Posted on 06/18/2014 11:20:50 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
At yesterday's CNN Town Hall with Hillary Clinton, a Maryland teacher named Gail Santa Maria expressed concern about school shootings and asked whether "reinstating the ban on assault weapons and banning high capacity magazines would do any good?" Hillary broke in and said: "Yes, I do. I do." That got loud, sustained applause from the very friendly audience.
Gail Santa Maria had put one thing in question form, and that was enough to send Hillary Clinton into her "guns" riff. When Hillary got to the end of that riff, Gail Santa Maria said: "My question is, why does anyone..." And the moderator, Christiane Amanpour, cut her off with a stern "You just had a question. Sorry, ma'am" and moved on. That made me feel bad for the school teacher, who was an unusually timorous lady. And yet... the pacing cannot slow way down for humble little people like this.
But in fact, the school teacher was not too timorous to talk over Hillary and say "74 more" when Hillary said the line "the horrors of the shootings at Sandy Hook and now we've had more in the time since." Hillary's "more" triggered the teacher's "74 more," a repetition of the dubious factoid that is getting lodged in voters' brains. Hillary herself never uttered the dubious factoid, but her "more" made the timid schoolteacher say "74 more." No one is accountable for that heavily inflated number, but we heard it. We heard it as if we were hearing our own internal voice. Yes, we already know that. The number is 74.
Now, let's get into the substance of Hillary's "guns" riff, which contains the amazing assertion that I've put in the post title. She begins:
First of all, I think as a teacher or really any parent, what's been happening with these school shootings should cause everybody to just think hard.
"Hard" is Hillary's key word. It's her book title — "Hard Choices" — and it's an all-purpose boast and excuse. She's capable of doing what's hard and, when things are hard, one can't be expected to get everything exactly right. And yes, "hard" invites her critics to mock her in a sexual way, as Rush Limbaugh did on his show yesterday: Hard Choices? Hard?!! That's going to make everyone think of Bill Clinton's erections. I'm paraphrasing. What Rush said was: "Now, if Bill had a book and the title of that was Hard Choices with the foreword by Monica Lewinsky, then maybe you might have a book that would walk itself off the shelves."
Back to the town hall transcript. We've seen that Hillary has led off with her core theme: It's hard.
Which seems to say: We all should just first pause and think about how hard it all is. She expands on hardness:
We make hard choices and we balance competing values all the time.
This might make you think she's about to give a balanced presentation with careful attention to the opinions and preferences of those who see deep meaning in the right to bear arms. But the values on one side of this values competition dominate:
And I was disappointed that the Congress did not pass universal background checks after the horrors of the shootings at Sandy Hook and now we've had more... in the time since.
And I don't think any parent, any person should have to fear about their child going to school or going to college because someone, for whatever reasons -- psychological, emotional, political, ideological, whatever it means -- could possibly enter that school property with an automatic weapon and murder innocent children, students, teachers.
I'm well aware that this is a hot political subject. Hot political subject, yes, but I thought you said there were values here and that it was hard to balance them. Are the gun-rights people just political heat you have to face or do you genuinely contemplate their values?
And again, I will speak out no matter what role I find myself in.
That's the next line because she mentioned politics, and she must always pose as if she has not yet decided to run for President.
But I believe that we need a more thoughtful conversation.
Yes? Do tell. We're going to balance those competing values? We're going to cool down and actually think about everything? NO! The next thing she says is:
We cannot let a minority of people -- and that's what it is, it is a minority of people -- hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.
Whoa! That's the line I was looking for. Read it again and see how shocking it is. Not only did Hillary completely turn her back on "balanc[ing] competing values" and "more thoughtful conversation," she doesn't want to allow the people on one side of the conversation even to believe what they believe. Those who care about gun rights and reject new gun regulations should be stopped from holding their viewpoint. Now, it isn't possible to forcibly prevent people from holding a viewpoint. Our beliefs reside inside our head. And in our system of free speech rights, the government cannot censor the expression of a viewpoint. But the question is Hillary Clinton's fitness for the highest office, and her statement reveals a grandiose and profoundly repressive mindset.
I'm sure if she'd anticipated this criticism, she would have reworded it and made it clear that her point was only that in a democracy, the majority should win. Even that is open to critique. The majority only wins with respect to thing that are determined by majoritarian decisionmaking. Some things are reserved to individuals, and we could have thoughtful conversations — if we wanted to do some hard intellectual work — about what matters belong to the individual and not to the majority. What gun rights are to some Americans abortion rights are to others.
But Hillary leaps over these hard questions.
So, my view is that yes, we need to thrash this out in the political realm.
Thrash? Is thrashing "thoughtful"? Is thrashing the balancing of an array of values? Apparently, this isn't even a hard choice. The good people already know the answer:
But the vast majority of Americans, even law abiding gun owners, people... who want background checks that work, information that is shared immediately, and an awareness that, you know, we're going to have to do a better job protecting the vast majority of our citizens, including our children, from that very, very, very small group that is unfortunately prone to violence and now with automatic weapons can wreak so much more violence than they ever could have before.
The vast majority of Americans want to protect the vast majority of our citizens. At that level of generality, who can disagree? And I guess she gets to her "vast majority" by including all the people — like the NRA — who want effective enforcement of background checking requirements already on the books. Obviously, no one worth talking about wants murder, but that wasn't the topic we were supposedly about to have a thoughtful conversation about.
Hillary Clinton poses as the coolly thoughtful presider over a national conversation, but if you listen to what she's saying, she already has her answers and she's not going to let hold you hold any other viewpoint. The woman who once famously said...
I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic... ... is now ready to deploy the verb "to terrorize" against those who debate and disagree with her.
