My Fourth Open Letter to Mike Lawlor: Of anti-Catholic jihads and spitting on your heritage. (Hedgehogs, foxes and wolverines. Oh my!)

πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα 

"The fox knows many things, 

but the hedgehog knows one big thing" 

-- Archilochus.

Mike.Lawlor@ct.gov

10 February 2014

Mike Lawlor

Under Secretary, State of Connecticut

Office of Policy and Management, Criminal Justice Policy and Planning Division

450 Capitol Avenue

Hartford, CT 06106

Dear Mike,

While we await a response to my letter to the Russian Embassy, more folks are volunteering news tips and observations in response to my three previous letters regarding your peculiar case:

An Open Letter to Michael Lawlor, the CT Governor's Hatchet Man on Firearms Confiscation. "How's your KGB file hangin', Mike?"

My Second Open Letter to Mike Lawlor -- On "Nightcrawlers" and Treason Played for Laughs. We've already established that you are willing to sell out your country. Now we're just haggling about the price.

My Third Open Letter to Mike Lawlor: The Depraved Indifference of the "Prison Commissar" & The Subversive Uses of the "Wretched of the Earth."

Hard to believe it's just been a week since I began by quoting Ho Chi Minh to you: "Cherish your enemies for they teach you the best lessons." Time flies when you're having fun. Well, time flies when I'M having fun, anyway.

Among the things that have filtered out of the Nutmeg* state are some personal references on you by folks who have known you or interacted with you, and I must say they are not very flattering. "An unpleasant bastard," said one source. "A vindictive son of a bitch who never forgets an imagined slight" said another. "A sneaky, lying sack of shit," said a third "A Gay Gestapoman," said a fourth. (This is a misuse of the term -- "gay" not "Gestapo" -- but more on that later.)

*(Note: As an aside -- and we're not on any time clock here -- I've always wondered about Connecticut being referred to as the "nutmeg state." As both my daughters played soccer in college, my previous experience with the term nutmeg involved the technique used to roll or throw the ball through an opponent's legs to pass or shoot it. The maneuver makes the defending player look like an idiot. Wikipedia tells us that "the origins of the word are a point of debate." One theory holds that "the word arose because of a sharp practice used in nutmeg exports between America and England. 'Nutmegs were such a valuable commodity that unscrupulous exporters were to pull a fast one by mixing a helping of wooden replicas into the sacks being shipped to England . . . Being nutmegged soon came to imply stupidity on the part of the duped victim and cleverness on the part of the trickster.'" Hmmm. Fraud emanating from Connecticut. Seems there's been a lot of that going around for a very long time.)

A fifth source said, "Like most militant homosexuals he is anti-(Catholic) church. . . He was raised Catholic and . . . yet he hates the Church and everything it stands for." In support of this thesis, another source drew my attention to this series of stories by Don Pesci, who called your anti-Catholic campaign using (and abusing) the legislative process "Lawlor's Jihad." Read together at one sitting it appears that because of its refusal to embrace homosexuality you attempted to alter the apostolic structure of the Catholic Church when you (along with Andrew McDonald, another militant homosexual recently appointed a Justice of Connecticut's Supreme Court) were co-chair of Connecticut's Judiciary Committee. Another source drew my attention to your anti-Catholic bigotry with the comment "he's as sly as a fox in sneaking legislation through without anyone noticing." I'll have more on the subject of foxes presently.

Indeed, while I was writing the first draft of this letter, the following came in via email, entitled simply "Lawlor." It was this warning: "Man, keep Rosey and your kids out of the way, those bastards would think nothing of off'ing one or all of them, just to teach you a lesson. Also make DAMN sure you're square with IRS, don't give them an easy kill. They'll do what they want, and provide the necessary evidence to back it up, in the end, so be prepared for that."

Nice rep you got going there, Lawlor.

You know, I'm always curious about the original meanings of words and names, and "Lawlor" was no exception. The Surname Database tells us that Lawlor "derives from the Olde Gaelic "O'Leahtobhair" . . . The name means "The descendant of the sick one."

