Quote of the day—American Mercenary

So the gun control advocates, 2/3rds evil, 1/3 stupid. I would say full evil except that there are some gun control advocates who are able to learn, so not all of the ignorance is willful. Still, evil must be opposed.

American Mercenary
December 1, 2010
Evil or Stupid?
[I’m not sure I agree with this. If you read the analysis you will find that, according to him it boils it down to willful ignorance being evil.

I think before resolving this question one has to define evil. If it is defined as intentionally doing harm we will arrive at a different conclusion than if we were to agree that evil means the results are harmful and/or injurious regardless of intent.

But the end result is the same. Even if they have the best of intentions gun control advocates are harmful and must be opposed.

How we oppose the gun control advocate must be tailored to the advocate. Someone who obviously lies and misrepresents facts can be safely exposed as evil. But labeling the willful ignorance of someone with the best of intentions and perhaps the loss of an innocent loved one in their background as evil is probably going to do more damage than good.—Joe]

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9 thoughts on “Quote of the day—American Mercenary

  1. I dunno, Joe. Show me a Gun control Advocate with a dead loved one who isn’t dancing in the blood of their loved one. I mean we have Sarah Brady who made sense when she campaigned for the Brady Background Check which would have forced Hinkley to get his gun on the black market rather than at a pawn shop. But when she then decided to use the fact that her husband was shot by a .22 revolver to ban semi-auto rifles and magazines that hold more than 10….

    And there’s Colin Goddard who was shot in a gun-free zone (With Brady Compliant Magazines) who is campaigning for the same rifle and magazine ban, and calling for background checks at gun shows…when the gun that shot him was bought in a normal shop.

    Or Joan Peterson who calling for the same BS as Goddard who’s sister was shot by weapons she doesn’t care to identify (for good reason I’m sure) by an estranged husband with a restraining order.

    Or Bryon Miller who is calling for any gun control the world can think of, and had the police called on him for harassing several gun dealers, who’s Brother was shot in DC (!) with a semi-auto Pistol (!!) with a high-capacity magazine (!!!)

    Or even the troll you still occasionally post links to who calls for more gun laws, but openly admits to simply ignoring them back when he lived in the States…

    If it isn’t evil its a sickeningly large lack of class.

  2. Of course the best, most clever evil is the evil that has you doing its bidding while thinking you’re doing great good.

    There’s little point in attacking the doer of evil if you can simply shine a light upon the evil itself, and contrast it with the good. Often the people who play the roles are of secondary or tertiary interest. It’s better to attack the script, or the script writer, or the director, than to attack the actors and the extras.

    That’s something of a departure from what I’ve said in the past – that ridicule and ostracism is an important tool we should use. Mostly though it’s a shift of focus from the actor to the message behind the story.

    When it comes time for the indictments and prosecutions, we can focus completely on individuals, but that will be after the crimes have been well defined, documented and highlighted in the public discourse.

  3. Weer’d,

    Nitpicking–Hinkley would not have been stopped by the Brady Act from getting his gun from a FFL because he had never been involuntarily committed. Hence, any sense the Brady Act might have had was unrelated to the shooting of Brady.

    But getting to the substance of my point… You have to define evil before we can make further progress. Are Brady, Goddard, and Peterson intentionally doing evil? Or is it just that the potential result of their good intentioned actions are evil?

    Perhaps this really should be philosophical question because one could claim that Hitler had “good intentions” in exterminating the Jews. They were considered, by some, to be “vermin”. Thus ridding Europe of Jews was no more controversial, in the minds of “right thinking people”, than exterminating Malaria carrying mosquitoes or Smallpox. Without a solid definition of “evil” we aren’t going to resolve this.

    I think Lyle has the best approach, point out the script is evil without getting personal.

  4. thanks for the info on Hinkley, I knew he had been treated for mental illness, but I was somehow lead to believe he had been committed. This further proves my point.

    I would certainly say that since NONE of these people have admitted that the laws they call for have ZERO relation to the crimes they were involved with (outside of the total ban they all long for….but of course they deny that further supporting my point) and do their best to avoid debate and/or discussion.

    Good/Evil can be a shifting paradigm. So we can certainly say all of them are dishonest, and all of them have used their dishonesty for personal gain. I WOULD call the evil in my own personal accounting.

