Tuesday, September 22, 2009

WaPo writer unsuccessfully attempts to set the rules of debate with the wolverine. "How do you like YOUR balls, Mr. Cohen? Attached, or detached?"

Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist. Liberal. Urbane. Sophisticated. Without an ever-lovin' clue. As they say in Winston County, "God love him."

Healthy Debate Doesn't Involve Threat Of Guns

By RICHARD COHEN

Washington Post

Monday, September 21, 2009

Try a thought experiment: What would conservatives have said if a group of loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush?

How would our friends on the right have reacted to someone at a Reagan or a Bush speech carrying a sign that read:

"It's time to water the tree of liberty"?

That would be a reference to Thomas Jefferson's declaration that the tree "must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Pardon me, but I don't think conservatives would have spoken out in defense of the right of every American Marxist to bear arms or to shed the blood of tyrants.

In fact, the Bush folks didn't like any dissent at all. Recall the 2004 incident in which a distraught mother whose son was killed in Iraq was arrested for protesting at a rally in New Jersey for first lady Laura Bush. The detained woman wasn't even armed. Maybe if she had been, the gun lobby would have defended her.

The Obama White House purports to be open to the idea of guns outside the president's appearances. "There are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally," Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said on Tuesday. "Those laws don't change when the president comes to your state or locality."

Gibbs made you think of the old line about the liberal who is so open-minded he can't even take his own side in an argument.

What needs to be addressed is not the legal question, but the message that the gun-toters are sending.

This is not about the politics of populism. It's about the politics of the jackboot. It's not about an opposition that has every right to free expression. It's about an angry minority engaging in intimidation backed by the threat of violence.

There is a philosophical issue here that gets buried under the fear that so many politicians and media types have of seeming to be out of touch with the so-called American heartland.

The simple fact is that an armed citizenry is not the basis for our freedoms. Our freedoms rest on a moral consensus, enshrined in law, that in a democratic republic we work out our differences through reasoned, and sometimes raucous, argument.

Free elections and open debate are not rooted in violence or the threat of violence. They are precisely the alternative to violence, and guns have no place in them.

On the contrary, violence and the threat of violence have always been used by those who wanted to bypass democratic procedures and the rule of law. Lynching was the act of those who refused to let the legal system do its work. Guns were used on election days in the Deep South during and after Reconstruction to intimidate black voters and take control of state governments.

Yes, I have raised the racial issue, and it is profoundly troubling that firearms should begin to appear with some frequency at a president's public events only now, when the president is black.

Race is not the only thing at stake here, and I have no knowledge of the personal motivations of those carrying the weapons. But our country has a tortured history on these questions, and we need to be honest about it. Those with the guns should know what memories they are stirring.

And will someone please tell the armed demonstrators how foolish and lawless they make our country look in the eyes of so much of the world? Are we not the country that urges other nations to see the merits of the ballot over the bullet?

All this is taking place as the country debates the president's health care proposal. There is much that is disturbing in that discussion. Shouting down speakers is never a good thing, and many lies are being told about the contents of the health care bills. The lies should be confronted, but freedom involves a lot of commotion and an open contest of ideas, even when some of the parties say things that aren't true and act in less-than- civil ways.

Yet if we can't draw the line at the threat of violence, democracy begins to disintegrate. Power, not reason, becomes the stuff of political life. Will some group of responsible conservatives, preferably life members of the NRA, have the decency to urge their followers to leave their guns at home when they go out to protest the president? Is that too much to ask?


"Let me introduce you to my leetle friend."

Dear Richard,

I read your editorial with great interest. I hope you understand that what I am about to say comes strictly from an avuncular, friendly uncle sort of perspective. You see, you really don't know what you don't know about this subject. I will try to keep you safe by explaining.


