A Modest Response to Joe’s Immodest Proposal
President Biden and his supporters, ever eager to capitalize on human suffering, are once again calling for the disarming of America. The occasion of their renewed animus against the Second Amendment has been two shootings, both misreported in press accounts.
The Atlanta shootings are being promoted as the result of anti-Asian racism, when the true cause appears to like in the shooter's sense of guilt over his obsessive frequenting of massage parlors. Anyone who lives in an urban area today is aware of how "sex workers" are brought into an area, where they work in massage parlors or lingerie display shops or on the street and, after they have been arrested a certain number of times, are moved on to the next city. The fact that the workers in this industry are disproportionately members of certain ethnic groups might tell us something about the wisdom of allowing the country to be flooded by groups whose members engage in questionable activities.
The shootings in Boulder, as soon as anyone read the first accounts, had to have been committed by some protected minority group, probably Muslim. Inner city thugs are less likely, most people realize, to commit random crimes from which they reap no benefit. In this case, the shooter was a Muslim named Ahmad, one of the names of the Prophet.
Ahmad had been a high school wrestler. Schoolmates and family members have described him as crazy, paranoid, and dangerous. He was recently playing with a firearm in a relative's home. They took it away from him--as well they should have--but apparently gave it back to him.
Ahmad had been in trouble for fighting in school and told one classmate that if he beat someone up, he would simply lie about what happened and accuse his victim of having attacked him out of anti-Muslim bigotry. But surely in this great country of ours, no one would actually go so far as to fabricate a hate crime just to enhance his own self-esteem or private interest! Among Ahmad's complaints was that he couldn't get a girlfriend--no one apparently ever suggested he get a shave or dress like anything but a weasel--and he absolutely hated Donald Trump.
So, President Joe, here is my modest response, which I shall put forth in my campaign: Ban Muslims, not guns, especially Muslims with names like Mohammed and Ahmad and Ali. We might also designate the Never-Trumpers of both parties, spewing violent and irrational venom against a political leader whom nearly half of Americans supported, as the hate criminals they really are.
I agree Tom. When Vice President Cheney accidentally shot his hunting buddy in a staged pheasant hunting photo op during the Bush II “wars forever in the Middle East administration,” I thought that was a great opportunity to ban media reports of staged photo ops for national politicians. It never occurred to me we should confiscate the guns and bird dogs or actual American small game hunters. A Southern senator recently said in response to the most recent criminal slaughter and Uncle Joe Biden’s perfunctory request for more “gun control” that It was his thought that we had an idiot control problem not a gun control problem.
Biden and the Progressives are a one trick pony when it comes to guns.
All that’s being pressed so far is the reinstatement on some old, revoked limitations on “assault” weapons and big ammunition magazines. A lot more may be proposed but won’t fly far, and meanwhile, gun industry money will gush into campaign funds. Not to worry, most probably.
Unmentioned is whether the increase in mass shootings rises while other gun-related casualties continue to fall, which I’ve been given to understand has been the case since the late 1990s. Also, the incidences of other violent crimes have fallen, too, we’ve been told. America is apparently not becoming more violent overall.
Other suppressed questions are how many mass shooters are Muslim and what are the rates of violent crimes committed by Muslims in comparison to the overall population of Muslims and to the similar rates of Christians, Jews, Asian-heritage Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans.
Or are such facts impertinent because they’re asserted by government, academic, and think tank social scientists, who are to a person incapable of telling the truth?
Ray, thanks for raising what might be valuable points. There was a time when I studied statistics on crime and social pathology. I gave up on that about ten years, when I came to realize that governments at all levels jigger their figures. For example, national agencies like the FBI report particular groups, e.g. “Hispanics” as either white or non-white, as it suits national policy. Big city police departments were have apparently been converting higher class felony charges into lower or multiple misdemeanors in order to make it appear that serious crimes are in decline. As you observe, they are incapable of telling the truth, and the academics who receive grants to prove the received wisdom are even more dishonest, if that is possible.
Second, statistics apart, the United States are now and have been for some time far more violent than Canada and the European and Asian countries with whom we compete economically. What one is not supposed to talk about is the simple fact that Americans of European background commit violent crimes about the same rate as Scotland and Norway. Our vastly disproportionate rates of violent crime are the gift of diversity, first and most prominently from Americans of African extraction and second, from certain–but not all–“Hispanic” groups, e.g. Mexicans, Dominicans Puerto Ricans. Setting aside the demographic reality, though, small ups and downs in rates of abortion, divorce, rape, murder should not be used to conceal the truth: that life in these United States is increasingly threatened.
As for comparing murder rates of Muslims and non-Muslims, it would be interesting to know the results. In your unfortunate neck of the woods, Somali Muslims are a crime wave in themselves, but I suspect that overall Muslims are not much more violent than European ex-Christians, but I cannot think of a single reason for letting in any members of a religious tradition that explicitly encourages violence against non-believers. Jihad is an ethical category for Muslims, and, while–thank Heaven–there are a lot of Muslims whose faith is about as strong as the average Methodist or ECLA Lutheran–disgruntled Muslim young men are a ticking time bomb. We don’t need this problem in our country, and we are not in the same position as France, UK, and Netherlands who colonized Muslim countries.
You will find it strange, but I have no particular animosity toward Muslims and oppose American imperial aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. I believe strongly we should leave them alone to manage their own affairs, but in return there is no reason why we should import, into a country so divided by ideology, religion, and race, the traditional enemies of our people and religion.
