3 Comments

Jack Perry
November 2nd, 2011 | 11:39 am

Manners may have been in decline in the South for a while (even women won’t get up to let pregnant women sit down in some places) but as for this:

But it is no longer as effective as it once was, he said. The nation’s political discourse has become more aggressive. When played out in the South, it just seems more shocking.

It’s a shame what the study of history has come to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_K._Vardaman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Harrison
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_G._Bilbo

Never mind their policies (some admirable, some execrable); just read what they said about each other in public.

“Tell the son of a b* I wouldn’t speak to him even if it meant the presidency of the United States.”

“…unfit to sit with honest, upright men in a respectable body.”

…and that’s just Mississippi.

Dave Eden
November 2nd, 2011 | 12:06 pm

RE: “Don’t bring guns to church”. We don’t have the option anywhere in Canada so this is pretty academic for me, but when I hear about things like this I recall a story recounted by LTC Dave Grossman in his book “On Combat”. An off-duty police officer, who was legally entitled to carry a concealed firearm, did not have his gun with him when a mass shooting occurred while he was at church. If I recall correctly, even though he bravely tried to shield them with his own body, I think some of his own kids were killed in the incident. You never know for sure, but presumably he could have done something if he was armed like the bad guy was. That would be a hell of a thing to live with. Shootings in churches are presumably rare, but unless there is evidence that legal carriers go nuts or accidentally shoot people in churches, I say, keep the guns! I’d feel much safer with a few responsible carriers around, who have received instruction in gun safety and use of force, rather than the helpless situations of Virgina Tech or Norway where the psychos knew they would have an unimpeded field day.

Pastor Spomer
November 3rd, 2011 | 12:38 pm

You are correct Mr. Eden,
Arming one’s self in a house of worship promotes peace. We must never confuse respect for life with radical pacifism.

Remember Luke 22:36 “He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.”

People unfamiliar with firearms bluntly associate them with violence with out regard for who uses them and why.
I recall William Buckley’s observation about how a liberal equally condemns a person who pushes an old woman out of the way of an on-coming bus, with a person who pushes an old woman into the path of an on-coming bus, as people who go around shoving old ladies.