Patterico's Pontifications

6/28/2011

Praise God and Pass the Ammunition, I’m Going to be On NRA News Radio! (Update: Streaming From NRA Site Works) (Update: Link to Podcast Added)

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 5:17 pm



[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Update (IV): Listen to the podcast, here.  Thanks to their staff for the linkage.

Update (III): Literally waiting to go on the air now…

Update (II): I have bumped this post so that you can go and stream from the show more easily.  Be sure to look below because Lee has been posting up a storm.  I can’t give away too much, but there are some big things in store in the ongoing fallout from Weinergate.  So stay tuned.

Update: Hey, it’s just about an hour to go, and contrary to what some people said in the comments, it looks like the show is streaming.  So you will be able to hear me that way, if you don’t have Sirius.  And you might listen in now.  He is talking a lot about the ATF gunrunner scandal.

This afternoon, I was contacted by NRA News and they have asked me to appear on the radio discussing my post of earlier today.

I am scheduled to be on at 10:20 p.m. Eastern Time.  #IThinkThats7:20InSeattle.  (and in Los Angeles).  That’s of course 9:20 Dallas time.

I asked their representative how to listen in and he wrote:

We’re on SiriusXM Patriot 125 and www.NRANews.com

I don’t have Sirius, so I will hope that makes sense to those of you who subscribe.  And I am trying to figure out how to listen to their radio show on their website as we speak.  My suspicion is that it doesn’t become a live link until they are actually live on the air.

Also I found a lot of good posts also challenging Stengel’s piece, even finding errors I missed.  I mean let’s face it, it’s the Goodyear blimp of fat targets, right?  So I was bound to miss a few errors.  I will post a few of those as updates to this post.  I would put it on the other post, but I am trying to keep that post as readable as possible, with as few updates as possible.

Update: As promised, here’s some other discussions about this terrible piece.

Over at Real Clear Politics, Thomas Sowell waxes philosophical and shows us how everything old is new again:

A long and rambling essay by Time magazine’s managing editor, Richard Stengel, manages to create a toxic blend of the irrelevant and the erroneous.

The irrelevant comes first, pointing out in big letters that those who wrote the Constitution “did not know about” all sorts of things in the world today, including airplanes, television, computers and DNA.

This may seem like a clever new gambit but, like many clever new gambits, it is a rehash of arguments made long ago. Back in 1908, Woodrow Wilson said, “When the Constitution was framed there were no railways, there was no telegraph, there was no telephone[.]”

And with each of these, there are more goodies in the article than I am quoting here, so read the whole thing.

And that came courtesy of David Azzerrad, who wrote a post the Corner criticize Stengel’s work.  Here’s a particularly solid quote:

These principles, although first articulated centuries ago, are not tied to the material conditions of a bygone age. They rest on that most solid and enduring of all foundations: human nature. Madison’s rhetorical question in Federalist 51 rings true as ever: “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” The miniskirt, sexting, and collateralized debt obligations haven’t put much of a dent on good ol’ human nature. Until men become angels, let’s stick to the Constitution’s healthy distrust of concentration of power and unfettered mob rule.

Again, read the whole thing.

Meanwhile over at Freedom’s Front Line, they are perhaps a little more harsh than the situation justifies, likening it to “baby babble”—that is speech by someone unused to speaking on a subject:

One might have hoped Mr. Stengel to be knowledgeable about issues of constitutional meaning. A Rhodes Scholar and Princeton grad, he was president of the National Constitution Center for several years.  But his essay demonstrates that he has a long way to go—and that he should have become more fluent before presuming to instruct Time readers in the subject.

Harsh, but still all of it is worth a read.  Seriously.  He even catches him in another clear error that I missed:

Stengel: “What would the framers say about whether a tax on people who did not buy health insurance is an abuse of Congress’s authority under the commerce clause? Well, since James Madison did not know what health insurance was and doctors back then still used leeches, it’s difficult to know what he would say.”

Answer: These are really confused sentences.  “Taxes” are authorized by Article I, Section 8, Clause 1, not by the Commerce Clause (I-8-3).

See?  I glossed right over that one.  Meanwhile at Big Journalism, Accuracy in Media asks “Does TIME Still Matter?

