Retro Post: How About More Hate Control Before More Gun Control: In Light Of The San Bernardino Shootings

The post listed below was originally posted back in January, 2013 in response to the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. I reprint it here today two days after the mass shootings in San Bernardino, California because the message back in 2013 is just as relevant today.

Yes, guns were used to kill a lot of Innocent people. Both cases were terrible incidents of violent human behavior that should not happen in a civilized society. 

But going off hysterically about the need for undefined, nebulous, and likely ineffective gun control measures, like many Democrats and liberals did before the body count was even finalized in both situations, does nothing to address the underlying root causes of this violence. 

What those root causes are needs to be investigated and addressed in a logical, rational, and effective means. Going off half cocked without knowing those root causes and just shrieking "gun control" is nonsense. The San Bernardino shooters would not have obeyed any new gun laws. The Sandy Hook shooter would not have obeyed any new gun laws. They had other motives driving their insane behavior and following the law was not likely a big motivator for them.

IF the San Bernardino shootings were terrorist driven, then no new gun law is going to stop those kinds of attacks. The two shooters, husband and wife, from two days ago had body armor on, assault rifles, pipe bombs, were Muslim and at least the husband had recently visited Saudi Arabia, a hot bed of Sunni terrorism. 

If Hillary Clinton and Bernie and Sanders and others think that passing a new gun control law or two is going to stop people like this, they certainly should not be elected President. All their actions will do is further disarm law abiding American citizens and deny them the right  to defend themselves. Keep in mind that California has some of the toughest gun laws in the country and those laws did nothing to prevent the latest mass shootings.

 But the post below does not touch on terrorism. It hypothesizes that maybe hate, as it emanates from the American political class, is a root cause of the mass shootings in this country. When politicians call their political opponents Neanderthals, racists, ass-holes, and say many of them deserve to die and go to hell, well, that degradation of human life, even though they are just political opponents, could be interpreted as a wink and nod to the less stable in this country to do the acts of violence that are incited by politicians' words and slander. 

Something to think about, maybe we need more hate control vs. more gun control in this country.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2013

How About More Hate Control Before More Gun Control, Part 1 - Maybe Hatred Is The Real Root Cause Of Mass Shootings

Be forewarned: there is some bad language and implied bad language in the following so please pass if this might offend you. These are not my words but actually the words of our politiciains and their supporters.

Today is the first of a four part series regarding the Newtown, Connecticut shooting where innocent kids and teachers were needlessly slaughtered be a deranged young man. Let me state a few facts up front:

• I was tremendously saddened by this senseless act of violence.
• I do not know how a young man can become so separated from compassion and reality and have so little respect for life that he would kill innocent children and teachers.
• I am not a psychologist and have no understanding from a psychology/scientific perspective of the root causes which trigger a young man to execute this type of terror, and neither do 99.9% of the people with an opinion on this matter and 100% of those in the Washington political class.
• I am not a member of the NRA and have never fired a gun, never mind owning one.
• I am a fervent defender of the U.S. Constitution including the Second Amendment.

Today I want to consider a concept that I have not seen discussed in the media and certainly not by those in politics that want to strip law abiding, common sense citizens of their right to bear arms. The concept involves the idea that maybe we should do a little hate control BEFORE we recklessly and senselessly go off on a gun control tangent, a tangent that will likely increase crime and gun play, not reduce it (more on this latter concept tomorrow).

Let’s be honest, there is a lot of hate and venom circulating in the country today. Much of it is fomented by the political class as they foolishly try to incite their supporters and degrade their opponents in the most dehumanizing and disrespective ways possible.

The more you dehumanize others, the easier it is to see them as less worthy of their opinion and their life. Maybe if we started respecting each other a little more, taking some of the hate and venom out of our politics, thought processes, and speech, incidents like the shootings in Newtown, in south Chicago, in the ghettos of Detroit, etc. might be become a little less frequent if we respected each other a little more.

This increase in respect and humanizing of other human beings should start with our so-called leaders, However, as we have pointed out many times in this blog, these so-called leaders are a big cause of the problem, not the solution. They have had a busy, and disgraceful past couple of years degrading and abusing the opinions, lives, rights, and very existence of the citizens they are supposed to be serving:

• Democrat Speaker Of The House Nancy Pelosi called citizen opponents to Obama Care unpatriotic for simply having a difference of opinion with many politicians in Washington.
• Democrat Charles Rangel slandered millions of Americans who opposed Obama Care by calling them racists for simply having an honest difference of opinion with many politicians in Washington.
• Democrat Shelia Jordan Lee slandered millions of Americans who opposed Obama Care by associating them with the Ku Klux Klan.
• Union boss and Democratic supporter Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. stated that his union was at war with the Republicans and Tea Party citizens and that these people "need to be taken out."
• Democratic Congressmen Mike Doyle and Henry Waxman and Vice President Joe Biden slandered American citizens opposed to unfettered and destructive government spending and debt by calling them terrorists (those people that bomb and kill innocent civilians).
• When ordinary Americans objected to the building of a Islamic mosque near the World Trade Center property because of the sad memories of 9-11, Democrat Nancy Pelosi said THEY should be investigated for simply having a passionate opinion on the mosque.
• Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Walters said all Tea Party American citizens can go to hell simply for having a difference of opinion with her.

When you viciously and unfoundedly associate ordinary citizens with racism, call them terrorists, question their patriotism, when you wish they would go to hell, and then threaten to take them out/exterminate them, you have dehumanized them in the eyes of your political supporters, making it easy to imagine them actually going away permanently.

Maybe, this type of hate and venom and dehumanizing goes through the head of a young man when he decides to go off and actually follows the advice that those people “need to be taken out.” When your so-called leaders call for this type of behavior and language, it can’t be wrong, can it?

But our political class, and their direct supporters, also direct their hate and venomous words towards other politicians:

• The campaign manager of Democrat’s Gerry Brown’s gubernatorial campaign called his Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, a whore.
• White House czar Van Jones publicly called all Republicans a**h****s.
• Democrat Alan Grayson called all Republicans knuckle dragging Neanderthals.
• TV host Montel Williams publicly hoped that Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachman would commit suicide by decapitating herself.
• Ed Schultz, an on air commentator for the Democratic leaning MSNBC news channel, called Laura Ingraham of Fox News a slut.
• HBO TV host Bill Maher, a major donor to Obama’s 2012 Presidential Super PAC (a $1 million donor), said on air that Republican Sarah Palin “would f*** Rick Perry if he was black.”
• Bill Maher called Republican Sarah Palin a disgusting and derogatory name that I will not repeat here.
• Playboy magazine’s online website offered a detailed analysis on why and how each of ten Republican women in politics should be hate raped.
• Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen likened Republican critics of Obamacare to the Nazis and their propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
• A rap artist gave a Minnesota concert that was billed as the “F*** Michelle Bachman” concert (spelling out the entire f-word), a Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota.
• A Democratic operative insulted Ann Romney, and millions of other American women, by slandering and demeaning her as a stay at home mother.
• Martin Bashier of MSNBC News showed a video of Mitt Romney’s campaign bus that was interspersed with video clips of buses blowing up in balls of fire, explicitly wishing that the Romney bus also blow up and those inside die a fiery death.

