This is the example all of you set for your fellow Americans, and even children?
We just find it all of a particular flavor. We'll take you back to the old idea of guns at townhall meetings. A wonderful editorial in the Atlanta Journal Constitution by Jay Bookman, who saw a photo of one such bagger-fest in which a man holds a sign that reads, "We didn't bring our guns - this time."
It’s hard to misinterpret the message that sign is intended to communicate.
I would argue that it is a threat intended to terrorize. It is an effort to use the spectre of violence to frighten people into accepting an outcome that they would otherwise not accept.
It is attempted intimidation. It is an acknowledgment that, lacking the intellectual firepower and ammunition to carry the day, the person in question is prepared to try to settle the issue using the kind of firepower and ammunition that any idiot can purchase at a local gunshop.
It also reflects a growing mindset among some that the government just isn’t listening and thus must be made to listen, one way or the other. There’s a fundamental childishness to that attitude, a notion that equates listening to agreement. The person in question is not prepared to accept the idea that having listened to him, a majority of his fellow Americans might decide that he is wrong. So he reserves the right to try to impose his view at the point of a gun.
The sad part is, the guy probably sees himself as a defender of freedom and democracy.
Yep, Jay. We're pretty sure Ronnie Raygun and GW Bush both thought they were doing good things as they worked so very hard to wreck the country.
Yet, no one brought guns near them (ooops - forgot about President Reagan!) and nobody shouted them down during a joint session of Congress. At least the opposition had some decorum.
And, about the guns? Legal or not, it doesn't mean you should do it.
The barely veiled threat of violence sometimes not veiled at all | Jay Bookman
3 comments:
Actually, the Dems were very indecorous when Bush spoke, or did you miss the hissing during the 2005 State of the Union. Inlike Obama, Bush kept his composure. But if the Dems had been serious about decorum, they would not have shown such a shicking lack of it furing Bush's tenure. They may have been right about a few things, but Pelosi and Reid have surrendered the moral high ground with their antics.
As for Jay's insipid little peice of dreck, noone needed to come armed until Obama excoriated the union goons to beat people up and rough up the old folks. Only then, when reports of physical abuse towards the Protesters proved real, did anyone carry a weapon.
Maybe you believe in this phantom right to free health care, but you do not see the stated and real right to self-defense.
Steve, your trolling aside, we've said plenty here about the 2nd amendment. We've always found it pretty clear. What we don't understand is the mindset of some people who seem to think the constitution and bill of rights are the only rules that govern life in the United States. Even attorneys who consider themselves "strict constructionists" will admit that the English common law and some 200 years worth of American jurisprudence are the greater body of the law in the nation, and that they all fit together. If something is truly unconstitutional, lawyers will file suit, the US Supreme Court will grant a writ of certiorari and make a decision on whether said law violates constitutional principles. As for "right to self defense" or "right to a free education" - you might not find those things written explicitly into the constitution, but you will find legal interpretations that those rights do exist through the state and US codes. We've never said anything about a right to protect oneself, but we'd refer you to thinkers like Rosseau and others of the enlightenment who had much to say about the "state of nature" and the responsibilities of both individuals and government in regards to personal safety.
Well, according to the SCOTUS, the state has no responcibilities to individual personal safety, which is why it is up to individual to, ultimately, take care of themself.
By your standards, the courts have sided on that issue.
Right to education is another matter, but the list of exclusions is pretty clear, and I find it odd that a rule so plainly written is so braodly interpreted. That is something for the states to resolve, and I am happy with that.
YOu familiar with Bastiat?
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