That big Journalism post appears to be cross-posted, here.  And I want to thank Mary Chastain for prominently mentioning my post on her site, Bookworm Room has very kind words, and Ace has a link, writing:

Time can’t retract. Their whole authority rests upon the claim that they are smarter than other people. If they retracted an entire article, by a credentialed head of the National Constitution Center, as entirely wrong in almost every claim it made, they’d look, what’s the word?, pretty stupid and uneducated.

But you can still try.

Maybe so, but we can create a situation where they can either correct the article, and look stupid, or look like they are stonewalling, and still look stupid.  Like Dan Rather in Rathergate, the problem isn’t just the initial mistake but how they react to it.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

35 Responses to “Praise God and Pass the Ammunition, I’m Going to be On NRA News Radio! (Update: Streaming From NRA Site Works) (Update: Link to Podcast Added)”

  1. Do you say “break a leg” for radio?

    MayBee (081489)

  2. maybee

    beats me. but the sentiment is appreciated, anyway.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  3. I was going to think up something clever to say involving No-knock warrants and “knock ’em dead,” but I haven’t had caffeine yet and it’s before noon, so bleh.

    CliveStaples (9073b6)

  4. Aaron, congratulations, the constitution has its great defender against presidential encroachments.
    and uh. “break a leg”.

    bmertz (d77c52)

  5. Breaking a leg is Teh Suck, by the way. Especially in summer.

    Congrats, AW. Does this mean you are a gun fetishist?

    JD (29e1cd)

  6. Hey Aaron,

    I don’t think you can stream NRA News shows until they’ve been archived. If you have a Sirius/XM account, you can tune in here:

    https://www.siriusxm.com/player/

    But I think it costs an extra $2 a month to stream Sirius online or on your phone. Worth it, IMHO.

    Have fun with Cam!

    Rex Harrison's Hat (34b9f5)

  7. JD

    i have a shotgun i have never fired for personal protection. I’m not big into guns, but i believe its better to have one and not need it than to need one and not have it.

    And yes, i pretty much agree with Kozinsky’s famous opinion on the 2nd amendment.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  8. but i believe its better to have one and not need it than to need one and not have it.

    When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

    Rex Harrison's Hat (34b9f5)

  9. Do you say “break a leg” for radio?

    i suppose we could wish “develop laryngitis” on him

    bmertz (d77c52)

  10. Break a klystron tube!

    Bigfoot (8096f2)

  11. keep the dialogue off of the light saber and whether disrupters are covered by todays conceal and carry permits and you should do okay

    EricPWJohnson (2925ff)

  12. Time can’t retract. Their whole authority rests upon the claim that they are smarter than other people. If they retracted an entire article, by a credentialed head of the National Constitution Center, as entirely wrong in almost every claim it made, they’d look, what’s the word?, pretty stupid and uneducated.

    Very True – Same with much of the AGW story

    Joe (231de8)

  13. ‘Stengel: “What would the framers say about whether a tax on people who did not buy health insurance is an abuse of Congress’s authority under the commerce clause? Well, since James Madison did not know what health insurance was and doctors back then still used leeches, it’s difficult to know what he would say.”’

    Baloney.

    Madison would have vetoed any such bill, just like he vetoed the internal improvements bill in 1817, and for exactly the same reason.

    Anyone who asserts otherwise is one of two things: an ignorant jackass, or a liar.

    http://www.constitution.org/jm/18170303_veto.htm

    Like an idiot, I actually read Stengel’s drivelfest in Time.

    And, now I’m kicking myself, because that’s 15 minutes I’m never going to get back.

    Dave Surls (c43931)

  14. btw, i love the graphic created by accuracy in media.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  15. Accuracy in Media asks “Does TIME Still Matter?”

    LOL Could there be a more fitting summary?

