Last week, RF wrote while he “may regret saying I’m with Donald I will never regret saying I’m without her.” Given the way that Hillary supporters and their fellow travellers have comported themselves since election day, the concerns or doubts I’ve had about the wisdom of voting for President-Elect Trump have been steadily slipping away.
The past month hasn’t been all sunshine and bunny rabbits, though.If there’s one thing that’s been shoved in our faces and illuminated with blinding klieg lights, it’s that the constellation of political groups on the left really hate anyone who they suspect isn’t on their side, and nowadays going to church is apparently a sin equivalent to being Steve Bannon in their eyes.
More than that, they’re afraid of people who prioritize such right wing notions as the right to keep and bear arms. (Just peruse the comments section of this Mother Jones article on the prospects for the Second Amendment in the near future, and you’ll see what I mean. If you actually needed more proof at this point.)
We’ve always known that there were some people who aver that they are “less afraid of the criminals wielding guns . . . than I am by those permitted gun owners,” as Tricia Bishop put it in the Baltimore Sun. In my misbegotten youth, I believed this was a simple matter of ignorance, one that could be cleared up through a liberal application of sunlight. There are none so blind, however, as those who refuse to see.
When I see the left throwing around slurs like “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobe” and “Islamophobe” at the President-elect and his supporters while Donald Trump is, literally, giving speeches where he “condemns bigotry in all of its forms and envisions an inclusive America premised on our own American dream,” I see a lot of people who prefer the certitude of blindness to the occasional doubt induced by sight.
This is evidenced when you see things like George Takei placing the blame for an Islamic terrorist’s car and knife attack at Ohio State on the NRA. You also see it in the sudden increase in assassination revenge fantasies directed at Donald Trump. You even see it in the quilting blog of a community college instructor that veers into unvarnished hate for her fellow citizens.
Last year, I wrote an article expressing concern that the NRA was going far afield of its mission when it offered the estimable Dana Loesch a platform for conservative views whose relationship to the right to keep and bear arms was questionable. While I continue to believe that the NRA shouldn’t fritter away its resources and political capital by searching for other dragons to slay, as gun owners we need to be cognizant of the fact that we are in the middle of a culture war. The other side views gun owners as deplorable, incorrigible cretins, unworthy to talk back to their “betters.”
There are non-gun issues that impact us as firearm owners in this culture war. In the past, others have pointed out how the powers that be in the Democratic Party are counting on unregulated immigration to serve as cheap labor in the service of a technocratic elite, as well as a way to improve their election chances by increasing the number of voters who are beholden to them. California is, of course, the model for both, and the right to keep and bear arms does not fare well there.
For my part, I’m finding those arguments more and more persuasive — which is somewhat incredible when I reflect on my dearly departed grandmother who came to this country illegally after being orphaned in a flood in Mexico. She came here to be an American, and raised a daughter who cried real tears every July 4th. And December 7th. Perhaps the road less-travelled really does make all the difference.
For those reasons, I’m quite willing to be forgiving toward the President-elect. If I occasionally feel that some of Mr. Trump’s off-the-cuff remarks on things such as flag burning are a bit off-putting, it’s a small thing when compared to what I feel about people who are, right now, actively pushing — and passing — substantive laws to undermine the Bill of Rights. Especially when it looks like comments such as his are less indicative of an actual legislative agenda, and more a tool to smoke out the hate-filled groups who are arrayed against him — and us.
No, this isn’t the Libertarian moment I’d hoped 2016 would bring. I cannot say, however, that the path we’re currently on is leading us astray. I may be too optimistic (words rarely uttered in a firearms-related publication,) but the path we’re on might actually lead to a brighter future. For that reason, I’m willing to give the President-elect the benefit of the doubt.
[H/T: Ann Althouse for clip of Trump’s Cincinnati speech.]