Obviously, no one in power is going to take the smallest step toward resolving any of these problems. In a better world, with even a decent minority of sane political leaders, I’d happily discuss the merits of various gun control measures, but since the object of the political left is not to control violence–they love violence, obviously and do everything to encourage the anarchy that calls for more power to government–but to enslave the free population, I simply see no reason in pretending to engage in honest and rational discourse with the bizarre aliens who rule are country and its repellant mass culture.
I wonder if we could find some better word than “Progressives”. I know the left started using this term some decades ago as a polite replacement for Marxists and socialists and leftists, but the original Progressives were an interesting lot who opposed the capitalist monopoly on power, favored responsible democratic institutions and controls, and opposed American entrance into two World Wars. They were mistaken–as some eventually realized–in thinking that big government could tame big business–Senator Borah wisely referred to them as “Twin whelps from the same kennel”–but they were authentic Americans whose dream was to restore something like the old republic. Fighting Bob LaFollette, Burt Wheeler, William Borah, Robert Taft would not waste their spit on the people who call themselves Progressives today.
I used to know Erwin Knoll, the editor of the Progressive. He was in many ways a traditional anti-war Leftist, but living in a Wisconsin village taught him the virtues of Middle American people and as he ripened in his thinking we found more to agree on than to disagree.
Another word for “Progressives” could be Clatterers or Rattlers . Didn’t these so-called Progressives caused mayhem across the country clattering their demands to cancel the first amendment and now to change the second amendment? I believe there were people who were partial toward a Biden victory who helped make it so and it wasn’t through those Dominion machines. Call me a conspiracy theorist but I’ll stand my ground until it is proven otherwise.
The Muslims? At the rate we’re going they’re probably delighted. There is nothing they would like more than to have them run the county under shiria law, and Biden is only too happy to let them in across the border along with every one else.
*A perfectly rational response*
I understand that two of the murdered women in Atlanta were white. Assuming that the massage parlours were in fact brothels and assuming that they were owned and operated by asiatic foreigners, where is the outrage among the general population, much less the media, in response to foreign white slavers operating with impunity in our country.
Tom–Thanks for your thoughtful and persuasive reply. I’m not as skeptical about social scientists as you are nor even as skeptical about government. Perhaps I’m mistaken not to be.
Of course, I knew that you share my dislike of our government’s international meddling. but is that not a function of our government’s unalterable fealty to international business, which is also why nothing will come of gun control efforts? I expect our running dog media, especially its progressive components, to never let us forget Jan. 6.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by “skeptical”. I have explained more than once the dishonest use of the term scientist in connection with the social “sciences.” If by science, we mean only an organized body of knowledge and set of techniques to get at truth, of course sociology and political science are sciences, but so is aesthetics, history, and the study of ancient Greek meters.
If we mean something like “exact” science, e.g., physics, biology, astronomy, where ultimate reality is often to be found in numbers, then the social sciences are about as valid as phrenology. The use of statistics in such “sciences” is one of their indications of their fundamental falseness and dishonesty. My old friend John S Reed, a distinguished sociologist who did a lot of survey work, used to say that surveys and opinion polls tell you what people are likely to say when strangers come to the door asking suspicious questions.
But apart from the inherent falseness of using abstract and mathematical methods to determine some truth about human behavior–a fallacy Aristotle unmasked so long ago–there is the built in institutional dishonesty of American researchers whose reports are made as part of their PR campaign to attract grant money. Serious academic studies over the past t0-15 years reveal that the writing of history is plagued by incessant plagiarism, but in the sciences–even real sciences–a huge proportion of published articles make patently false claims. 2-3 years ago a researcher went over reports of scientific discoveries, particularly medical, in the mainstream press and concluded that a large majority were either, 1) misreported and distorted by the publication or, 2) bogus research made up to attract grants or both. Bogus research is most apt to be done in fields where big money is at stake–cancer, AIDS, COVID. A very recent study of journal articles in the social sciences revealed that most of the studies could not be replicated–in other words, they proved nothing.
There used to be a character (still is perhaps) on NPR, who reports on social science. Even from his reporting one can detect the flaws in the methods used, most of which come down to the post hoc propter hoc fallacy, and false correlations that do not take into account significant related factors. This is especially true in sensitive areas involving race and gender but it is almost equally true in correlating life styles and diets with disease. A typical study will tell you that people who swim 4 times a week or go to gymnasia are less likely to die of–say, heart disease. What about the fact that such people are less likely to eat junk food? Smoke cigarettes? Become morbidly obese. Or, what it often comes down to, they have a median income much higher than the group that does not go to gymns or have personal trainers or shop at Whole Foods. So, I would not call my attitude skeptical in the philosophical sense but formed as a rational response to bogus disciplines that have mostly taken shape in less than 100 years.
As for skeptical about governments in general, I am not. I am pretty optimistic about the ability of human beings to deal constructively with the circumstances they find themselves or, indeed, create in their folly and mischief. What I am skeptical of are the lies put about by do-gooding philanthropists who sacrifice their self-interest on the altar of human progress. The more democratic, progressive, and humanitarian governments pretend to be, the less honest, effective, and fair they almost inevitably are. What were the most idealistic governments of the last century–if we go by rhetoric? Nazi Germany and the USSR. My advice, if you believe any of that, is to read Machiavelli. I am often reminded of a line James Mason delivers in the silly movie “Georgie Girl.” As a widower with the hots for a young Lyn Redgrave, he tells Georgie, “Try to think of me as a kindly old man who has nothing but your best interest at heart.” Indeed, as our friend Michael Guravage would say, Indeed.
“… since the object of the political left is not to control violence–they love violence, obviously and do everything to encourage the anarchy that calls for more power to government…”
Tanto peggio, tanto meglio?
Esatto.