Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. -- MaxedOutMama

I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. -- Kim du Toit

The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them.-- Moshe Ben-David

The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem. -- Sultan Knish

All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war. -- Billy Beck

Friday, October 23, 2015

Blocked at Quora.com

Well, I've been temporarily blocked at Quora.com for violating their "Be Nice, Be Polite" policy.  Can't post there until October 30.  In the mean time, I guess I can still post here!

If you're unfamiliar, Quora is a site where anybody can ask anything, and anybody who joins up can respond.

Ran across this jewel over there and thought I'd share it.  The question asked was, "What will it take to radically change America's gun culture?"  Like there's only one.

Seems this guy thinks he's struck upon something original.
Avoiding getting dragged into the gun control debate and attempting to answer your original question, I would say there are at least two options, both of which would be lengthy and difficult in application. First, like cigarettes, the government could embark on a long term effort of making gun ownership and gun use difficult and expensive, while propagandizing against equating guns with generally positive terms such as "liberty" and "freedom", instead instilling in future generations the association of guns with negatives such as "murder" and "anti-social". Realizing that a goodly number of people holding social and political power in the US are themselves gun nuts, you can imagine this is a remote possibility. Equally problematic is the idea of revolutionary change in the US which removes all notions of American exceptionalism, militarism and conservative ideology from popular thought.

Summing up, the two paths I see involve public "shaming" of gun people in the same manner as smokers are publically(sic) shamed today, or the active suppression of what I think are really defining characteristics of America: conservative ideology, religious ideology, fierce individualism, a tendency towards conspiracy theory, a preference for violence as a solution to social and individual problems, and mistrust of government. As you might guess, I'm not optimistic.
As Instapundit once said, "It’s pretty irritating, being shamed by people who have none themselves."

He apparently doesn't realize that his prescription is precisely how it was done in the UK.  I have to wonder, though, at what form his "active suppression" would take.  What's most interesting to me however, is what he himself describes as the "really defining characteristics of America,"
  • Conservative ideology
  • Religious ideology
  • Fierce individualism
  • Mistrust of government 
You begin to understand Barack Obama's appeal to people like him when Obama promised to fundamentally transform the United States of America.

They're ashamed of it.  They hate it. 

So yeah, I do think they're un-American.  They admit it themselves.

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