Quote of the day—Rob Morse

The antipathy towards gun owners is not based upon stopping violence, but upon reducing the discomfort felt by idealists.  For the idealist, letting society take the burden removes both the duty and the emotional cost of facing an imperfect world. For the idealist, protecting the fantasy narrative is more important than respecting the facts.

Rob Morse
March 27, 2017
Violence and Utopia- Realism and Idealism in the age of Gun Control
[This is probably fair to the majority of the anti-gun people. But, I wouldn’t use the word “idealist” to describe a large minority of them.

“Idealist” is far, far too generous to those in power who know and understand the facts. They want a monopoly on power and the existence of a large number of gun owners are an obstacle to them.—Joe]

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11 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Rob Morse

  1. Joe, I think ‘idealist’ is a utilitarian word, having a well defined and neutral meaning, but at the same time imbued with extraneous meaning due to sloppy thinking.

    An ‘idealist’ is one who molds their life to some kind of ideal. Mother Theresa was an idealist. So was Pol Pot.

    Rob Morse describes one kind of idealist that favors gun control. That kind of idealist wants to live a life where they do not feel morally deficient for failing to take appropriate and responsible action for something that is their duty as an adult. Being a lazy and/or cowardly kind of person, however, their solution is to lower the bar rather than make the effort. If nobody is responsible for their own defense, they reason, then they cannot be judged deficient for not wanting to. This idealist gets offended when the self-responsible kind of folk look down upon them for shirking what they see as a duty. Being offended, these days, gives this idealist moral standing.

    Another kind of idealist that favors gun control is the progressive. I have a tendency to be revulsed when someone uses the term “progressive” as an adjective with a favorable connotation because the same people who use it wouldn’t tell me clearly what they’re progressing towards. This is either done in relatively innocent ignorance, of a concept they’ve absorbed as received wisdom without understanding, or in malice, by those that do know what they’re progressing towards and know I won’t like the end result (rather like the concept of taqiya). I came across a concise and accurate description of the ideal of progressivism, said by a famous progressive: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” This phrase describes the end result of progressivism, whether it is the progressivism of T. Roosevelt (R), or of F. D. Roosevelt (D), or of Mussolini (fascist), or of Mao (communist), or generally of anyone that read Marx and didn’t get the joke. In any case, for the progressive, self-defense is an affront because it doesn’t happen within the state, under the state’s watchful eye and guided toward a result best for the state, (which is naturally assumed to be operated by the progressive’s fellow-travellers, who somehow in defiance of history were not first against the wall when the revolution comes). The best result for the progressive is that you get mugged, assaulted or murdered without resistance, then the perpetrator is captured, tried and convicted by the state, and it is made perfectly clear that you need them. Then the perpetrator is subjected to some hand-wavy correctional action, declared by the state to be redeemed, then released to either be a good ward of the benevolent state, or to offend again and continue to the cycle of you needing them.

  2. The time to attempt to understand the criminal mind comes AFTER you’ve stopped the crime. Save that for the sentencing phases of their trials.

    There are various reasons why someone might rob a bank, or commit any sort of crime. Those reasons don’t much matter until a suspect has been apprehended and put on trial. Street level, or individual crime or crimes committed by small groups are what I’ll call “retail level crime”. The perpetrators usually operate without collecting a government paycheck.

    For some reason though, when it comes to the wholesale violation of rights (large scale conspiracy to deprive rights, often carried out by those specifically charges with protecting the rights they’re violating) which is far more destructive to society than all the retail level crime combined, we feel we must try to understand, so that we might convince the perpetrators to stop doing it of their own accord, for no other reason than sympathy for their victims.

    You see the crazy, stupid, deadly game we’re playing? The reason we have laws, and law enFORCEment, is so we don’t HAVE to attempt to persuade the criminal to understand the error of his ways before we get any relief from his and his accomplices’ repeated attacks, and yet we completely forget that somehow when it comes to these kinds of wholesale crimes.

