Singer Tony Bennett Says Other Countries Will Invade U.S. to Stop Gun Violence

Singer Tony Bennett Says Other Countries Will Invade U.S. to Stop Gun Violence By Matthew Sheffield Created 02/07/2013 - 11:44am

Tony Bennett is one of America's most popular singers but he has proven once again that talent in the arts is no predictor of intelligence.

At a Wednesday press conference, the outspoken “pacifist” Bennett compared gun rights activists to Nazis and said that if the United States did not do something to curtail violence in this country, the rest of the world would “take care of us in a really bad way,” just like they did in World War II to Germany.

In a subsequent interview with CNN, Bennett declined to defend his comments but he did not distance himself from them either. Here’s what he said in full at the conference:

It’s the kind of turn that happened to the great country of Germany where Nazis came over and created tragic things and they had to be told off. And if we continue this kind of violence and accept it in our country, the rest of the world is really going to take care of us in a really bad way.

We should learn that we’re the greatest country because we’re all different nationalities, we’re all different religions, and we should show the rest of the world how to behave.

Later in the day on the CNN show “The Situation Room,” Bennett was asked about his remarks and how he was potentially alienating many of his fans by being so anti-gun. Asked what message he had to people who like his music but who disagree with his position, he responded: “Well, that’s their ignorance.”

Toward the end of the discussion, host Wolf Blitzer meekly asked the singer about his offensive comparison of gun-rights advocates to Nazis:

“You served our country admirably, heroically in World War II and we’re grateful to you for that and I just want to play another clip from what you said up on Capitol Hill today because it brings back memories of World War II,” Blitzer said, firmly placing the softball on the tee.

Bennett’s son and manager, Danny, immediately interjected before his father could answer, doubling down on the service angle:

“Well, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He’s a war hero so that’s the reference.”

The singer could have left that remark well enough alone but he decided to continue the discussion, much to the apparent chagrin of his son who cleared his throat loudly before Bennett could speak.

“War is the lowest form of human behavior. Killing is the worst form of—” Bennett began before veering off into touchy-feely land as he referenced his recently published book, Life Is a Gift. “Life is a gift. We are blessed with being alive. We should enjoy it and enjoy our neighbors and help our cousins and relatives, our friends. One another, we should all help one another. It’s a gift. We have a gift with our life.”

One wonders what other offensive statement Bennett had in mind before he caught his son’s signal to pipe down.

danny-bennett-tony-bennett.jpgBe that as it may, though, Bennett’s reference to other countries having to defeat Nazi Germany is an interesting one since he has previously questioned whether or not it was even worth attacking Hitler. In a October 11, 2011 interview also on CNN, Bennett was decidedly noncommittal when asked whether the world was morally just in defending itself from Adolph Hitler’s regime:

That’s a very difficult question because I think we should have a society of highly educated, intelligent people that will think realistically about how to do things. When I said to you earlier that the lowest form of nature is to kill someone, it's the lowest form of humanity, that's the bottom of the line. So we’re actually intellectual cavemen at this point. No matter how much technical things we work out, we're still fighting. And it's my dream that some day we'll find out, everybody will learn that what a gift it is to be alive and how we should cherish one another and appreciate one another.

Bennett also feels the same way about the current American struggle against radical Islamic terrorist groups. In a September 2011 interview with radio host Howard Stern Bennett actually wondered “Who are the terrorists? Are we the terrorists or are they the terrorists?”

The illogic is enough to make one’s head spin: The rest of the world will invade America if it doesn’t pass gun control because we will be like the Nazis in creating violence. But such an action would be wrong because attacking Germany in World War II was not morally justified nor is attacking Islamic terrorist groups.

On what basis then are gun control laws, which must be enforced by armed government agents, morally correct?

A transcript of the conversation from the February 6 edition of The Situation Room follows:

WOLF BLITZER: All right. So you want to get involved in this fight. What do you exactly want to achieve?

TONY BENNETT: The assault weapons should be illegal in the United States. They should be—they were made for war and they should—and they don’t belong in our, in the citizens’ hands of our great country.

BLITZER: The hardest part of this whole fight—getting these assault-type weapons banned—might be a little bit easier expanding background checks or magazines, or if you will, the amount of bullets in a magazine. But the assault weapons, that’s an uphill struggle.

KATE BOLDUAN (CNN correspondent): A lot of people talk about wanting -- a lot of people may talk about wanting to get involved in an issue, but why -- what brings you and your father to Washington? Why did you want to get out so front and center on this issue?