When you label others as sluts and whores and suggest they should be raped or be killed, either by themselves or a fiery bus explosion, you set another stage for dehumanization. If your political opponents are just sluts and whores, no big deal if they go away, right?

I maintain that this type of disgusting, hateful behavior is an influence in our society and not an influence for good. It infects the undertone of how we view others. It reduces the amount of respect we have for others, making it easier to abuse others, possibly violently.

It usually does not cause someone to go off and actually start killing others but it certainly cannot help. It also cuts short the ability to listen to each other and appreciate the diversity of opinion each brings to a potential solution of a problem.

If I have allowed the political class and their ardent supporters to frame you as a racist or a slut or a terrorist, I am unlikely to consider any good you can bring to my life or to a solution of a problem. If I think it is a good thing that you self decapitate or die in a bus explosion, you will probably not get my attention when it comes to working towards a better society.

As a result of this hateful divisiveness the political class has driven into our society, we despise others that have a different opinion from ours. Major issues, such a failing public schools, a lost war on drugs, skyrocketing national debt, high health care costs, illegal immigration, etc., never get resolved. The hate prevents us from listening to each other, from calibrating our view of the world with others’ views of the world.

And possibly in the case of Newtown, we go beyond not listening and we start shooting. Not because guns are legal but because we have allowed the political class to desensitize us to each other as human beings.

But it is not only politicians that spew the hate and venom, hate and venom that others take to heart, hate and venom that their children take and internalize. Consider just some recent examples that have appeared in the news:

- Consider the hateful speech and intentions of Professor Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz regarding other human beings that are global warming deniers, those daring to have a different opinion than his: “In this article I am going to suggest that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for influential GW [global warming] deniers... They [global warming deniers] are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate… With high probability it will cause hundreds of millions of deaths. For this reason I propose that the death penalty is appropriate for influential GW deniers.”

Different opinion, therefore you should die. I wonder what he would do to people like me, given our opinions on global warming; should we die also or just suffer some horrible disease since we are not influential enough:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/11/wishing-al-gore-would-shut-up-why-i-am.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/11/wishing-al-gore-would-shut-up-why-i-am_10.html

As an aside, in 2009, the CIA opened up a new division, The Center on Climate Change and National Security. The purpose of this group was to examine the impact of global warming from a national security perspective. A few months ago, with little fanfare, they disbanded the organization. Is the CIA also worthy of Professor Parncutt’s death penalty or was it just common sense that this global warming organization was not longer viable or needed?

- Pulitzer nominated newspaper columnist Donald Kaul recently wrote an article for the Des Moines Register where he called for the killing of gun owners and “dragging legislators who disagree with gun control behind pickup trucks until they get the message.” Don’t agree with my opinion? Thus, we should have more killing and more torture for those that dare to have a difference of opinion. How does this stop the cycle of hate that starts with the political class?

- Erik Loomis, PhD, assistant professor of history at the University of Rhode Island decided he needed to get into the hate and venom game also when he recently stated on Twitter that he wanted the death of National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO Wayne LaPierre, branding the gun rights group he heads as a terrorist organization:"[I] want Wayne LaPierre's head on a stick." A little hateful, a little violent?

- Karen Lewis, head of the Chicago Teachers’ Union recently had some violent rhetoric of her own to share: “Do not think for a minute that the wealthy are ever going to allow you to legislate their riches away from them. Please understand that. However, we are in a moment where the wealth disparity in this country is very reminiscent of the robber baron ages. The labor leaders of that time, though, were ready to kill. They were. They were just – off with their heads. They were seriously talking about that.”

And this person is associated with educating young minds and kids. Don’t like someone or are jealous of their wealth, that in all probability was garnered via honest hard work and sweat, than just off with their heads.

I maintain that you cannot have such hate and disrespect and venomous speech floating around and it not have a negative impact on how we treat each other, how it dehumanizes others. I am not saying the Newtown shooting was directly caused because of this poisonous environment but it certainly did not help. Was the shooter seated around his dinner table through the years when slurs and demeaning things were said about others, how others that were different from him were worthy of being “taken out.“

And it certainly does not allow us to sit down and go face-to-face with others to leverage everyone’s knowledge and skills to confront all of our problems from school shootings to high debt, high illiteracy levels, failing public education, a failing health care system etc.

But if we solved all of our problems, on what issues would our politicians run on? And that, my friends, is the root cause of most of our problems, from school shootings to the lack of a national energy problem, our shameless politicians need the hate and venom to frame and finance their continual reelection effort.

So tonight, when you are sitting around the table with your family, how about a little more hate control and a lot more respect for others in front of our kids. Again, it couldn’t hurt.

And tomorrow if you should come across someone who thinks other human beings need to be taken out, killed, dragged behind a truck or hate raped simply for having a difference of opinion, may I suggest you walk away? Engaging in such a discussion with these types of people just spreads and intensifies the hate and gets yourself muddy, as the old saying goes: “Never mud wrestle with a pig because you both get dirty and the pig likes it.”Walk away, stay clean, and let the hate spewer stew in his own mud. Help break the cycle of hate.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Retro 7: How About More Hate Control Before More Gun Control, Part 3 - The Facts, Statistics, Fallacies and Realities Of Gun Control

Given family engagements in town this week, we will be rerunning some of our most popular posts, posts that have garnered the most attention and which showed that we are currently enduring the worst set of politicians America has ever had.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2013

How About More Hate Control Before More Gun Control, Part 3 - The Facts, Statistics, Fallacies, and Realities Of Gun Control

This is our third post in the series where we propose that the country, and especially our politicians, practice more “hate control” than gun control. In the previous posts we reviewed how venomous and hateful speech were pervading our society, degrading the sanctity of life and possibly being a major reason why some people go nuts and end up killing innocent people. We also reviewed actual cases of Americans legally using their Second Amendment rights to protect their lives, their families, and their assets from violent criminal elements, an option that many politicians would like to eliminate with draconian gun control/gun elimination.

Today, we will be reviewing a wide number of statistics, sources, and realities when it comes to violence and gun control, all of which indicate that rational gun laws that allow Americans to keep and use guns in the protection of their lives is a logical, Constitutional, and viable option for the citizens of the country.

Now some people may question the following “facts” and realities since the sources are not what they consider mainstream media. But I think there is a growing awareness among informed, rational people that the mainstream media is no longer the unbiased, purveyors of truth that many think they are today. The various components of mainstream media now take sides, and the publication or non-publication of facts and stories is based on whether or not it helps their “side.”

