Fascinating interview with Krist, former bassist for Nirvana, current chairman of FairVote:
Note, Paul Jacob also serves on the board of FairVote.
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Author: Redactor
This week, a major-party politician said that “we cannot let a minority of people — and that’s what it is, a minority of people — hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority.”
How can simply having a viewpoint — a very American thing to possess, by the way — terrorize anyone?
But of course, this person wasn’t talking about real terrorism. This person — a Democratic Party politician of high standing — was using the T-word to smear defenders of the Second Amendment.
Yes, it was Hillary Clinton, former First Lady, and former U.S. Secretary of State (an office she has now taken “full responsibility” for holding), who trotted out those words, allegedly to encourage “a more thoughtful” debate about gun control.
Demonizing her opponents as “terrorizing” her comrades is hardly a way to produce the stated result.
Them’s fightin’ words.
I know of no one who defends the Second Amendment and opposes the gun control agenda of the Democratic Party who also supports the terroristic activities of spree murderers. Not one.
We have more complicated reasons to oppose gun control than merely focusing on such violence.
But understanding those reasons would require a “more thoughtful” attitude than besmirching opponents with the word “terror.”
And as for terrorizing, there are few words more frightening coming from an American politician than “we cannot let a minority” exercise their rights — whether to arms or . . . holding “a viewpoint.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Auberon Herbert
We hold that what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot morally do, and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do.
It’s hard to keep track of things. It helps to make a list.
I’m trying to follow all the IRS-scandal stonewalling, the latest example of which is how emails inculpating Lois Lerner and others have mysteriously disappeared; with, allegedly, no server backups (see my latest Townhall column, “The Dog Ate My Country”).
How many ways have fedgov officials fudged, fabricated, prevaricated, and otherwise non-cooperated with investigators after news broke that IRS had targeted for special harassment sundry conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status?
- When the head of IRS’s department overseeing nonprofit applications, Lois Lerner, felt compelled to admit that IRS had specially targeted right-leaning organizations applying for nonprofit status, she and others put the main blame on a few low-level clerks.
- Lerner twice formally refused to testify to Congress about the doings of her own department. Yet she also asserted, formally, that “I have not done anything wrong.”
- IRS says it’ll take many years to comply with congressional requests for relevant documents. IRS was prompter when it handed abundant confidential information on conservative nonprofits to the Justice Department so that they could be selectively prosecuted.
- DOJ selected an “avowed political supporter” of President Obama to lead a meaningless “investigation” of the targeting of Obama’s critics. No prosecutions of wrongdoers are in the works.
- Initially professing outrage at the IRS’s “inexcusable” targeting, Obama later airily dismissed the affair as a “phony scandal.” On which occasion was he lying? (Hint: both.)
- Major media outlets do all they can to abet the stonewalling.
What did I miss?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
In 1910 on this date, the first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane, Washington. On the same day, in Tennessee, future Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas was born.
In 1941, Václav Klaus was born; other June 19 births include Salman Rushdie in 1947, Kathleen Turner in 1954, and Laura Ingraham in 1964.
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Auberon Herbert
Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force.
The headline: “Husband and wife shoot gunmen who try to enter their St. Louis home, killing 1, police say.”
They acted when two thugs tried to force their way into their home by using the St. Louis couple’s 17-year-old daughter as a shield. She had been outside fetching something from her car when the men grabbed her.
Inside, the father happened to see what was happening and pulled out his gun. His wife also retrieved a gun. Home invader Terrell Johnson entered first and received the first bullets. He didn’t survive. His partner Cortez McClinton — arrested in 2010 on a murder charge, but eventually released because of uncooperative witnesses — managed to escape, if only briefly. His brother took him to a hospital for chest and thigh wounds. The police picked him up there.
Mom had also gotten off a shot but did not hit either intruder, leading one blogger to opine that although her heart is in the right place, she needs practice. A reader replied, rightly, that when your own daughter is directly in harm’s way, your shooting skill is hardly the only variable.
Besides, the goal in brandishing a weapon isn’t necessarily to wound bad guys, but better yet to scare them off. There’s a deterrent effect in owning guns.
I am surprised that advocates of gun control and their compatriots in the national MainStream Media are not all over this story. For here is yet another dramatic proof of the need for effective gun control on which they constantly insist.
The gun used to thwart the invaders was very effectively controlled indeed.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On June 18, 1778, British troops abandoned Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
On June 18, 1838, Auberon Edward William Molyneux Herbert was born. Auberon Herbert (pictured) was a liberal politician in Great Britain who, after reading the writings of Herbert Spencer, became a radical individualist, promoting a doctrine he called “voluntaryism.”
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Will Rogers
We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.
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Term Limits Poster Boy #98,992,938
A Wisconsin lawmaker has changed his mind about term limits. Maybe.
Power that politicians shouldn’t have in the first place is easily abused. And it’s easy to see how incumbents who come to regard inherently abusive power over others as “normal” may succumb to other ethical laxities.
That is, power tends to corrupt. Lord Acton had a point.
On the other hand, some incumbents are morally derelict before they reach office — for example, with respect to the pledges they make to voters as a way of appealing for votes.
Which breach did Scott Krug commit? That of swerving from fidelity to the truth in 2010 about whether he would limit his tenure (“I’m for real. . . . Four years, done.”)? Or that of scuppering an “honest” pledge only after it dawned on him that if he kept his promise not to run again after serving four years, it would mean not running again after serving four years?
Does it matter? If Krug wasn’t lying back then, he’s lying right now when he expatiates about how his newfound appreciation of the Value of Experience trumps any formal vow.
I’m gratified, and not surprised, when candidates keep their term-limit pledges. I’m saddened, but also not surprised, when others fail to. Krug’s cruddy conduct is just one reason I must dispute Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s recent pronouncement that although a hyper-corrupt state like Illinois may need term limits, Wisconsin does not.
Acton’s principle is no respecter of geographic boundaries.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.