Let me begin this post with a warning that it is a rant and will therefore come with the inevitable disjointed arguments presented in what is more than likely to be a chaotic jumble peppered with regrettable expletives that a more erudite columnist would never deign to use.
Before I begin this tirade, let me present the "Cliff Notes" for any of you who wish to understand my basic point without the necessity of even scanning this post. To all leftists, self-congratulatory elitists, moral idiots, progressive retards, and liberals who believe that the loss of freedom, up to and including the right to self-defense, should apply to the Little People (and, of course, you are the Little People) and ONLY to the Little People while they themselves retain the fullest expression of privilege and protection afforded the Ruling Class:
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| "Do I make myself clear?" |
For the rest of you kittens, I appreciate your determination to struggle through the ravings of a slightly hungover woman hopped up on four cups of strong coffee and annoyingly damp from wrestling leaves and twigs out of the coat of a squirming little dog who saw fit this morning to gambol through bushes which were thoroughly soaked from a week of steady downpour.
To put it mildly, I'm a bit peevish.
So when I read this at Rachel's...
The wonderful British blogger David Thompson links to a piece by the pompous leftist British writer George Monbiot, who describes
an encounter with reality many years ago that apparently did not sink
in very well, seeing as how he’s still a pompous leftist (or even
“anarchist” as he fancies himself). I bolded my favorite parts.
A group of us had occupied a piece of land on St George’s
Hill in Surrey, 70 miles from where we now sat. In 1649, the Diggers
had built their settlement there, in the hope of establishing a “common
treasury for all”. Our aim had been to rekindle interest in land reform.
It had been going well – we had placated the police, started to
generate plenty of public interest – when two young lads with brindled staffordshire bull terriers arrived in an old removals van.
Everyone was welcome at the site and, as they were
travellers, one of the groups marginalised by the concentration of
control and ownership of land in Britain, we went out of our way to
accommodate them. They must have thought they had died and gone to heaven.
Almost as soon as they arrived they began twocking stuff. A radio
journalist left his equipment in his hire car. They smashed the side
window. Someone saw them bundling the kit, wrapped in a stolen sleeping
bag, into their lorry. There was a confrontation – handwringing appeals to reason on one side, pugnacious defiance on the other – which eventually led to the equipment being handed back.
...I thought how utterly amusing it was that those who were protesting the indignity of private property in the hands of
others were nonetheless indignant when
their private property ended up in the hands of others. Goose, meet Gander. Y'all should really get along.
Rachel points out that Mr. Monbiot also believes that Britain should tax the living crap out of anyone who has "too much living space". In a charming bit of irony, what might be considered "too much" is more than likely defined by people who live in castles and manors and palaces. This tax should be so punitive that one is forced into taking in a boarder to avoid paying it. Such boarder must surely be allowed into one's home for free, it would follow, since private commerce is a sin or something to Mr. Monbiot. The justification for his position is that housing resources should be commonly owned because they are universally needed. What he seems pathologically unable to ascertain is that the travellers who stole everything they could get their hands on forcing
-- handwringing appeals to reason -- were simply employing his philosophical ideas in the most immediate and genuinely intimate way possible. They were just taking it because they needed it. Why create red tape where it isn't necessary? The thrifty and efficient travellers were simply removing the middleman. Jolly good.
Barely able to process the enormous hypocrisy of such a position by celebrated "smart guy" Monbiot,
I then read that another celebrated "smart guy" and journalist David Gregory, obviously a man of refined impulses who would never succumb to the lurid temptation of violence that the rest of us hair-trigger idjits fumbling with our Bibles while trying to pick our noses during target practice always seem so frighteningly close to doing, held up an illegal magazine clip on TV to illustrate the existence of such accessories. Apparently Mr. Gregory's "
AH HAH!" moment in the face of NRA lobbyist Wayne LaPierre was worth the flagrant illegality of having such an item in his possession at all, much less brandishing it on air. It seems, kittens, that a stunt that would land you in prison was performed by the intelligent Mr. Gregory because he was "committing an act of journalism." One's right to own firearms therefore, while constantly questioned and restricted under the 2nd Amendment, is wide open under the 1st Amendment, provided you have the proper credentials to open your yap. Not a member of the journalistic intelligentsia? Then shut up and put on this here orange jumpsuit, Mr. Average Citizen. And quit picking your nose.