So, when reading the following, if you do not like the source, I encourage you to prove it wrong. If proven wrong, I have no problem issuing a retraction. But do not blindly rule out the following conclusions and theories just because it does not line up with your position on the issue or it is not from your favorite media/news source. Going forth blindly allows the political class to lead you to where their best interests lie and we all know that is seldom the best interest for citizens and the country.

1) Lets start with an article from a January 7, 2013 article from the website, www.mrconservative.com, entitled “Society Is Crumbling And Banning Guns Will Make It Worse.” Consider some of the facts and conclusions laid out in the article:

- The writer points out that Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws. But 10 people were shot in the city of Chicago on the Friday before this article was posted. Ten people shot on one day in one city, a city with very strict gun laws. The author claims Chicago is now considered to be “the deadliest global city,” and the murder rate in Chicago is about 25% higher than it was last year. So, implementing strict gun laws has resulted in rising violence.

Now, I guess one could make the case that gun violence would have been up 50% without the strict gun laws and that would be a valid counter argument. But I would not believe it, based on the actual individual cases we reviewed yesterday where gun owning Americans protected themselves from violent criminals.

I suggest you check out the following link to the gun violence in Chicago from the Associated Press. It contains a myriad of statistics and reasons why 500 people, more than one a day, are murdered annually in Chicago, a murder rate that has doubled in the past decade. A lot of the murders are a result of gang activity, the participants of which are highly unlikely to register their guns with authorities:

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20121229/b5734626-50e3-4ce9-80b4-027a3e02d387

- The following paragraph from the article describes the situation in a Georgia town where a law was passed that required all of its citizens to actually own a firearm. The article reviews what happened after that requirement was passed: “In March 1982, , the small town of Kennesaw (Georgia) – responding to a handgun ban in Morton Grove, Ill. – unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun. Since then, despite dire predictions of “Wild West” showdowns and increased violence and accidents, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting – as a victim, attacker or defender. The crime rate initially plummeted for several years after the passage of the ordinance, with the 2005 per capita crime rate actually significantly lower than it was in 1981, the year before passage of the law. Prior to enactment of the law, Kennesaw had a population of just 5,242 but a crime rate significantly higher (4,332 per 100,000) than the national average (3,899 per 100,000). The latest statistics available – for the year 2005 – show the rate at 2,027 per 100,000. Meanwhile, the population has skyrocketed to 28,189."

So let’s review. A town has a crime rate substantially above the national level. The town passes a law requiring every responsible adult to have a licensed gun. Over time, the crime rate drops to a level substantially below the national level.

Again, an argument could be made that this was a spurious correlation and that the crime rate would have dropped in the absence of the gun law. A valid point, but given that the program did not result in wild shooting incidents and no one accidentally shot themselves, I would contend that it did not hurt.

- The article goes on to put forth a very valid hypothesis: maybe guns are not the problem but medication and legally prescribed drugs are the problem. The Washington Post has reported that the Newtown shooter was “on medication.” The article quotes some authorities on this issue/root cause: “The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) has raised concerns about severe acts of violence as side effects of anti-psychotic and antidepressant drugs not only on individuals but on society as well. Just a month ago PRWeb described drug induced violence as ”medicine’s best kept secret. And the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHRI) is calling for a federal investigation on its web page which links no less than 14 mass killings to the use of psychiatric drugs such as Prozac and Paxil."

Certainly a potential root cause worth exploring.

- What happened in Newtown was tragic. I do not want to belittle the sorrow and tragedy in any way. But while the political class is fretting and grandstanding about gun control, how about the following issues that never get their attention, according to the article:

• There are more than 3 million reports of child abuse in the United States every single year.
• An average of five children die as a result of child abuse in the United States every single day.
• The United States has the highest child abuse death rate on the entire globe.
• It is estimated that 500,000 Americans that will be born this year will be sexually abused before they turn 18.
• In the United States today, it is estimated that one out of every four girls is sexually abused before they become adults.

Would banning guns keep these atrocities from happening? No, banning guns would not prevent these atrocities from going on everyday. Maybe we need a national discussion about protecting our kids, with preventing school shootings only a component, but a very important component, of the overall discussion. That would be a noble cause for the political class as opposed to using the Newtown shootings as means to another, selfish, political end, gun prohibition, rather than a means to truly protecting and cherishing our kids on a daily basis.

The Pentagon has the Defense Department. The businesses in this country have the Commerce Department. The unions in this country have the Labor Department. Energy companies have the Energy Department. Maybe we need a Kids Department, an organized effort to protect our kids, not only from school shootings, but also from bad public schools, sexual predators, bad economic futures, etc.

2) The following letter, and the accompanying TV news reports this Marine has been on, has become wildly popular across the country. He has done the best and most succinct job of pointing out the massive hypocrisy of our politicians as they try to reign in our ability to defend ourselves with severe gun ownership laws but make sure that they are protected with gun toting employees and exceptions to the laws they want to pass for the rest of us.

The letter is addressed to California Senator Diane Feinstein who is proposing very severe and freedom eroding gun control legislation despite the fact that she has admitted to carrying a concealed weapon in the past for her own protection. The initial letter that started it all and which pointed out the hypocrisy is below:

From: U.S. Marines Cpl. Joshua Boston
To: Senator Dianne Feinstein,

I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government’s right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma’am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.

I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America.

I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.

I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.

We, the people, deserve better than you.

Respectfully Submitted,
Joshua Boston
Cpl, United States Marine Corps
2004-2012

As an aside, consider two recent sets of news reports:

• President Obama just signed legislation that will guarantee that he and his family, along with other former Presidents, will be protected by armed Secret Service guards for the rest of their lives.
• The school where the President sends his kids currently has 11 armed guards on site for protection, not counting the Secret Service personnel assigned to protect Presidential families.

Given that politicians want to protect themselves with armed guards, responsible, ordinary Americans should have the same right, a right not made overly restrictive or arduous by the Federal government.

3) According to the latest available FBI crime statistics, in 2009, 1,825 Americans were murdered by knives, 611 were murdered by blunt objects likes hammers and bats, and 801 were murdered by an assailants feet or hands. In context, only 766 murders were committed by rifles or shotguns. Should we ban knives, hammers, bats, feet, and hands since they account for more than four times as many murders every year than rifles and shotguns?

Or should we focus on crime prevention of all types so that the act of murder is done less regardless of the means? By the way, the national number of murders by handguns has decreased by 15% from 2005 to 2009 and murder by any type of gun has decreased by 10% from 2005 to 2009. But has increased in places like Chicago which has very strict gun laws. Thus, statistically, one could make the correlation that violence goes up (as in Chicago) where there are stricter than normal gun control laws but goes down overall where the gun laws, on average, are not as strict.

4) An Associated Press article from January 8, 2013 showed that all not politicians are as ignorant as the Washington political class when it comes to sane gun laws for stable law abiding citizens. Politicians in a Utah town, Spring City, want to make sure every head of household has a firearm and knows how to use it, and they want to give school teachers training with guns too.

