bookmark_borderActually, guns *are* cool

The anti-rights organization, Brady: United Against Gun Violence, recently made a social media post which read: “It may seem like a small hand gesture, but when those who have a platform use even an imaginary firearm for celebration, it sends a message that guns are cool and fails to recognize their lethality or that they’re the #1 killer of kids. We can do better.”

My question for Brady: What exactly is wrong with sending the message that guns are cool? In my opinion, guns are cool. And judging by the comments on the post, many other people feel the same way. There is absolutely nothing wrong with thinking that guns are cool. People have a wide variety of different interests. Some people find Disney movies cool, some people find horses cool, some people find rap music cool, and some people find guns cool, to give just a few examples. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of this. People have a right to like things, to be interested in things, and to find things cool. Guns are no exception to this.

Regarding the claim that using imaginary guns for celebration “fails to recognize their lethality”… I fail to see why this is a problem. First of all, guns arguably do not have any “lethality” at all, because it is the people who use guns who are responsible for any deaths that may occur, rather than the guns themselves. But even if one accepts the claim that guns possess lethality, this does not create any obligation for people to “recognize” this. As mentioned above, people have a right to like things. People are not obligated to actively recognize every negative aspect of the things that they like, every time those things are mentioned.

Regarding the claim that guns are “the #1 killer of kids”… this strikes me as ageist. If guns were the #1 killer of adults, would this somehow be less bad? Additionally, as mentioned above, one could make the argument that guns are not a killer of anything, because it is the people who use guns who are responsible for any deaths that may occur, rather than the guns themselves. 

In conclusion, it’s Brady that needs to do better. Criticizing people who have done nothing wrong is unacceptable. The people at Brady need to respect the full spectrum of human diversity, rather than criticizing and shaming people who have different likes and dislikes than they do. 

bookmark_borderExcellent post re: religious exemptions from Rep. Clay Higgins

Thank you, Rep. Higgins, for stating this truth so perfectly.

No person should ever need to provide a reason or justification for refraining from receiving a medical procedure.

Refraining from receiving a medical procedure is a fundamental right. Period. Full stop. End of story.

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by @blue.haired.american

Source here

bookmark_borderActivism, new frontiers, and moving goalposts

I’ve been reading various articles about transgender ideology lately, and one thing mentioned in many of these articles is the concept of “social justice” movements and how their “goalposts” (for lack of a better term) are constantly moving. What this means is that activist movements emerge with a particular goal, but then once they achieve this goal, move forward to a more ambitious goal, and then another, and then another, ad infinitum. In this way, successful activist movements cause the “frontier” to keep moving. The movement keeps winning, succeeding, gaining ground, while its opponents continue to lose, fail, and lose ground.

This, of course, isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. Movements can have ideologies and goals that are either good or bad. The proponents of a movement might be in the right, or their opponents might be in the right. That depends entirely on what the movement is all about and what its goals are. 

What is a bad thing is when a movement, throughout this entire process, denies that it has gained any ground at all. Despite winning victory after victory, and gaining more and more ground, the movement claims that things are “as bad as ever.” I’ve noticed this phenomenon happening a lot regarding several movements with which I disagree. And quite frankly, it’s a form of gaslighting towards the opponents of the movement. Opponents, who lose more ground every year and are thwarted in their goals time and time again, are portrayed as always getting their way, and therefore having nothing to be upset about. The members of activist movements claim that they (or the people they claim to champion) are the only ones who have a right to be upset. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. 

An example of this is the gay rights movement, which began by advocating merely that being gay be legalized. The goal of this movement was for gay people to be able to live their lives without fear of being arrested and/or jailed. Once this goal was achieved, the gay rights movement pushed for increasing levels of social acceptance, and then for legal protections that were the same as what would be given to straight couples. It was demanded that gay couples be allowed to adopt children, to form civil unions, and eventually to marry. As the infamous Masterpiece Cake Shop case illustrates, the gay rights movement demanded that businesses be legally required to serve gay couples just as they would straight couples. As queer people have gained nearly universal social acceptance, and same-sex marriage has been federally legalized, the focus has turned to trans rights. Today, LGBTQ+ advocacy centers around not only increasing social acceptance of trans people, but also increasing the availability of trans-related medical procedures for people of all ages. Gay rights organizations, their goals having been realized, have, well, transitioned (no pun intended) to trans issues as their next frontier.

