Crooks and Liars – by Susie Madrak
Rick Perlstein writes about how Democrats completely surrendered our political will to control guns when the Obama administration backed away from the Bundy ranch. And I have to admit, he makes a good point. I assumed the feds would be back later — as in, a few weeks. How long has it been now? By the time anything actually happens, will it have any real deterrent effect?
But Perlstein doesn’t mention the big honkin’ elephant in the room: Namely, at what point does the federal government literally go to war with its own citizens? Because we’re not talking about bank robbers here, we’re talking about (mostly) non-criminal cranks — scofflaws and political malcontents. So what line has to be crossed in the good old U.S. of A. before we start mowing them down to make our point? Because you can’t talk about the Bundy ranch without talking about Ruby Ridge, and Waco.
So here’s the political corner into which we’ve painted ourselves.
Do we have the ATF and BLM agents roll up in armored tanks? Do we use drone strikes? I can see the administration’s reluctance to have that confrontation — after all, it’s not as if gun control advocates were flooding the White House switchboard, screaming to ‘take them out!’ And then we do have the militia types all over the country, just waiting for an excuse to start their own local uprising. These assholes want a civil war so bad, they can taste it.
Some days, I wonder: Should we let them, and just get it over with? You know, settle the burning question about whose is bigger.
Now, as a historian, it has been my project to demonstrate that there is nothing particularly new about the fetishization of anti-constitutional insurgency as Constitution-worship on the right. I’ve written about the Minutemen, the early-’60s crowd of gun nuts who stockpiled weapons for the final showdown against the state they were sure was imminent once the Communists finally took it over, and slapped stickers on the mailboxes of perceived enemies reading, “Traitors, beware! Even now the crosshairs are on the back of your necks.” In 1966 authorities arrested their leaders and confiscated their stockpiles of tons of ammunition, bombs and even rockets. The right’s vision of sidearms as any patriot’s must-have accessory got a boost from the riots and increasing crime rates of the late 1960s. Inside the National Rifle Association, once mostly an anodyne gun-safety organization aimed at sportsmen, a faction emerged to take aim at any and all attempts at gun regulation, many of which they once supported. Laws, for example, aimed at banning the sale of guns by mail — the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine said that followed the “Communist line.” From there it was but a short distance to the conviction that gun-toting was a patriotic imperative — the better to beat back “those,” as Ronald Reagan wrote in Guns & Ammo magazine in 1975, “who see confiscation of weapons as one way of keeping the people under control.”
So what’s different now? Why is this language so prevalent, and why do so many on the far right seem so eager to act upon it? They haven’t changed. We have.
By “us,” I mean Democrats — though the kind of Democrats, to be fair, who decide party policy from Washington. Once upon a time, Democratic presidential candidates robustly argued for gun control — that, as the party platform put it in 1980 (the year the NRA made its first ever presidential endorsement, of Ronald Reagan), “handguns simplify and intensify violent crime”; Democrats support “enactment of federal legislation to strengthen the presently inadequate regulations over the manufacture, assembly, distribution, and possession of handguns.” Note no mention of machine guns, because back then the notion that there should be no barrier to their ownership would have seemed self-evidently ridiculous to most reasonable observers.
[…] In the interim, the mainstream of the Democratic Party simply gave most of the gun control argument away. Al Gore ran on a platform in 2000 that devoted about 250 words to gun control, including a pledge to push for mandatory child safety locks and a full background check and gun safety test before anyone could buy a handgun in America. Then, after Gore lost his home state, Tennessee, and other “border” Southern states, the geniuses running the Democratic Party decided to abandon gun control as an issue in order to court Southern white men (how’s that working out?).
The gun-control portion of the platform in 2004 was slimmed down to 46 words. 2012’s version gave away the store: It affirmed, “We recognize that the individual right to bear arms is an important part of the American tradition, and we will preserve Americans’ Second Amendment right to own and use firearms,” and asked only for “an honest, open national conversation about firearms” (yeah, the NRA is really interested in that), “effective enforcement of existing laws, especially strengthening our background check system,” and reinstating the assault weapon ban and closing the gun show loophole.
In other words, there is virtually no countervailing power to the now-hegemonic acceptance that there’s nothing much to do about the proliferation of guns in America. Democrats, as usual, gave an inch. The right, as usual, took a mile. And now we face the consequences.
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/06/so-what-point-do-we-actually-stand-gun
“A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity”.
Sigmund Freud
Rotfl.. that’s the only needed reply.
I can’t wait to boot your commie ass out of this country, Susie Madrak (author). You need get the hell out of here and find happiness with your friends in Israel.
