“Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.

By Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.

The post-McGovern Democratic Party, by contrast, while losing the bulk of its conservative Dixiecrat contingent in the decades after the civil rights revolution, has retained a more diverse base. Since the Clinton presidency, it has hewed to the center-left on issues from welfare reform to fiscal policy. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.

What happened? Of course, there were larger forces at work beyond the realignment of the South. They included the mobilization of social conservatives after the 1973Roe v. Wade decision, the anti-tax movement launched in 1978 by California’s Proposition 13, the rise of conservative talk radio after a congressional pay raise in 1989, and the emergence of Fox News and right-wing blogs. But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrichand Grover Norquist.

From the day he entered Congress in 1979, Gingrich had a strategy to create a Republican majority in the House: convincing voters that the institution was so corrupt that anyone would be better than the incumbents, especially those in the Democratic majority. It took him 16 years, but by bringing ethics charges against Democratic leaders; provoking them into overreactions that enraged Republicans and united them to vote against Democratic initiatives; exploiting scandals to create even more public disgust with politicians; and then recruiting GOP candidates around the country to run against Washington, Democrats and Congress, Gingrich accomplished his goal.

Ironically, after becoming speaker, Gingrich wanted to enhance Congress’s reputation and was content to compromise with President Bill Clinton when it served his interests. But the forces Gingrich unleashed destroyed whatever comity existed across party lines, activated an extreme and virulently anti-Washington base — most recently represented by tea party activists — and helped drive moderate Republicans out of Congress. (Some of his progeny, elected in the early 1990s, moved to the Senate and polarized its culture in the same way.)

Norquist, meanwhile, founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 and rolled out his Taxpayer Protection Pledge the following year. The pledge, which binds its signers to never support a tax increase (that includes closing tax loopholes), had been signed as of last year by 238 of the 242 House Republicans and 41 of the 47 GOP senators, according to ATR. The Norquist tax pledge has led to other pledges, on issues such as climate change, that create additional litmus tests that box in moderates and make cross-party coalitions nearly impossible. For Republicans concerned about a primary challenge from the right, the failure to sign such pledges is simply too risky.

Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.

In the third and now fourth years of the Obama presidency, divided government has produced something closer to complete gridlock than we have ever seen in our time in Washington, with partisan divides even leading last year to America’s first credit downgrade.

On financial stabilization and economic recovery, on deficits and debt, on climate change and health-care reform, Republicans have been the force behind the widening ideological gaps and the strategic use of partisanship. In the presidential campaign and in Congress, GOP leaders have embraced fanciful policies on taxes and spending, kowtowing to their party’s most strident voices.

Republicans often dismiss nonpartisan analyses of the nature of problems and the impact of policies when those assessments don’t fit their ideology. In the face of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the party’s leaders and their outside acolytes insisted on obeisance to a supply-side view of economic growth — thus fulfilling Norquist’s pledge — while ignoring contrary considerations.

The results can border on the absurd: In early 2009, several of the eight Republican co-sponsors of a bipartisan health-care reform plan dropped their support; by early 2010, the others had turned on their own proposal so that there would be zero GOP backing for any bill that came within a mile of Obama’s reform initiative. As one co-sponsor, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), told The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein: “I liked it because it was bipartisan. I wouldn’t have voted for it.”

And seven Republican co-sponsors of a Senate resolution to create a debt-reduction panel voted in January 2010 against their own resolution, solely to keep it from getting to the 60-vote threshold Republicans demanded and thus denying the president a seeming victory.

This attitude filters down far deeper than the party leadership. Rank-and-file GOP voters endorse the strategy that the party’s elites have adopted, eschewing compromise to solve problems and insisting on principle, even if it leads to gridlock. Democratic voters, by contrast, along with self-identified independents, are more likely to favor deal-making over deadlock.

