Posted on 03/16/2013 6:08:33 PM PDT by marktwain
Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- When Obamacare passed in March 2010, a grassroots outrage ensued and months later, in Nov. 2010, the Tea Party voted out Democrats in red states and moderate Republicans who’d supported the measure.
Liberals were blindsided, RINOs were dismayed, and because of the passage of Obamacare, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) only held the gavel for two years.
Now, just three short years later, a grassroots movement has been awakened again. But this time it’s not the Tea Party reacting to healthcare. Rather, it is a collection of the approx. 80 million gun owning Americans reacting to the federal government’s insistence on taking guns away.
It is the more than four million NRA members, and the hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of members of the Second Amendment Foundation and Gun Owners of America.
This movement is broad–encompassing Republicans for sure, but also Democrats, Independents, and Progressives like “Warren” who called into the Wilkow Majority on March 5 to talk about how sacrosanct guns are in this country. He talked of how his support for much of the progressive agenda does not include support for more gun control.
This broad spectrum of political opinion, united under the umbrella of the right to keep and bear arms, portends a 2014 election cycle not unlike the one we saw in Nov. 2010.
For this reason, much of the federal-level talk of passing more gun control that was so ubiquitous in Dec. 2012 has quietly given way to silence by Senators like Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Mark Warner (D-VA), both of whom know 2014 will not be kind to gun grabbers.
As Breitbart News reported on Jan. 14, gun control is a big loser for Democrats in 2014. But the other side of that coin is that the gun rights movement can be a big winner for conservatism.
In fact, we could see conservatism reborn around the simple truth that the right to keep and bear arms is “necessary to the security of a free state.”
About: AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.
His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.
If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.
You say nothing I disagree with. Wallace had a poor issue to make a stand with, I offered no opinion on the justness of his position, just that Ike had nationalized his National Guard and moved Federal troops in to assure that Wallace would be arrested if he failed to stand aside.
Yes they are. Unfortunately even though 70% of the people oppose ObamaCare it is nevertheless the law of the land according to the Speaker of the House, who has made Zero effort to defund the unconstitutional disaster.
I am too old for it to matter much to me personally, but I fear for my Country nevertheless.
I am not so sure about the Supreme Court we hold a slim 1 vote majority, but no telling who Zippy might appoint next.
While there are plenty of people on the Left who just might believe in their right to keep and bear arms, keep in mind that on all else they are just securing their other rights, to use those in opposition to Conservative values.
While I am glad to see them support the Constitutional stand on this one issue, by no means does that make them Conservatives.
Never confuse their stand on this one issue for a change of heart on others.
Sometimes the enemy of your enemy is just the enemy of your enemy.
That was one person in five, not a tiny percentage. The case was for being left alone, not to make a moral case for the habit. Being left alone lost and the nanny state got a big leg up.
Oddly enough, behaviours which would have been completely socially (morally) unacceptable (abortion, homosexuality, drug use, illegal invasion/immigration) when cigarettes were advertized on TV have become the focus of groups who claim a 'right' to act that way, and the same public who sent smokers to the back of the bus before kicking them off is lapping that BS up.
I'd rather go back to people smoking in public and put the rest back in whatever dark location it belongs in.
Whatever the argument against cigarettes, it d@mn sure wasn't very deeply rooted in morals or the rest of that crap would not have moved to a position of social prominence.
The vast majority said something to the effect, yeah, I know I should quit....
Most, including me at the time might have done so even sooner, but the constant harassment by smug snotnoses (often coughing at the sight of the pack or a cigarette--even though no smoke was being produced), was enough to make you want a smoke.
I got a laugh out of people in New York City bragging about having a smoke-free tavern in a town where the air is the equivalent of two packs a day, but later found out they were serious.
Say whatever about health, but it was an Alinsky campaign, where a majority of the population found reasons to 'hate' a minority, and was so effective that people were having pavlovian reactions to the sight of a package (coughing, not drooling). Of course, this gave the excuse to raise taxes and loot corporations for producing a legal product, but the anti smokers had the pep-rally bit between their teeth and weren't about to understand the precedents they were setting.
In the meantime, the State and others get to be so invasive as check your bodily fluids for traces of nicotine, and any tobacco consumer (smoker or otherwise) is treated like a second-hand citizen with the abundant blessings of the government, industry, and the clamoring mob alike.
The boundaries of how badly a group of people could be treated were being pushed back on this continent the whole while we were told to be 'tolerant', and then to 'celebrate' far more heinous habits. The rationale for doing so was stretched far beyond direct or intimate exposure to a standard of 'if you might be able t smell it'. (Pity none seem to be as paranoid of the pathogens possibly spread by the purveyors of other lifestyles we are being forced to admit to our communities, schools, and workplaces. )
Science had little to do with anything, frankly. The studies I saw made no allowances for other occupational exposures, some went as far as to blame childhood (actually, infants with) cancer on the neighbor's cigarettes.
It is amazing what people will believe when it is what they want to hear (blame the evil Jew, oops, I mean smoker...) See how that works? Welcome to 1939.
You both have jumped to a false conclusion about my position on buiilding Reagan’s big tent.
A coalition of otherwise disparate voters who have overriding issues in common is a legitimate system for building a conservative candidacy. Voters need not be expected or required to accept every detail of the candidate’s platform to vote for him.
A progressive may vote for a conservative because his overriding issue is gun control. The conservative candidate is not thereby required to accomodate the progressive voter on abortion.
There are plenty of otherwise progressive voters who will vote for a conservative on a variety of issues if their candidate fails to support their concerns. We are not looking for those voters. We should.
Is this too deep for you guys?
Make no mistake: all politicians — even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership — hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician — or political philosophy — can be put.
If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash — for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything — without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you. - Why did it have to be Guns 1999 L. Neil Smith
George Wallace also had no moral courage to take that step and become a martyr unlike other more heroic people of his time.
Perhaps the differences is the nature of the cause over which George Wallace was fighting. Perhaps George himself did not believe it worth the sacrifice.
In any case I believe George Wallace’s heart was not in the cause as it should have been if we was to win.
He should have resisted and let the Federal troops arrest a sitting governor. Create a political crisis where battle of States rights could be fought. This is what his contemporary Martin Luther King jr did. Although not quite what anther Wallace ~655 years before would have done.
The point is if we are to defend our rights we must find and appoint leaders with the passion and conviction to do whatever it takes to defend our liberty.
We don’t need a great many of them, just a few to stand firmly upon the ground of freedom and light the fire of devotion in the hearts of our countrymen.
Okay, so they vote with you for one candidate on one issue. The problems are these: Either they seek and eventually get acceptance of their positions on other issues which are not conservative positions, effectively watering down the set of values which together comprise conservatism, or they turn on you over the other issues.
It is great that they are concerned over this one issue if they are the sort of one-issue voter without compelling antithetical interests.
However, Abortion, Homosexuality, Illegal Immigration, etc. often are the sort of seminal issues which will take precedence as soon as the firearm issue seems settled.
As I said, sometimes the enemy of your enemy is just the enemy of your enemy.
Great comment.
I watched on live TV as it happened, I could see by the look on his face, he would cave.
Regardless of the cause, I believe that on day, that we were a Republic no more, that we had became a democracy determined to become a socialistic tyranny.
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