A. We ain't "Bush Folks." Most of us Tea Partiers don't listen to the sell-out GOP or their lap dog the NRA anymore. Haven't for years. The misnamed PATRIOT Act did it for most of us. The rest of us were alienated by their corruption, by their failure to enforce our borders, by their growing government, enlarging debt beyond sanity and finally by printing money to do it all. We took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. In our eyes, Clinton was a skirt-chasing domestic enemy, Bush was an affable, badly misguided pretend-conservative domestic enemy, and now true believer Obama jumps into the tyrannical vehicle they constructed and has his foot on the gas, peeling the tires, headed straight for us -- and our kids and any future they might have had. Pardon us if we try to throw a few caltrops in the road to slow him down. The GOP laid down the predicate for Obama just as the Weimar Republic did for Hitler. Ergo, by politically defeating the GOP and NRA's corrupt arrangement and driving them effectively from the field, you no longer have them to protect you from us. You have us surrounded, you poor bastards. You are finding out what it is to deal with us directly and you don't like it one bit. Perfectly understandable.


B. We don't wear jackboots, government employees do. This isn't about left or right, which is a false dichotomy anyway, invented by collectivists to advertise their alleged opposition to other collectivists. What is the functional difference between communists and Nazis? They both like to stack up bodies, just for different reasons. And a socialist is a communist who hasn't yet figured out where they keep the guns. We Tea Partiers are for individual liberty, free men and women and free markets. We are for the ordered liberty of the constitutional republican variety, the right to property and the rule of law. You remember the rule of law, surely? You know, the thing Obama threw out when he seized GM and Chrysler, stiffed the secured creditors and gave their money to his crony friends, the auto unions? Michael Barone called that "gangster government," and rightly so. But do you know what the Founders' prescription was for gangster government? Armed citizens.


Now, I understand how you mistake the measure of the people you are messing with, I really do. First, this has become a matter of irreconcilable world views. You worship "democracy," literally "majority rule." We revere the Republic of the Founders, who, by the way, hated mob rule as much as they hated royal despotism. Avid students of history, they understood that unrestrained democracy was three wolves and a sheep, sitting down to vote on what to have for dinner. In a republic, the sheep is off the menu, and personally armed to make sure the wolves don't lose their sense of perspective when the sheepdog isn't around. But, as I say, this is a matter of conflicting world views, so you can't see this from our point of view and we, being students of history ourselves, refuse to let you persuade us that yours is anything but a suicide pact for us.


C. If you really think "an armed citizenry is not the basis for our freedoms," keep pushing us back from ours and watch what happens. You say, "our freedoms rest on a moral consensus, enshrined in law, that in a democratic republic we work out our differences through reasoned, and sometimes raucous, argument." First, I'm glad to see you still know how to use the word "republic" in a sentence, as if that means anything. The world is replete with "democratic republics" run by jackbooted thugs whose only "consensus" and "reasoning" comes from a state monopoly on the use of force. This is proven by how deep they dig the mass graves of their opponents and how high they stack the bodies. And, by the way, you ARE the same guys who your Fearless Lightworker proclaimed that now that the anointed had won the election that it was time for the rest of us to shut up, get out of the way and like it, aren't you? Does that sound like "moral consensus" and "reasoned argument" to you? Well, it sounds more like the rapist's command to us. Did you really forget it was Americans you were talking to?

D. Finally, I want to deal with this race canard you folks always wrap around every failing argument. There was a sign I saw at the 9-12 demonstration in DC (yes, I was one of the alleged "tens of thousands" you media folks couldn't count) that read, "I don't hate Obama because he's black, I hate him because he's red." Precisely. The only folks in this country who are as obsessed about race worse than a 1930s Nazi Gauleiter from Lower Saxony, is an American liberal of the 21st Century. But that club loses its sting when we cease to care about it. Take me for example. I've fought neo-Nazis and Kluxers all my life, at street level where you risk quite a bit more than your "journalistic reputation." In the '90s, when the Clinton Administration was strangely sheltering certain members of the Aryan Republican Army bank robbery gang, letting them walk the streets of Philadelphia armed and unmolested, me and my militia friends embarrassed the FBI into arresting them by posting notices, "Unwanted by the FBI." Think I'm lying? Google "Michael Brescia" and my name and see what pops up. Call ME a racist to my face and I'll punch you in the nose.