Race-based movements have followed a similar trajectory. What began as a movement to abolish slavery turned into efforts to secure voting rights, citizenship, and equal treatment under the law for black people. In the 1960s, protesters were marching in the streets for equal access to public accommodations such as buses, restaurants, schools, and water fountains. At some point in this process, demands for equality of opportunity transformed into demands for equality of outcomes. Demands for protection from discrimination turned into demands for discrimination against others. Equality became “equity,” affirmative action became the norm in schools and workplaces, and political correctness silenced dissenting views. All while activists claimed that the current state of things was merely “the new Jim Crow” and that no meaningful improvements had been made for black people. Now, among the goals of “anti-racist” movements is the obliteration of all statues, memorials, holidays, place names, and monuments honoring historical figures who had anything to do with anti-black racism in any way. This is an issue that is very important to me, because I’m an autistic person who happens to be white, and whose special interest is history and statues. Race-based movements started out with goals that no one in their right mind would disagree with. But after achieving these goals, they gradually morphed into mean-spirited campaigns to invalidate the struggles of others and to actively inflict harm on people who are truly oppressed and disadvantaged, such as myself.

Logically, it makes sense that a movement would do this, because if a movement admits to having achieved all of its goals, then it would be admitting that it no longer has any need to exist. This would understandably be a difficult pill to swallow for people who have built their identity around advocacy for a particular movement, as well as for organizations that have offices, employees, fundraising apparatus, and infrastructure dedicated to their advocacy work. But to enjoy success while pretending otherwise, is not fair to a movement’s opponents. Getting your way while claiming to be as oppressed as ever is inexcusable gaslighting of those who think differently than you do. Too often, movements for social justice transform into movements for injustice, demands for equality turn into demands for preferential treatment, advocacy for inclusion becomes advocacy for exclusion, and protests against oppression and discrimination morph into demands for oppression and discrimination against others.

bookmark_borderJeb Stuart Preservation Trust’s response to the despicable bill HB1699

The Jeb Stuart Preservation Trust, the organization that runs and maintains Jeb Stuart’s boyhood home, wrote an excellent letter to the Virginia governor regarding the despicable bill that bullies and bigots in the state legislature are attempting to pass.

Here is the most important passage from their letter:

HB1699… can be argued as viewpoint discrimination. In 1995 Virginia Supreme Court held viewpoint discrimination as an egregious free speech violation. In Rosenberger v. Rectors and Visitors of the University of Virginia (1995), the Supreme Court declared: ‘When the government targets not subject matter but particular views taken by speakers on a subject, the violation of the First Amendment is all the more blatant. Viewpoint discrimination is thus an egregious form of content discrimination. The government must abstain from regulating speech when the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker is the rationale for the restriction.’

(emphasis mine)

The concept of viewpoint discrimination really captures what is so deeply and fundamentally wrong with this disgraceful bill and the thought process behind it. Thank you, Jeb Stuart Preservation Trust, for putting this idea into words and providing legal citations to support it.

You can read the letter in its entirety here.

bookmark_border“Hey MAGAs, show me your best cognitive dissonance!”

I recently saw a post from one of my Facebook “friends” regarding the accidental leaking of military information by Department of Defense officials in a group chat.

The post read: “Hey MAGAs, show me your best cognitive dissonance! Best one wins a new red hat!… Go ahead, twist me a pretzel and tell me why this is all OK.”

This post, to be blunt, really pisses me off. And it does so for two reasons:

First, the double standards and logical inconsistency. This person expresses outrage about what is a relatively minor problem in the grand scheme of things, while completely failing to express any criticism of an obvious, pervasive, and blatant campaign of atrocity that is enormous in both its scope and its severity. He calls an accidental leak “a major fuck up” and “justification for heads to roll.” However, he expressed not even the mildest criticism of the statue genocide that began in 2020 and continues to this day, a series of deliberate and intentional acts of extreme cruelty targeting people who are different from the norm in an attempt to ensure their erasure from society. It makes no sense that someone would get so outraged at what is essentially an accident, while apparently feeling no outrage whatsoever at a deliberate and cruel campaign to inflict harm.

