Perhaps the second basic tenet of "small L" libertarianism, right behind that people belong to themselves, is that people are responsible for their own actions. The FN guy who went to a baseball game practice to kill Republicans is responsible. Bernie Sanders isn't responsible, although the shooter loved him some Bernie socialist idiocy (that's redundant). The Democratic establishment isn't responsible. The disgusting, unfunny, skank "comedienne" with the simulated beheaded Donald Trump mask isn't responsible, nor are the Shakespeare in the Park depiction of assassinating Trump or the "coarsening of the culture" responsible. The guns are absolutely, unequivocally not responsible. Only the guy who pulled the trigger is responsible.
However...
We humans are good at stereotyping because it's an effective survival technique. If one of our tribe is killed by a lion, it's hardwired that we remember that large yellowish-beige cats are dangerous and to be avoided. Watching things we stereotype can help us see where trouble might be coming from and help us survive. It doesn't mean that every big yellow-beige cat is going to attack and kill one of us, and paying attention to one while a smaller, spotted cat is stalking us from another direction might be catastrophically bad survival skill. Likewise, if you got horribly sick and threw up repeatedly after eating something, I bet you're going to be reluctant to have it again, even if you intellectually know it wasn't bad.
In this case, it pays to be alert to left wing wackos. If I recall correctly, with the exception of the Palestinian who killed Robert F. Kennedy, every political assassination in the US has been carried out by a leftist.
At the moment, Townhall is reporting that Representative Steve Scalise has had a second surgery and may need a third. He's in critical condition and in the Intensive Care Unit at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, a level one trauma center. Former staffer turned lobbyist Matt Mika is also in critical condition.
This incident isn't over for them or their families. It's only over for the shooter.
Malcolm Harris and the rest of the corrupt, elite, smug, lying mainstream media are to blame for this sort of thing. Of course, progs won't take responsibility for anything. It's just who they are.
ReplyDeleteWhat we are seeing is the beginning of the second civil war. The level of polarization here is worse than the 1960s, and nearly as bad as the 1860s.
ReplyDeleteHow many hundreds of millions of people do socialists have to kill before you can allocate at least some blame to socialism? We're already over 100 million. Does it need to get to 200 million? 300? A billion?
ReplyDeleteLet's take your claim and apply it to ISIS... Let's say this person watched ISIS propaganda and then followed their suggestions for mass murder. Is the responsibility solely with him? Even if the creators of the propaganda publicly proclaim that it is meant to inspire murder?
This person did not develop their mindset in a vacuum. They were taught to hate. They were told these people's lives had no value. They were told they needed to be stopped no matter what. They were told to form a resistance and fight. They were told that these people are guilty of treason.
What has been going on is just short of saying "Won't someone rid me of these troublesome 1%'ers?"
It sure makes the word seem a nicer place to pretend that the responsibility is only his, but there truth is that political and media elites are deliberately crafting their propaganda to teach the same hate that this man expressed. They knew this might happen and they're counting on you to pretend that there's no way they could have seen it coming.
So tell me: you've been exposed to the same propaganda all your life, why haven't you gone off and killed people? Is it that you're stronger and he was too weak? You're a better person? You've been steeped in propaganda all your life, too, but you haven't gone off and killed people. I hope.
DeleteThe thing about propaganda and influence is that all they can do is tell you that you really ought to do something. You have to decide to pull the trigger with your finger on someone that's a recognizable person in front of you. To do that, you have to dehumanize the person in front of you to some abstract hated enemy and make them not a person anymore. He tried to kill someone simply because they hold different political views than he does. A person who would kill someone because they disagree with them is a psychopath. The more plain-talk version that I used last night is Fucking Nuts. A person who is not FN doesn't pull the trigger.
Again, you've been exposed to people who disagree with you all your life; why haven't you killed them?
To assume that only people who aren't as good as you are would do something like that is the worst kind of elitism. It's one step away from, "we need to censor those videos because they make people kill", or one step away from "we need to take away your guns - for the children".
I believe in free will and liberty. Free will means it was his choice to pull the trigger, not the effects of influence. It also means he gets the consequences of his free will.