You hypocritical hothouse lily liberals disgust me. There is no one more racist than an American liberal. Why, it was armed black men in the Sixties -- the Deacons for Defense and the Panthers -- who scared you into passing the Gun Control Act of 1968. Why did you then focus on so-called "Saturday Night Specials?" I'll tell you why. Because they were the inexpensive pistols used by poor inner city folks to defend themselves from the thugs that Great Society welfare programs had set amongst them and empowered. Gun control is racist at its core. It always has been since the first slave codes disarmed slaves and free blacks alike. And you call US racist?

But here's the thing. As this is all about diametrically opposed world views, I don't expect you to get any of this. I told you all of the above to tell you this. When a black man, a citizen, shows up carrying an AR-15 at an Arizona town hall, the sound you're missing is the rattlesnake's buzz. When a grandma who's never been in a demonstration in her life, carries a sign to her nation's capitol that says, "Don't make me come back here with my rifle," the message you're ignoring is the quintessential American sentiment, "Don't tread on me." And when firearms owners like me tell you we will NOT obey any further laws that restrict our liberty, steal our property or threaten our lives or those of our children -- and that by our refusal we will force you to try to work your will upon us, even at the point of a government gun -- you are hearing the equivalent of a wolverine's growl.

You know, my Michigan farmer grandpa once told me why he didn't argue too much with my grandmother. "Son, let me tell you something," he cautioned, "You don't poke a wolverine with a sharp stick unless you want your balls ripped off."

How do you like YOUR balls, Mr. Cohen? Attached, or detached?

Then maybe you and the regime you support better drop the stick and ease on up out of our faces.

Don't start nothin', won't be nothin'.

We've been poked enough these last 75 years, and we've always backed up, grumbling. No more.

You don't have the GOP and the NRA to protect you anymore, Mr. Cohen.

It's just you and the wolverine.

Like I asked before, how do you like your balls?

Now, that's what I call a "healthy debate."

How 'bout you?


Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com
sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com

Mad Bob's pet, "Sweetie," mascot of the shadowy and feared Dogtown Rangers Militia.

"Bejabbers! Tie up the bloody hellhound, ye godless heatherns! Bloody Yanks."

19 comments:

Unknown said...

So what's the over/under on when you'll be IP banned from posting comments to Mr. Cohen?


^Hawk^
III

Anonymous said...

Hey Mike,
Our wolverine friend might have a hard time finding Mr.Cohen's balls. That guy doesn't look like he(she) has any...

Mike III said...

Even with your complete and accurate description of who the III are and what we stand for, Mike, to bad Mr. Cohen most likely will not even understand that his historical ass was just handed to him with a serving of cornbread and beans.

As for his actual white lily ass, I suppose it's up to him as to how many wolverines rip into it.

Well, in the near future, Mr. Cohen can lay his "ripped a new one" lily white ass next to his mason jarred balls that will be sitting on the shelf in his study.

Perhaps then he will understand.

Mike III

Anonymous said...

Mike,
Thanks for your wake-up comments to "Mr" Cohen. I would have replied in a more past and present historical context. To wit:

"The simple fact is that an armed citizenry is not the basis for our freedoms."
Oh, really? Try telling that to the colonial (they weren't Americans yet) soldiers under General George Washington, who fought up and down the coast, froze and starved at Valley Forge, crossed the Delaware River in the dead of winter to defeat the Hessians, and finally forced General Cornwallis to surrender at Yorktown. Do you think that they were UNARMED?? Where do you think that these armed soldiers sprang from? Someone wave their magic wand and POOF! there they were? NO! These armed colonial soldiers came from (wait for it . . . .wait for it! Tah Dah!) an armed citizenry.

