets off the disturbance and people figure out that their money isn’t really theirs.  That it isn’t really in the bank, isn’t really in paper form there in a vault on main street, and that the bank cannot hand it to them.

Fractional reserve banking means that in a run on the bank, the bank cannot give them 10 cents on the dollar because their money has been loaned out more ten times over, and the electronic money system contains many more dollars than really exists, or another way of saying it, contains as many dollars as the federal reserve wants it to contain.  But printing more money to fill the needs doesn’t work because that deflates the value of existing dollars and makes money worthless, thereby making the federal reserve worthless.  And thus, the horns of the dilemma are born.

So believe in false gods like Keynesian economics is only part of the sadness.  The worst of it, in my opinion, is that a man dies like he lives.  And die he will.  We won’t all remain vertical in any upcoming catastrophe, and even if we do, we won’t get out of this alive.  We will all die at some point, and it’s how we perish that’s important.  What did we believe, what did we do, how did we live, and how will we meet out maker?

And this makes Matt’s analysis of the genesis of the collapse – through the eyes of his character – even more important than what happens to the character.