…you might buy someone else the time they need to get out.

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger;

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

Let pry through the portage of the head

Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it

As fearfully as doth a galled rock

O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,

Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.

**Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,

Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit

To his full height.**

Our friend Ann has said it many times, but since she’s off today it’ll have to be me. Make sure you’re ready. Lift weights and run sprints. Live clean and get to Confession and Communion often. These are the very least things to do.

When you hear the shots, scream your act of contrition while you run at the bastards.

Kathy Shaidle quotes

“The Bataclan isn’t an enormous venue, and chaos makes for terrific cover. You might have waited for the next time the terrorists ran out of bullets in their magazines—according to reports, they reloaded their rifles three or four times—and then charged and took a shot. You might’ve missed. You might’ve spooked the killers, causing them to detonate their explosive vests. You might’ve accidentally hit innocent bystanders. But it’s also entirely possible that you could’ve shot one of those evil ISIS creeps in the head.

There were three terrorists at the Bataclan on Friday night; if you happened to be there with nine other friends, all armed, the odds of the siege ending much sooner and with far fewer killed are not bad.

“What we’ve seen in Paris this weekend is not an attack, or an incident, or a tragedy. It’s war, and war, like it or not, is fought with guns. Because terrorism works precisely by striking at random, it’s silly to expect the police to be able to protect everyone at all times.

“When there are men out there teaming up to kill you, the rational and prudent thing to do is to at least make sure you have a chance to fight back.”

~

When you see someone threatening to kill or harm others, you have a choice; you can choose to risk your life in the hope of saving someone else or you can cringe with the rest of the victims.

This is not peace time, and we all know full well that we may one day be faced with that choice and we all wonder what we would do. But the question you should ask yourself is not, How do I stay alive? but, Have I been to confession recently? And the answer damn well better be yes.

The lapdog media has taught us to be afraid only of being called “rightwing” or a “fascist” and have used and played on that fear for years to turn us all into helpless, cringing victims bleating for the state to come and rescue us. But the people in that concert hall on Friday bleated loud and the state came too late. This should teach us who survive all we need to know.

Are these young people “fascists”? Are they “rightwing”?

Will it matter what they call you when you’re lying on the floor of the concert hall in a pool of your friend’s blood, or diving behind a table at a bar, or hiding under your seat on a train?

~