    Dustin (c16eca)

  16. listening to Cam
    now, Aaron and will tune in
    to you in an hour

    ColonelHaiku (eb5392)

  17. About 10 minutes to showtime, hopefully.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  18. Aaron is about to be on at NRA show. I’m watching in support. Go Aaron!

    felipe (2ec14c)

  19. Cam mispronounced “Patterico”, oh well.

    felipe (2ec14c)

  20. Yeah, the pronounced it right now.

    The quality is excellent.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  21. LOL. Nice format with the snooty roleplay vs voice of truth.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  22. I found it amusing that we are shown a general graphic when Aaron speaks – I would have thought they could have used a “file photo” of Aaron; perhaps a pic of George Clooney? LOL.

    felipe (2ec14c)

  23. Outstanding job, Aaron!

    ColonelHaiku (eb5392)

  24. “not puerto rico dot com”

    They should add that to the banner.

    perhaps a pic of George Clooney? LOL.

    Ha!

    Anyway, the host did a great job too.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  25. thanks for your kind words.

    felipe, Clooney has nothing on me. 🙂

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  26. During the Apollo missions, the MSM would show a mock-up of the space vehicle carried about on a figure-eight train track whenever one of the astronauts spoke and during commentary fron the unseen NASA command center. Though the times have changed, the problem remains.

    felipe (2ec14c)

  27. Here’s another inconsistency:

    “The framers . . . gave us the idea that a black person was three-fifths of a human being, that women were not allowed to vote and that South Dakota should have the same number of Senators as California, which is kind of crazy.”

    Stengel went to great length to identify “things the framers did not know about” — including “Hawaii, a state that did not exist.” So, following his reasoning, how could the framers give us the idea that two other states that did not exist should have the same number of Senators?

    aunursa (323789)

  28. No it is not hard to know what the framers would have said. If you read their words in the Federalist Papers, you know how the Federalists (i.e. Hamilton, Madison, Jay) thought at the time. Read the Anti-Federalist Papers (Patrick Henry, et.al.) you get opposing views. My copy of the Anti-Federalist Papers also has the Virginia ratification debates. There are numerous sources to read their words.

    You could be in a flying saucer and it would not make any difference. The constitution was written as a framework for a general government, not effected by technology. Dr. Franklin had many inventions. Would he not have foreseen this situation.

    Our rulers seem to think we are to stupid to understand that which must now require a law degree, to understand that which was understood by the common reader of the 18th century. Hey, thanks public school!

    Larry A. Lively (5af64b)

  29. When libtards inform us, they expect us to accept their statements with no further question because they have unassailable credentials. When an honest scholar makes a statement, you, normally, get the source from the original author at the end of the paper, many times written in PLAIN ENGLISH, for any libtards that may be out there.

    Larry A. Lively (5af64b)

  30. Aaron, Newsbusters now has an entry on your post.

    aunursa (323789)

  31. Congrats, Aaron. Well deserved. The post was one of the best you’ve done.

    Dana (4eca6e)

  32. Yay, Aaron!

    MayBee (081489)

  33. _____________________________________

    They rest on that most solid and enduring of all foundations: human nature.

    Exactly! The foibles of human nature in particular, including the facet of some people’s stunning lack of common sense (Hi, Time magazine managing editor!). Or that which people of the left seem uninterested in or disconnected from—because, in their mind, compassion and humaneness (whether real or fake, sincere or manipulative) absolves one of foolishness or stupidity.

    Beyond that, one example of the way that human nature surprisingly hasn’t changed much, or at all, was in trying to figure out the origins of the current foolish soft-hearted sentiments towards the idea of same-sex marriage. In reading about the ancient Greek philosopher Plato and his take on homosexuality, I found it amusing that he originally chastised the critics of such behavior for being, to paraphrase, unsophisticated rednecks. IOW, he sounded just like a typical modern-day liberal, similar to the way that Obama at a notorious fundraiser in San Francisco awhile back described small-town Americans.

    The kicker was that Plato later in life — when he apparently acquired greater wisdom after decades of observing human nature — eventually voiced disapproval of homosexuality, or certainly same-sex activity among males.

    The saying of the day: As much as things change, some things never change.

    Mark (411533)

  34. notice guys there is a link to the podcast added.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  35. Comment by Aaron Worthing — 6/28/2011 @ 12:08 pm

    If you haven’t fired it, how do you know that it works, and that you know how to work it?
    At least take it to the range and do a “pattern test” at indoor distances: across the bedroom, down the hall, etc.

    AD-RtR/OS! (4b4c36)


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