Democrats are hardly blameless, and they have their own extreme wing and their own predilection for hardball politics. But these tendencies do not routinely veer outside the normal bounds of robust politics. If anything, under the presidencies of Clinton and Obama, the Democrats have become more of a status-quo party. They are centrist protectors of government, reluctantly willing to revamp programs and trim retirement and health benefits to maintain its central commitments in the face of fiscal pressures.

No doubt, Democrats were not exactly warm and fuzzy toward George W. Bush during his presidency. But recall that they worked hand in glove with the Republican president on the No Child Left Behind Act, provided crucial votes in the Senate for his tax cuts, joined with Republicans for all the steps taken after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and supplied the key votes for the Bush administration’s financial bailout at the height of the economic crisis in 2008. The difference is striking.

The GOP’s evolution has become too much for some longtime Republicans. Former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraskacalled his party “irresponsible” in an interview with the Financial Times in August, at the height of the debt-ceiling battle. “I think the Republican Party is captive to political movements that are very ideological, that are very narrow,” he said. “I’ve never seen so much intolerance as I see today in American politics.”

And Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribelast year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site.

Shortly before Rep. West went off the rails with his accusations of communism in the Democratic Party, political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, who have long tracked historical trends in political polarization, said their studies of congressional votes found that Republicans are now more conservative than they have been in more than a century. Their data show a dramatic uptick in polarization, mostly caused by the sharp rightward move of the GOP.

If our democracy is to regain its health and vitality, the culture and ideological center of the Republican Party must change. In the short run, without a massive (and unlikely) across-the-board rejection of the GOP at the polls, that will not happen. If anything, Washington’s ideological divide will probably grow after the 2012 elections.

In the House, some of the remaining centrist and conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats have been targeted for extinctionby redistricting, while even ardent tea party Republicans, such as freshman Rep. Alan Nunnelee (Miss.), have faced primary challenges from the right for being too accommodationist. And Mitt Romney’s rhetoric and positions offer no indication that he would govern differently if his party captures the White House and both chambers of Congress.

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.

Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?

Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.

Look ahead to the likely consequences of voters’ choices in the November elections. How would the candidates govern? What could they accomplish? What differences can people expect from a unified Republican or Democratic government, or one divided between the parties?

In the end, while the press can make certain political choices understandable, it is up to voters to decide. If they can punish ideological extremism at the polls and look skeptically upon candidates who profess to reject all dialogue and bargaining with opponents, then an insurgent outlier party will have some impetus to return to the center. Otherwise, our politics will get worse before it gets better.”

To be clear, I had nothing to do with the information or opinions in this piece, it was written by the authors listed above.  I do agree with most of what is said here and recognize that most Republicans will dismiss it out of hand without acknowledging the facts detailed in the article.  I also recognize that Democrats will celebrate this as a honest and fair indictment of GOP politics and ignore any games played by the media, the left leaning pundits and of course the politicians in the Democratic party.

My point in copying this is simple, we are a single nation of people, most of whom are proud to call themselves Americans and though we may have differing opinions, the only way this country will get back on track is if we are talking to each other, not screaming at each other.  The GOP of the last 30 years has morphed from a political party to a movement that is even repelling it’s own members and functions solely to divide us further.

The basis for true Conservatism is founded in strong virtues still valued by many in this nation, but the GOP no longer represents those virtues.  It is shown in every little expression by those on the right challenging the patriotism of anyone that disagrees with them.  They have changed their platform language and litmus tests so that honorable moderate Republicans are attacked as RINO, Republican in Name Only.  Leaders like Sen. John McCain are torn apart in the political process (look back at the 2000 and 2008 Primaries) and long serving, solid Conservatives, like Sen. Tom Coburn, are slowly getting pushed out because they fail to sign these pledges or don’t measure up to the new standard of Conservatism by the Tea Party and people like Sen. Jim DeMint and Gov. Sarah Palin.