ADDED: The video (via Power Line):
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
I watch a flood of kids doped up on ADD meds, I watch a flood of Mexicans, Sadistic Salvadorans, Syrians, Moslems of every stripe pouring in.
I watch as communists have open meetings and demand a blogger be arrested for quietly filming the meeting.
I watch fusion centers release announcements that TEA, Paul voters, Christians, and people who respect the constitution are terrorists.
I watch as our police are increasingly militarized and federalized. I watch as a revolutionary socialist movement is busily changing everything from Football team names, to whether homo marriage.
I watch Obama actually provide guns to the most violent Cartels on earth. I see the borders flung open for these same Cartels. I see half of Colorado is stoned.
In such times, I believe I will keep my defense weapons, no matter what law is passed.
I bet if you tell a liberal that mass shootings happen at gun free zones, their brain would melt and you’d see smoke coming out of their ears like a cartoon.
A certain sub-set of Americans “cannot be allowed to hold a viewpoint”. H. Clinton
Obama pulled the same Orwellian stunt. He campaigned assuring the 5-10% in the middle that he would listen to all viewpoints. Then he listened—and sicced his IRS on anyone who disagreed with him.
It isn’t enough for totalitarians like Obama and Clinton that they be able to decide which laws to enforce. They want to control the language (e.g. “Redskins”) so that someday their dream is realized: thought itself becomes a crime so that government “becomes a boot stamping on a human face forever.”
So much for over one thousand years of Anglo-American jurisprudence requiring a crime be a ‘joint union of act and intent.’
As hard as she tries to appear human—and for her it is an effort—it is important to keep in mind that she is a grave threat to American liberty, much like the current occupant of the WH and his Reptilian right hand.
Or guns, according to Hillary.
Stick to your guns, people! When you're disarmed, you'll be just as vulnerable as those people lying in ditches in Iraq that we all viewed recently.
Liberals are reminded all the time that “gun-free zones” are just target practice ranges for psychotics and malcontents and, surprisingly, they agree. But somehow only those who now legally own guns are considered to be the enablers of psychotics and malcontents, which makes their reasoning secure and totally circular.
The “logic”, such as it exists, is that persons who purchase guns within the entirely legal channels, are only doing it to funnel the weapons to the mentally unstable and criminal types, and THAT is the crux of the problem. Not that the criminals, most of whom are NOT first-time violators, but have a long arrest record, only to be repeatedly turned loose by liberal judges, have obtained their weapons through theft or other unlawful transfers from legal owners. And not that the mentally unstable, known for some time to be troubled and potential threats to those around them, can be held against their will in confinement while their instability is active.
Individuals are supposed to be locked up or kept in circumscribed localities if they cannot accept the civil limitations on bad behavior. If that involves implanting a chip with GPS capabilities to track them, then so be it, but they are, for a period of time anyway, NOT to be accorded full civil liberties.
it would go in one ear and out the other. they don’t give a F about stopping school children. They’re interested in disarming those who oppose them. you can’t have a leftist dictatorship with an armed populace you know.
Without a gun,you are nothing.Just another animal to herded to a death camp.
This is the problem with progressivism, liberalism - Democrats in general.
That “we cannot let those who......”
In a Constitutional Republic, it isn’t the “we” - it is the “law”. Democrats would rather throw out those two words, Constitutional Republic, altogether.
Obama and the DNC will bring deathcamps and
Islamic and narcoterrorists created deaths.
They already have practiced worldwide.
PEOPLE, this was a CNN rally of idiots who wanted to hear Hillary Clinton! The real America needs to wake up and quit listening to the libtards. They are lying, cheating, stealing, covering up and stealing elections. Vote out the liberals of both political parties.
So Hillary will decide what viewpoints we can and cannot have?
She also stated that she much more prefers the government structure of England with their parliament. But guess what else she likes about England. They don’t have a constitution.
Funny how the “majority rule” crowd have an on/off switch for their opinions depending on which minority is being discussed.
I'm getting ready to walk my dog, in my peaceful, quiet neighborhood, in which we've lived since 1979 and there has never been any trouble with mobs or gangs.
A few years ago we had a couple of teen age kids "egging" some homes and cars, but we went to their parents and told them if the kids didn't stop and clean up the damage that they would be dealt with severely...they stopped.
When I leave with the dog this morning, I'll be carrying and had you "axed" me 10 years ago if I felt I needed to carry in my own neighborhood, I'd have said you were crazy.
obama sure has brought the country together.
Kittens rank higher on my scare list than guns. The top of the list is this administration.
There is no arguing with a liberal, they have their minds (small as they be) fixated of what they believe to be correct and will not, or perhaps are unable to change their viewpoint. They are “right” and be damned what anyone else believes.
Beginning with the murder of John Kennedy the MSM began a series of anti-gun articles to frighten the public.
The MSM led the carge into hysteria in 1968 with the murder of Bobby Kennedy.
In the 1960s, they ONLY wanted to register handguns in the USA. Long guns would not be affected.
In the 1970s they ONLY wanted to ban handguns in the USA. Long guns would not be affected they said. Long guns would not be affected.
In the 1980s came the call to ban semi-auto rifles and shotguns, something they said they would NEVER do.
They have never let up. Today we see a public frightened of guns which were never frightened before 1963.
You have a Natural Right to self-defense. It says so right in the Declaration of Independence. "No matter what law is passed", as you wrote.
This is the build-up to a national "Drop-A-Dime" law, like they were talking about in Caliwhackistan after their little Hollyweird whackjob went on a stabbing & shooting spree.
Lautenberg's little "misdemeanor domestic violence" gungrab was pretty good for them, so now they're going to try to sell the "Drop-A-Dime" notion.
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