Cheryl Rofer was kind enough to post an essay where she discusses her attempts to understand the mindset behind the supporters of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party movement.
That essay has invited a fair number of comments, some of them less than kind. When I noted that Ms. Rofer was trying to reach Tea Party satori by mulling over the life of Tchaikovsky, and the writings of authors who hail from Spain and Great Britain, I am afraid that I became guilty of writing something negative myself….
“You conflate a Russian composer and a British novelist with an American grass roots movement that is devoted to shrinking the size of government? I think it is pretty obvious why you are confused!”
That was both unkind and uncalled for, and I apologize to Ms. Rofer unreservedly.
As a gesture to show that I take her seriously, I would like to try and smooth the way for her a little bit. But to do that, I will have to bore you all to tears by explaining my own background. My only defense for this terrible waste of your time is that I believe it will lead to a better meeting of minds.
My private charity for 18 years was a self defense course for violent crime survivors. Eventually I came to specialize in elderly and disabled students, the most vulnerable members of society.
In all, more than 700 people managed to live free from crippling fear because they received the help they needed to put their past behind them.
Working with people suffering from reduced physical abilities meant that less lethal options were not going to work. The idea that martial arts training, defensive sprays, or even impact weapons would provide a means to fend off a violent criminal attack was simply asinine.
When one cannot outrun a 12-year-old child, and one is so frail that the kid can beat them to death without breaking a sweat, a can of pepper spray isn’t going to do anything but take up room in their pocket.
So my goal was to instruct my students on the safe and effective way to use firearms in their defense.
Elders crippled by arthritis, people suffering from partial paralysis, and even people confined to wheelchairs all learned how to shoot in order to save innocent life.
And yet I was branded as a monster by many Liberals I encountered. Because the active self defense portion of the charity course focused on firearms, I was even accused of scheming to increase the death rate! All because I advocated private ownership of firearms.
The vast majority of my students were women, and yet it was said that my purpose was to facilitate the brutalization of women because I was putting more guns on the streets. Most of my students were minorities, yet I was branded a racist because the majority of violent crime victims were minorities. The fact that there were no other options open to my students to resist violent criminal attack, that law abiding people by definition do not commit crimes, was completely ignored in favor of mindless moralizing.
I was a bad person, evil right down to my socks, because I was acting counter to one of the most dearly held shibboleths of Liberal thought: The mere act of owning a firearm turns people into violent lunatics!
The claim was that firearms increased the death rate, even if they were in the hands of innocent people who obeyed the law. Access to a gun would warp their character, the power to shoot unleashing the very worst impulses that might be suppressed if it took effort to end a life. The common image that gun control advocates invoked was blood flowing in the streets as unsuspecting motorists were gunned down for minor traffic disputes.
The facts, however, proved this to be completely wrong.
The United States is perhaps the one country in the world best suited to embrace change, and things certainly changed during the two decades I was tending to my life’s work. Laws allowing law abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms for their defense blossomed, while the number of violent crimes shrank even as the population rose. Obvious for all to see, states with the strictest gun control laws are less safe than those which have less restrictions.
But what was most telling was a study by the CDC which failed to find even a single gun control law which reduced violent crime. Considering all of the Federal, state, and local laws which limit and control access to firearms, this should have been a slam dunk. And yet, they found nothing!
The facts seem plain enough. Despite all the predictions and rhetoric brought to the table by Liberals, firearms in the hands of law abiding citizens do not increase the crime or death rates. The scenarios designed to scare the public, that of minor traffic disputes giving way to murder in the streets, never materialized. In fact there is every indication that draconian gun control laws will increase the danger to average citizens by removing the only means they have for defense.
The Liberals insist that this is not their fault. Their scheme would bear fruit, in time. The reason why it fails to provide any of the positive effects they predict is because it just hasn’t been tried hard enough!
Washington, DC is a pit of violence and crime, even though it sees some of the most draconian restrictions on firearms in the entire country? Well, that is because there are hardly any laws against owning guns in peaceful Virginia! Criminals can simply take a day trip to that low-crime state, load up on shooting gear, and return to ply their foul calling in our nation’s capitol. If only the most severe and unreasonable restrictions on personal choice and freedom were enacted across the country! If only average citizens were treated as criminals before they commit even one crime!
