Peaceful gun owners should no more be punished for the acts of violent criminals than should present day progressives be punished for the acts of those that ran the gulags in the USSR. People who do not abuse theirs rights shall not have their rights infringed. That is the system of government we have.
Progressives advocate for collective rights and punishments. They should be careful what they ask for. Should they get their way they might not be happy paying the price for the tens of millions murdered in the pursuit of “progress” by their political brethren.
Nice point.
The analogy is not completely accurate. While gun owners do not support the actions of criminals, progressives often DO support the actions of totalitarian governments. But I do agree that, for those progressives who don’t support Stalin, or Putin, they should not be held guilty by association. Not so long as they support the same for gun owners.
You mention Putin. There is a downed jetliner over there due to this “Progressive ” reunification of the Soviet Union.
Paul has a good point; Progressives, by definition, support criminal activity, wholesale theft and general denial of human rights to be specific, in favor of central control. It goes all the way to who is “fit” to survive and who isn’t. Though most rank and file, “low information” Progressives are blitheringly unaware of that last point, Hillary at least made it very clear that she understands and supports Eugenics when she declared herself to be a “Proud, early 20th century Progressive”. That’s Margaret Sanger, KKK, Woodrow Wilson, Fascisti stuff right there, all in one tidy package.
Your point regarding the need for Progressives to think about what they advocate (collective guilt) is an excellent one in that regard. I would only point out that anyone who chooses to punish Progressives collectively, wholesale, has by that definition thereby become a Progressive.
It is often said that the aggressor sets the rules. While that may be the case in a situation of immediate self defense, we still have principles as our guide, no matter what any aggressor may do– That’s the only thing that sets us apart from the criminals. Without that, all we end up doing is supplanting one set of criminals with another, only THIS TIME it’s “TRULY JUSTIFIED”, and so it’s far worse and more deadly.
That was one of Jesus’ messages, though in this day and age no one remembers it. Hate is not a remedy for hate. When you’re set apart from that cycle, you see that the remedy for hate is the opposite of hate. When you actually live it, you provide thereby an example, a banner to which others can repair.
Of course they would be happy to pay the price. These are progressives collectivists. Even liberals have standards sometimes. You have to understand that they don’t view people that are not progressive as even human. To them we are unworthy of life. Since to a progressive collectivist life itself is a privilege granted by the government and not a right. So to them the US government has the ‘right’ to kill us as we are in essence simply a source of revenue. If the United States government killed 100 million United States citizens progressives would be happy about it. All of those gun owners and conservatives; people who are not at least Democrat all dead. Nothing left to oppose them. We are nothing but an obstacle to be destroyed to realize their Utopia.
Then they would have to get rid of the progressives who weren’t quite progressive enough.
One of the surprises, to me, in The Gulag Archipelago was that the Soviet economy became dependent upon the slave labor output from the Gulags. But the conditions were so bad there that the death rate was extremely high (“general labor” life expectancy could be only months). Hence they needed more “criminals” to put into the Gulags to keep the economy going.
This was in addition to all the paranoia about people not being “communist enough” let alone the “counter revolutionaries”.
Another way to look at the progressive utopia is that they are looters and not producers. They “loot the freedom” of people as well as the property. The only real natural limits to how far they will go is the exhaustion of resources available to loot.
I started reading Gulag Archipelago on the way to Alaska. Something quotable every few pages, and a surprising number of “Uhhhh…. that sounds just a little too reasonable, too familiar, too plausible, so easily justifiable…. Then, once you are in the system, your hands are tied (perhaps literally, perhaps not), and options extremely limited.
The scariest part is how he talked about it all being an age-long solitaire game, where a card would be put in quietly into one stack, then later quietly shuffled to another stack, then silently flopped into another one, years later, making it all happen below the surface, and making talking about it in public the fast way to the bad part of the deck. That, combine with the public praise of the “good” and screaming public condemnation of the “bad” is creepy.
You missed what perhaps was a too subtle suggestion on my part.
If they change the form of government such that collective punishment is accepted then progressives could, legally, end up paying the price for the progressives of the USSR.
If our opponents are willing to legally inflict sanctions on us to “prevent gun violence” then isn’t it perfectly reasonable to inflict sanctions on progressives to “prevent government violence” against innocent people?
It would be “perfectly reasonable” if we didn’t have principles that tell us it’s wrong and unjust. What, after all, makes us any different from Progressives if not our principles? Trying to punish a whole population, such as with “War Reparations” after W.W. I, don’t seem to work out well for anyone as a purely practical matter, principles notwithstanding.
It is my intent to educate them as to the risks. Not that I think it would be appropriate. Sort of like:
Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it’s not an individual right or that it’s too much of safety hazard don’t see the danger of the big picture. They’re courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don’t like.
Alan Dershowitz
Still and all, it IS something of which the Progressives should be mindful. Mass reprisals, whatever one may think of them, are a fairly common occurence.
Maybe I’m looking at it wrongly, but the mass show trials in 1930’s Soviet Union seem to me to have been collective punishment for something (exactly what, I’m not sure of even today). So many people were caught in the NKVD net, many innocent of anything resembling the “crimes” for which they were convicted, that many famously wrote letters to Comrade Stalin because surely he would not countenance such an injustice if he only knew the particulars.
Leftists are perfectly willing to impose collective guilt and punishment on “the other”, but react like normal people when that hammer falls on them.
Yes leftists are exactly like normal people, under duress they scream and whimper and beg. But in their exalted state of Statist Command they are worms with the spine removed – that’s why they need to stand on a pile of bleached bones and skulls just to see where the next Soylent food-line begins.