Sipsey Street Irregulars: Now that's just plain funny.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Now that's just plain funny.

Michelangelo's David Has a Right to Bear Arms

Italian authorities were indignant when they discovered that the Illinois weapons maker ArmaLite had an advertising campaign showing Michelangelo’s David holding one of its rifles. “The advertisement image of an armed David offends and violates the law,” tweeted tourism minister Dario Franceschini. Angel Tartuferi, director of the Accademia Gallery, which houses the sculpture, agreed: “The law says that the aesthetic value of the work cannot be altered."

13 comments:

Ex Machina said...: My likey.; March 22, 2014 at 9:56 AM
Anonymous said...: Yea, well somebody should tell Dario that his David is already armed, he has his sling in his left hand and Goliath is about to learn the terminal ballistics of a 500 cal rock.; March 22, 2014 at 10:04 AM
Ed Gage said...: It probably isn't the rifle they object to. It's the fig leaf.; March 22, 2014 at 10:20 AM
Anonymous said...: That Italian statement, if true (ok, pretty likely, although I haven't confirmed it) is as outrageous as it is hilarious. David is the quintessential warrior. While a great leader later in life, Michelangelo's work depicts him as a youth, about to .... what? Herd sheep? Have dinner? Hell no. He is about to go into battle, armed, and dangerous. The rifle is by every measure today's best equivalent of David's sling.

Equally interesting to me, although I'm not well versed in the theory, isn't David's assassination of Goliath an excellent illustration of 4thGen warfare? (All the very way to "cutting off the head" of the opposition?); March 22, 2014 at 11:04 AM
Carl Stevenson said...: Screw the Italians and their condescending, rude attitudes.; March 22, 2014 at 1:38 PM
Tom Skoch said...: What makes things even worse is that Armalite apologized.
http://www.ammoland.com/2014/03/armalite-statement-on-michelangelos-david-with-ar-50-advertisement/#axzz2vbz2ZIik; March 22, 2014 at 3:55 PM
aaronw said...: Why do I suspect that they wouldn't have complained if David were instead holding a Beretta?; March 22, 2014 at 5:35 PM
Anonymous said...: That is the beauty of living in America and not Italy. We don't have to comply with their asinine culture laws.; March 22, 2014 at 6:43 PM
THEBigFAtPanda said...: Reply to aaronw at 5:35pm: I suspect if given the choice, David would have carried a 1911 .45 and would have punched Goliath's ticket right between the eyes with it just as he did with the rock.; March 22, 2014 at 7:53 PM
Anonymous said...: Poor Venus de Milo, no right to arms for her. :-(; March 22, 2014 at 9:28 PM
Anonymous said...: Does this mean we won't be able to buy a poster of this from Armalite?; March 23, 2014 at 8:12 AM
Anonymous said...: Bring enough gun!; March 23, 2014 at 2:25 PM
Anonymous said...: Does David pass the "short arms" inspection?

B Woodman
III-per; March 23, 2014 at 8:15 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Now that's just plain funny.

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