Of course it is also obvious to all but the most casual of observers that the real lesson in Mr. Gregory's astonishingly courageous journalistic action (fully protected under the 1st Amendment) is that our
gun laws are ineffective because they are such a hodge podge, changing from state to state.
The Gregory case incident highlights the problem with the country’s gun
laws, a patchwork of state, local and federal regulations that make it
almost impossible for jurisdictions that want to enact stricter
regulations to do so with any kind of effectiveness.
Gun advocates often point to crime rates in Chicago, Washington and
New York City — which have some of the country’s most robust gun control
laws — as evidence that gun restrictions don’t work to deter crime. But
the problem is that, in the absence of a robust national law like the
Assault Weapons Ban, it’s incredibly easy for someone to simply go to
the next jurisdiction over to buy a gun or ammunition that is banned in
their hometown.
While
it would have been impossible for Gregory and his staff to purchase the
magazine he used in the District of Columbia, they could have easily
visited one of the many stores
ringing the city in its Virginia or Maryland suburbs, all within just a
few miles of their studio. Or you can simply order high-capacity
magazines like the one Gregory used on eBay or off a dozen other websites.
“Don’t
wave Chicago because where are Chicago’s guns coming from? We trace the
weapons that come into my city. They’re not coming from [Chicago],”
Newark Mayor Cory Booker said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday after Wall
Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan raised this exact point. “They’re
coming from places that have free secondary markets where criminals and
gun runners can easily buy weapons and pump them into a community like
mine, where it is easy for a person who is a criminal to get their hand
on a gun.”
Allow me to point out where this line of reasoning is headed. Gun bans don't work. Even the Educated and the Elected admit they don't work and they will never work -- so they must be implemented everywhere and for everyone...you know, so they will finally work. Otherwise someone somewhere will get a hold of a gun and use it illegally. It is an accepted fact to the more intelligent among us that any gun anywhere is a potential threat to everyone everywhere unless, of course, it is in the hands of the "proper authorities". You, Mr. Average Citizen, are no longer considered a "proper authority". Your government now considers you a "threat." We have an orange jumpsuit for you right here....
And I do hope you're not ill-bred enough to question whether the same person who would soullessly commit mass murder would instead meekly hand over his guns to the authorities. That would be in poor taste because...
MORE GUN CONTROL = PROBLEM SOLVED. (And if the problem isn't solved, we promise to eliminate every last freedom until it is. You have our word.)
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One of the most remarkable things about the way progressives view the insane world their ideas create is that when the inevitable disasters occur from their stupid ideas, their solution is always to increase the stupid. If some gun control leaves law-abiding citizens unarmed and sitting ducks for criminals, then
more gun control is obviously needed. If
even more gun control creates "gun-free" zones where mass murders can happen, then we need to make the entire country a "gun-free" zone. We need
more more MORE, not less. You have to be very, very smart to understand this.
Of course, if they're wrong, they have that covered too:
John Hayward of the conservative-leaning Human Events website, frames it
as a “Ruling Class” versus “Little People” divide, pointing out that
"David Gregory is ... a highly-paid, high-profile employee of a
high-powered news network – in other words, a member of the Ruling
Class. It’s supposed to be tastefully understood that most of the little
rules for Little People don’t apply to him, any more than demands for a
helpless and disarmed citizenry mean the Ruling Class will disarm its
own bodyguards."
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| And also resource control and space control.... |
So remember, when government offers
more of anything,
it always represents the loss of freedom for someone. Eventually that "someone" is you.
So hand over those guns, Mr. Average Citizen Little Person. Your Overlords of the Ruling Class don't want anyone getting hurt.
And while you're handing over those guns, perhaps you can find some room for a comrade? It's been determined by the Central Committee that you have entirely "too much living space."
Of course, if you disagree, we have a rent-free accommodation specially designed to have exactly the correct amount of living space. Oh...and it comes with its own fashion-conscious wardrobe. Here's your orange jumpsuit.
Don't say government never did anything for you.
FORWARD!
(And HEY! I didn't swear once. I let Mr. Gillette do that for me.)
