Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

The defining American code is freedom. The defining liberal code is compassion. Conservatives have attempted to counter that by defining freedom as compassionate, as George W. Bush did. Liberals counter by attempting to define compassion as liberating, the way that FDR did by classing freedoms with entitlements in his Four Freedoms.

On one side stands the individual with his rights and responsibilities. On the other side is the remorseless state machinery of supreme compassion. And there is no bridging this gap.

Daniel Greenfield
December 17, 2012
Gun Control, Thought Control and People Control
[H/T to JPFO.

Nearly every paragraph in Greenfield’s post would qualify for a QOTD here. It is filled with awesome insights.

I decided to focus on these two paragraphs because of the last sentence of the second paragraph quoted above.

I’ve read that no two businesses or even species in nature share the same exact marketplace or ecologically niche at the same time. One will dominate and push the others out or cause them to differentiate themselves.

The freedom and anti-freedom, the left being the dominate flavor of anti-freedom, people are in a political struggle for the geographical niche known as the United States of America. There is no compromising with the other side anymore than there is compromising with someone that wishes to rob you or loot your business. There is only winning versus losing and protecting your property versus having your property redistributed for the common good.

The language of the left betrays this mindset.

In their “compassion” they will sometimes “concede” a “buy-back” of firearms they want confiscated. You can’t “buy back” something that was not yours to begin with. And you can’t “buy” something with money that you confiscated (in the form of taxes) from the victims you want to take the property from. But in the mind of the left all property, including money, is “community property” and there is no inconsistency. They don’t, and probably can’t, “get” the problem we have with their plans.

The anti-gun people claim removing restrictions against people carrying firearms on college campuses is “forcing guns on campuses”. Did you catch that? In other words we are using the power of government to force liberty upon them. One of daughter Kim’s economic class reading materials literally referred to the U.S. government “forcing free markets.” In their language and their world/philosophical view that makes perfect sense rather than being a self-contradicting statement.

They can barely understand that we don’t trust the government. They can understand not trusting the “right government” which in broad terms is a government which is not “compassionate.” But they cannot understand not trusting a government because of its size. The classic joke about the anti-freedom people fear Libertarians because they would take over the government and leave everyone alone is funny because it is true. It is beyond their philosophical framework to not trust the government based on its size. It simply doesn’t make sense. It is a nonsensical thought and in order to make sense of it they have to redefine the fear of large government in other terms such as “greed”, “selfishness”, or a as a close relative recently told me, “heartless bastards”. Gun owners cannot possibly be serious about defense against a tyrannical government and rational gun ownership must be redefined in terms of a hobby, penis substitution, or some sort of paranoia in order for it to make sense to them.

Any “compromise” they offer is defined in terms they understand. They are “compromising” by “allowing” us to continue our “hobby” by registering our firearms/magazines and submitting to a licensing process. In their minds this is a HUGE concession. In our minds this essentially defeats the entire usefulness of the right to keep and bear arms.

It goes deeper. They do not comprehend that the act of submitting to the government over a basic right is unacceptable. Submission to government/authority on every level is so fundamental to their nature it is like a fish in water. Any glimpse of “not water” is very brief and incomprehensibly hostile. It is extremely scary to them. More government is less scary and more “compassionate” to them.

They oppose us so vigorously and with so much violence because they see it as does a fish having their water removed. In their minds we have to be insane, incredibly stupid, or have evil intent. There is no other way to explain our actions and desires. Hence they are completely justified in killing us because if we had our way we would destroy their existence.

As Greenfield says, “There is no bridging this gap.”

I only see two possible outcomes and two ways to get there.

The possible outcomes are:

  1. One side will dominate and force the other side into virtual extinction.
  2. The sides will find different geographical niches. This option would mean the collapse of the union of the individual states.

The two ways to get there are:

  1. “Education.” The left has been working, successfully, on education for a century.
  2. Force. The left is close to reaching a critical mass and they now contemplate a victory through force.

The force option will result in massive numbers of people being forcibly imprisoned and/or murdered.

The big wild card in this deck is that the intended victims are arming up and training. The outcome is difficult to see. It depends both upon the order in which the cards show up and how the cards are played. For example had a “Newtown massacre” occurred before the Heller decision the course of history could have been drastically different. And so it is with our future.