In this primary cycle we got to see candidates like Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry each try to convince the American public that they were the most Conservative by denying science, challenging settled law, trashing those activist judges and beating on the GOP’s most likely candidate to be able to challenge the current President in the coming election by pointing out how non-conservative he was.  And we got Newt Gingrich to actually return to the race, after leaving Congress following ethics violations.  America has such a short memory and he had far more supporters than any individual drummed out for ethics violations should ever have.

We have a long way to go and promoting failed economic policies, ignoring the debt, and spending all of our time rehashing same sex marriage, abortion, and trying to delegitimize the new Consumer Financial Protection Board, women’s birth control, etc, etc, the list of all of the distractions goes way to long from a party that claims to be focused on jobs.  This party has Governors that have stripped public unions of bargaining rights and have replaced publicly elected officials with political appointees chosen by the new authoritarian regime, with no oversight or ability to challenge these decisions.  All the while they have convinced nearly 40% of the American population that the Democrats are the ones trying to take their freedom away through taxation, ignoring the fact that we are at a relative historical low for personal taxes.  They have inflamed their base pointing at the fact that approximately 50% of Americans do not pay Federal Income Tax while ignoring the fact that the primary tax break that makes this possible, the Earned Income Tax Credit, was a GOP created (signed into law by Ford) and GOP expanded program (under Reagan and George W. Bush).  It is just this kind of intentional ignorance of facts that has made independents like me increasingly distrustful and critical of the GOP.

I have voted Republican in the past and I hope to a return to true integrity and fair based Conservatism will provide me with candidates that I would be willing to vote for again.  But it becomes clearer with each passing election cycle that any candidate I might have considered viable before the primary season begins either will be doomed by their principles never to reach the general election, or sells out every principle that attracted me in the first place to get the nomination. 

Share on Facebook

The promise of this country was that you could make it rich, regardless of where you came from, and this promise is still very much alive, but it is very rare.  The largest advantage to our society is that, with the exception of those at the very bottom, we are almost all richer than the average citizens in 75-85% of the rest of the world (dependent on whose numbers you look at).  And this is what most of us want, we want relative freedom to pursue our passions, less worry about finances and a comfortable living.  Most of us are not interested in being wealthy, per se, but pursuing a lifestyle of our choosing and earning enough to do that.

To achieve these desires, we have a relatively free economy (as compared to most, but clearly not all) that rewards great ideas and better products.  Now of course a great idea alone won’t make you rich, in most cases, you need to be able to create your product, test it and sell it, so you need capital and for that you need the top earners to invest or a bank to loan you the money.  No matter how good your idea or product is, if no one buys it you are screwed, your investors will lose their money and your little business venture will fail. If people buy, you earn, and therefore you can spend those earnings to expand, hire and pay off your debts.  If your idea/product is successful enough, you can improve your life and the lives of those around you, those that work for you and their families and hopefully be in a position to help the next guy that comes along to do the same.

Now here is where Trickle Down theory comes into play.  Back in the early 70s (and since income tax was first collected) our progressive tax structure was designed to tax disposable income only at progressively higher rates so that those at the top had a higher tax burden than those in the middle and those at the bottom would essentially have none.  The system was stacked to give the primary benefits and therefore the best incentives, tax breaks and credits to the middle income earners.  This allowed for continued growth in the private sector as the primary consumer base had more to spend, which gave bigger profits to those that produced regardless of level of income, and guaranteed a thriving economy.  Of course there were hiccups in the system, usually caused by outside influences or forced manipulation by our Government, but the central concept was fine.  And we flourished even though the top marginal tax bracket was over 70%, and not at the historical low of 35% where we currently are.  When ‘Trickle-Down’ theory was applied, we had been through one financial upheaval after another, the inflation crisis that brought us to a floating standard (or fiat money as Michael likes to say) oil price hikes and the embargo, as well as a few other hiccups.  The right pushed through a concept promising sweeping change that would benefit everyone.  By the end of the ’80s, Reagan had reduced the taxes on the top, created the largest tax increase in our history on the middle, simplified the tax code and raised taxes a total of 6 times while increasing deficit spending beyond levels anyone had dreamed of before, establishing a National Debt that will not be paid off for decades.  Instead of benefiting everyone, the top earners pocketed the differences and began accruing wealth at never before seen levels.  He also froze the Federal minimum wage for 9 years which, in effect gave the lowest earners a pay cut every year as inflation and the cost of living continued to increase.  Increasing wage/wealth disparity.