DANNY BENNETT: Well, I was raised a pacifist. You know, Tony fought in World War II, at the Battle of the Bulge, liberated concentration camps, came back a pacifist, marched with Martin Luther King and Ed Solomon in 1965. A lot of people don’t know this. He doesn’t wear it on his sleeve. Feels that that’s the citizen’s responsibility. And we grew up with that dear to our heart.

This is a public safety issue for us. It’s not about taking away guns. It’s not a Second Amendment. It’s controlling the kind of guns that, again, an uphill battle, but what isn’t an uphill battle? Martin Luther King was an uphill battle. You have to -- you have to stand up.

Now is a time to act and the president’s stepping up, and we’re very proud of that. Mayor Bloomberg and those efforts. And we’re here to support that, however we can.

BOLDUAN: Mr. Bennett, you’ve seen music and Hollywood evolve over the time of your career. Do you think the music industry, Hollywood, is partially to blame for the gun violence we're seeing in this country? Glorifying gun violence?

BENNETT: You know, I really don’t because it’s interesting that Canada is a great neighbor to us and they really watch all of the television that we have in America. They watch all of it. So they see all of it and they don’t get into that—all these violent tragedies have happened in the United States. They watch it and they just realize ‘Well that’s films and magazines and all that kind of thing.’ But they don’t fly out of control like what’s happening in the United States.

BOLDUAN: What do you say to your fans then who say they love you, they love your music, they love your career but they really, they just don’t agree with you on this issue?

DANNY BENNETT: And I think that’s something that’s important to say here that it’s their right to have their opinion and again, a lot of people step up about Hollywood and saying ‘mind your own business,’ well the highest office that somebody can attain under a republic is that of the citizen. It’s not, we forget this. And entertainers are people, too. We’re all citizens and I think it’s a responsibility of each citizen to raise their voice.

BLITZER: You served our country admirably, heroically in World War II and we’re grateful to you for that and I just want to play another clip from what you said up on Capitol Hill today because it brings back memories of World War II. I’ll play the clip and I’ll let you elaborate, explain what you meant.

BENNETT (earlier video): It’s the kind of turn that happened to the great country of Germany where Nazis came over and created tragic things and they had to be told off. And if we continue this kind of violence and accept it in our country, the rest of the world is really going to take care of us in a really bad way.

We should learn that we’re the greatest country because we’re all different nationalities, we’re all different religions, and we should show the rest of the world how to behave.

DANNY BENNETT: Well, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He’s a war hero so that’s the reference.

BLITZER: So the fact that he was obviously, dramatically influenced by World War II—

BLITZER: —and that’s still part of your life right now and you see some connection with your experience.

BENNETT: —the lowest form of human behavior. Killing is the worst form of—you know, I just finished writing a book, I’m not plugging it right now.

BENNETT: Life is a gift. We are blessed with being alive. We should enjoy it and enjoy our neighbors and help our cousins and relatives, our friends. One another, we should all help one another. It’s a gift. We have a gift with our life.

DANNY BENNETT: Well, I was raised a pacifist...

