A thought came to mind as I was having a cup of coffee while observing the flag that I just put up to honor the 75th anniversary of D-Day. It was in conjunction with the memory of ex-president Obama’s recent statements in Brazil about our gun laws – “… our gun laws don’t make much sense”. His nonsensical comments are part of the long, twilight Progressives’ struggle against American self-reliance.
Here’s the clip of his remarks:
As a 30-year veteran of the classroom, and way back to my days in UC Santa Barbara’s grad school of Education 40 years ago, there’s been a persistent campaign to devalue the American value of self-reliance. It doesn’t end with our schools. It permeates the beliefs of most left-of-center sectarians like Obama. It’s at the heart of Progressivism since the days of Herbert Croly and John Dewey.
Back to Obama’s statements. He makes patently false contentions that Americans can buy “any” gun, including machine guns, and over the internet. Just to clarify, as anyone in the gun business knows, you can’t buy machine guns (It’s so difficult and expensive as to make it nearly impossible), buy a gun on the internet (It must go to a FFL dealer and undergo the requisite background check), and, as you probably guessed, heavy regulation makes the word “any” silly in relation to gun talk in America.
Why the promiscuous willingness to misspeak on the subject? People will say and believe even falsehoods if it will further the end that they seek. The progressive goal from the days of its birth in the 19th century is the reshaping of the human mind. Progressives have long wanted to make a “better” human being by replacing the individual with the group. That means individual accountability, responsibility, and self-reliance are suppressed in favor of a collectivist ethic.
It’s the main reason for the pedagogy of group learning and a curriculum infused with the carping about “buccaneer capitalism”, the worship of FDR, and the substitution of an American identity with a world one. The larger the collective, the better.
Your kids are taught to be world citizens with environmentalism principally as the catalyst.
Every incident of mayhem with a gun – like the one in Virginia Beach – becomes the opportunity to advance the ball. Now, Dem presidential contenders are open about gun confiscation, something not said in polite company just a year ago.
Will fewer guns in the possession of citizens reduce “gun violence”? Maybe, but not “violence”. Pressure cookers, fertilizer, and box cutters have proven to be quite lethal. I have great faith in human beings to adapt. If the desire for slaughter is present, and guns not available, knifings and anything cooked up in a garage will do just as well.
What’s at stake is the very nature of our American character. Americans not coddled in an urban mommy-government may recoil with horror at the prospect of dependence on an unionized government worker for the personal safety of themselves and their loved ones.
The debate about guns is really a debate about what it means to be an American. One the one hand is the belief that we are capable of taking care of our own. On the other is government dependency. It’s a choice between self-government and perpetual adolescence?
RogerG