In 1953 the average percentage of corporate profits that went to executive compensation was 22%, in 1991 it was 61%.  As a multiple of the average factory workers salary, in 1980 a CEO made 30 times the factory worker, whereas in 1991 it was 130-140 times the average factory worker’s salary.  In 1980, before Reagan took office, there were less than 600,000 people in the U.S. that were listed as millionaires, none of which made over 10 million except for 1 Billionaire.  By the time Reagan left office there were nearly 3 times as many millionaires, with 100,000 making over $10 million, 1,200 making over $100 million, and 51 people listed as billionaires by the IRS.  In 8 years the total wealth shifted sharply up, but never trickled down to the rest of us.  The total wages of all people who earned less than $50k a year (about 85% of all Americans) increased an average of 2% a year from 1980 to 1989, which was below the rise of inflation.  By contrast, the total wages of all millionaires increased 243% a year for the same period.

The rich have been rewarded for the last three decades, and though those that behave unethically are the exception, rather than the rule, how much longer shall we continue this nonsense.  The income for all levels grew consistently from 1950 up until 1973 despite the fact that the top marginal tax bracket was 70% or better (88% during our greatest ‘boom’ years), but since the taxes on the top were reduced, the burden was shifted down as well and average income growth has remained relatively the same where the income at the bottom has gone down because the cost of living and inflation have increased at a faster rate.  The only tax bracket that has done well is the top 20% of earners.  The GOP has again convinced the population that any increase in taxes on this group will further stall the economy’s growth even though the evidence is to the contrary. The tax burden needs to be shifted back up, consumers need to have more discretionary income and that isn’t going to happen while we have the primary burden for the system resting solely on our shoulders.  Another way to look at it is the top 20% owned 80% of American Wealth, or the top 1% owned more than all of the bottom 90% combined.

Lower taxes on the middle class, the consumer class is the only right answer.  Continuing to keep the progressive tax system as a marginally progressive system has proved to be far more regressive than Reagan or any other proponents of the system expected, but it continues because everyone has accepted it as common sense, even though it has been proven to be anything but.

Share on Facebook

In the 70′s the SO2 concentrations in coal burning plant exhaust was sufficient to produce detrimental effects on both the populace and the environment in the form of Acid Rain.  There were several attempts to find ways to solve this but no legislation could move forward because the cost to industry was considered far to high.  Several economists, using different economic models went through many variations on methods and means to achieve the noble goal of the end of acid rain.  All of these models included some form of restriction on emissions, enforceable by the EPA, but it wasn’t until one of these economists considered a secondary economy of transportable credits that could be traded between emitters that they came upon a model that was economically feasible.  Thus Cap & Trade was born.  This economic model was put into fashion by a bipartisan group that agreed on the problem, and decided to find a feasible solution.  And in 1990 G.H.W. Bush signed the amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1970 into law, capping SO2 emissions and creating a barter system that rewarded efficient companies and innovators that could find ways to reduce their emissions, and leaving the majority of the burden of the price tag on those companies that could not change.  Of course some portion of this increase in the cost of doing business would be passed on to the consumer but since the goal was noble and everyone essentially agreed that the problem needed to be fixed everyone was willing to accept the additional costs and move forward.  And it was very successful (when the EPA effectively enforced it) and acid rain has been drastically reduced.  NOx emissions were next, and also very effective.

