The Phantom Menace

July 19, 2022 By: Nick Carraway Category: Uncategorized

As we move through these tricky times, we find people picking and choosing which bedrock principles they will choose to follow. These choices are based on fear. They are based on things that aren’t real and have never been real. Some of these choices are based on bedrock principles that are invisible.

https://twitter.com/mccloskeyusa/status/1549072016233431043?cxt=HHwWhoC8sdOytP8qAAAA

Keep in mind, these were the jackasses that saw a group of protesters walking down their street. None of them actually came on the property, but what the hell, the second amendment saved their lives. Those protesters kept going after the McCloskey’s were standing on their porch with their ridiculously huge guns. Someone might take their guns from their cold dead hands, but it will be after they’ve accidentally shot each other.

Listen to any second amendment fanatic long enough and you will hear two inevitable “truths”. They need those big guns to protect them in case of a home invasion. They need those guns to protect them when the government goes rogue. Lost in the translation is the extreme unlikelihood of either of those things actually happening.

Lost in the translation is the near complete cancellation of portions of the first amendment. In particular, movement conservatives now want to cancel the establishment clause and want to tear down the walls between church and state. This isn’t rumor. This isn’t innuendo. They are saying this explicitly out loud.

We’ve discussed gun control and gun rights before. Certainly we can produce commentary from the framers that would seem to indicate a desire for unfettered access, but a broader look at history doesn’t back it up. Boil it all down and it’s all pure fantasy. It is about as meaningful as the need to protect ourselves from a rogue government or rogue home invader.

What we haven’t touched on is the seemingly randomness of holding some rights sacrosanct while others are ignored. Freedom of speech, religion, expression, and assembly is at the very heart of our political culture. The ability to travel freely and unfettered is there too. But by all means let’s have those big guns so we can protect ourselves from our neighbors and “others.” By all means, let’s protect us from a rogue government that would attack us while opening the door for them to take away our privacy and dominion over our bodies.