Stevie Joe and Alice

Pretty trippy.

Far out,
Stevie Joe Parker

Stevie Joe Ponders Peace

Just yesterday, I saw a fella wearing a t-shirt that said, "Peace Through Superior Firepower."  That got me to pondering about how I think of peace.  "Superior firepower" sure didn't fit my definition, but maybe it could.  As I sat whittling away at a branch that fell out of my Silver Linden tree (which tends to drop an awful lot of junk on my lawn, but that's another matter), it occurred to me that having military superiority could achieve peace in one of two ways.

First, you can use the threat of force to get the other party to submit to your demands.  This avoids armed conflict (and thus, preserves peace), but it does so through coercion.  This is the oppression of one party by another.  It might be the most expedient way to achieve some end, but it is still coercion.

Second, you can use actual force to create peace.  Using force in this manner is not peace in itself but a mechanism that may lead to peace.  It does this be either convincing the opposing party to surrender and submit, which gets us back to coercion as discussed above, or by eliminating the other party.  Using force to create peace in this manner is genocide.  This strategy is rarely successful as other parties will object to the genocide and intervene.

This might be what bothers me about concealed-carry gun laws.  In general, I believe that folks should just be allowed to do as they please as long as they don't bother anyone else.  Yet, the concealed-carry thing bugs me a bit.  See, folks claim that if ordinary folks can carry concealed weapons, then the bad guys will never know who might have a gun.  This may dissuade them from doing their usual bad guy stuff.  If it works, it does so through the threat of force.  Nobody has to actually shoot the gun.  They must only create the fear that someone might shoot a gun.

The downside, or the thing that bugs me, is that this requires all of us to live under this fear, this threat of force.  The lower the likelihood of someone whipping out a gun and shooting it, the calmer I am.  That's just me.  

Anyway, the difficulty in all of this is figuring out the alternative.  So, if we don't use "superior firepower" to contain our enemies, what do we do?  We have to learn to make peace.  That's what, and it's a heck of a lot harder than making war.  Making war is easy.  We're good at it.  Making peace is hard.  It's a continuous process.  Once you have a bad guy with a loyal army, it's already too late.  

Same thing with crooks.  Catching them and locking them up is simple compared to the task of preventing them from becoming crooks in the first place.  That's hard, but it's worth trying.  Same with making peace.  

I think that's what JC would do, anyway.

Peace out, 

Stevie Joe Parker

Stevie Joe and Public Service

Things are just a mess.  Take a look at politics today.  Who'd be fool enough to run for public office?  Here in the Holler, we got ol' Mayor Barney as our local chief executive because nobody else in town wanted the job.  There aren't any perks (well, not any that an honest man can come by).  Yet, the mayor gets those phone calls from Mrs. Frenchak complaining that the streetlight outside her parlor window is too bright or that Junior's dog, Junior Junior, is peeing on her rose bushes.  Nobody, not even Mayor Barney, has the heart to tell her that the odds are even that it's actually Junior himself.

On the national level, consider the race for President.  This is some rough business.  So rough, in fact, that I think it's having a detrimental effect on the whole country.  

Take a look at the Dumbocrats latest efforts to lose yet another election.  Hillary Clinton is shocked, just shocked, that Nancy Pelosi had the audacity to suggest that the nomination should go to the candidate with the most votes. 

Let's put aside for the moment the fact that leaders of both national parties have now casually discarded the notion that our leaders should be selected by popular election.  Apparently, the will of the voters is no longer all that relevant.

What is interesting about the Pelosi incident is the response from the Clinton campaign.  They rounded up their biggest financial contributors and had them write a letter to Ms. Pelosi.  In this letter, they suggested that she re-think her position or else they may stop all financial contributions to the Democratic Party congressional campaign.  That's right.  Hillary Clinton is blackmailing her own party.  Things better go her way, or she'll help the Republicans regain control of Congress.

Talk about scorched-earth strategy!  This is the state of politics in the US today.  Do you think that this is good for our nation?  Me neither.

"Nice party you got there - it'd be a shame if anything were to happen to it,"

Stevie Joe Parker

Stevie Joe, Eliot Spitzer, and the Mortgage Crisis

Everyone knows about Governor Eliot Spitzer's dramatic fall from grace, but there was another story buried beneath all the headlines.  That story was Spitzer's Washington Post commentary explaining how the Bush administration willingly aided banks in their predatory lending practices.  Some have even alleged that the timing of Governor Spitzer's scandal was orchestrated to minimize the effect of this commentary.  

Well, ol' Stevie Joe doesn't know about that, but it is an interesting column nonetheless.  Check it out here.

Denying that I have a client number,

Stevie Joe Parker

Stevie Joe's Easter Message

Here to hoping you all have a great Easter. Be sure to listen to Jesus Christ Superstar (the original 1970 album, not the later soundtrack) like the Good Lord intended.

Peace,
Stevie Joe Parker

Stevie Joe and the Cost of War

Stevie Joe's Holler Update

Stevie Joe is just getting over the flu, and, boy, did it kick my behind! My body was so sore that I couldn't sleep. Of course, Mrs. Stevie Joe thought I was making it all up as an excuse to lay in bed and get outta doing chores. So, this morning, I licked her toast when she wasn't looking.

In other news, Juanita and Jimmy are fighting again. Lord knows what it's all about this time. They are both so hard-headed. To get Jimmy's goat, Juanita has been hanging around Junior. Everyone knows that Junior is sweet on Juanita. Jimmy has responded by hanging out with Dickie Jensen. As a result, the Great Ambulance Feud of 2008 gains two new combatants.

Now, Juanita and Jimmy are both holding their noses on this one. Hardly anyone except me can stand Junior, and nobody at all can put up with Dickie for any length of time. But as they say, strange bedfellows and all . . .

Toast lickin' for the truth,
Stevie Joe Parker