Councilman Neil Sorensen first proposed the legislation requiring a gun in every household in the town of 1,000. The rest of the council was not in agreement of making at making it a requirement, but they unanimously agreed to move forward with an ordinance "recommending" the idea. The council also approved funding to offer concealed firearms training to the 20 teachers and administrators at the local elementary school.

The proposal, which will go before the full council in February for further review and comment, appears to have the support of the council's five members and many residents in the community about 90 miles south of Salt Lake City. Councilman Noel Bertelson believes making guns in every house mandatory was too much. 

However, he agrees the town would be safer if everyone was armed. With only a part-time police force, he said, response time is not like it is in a big city: "If a person is able to take care of themselves for a while, it would probably be a good thing." 

Sounds like the situation that reported on yesterday, when a mother alone with her infant child waited well over 20 minutes for police help, needing to shoot the knife wielding intruder on her own to save her and her baby’s life.

The community is still smarting from the double-murder of an elderly couple in nearby Mount Pleasant couple of years ago. One councilman said what used to be a peaceful, quiet town has seen increasing criminal activity. Thefts of metal for scrap and other property also have become a problem” "We are kind of tired of people breaking in and taking stuff," said Councilman Mickel, explaining why he voted to urge every house to have a gun.

Angela Johnson, owner of a local town gas station, said she doesn't like guns but backs the council's proposal, showing more insight to human beings than all Washington politicians combined: "If criminals knew they would be fired against, I think it would cause pause."

Why is that concept so difficult for people like Senator Feinstein to understand?

5) Consider the reporting from the Sacramento Bee on December 27, 2013:

• Gun deaths and injuries have dropped sharply in California, even as the number of guns sold in the state has risen, according to new California state government data.
• Gun dealers sold 600,000 guns in California last year, up from 350,000 in 2002, according to records from the California Attorney General's office, a 71% increase.
• During that time period, the number of hospitalizations from gun injuries dropped from about 4,000 annually to 2,900, a roughly 25% drop, according to hospital records collected by the California Department of Public Health.
• California firearm-related deaths fell from about 3,200 annually to about 2,800, an 11% drop, state health figures show.
• The number of California injuries and deaths attributed to accidental discharge of firearms also has fallen.
• The number of suicide deaths involving firearms has remained roughly constant, i.e. having a lot more guns present in California homes and businesses has not increased the number of self inflicted deaths by gunfire.

So in summary, gun sales go way up, gun deaths, wounding, and suicides either go down or remain the same. See Angela Johnson’s comment above for a potential reason.

6) Consider an article written by AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen which appeared on the Western Journalism website on December 26, 2013, and whose excerpts are listed below:

• The city of Chicago currently has the most restrictive gun control laws on the books, has been declared a “gun free zone” where handguns are banned, yet it is the most bloody city in the world in terms of gun-related deaths. The city averages 40 deaths per month from guns, and is nearing 500 for the year. Chicago’s murder rate is 19.4 per 100,000, which is by far the highest rate in the nation, at nearly 3 times New York which is at 6, and nearly 2 ½ times Los Angeles’ 7.5. In fact, Chicago ranks as the number one deadliest Alpha city (significant urban center in the global economic system) on the planet. Since it is no longer possible to legally own guns within city limits, the only ones who still have them are criminals. It doesn’t appear gun control works for Chicago. In fact, the city illustrates how correct the aphorism is that if guns are outlawed, only the outlaws have guns. The law-abiding citizens do not.
• The Center for Disease Control (CDC), in 2003 thoroughly analyzed fifty-one in-depth studies dealing with gun control. Those studies included everything from the effectiveness of gun bans to laws requiring gun locks. From their objective analysis, they “found no discernible effect on public safety by any of the measures we commonly think of as ‘gun control.’”
• In 2005, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine conducted a similar analysis of extant gun laws across the country. They arrived at a similar conclusion, as the abstract for their research concludes, “that evidence for the effectiveness of a given firearms law on an outcome is insufficient.” After reviewing over fifty different gun control laws, and coming to the conclusion that their effectiveness on an outcome is “insufficient” is euphemism for “they had no discernible effect.”

Not only are these findings of interest and vital in debunking the need to severely restrict or prohibit gun ownership of rational American citizens, he closes the article with a great description of why we are going through this useless exercise of draconian gun control laws and why it will fail: “Gun control has proven impotent in curbing the problem, and “gun free zones” are absurd, since they practically advertise themselves to be potential venues of mayhem and violence. More gun control is not a solution, but only serves as a Band-Aid to our emotions so we feel like we’re doing something. The problems are much deeper in our society than Band-Aids can cure.”

Band Aids will not prevent future Newtown shooting sprees. Putting a trained police officer in each of our 132,000 schools will do a lot more than Band Aids.
Band Aids will not prevent people from being raped or killed in their homes or businesses. Only well trained, rational citizens with legal firearms will do that.

Band Aids will not halt the venomous and hateful speech that spills out of certain people’s mouths, vileness that has become a trademark of current day politicians.

Band Aids will not prevent criminal elements from getting their hands on guns.

Band Aids will not force criminal elements to register or turn in their firearms.

Band Aids will not stop thousands and thousands of our kids from being abused, physically or sexually, or unnecessarily dying every year.

Band Aids will not allow us to understand how our legal drug infested culture leads an individual to snap and kill innocent people and children.

Band Aids will not prevent the current and dire economic and social conditions from creating the gangs that lead to the thousands of firearm murders every year.

Band Aids will not work but as usual, that is all the Washington political class is capable of. They always fail to understand the root causes of our major issues and fail to address those root causes with real medicine and real solutions, settling only for political grandstanding and surface solutions that never work. 

Nowhere is this simplicity of this Band Aid approach and idiocy more on display by the current administration. Vice President Joe Biden is having a series of meetings and thinks that his recommendation after two weeks of meetings will result in a viable solution. The problem is way too deep and way too complicated for a single politician to come up with a solution in less than a month’s time, especially a politician like Joe Biden.

Senator Feinstein’s simplistic approach, ban or severely restrict gun ownership, will only result in the killing of so many more people that it will dwarf the carnage at Newtown.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and
others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Retro 6 - How About More Hate Control Before More Gun Control, Part 3 - The Facts, Statistics, Fallacies, and Realities Of Gun Control

Given family engagements in town this week, we will be rerunning some of our most popular posts, posts that have garnered the most attention and which showed that we are currently enduring the worst set of politicians America has ever had.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2013

How About More Hate Control Before More Gun Control, Part 3 - The Facts, Statistics, Fallacies, and Realities Of Gun Control

This is our third post in the series where we propose that the country, and especially our politicians, practice more “hate control” than gun control. In the previous posts we reviewed how venomous and hateful speech were pervading our society, degrading the sanctity of life and possibly being a major reason why some people go nuts and end up killing innocent people. We also reviewed actual cases of Americans legally using their Second Amendment rights to protect their lives, their families, and their assets from violent criminal elements, an option that many politicians would like to eliminate with draconian gun control/gun elimination.