"Free elections and open debate are not rooted in violence or the threat of violence. They are precisely the alternative to violence, and guns have no place in them.
On the contrary, violence and the threat of violence have always been used by those who wanted to bypass democratic procedures and the rule of law."
Again, oh really? In this one, I agree with you - in theory. But in order for it to work effectively, BOTH sides must be equally armed, or equally UNARMED. And what are the chances of THAT happening? If only one side is UNARMED, what happens then? For an all-too-recent example of what actually DOES happen, let's look at the case of the New Black Panther Party intimidation of voters in Philidelphia. How many people's vote did they influence with their threats of violence? We'll never know, will we, because Eric & the DOJ have dropped all pretences of impartiality in their dropping of prosecution of this clear-cut case.

I could go on, but I DO have to at least pretend to do some work today.

Mike, again thanks and keep up the good work.
B Woodman
III-per

Anonymous said...

Michael Collins: "I hate them for making hate necessary, and I'll do what I can to end it."

Anonymous said...

Has he forgotten about the black panthers armed with loaded "assault rifles" at the GOP convention in Texas? Where was the liberal outrage then?

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7ca_1250667222

Anonymous said...

Mike,
Tell your artist that a real wolverine's back molars are turned sideways.

They are in most mustellids, it allows a shorter jaw, so they can give a harder bite :-)

How is Absolved coming along? are you still writing or are you into editing and re-drafts?

No apology for gentle kick up the arse, I know how easy it is to avoid writing

good luck

Doc Enigma said...

The write says, "Pardon me, but I don't think conservatives would have spoken out in defense of the right of every American Marxist to bear arms or to shed the blood of tyrants."

This is illogical on its face. Reason one: Marxists cannot be held to be "American" by belief or value system because "Americans" are those who value the Constitution, private property, and the individual. Marxists despise our "deeply flawed" Constitution (hey, I didn't say it, the current president did), believe property belongs to the state, and value the collective over the individual. Reason 2: All tyrants aren't Marxists, but all Marxists are, in fact, tyrants. Reason 3: Marxists will, very willingly, shed the blood of patriots, but American patriots shed blood as the 'court of extreme last resort'.

This guy needs to go pound sand...and if he's smart, LUTHA!

Anonymous said...

"It's about the politics of the jackboot."

Well.......at least he go that part right. He just fails to realize that whoever controls the govt. controls the jackboots.

ParaPacem said...

Brother Woodman -
You forget, Washington and his men did not have TelePrompters like modern civilized people; else they could have read grandiose and eloquent lectures of bulls--t and paralyzed the Brits into mind-numbed boredom, like Dear Leader does today to keep his serfs enthralled.
BTW - I have known for a long time how the ex-comedian, David Letterman, fawned at the feet of all guests anti-American; after hearing about Obongo's appearance on the once popular show last night, my only surprise is that Letterman did not drop to his knees to offer either worship, or a quick bout of oral adoration, to his minor deity.

A Texan said...

Excellent piece, best fisking of this particular ball-less wonder I've yet seen. Yet IF he reads it, he'll fail to understand, fail to heed the warning, and probably come up with yet another fact-challenged emoti-torial about how evil and racist you, and those who think like you, are.

So be it. The rattlesnake and the wolverine have given their appropriate warnings. Hopefully someone with historical knowledge and some modicum of common sense and a survival instinct will be in a position to tell the statists to back off...though I'm not holding my breath. Just waiting for the Reichstag fire that will be coming not too long after Fauxbama's approval rating dips below 40%.

Anonymous said...

What would conservatives have said if a group of loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald Reagan..?
--Richard Cohen

John Hinckley brought a gun to Washington, D.C. in an attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan. Reagan responded by susequently signing the McClure-Volkmer Act--AKA the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986.

