Free enterprise offers the most happiness, freedom and prosperity to the most people. It is also despised by politicians because it limits their power, and by most businessmen because it limits their ability to set their prices and forces them to compete for business. Thus, as much as it benefits any country or society that adopts it, it is always under attack and must be constantly defended from political attack by rent seekers.

To successfully defend free enterprise, to stay on the road to freedom and avoid the road to serfdom, we should know and understand the tactics used by the enemies of free enterprise. That means being wary of anyone talking about “fairness” or “justice”, especially when they insert the word “social” in front of it, because social justice so often means a denial of ordinary justice and fairness can mean a total absence of true fairness. These words do not have universally agreed upon definitions. True fairness is achieved only when we have power over our own destiny, power and freedom to reap the rewards of the our own earned success. The other road, the road to serfdom, leads only to learned helplessness.

“I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they’ve described.  I would like to see this campaign focus on the economy, on getting people back to work, on seeing rising incomes and growing prosperity — particularly for those in the middle class of America.  And I think what we’ve seen so far from the Obama campaign is a campaign of character assassination.  I hope that isn’t the course of this campaign. So in regards to that PAC, I repudiate what they’re thinking about … It’s interesting that we’re talking about some Republican PAC that wants to go after the president [on Wright]; I hope people also are looking at what he’sdoing, and saying ‘why is he running an attack campaign?  Why isn’t he talking about his record?’”

This is awful.  Just what we need, another McCain and another disaster in November.  The country can’t take anymore of this.  Obama is going to unleash everything under the Sun at Romney and if he doesn’t fight back he will lose simply because people will become sickened by him.  It’s programmed into our genes by 250,000 years of human evolution to stand by those who will stand up and fight and to despise those who refuse to fight.  If Romney wimps out he will end up like the chicken with all its tail features pecked away by the other chickens.  Even chickens don’t like weakness when boldness is called for.

The story of the new super pac and its plans to help defeat Obama in November come from this piece in the New York Times;

Obama’s Dependency Nation:

Dependency Nation

Don’t know who “Julia” is?  Go here.

So much of my life having been spent in Denver’s Golden Triangle I’m pretty happy to see that the City Council has voted 9-4 to run the bums out and return this special place to the good citizens of the city.

This is pretty good news to a fellow like me who spent so much of my youth in this special area. Except for time away in the Navy I spent all of my youth since leaving Cheyenne, Wyoming after high school in and around this area known as Denver’s Golden Triangle. I lived nearby, went to college and held part-time jobs almost exclusively in the vicinity. Growing up in the wilds of Wyoming I longed for the city life when I was a young man finding my way in the world.

I attended the University of Colorado Denver Center campus when it was on 14th Street between Lawrence and Arapahoe (we called it Lawrence of Arapahoe) to earn a B.A. in Mathematics while working two or three part-time jobs at once. I drove a yellow cab, delivered the Denver Post to newsstands and carriers, and worked at the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant near downtown Denver, sometimes holding all three jobs at once on a part-time basis. Somehow I still found time to spend at My Brother’s Bar and the Wazee Lounge, wonderful watering holes that remain near to their historical glory today. I actually learned a lot about math, American history and the law in those bars, arguing with classmates and grad-student lecturers over some esoteric point of law or some mathematical theorem. I can still remember arguments over beers on the brachistochrone problem or whether Lochner v. New York was rightly decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1905 (it was, don’t get me started).

After graduating from the University of Colorado I was accepted to the University of Denver College of Law when its classroom building was at 14th Avenue and Bannock Street near Civic Center Park. That accomplishment led to immediate penury accompanied by student loans since law school pretty much precluded even the thought of a part-time job.  It was a wonderful time arguing the law with other students not only in uptown bars but also in nearby Civic Center Park or in the cafeteria of the Denver Art Museum across the street from the law school.   Sometimes these debates took place in the cafeteria on the 3rd floor of the law school, affectionately referred to as ptomaine’s, but that place was usually too full of people who saw it as primarily a place to eat and make a last ditch effort to read at least one case before a class.