Then, and only then, would we realize the Utopia that Liberals see just around the corner!
This is hardly a big political issue today, mainly because the Democrats realized that they were losing elections when their candidates banged the gun control drum too loudly. Advocates of armed self defense such as myself are extremely wary of this trend in Liberal policy. We note that the Clinton administration was devoted to gun control measures, even though all the facts clearly stated that it was the wrong path if the lives of innocent people are to be protected.
To many people, the silence from the Democrats on the issue is nothing more than a cynical ploy. Considering their tenacity in bullishly pushing gun control in the past, it seems beyond belief that they would give up completely. Instead, this period of calm is seen as nothing more than a time for wily politicians to allow emotions to fade before they take up the cause once more, even though it has proven to be a complete and utter failure.
The lines above outline my very own keyhole issue, the one subject that colors all of my political beliefs. And so it is the one thing I know the most about, which is why I have been putting all of you through this extreme tedium. Admittedly, most people aren’t too concerned about this, mainly because they and their loved ones have never been the victim of a violent criminal attack. (And thank goodness for that!)
But even if the Liberals refuse to acknowledge the plain and obvious facts of this matter, what about other issues where they claim to know the best course? They might have screwed up royally on the issue of self defense and gun control, where they never managed to get anything right. Couldn’t this be a blind spot? Just an outlier, a lone failure, of Liberal philosophy?
I don’t think the track record of the Democrats will elicit a great deal of pride. On foreign policy, the economy and fiscal policy, basic law enforcement, and even health care, the Liberals have dropped the ball.
Even though they have enjoyed a dominance in Washington that they have not seen in decades, and used that power to make some of their most cherished policies reality, they can’t keep from shooting themselves in the foot. Many, perhaps even a majority, of their ideas simply don’t work in the real world. Attempts to enact them reduce freedoms and rights in the US, and even produce the exact opposite effects that are promised by the Liberals.
Yet, even so, they refuse to give up on them, and adjust their thinking to what is embarrassingly obvious.
Above is outlined my own opposition to Liberals and their ideas. What does this have to do with Glenn Beck and the Tea Party? What are the goals?
As I can attest by personal experience, media bias is pervasive and omnipresent. The Left is given what amounts to free publicity, while attempts are made to present Conservative ideas and policies in the most unflattering light possible. It appears to me that one of the unstated goals is to reveal this bias in all its ugliness.
Not that a lot of effort really needs to be expended. All anyone has to do is state that they are against the policies of the Democrats, and the media and their allies will screw themselves over in their zeal to condemn the infidels.
Since the Democrats have come to power, they have allowed their unreasonable and unreasoning hatred of the military come to the fore. Although a strong military is vital to protect American interests abroad, as well as provide leverage when attempting to find common ground through diplomacy, the Obama administrations disdain for our ability to project force is obvious.
I see the Restoring Honor rally held last week as a repudiation of this mindset. Those who choose to serve this country deserve at least our thanks, not vitriol for fearlessly allowing themselves to be placed in harms way for our sake.
Providing a sympathetic alternative to the mainstream media’s bias against the military will hopefully show just how morally bankrupt the Liberals are when it comes to this issue.
One of the unifying themes presented by Mr. Beck is that of religious faith. This seems to be a big issue with Ms. Rofer, as she spends a great deal of time trying to get people to discuss the matter.
Speaking as someone who is not a person of faith, I would have to say that it simply isn’t something that I even notice all that much. It might provide a sense of solidarity to some, but it just isn’t on my radar. There is a great deal to recommend the movement besides religion, and that seems to be missed for some reason.
So what am I hoping that the Tea Party movement achieves? Simply put, I hope that it leads to the discredit, disgrace, and eventual destruction of Liberal ideology in this country.
Far too much harm has been wrought by the Democrats. Good intentions aside, there is a time to modify the plan when it becomes obvious that it simply doesn’t work. The failure of Liberal policies has been on display for far too long, and yet they continue to bitterly cling to unworkable ideas. When are they going to get a clue?