I hate to go all Godwin here but I’m seeing the final option being played by the anti-freedom people as being the Final Solution to the “freedom problem”. Let’s play our cards well.—Joe]

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7 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

  1. In that case, the anti-liberty position seeks to bring the casting couch, crony capitalism, and the closed-door permit approval process to every aspect of daily life here, as one seeks special favors from the one high mucky-muck who is able to sign off on your paltry request which is expressly disallowed by statute except as the interests of justice allow.
    Douglas Miller described a certain European country in the 30’s whose fast trains to the capital were crowded with lawyers who no longer needed to make deals, but who instead needed to go to the capital to supplicate before some minor functionary in order to receive the stamp of approval to do business in that country. That is the model looked at approvingly by Leftists today.

  2. The “compassion” of the Left.Gov is a lie. It is a parasite and creates nothing itself (but excrement) and cannot create wealth, apart from attempting to pick winners and losers, which it does badly. It must take from the creative who DO make wealth happen, in order to support its give-aways. And because it’s a parasite and feeds itself first, it uses-up and runs out of other people’s money. The “seed corn” of wealth is consumed to display its faux-Compasion – as for instance with the pseudo-compassionate “Heath Care.” Gov.Hospitals always and inevitably ration care, and people start to die because the iron-law of Bureaucracy’s money-equation runs into and against the soft and feeble life-equation…

    • Absolutely. The whole set of rationalizations is a lie. It’s a lie they tell us and a lie they tell themselves. The rationalizations are like mantras. “The Common Good” is one of them, used in the post. It’s bait, to lure us all into the trap of servitude, and eventual destruction. The motivation is hate, founded in envy, irritation and resentment, and with that motivation there is no possibility of a good choice.

  3. I find it interesting that a Small Minority of Leftist Politicians who control about a Dozen States think that they can treat the rest of the Republic as if WE were “Unruly Minority” who need to be “Enlightened” as to our Roles in THEIR System. Do they really think that just because they’ve succeeded in turning their States Citizens into “Subjects,” that the rest of us will just roll over at their behest?

    And if they try to use Deadly Force, where are they going to get their Army? My God, 2.8 MILLION Firearms Checks were done just last Month in the NICS System! Who do they think bought all those Guns? Bill Gates?

    You know, the Psychiatric Hospitals are full of People who suffer from Delusions. Perhaps the Leftists should join them. At least they’ll have a new group of people to share their Napolianic Complexes with.

  4. People in the government may in fact be compassionate but the government as an entity is only interested in its own survival and growth. I am unaware of any government contracting in size from its beginning. It may grow large and divide, it may die and collapse but it never gets smaller and healthier.

  5. Joe; you hit upon the ancient struggle. It goes through cycles, but it never ends. All those nice-sounding terms, like Compassion and The Common Good are a smokescreen, to cover for evil intent, which needs to hide in complexity and confusion.

    Now I quote the Bible to an atheist.
    “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12, King James, Cambridge ed.

    Relatively good people (for how many purely good people are there?) can be easily fooled into becoming agents for the Endarkenment. Our struggle is not with them. As was said some time ago by some dude, “They know not what they do”. It is with principalities, and the only real counter is to become an agent of a different set of principalities. As far as understanding or embracing all of that is concerned, I don’t believe it matters whether one is an atheist or not. I guess that’s what I’ve been harping on for a while. Principalities.

    Nor do I see the U.S. as a geographical location, so much as an idea. Though I understand what you meant, this I think is the geographical location where the next two hundred+ years of world history will be decided. There are “Americans” (in spirit) all over the world and they’re watching this intently. So are the world’s communists. We are a big target, and as you say, we had better play our cards well.

    Let’s look at our cards, then. What are they? And are we “playing” or are we being? I’m saying that this starts with the individual. What you are is what you do, and what you pass on to others. If a person “fears” the trends we’re seeing, well I am reminded of a quote from “The Man With No Name” and I paraphrase;
    “It’s what people know about themselves inside that makes them afraid” and the more I think about it the more I think that it is true.

    So OK; we know what the Endarkenment is and we know that it won’t give up or concede any points except as a ruse. That’s a known quantity. A given. A matter of fact. A constant. It will trick and fool, lie and cheat at every stage, often appearing as your best friend, or as a great and laudable and just goal if you’re not fully aware, even making you think that it was your own great idea (aren’t we clever, after all?).

    The only open question then is; what, exactly, do we stand for? What are we? For what principalities, if any, have we become agents?

  6. And yes; it’s true that both sides seek “liberation”. I’ve heard it described as wanting “freedom from right, to do wrong” verses “freedom from wrong, to do right”. And both sides want to “wake up” the other, each seeing the other as fools. We truly are talking about different states of being, like humans and vampires or something (although in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire exhibited some compassion for his target victim).

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