A Moderate Danger

I had been thinking of posting on this subject for a couple of months now, but I suppose I hadn't had enough of a push until the past couple of days.  I don't believe in coincidences.

First, the lovely Daphne over at Jaded Haven simply opened up a thread on gun control.  Most of those who come to her sight seem to be of an intelligent conservative bent.  I hate to seem redundant, but we live in a world of newspeak, so, in case someone is surfing by here who isn't adequately educated I wish to provide clarity. Two particular commentators caused me to deem this post necessary.

"The Phantom" is to most of us, an obvious lefty.  He came with this typical nonsense:

NRA-Occupied America is incapable of speaking rationally about guns.

Pay no attention to the fact that the USA has a gun murder rate that is ten times higher than our neighbor Canada, which has sensible gun controls.

And an overall homicide rate that is ten times higher than Canada’s

Screw the dead kids. Fuck ‘em. They’re a small price to pay. The NRA comes first, that’s what I say.

Everybody repeat after me ” Guns make us safe “!

Of course, after that, he tried to bring statistics that came from sources he liked and ergo, not worth paying any attention to.  There are much better sources of information by those with rational and scientific methods, and if you spend any time with experienced law enforcement people who generally aren't into seeking political office, they will tell you that criminals absolutely hate the idea of citizens commonly being armed. But all of that is not the real purpose of this post.

My point is in comparing The Phantom to someone with the handle of "mahons."  I'm sure mahons is a great guy.  Daphne seems to like him a lot.  Toward the end of the thread things seemed to devolve because some people who like to think of themselves as centrist or moderate seem offended by what I said or Gal Spunes said.

Now, I certainly believe that language, and that includes labels, gets abused on a regular basis.  Nobody likes to get mislabeled and so they protest at being labeled at all.  Problem is, humans live in a world that requires language and we can't make sense of our world without labels.  As someone pointed out on the thread, "centrist" and "moderate" are difficult labels because they apply to moving targets.  Political chameleons.

Do all conservatives fit neatly in any given profile?  Of course not.  People labeled conservative can range from John McCain to Barry Goldwater.  On the liberal side you have people on a continuum from Joe Scarborough to Alan Grayson.  So, if there is that much diversity in those two sides, how much more so does it exist in people who call themselves moderates?

The other thing that got me to write this post was, last night, watching An American Carol, the movie by David Zucker. It was just a couple of hours after leaving the thread at Jaded Haven.  In the movie is a scene where "Michael Malone" is on the Bill O'Reilly show with "Rosie O'Connell," in which Rosie comes off like the completely loony, nutcase leftist that she is, and "Michael" begins to realize that he doesn't want to be compared or connected with that level of crazy.  Bill O'Reilly makes the observation that "Michael" is more of a problem because some people like him and listen to what he says.  This just reaffirmed something I had said on the thread.

Trolls who come to blogs and say the kinds of things that Phantom say are quite easy to point to and laugh because what they say is so easily disproven and their rhetoric is so over-the-top.  The "mahons" on the other hand are another matter because they seem so reasonable and intelligent.  Their sarcasm is subdued and very deflective.  For those of us on the deeply conservative side (remember, check the glossary), he is a very dangerous political animal, because when he talks about destroying freedom, it comes off as reasonable and without a hint of malice.  Indeed, a wolf in a sheepskin.

You see, we didn't get this far down the socialist road in America because of the Barak Obamas and the Bill Clintons.  We got this far precisely because of the Richard Nixons, the John McCains, and the George Bushs, both father and son.  We bought into the lies that, seeming to be against the obvious left made you a conservative.  Nixon was power hungry egomaniac who gave the left a whipping boy that would keep conservatives on the defensive for decades.  Bush 41 messed up many of the gains made by Reagan and paved the way for the country to let Bill Clinton use the White House as a playground.  Bush 43 came in and proceeded to let Ted Kennedy write expansive education legislation, signed the McCain/Feingold assault on the 1st Amendment into law, massively expanded medical welfare where it wasn't needed.