  5. That depends on your definition of “personal gain”. I suppose publicly wallowing in their victim-hood (we need a name for this, how about an “Elite Victim”?) is considered achieving personal gain by some. But the dishonesty didn’t get them there status. The dishonesty furthers their claimed altruism.

    It might boil down to another philosophical question, “Is Ayn Rand correct in saying altruism should not be considered virtuous?” If their actions are only for the benefit of others, as they might claim, then a large number of people would might consider some half-truths justified. “The end justifies the means.” Is it unethical/evil for the defense attorney to propose someone else had the means, opportunity, and motive to commit the same crime as the defendent even if they are pretty sure the defendent did commit the crime?

    The anti-gun activist could realize that a proposed law would not have prevented their personal tragidy but believe the law would prevent the loss of some other innocent life. But is the telling of something less than the full truth of their experience evil if they believe it will save the lives of innocent people in the future? Is it evil for someone to accept a job with the stated goal of saving innocent lives with the requirement that less that truthful means will be employed? If so then is our CIA inherently evil?

    I still think Lyle is correct–Focus on the script and save the individual responsibility for their trials at a later date.

  6. Weer’d Beard,

    Re Joan Peterson’s sister; while the estranged husband may have had a restraining order on him, the sister went to HIS HOUSE ALONE. TO DELIVER PAPERS on him. Why, on God’s green earth, did the sister not have somebody else deliver the paperwork or, failing that, have somebody go with her? “Japete” strikes me as one of those people who, after being bitten by the barking dog after having climbed over the fence, blames the home owner for her wounds because the fence was not topped with concertina wire.

    My daughter considers “Japete” the quintessential “I didn’t know it was loaded” type.

  7. I can’t find much info on the stories but some old Newsroom snippets, but I’m sure there are a wealth of mistakes and bad judgments made that day. I would find it hard to believe that somebody could be married to a man as insane as he was and not realize it, yet she went. If my wife and I divorce and she comes to my house WITH HER BOYFRIEND, to serve me papers, it’ll certainly be in bad taste and likely raise my temper a bit (not being violently insane I doubt anybody would get hurt, but still…) What was the mood of the meeting? My Uncle’s divorce there were often katty exchanges made to attempt to hurt or fluster the other party, etc etc etc.

    Still my point is not to the late sister or her boyfriend, no matter what they did it didn’t excuse their deaths, and the crazy Husband is at fault. My point is with Joan herself who seems to be smart enough to write a blog, and woo Paul Helmke and the Joyce Board to let her into the inner sanctum that many anti-freedom bloggers long for, but will never attain, yet she somehow doesn’t get that she will talk about her dead sister in one breath, and then a law that has NOTHING to do with the case in the next?

    Nah, I think she damn well knows what she’s doing. I would also say she has gained national notoriety from her actions, which I suspect she enjoys.

  8. Joe, you bring up a good point, but unintentional evil is still evil. I can’t remember who said, “If all value systems are equal then cannibalism is just a matter of taste” that pointed out that we humans have a very general understanding of morality. We can’t always agree on specifics, but we can point out that abhorrent practices like cannibalism are are not acceptable.

    Now I hate to sound like I am advocating for morality by consensus, I am only asking for a “reasonable person” standard of morality. Is it ethical to raise the crime rate by restricting guns while promising the opposite? By any “reasonable” standard it is not ethical. Whether you call unethical behavior evil or not is just convention.

    We have the data on our side that more guns = less crime. We have this data for the US, UK, South Africa, Canada and even Australia (unless their current downward trend continues, but trends never continue in a linear fashion forever). These are not opinions, feelings, or voodoo. Facts are facts, and ignoring facts is a deliberate lie. A deliberate lie increase crime and death.

    I cannot in good conscience call such an act anything but evil. Especially when gun control advocates lay claim to the moral high ground.

    Here is a handy way to tell evil from stupid; evil is consistent. Joan and her ilk are very consistent, and therefore the likelihood of evil is high. They could be consistent for other reasons, but if we list them all it will still come back to advocating for increased crime, suffering, and death.

  9. The use of victim status to stop rational argument is not something I will accept. Unless the person whose background includes some tragic loss, is also a subject matter expert delivering cogent, fact-based and rational arguments, I will have to respond with a sincere, “Sorry for your loss, but you’re not making any sense. Perhaps your grief has unbalanced your mental faculties.”

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