Second is the entire way that the argument is framed. This person purportedly invites others to discuss and debate, while simultaneously stating that anyone who expresses a differing opinion is demonstrating “cognitive dissonance” and “twisting a pretzel.” This way of framing the issue puts people who see things differently in a no-win position: we could either be silent and pretend that we agree when we don’t, or we could speak up and have our views automatically be labeled as “cognitive dissonance” and “twisting a pretzel.” Talk about intolerance for those who think and feel differently than you do. What is the point of inviting discussion when you have no openness to considering alternative perspectives? Why even ask people to contribute their views, when you admittedly have no intention of actually hearing or learning from those views, but intend rather to use those views as evidence of their authors’ twistedness and cognitive dissonance?

Personally, I support Trump and his administration because I’m on the autism spectrum and my special interest is history and statues, so the events involving statues that have taken place over the past 5 years have had a profound negative impact on me. The issue of military information being leaked just isn’t important to me in comparison, and therefore I do not share the outrage that this “friend” and so many other people are expressing. This isn’t cognitive dissonance, and it’s not twisting a pretzel. I simply have a different perspective because I’ve had different life experiences and my brain works differently.

bookmark_border“You have a right to self-defense and the use of just force …”

Check out this post from the Firearms Policy Coalition:

My reaction: So? Whether or not your abuser can get a gun is none of your business. Whether or not your abuser can carry a gun concealed is also none of your business.  The only thing that is your business is that your abuser doesn’t harm you, and doesn’t contact you if you don’t want them to. And preventing these things is the whole purpose of a restraining order.

As long as a person is not harming you or contacting you against your wishes, the things that they do are none of your business. The objects that another person owns and/or carries are none of your business.

You have a right not to be harmed or contacted; you don’t have a right to prevent others from owning or carrying any object that they might potentially use to harm you. If you demand control over the objects that other people are allowed to own and/or carry, you are now the one who is harming others, and you are now the abuser.

As the FPC correctly points out: “You have a right to self-defense and the use of just force against unjust force. Period.”

bookmark_borderThere’s nothing “weird” about being interested in art

I recently saw an article about President Trump’s appointment of several of his supporters to the board of directors of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The article’s headline read, “Trump’s weird obsession with the arts is right out of the fascist playbook.”

This headline is just another example of the intolerance and bigotry of the supporters of “woke” ideology. Why do these people consider art to be something that only those who share their ideology are allowed to take part in? Why do these people consider anyone who thinks differently than they do to be “weird” and “fascist”? It’s because they are bullies. It’s because they are intolerant bigots who value sameness and conformity above all else and believe that being different from the norm is intrinsically bad. In other words, they have values and beliefs that are the exact opposite of the values and beliefs that they claim to have. If this sounds completely hypocritical, logically inconsistent, and morally bankrupt, that’s because it is.

I consider myself to be both right-wing, and a Trump supporter, and I love art. Art is one of the most important things in my life, if not the most important. As someone whose ideological views are not shared or understood by the people around me, art is a crucial form of self-expression. It is because of my right-wing values and beliefs – not despite them – that I love art. Art is how I express my emotions, feelings, and thoughts. It’s how I honor the historical figures that I love. (If you are interested, you can see some of my artwork at my art website here.)

There is nothing “weird” about being interested in art, and there certainly isn’t anything “fascist” about it. Silly me, but I would argue that it is fascist to believe that only people who think like you are allowed to be interested in art. Unfortunately for the woke bullies, there is no law restricting art to only one ideology. People like me have just as much right to partake in art as they do.

bookmark_borderThe distinction between settlers and immigrants

Interesting post by Matt Walsh:

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson)

This is a good explanation of the distinction between settlers and immigrants. People who oppose unlimited immigration are often called hypocrites because their ancestors were settlers. Walsh’s argument debunks these allegations. Additionally, anti-white racists often use the term “settler colonialism” (whatever the heck that even means) as a pejorative, presuming that settlers are intrinsically bad. But as Walsh points out, settlers built this country. They ventured into the wilderness to build a civilization from scratch, something that takes great courage. There’s nothing bad about settlers, and nothing hypocritical about being descended from them.