Is it just me . . .

[XLMiguel]

. . or didja notice that the same people who want more 'gun control', just the military and police should have guns, just call 9-1-1, trust the .gov for your to keep you safe and/or save your bacon, yadda-yadda, are the same ones raving about .gov incompetence, whining about .gov lies and deception, yadda-yadda, yet we should trust them with our personal safety and security at large?? I'm so confused.

Whyizat?

(I hereby stipulate that Iraq is a mess and I do not wish this thread to be a partisan discussion on the war or .gov policy related to same, or solutions to same, I'm interested in some insight into what I perceive to be circular thinking described above. TIA, M2)

 

[Prince Yamato]

Yep.

I remember finding a 1997 esssay by a college student in support of the AWB on the internet. It said something to the effect of:

Because gov't no longer poses a thread to US citizens, we don't really need weapons to defend ourselves against authoritarians. Flash forward to 2004 and all the liberals are chanting: "Bush is a tyrant".

Irony is a bitch, ain't it?

I used to say to my classes (to purposely bug the hippies in the room), "don't you think it's ironic that the same people who complain about cigarette smoke, are usually the same ones who want pot legalized?"

 

[Beagle-zebub]

I was liberal for so long because the not-trusting-the-government made so much sense growing up under Bush; after a while, though, I realized what it really meant to not trust the government.

I fully understand what you are saying. The people who hold the positions of simultaneously not trusting the populous with firearms yet not trusting the government with power have the erroneous conception that free speech and the electoral process will be able to supply all the accountability necessary to keep bad apples out of government (provided that everyone would just wise up and vote like them), clearly overlooking the reality that fully informed and intelligent people can disagree on choices and that leaders will always be able to hang pork over the heads of the people in order to save their own skin.

 

[xd9fan]

.

 

[RayMel1]

..

 

[illspirit]

Notice? This subject has been an almost constant source of laughter for me. On more general websites (especially political flame-war threads at, say, Fark) it's not uncommon for some left-winger to go from saying a revolution might be the only thing to save us from Dubya's "tyranny." Then say he's a bad guy for not banning "assault weapons" a few posts later. Make up your minds people!

Something else struck me as ironic while watching the news about the fifth US helicopter being shot down this month. How many times have we all heard an anti say something like this?:

'The Second Amendment is obsolete. There's no way you can take on the Army with small arms, they have helicopters and tanks and stuff!1'

Yet pretty much all of the antis use things like helis downed by small-arms fire as examples of why we should retreat. Again, make up your minds people. You can't have your cake and ban it too.

(Disclaimer: I'm not arguing for/against the war, whether Bush is a tyrant, etc.. Just pointing out the cognitive dissonance in the socialist hive-mind.)