I have naturally been dismayed at the erosion of decorum and civility in Denver’s Civic Center as bums have taken it over in the last ten years or so, and now that #occupy protestors, also bums in my opinion, have literally turned it into a filthy mess of human debris.

But sanity seems to have been restored on The Denver City Council and the bums have been ordered off the property.  Well, they have been given ample time to comply, until November I think.  I don’t understand the need for such a lengthy reprieve, but at least this special place will eventually be returned to the hard-working tax-paying citizens of the City and County of Denver.

With any luck Denver’s Civic Center Park may once again look like this, but with people sitting on benches conversing, reading or just resting in the sun or in the shade of the amphitheater:

The only way to stop vote fraud is to require an ID at the voting place before one can vote. Still, the left will just engage in massive ID fraud but at least those cases are more easily detected and prosecuted, with severe penalties.

This is a photo I took of the Temple of Jupiter at Baalbek, in the Bekaa Valley.  It is majestic as you can see by the tiny human figures in the foreground:

Temple of Jupiter Baalbek, Lebanon

Jupiter was the king of Roman gods and was the god of rain, thunder and lightening.  The Temple of Jupiter in Baalbek was completed about 150 A.D.  The Roman Empire converted to Christianity in 313 A.D.  Syria and Lebanon were added to the Roman Empire in 64 B.C. After about 395 A.D. the Romans were in chaos and confusion and anarchy ruled the region until a series of severe earthquakes in the 6th Century destroyed much of the remaining temples and other structures built by the Romans.  Beirut was a thriving city at this time, however, and was the site of a famous law school.  The earthquakes destroyed the school and pretty much leveled the city.  The damage seen in this photo of the Temple of Jupiter probably occurred at that time.  It was also then that the region came under Arab rule, as it remains today.

Lebanon has Roman ruins literally everywhere. This photo I took in Beirut shows Roman columns through which an inviting sidewalk cafe can be seen in the background.

Roman Columns with sidewalk cafe, Beirut, Lebanon 2002

See the post immediately below for an account of how some real alpha males showed their stuff.

They immediately entered grizzly country, and began to see signs of this powerful creature. The Mandan had warned them about the “white bear”, but Lewis was unimpressed. The first bears they saw ran away and Lewis concluded they were of little threat. After killing one on April 29, Lewis wrote in his journal:

“the Indians may well fear this anamal equiped as they generally are with their bows and arrows or indifferent fuzees, but in the hands of skillfull riflemen they are by no means as formidable or dangerous as they have been represented.”

This proved to be a false sense of security. On May 5th a grizzly was encountered which did not run away. Clark described it as a

“verry large and a turrible looking animal, which we found verry hard to kill we Shot ten Balls into him before we killed him, & 5 of those Balls through his lights.”

Lewis wrote that after the bear had been shot,

“he swam more than half the distance across the river to a sandbar & it was at least twenty minutes before he died; he did not attempt to attack, but fled and made the most tremendous roaring from the moment he was shot.”

A few days later one of the party was chased by a grizzly after shooting it in the lung. Lewis and others later searched for the bear and found it “perfectly alive.” They killed it with two shots to the head. Lewis was quickly changing his first impression that the grizzly was not a serious threat, having experienced how difficult it was to kill one after an attack began.

Finally, on May 14, 1805 six men, described by Lewis as “all good hunters,” met a bear that taught them all a pretty good lesson about grizzlies. They came upon the bear lying in the open about 300 paces from the river. Lewis described the encounter as follows:

…they took the advantage of a small eminence which concealed them and got within 40 paces of him unperceived, two of them reserved their fires as had been previously conscerted, the four others fired nearly at the same time and put each his bullet through him, two of the balls passed through the bulk of both lobes of his lungs, in an instant this monster ran at them with open mouth, the two who had reserved their fires discharged their pieces at him as he came towards them, boath of them struck him, one only slightly and the other fortunately broke his shoulder, this however only retarded his motion for a moment only, the men unable to reload their guns took to flight, the bear pursued and had very nearly overtaken them before they reached the river; two of the party betook themselves to a canoe and the others seperated an concealed themselves among the willows, reloaded their pieces, each discharged his piece at him as they had an opportunity they struck him several times again but the guns served only to direct the bear to them, in this manner he pursued two of them seperately so close that they were obliged to throw aside their guns and pouches and throw themselves into the river altho’ the bank was nearly twenty feet perpendicular; so enraged was this anamal that he plunged into the river only a few feet behind the second man he had compelled take refuge in the water, when one of those who still remained on shore shot him through the head and finally killed him; they then took him on shore and butchered him when they found eight balls had passed through him in different directions.

It is instructive of this encounter that the bear was slowed only momentarily by a broken shoulder and continually charged after each time it was shot, and charged the last person who shot it.  Many a hunter or hiker has suggested that one should shoot to break a leg of a charging bear.  But a four-legged animal, especially one as determined as a grizzly can easily continue a charge on three legs.

Several modern-day accounts of hunting parties attacked by a grizzly record a scenario similar to the one Lewis reported, several men shooting, the bear charging each shooter in turn, and the bear absorbing bullet after bullet while keeping up a ferocious rage until finally either killing some or all of the people or succumbing itself, sometimes after taking 10 or more hits from high powered hunting rifles.

It is common of grizzly attacks defended by multiple hunters or hikers in Alaska armed with .44 magnum revolvers that the bear is capable of taking several of that type bullet, often a dozen or more, by the time it finally gives up the attack. At the same time, one can find reports of a single bullet or even a single arrow stopping a charge, but that is rare.  Apparently, shot or arrow placement is the key and that place is the brain, protected by hard and thick bone not easily penetrated and small in size on a large animal.

Grizzlies are hunted in Alaska but on those hunts the shot is usually aimed at the heart and lungs, just over and slightly behind the front shoulder, and taken from cover at a distance of 100 yards or more with a scoped rifle so that the bear does not immediately detect the source of the injury and does not know where or what to charge.  If the shot is well placed the bear often disappears into the brush where it dies within a short time.  When the shot is bad the bear may suffer for a longer time while the hunter risks injury or death if he tries to find the bear to finish the job.  Hunters may find bears by using dogs, or by sitting at a bait source, which may be a bucket of rotten bacon.  Those practices have been criticized as not sporting and is illegal in some areas.  In those areas only the “spot and stalk” method is allowed.

At present there is nowhere in the lower 48 where grizzly hunting is legal.  I’m confident the day will come when grizzlies will be legally hunted in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, and believe that day cannot come soon enough.  The defenders of the grizzly should welcome that day, since no animal that is hunted will ever become endangered.  The hunting associations are far and away the best at preserving and strengthening the population of the animals they hunt.

Some hunters are more adventurous and will spot and stalk hunt with a lever-action rifle having iron sights only, or even with only a powerful un-scoped handgun where that is legal.  This is sometimes called the “Boone and Crocket” style of bear hunting.  The idea is that the hunter offers the bear a more even chance, the hunter placing himself in danger which he accepts as part of the thrill of the hunt.  Of course, the most authentic Boone and Crocket style of bear hunting would be with a muzzle loading rifle, although it must be said that neither Daniel Boone nor Davy Crockett ever hunted the grizzly.  A fair number of early 19th Century mountain men did face the grizzly with only single-shot muzzle loaders.  Sometimes they ate the bear, but most times the bear ate them.

I’ve never heard of anyone hunting grizzly with bow and arrow, but if anyone is brave enough to do it  I salute them.  There are at least two well-known stories from Montana of deer or elk bow hunters who have successfully defended themselves from grizzly attack with only their bow and arrow.

The Corps of Discovery encountered grizzlies a few more times both going to the Pacific and on the return, but after these first encounters they had learned much about this bear and always did their best to avoid them when they could.

There’s no shortage of present-day accounts of just how difficult is it to stop a grizzly charge once it begins, even with large and powerful firearms, but these episodes of the Corps of Discovery in 1805 are as illustrative as any.