Today, we will be reviewing a wide number of statistics, sources, and realities when it comes to violence and gun control, all of which indicate that rational gun laws that allow Americans to keep and use guns in the protection of their lives is a logical, Constitutional, and viable option for the citizens of the country.

Now some people may question the following “facts” and realities since the sources are not what they consider mainstream media. But I think there is a growing awareness among informed, rational people that the mainstream media is no longer the unbiased, purveyors of truth that many think they are today. The various components of mainstream media now take sides, and the publication or non-publication of facts and stories is based on whether or not it helps their “side.”

So, when reading the following, if you do not like the source, I encourage you to prove it wrong. If proven wrong, I have no problem issuing a retraction. But do not blindly rule out the following conclusions and theories just because it does not line up with your position on the issue or it is not from your favorite media/news source. Going forth blindly allows the political class to lead you to where their best interests lie and we all know that is seldom the best interest for citizens and the country.

1) Lets start with an article from a January 7, 2013 article from the website, www.mrconservative.com, entitled “Society Is Crumbling And Banning Guns Will Make It Worse.” Consider some of the facts and conclusions laid out in the article:

- The writer points out that Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws. But 10 people were shot in the city of Chicago on the Friday before this article was posted. Ten people shot on one day in one city, a city with very strict gun laws. The author claims Chicago is now considered to be “the deadliest global city,” and the murder rate in Chicago is about 25% higher than it was last year. So, implementing strict gun laws has resulted in rising violence.

Now, I guess one could make the case that gun violence would have been up 50% without the strict gun laws and that would be a valid counter argument. But I would not believe it, based on the actual individual cases we reviewed yesterday where gun owning Americans protected themselves from violent criminals.

I suggest you check out the following link to the gun violence in Chicago from the Associated Press. It contains a myriad of statistics and reasons why 500 people, more than one a day, are murdered annually in Chicago, a murder rate that has doubled in the past decade. A lot of the murders are a result of gang activity, the participants of which are highly unlikely to register their guns with authorities:

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20121229/b5734626-50e3-4ce9-80b4-027a3e02d387

- The following paragraph from the article describes the situation in a Georgia town where a law was passed that required all of its citizens to actually own a firearm. The article reviews what happened after that requirement was passed: “In March 1982, , the small town of Kennesaw (Georgia) – responding to a handgun ban in Morton Grove, Ill. – unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun. Since then, despite dire predictions of “Wild West” showdowns and increased violence and accidents, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting – as a victim, attacker or defender. The crime rate initially plummeted for several years after the passage of the ordinance, with the 2005 per capita crime rate actually significantly lower than it was in 1981, the year before passage of the law. Prior to enactment of the law, Kennesaw had a population of just 5,242 but a crime rate significantly higher (4,332 per 100,000) than the national average (3,899 per 100,000). The latest statistics available – for the year 2005 – show the rate at 2,027 per 100,000. Meanwhile, the population has skyrocketed to 28,189."

So let’s review. A town has a crime rate substantially above the national level. The town passes a law requiring every responsible adult to have a licensed gun. Over time, the crime rate drops to a level substantially below the national level.

Again, an argument could be made that this was a spurious correlation and that the crime rate would have dropped in the absence of the gun law. A valid point, but given that the program did not result in wild shooting incidents and no one accidentally shot themselves, I would contend that it did not hurt.

- The article goes on to put forth a very valid hypothesis: maybe guns are not the problem but medication and legally prescribed drugs are the problem. The Washington Post has reported that the Newtown shooter was “on medication.” The article quotes some authorities on this issue/root cause: “The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) has raised concerns about severe acts of violence as side effects of anti-psychotic and antidepressant drugs not only on individuals but on society as well. Just a month ago PRWeb described drug induced violence as ”medicine’s best kept secret. And the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHRI) is calling for a federal investigation on its web page which links no less than 14 mass killings to the use of psychiatric drugs such as Prozac and Paxil."

Certainly a potential root cause worth exploring.

- What happened in Newtown was tragic. I do not want to belittle the sorrow and tragedy in any way. But while the political class is fretting and grandstanding about gun control, how about the following issues that never get their attention, according to the article:

• There are more than 3 million reports of child abuse in the United States every single year.
• An average of five children die as a result of child abuse in the United States every single day.
• The United States has the highest child abuse death rate on the entire globe.
• It is estimated that 500,000 Americans that will be born this year will be sexually abused before they turn 18.
• In the United States today, it is estimated that one out of every four girls is sexually abused before they become adults.

Would banning guns keep these atrocities from happening? No, banning guns would not prevent these atrocities from going on everyday. Maybe we need a national discussion about protecting our kids, with preventing school shootings only a component, but a very important component, of the overall discussion. That would be a noble cause for the political class as opposed to using the Newtown shootings as means to another, selfish, political end, gun prohibition, rather than a means to truly protecting and cherishing our kids on a daily basis.

The Pentagon has the Defense Department. The businesses in this country have the Commerce Department. The unions in this country have the Labor Department. Energy companies have the Energy Department. Maybe we need a Kids Department, an organized effort to protect our kids, not only from school shootings, but also from bad public schools, sexual predators, bad economic futures, etc.

2) The following letter, and the accompanying TV news reports this Marine has been on, has become wildly popular across the country. He has done the best and most succinct job of pointing out the massive hypocrisy of our politicians as they try to reign in our ability to defend ourselves with severe gun ownership laws but make sure that they are protected with gun toting employees and exceptions to the laws they want to pass for the rest of us.

The letter is addressed to California Senator Diane Feinstein who is proposing very severe and freedom eroding gun control legislation despite the fact that she has admitted to carrying a concealed weapon in the past for her own protection. The initial letter that started it all and which pointed out the hypocrisy is below:

From: U.S. Marines Cpl. Joshua Boston
To: Senator Dianne Feinstein,

I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government’s right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma’am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.

I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America.

I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.

I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.

We, the people, deserve better than you.

Respectfully Submitted,
Joshua Boston
Cpl, United States Marine Corps
2004-2012

As an aside, consider two recent sets of news reports:

• President Obama just signed legislation that will guarantee that he and his family, along with other former Presidents, will be protected by armed Secret Service guards for the rest of their lives.
• The school where the President sends his kids currently has 11 armed guards on site for protection, not counting the Secret Service personnel assigned to protect Presidential families.

Given that politicians want to protect themselves with armed guards, responsible, ordinary Americans should have the same right, a right not made overly restrictive or arduous by the Federal government.

3) According to the latest available FBI crime statistics, in 2009, 1,825 Americans were murdered by knives, 611 were murdered by blunt objects likes hammers and bats, and 801 were murdered by an assailants feet or hands. In context, only 766 murders were committed by rifles or shotguns. Should we ban knives, hammers, bats, feet, and hands since they account for more than four times as many murders every year than rifles and shotguns?