Now we get to the current debate.  The GOP has been fighting hard against these controls being applied to CO2 emissions, and that is the real issue.  They are actually arguing that controls on CO2 are too costly, why you ask, because they don’t believe that man made CO2 has the harmful effects that the IPCC or most of the rest of the world has agreed upon by consensus.   That’s right, they do not believe in Climate Change, and this is why they oppose Cap & Trade.  It is not that the Cap & Trade policy is bad, it has been proven as an effective tool in reducing emissions, providing incentives to innovate and change, and at the least effective cost to the consumers/tax payers and industry as a whole.  Some members of the GOP will still say that they don’t believe but since the media mocks them and tries to show them as radical conservatives or loons, most no longer are willing to step out from the herd like that.  So they argue against bills or measures that would actually make strides towards reducing carbon in the atmosphere, and avoid the subject as to what their real motivation is.  If they bought into climate change, they would be applauding the application of Cap & Trade as the most effective means that can be provided at the least cost.

Whether you believe in climate change or not is not the issue.  It is the manner in which these people that represent us that matters.  The GOP has effectively blocked this legislation, and though, not officially, this bill is dead.  CO2 will continue to be unregulated which is the GOPs real intent.  The threat to put it under EPA jurisdiction is just that, a threat.  The EPA cannot act unilaterally and declare something controllable without an expected back lash, and subsequent lawsuits.  It is just a matter of time until this happens.

Chris

Share on Facebook

The arguments against gay marriage usually fall along one of three points:

The basis of marriage is about procreation:  This is false, many people get married and not only don’t have children, but they have no intention in having children.  Should these marriages be negated?  Should any woman be allowed to marry after menopause?  If a guy has a vasectomoy while married should he be automatically divorced because of this?  These are the absurd questions that can crop up when we use this as the primary basis for marriage, which, incidentally, is currently the only argument being used to defend Proposition 8 out there on the left coast.

The basis of morality:  This puts the institution of marriage more soundly in the realm of a religious institution and not a legal one.  Religion and philosophy are the foundation of moral teachings and the State has no place in the defining of morals.  If a gay person wants to get married they should petition their church, not the State.  This is where civil unions come in as a tool of the State, but I will get to this piece of legal documentation later.

The basis of harming the existing institution of marriage:  This is my favorite argument used and the worst of the bunch.  There is nothing that cheapens or weakens my marriage other than the decisions my wife and I make, any argument otherwise is absurd.  And there is very little anyone can do to convince me that anything harms the institution of marriage like divorce does.  This single act of breaking your vows and throwing out the promises that make up the union of marriage is what harms it, not two other people getting married, regardless of sexual orientation.  Until the religious right can make it so hard to get divorced that people stop and think before getting married I won’t be convinced that they are interested in protecting the institution of marriage.

The arguments for gay marriage are simple, but they are as fruitless as the opposition to them.  Gay people want to be accepted for who they are.  This is a desire that almost all people want and it is both understandable and a fair request.  The problem that they run into is that too many people believe that the acts that they commit as a part of their lifestyle are grievous or mortal sins and therefore they believe that they cannot accept the person as they are or they will be seen as condoning the behavior.  Of course people of the G.L.B.T. community do not like the fact that a portion of the population, regardless of how big this portion is, thinks they are evil, corrupt, lost, or just plain wrong for being who they are.  The compromise has been to offer Civil Unions in place of marriage certificates or licenses.  The G.L.B.T. community disagrees with this on the principle that it reduces them to a second class citizen and they are “equal but separate” adding to the concept that this is a civil rights issue.   Every one of the legal protections afforded by this piece of paper are already accessible in the current system but it requires a few extra hoops and comes at a slightly higher price, which is a penalty for a lifestyle, again pushing this in the direction of the argument that this is a civil rights issue.