Pacifism: The Ultimate Immorality by Raymond Kraft

Last week, Jack and Jill Pacifisto were walking home through the park after dinner with friends, during which they had spent a few hours discussing the immorality of violence and war and their commitments to send more money to progressive activists over the next year. Suddenly, Tony Thug stepped out of the shadows and pointed a pistol at Jack and said, “Give me your wallet,” and, pointing the gun at Jill, “Your purse.”
“What?” asked Jack, incredulous, “Hey, we don’t want any trouble. We’re pacifists. We aren’t going to hurt you.”
“Not my problem,” said Tony, “Gimme your money.”
So Jack and Jill did, and then Tony said, “And now gimme your watches, rings, jewelry, everything worth anything.”
“Hey,” said Jill, “This is my wedding ring!”
And Tony said, “Not my problem.”
Jack and Jill handed over their wallet, and purse, and all their jewelry and Rolex watches, and then Tony shot them both twice in the chest and picked up the loot and stepped back into the shadows.
As Jill lay dying she whispered, “Jack? Why didn’t you fight back? Why didn’t you have a gun?” Those were her last words.
“I couldn’t,” whispered Jack. “I’m a pacifist.” Those were his last words.
A few days later, Bill Thaxton and his wife were walking home through the park after dinner, when Tony Thug stepped out of the shadows.
“Give me your wallet, your purse,” said Tony, pointing his gun first at Bill, and then at his wife. He did not know that Bill was an old lawman, and had been a Marine sniper when he was young, and was active in the Single Action Shooters Society and had a concealed-carry-permit. Tony assumed that the old man was just an old man with some money and a few credit cards in his wallet walking home from dinner.
“Sorry, friend, I don’t like guns, and I don’t want any trouble,” said Bill.
“Not my problem,” said Tony, “Gimme your wallet, your purse,” he said, waving the gun at Bill’s wife, “Rings, watches, everything.”
“And what if I don’t?” asked Bill.
“I’ll shoot you both. Her first,” said Tony, pointing his gun at Bill’s wife again.
“Well,” said Bill, “Okay, honey, do what he says.”
She tossed down her purse. Bill reached slowly for his left lapel with his right hand and then, like lightning, did a cross-draw with his left and came out blazing with his trusty little 9, nailing Tony three times.
As he lay on the sidewalk dying, Tony Thug was heard to mutter, “Damn, I shoulda stuck with the pacifists . . .”
An acquaintance wrote me last week to tell me proudly how he had been a pacifist since the ‘60s. His letter set me thinking about pacifism, which is the ultimate and vilest form of immorality.
If you are Hitler, or Saddam, or Osama, or Ahmadinejad, your desire to kill those you dislike is at least honest and open. You wear you hate on your sleeve and we know who and what you are. But the Pacifist wears his refusal to resist evil as if it were a badge of honor, and claims it as a sign of his or her absolute moral superiority. The Hitlers and Osamas are at least honest about who they are, the Pacifist is not. Not even to himself.
The German Pastor Martin Niemoller wrote a poem circa 1946 about the quiescence of German intellectuals in the face of the Nazi rise to power that has become famous. Translated, it reads:
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent,
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists
I did not speak out,
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews
I did not speak out,
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me
there was no one left to speak out.
The Pacifist says something like this, but, unlike Niemoller, without apology. He says:
When you come for my allies
I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for my countrymen
I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for my neighbor,
I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for my mother,
my father, my brother,
my sister, I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for my wife,
my husband, my son,
my daughter, I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for me,
I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
The Pacifist claims that he (or she) is too good to fight against evil, and this is the catastrophic intellectual and moral failure of Pacifism. In the guise of being too good to oppose evil, the Pacifist invokes the ultimate immorality by aiding and abetting and encouraging evil, on the pretext of being too pure, too wise, too sophisticated to fight evil, thereby turning the pretense of goodness and purity into an invocation and license for evil to act without opposition.
The moral stance of the Pacifist is, unwittingly perhaps, homicidal, genocidal, fratricidal, suicidal. The Pacifist says, in effect: “There is nothing good worth fighting for. And there is nothing so evil worth fighting against.”
The Pacifist is willing to give evil free reign, because he or she thinks or feels that fighting against evil is even worse than evil itself . . . an intellectual and moral equivocation of monumentally staggering proportions. In order to be a Pacifist, one must hold that Nazism or Islamism or Communism or any other puritanical totalitarian ideology that seeks to slaughter or oppress all the Jews or all of any other race or tribe is no worse, is not morally inferior, to the existence of Jews and Judaism, or whatever other race or tribe is the whipping boy of the day.
To be a Pacifist, one must hold that acquiescence to a Jihad that seeks to destroy Western Civilization is no worse than Western Civilization, even though the Jihad seeks to extinguish intellectual freedom, religious freedom, political freedom, and ultimately even the freedom to be a Pacifist.
As the English philosopher Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” The Pacifist replies, “I am so good that I will do nothing, I will hurt no one, even if that means that good will be destroyed and evil will win. I am so peaceful that I will not discriminate between the goodness of good and the badness of evil, certainly not with enough conviction to take up arms, literally or figuratively, against the triumph of evil over good, of totalitarianism over freedom, of barbarianism over civilization.”
And so the Pacifist, perhaps unthinkingly, unwittingly, mistakenly, is deeply mired in his intellectual confusion, but surely and unequivocally, the epitome of evil itself, For the Pacifist devoutly believes that by refusing to fight against evil he is affirming that he is good, too good and pure to oppose evil, too good and pure to fight evil, to good and pure to kill evil. But in the end, he is the enabler without whom the triumph of evil would not be possible.

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