Or should we focus on crime prevention of all types so that the act of murder is done less regardless of the means? By the way, the national number of murders by handguns has decreased by 15% from 2005 to 2009 and murder by any type of gun has decreased by 10% from 2005 to 2009. But has increased in places like Chicago which has very strict gun laws. Thus, statistically, one could make the correlation that violence goes up (as in Chicago) where there are stricter than normal gun control laws but goes down overall where the gun laws, on average, are not as strict.

4) An Associated Press article from January 8, 2013 showed that all not politicians are as ignorant as the Washington political class when it comes to sane gun laws for stable law abiding citizens. Politicians in a Utah town, Spring City, want to make sure every head of household has a firearm and knows how to use it, and they want to give school teachers training with guns too.

Councilman Neil Sorensen first proposed the legislation requiring a gun in every household in the town of 1,000. The rest of the council was not in agreement of making at making it a requirement, but they unanimously agreed to move forward with an ordinance "recommending" the idea. The council also approved funding to offer concealed firearms training to the 20 teachers and administrators at the local elementary school.

The proposal, which will go before the full council in February for further review and comment, appears to have the support of the council's five members and many residents in the community about 90 miles south of Salt Lake City. Councilman Noel Bertelson believes making guns in every house mandatory was too much. 

However, he agrees the town would be safer if everyone was armed. With only a part-time police force, he said, response time is not like it is in a big city: "If a person is able to take care of themselves for a while, it would probably be a good thing." 

Sounds like the situation that reported on yesterday, when a mother alone with her infant child waited well over 20 minutes for police help, needing to shoot the knife wielding intruder on her own to save her and her baby’s life.

The community is still smarting from the double-murder of an elderly couple in nearby Mount Pleasant couple of years ago. One councilman said what used to be a peaceful, quiet town has seen increasing criminal activity. Thefts of metal for scrap and other property also have become a problem” "We are kind of tired of people breaking in and taking stuff," said Councilman Mickel, explaining why he voted to urge every house to have a gun.

Angela Johnson, owner of a local town gas station, said she doesn't like guns but backs the council's proposal, showing more insight to human beings than all Washington politicians combined: "If criminals knew they would be fired against, I think it would cause pause."

Why is that concept so difficult for people like Senator Feinstein to understand?

5) Consider the reporting from the Sacramento Bee on December 27, 2013:

• Gun deaths and injuries have dropped sharply in California, even as the number of guns sold in the state has risen, according to new California state government data.
• Gun dealers sold 600,000 guns in California last year, up from 350,000 in 2002, according to records from the California Attorney General's office, a 71% increase.
• During that time period, the number of hospitalizations from gun injuries dropped from about 4,000 annually to 2,900, a roughly 25% drop, according to hospital records collected by the California Department of Public Health.
• California firearm-related deaths fell from about 3,200 annually to about 2,800, an 11% drop, state health figures show.
• The number of California injuries and deaths attributed to accidental discharge of firearms also has fallen.
• The number of suicide deaths involving firearms has remained roughly constant, i.e. having a lot more guns present in California homes and businesses has not increased the number of self inflicted deaths by gunfire.

So in summary, gun sales go way up, gun deaths, wounding, and suicides either go down or remain the same. See Angela Johnson’s comment above for a potential reason.

6) Consider an article written by AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen which appeared on the Western Journalism website on December 26, 2013, and whose excerpts are listed below:

• The city of Chicago currently has the most restrictive gun control laws on the books, has been declared a “gun free zone” where handguns are banned, yet it is the most bloody city in the world in terms of gun-related deaths. The city averages 40 deaths per month from guns, and is nearing 500 for the year. Chicago’s murder rate is 19.4 per 100,000, which is by far the highest rate in the nation, at nearly 3 times New York which is at 6, and nearly 2 ½ times Los Angeles’ 7.5. In fact, Chicago ranks as the number one deadliest Alpha city (significant urban center in the global economic system) on the planet. Since it is no longer possible to legally own guns within city limits, the only ones who still have them are criminals. It doesn’t appear gun control works for Chicago. In fact, the city illustrates how correct the aphorism is that if guns are outlawed, only the outlaws have guns. The law-abiding citizens do not.
• The Center for Disease Control (CDC), in 2003 thoroughly analyzed fifty-one in-depth studies dealing with gun control. Those studies included everything from the effectiveness of gun bans to laws requiring gun locks. From their objective analysis, they “found no discernible effect on public safety by any of the measures we commonly think of as ‘gun control.’”
• In 2005, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine conducted a similar analysis of extant gun laws across the country. They arrived at a similar conclusion, as the abstract for their research concludes, “that evidence for the effectiveness of a given firearms law on an outcome is insufficient.” After reviewing over fifty different gun control laws, and coming to the conclusion that their effectiveness on an outcome is “insufficient” is euphemism for “they had no discernible effect.”

Not only are these findings of interest and vital in debunking the need to severely restrict or prohibit gun ownership of rational American citizens, he closes the article with a great description of why we are going through this useless exercise of draconian gun control laws and why it will fail: “Gun control has proven impotent in curbing the problem, and “gun free zones” are absurd, since they practically advertise themselves to be potential venues of mayhem and violence. More gun control is not a solution, but only serves as a Band-Aid to our emotions so we feel like we’re doing something. The problems are much deeper in our society than Band-Aids can cure.”

Band Aids will not prevent future Newtown shooting sprees. Putting a trained police officer in each of our 132,000 schools will do a lot more than Band Aids.
Band Aids will not prevent people from being raped or killed in their homes or businesses. Only well trained, rational citizens with legal firearms will do that.

Band Aids will not halt the venomous and hateful speech that spills out of certain people’s mouths, vileness that has become a trademark of current day politicians.

Band Aids will not prevent criminal elements from getting their hands on guns.

Band Aids will not force criminal elements to register or turn in their firearms.

Band Aids will not stop thousands and thousands of our kids from being abused, physically or sexually, or unnecessarily dying every year.

Band Aids will not allow us to understand how our legal drug infested culture leads an individual to snap and kill innocent people and children.

Band Aids will not prevent the current and dire economic and social conditions from creating the gangs that lead to the thousands of firearm murders every year.

Band Aids will not work but as usual, that is all the Washington political class is capable of. They always fail to understand the root causes of our major issues and fail to address those root causes with real medicine and real solutions, settling only for political grandstanding and surface solutions that never work. 

Nowhere is this simplicity of this Band Aid approach and idiocy more on display by the current administration. Vice President Joe Biden is having a series of meetings and thinks that his recommendation after two weeks of meetings will result in a viable solution. The problem is way too deep and way too complicated for a single politician to come up with a solution in less than a month’s time, especially a politician like Joe Biden.

Senator Feinstein’s simplistic approach, ban or severely restrict gun ownership, will only result in the killing of so many more people that it will dwarf the carnage at Newtown.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Mourning The Senseless Shootings In South Carolina

Today, most of the country mourns the senseless mass killing of nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina by a despicable human being. Nine people who were doing nothing wrong, nine people who were exercising their religious rights were needlessly killed by a complete stranger. No stretch of logic or reasoning is possible that would justify such hate.