What does that tell you about the difference between conservatives and scruffy leftists?

MALTHUS

Luke (alias "Lines With Chrome") said...

The "politics of the jackboot"?

No Mr. Cohen, it's the politics of the RE-BOOT if your ilk don't back down.


The Second Amendment is to the federal gooberment, what CTRL-ALT-DELETE is to computers.

Happy D said...

Let us review
1. SEIU terrorists attack protestors.
2. Protestors white and black show
up armed.
3. The 14th Amendment was passed
among other reasons because of
freed slaves being disarmed.

MALTHUS I think you answered
Mr. Cohen most decisively to bad he would not read this blog.

Anonymous said...

I forgot to mention Lexington Bridge, where the citizen-farmers first fired on the British Redcoats. "The Shot Heard 'Round The World."

These were armed citizens. Not government-issued armed soldiers.

B Woodman
III-per

Anonymous said...

Very well said Mike.

theaton

Defender said...

Replies from my U.S. Senator and congressman indicate that they too are clueless. I pointed out that federal taxes took away 1/4 of my severance pay when I was laid off, and said I hoped the federal government would spend the money wisely, because I would have.
The sarcasm was WASTED on them. Both assured me that they sponsored waste-cutting measures for our government and would support candidates who likewise promised to be good stewards of our (confiscated) money.
I can hardly wait to see what will follow Obamacare's Socialization of one of our remaining economy-driving industries "for our own good."
"For your own good" is what parents say to children when they can't think of an actual reason. Do the feds owe my mother decades of back child support?

Anonymous said...

So many unreasoned assertions, so little time. But let us give it a whack anyhow...


Try a thought experiment: What would conservatives have said if a group of loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush?

Oh, the old false-premise-as-bait trick hybridized with the old false-dichotomy trick, as if the only people who could possibly be against the current gang of thugs were all "conservatives". Note also the implication that conservatives are necessarily bad, somehow. Mr. Cohen fails here. Lets see whether he fares any better elsewhere.

Pardon me, but I don't think conservatives would have spoken out in defense of the right of every American Marxist to bear arms or to shed the blood of tyrants.

Well DUH - that's right. There is a difference - a fundamental one no less - between guarding liberty for all and imposing slave conditions upon them.

Gibbs made you think of the old line about the liberal who is so open-minded he can't even take his own side in an argument.

No he doesn't. He makes me think of a man who is intelligent enough to know he has no place else to go.



The simple fact is that an armed citizenry is not the basis for our freedoms.

True, the threat of violence is not the basis of our freedoms, it is one of the components of it, and at extreme times such as this, it is the single most important one.

Race is not the only thing at stake here, and I have no knowledge of the personal motivations of those carrying the weapons.

Here he admits fully that he has no clue as to why those people are carrying firearms to the events in question.

And will someone please tell the armed demonstrators how foolish and lawless they make our country look in the eyes of so much of the world?

At the moment we don't give a damn about what the rest of the world thinks.

Are we not the country that urges other nations to see the merits of the ballot over the bullet?

Sure, back when we were a nation that was at least nominally operating on the same basis, which is no longer the case.

Shouting down speakers is never a good thing, and many lies are being told about the contents of the health care bills.

And Obama and his buddies in congress are the ones telling them! I'm glad he sees this much.

Yet if we can't draw the line at the threat of violence, democracy begins to disintegrate.

Where is your proof of this assertion, Mr. Cohen?

Will some group of responsible conservatives... urge their followers to leave their guns at home when they go out to protest the president? Is that too much to ask?

It is. Way too much.

So here we have it. A longish diatribe of unreasoned emotionalism whose apparent intent is to paint all those who disagree with the current batch of mobsters as the bad guys. It is my hope that most of the people of this nation will have the sense to relegate him to the dustbin of ignominy.

Billy Beck said...

A link to Cohen's article would have been helpful, Mike.

There are protocols to this stuff.