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Let Freedom Ring,
Posted on 09/21/2012 7:00:15 AM PDT by Sopater
I try to stay out of politics. Ain’t my job. Here at Backwoods Home, I’m the resident gun guy, and because I’m the only staffer who also works in the criminal justice system, I sometimes go there too.
A hugely important Presidential election looms upon us. The next four years will see new appointments to the United States Supreme Court, with obviously great implications for those of us who believe in the Constitution and have sworn an oath to uphold it. As has been discussed here before, the one-issue voter isn’t necessarily wearing blinders. Rather, he or she recognizes that no citizen can be on top of every critical issue in our society, but our leaders must be. Therefore, we pick one issue we DO know inside and out, and use that as the litmus test to determine the candidate’s reasonableness, fairness, and logic in the other matters we will vote to entrust to him or her.
This is not to say that we don’t have other issues which are important to us.
[SNIP]
The Democratic Party has chosen to support a reinstatement, presumably permanent this time, of the totally failed and Draconian “assault weapons ban” dumped on us for a decade by Bill Clinton when he was President. Don’t believe me? Look here: http://www.democrats.org/democratic-national-platform
The Republican Party, on the other hand, isn’t buying that crap and instead, is for the first time endorsing national reciprocity for concealed carry, that is, the right to carry a loaded, concealed handgun in every state to protect yourself and your family when you’re traveling. Don’t believe me? Look here: http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_home/.
(Excerpt) Read more at backwoodshome.com ...
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Let Freedom Ring,
For me it used to be abortion, but in time they all learned how to do the automatic check off on that with a few pat sentences, so then it became guns, it is easy to gain insight into their conservatism, by listening to how comfortable they are talking about gun issues.
You can tell Romney’s true inner beliefs by listening to him struggle to survive mention of either.
Whatever your one issue is, if it ain’t Socialism it’s gonna be permanently off the table of Obozo gets re-elected.
Swallow very hard and pull the lever for Mitt. Live to fight another day.
Right now, for me, the issues are spending and unconstitutional over-reach, especially as it relates to federal control of local issues.
Abortion
Gun Control
Education
Subsidies/Welfare (both corporate and individual)
Government growth
Those are a few of the main ones for me.
What I'd like to see someone say when confronted with the "what about rape?" question wrt abortion is this:
"Why do you want to kill someone who had no choice in the incident? I find it deeply disturbing that you would kill the child for the wrongdoing of one of his parents."
I'm going to disagree with you; Romney is a Fabian socialist as opposed to the more hard-line ideology of Obama, therefore Romney is not a win if your issue is socialism.
Elect Elect
Obama Romney
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\ /
\ /
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IMPLEMENT
SOCIALISM
That’s pretty good!
Here’s how I would answer the question about rape abortions...
Them: “You think abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape?”
Me: “Are you agreeing to make all non-rape abortions illegal?”
Them: “Well no, I’m just asking.”
Me: “There’s no point in discussing it then. You ask about the hardest, most painful - and most rare - case, when all you really want to do is defend abortion in the most common, most frivolous cases. You don’t care about pregnant rape victims at all.”
I like your response as well. :)
Considering that the author is one of the nation's leading firearms instructors, his litmus test is the 2nd Amendment.
Like most any litmus test: for that one issue to resolve as desired, a whole lotta other things must likewise be favorable. Full support of RKBA requires an inherent trust of citizens, a recognition of natural inalienable individual rights, a presumption of innocence before guilt, an acceptance of higher morality, etc...all which in turn affect other issues and require their implementation in a form consistent with particular axioms.
Thank you, that’s what I was trying to determine...”What’s a good litmus test and what exactly does it tell us?”
A RKBA politician might have those characteristics you described so well. On the other hand, many RKBA supporters do not. So how can we be sure the politician does?
Take the case of Ron Paul. He’s in favor of legalizing drugs, because he loves liberty and has “an inherent trust of citizens”. Many of his supporters, however, favor legalizing drugs simply because they wanna get stoned.
A litmus test is not a purity test. It is a rule of thumb used to weed out the bulk of undesirable results. It also is not a test of the motivation of other supporters. The basis of your litmus test and someone else’s litmus test may result in the same test, but interpret the results to different ends. Sometimes the focus of the litmus test is misleading to others: you may be testing for X, but X is a tolerable side effect instead of the actual goal Y because checking for X is much easier/palatable than testing for Y directly.
Ending the WoD per se isn’t a big deal to me, but stopping the fallout from it is - so legalization is a litmus test, even though availability would not affect me, it’s the restored respect of rights which is paramount. Sorta like Hitchcock’s “MacGuffin” (look it up): something which is vital to driving the plot of a story, but the thing itself is irrelevant - it’s the story driven that matters.
You make a lot of sense!
I guess that’s why my litmus test has been abortion - including rape - for a long time, and why Akin impresses me. It tests for X directly, but tells so very much more about Y and Z and etc. If a “pro-lifer” will cave on rape, he’s “pro-life” for the wrong reasons.
Reminds me of the old semi-joke about the fellow who asked a woman, “Would you sleep with me for $100,000?” (I’m sure you know the rest.)
And now I’m off to look up “MacGuffin”. :-)
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