So today, we are going to rerun one of our more popular posts, a post that called for more hate control before more gun control. This post was written in the aftermath of the Newtown school shootings in Connecticut. At that time, there was an outcry for more stringent gun control. 

However, rather than make the case for more gun control, this post made the case for more hate control. Hate killed those school kids a few years ago. Hate killed the nine churchgoers yesterday. A gun may have been an instrument of the hate, but hate was the root cause the violence and killings.

A hypothesis of that post is that in this country today, most hate starts from the political class. Our political process and the politicians that manipulate those processes, along with their allies in the media, have gotten to the point where getting elected is now both the ends and the means to power and personal wealth. Thus, it is okay to denigrate, name call, and reduce other citizens to hated stereotypes who do not deserve any respect or in some cases, right to life. 

Rather than go on, I will let the post below make our case that if we had better, more decent politicians in office, politicians that viewed dissent and diversity as healthy and not something to be purged in any way possible, we would not have as much crime and the underlying hate that goes with it.

****************************************

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

How About More Hate Control Before More Gun Control, Part 1 - Maybe Hatred Is The Real Root Cause Of Mass Shootings 

Be forewarned: there is some bad language and implied bad language in the following so please pass if this might offend you. These are not my words but actually the words of our politicians and their supporters.

Today is the first of a four part series regarding the Newtown, Connecticut shooting where innocent kids and teachers were needlessly slaughtered be a deranged young man. Let me state a few facts up front:

• I was tremendously saddened by this senseless act of violence. 
• I do not know how a young man can become so separated from compassion and reality and have so little respect for life that he would kill innocent children and teachers. 
• I am not a psychologist and have no understanding from a psychology/scientific perspective of the root causes which trigger a young man to execute this type of terror, and neither do 99.9% of the people with an opinion on this matter and 100% of those in the Washington political class. 
• I am not a member of the NRA and have never fired a gun, never mind owning one. 
• I am a fervent defender of the U.S. Constitution including the Second Amendment.

Today I want to consider a concept that I have not seen discussed in the media and certainly not by those in politics that want to strip law abiding, common sense citizens of their right to bear arms. The concept involves the idea that maybe we should do a little hate control BEFORE we recklessly and senselessly go off on a gun control tangent, a tangent that will likely increase crime and gun play, not reduce it (more on this latter concept tomorrow).

Let’s be honest, there is a lot of hate and venom circulating in the country today. Much of it is fomented by the political class as they foolishly try to incite their supporters and degrade their opponents in the most dehumanizing and disrespective ways possible. 

The more you dehumanize others, the easier it is to see them as less worthy of their opinion and their life. Maybe if we started respecting each other a little more, taking some of the hate and venom out of our politics, thought processes, and speech, incidents like the shootings in Newtown, in south Chicago, in the ghettos of Detroit, etc. might be become a little less frequent if we respected each other a little more.

This increase in respect and humanizing of other human beings should start with our so-called leaders, However, as we have pointed out many times in this blog, these so-called leaders are a big cause of the problem, not the solution. They have had a busy, and disgraceful past couple of years degrading and abusing the opinions, lives, rights, and very existence of the citizens they are supposed to be serving:

• Democrat Speaker Of The House Nancy Pelosi called citizen opponents to Obama Care unpatriotic for simply having a difference of opinion with many politicians in Washington. 
• Democrat Charles Rangel slandered millions of Americans who opposed Obama Care by calling them racists for simply having an honest difference of opinion with many politicians in Washington. 
• Democrat Shelia Jordan Lee slandered millions of Americans who opposed Obama Care by associating them with the Ku Klux Klan. 
• Union boss and Democratic supporter Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. stated that his union was at war with the Republicans and Tea Party citizens and that these people "need to be taken out." 
• Democratic Congressmen Mike Doyle and Henry Waxman and Vice President Joe Biden slandered American citizens opposed to unfettered and destructive government spending and debt by calling them terrorists (those people that bomb and kill innocent civilians). 
• When ordinary Americans objected to the building of a Islamic mosque near the World Trade Center property because of the sad memories of 9-11, Democrat Nancy Pelosi said THEY should be investigated for simply having a passionate opinion on the mosque. 
• Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Walters said all Tea Party American citizens can go to hell simply for having a difference of opinion with her.

When you viciously and unfoundedly associate ordinary citizens with racism, call them terrorists, question their patriotism, when you wish they would go to hell, and then threaten to take them out/exterminate them, you have dehumanized them in the eyes of your political supporters, making it easy to imagine them actually going away permanently. 

Maybe this type of hate and venom and dehumanizing goes through the head of a young man when he decides to go off and actually follows the advice that those people “need to be taken out.”When your so-called leaders call for this type of behavior and language, it can’t be wrong, can it?

But our political class, and their direct supporters, also direct their hate and venomous words towards other politicians:

• The campaign manager of Democrat’s Gerry Brown’s gubernatorial campaign called his Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, a whore. 
• White House czar Van Jones publicly called all Republicans a**h****s. 
• Democrat Alan Grayson called all Republicans knuckle dragging Neanderthals. 
• TV host Montel Williams publicly hoped that Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachman would commit suicide by decapitating herself. 
• Ed Schultz, an on air commentator for the Democratic leaning MSNBC news channel, called Laura Ingraham of Fox News a slut. 
• HBO TV host Bill Maher, a major donor to Obama’s 2012 Presidential Super PAC (a $1 million donor), said on air that Republican Sarah Palin “would f*** Rick Perry if he was black.” 
• Bill Maher called Republican Sarah Palin a disgusting and derogatory name that I will not repeat here. 
• Playboy magazine’s online website offered a detailed analysis on why and how each of ten Republican women in politics should be hate raped. 
• Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen likened Republican critics of Obamacare to the Nazis and their propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. 
• A rap artist gave a Minnesota concert that was billed as the “F*** Michelle Bachman” concert (spelling out the entire f-word), a Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota. 
• A Democratic operative insulted Ann Romney, and millions of other American women, by slandering and demeaning her as a stay at home mother. 
• Martin Bashier of MSNBC News showed a video of Mitt Romney’s campaign bus that was interspersed with video clips of buses blowing up in balls of fire, explicitly wishing that the Romney bus also blow up and those inside die a fiery death.

When you label others as sluts and whores and suggest they should be raped or be killed, either by themselves or a fiery bus explosion, you set another stage for dehumanization. If you political opponents are just sluts and whores, no big deal if they go away, right? 

I maintain that this type of disgusting, hateful behavior is an influence in our society and not an influence for good. It infects the undertone of how we view others. It reduces the amount of respect we have for others, making it easier to abuse others, possibly violently.

It usually does not cause someone to go off and actually start killing others but it certainly cannot help. It also cuts short the ability to listen to each other and appreciate the diversity of opinion each brings to a potential solution of a problem.

