Robert the Bruce stumbled out of the Greyfriars Chapel at Dumfries covered with blood and frantically checking to see if any of it was his own. Roger Kirkpatrick rushed to his liege lord's side. "I doot I hae slain the Red Comyn!" the Bruce said between breaths. "Ye doot? I mak siccar!" (I make sure!) Kirkpatrick replied, as he entered the chapel to do just that. (To this day, the Kirkpatrick crest depicts a dagger dripping blood, with the motto: "I Mak Siccar!")

The Bruce had arranged the parley with his rival for the throne, and now he had what we'd call a problem with optics. His enemies would say it was premeditated, but assassinating a rival in 14th century Scotland was a "dog bites man" story. Thing is, he killed him IN A CHURCH, IN FRONT OF THE ALTAR. Instructions for excommunication were sent from Rome, but the local bishops refused to carry it out; either out of loyalty to the Bruce or out of fear they'd end up with a sgian dubh (knife "black," i.e. hidden) stuck in their ribs, just like the Red Comyn.

To clear the record, in 1320 a group of Scottish nobles sent a letter to the Pope written at Arbroath, extolling Robert's virtues as a killer of Englishmen. But if he should falter in this, they would "...make some other man who was well able to defend us our King.... It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."

So what do the goings-on long ago in that "pair wee bit o' hill an' glen" have to do with us? That streak of fierce - and I mean that literally - independence led to the Scottish Enlightenment, which in turn fueled both our Revolution and our economics (David Hume and Adam Smith were both Scots). For a more thorough treatment, see HOW THE SCOTS INVENTED THE MODERN WORLD by Arthur Herman. Oh, and we should pay tribute to the finest uisge beatha (whiskey) on the planet. And for you partisans of the elixirs of Kentucky and Tennessee shaking your heads, those recipies came from - you guessed it - the Scots.

I agree with Rachel Maddow approximately 6% of the time, 1% of the time. Okay?

But right now I'd buy her a beer if I could. Why? Because she's a high-profile type who said something I appreciate, and she said it in public. Here's part of what she said, RE the media's treatment of the latest Ft. Hood shooting:

"that the most important deciding factor on what explains the [shooting] must be the fact that the suspected perpetrator is an Iraq War veteran. As if veterans are uniquely dangerous. As if knowing the suspected shooter served in Iraq explains why this happened."

Absolutely. First of all, Post-Traumatic Stress is NOT a disorder. Anyone can get it, and the source of the stress is different for all individuals. The intensity of the stress is proportional to the perception of trauma experienced, and through the lens of a given person's perceptions and experiences. Dead bodies probably don't bother a coroner as much as they do someone who doesn't expect to see them everyday, or someone who is seeing a dead body for the first time. It doesn't mean the person being stressed by the trauma is broken or experiencing a mental "disorder."

Quite the contrary, really. Isn't it natural for a person to replay traumatic memories and try in vain to amend the past?

Maddow also said:

"If we think of every other mass shooting in America as somehow particular to the circumstances of that shooting but this one as explained away as 'Oh he was an Iraq vet'... not only does that not help us understand what happened here, it is an offense against every other veteran who right now is getting that stigma shoveled onto them by a lazy civilian world and a lazy civilian media who find this dangerous veteran stereotype to be an easier thing to point to than America has a bad mass shooting problem."

The last sentence is probably a clue to some "it's the gun's fault" type thinking, but I'll look past that for now to appreciate her rejection of the Feinstein-esque idiocy. Cheers!

So no spoilers but it's a brilliance on Disney/Marvel's part that their newest blockbuster can make me excited to see this week's TV show. If they're smart, they will use Agents of Shield to do the same thing in reverse. And yet both are enjoyable without seeing the other.

The meta-narrative can allow an artist to create something bigger than individual works. Stephen King tried it to some degree. I think well planned, it can be a powerful thing. This is especially true now that we live in a world where content creators can not only cheaply and easily produce books and written materials but music and movies.

We are in a golden age. It's up to us to take advantage of the opportunity.

I went to see God is Not Dead on Friday with my girlfriend. She wanted to see it and I figure it's the right thing to support conservative, faith affirming films.

It was really good. And this is important. We cannot simply decry the fact that Hollywood is not receptive to Christians and conservatives. We have to make our own works but make them entertaining. If we make good movies and good books, but don't have the standard evil white bad guy or the nefarious corporate villain but instead have heroes fighting environmental terrorists or neo-Communists. The Left has monopolized our culture for more than half-a-century. We can't turn the ship around immediately but slight nudges can add up.

This is a great take on the "man's dark past comes back to haunt him." It's a huge trope for thrillers, and I find that most authors don't get quite right in terms of believability. Not the case here. A very complete, sympathetic character in the middle of highly layered, fast paced international conspiracy thriller. A caring husband, loyal friend, ruthless killer and desperate fugitive- all the pieces are there inside of one person, and they all fit just so. The side characters are just as memorable, to the point where I see good spinoff/prequel potential for a few of them.

What takes book up on yet another level is the author's ability to create a sense of place. Whether it's a suburban Virginia home, an estate in Ireland or a terrorist hideout, the reader truly gets a feeling of being there, viewing it through the characters' eyes. (Lets' just say Ireland has shot way up on my travel destination list!) The only quibble I have is some loose ends that are obviously left over for the sequel, but there is enough closure to leave the reader satisfied. Recommended to fans of thriller or mystery genre, or to anyone interested in Irish-themed fiction.

Contest, Qui audet adipiscitur
A short story I wrote entitled "Resource" appears in the anthology "The Ways of Magic" released last week by Deepwood Publishing, which published another story of mine "Escapement" in the anthology "Ancient New." So that's pretty cool. Check it out.