The only reason they have managed to get as far as they have is due to the fact that the media is shilling for them. Remove the besotted cheerleading ideologues from the media, or expose them for the foes of free speech that they are, and the general public will abandon the nightly propaganda in search of the actual facts. This has been happening on its own for some time now, but let us hope that the movement accelerates the trend.
There were many goals of the Restoring Honor rally, but the one most important to me was an attempt to undermine the media by exposing them as the unthinking hacks they are. This would lay the groundwork for removing the most important ally that Liberals enjoy today: a fifth column embodied in the fourth estate.
And how did they do this? What was the nefarious scheme to reveal the Liberal groupthink that pervades journalists today?
The people at the rally just showed up. The Liberals are pretty much screwing themselves over without any help.
Re firearms, etc…liberals have increasingly tended to associate moral agency with *things* rather than with *persons*. One of the most bizarre examples of this was the hostility toward arming airline pilots…I addressed the psychology behind this opposition in one of my very first blog posts, here.
Nicely done!
Your tale of those unable to defend themselves called to mind a similar failing in the left/statist/Dem/green canon. We’re admonished and goaded and shamed to spend endless resources on alternative transport like rail and bicycle. But so many of the people I deal with in the real world are not able to bike, or to do so meaningfully. Being squished into communal transport helps disease spread, and one has to be fit enough to get to the station in the first place. Communal transport is a target concentrator for both local brigands and terrorists (for those who have learned to examine the daily environment for such things).
There are other undiscussed costs to alternative transport not related to health and physical stature, too. Alternative transport makes each of worlds smaller by shrinking our sphere of travel. The economics fail every reasoned test.
Yet those who choose to drive are just another class of demons. I’ve had enough.
I was in that comment thread you reference.
While I had no desire to be rude to Ms. Rofer and I think it shows class that you apologized I was struck by just how much time we had to spend worrying about her feelings.
As comment threads go that one was amazingly polite. Yet still people popped up to complain about the vitriol she had to tolerate.
In my opinion you owed her no apology. Your comment seemed to me to be well within the bounds of normal discourse.
Yes, I know this is none of my business and Ms. Rofer is a friend of Lexington Green. So plainly he doesn’t want people to be rude to his friend.
But my sense is that something else was in operation. Elites demand deference.
So thus they take offense at comments that are simply normal and typical but lack the verbal genuflection they believe they deserve.
With the Nov 2, 2010 election, the Progressive Left is looking at its fisrt “Kobiashi Maru Scenario.”
Nothing they do will prevent them from losing the ship (Power in Congress) and how they lose is the test of character they have never had to face before.
Reagan said “People are policy.”
The corollary is that if you reject a policy that the people implementing those policies truly believe in, you are rejecting _THEM_.
Mature, professional, people will recognize it is not personal, because they have developed the personal humility to recognize that fact that their ideas and their personal identities are two seperate things.
The Obama generation of Democrats — and younger Democratic activists with the same Leftist-Progressive Ivy League backgrounds — lack the humility to separate the personal from the political.
That has made it inevitable that Democrats would start openly attacking the American people for the utter and complete rejection of their policies.
And they are going to continue attacking the American people — hard and often — before they figure out that they are hurting themselves politically for 2012.
Interesting story. My own personal experience is that when a liberal wants to know what I believe and I share my personal faith in God, I get a look like I’m the Elephant Man. My beliefs are very personal and I rarely share my convictions with others but it is almost a universal occurrence amongst self-identified liberals to indicate that I should be ashamed of myself for being so weak as to need a god. They find my beliefs quaint at best, frightening at worst. It’s just not publicly acceptable these days. God to them is like some throwback to an era of ignorance along with voodoo and the Spanish Inquisition.
This automatic revulsion towards people of faith seems to me to be a recent phenomena that is unique in our history as a nation.
One Nation Under God.
Even with the cultural, societal and racial differences that this nation has, a deep belief in a higher power has united us as a nation in the past.
Ms. Rofer uses the racial divide to illustrate the “unjust nature” of America. The few that fought and sometimes died in their commitment to level this injustice are apparently her heros. I would like to point out to her that these “heros” of hers were deeply religious people and believed that they were just ordinary folks doing God’s work.
If Ms. Rofer would like to get inside my head as a “Tea Partier”, I would like to suggest that she start with her own.