Background music is courtesy of iTunes
Shuffle. Today’s blog begins with “Wall of Denial”by Stevie Ray Vaughan playing
in the background.
This will be the week that was – maybe –
at least for a little while longer.
Politics;
Well I have a friend – I guess, who has
absolutely no problem framing liberals in the most vile and stereotypical ways
possible. Liberals kill babies, coddle criminals, hate legitimate Americans,
lie, steal, cheat, want to steal your guns, and re-distribute your wealth. It’s
very much a cold-war mentality having settled on a new red menace.
The problem with this approach is that
it forces my back against a wall. Am I a liberal? Well, maybe not, but I am
now. The truth is that few of us are either all liberal or all conservative.
It’s seldom an all one way or the other proposition. Yet many people would
prefer that we frame every discussion in that extreme manner.
I support Obamacare – I think. It
tackled a real problem: healthcare in the United States. But, it’s over 20,000
pages long. I could never knowledgably and truthfully make a statement of
full-out support. Yet the ideological grandstanding that is driving all-out
efforts to mindlessly defeat it force me to take such a stance. The truth is
that in its 20,000-plus pages I’m sure that there are items that my liberal and
conservative friends would agree are in need of additional fixing. (Obamacare
is hardly some liberal manifesto as it is reasonably similar to a proposal
first put forth by Richard Nixon.)
Playlist: "My Humps" by Black Eyed Peas. There are some songs where
not understanding the lyrics wouldn’t be so bad.
A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
It’s all about the guns. But before even beginning to wonder
whether or not Obama is attempting a gun grab it might be worth considering
what the above words say.
They don’t say that you can’t regulate arms – just the opposite.
That would seem to indicate that registration, background checks, and all sorts
of limitations are fair game. Maybe even more importantly the second amendment
places restrictions on the federal government. States would seem to be a little
freer to trample on second amendment rights – within the allowances of their
own constitutions.
In a perfect world there would be no guns. Livestock would simply
walk up to your door and die whenever you were hungry. Obviously the world is
less than perfect, and things evolved differently. Guns are a part of our reality.
But that’s a manly hunting story and not really what is being talked about.
Assault weapons, handguns, ammunition cartridges, registration, background
checks – that is all the stuff of controversy. Is anything that is being
proposed part of some insidious plan to disarm the public? Is it an attack on
out second amendment rights?
I’m sure there is something somewhere
that proposes to trample second amendment rights, but it doesn’t stand a
snowball’s chance in hell of passing, so I think for now it is sufficient to
focus on what is possible.
Does requiring registration and
background checks infringe upon anybody’s right to own a weapon. We allow
similar checks for voting, yet don’t necessarily see that as an infringement
upon voting rights. I fail to see a significant problem, unless. . .
Unless you believe the government is out
to crush us all. If that’s the case why worry about constitutional rights?
You’re basically taking the stance that the government as it exists is not
legitimate.
Is gun registration a slippery slope
towards confiscation? As usual – for me – I reject slippery slope arguments.
Every utterance or action is a potential slippery slope towards something. We
can stop where desired.
And the playlist closes the blog with “Leaving Las
Vegas”, by Sheryl Crow.
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