But let's switch things up a bit, do something a bit different in this web log. I'm going to present a contest in support of neither of the projects mentioned above. Instead let's focus on my novel "Reunion" from Twilight Times Books. "Reunion" is available digitally now, with the print edition to follow in mid-June. I have a couple Advance Review Copies of the print edition sitting in a box in my library. I would like to send a signed copy to the contest winner. Here's what I propose: anyone who purchases a digital copy between now and, oh, let's say Wednesday, April 16th can enter the contest. To enter just send me an email with your digital receipt of purchase, that is, the email acknowledgment you received from Amazon or whatever digital store you bought "Reunion" from. On the 16th I will select a receipt at random (maybe using some polyhedron dice that are gathering dust since I don't have a D&D game going at the moment) and will mail the winner a signed copy of "Reunion." Hey, if you win, you get an advance review print edition for less than half the retail price and free shipping. If you don't then you've still got a book to read.

Fine print. Contest limited to United States residents at least eighteen years old. Digital receipt must carry a date of sometime between April 6 and April 16. Odds of winning depend upon the number of valid entries received. Void where prohibited. Swim at your own risk. No life guard on duty.

So there you go. I told you I'd do something different with this post.
www.kenlizzi.net

Folks, Mozilla just made a choice by making its CEO resign for a $1000 donation in support of Prop 8. Depending on the poll, more or less than half the country supports traditional marriage.

I am all for tolerance. But the gay lobby - note I'm not saying all gays, just the folks they allow to speak for them - does not want tolerance. They want celebration. See how bakers and photographers are pilloried for declining to go against their religious beliefs by participating in gay weddings.

And if you dare to oppose them politically, you will be crushed.

It's a market folks. If Mozilla will not tolerate dissent, don't tolerate Mozilla. It took about 5 minutes for me install Chrome and import my settings. I have no doubt Google and its execs oppose me politically. So far, however, they have not forced it in my face and demanded loyalty oaths from their workers.

That's good enough for me.

In "Venezuela Wants to Spread the Suffering" Megan McArdle describes how Chavez and Maduro diverted the country's oil wealth into social spending. As debt increased, the currency fell and runaway inflation ensued. The next step was price controls...and before you could say "Milton Friedman," ordinary Venezuelans found they couldn't buy toilet paper or flour without standing in line. Read the whole thing at http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-01/venezuela-wants-to-spread-the-suffering.

That's a great "bottom-up" analysis. But I can't help wondering if there's a complementary "top-down" explanation as well. Start with Stalin's terror famine in the Ukraine from 1932-33. Talk about a man-caused disaster. The Soviets confiscated the Ukrainians' food in order to destroy the kulaks' small family farms and force the population into party-controlled collectives. Death estimates range from 7 to 14.5 million.

Then there's North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. Without functioning markets for food and clothing, people come to depend on the government--and their access to government bureaucrats--for everything.

Now I'm wondering if Seattle will soon join the list of authoritarian regimes. We have one party rule: 85% percent routinely vote for the LPCS (liberal-progressive-commie-socialist) candidate. And our late mayor adopted a policy of "getting people out of their cars," by redesigning our roads to accommodate the relatively few buses and bicycles at the expense of cars. Now we have bottlenecks and traffic congestion where traffic used to flow.

I described Seattle as a left-wing laboratory in a previous post. I understand that similar traffic terrorist tactics are in place in LPCS cities around the country--Cheeky Warren's claims about roads, notwithstanding. It's clearly a conspiracy. But Seattle is the only American city with a statue of Lenin. And that really gives me the creeps.

If any one is curious where my story's title, Ense Petit Placidam (By the Sword Seek Peace)came from, it is the first part of the motto of Massachusetts. The second part is Sub Libertate Quietem (under liberty well-ordered, or more literally "liberty quiet"). Now if we were to say "freedom well-ordered" it would sound awkward, just as it would if Janis Joplin had sung "Liberty's just another word for nothin' left to lose..."

An old mountain man trapping for fur had a high degree of freedom; unless a she-grizzly got a hold of him before he could level his Hawken, or until a Crow or Blackfoot lifted his hair. And if an image of cute and cuddly Robert Redford just popped into your head, let me help you. The real Jeremiah Johnson ritually cut out the liver of Crow warriors, took a bite, then spit it out, while loudly proclaiming Crow liver unfit to eat. He was eventually given a wide berth by the Crow, as was intended. Such are the methods whereby "freedom" is preserved in a state of nature.

Liberty, on the other hand, is the proper intercection of one's individual freedom with that of another, and with the community at large. Our founders talked more of liberty than of freedom. They weren't called "The Sons of Freedom," nor was it a "Freedom Tree" in old Boston (some other cities had liberty poles, by the way). And borrowing from Locke, the Declaration spoke of liberty as an unalienable right, not "freedom." The word "freedom" seems to have crowded out the word "liberty" of late. Perhaps we should bring it back into fashion.

From the full post, available on my website ConservativeFeminism.com:

I never understood the abortion issue until I had a miscarriage in July 2006. She was a baby I wanted terribly - the daughter I wanted to cherish with my husband - and when I found I was pregnant I was ecstatic. When I was three months along, my husband was sent to a training program for new Navy technology; he'd be gone a month. Only a few days later, I started spotting and cramping. Within hours, I had lost the baby. It took me weeks to recover physically; I had lost a lot of blood.

I will never recover emotionally. I loved that baby as much as if I'd held her in my arms. Today, when I watch my two daughters (both born after I lost her), I can "see" the echo of the little girl who could never be playing with them, brushing their hair, singing and playing games. Women who have abortions know, just as I did, that the baby was real - even when they bury the truth, hide it from themselves. Most will always regret the baby they never had, and some will regret it mightily.

Read the rest at http://www.conservativefeminism.com.