Look, I've been writing that I expect political assassinations to be started by the leftists since at least 2012, and maybe farther back. I'm not surprised. But it's not the fault of some vaguely defined "communists" or whatever group you name, it's the fault of the person pulling the trigger.
I say, it makes the word seem a nicer place to blame everything bad on a small group of political and media elites, but the truth is that free individuals have the power to ignore them.
Go read again... if you're going to represent my view point honestly, you have to admit that I never said this man bears no responsibility for his actions, simply that that others may also share the blame.
DeleteI notice you still haven't answered my question about ISIS.
Under the standard you are putting forward, only the shooter bears any responsibility.
The question of ISIS takes your point of view to its absurd logical conclusion. Address it.
So do you think that even if someone publicly calls for murder and and describes how to do it you think they bear no blame when the actual murder takes place? Because it's just propaganda right?
(I'm betting you can't actually get yourself to come out and say yes to that question, even though that is precisely what you are claiming.)
Come out and specifically say that you think incitement to violence is protected speech. Or fail to do that or you admit that by your failure to do so, admit that you are wrong, and actually IT IS POSSIBLE in some cases for someone who speaks to also bear responsibility for actions that result.
(Like maybe shouting "fire" in a theatre.... Perhaps it's possible that someone might bear responsibility for the subsequent actions of those theatre patrons. Perhaps there's already a well established legal standard that false claims that could be reasonably expected to cause alarm and significant harm to others are legally culpable!)
If you can get yourself to that point, then you will have taken the first step. You would be starting to see that the real world isn't some silly libertarian fantasy land, but a practical place where sometimes there are tough moral decisions to be made. Then you're going to have to start thinking about what the limits are.
Next, do I think I'm a "better" person than someone who falls for ISIS propaganda an starts murdering people? Hell yes I do!
I believe my world view is better than theirs, and I'm actually willing to say that instead of hiding behind some PC nonsense about elitism. Yes, I'm better than a bunch of terrorists. What an awful elitist I must be!
If you're going to consider what I said truthfully, you'll see that I never endorsed any prior restraint. I simply advanced the notion that one might actually sometimes bear responsibility for one's actions. For example, perhaps publicly calling for a military coup against the elected president might be something that could possibly merit legal consequences?
The reply to this is going to be another post - because it got too long to be a reply.
DeleteOf course the individual pulling the trigger is responsible. But those in public office and the entertainers who are relentlessly messaging to the masses that President Trump and his backers must be taken out, taken down, and even beheaded and murdered are clearly signaling their followers. These Democrats act in the same manner as the ISIS media arm does to its followers. So the Democrats bear great responsibility in triggering this event.
ReplyDeleteOne thing is certain and clear to me. This is not the last of the attacks against Republicans by Democratic Party followers. As long as the leftists and LEO's are the only trigger pullers a civil war will be averted. But as soon as the far far Right jumps in and starts making headshots to the Antifa and other Marxist subversives the balloon will go up and civil war 2017 will be upon us.
For the record I am a Convervative and Trump supporter.
I am not a lawyer, so the difference between propaganda and inciting is opaque to me. If someone kills someone and blames it on a TV show or speech, I think the the person attached to the trigger finger is the one who goes to jail, not the one encouraging it. Shooters don't ordinarily get to point and say, in effect, "he made me do it" and get away with murder.
DeleteThat said, I agree with the observation that our long, cold civil war is going hot and when it does, it's going to reach a level of ugly the world has never seen.
The Trail of Tears worked in the press because the optics were good. Present-day banning of the healthcare market similarly works because the optics are good. Both are ethnic cleansings. Both remove at gunpoint previously satisfactory economic arrangements, which are sufficiently key as to endanger life by their removal.
ReplyDeleteThese "different political views" are not some abstract position in an academic debating society, which does not ever motivate harmful actions. These are national legislators. They worked hard to become national legislators, they have purposeful culpability. Once elected, they could have advocated to repeal every law which is incompatible with libertarianism, but they didn't. They could have all been Ron Pauls, but instead they make the choice each morning to forcibly remove the liberties of their victims.