The proper compromise is simple, the State should only issue Civil Union licenses or certificates, period.   No more Marriage Licenses!   A wedding is a religious ceremony and a marriage is a partnership, two separate things.  But because the average American does not separate these two things they can no longer accept the idea that the legal protections provided by this certification of their partnership has nothing to do with the arguments listed above regarding morality or anything else.  If any two people want to form a personal, legal bond then this should be allowed, it says nothing in regards to the actual nature of the relationship nor the acts that they perform in the privacy of their homes.   Of course once you enter into any partnership, if you choose to leave it you have to go through other legal hoops to disolve the legal partnership you have created, but that is a different discussion.  This solution is fair and will provide equal treatment for all, and it will still provide the State with a small revenue stream.  For the time being, members of the G.L.B.T. community will still be treated as second class citizens in one way shape or form, as do almost any minority populations, that is human nature and is not likely to change just because you cram it down your oppositions throat.

Share on Facebook

In this I agree, but it goes far beyond gun control.  Left and right both use tragedies and accidents to further their agendas.  This is opportunistic and has been going on in some way shape or form since the Agricultural Revolution thousands of years ago.  This is an issue of human nature, those we agree with can do no wrong until they go off message, and those we oppose can’t seem to get anything right, no matter how much we may agree with them.

Gun control just happens to be the issue of the day, situations such as the shootings at Columbine and Virginia Tech had arguments on both sides.  Those that want stricter gun laws cited the types of guns used, the ease of access and the overly violent video games that ‘desensitize’ today’s youth  to the violence demonstrated.  Those that oppose gun laws cried about restrictions against possession of guns and lack of concealed-carry permits by staff and teachers that could have resolved the situation more quickly or may have deterred the violence in the first place.

Both sides choose extremes when the actual resolution needs to be somewhere in the middle.  Both sides are opportunistic and will weigh in on articles such as the one Rich started from, but both will continue to miss the mark.  The second Amendment states: ” 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.”  This is the most hotly contested part of the Constitution but its origin comes from Section 13 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights 1776, originally drafted by George Mason, which states: “That a well-regulated militia, or composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.”   For one reason or another the drafters of the Bill of Rights left out much of the language, and they made few statements as to why.  George Mason’s thinking is clear in that those trained with arms should be allowed to carry guns, a Militia would be a step up, but private citizens should still be allowed to protect themselves and provide for the common defense of their State.

Rich is right in that those that fail to recognize social norms should not be reduced to ‘crazy’ or ‘nut job’ because they are exercising their rights.  But the argument lacking in his statement ignores the common sense restrictions that should be put into law.  Licensing should include mandatory demonstrations of competency and training, and restrictions against assault rifles and any weapon that can be configured for fully automatic operation should be denied the public, but hunting weapons and handguns have a very valid purposes within our society.    The strongest opposition to these policies should be the strongest proponent for responsible gun ownership and practical legislation but the NRA has argued that this is a ‘slippery slope’ to hand away all gun rights and I am sick of that position.  This is the position of everyone that cannot think of a cogent argument that is based upon substance…fear of what may come.  Get off your high horse and see the world that we live in, there is no legitimate justification for assault rifles in the hands of a private citizen, nor is there any valid argument to suggest that required training for a  license shouldn’t be implemented.  We require it for anyone operating a motor vehicle which has more uses than killing something or someone. (Guns don’t really have any other purpose, we can claim they do, but at their core, their design is to do just that, kill.)

But lets be clear here, the majority of gun related violence comes from those that obtain weapons illegally, and the incidents of domestic violence that end in gunfire would still be played out with similar ends, with or without a handgun, those situations just don’t get sensationalized.  Many of us recognize the potential harm that a gun represents, we can also recognize the inherent usefulness in these tools in regards to hunting and home defense, but at some point we need to acknowledge that there are some people that should not have guns, and there are some guns that no one but those trained and working in an organized unit, be it police or military, should have.  Until we can all acknowledge that we cannot move forward and make any real strides that will guarantee the rights protected by the Constitution while providing us with common sense policies designed to protect the public from those that would do wrong.

Chris

Share on Facebook