Shame

The progressive pantheon has no higher deity than the Victim. Sacred, honored and often unquestionable as most true Victims are deceased. There are some living Victims, and it's arguable that the status of Victim is something the progressives wish to label a majority of their followers with, but the most sacred of the sacred would be the ones whose Victim status was recognized posthumously.

Since the most venerated Victims cannot speak for themselves the progressives elevate those that would speak for them to seemingly equal status. In most cases, it's a parent or relative or spouse of the Victim. Their prestige is akin to the High Priests of old, who would deliver the gods message to the mere mortals.

Public servant Fields, of the Colorado house of representatives is a prominent example, not only of the reverence for the Victim by the progressives, but how they're used by the progressives. I've opined before that Fields just isn't that bright . From her speaking it does not seem that she's possessed of any special intellectual abilities or even has a grasp of the subjects which she implies expertise on (I mentioned that briefly in this post on Hickenlooper). Yet she was chosen to spearhead the gun owner control effort in Colorado, because her status as Victim seemed compelling to the progressives.

Public servant Hudak, also of the Colorado legislature, committed heresy by being rude with an actual Victim. That dashed the momentum of the bill that Hudak favored, and also caused criticism by her own people.

Nationally, some of the most prominent figures in the progressive movement to extinguish the gun culture are Victims. Brady's husband was shot in an assassination attempt on then president Reagan. McCarthy's husband was murdered and her son was injured during a spree killing. Giffords was shot and permanently injured during a mass murder. Feinstein wasn't a relative, but she was a politician in the same building where two murders took place, which I suppose is the next best thing in the progressive roll-call.

Now the families of the children murdered at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newton, Connecticut are being exalted by the progressive priest-makers. They've even gone so far in their newly appointed roles as High Priests and Priestesses to hurl cries of "shame!" at the senate if they don't do their bidding:

"Dozens of relatives of victims in the Dec. 14 shooting spree in Newtown, Conn., released a statement Thursday shaming senators who attempted to block, or filibuster, a vote on legislation that would expand criminal background checks for gun purchases."

There are a few other stories about some of the parents of the victims of the Newtown murders:

Voices of Newtown: How gun violence victims became effective lobbyists

From that article comes the following quote, from white house press secretary Jay Carney:

"When it comes to gun safety – especially in the wake of a string of horrific multiple shooting deaths – 'Nobody has a more important and powerful perspective on the issue than the families who have lost loved ones.”

That places them at the top of the list fairly decisively, from the progressive's perspective.

Newtown mom pleads for gun control at White House

"The mother of a 6-year-old boy killed in the Connecticut school shooting used the opportunity to fill in for President Barack Obama during the weekly radio and Internet address to make a personal plea from the White House for action to combat gun violence." (links omitted)

I won't embed it here, but this is a link to the youtube video of the weekly address mentioned above.

I'll warn you, it's very emotional. The mother of a child that was murdered choked up several times as she spoke. It will tug at your emotions, and attempt to compel your empathy.

That's why it was not only shameful, but immoral.

This headline sums it up nicely:

DC handlers turn Newtown families into anti-gun lobbyists

That surprisingly blunt article links and quotes this Politico piece on the Newtown parents-turned lobbyists:

"What started as a support group is now a lobbying force unlike any other to descend on Capitol Hill. The family members typically begin their pitch to senators softly, telling the story of the child that they lost. They gently say they could not have imagined themselves in this position, but they’re doing it to honor the memory of their children. They say they’re supporters of the Second Amendment, and just want to have a conversation.

But there’s nothing subtle about the way some of them conclude their visits: by leaving behind a color card with a photo of their slain relative. Nicole Hockley, who introduced President Barack Obama in Hartford this week, hands senators a card with three photos of her son Dylan, who was 6 when he was gunned down. One frame shows him grinning, in a Superman shirt.

'Dylan Hockley, 3/8/06 – 12/14/12,' the card says. 'Honor his life. Stand with us for change. NOW IS THE TIME.” (link in original)

What these families are doing is trying to emotionally blackmail everyone to succumb to their wishes. To the progressives this is a perfectly legitimate, and even laudable tactic - after all, in their grouping of the gods the Victim is sacred, therefore cannot speak wrong or be spoken ill of.

I'm a heathen then.

When someone, anyone tries to use emotion to convince you to do something it's a good time to be wary. This isn't always a despicable action, but it warrants some caution.

But when someone tries to use your own empathy to compel you to act against your own interest, or to create an artificial sense of guilt to persuade you to do something you didn't wish to do, then that person is not worth of trust, time or pity.

Now I admit I try to behave as Spock-like as possible. I'm not without emotion though, or empathy, or pity, or sorrow. I genuinely feel bad for the children that were murdered that day last December. And since I've always thought the worst thing an adult could go through was to bury a child, I of course felt a lot of sympathy for the parents and relatives of those murdered children.

Felt. Past tense.