Of course, one of the most famous of the "O'Leahtobhair" descendants was a personal hero of mine, the Irish patriot James Fintan Lalor. I have long advanced the theory that for good or ill, history is made by determined minorities. Just three percent of the American colonists took the field actively against the forces of King George. This is the origin of my name for the Three Percent movement, which has been loudly denounced by that paragon of moral virtue, Bill Clinton. I enunciated that theory before I read this from Lalor's column entitled "Clearing the Decks," from the 22 July 1848 edition of the newspaper, "The Irish Felon."

It is never the mass of a people that forms its real and efficient might. It is the men by whom that mass is moved and managed. All the great acts of history have been done by a very few men. Take half a dozen names out of any revolution upon record, and what would have been the result?

Not Scotland but Wallace barred and baffled Edward. Not England but Cromwell struck a king from his seat. Not America, but six or eight American men, put stripes and stars on the banner of a nation. To quote examples, however, is needless. They must strike at once on every mind.

(For your convenience, I have reprinted Lalor's entire article here.) As I said in my speech at the Alamo last year:

"The lesson of our Revolution – as relevant today as then – is that history is made by determined minorities. For good or ill this has been true throughout the ages. The Founders were such a determined minority. So too are the people today who are determined to subvert and overthrow the Founders' Republic and replace it with some supposedly benevolent collectivist Borg.  To these people the Three Percent of today declare: "We will not disarm. You cannot convince us. You cannot intimidate us. You can kill us if you think you can. But remember we'll shoot back. And I might add, there's more of us than there are of you, and we're not going away. So, it's your move, Mr. Wannabe Tyrant. It's your move."

It is another major irony of your peculiar story that someone who shares with James Fintan Lalor the ancient and honorable name of "O'Leahtobhair" should now prove to be one of those very tyrants that made Lalor spit with justifiable disdain. But then, you've made quite a science of spitting on your own heritage, haven't you? Your country, your religion, the common citizenry of your state -- all subjects of my first three letters -- all of these have been the objects of your ill-disguised disdain. Why should your Irish heritage be any different? As I told O'Malley, the wannabe tyrant governor of Maryland: "Póg mo thóin."

You know, this malevolent hypocrisy of yours is typical of collectivists of all sorts, including the deliberate misuse of language, the twisting of meaning to your own purposes to serve the lie -- appropriation of the term "assault weapon" for propaganda purposes by firearm confiscation advocate Josh Sugarmann in the 1980s, for example. I gave a little talk on this subject the day after I visited your state last year, the video of which you can see here. This is one reason why I never use the word "gay" to describe homosexuals. The traditional meaning of gay was "full of joy, merry; light-hearted, carefree."

But in my experience, homosexuals of my acquaintance were unhappy, self-frustrated, angst-ridden and self-centered. Early in my life I worked at University Hospital in Columbus, Ohio as a hospital aide in Neurosurgery. There were two other aides there, Carl and Mark, who were homosexual lovers. Both were highly intelligent and ironically, acerbically, wildly funny. Their wit was acid and they didn't care who they splashed, including each other. I liked them. But as with every homosexual couple I ever knew, they were each self-absorbed and ultimately unfaithful. The longer I knew them it became obvious to me that their sense of humor was a veneer by which they shielded a deep unhappiness, with themselves and each other.

In the end, they split up. Carl took another lover, and it all ended tragically in a homosexual bar off campus when the new paramour pulled a pistol on Mark with the intent to kill him. Carl leaped in front of the muzzle and took the bullet meant for Mark. Carl died right there on the stained floor of that sadly mischaracterized "gay" bar. For such unselfish acts we award soldiers in war our highest medals. Carl got no medal, no reward, save the end of his personal turmoil, his own torment. And you want me to style such a tragedy as "gay"? Sorry.

I know not what effect your homosexuality has had on you. Although like many homosexuals you went to great lengths to conceal it early in life, you are now "out of the closet," as they say. That must be a relief. But to what extent has it shaped your actions since young adulthood? We have established, I think with some certainty, that you are "sly as a fox" -- a very dangerous and vindictive fox, who has history of turning his back on his country, his church and his heritage. Your actions in the legislature regarding your penal agenda and attacks on the Catholic church certainly, it seems to me, justifies my sources' judgment of you as "a sneaky, lying sack of shit." You are certainly a fox in Archilochus' formulation, for you "know many things." You are certainly highly intelligent as scientists measure such things. But what you evidently don't know, or fail to appreciate (which makes you either ignorant or stupid), is the hedgehog's "one big thing." And that one big thing is that if the fox attempts to attack the hedgehog, all he will get for his trouble is a face full of quills.