If I have allowed the political class and their ardent supporters to frame you as a racist or a slut or a terrorist, I am unlikely to consider any good you can bring to my life or to a solution of a problem. If I think it is a good thing that you self decapitate or die in a bus explosion, you will probably not get my attention when it comes to working towards a better society.

As a result of this hateful divisiveness the political class has driven into our society, we despise others that have a different opinion from ours. Major issues, such a failing public schools, a lost war on drugs, skyrocketing national debt, high health care costs, illegal immigration, etc., never get resolved. The hate prevents us from listening to each other, from calibrating our view of the world with others’ views of the world. 

And possibly in the case of Newtown, we go beyond not listening and we start shooting. Not because guns are legal but because we have allowed the political class to desensitize us to each other as human beings.

But it is not only politicians that spew the hate and venom, hate and venom that others take to heart, hate and venom that their children take and internalize. Consider just some recent examples that have appeared in the news:

- Consider the hateful speech and intentions of Professor Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz regarding other human beings that are global warming deniers, those daring to have a different opinion than his: “In this article I am going to suggest that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for influential GW [global warming] deniers... They [global warming deniers] are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate… With high probability it will cause hundreds of millions of deaths. For this reason I propose that the death penalty is appropriate for influential GW deniers.”

Different opinion, therefore you should die. I wonder what he would do to people like me, given our opinions on global warming; should we die also or just suffer some horrible disease since we are not influential enough:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/11/wishing-al-gore-would-shut-up-why-i-am.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/11/wishing-al-gore-would-shut-up-why-i-am_10.html

As an aside, in 2009, the CIA opened up a new division, The Center on Climate Change and National Security. The purpose of this group was to examine the impact of global warming from a national security perspective. A few months ago, with little fanfare, they disbanded the organization. Is the CIA also worthy of Professor Parncutt’s death penalty or was it just common sense that this global warming organization was not longer viable or needed?

- Pulitzer nominated newspaper columnist Donald Kaul recently wrote an article for the Des Moines Register where he called for the killing of gun owners and “dragging legislators who disagree with gun control behind pickup trucks until they get the message.” Don’t agree with my opinion? Thus, we should have more killing and more torture for those that dare to have a difference of opinion. How does this stop the cycle of hate that starts with the political class?

- Erik Loomis, PhD, assistant professor of history at the University of Rhode Island decided he needed to get into the hate and venom game also when he recently stated on Twitter that he wanted the death of National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO Wayne LaPierre, branding the gun rights group he heads as a terrorist organization:

"[I] want Wayne LaPierre's head on a stick." A little hateful, a little violent?

- Karen Lewis, head of the Chicago Teachers’ Union recently had some violent rhetoric of her own to share: “Do not think for a minute that the wealthy are ever going to allow you to legislate their riches away from them. Please understand that. However, we are in a moment where the wealth disparity in this country is very reminiscent of the robber baron ages. The labor leaders of that time, though, were ready to kill. They were. They were just – off with their heads. They were seriously talking about that.”

And this person is associated with educating young minds and kids. Don’t like someone or are jealous of their wealth, that in all probability was garnered via honest hard work and sweat, than just off with their heads. 

I maintain that you cannot have such hate and disrespect and venomous speech floating around and it not have a negative impact on how we treat each other, how it dehumanizes others. I am not saying the Newtown shooting was directly caused because of this poisonous environment but it certainly did not help. Was the shooter seated around his dinner table through the years when slurs and demeaning things were said about others, how others that were different from him were worthy of being “taken out.“

And it certainly does not allow us to sit down and go face-to-face with others to leverage everyone’s knowledge and skills to confront all of our problems from school shootings to high debt, high illiteracy levels, failing public education, a failing health care system etc. 

But if we solved all of our problems, on what issues would our politicians run on? And that, my friends, is the root cause of most of our problems, from school shootings to the lack of a national energy problem, our shameless politicians need the hate and venom to frame and finance their continual reelection effort.

So tonight, when you are sitting around the table with your family, how about a little more hate control and a lot more respect for others in front of our kids. Again, it couldn’t hurt.

And tomorrow if you should come across someone who thinks other human beings need to be taken out, killed, dragged behind a truck or hate raped simply for having a difference of opinion, may I suggest you walk away? Engaging in such a discussion with these types of people just spreads and intensifies the hate and gets yourself muddy, as the old saying goes: “Never mud wrestle with a pig because you both get dirty and the pig likes it.”Walk away, stay clean, and let the hate spewer stew in his own mud. Help break the cycle of hate.

*****************

Hate is the root cause of yesterday’s tragic shooting, not guns or gun control. And the political class is the main cause of the hate and are also not smart enough to keep guns out of the hands of people that hate, no matter how much they think they can.

Two last things to contemplate in the light of the latest shooting incident. According to NBC Los Angeles:

"President Barack Obama is scheduled to arrive at Los Angeles International Airport Thursday afternoon aboard Air Force One, then headline two Democratic National Committee fundraisers.

Obama’s first stop will be the Pacific Palisades home of television producer Chuck Lorre for a $16,700-per-person event benefiting the DNC’s 2016 White House Victory Fund, the entertainment trade publication Variety reported.

The invitation describes the event as an “intimate, living room style event” with only 30 people, but a chance to have “an open dialogue and discussion with the president,” according to Variety. The event will be closed to reporters.

Obama will then head to the Beverly Hills home of filmmaker Tyler Perry for the second fundraiser."

After giving a shallow, perfunctory statement on the shootings that, as always, had to include a political slant, the President decided that political fund raising was more important than leading the country in this time of tragedy, political fund raising was more important than discussing the need to reduce hate in our political rhetoric, political fund raising was more important than publicly reaching out to support the families of the deceased, political fund raising was more important than asking the country to pause, reflect, pray, and pull together.

But this type of leaderless behavior should not surprise us. When two dozen Americans were fighting for their lives in Benghazi, this President went to sleep because he had to leave early the next day for a trip to Las Vegas to….political fund raise. Today he leaves for another entertainment capital to raise political money from rich people while the rest of the country mourns.

Oh, and by the way, NBC Los Angeles also is reporting that Hillary Clinton will also be in LA to hobnob with rich people at a fundraiser in ritzy Newport Beach before heading to Los Angeles for three Hollywood fundraisers Friday. Another leadership void in the political class.

Perhaps Michelle Jesse, writing for the Allen West website, summed up many Americans; disgust and dismay with our political leadership with the following words: “While the nation prays for healing in the aftermath of yesterday’s tragedy, I must add a prayer for a true leader to enter the White House in 2016. One who puts national unity above politics and recognizes times when his or her power is best wielded in the name of bringing us together — rather than bringing in more cash to fund the next political battle.”

More hate control, more leadership, less fund raising is the path to a better country and life, three simple steps that continually eludes the politicians in America today, regardless of what senseless tragedy arises.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

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Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w