    Somehow we’ve been mesmerized into treating this not as a law enforcement issue but rather as a political one wherein the only possibility of relief from organized crime lies in changing the hearts and minds of the criminals. Thus we are crazy.

    If we’re going to analyze anyone’s delusions or other psychological pathologies then, we’d best start with our own, which is also, as it so happens, where we have by far the most influence.

    • I don’t disagree with your point, Lyle. Instead, I would just point out that understanding the motivations of gun control advocates can, in my opinion, save people the energy of thinking that such can be argued into rationality.

  3. sirs:
    nope, gun control is a lot simpler than that.–
    gun control types simply want to disarm their political opposition, so that they can exercise absolute power untrammeled by any opposition. you will please note that the leftist do not intend to disarm the police, civil or secret, or military.
    they are not against guns in the slightest …. they are against people having guns who might oppose them.
    in england, way back when, when the protestants took power they tried to disarm the catholics. and, when the catholics ruled, they tried to disarm the protestants.
    i don’t believe much in theorizing about politics. it is, as lenin once so correctly observed, simply a matter of “who does what to whom.” (i used to know the russian for that, but i am old and feeble minded now. i don’t worry about it. i’ve just got my “pet loads” for the .308 winchester committed to memory, as well as for the 6.8mm rem and the .223 rem/5.56mm nato.)
    i figured out a long time ago that it is very important to know the number of your scout troop, and who your friends are. it is also important to know who your enemies are.
    john jay

    • I think Joe’s point is that not all of them are actively evil — some are merely dupes. Clearly the leaders are actively evil. The brainwashed masses, perhaps not so much.
      Pretty much everywhere, those in power aim to disarm those who are not. That’s true in England, Germany, the USSR, California, DC, etc. And they always start with the subgroups that are easily demonized: catholics, blacks, jews, etc.

      • Agreed. I’ve met a variety of gun-controllers, and they definitely come in different stripes. Some are clearly evil, intent on disarming the political opposition just as a rapist prefers unarmed victims (and for much the same reasons). Call that a “Type 1” gun controller, whom Lyle identified, where the key emphasis in on “control.” Those are the leadership.
        Some are SPQR’s virtue-signalers; they don’t really care a lot one way or another, they are just imitating what the cool kids are doing. They haven’t thought it through, they don’t know the facts, don’t really want to argue, and tend to quickly change the subject when challenged. They are useful idiots to Type 1s. Call those “Type 2.”
        Many are sincere true believers, but seriously delusional about the facts, cause-effect, history, and logical thinking in general. They will gladly argue, but are frequently not bright enough to understand logical argument. They are heavily into the Feelz of the issue, and passionate about supporting the Type 1s, and may seem like nice people, but they are intellectual lost causes. They are the Type 3.

        There many more sub-types, but those are the major sorts I’ve run across, as least as they occur to me at this time of night. Did I miss any large categories?

        • One more, a variation of Type 3: those who parrot the headline because they have been told they are supposed to, but have not invested any further brainpower into the subject and aren’t capable of arguing at all.

  4. For the word “idealist”, I would substitute “delusional, virtue signaling, authoritarians” as it covers those with malevolent goals and those too stupid to recognize the danger of their viewpoint towards liberty and freedom.

    John Jay hits it right on the head. The true goal of gun control is obvious when any of the proposals are examined. They are ALWAYS directed at impeding the law-abiding citizens and exemptions (e.g. carry, magazine limits, select fire) for the state jackboots prove the point. That is the definition of tyranny, when the government is not restricted by the same laws it imposes on the citizens.

  5. The idealists aren’t the drivers of the gun control effort; they are the rank and file followers, the “useful idiots”, the NON-party members who hear the venial blather from the bad actors who push gun control.

  6. Pingback: Quote of the day—Tirno | The View From North Central Idaho

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