When they attempt to use my compassion to emotionally bully me then my pity evaporates. Real damn fast. Their actions reveal a depravity not only of morals but of soul that I find unpalatable and certainly unpersuasive. In their world this sort of behavior might be acceptable, but in my it's inexcusable.

Emotions have a place, and I've often thought the pro gun owners should not be as wary of displaying emotion as we typically have been. But our culture tends to a decency that causes us to shy away from openly emotional overtures. We don't want to stoop as low as the other side.

But I will point out that the very basic difference twixt the gun culture and for lack of a less accurate term, the Eloi culture is that they're trying to cause a change in our behavior, while we're just trying to get them to leave us the hell alone. They want to take something away from us, whereas we just want them to stop trying to take things away from us. When a robber uses emotion to justify theft, it's a perversion. When a person tries to use emotion to prevent that theft, it's appropriate (even if not the most effective crime prevention strategy).

This news story is about a parent of a child murdered at Newtown who did get emotional, but not in an immoral manner. Mark Mattioli's son was murdered, and he became visibly upset when discussing it. I don't give him a pass because I agree with him (in point of fact I'm against enforcing the laws on the books that deal with mere possession, nor do I hold the murderer's mother in contempt for the actions of her son). I excuse his emotional slip because he did not use that emotion as a trump card to convince me to cede my Rights. There's a video at the bottom of that linked article and it is difficult to watch, but if you choose to I think you'll see how it contrasts with the white house weekly address.

This next video some of y'all probably have already seen. It's a parent of a child in Newtown who testified at the Connecticut state capitol last January. His child wasn't at Sandy Hook, and is alive and well. But he spoke, and with emotion, although a different kind than has been presented so far:

This is another video that I'd hope most, if not all of y'all have seen. It's Suzanna Gratia Hupp speaking to a congressional committee back in the 1990's (presumably regarding the 1994 "assault weapons" ban, though I can't find much detail about the circumstances). She watched as her parents were murdered in a mass shooting several years before. I would not say her testimony is dispassionate as she exhibits a different emotion than stark grief, but neither does she use that emotion to compel anyone to do anything but let her protect those she cares for. But listening to her tell the story of how she lost her parents will likely make the room a bit dusty.

There are quite a few people that have lost loved ones to murderers yet do not support any imposition on my Rights. They typically do not use emotions to convince you to do anything for them, except to stop interfering with their Natural Right to self defense. They want you to leave their weapons alone, and their weapons are their firearms, not their tears and not your empathy.

Some, not all but some of the parents of the children murdered last December in Connecticut decided to use their circumstance and our pity to advance an effort to diminish our Rights. The progressives in favor of eradicating the gun culture lifted them up and have used them, and will continue to use them, to garner support.

I have not seen one Victim as of yet who had a firm grasp of the mechanics of firearms. Facts and logic are not their tools. Statistics occasionally creep in, but I've never found statistics compelling and generally they're just not trustworthy.

No; logic and reason are not what they use to advance the Eloi culture in place of the gun culture. They use emotion, as raw and bare as they can manage to find it. The part that's so dastardly is that they attempt to use our emotions against us. Our natural sympathy at the loss of a parent, our grief over a dead child - those are the things they seek to use to convince us to surrender to them things which would not have changed their situation. Surrendering our Rights, or our firearms, or our magazines, would not have prevented a murderer from committing evil acts. Yet they use emotion to convince us along with everyone else, that the only compassionate thing to do is to cede what actually does keep us safer than we'd otherwise be.

"It's for the children" is something gun owners have heard with such regularity from those who would disarm us that it's a running jokes amongst some of us. But never have I see it used so literally, so unabashedly, as from some of these parents who claim that their children would have wanted us to disarm or that disarmament is the only way to "give meaning" to their departed child's life. Or that just one small step towards "reasonable" control is all they want and to think of their children before saying no.

Quite emphatically, they're holding their dead children up, pushing them in our faces, whilst crying about their pitiable state and using their loss as leverage to overcome our reason, our logic and our morals. They attempt to blackmail and extort using our feelings against us.

Now that's shameful.

Whether they're so twisted that they think this is actually normal, decent or even excusable behavior, or whether it's their emotional pimps in the progressive camp who spur them on to these depths, I have no pity left for them, or any who'd use such an indecent method to garner support for their evisceration of my Rights.

But watch for them. Make note of when they try to create some sense of artificial guilt in you; notice when their voice breaks as they refer to their dead child in the midst of asking, begging, pleading with you to go against reason, Natural Rights and what you've concluded is your own best interest. They'll be appearing often, and the mainstream media will air them as frequently as they can. But don't give these empathic thugs anything; not your time, not your money, and definitely not your pity. Feel for the children, and show them what respect you can as your beliefs provide. But the parents that would use your own emotion to make you fashion your own chains - if they want your emotions, then give them your contempt, for they've earned it.

Posted by Publicola at April 14, 2013 10:18 AM | TrackBack