I agree that this is the fault of the shooter but that is an over simplification. In the struggle between left and right there are two different strategies at play. When the right disagrees with the left the right normally starts the discussion with the policies of the left are wrong. When the left disagrees with the right, the right isn't wrong, they are evil and want to kill your children and starve your parents to death.
ReplyDeleteThen when something bad happens, like a shooting, things get strange. The right says that it is the fault of the shooter. The left does one of two things. If the shooter was from the right then the fault lies with the people on the right that preach evil like Rush and he must be silenced. If the shooter is from the left then the left media just buries the story as soon as possible and blames the gun, not the person.
I found a strange thing today. I read lots of sources for my news, Fox, CNN, ABC.... Well today I wanted to see what CNN had to say about the shootings yesterday. Can you believe that on their home page there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! If you get your news from them then it didn't happen.
This is a culture war between the right and the left. The fight tries to fight with rational arguments and left fights with name calling and violence.
In a fight like this, if the right continues it will loose the fight.
I would like to see the right call out the left on a face to face. Such as the current adds that state the rights healthcare plan is going to kill you children. Chuck Shummer (sp?) is the leading proponent for that add. I would like to see media come out and ask him if he really believes that the right is doing this to kill people and if they are isn't the right and correct thing to do to hunt down and kill the people on the right because they are evil?
It is what they have been preaching fro years in subtle ways.
Well said.
DeleteI hadn't gone to CNN, but I went to Drudge early in the day and there were no mentions of the shooting, at least in the top areas. I went to Drudge a little while ago and there was mention of Rep Scalise still being in critical condition, and that was a link to CNN.
Sounds pretty iffy for Scalise. Minute by minute.
If you want to see the difference between left and right, look at the Twitter responses from the left celebrating this shooting. Bayou Renaissance Man had some earlier today.
I'd also say to this: This is a culture war between the right and the left. The right tries to fight with rational arguments and left fights with name calling and violence. That the left loves and pushes for central control. Any organization that specializes in top-down command structures have an advantage over a bunch of independent, "don't tell me what to do" people. I mean, militaries are all top-down structures, right?
Every human being who gives aid and comfort to organized crime deserves to be in a correctional situation which prevents them from aggressing me, until they reform. "Aid and comfort" includes supplying military intelligence by squealing on your neighbor who peacefully carries a handgun into the bar area of a gay nightclub. There are no exceptions because our mothers went into labor in the same town, or because we are the same race or religion, or because a group is the numerical majority in my geographic region.
ReplyDeleteThe differences between Republicans and Democrats are about the size of the differences between football teams. Different colors, different mascot animal.
"The differences between Republicans and Democrats are about the size of the differences between football teams. Different colors, different mascot animal."
DeleteAnon, if you are referring to the politicians of both parties, I absolutely agree with you. But not when we speak of the individual citizens identifying with both of those parties. I do believe many more Democrats accept the cultural drive of the Left toward violence if you disagree with them, or impede their agenda of dragging the rest of us into their socialist "paradise".
I think there are far fewer Republicans who agree with the GOPe, the establishment RINOs who are headed for the same agenda for America, just taking a side street to get there instead of the same road as the Left. I would guess that the majority of folks who vote Republican (while wishing for a viable third party) actually believe in the old-timey Republican values (or what was originally professed as being Republican values) of individual rights, small government, free markets and fiscal responsibility.
I will say that some of my relatives back in New England are still Democrats, but being old folks like me, they still believe (no matter how much reality shows it to be false) that the Democrats support the common man, the working man trying to take care of his family and provide a decent life for them.
Of course, today's Democrats don't give a damn about the working man, the middle class or lower. They simply pretend to, as they pretend to give a damn about blacks. Even the Congressional Black Caucus doesn't give a damn about their own folk, although they gleefully use them to push their own agenda, primarily getting re-elected so they can continue to snuffle at the trough, enrich themselves at the cost of counteracting everything Martin Luther King did to improve relations between black and white. And there never was a more blatant example of that kind of disdain for their own people as that scumwad, #44.