Perhaps George W. Bush's greatest damage to any possible conservative presidency was his failure to explain his actions in the "war on terror."  The name itself was a colossal mistake.  You cannot make war on a tactic. Perhaps it is because he had all the wrong advisors on this issue or he simply chose to ignore good advice.  We have never been at war with terror.  We didn't start the war.  Islam declared war on us a long time ago.  Since it's inception, Islam has been on a campaign to dominate the entire world for their god, Allah.  Failure to recognize this fact was a crucial mistake. I remember an article by a Jewish writer dated between Sep. 12, 2001 and Sep. 16, 2001 that said we may have lost this war already because of that.

I'll never understand why he did not at least have his press secretary hammer on the facts. That many prominent democrats, especially senators with access to the intelligence reports insisted that Saddam Hussein had access to WMDs and that it was documented that Saddam had WMD's because he had used them on his own people and Iran. British intelligence never backed down from its report on the uranium story.  Former Iraqi general Georges Sada has been touring the United States, testifying that the WMDs were there, that they had been moved north into Syria.  He knows the names.  He knows the details.  None of this is classified.
These and many other facts lead me to believe that George Bush and many like him are nothing more than loyal opposition and marionettes for the real government behind the scenes. The Bushes, the McCains and the Boehners are simply there for the right-wing drones to think they are supporting conservatives.

In hindsight, I believe Saddam Hussein was removed from power because he was a megalomaniac dictator who wouldn't go along with the New World Order plans of the other government powers.  Was he a threat to peace? Yes.  Should he have been removed for being a brutal dictator to his own people? Yes. Do I believe the United Nations and the powers that be, authorized Bush and the other coalition forces to remove him for the benefit of the general populace? Not at all.

But in getting back to my point about moderates, it is this pretending to rationality that is so irritating.  They are the people who will agree that we can't just sit and do nothing while the enemy is trying to overrun us, but they'll nitpick every tactic you might employ to fight the enemy.  They will chime in on agreeing that reasonable gun control measures are a good thing, but when you point out that there is no such thing, they simply repeat the premise again as if that is an answer.  They help the leftist/progressive side while appearing to remain neutral.  They believe in compromise for the sake of peace, but each little compromise is ALWAYS toward socialist and tyrannical ends.

I remember my argument with a moderate friend over McCain/Feingold.
"It's a direct violation of the first amendment of the worst kind, because it specifically targets political speech."
"But we have to do something."
"Why?  To protect incumbents?  How does limiting free speech help when what the people need is more information and not less?"
"But the money is corrupting the system."
"Nonsense.  Money is an inanimate object.  It doesn't have magical powers. People can be corrupted if they want to be.  It doesn't matter what the system is.  What we need is more transparency.  There should be no limits on campaign contributions so long as there is open access to the names and sources of every dollar given to a politician.  Then the people can decide for themselves who is worthy of their vote and why."
"But at least it's a step in the right direction."
"No, it's a step toward giving the government more power to shut people up who don't go along with the narrative."
"Oh, you just sound like a crazy right-winger.  It's just about trying to bring some moderation to the debate and curb the special interests."
"Special interests being anybody who doesn't agree with the liberal agenda; who tries to point out the voting record or history of someone like McCain or Kerry or anybody for that matter."
"You just won't give it a chance, will you?"
"No.  Because every time you surrender just a little bit of freedom, you never get it back."
"Why can't you just be reasonable?"

No logic. No evidence that he wanted to move past stage one thinking on this. It's the same old "We've got to do something!" without ever stopping to think about where it really leads; that it might end in disaster.  No real cognitive depth on such an important subject, but he sounded so "reasonable."  And because he has an MBA and is former military and seems conservative in other areas, no telling how many others he influenced with that crap. The true-believers in statism will be right out there where I can see them and see what they're up to.  But the moderates might be flanking me while smiling and nodding.  While I'm focused on the obvious enemy in front of me, I'm getting a thousand little cuts from the "reasonable" guy next to me.  To hell with that.

I understand the appeal of the centrist.  Nobody wants to be hated or viewed as a hater.  As Alison Armstrong points out, the drive to be liked is especially strong in women.  They are hard-wired that way for good reason.  Thank God!  Baruch HaShem!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why moderates are so dangerous.  The devil won't come to you in a red suit with horns, a pointy tale and a pitchfork.  He will come to you as an angel of light or as the object of your desire to feel good.