It's My Blog

Today Clemson got shocked in Columbia and fell to the Gamecocks 34-17.

I was completely caught off guard by the way we played today. It reminded me of last year's Nebraska debacle, only worse. The game started out great, just like I expected. CJ Spiller had a kickoff return for a touchdown, SC got the ball and Garcia threw an interception, and our offense went on the attack. We were marching right down the field using the intermediate passing game, exploiting the middle of the field...

And then, the ghost of Rob Spence reared his ugly head. I really just don't know what happened, it's like someone hit a switch and Billy Napier reverted back to Fun 'N Punt mode. We ran a fake reverse pass that of course didn't come close to working and it completely destroyed any sort of rythm that we had. That was the turning point in the game, early in the first quarter. Yes, we got a first down out of it because of a late hit, but that play signaled to our players that our coaches are fools and signaled to Steve Spurrier that he was up against an offensive coordinator who had no clue what he was doing.

The rest is history. Screens, pitch outs, receiver tunnel screens, reverses, and no production. Our offense laid a giant egg out there against a decent defense but definitely nothing top-25 worthy. It was almost like we were trying to make them look like world beaters, doing everything left and right, but nothing up the damn field.

Meanwhile, Spurrier noticed that the one pass his QB threw over the middle got intercepted, so he started picking on our corners, especially Chancellor. We didn't adjust to this until the second half, and SC was able to use a mixture of passes to the outside and running to run up the score.

I was starting to think that Napier had learned his lessons this year and was growing as an offensive coordinator but this game proved me completely wrong. Our offensive coaching staff is a huge problem for our team and something needs to be done. I like Dabo as the head coach and I like our defense, but our offense hasn't changed since the days of the Tommy Bowden Fun 'N Punt.

Labels: Clemson, football

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Posted by Tom on 8:14 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

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Posted by Tom on 9:24 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

The History Channel is running a special series called "World War II in HD" and I've caught a couple of episodes this week while trying to catch some Z's. It's a great show and History Channel has done a great job on this. However, it just makes me sad and angry to watch these episodes.

We're all taught that America was this great hero in entering World War II and we fought an evil dictator in Adolph Hitler and an evil Empire in Japan and we saved the world from their evil. Little to no time is ever spent on what actually caused this war. People just skim over Hitler as if he alone with his charisma was able to turn millions of Germans into Jew hating world conquering madmen. This is simply not the case.

The fact of the matter is that the "progressive" movement in the early 1900's caused World War II, and we as a nation were forced to send off our best, bravest, most valuable men to fight and die as a consequence. We sacrificed our best resource because of the misguided ideas of fascism, socialism, communism, and every other statist manifestation that came from these progressives. What did we get for it? Our own watered down Fascism in the form of the Income Tax, The Federal Reserve, Anti-Trust laws, Social Security, and a hole host of other New Deal monstrosities.

So how did this happen? Woodrow Wilson declared in 1917 that "the world must be made safe for Democracy" and so we had to go over to Europe and defeat Germany for the sake of others. So we did, we sacrificed our lives and treasure and after we "won" we setup a new democracy in Germany and a new League of Nations to keep this kind of thing from happening again.

So what did that accomplish? The German people "freely" elected Adolph Hitler, who promised them all of the great luxuries of socialism including free healthcare, jobs for all, equal distribution of wealth, etc. Sound familiar? As soon as none of this actually materialized, Hitler blamed the Rich and aggressively targeted them. He also blamed the Jews, the gays, and basically anyone that had any sort of irregularity at all. Midgets, handicapped, people with autism, everyone was blamed for Germany's woes. So what was the solution? Hitler sold the German people a two pronged approach:
1) Conquer other nations and loot their wealth (or as he put it, "take back what is rightfully ours.) and
2) Loot and Imprison all of the "undesirables" who are "the true cause of our problems." (which eventually led to enslavement and then death camps.)

Statism can only lead to this. Socialism, Fascism, Communism can only lead to this. Those systems simply do not produce any wealth or any prosperity, they simply loot it from the most able within them. When that revenue runs out, they are forced to go after someone else to loot their wealth, that means the rest of us.

Ayn Rand illustrates this point perfectly:

Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships. By the nature of its basic principles and interests, it is the only system fundamentally opposed to war.

Men who are free to produce, have no incentive to loot; they have nothing to gain from war and a great deal to lose. Ideologically, the principle of individual rights does not permit a man to seek his own livelihood at the point of a gun, inside or outside his country. Economically, wars cost money; in a free economy, where wealth is privately owned, the costs of war come out of the income of private citizens—there is no overblown public treasury to hide that fact—and a citizen cannot hope to recoup his own financial losses (such as taxes or business dislocations or property destruction) by winning the war. Thus his own economic interests are on the side of peace.

In a statist economy, where wealth is “publicly owned,” a citizen has no economic interests to protect by preserving peace—he is only a drop in the common bucket—while war gives him the (fallacious) hope of larger handouts from his master. Ideologically, he is trained to regard men as sacrificial animals; he is one himself; he can have no concept of why foreigners should not be sacrificed on the same public altar for the benefit of the same state.

The trader and the warrior have been fundamental antagonists throughout history. Trade does not flourish on battlefields, factories do not produce under bombardments, profits do not grow on rubble. Capitalism is a society of traders—for which it has been denounced by every would-be gunman who regards trade as “selfish” and conquest as “noble.”

Labels: History, TV

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Posted by Tom on 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post