Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
– Justice Louis D. Brandeis
How to Spot a Hypocrite in the Gun Debate and Other Reflections on Newtown
For those of you that follow me on twitter, some of the statements and themes you will read in this article will sound familiar. What happened on December 14, 2012 was obviously a horrific tragedy that my simple mind can’t possibly wrap itself around, but what I can do is send my deepest thoughts, prayers and sympathies to all of those affected. I can’t imagine the level of pain and suffering you are all experiencing. This article; however, isn’t directed at you. There is nothing I can do to ease your pain. This article is for the rest of us who weren’t directly affected by the incident, but may be indirectly affected by certain parties’ emotional response to it and by those that will exploit it to justify agendas.
One of the key lessons from all of human history is that the easy way to deal with any tragedy is to scapegoat. In some cases, like in Nazi Germany, the scapegoat proved to be unpopular minorities, especially Jews. These days, many Americans have fallen into the trap of scapegoasting Muslims and the Islamic religion for all the bad things that happen on the planet. The key similarity I see in these sorts of situations is that the population affected by some trauma (hyperinflation and economic collapse in Germany and 9/11 in the United States) tends to resort to the knee-jerk reaction of scapegoating an easy target rather than diving into the complexities of the issue and engaging in societal self-reflection. This is extraordinarily dangerous.
From what I can tell, some of the most ridiculous polices are the direct result of a trauma, people getting emotional, and then begging for a response. In my own lifetime, 9/11 is the perfect example. Our national response to a gruesome attack that killed thousands of innocent civilians was to tear up the Constitution, specifically the cherished Bill of Rights, with insane Big Brother type legislation like the “Patriot” Act. We basically launched the war on terror by waving a white flag. Truly defeating terrorists wouldn’t have consisted of running to the mall and shopping, as George W. Bush insisted, or giving up the freedoms that made America the most attractive country to move to for the last two hundred years. The way to judge victory or defeat in the “war on terror” eleven years later is not to check the statistics on terrorist attacks. They way to judge victory or defeat is to look at the nation economically, socially and politically and ask yourself are we better off or worse off? I think the verdict is clear on that front, and I do in large part blame our childish and emotionally reaction to the national tragedy of 9/11.
Well here we stand in mid-December 2012, just days from the Mayan end of the world and another national tragedy has been unleashed on the land. Most of the victims were innocent, helpless six and seven year old children that never even had the chance to fulfill their potential on this planet. Unfortunately, just as Ron Paul told us, key parts of the Patriot Act were written and desired by certain factions well before 9/11, there is a powerful faction in the highest echelons of the elite that have wanted and continue to want to remove guns from the hands of innocent American citizens. These people are not interested in easing violence; these folks want to disarm the public before the mathematically inevitable economic collapse occurs (see my article “Slaves are Always Disarmed”). While many of these folks claims publicly that there is an “economic recovery” and happy days are just over the horizon, they know better and privately want to get all their ducks in a row before the final and horrific collapse occurs. This is why the surveillance state is making such aggressive strides at the moment. It is also why there is a panic to remove firearms from the public.
The person who bothers me the most on this entire topic is Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of my hometown NYC. You can tell when someone is disingenuous if they freak out over gun violence like it is the biggest issue in America today and at the same time protect the banksters and their “too big to fail” culture, which has and continues to systemically steal trillions of dollars from the poor. This is Michael Bloomberg to a tee, so this man should have no credibility on any moral subject when he protects and coddles the most dangerous criminal organizations on this planet. I guess there is something “liberal” about white collar crime.
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