Posted on 05/20/2014 12:05:51 PM PDT by mojito
Speaking to the National Rifle Association’s recent annual conference, NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre, in describing America, said, “Almost everywhere you look, something has gone wrong. You feel it in your heart, you know it in your gut. Something has gone wrong. The core values we believe in, the things we care about most, are changing. Eroding. Our right to speak. Our right to gather. Our right to privacy. The freedom to work, and practice our religion, and raise and protect our families the way we see fit.”
He went on to say this:
"There are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and carjackers and knockout gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all. I ask you. Do you trust this government to protect you? We are on our own."
[....]
This kind of rhetoric, which can only incite and never persuade, is alienating to everyone who is not part of the Apocalypse Now crowd. It is also, in deep ways, profoundly unconservative, in good part because it is overwrought and detached from reality.
(Excerpt) Read more at commentarymagazine.com ...
And I'm sure that from Pete's elite Beltway perspective, things look mighty good, not great, but not horrible either.
But once you get out of the NY-DC bubble, things start looking alot worse, darker, more pessimistic.
And I might mention to Pete: The Right has not turned on America, the Right is trying to save what's left of America before the left destroys it and we lose what is left of our liberties.
Read the whole thing.
cue hillary screeching abot the patriotic right to disagree....
I remember when Bush the First said that the NRA was evil and unpatriotic because they warned that our police were becoming Jack-Booted Thugs.
And now the country is crawling with police acting and looking like Jack-Booted Thugs.
Some folks just don’t want to listen...
“Peter Wehner is not a bad guy”
No he’s just clueless about what is getting ready to happen in this country as are about 80% of the population.
And they are all going to get a big and unpleasant surprise.
What you said.
“Do you trust this government to protect you?”
The NSA spies on our emails, phone calls, and texts.
The CIA tails reporters and hacks their laptop computers.
The Parks Department sends armed troops to kill cattle and evict ranchers from “our” land.
The EPA stops pipelines, forcing oil to be transported by rail.
The DEA conducts no-knock raids on the homes of innocents.
“Oh, sorry about your dog.”
The BATF raids gun stores and Customs raids guitar makers over the type of wood being used.
...but not inside the Beltway.
If you are in the DC metroplex, you are left alone. Your political status is noted on the chalkboards of bureaucrats planning their daily raid meetings so that “important” or “connected” people don’t get raided.
So the Beltway isn’t experiencing the same level of fascism as is Flyover Country.
Of course *they* don’t get it. They aren’t here.
ROMNEYCARE
“A farmer 10 miles away, who was a father of four children, was shot and killed this week after investigating intruders on his farm. (The gang-banger suspects are now in custody.) He interrupted a stolen car being stripped, and “they” killed him for being so rude as to drive on his own land. I note that fact because a few weeks ago the dogs barked at 3 a.m. For once I decided to ignore them. And the next morning I found a stripped auto in my vineyard. I had gone back to sleep on the theory that in America today walking out to investigate would have been a politically incorrect sin.
Here is what I mean. America does not like the enforcement of property rights unless one is rich, hip and cool, like those who assume the sanctity of their Google or Apple parking lots. I would de facto have no right to have ordered people off my property. And without arms, no means of enforcing any order I had issued. Instead, I assume California would argue that there must have been extenuating circumstances that forced the gang-bangers into a life of crime, from callous indifference about their impoverishment to illegal-alien bashing (to…, well, fill in the blanks).
For all practical purposes, one has no right to arm oneself to protect property. If I were unarmed and shot, I would be assumed to have been foolish by venturing out on my own property. If I were armed, and yet got shot confronting thieves, the media would say that I was more foolish and trigger-happy and prompted the violence. If I had shot them in self-defense, I would appear a paranoid old white male who privileged property over human life — and be sued by their families who had access to free legal help. If I were to call 9/11, I would expect that the response would be slow, given that in the hierarchy of a night’s epidemic of central California felonies, a stripped auto would rank low.
So I went back to sleep, and called the sheriff the next day when I discovered the stripped auto. Someone else who was more courageous was murdered this week. We lost a brave citizen, and now deal with his murderers, on behalf of whom the resources of a bankrupt society will be amply invested.”
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-unforgiving-moment/?singlepage=true
Things are swell in the Apple/Belway world, but just try stepping outside it.
No need to fret about (most of) the right turning their back on America and the jack booted thugs. As soon as some GOP establishment jackhole gets back into the white house it will be all “USA, USA!” and it will be “Thank you for your service”!” to every cop wrapped in body armor driving an MRAP.
Interesting. “Commentary” doesn’t allow any comments...
Hey, Pete! How do you negotiate with a cancer?
The title of this op ed is ridiculous. The Constitution is being attacked by the left and this guy criticizes the Right for challenging that. With guys like this advising the GOP its in trouble!
He confuses opposing big government with opposing America.
I interpret this article in the way of cliche’s...”fogitaboutit”, “don’t worry; be happy”, “it is what it is”, he would have us bury our collective heads in the sand.
In the real world these things are happening, no hyperbole, time is quickly running out.
It will be disgruntled federal employees that have had their princely salaries and bonuses for watching porn at work or killing veterans cut. They will riot and take over the capitol to demand that the peasants be forced to pay their six figure salaries, bonuses, and 100% retirements with free health care after twenty years.
That's when the trouble will start.
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