She uses the derogatory term “gun nuts” to describe people who understand the constitution, history, and an American’s civic duty, and suggests here that the government should “go to war with it’s own citizens” simply for being good Americans.
I guess the Zionist takeover/genocide isn’t moving fast enough for this little bitch, and she’s hoping we all get killed just to make the world safe for thieving Jews.
why don’t you take a good look at the constitution you little whore, and if you don’t like what constitutes this country, go find another place to peddle your lies, you cheap slut. And nobody “wants a civil war” except for the genocidal Jews you work for.
On second thought, I don’t want to see you deported. You deserve to be tied to a stake and burned alive for being a witch. I’d enjoy watching that.
just waiting for an excuse to start their own local uprising. These assholes want a civil war so bad, they can taste it.
WTF, WHO IS THIS CUNT?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUrz9id6hks
FACE OF COMMUNISM
Next time you go to the courthouse or airport keep this film in mind:
Can I hang her? (the author)
Don”t buy the hype or play into the propaganda. These people get paid to stir the sh*t in the pot called the USA.
Great quote that popped up this am which is strangely appropriate to this article:
“That’s all the media and the politicians are ever talking about, the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another. That’s the way the ruling class operates in any society. They try to divide the rest of the people. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they the rich, can run off with all the f#king money. Fairly simple thing. Happens to work. You know, anything different, thats what they gonna talk about. Race, religion, ethnic and national backgrounds, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality. Anything they can do, keep us fighting with each other so that they can keep going to the bank. You know how I describe the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep them showing up at those jobs.” — George Carlin
Just add gun control to that and you have your answer as to WHY this article is even getting air time anywhere!
She was an abused child. I’m convinced she took a few to many hits of orange sunshine(for those of you that are to young, it was a type of acid) that turned her gray matter into mush. I knew a lot of hippies in the 60’s and most,but, not all thought the same way. Instead of hanging her, which by the way she probably wouldn’t understand what was going on, just send her to live with a militia group for the rest of her life. I like a little irony in life.
I’ve got a lil’ News Flash for ya’all…..
Gun Control advocates VERY MUCH want gun-owner’s killed if they don’t comply.
I’d say about 60-70% of those I’ve ‘casually’ brought up the subject around believe gun owner’s should turn in their weapons “or be killed if they don’t comply”.
It’s WAY worse than you think, trust me…………….
http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/jfkgunrights.jpg
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That’s funny Mesphisto, because unless you happen to live in a neighborhood where it’s almost entirely “liberals’, “Democrats”, or mentally disabled adults, the consensus from what is being reported in the news is the opposite of what you claim.
Are we just stirring the pot??
See here: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/08/an-anti-gun-rally-quickly-turns-into-a-pro-gun-rally/
And here: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/04/27/Anti-Gun-Rally-Outside-NRA-Convention-Draws-Twenty-Five-People
BUT THEN…we have this little sob story propaganda piece that says thousands, including 100 from Conn. including a teacher who survived Sandy Hook OH MY! Tigers and Bears, ignore what’s behind the curtain. Tug on the heart strings of parents who have lost children, who are ignorant enough to allow their emotions to override their brains in believing that guns killed their children, and NOT the person who pulled the TRIGGER! You have the perfect recipe for complacency and stupidity!
http://voiceofrussia.com/us/news/2014_06_17/Thousands-Rallied-for-Stricter-Gun-Laws-in-New-York-City-5063/
I would also add that, believing some how that a person who perceives a threat wouldn’t want that threat killed is some how abnormal would be ignorance.
Your comment, “Gun Control advocates VERY MUCH want gun-owner’s killed” only angers less thinking pro-gun advocates. Who would say the same thing in response to anyone who would try and force their compliance and take their guns away from them by force of law. It’s the same auto-human response. Like playing a fiddle.
When the 2 parts cancel each other out equally across the table of any issue, compared to it’s popularity and exposure across social circles, it equals the perfect example of my previous comment posted above.
“That’s all the media and the politicians are ever talking about, the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another. That’s the way the ruling class operates in any society. They try to divide the rest of the people.” George Carlin
Warriors learn that you should never let your emotions override your critical thinking in all conditions. React from proper training and never react on emotion, or, you will find yourself at the feet of your enemy.
Stop stirring the pot, whether your pro or anti whatever. If your not fighting for your own FREEDOM and LIBERTY from this current tyrannical fascist state currently and ignoring these divisive distractions, then your still barking up the wrong tree.
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to the one, who is striking at the root.”
Henry David Thoreau