Posted on 04/01/2013 3:34:14 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In the current debate over gun control, the pro-gun lobby has an ace card up its sleeve: We need weapons to prevent government tyranny, they say. These self-styled champions of liberty see guns as the ultimate insurance policy to protect the Constitution. The problem is that most of those making this argument also strongly support a massive U.S. military -- exactly the behemoth we must be armed against. It's the great gun gobbledygook.
Consider Marco Rubio. The senator just threatened to filibuster any gun-control legislation because the Second Amendment "speaks to history's lesson that government cannot be in all places at all times, and history's warning about the oppression of a government that tries."
The specter of government despotism looms so large our only salvation lies with a nation of armed watchmen.
But curiously, Rubio also strongly supports beefing up government power by creating a vast military establishment.
--snip--
Or take Sarah Palin. As governor of Alaska, she signed an amicus brief that claimed: "The Framers were understandably wary of standing armies and the powers of a potentially oppressive government." The Second Amendment provides for "a citizenry capable of defending its rights by force, when all other means have failed, against any future oppression." Last February, Palin even suggested that the federal government is "stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest."
But where did these bullets come from? They came from champions of a strong military -- like Sarah Palin....
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
That’s why all the Taliban came out and surrendered, begging for mercy, and our troops are marching home to victory parades just like in 1945.
There are plenty of fallacies, but an obvious one from the excerpt is that the ammo was bought for federal domestic law enforcement.
Wow! Amazing similar to what the constitution says. Dumbass.
It is not the regular military establishment we should fear. It is the clandestine army that is being built from elements of the Homeland Security teams, the Black Panthers that are not subject to prosecution, and the elements of the various administrative divisions that have “enforcement” capabilities. The CIA has always been held suspect by the more militant leftists, but now it is THEIR CIA. And FBI. And BATF. And even to some degree, the Border Patrol and ICE teams.
It’s not paranoia if they really are tracking you in preparation to hunting you down.
The article reminds me of the type of thinking and reasoning that most of us used to do when we were 14 year olds.
That would be friendly fire.
Well, he is an associate professor at Swarthmore. Whaddya expect?
He did quite a bit more than that - he fought alongside them in battle. This guy teaches political science?
It seems almost cruel to remind Professor Tierney that cognitive dissonance does not consist of two or more of his stereotypes conflicting with one another. He appears to think it incompatible for conservatives to at once support the military that they may be fighting shortly and the guns over which they will be fighting them. A very slight reformulation in the interest of accuracy might disabuse him of this confusion: conservatives respect both their freedom to keep and bear arms and the military that is sworn to protect it. There, was that so difficult?
Worse from the straw-man point of view is the revelation that some conservatives actually (gasp!) are service members and veterans! Why, we must just be so conflicted we don't know what to do with ourselves, but I'm sure that Professor Tierney will set us right. Good God, The Atlantic paid money for this drivel?
rotfl. coffee out the nostrils funny.
Another irrelevant bleat from yet another pointy-headed college type who’s never done anything in his entire life except sit in a library reading books and writing pointless articles.
I think that most FReepers used better reasoning skills than this by the age of 14.
Maybe at age 8? Even then you’re probably giving this cat too much credit.
The 2nd Amendment refers to the security of a free state. States have militias, the United States does not have a militia, it has a standing army. Apart from revenue agents, the United States did not have a national constabulary or police force until the 20th Century’s FBI and DEA. We have locally-elected sheriffs and state and locally-hired municipal police chiefs. Sheriffs can form posses. The posse comitatus act forbids involvement of the military in law enforcement. This reduces the opportunity for tyrants to arise. Our fear is the creation (as Obama has suggested) of a “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded as the military.”
It’s sad, in a way, that each crop of new gun grabbers seems to recycle the stupid “arguments”, thinking that they’ve come up with a novel, and dispositive line of reasoning that proves the pro-freedom side wrong.
In this case it’s a variant of the “you can’t fight the US military with a rag-tag group of civilians armed with puny AR-15’s”.
Which I’d be willing to stipulate, just to shut them up for a second. The point being, I’ve never heard a pro-gun Patriot talk about fighting the US military (in fact, a huge percentage of us gun nuts are either active duty, veterans, or part of military and law enforcement families).
No, the tyrants by and large don’t tend to wear kevlar helmets. They wear business suits, and sit in wood-paneled rooms, and stand before microphones and shred the constitution and our God-given freedom with their lying honeyed words.
Which is a good thing, because those cats, them, we can fight.
It’ll come to that before the end, but it would be refreshing if the other side would stop with the straw men.
Ping
“you can’t fight the US military with a rag-tag group of civilians armed with puny AR-15’s”
This statement by the gun grabbers flies in the face of recent military history. In the last hundred years, there are many examples of rag-tag groups defeating superior forces or forcing superior forces political leaders to the bargaining table. An example of the former is Castro overthrowing Batista with less than 1,000 men from the Sierra Maestra Mountains. Of the later, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, with AR-15’s, forced the nuclear armed United Kingdom to the conference table. Currently the PIRA’s former leader Martin McGuiness is a deputy minister in the Northern Ireland government.
I don’t know any veterans who own guns and are concerned about the possibility of having to fight them one day. However, I know several who seem a bit concerned over DHS and the militarized law enforcement.
That statement is so asinine that no rebuttal should even be necessary among adults.
I don't see the military of any size as being synonymous with "government tyranny." The military certainly can be the means to establish and perpetuate a tyranny.
But it can also be the means of preventing one.
A lady walking alone at night targeted by a rapist is 1/300,000,000th of this country under attack. The military, police, et al are not there when she needs defending.
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