The majority of the common folks of Connecticut, the ones who are refusing to sign up for your benighted program of citizen disarmament, are hedgehogs. The foxes who mess with them -- or the Connecticut state police weasels who get deputized for the job -- are simply going to end up with faces full of pain. And that's if no one gets killed in the exchange.

But there is another critter in the brush that I would like to caution you about, which like the hedgehog, you evidently fail to appreciate.

I once warned an academic advocate of universal firearm registration:

There are things in life that you CAN do. There are things in life that you SHOULDN'T do.

For example, you CAN urinate on an electric fence, but it will undoubtedly be a far more religious experience than you had bargained for. Likewise it is with mandatory gun registration.

Ah, but Mike, you have moved from the academic to the brute force phase of that argument, haven't you? And you are evidently quite enthusiastic about wielding this new tyrannical power over your fellow citizens. Consequently, if you persist, you will undoubtedly in the fullness of time meet the wolverine.

When I was very young, about ten or so, I used to spend summers with my grandparents up in Michigan. My paternal grandfather was a farmer and blunt to the point of perpetual rudeness. One day, he and my grandmother fell into an argument which he rapidly, deliberately, lost. I followed him outside, convinced in my ten-year-old sense of moral indignation that he was right. He should go back in and press the point, I urged. He looked at me sadly, sagely, shook his head and said: "Son, you don't poke a wolverine with a sharp stick unless you want your balls ripped off."

The business end of a wolverine.

Now the subject of wolverines ripping off testicles was something my grandfather had some personal experience with. When he was in his twenties he was out hunting one day when he disturbed a wolverine and it attacked without warning, latching onto his upper inner thigh. Grandpa had to kill it up close and personal with a hunting knife, and he darn near bled to death getting back to the farmhouse so old Doc Smith could be called in for the repair work.

I knew the story, of course, but I also knew that Grandpa wasn't talking about vicious critters, but simply relating a parable about Grandma when she was riled. And Grandma, like many humans sorely provoked, could make a wolverine's bite at your precious parts seem positively benevolent in comparison. (She didn't lack for personal courage, either. I once watched as she waded barefoot into the muck of some bottomland they were draining to grow berries on and stood in awe as the little bitty woman chopped the heads off of nine water moccasins that had taken up residence there and disputed human encroachment. A most fearsome woman, my Grandma.)

So, let's discuss those wolverines lurking about in Connecticut and elsewhere, and the Clintonian rules of engagement that they may, to your future detriment, be operating under.

In the introduction to my as-yet unpublished novel Absolved, I discuss Fourth Generation Warfare and the Clintonian rules of engagement from 1999:

The thing is, once started, the regime will find it almost impossible to stop on any terms besides their own unconditional surrender as they would be fighting an enraged but dispersed network insurgency. It is likely that after a few weeks of such blood-letting, the administration will be unable to find anybody left alive with sufficient influence among the insurgents with whom they can negotiate an end to the horror. The fact of the matter is that they would have done their best to kill the folks they would need to stop what they started.

And they will want to stop it, oh, yes, out of concern for their own miserable hides if nothing else.

For they will have provoked a conflict that will not be directed at the war-fighters, the grunts, even those in the outnumbered federal police, but rather at the war-makers, i.e. themselves.

In this they have only Bill Clinton to blame. When the Philanderer in Chief, frustrated with Serbian intransigence in 1999, changed the rules of engagement to include the political leadership, news media and the intellectual underpinning of his enemy's war effort, he accidentally filed suit under the Law of Unintended Consequences. The Serbians knuckled under, yes. But the rest of the world took note, including (the Three Percent). I assure you, the appeal to the higher court of history in that case has yet to be decided.

As a friend of the court brief in your own interest, Mr. Lawlor, I present as evidence the initial founding of what some of my readers are now calling The One Hundred Heads Life and Casualty Company.

You will find it in The Mathematics of Liberty: "One Hundred Heads" re-examined, written more than four years ago.

But I was reminded this week that no man is an island, entire of itself. On my trip to the post office box, I was rewarded, in addition to statements from Social Security and the power bill, a single anonymous envelope. It was postmarked from somewhere in Oklahoma. It said this in handwritten block letters, spelling and punctuation as written:

Sir,

I have read you on the internet and believe in what your doing. One day the ATF will come to count coup on you & take your head. I promise to take One hundred heads for yours.

Cheyenne 0317/8541

There is a small, delicate ink drawing on the bottom of the sheet, showing what appears to be a coup stick crossed with a tomahawk and over-arched with what I'd guess are eagle feathers. 0317/8541, for the uninitiated, are the current and former MOS numbers for a Marine Scout/Sniper.

One hundred heads. I sat in the car, reading and rereading this piece of paper, touched by its simple sincerity. I have no doubt the man means what he says. I also have no doubt that a Marine scout/sniper has the skills to take a hundred heads if, God forbid, this should come to guns.

Now, Mike, take the Clinton Rules of Engagement, the principles of 4th Generation Warfare, the actuarial mathematics of the One Hundred Heads Life & Casualty Company and your threat of naked tyrannical force to wreak your will on the people of Connecticut, think for a minute or two, and look in the mirror.

What conclusion would you draw from that set of facts? Oh, it is hardly your fault, I suppose. You, the crafty fox, have no experience of hedgehogs nor any knowledge whatsoever of wolverines. It is beyond your past experience. The consummate Mandarin manipulator of laws and the bureaucracy, you think, poor man, that just because you or your power sponsors are "democratically elected" and because your side -- the domestic enemies of the Constitution as we see you -- control the courts, that you have won the argument. However, as I pointed out in my April speech on the steps of your state house, "When democracy turns to tyranny, the armed citizenry still gets to vote."

You, you silly sod, are extrapolating from your own cowardice. Just because you wouldn't risk death for your principles, doesn't mean there aren't folks who most certainly will. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but folks who are willing to die for their principles are most often willing to kill in righteous self-defense of them as well. You may be ignorant of such people and their ways. You may think that they are insane. But surely even you cannot be so clueless that, insane or not from your point-of-view, such people DO exist and in numbers unknown. This is the undiscovered country that you and your tyrannical ilk have blundered into, like clueless kindergarteners gaily (no pun intended) tap-dancing in a well-marked mine field. The Founders marked the mine field. Is it our fault or yours that you have blithely ignored the warnings? If I were a Connecticut state policeman I would be wondering if the orders of a possible KGB mole throwback were worth the terminal inability to collect my pension. Of course, you may be thinking that you can hide behind that "thin blue line." Bill Clinton's rules of engagement say otherwise.

The odds are, and it gives me no particular satisfaction to say it, is that someone is going to get killed over your unconstitutional misadventures in Connecticut. And if not Connecticut, then New York, or Maryland, or California or Colorado. And once the civil war you all apparently seek is kicked off, it would not be -- it could not be -- confined to one state.

This is not a threat, of course. Not the personal, actionable threat that you may claim. It ranks right along with -- no, that's wrong, IT IS EXACTLY LIKE -- an ex-con meeting me in the street and pointing to my neighbor's house saying, "Tonight I am going to break in there, kill that man, rape his wife and daughters and steal everything that he is, has, or may become." I warn him, "If you try to do that, he will kill you first. He may not look like much, but I know him to be vigilant and perfectly capable of blowing your head off." That is not a threat from me. It is simply good manners. Consider this letter in the same vein. I am trying to save you from yourself.

For, like that common criminal, you have announced by your unconstitutional law and your public statements in favor of its rigorous enforcement that you have a tyrannical appetite for your neighbors' liberty, property and lives. It doesn't take a crystal ball to see that this policy, if carried to your announced conclusion, will not end well for anybody, but especially for you. To think otherwise is to whistle past the graveyard of our own history.

I urge you to reconsider such foolhardiness. To paraphrase Archilochus' formulation, the fox may get a face-full of quills from the hedgehog, but the wolverine is likely to eviscerate him. And I relate this to you with all good wishes, as someone who is commanded by his God to hate the sin but love the sinner. In your own interest and that of everyone else in this country, please, I beg you, do not poke that wolverine with a sharp stick.

Have a nice day.

Sincerely,

Mike Vanderboegh

P.O. Box 926

Pinson, AL 35126