Warning and Educating Our Enemies

As Vox Day recently pointed out, “conservatives” love to instruct our enemy, better yet, warn them off because, hey, this time we’ll enforce consequences, if you keep this up.

Yeah.

Look, I actually respect what Crowder does with his “change my mind” segments, but he’s doing more than just instructing liberals on how awful the left really is – he’s staking out moral ground behind enemy lines, raising the morale of other right wingers, and battering down the misconceptions a number of people have, and thus actually gaining a few converts.

You know, carrot to stick, but he’s got skin in the game, putting his money where his mouth is, and getting several good results from it. he also absolutely does not allow the people he discusses things with to rhetorically cheat (the below video is long, but is pretty typical otherwise of his “change my mind” bits…).

But you’ve got to have a stick. As opposed to this moron which goes far too far trying to be fair minded.

1. We Rarely Get to Come to the Conversation in Good Faith

The most destructive, divisive response when dealing with Second Amendment advocates is the notion that we aren’t on your side of the issue because we “don’t care” about the tragedy and loss of life. Two years ago at Christmas I had a family member, exasperated that I wasn’t agreeing about gun control, snarl, “It appears that if your [step] daughter was killed because of gun violence you wouldn’t even care!”

I’ve seen journalists, politicians, and friends in recent days say something to the effect of “If children dying (in Newtown) won’t change their minds, nothing will!” The obvious implication is that we are unmoved by the loss of life.

It is a true dehumanization of Second Amendment advocates to think that we didn’t see the events unfolding in Las Vegas and have the same ache deep in our souls. That we, too, haven’t read the memorials of those who gave their lives for others and silently cried over our computers or phones. We felt it, and we hurt, and some of us even died or were heroes and rescued others. As hard as it may be to imagine, a person can watch this, ache, hurt, and be profoundly affected by these events and not change his or her position on the Second Amendment.

You may be thinking that the right-wing kneejerk response to assume that progressives just want to confiscate guns is also a denial of coming to the table in good faith. You would be right. However, I suggest assuming progressives just want to ban guns, or some other policy, is not equivalent to thinking, “If you really cared that people died you would agree with me.”

Really?

I’ll grant that there are idiots on the left who somehow still can get into college. See the last guy Crowder debates on guns in the second video who actually espouses that because people are powerless they should be made more powerless, and despite having lived his entire life in a world where a bunch of goat herders with rifles have cause absolute holy hell for one of the most capable and advanced militaries on the planet, for decades, thinks that just because one guy with a rifle can’t stand up to a tank or a drone in a stand-up fight, that no-one can. The same moron was flat-out incredulous when told that the left wanted to ban guns/take all guns/revoke the second amendment.

Sure, a lot of them say “well, we don’t” and ignore the implicit “now”, especially given that people from the AGUS (Reno) to recent protest organizers have flat out stated that they’ll take any inch, because the goal was to take the whole mile. But to not realize that a former Supreme Court justice has argued for repealing the 2nd amendment as well, while not being aware of Heller, but nevertheless being aware of a more recent lower court ruling that semiauto rifles were not protected by the second amendment (and not being able to point to or explain a principle to base that on other than “weapons are dangerous and won’t help anyway” – yes, I’m aware of the contradiction), is astounding to even my jaded soul.

So it’s bad enough you’re trying to make nice with the assholes without, as Crowder does, insisting they play by the same rules you do and enforcing good behavior, but you’ve got to play a stupid and untrue false equivalence here.

So yes, a lot of libs insist they’re not trying to take our guns – then they call for laws that prevent anyone from obtaining them ever again, if not outright confiscating them, or removing the second amendment entirely, while the leaders insist that any gain is but a first step in taking it all.

Which is why we don’t believe them when they say “no, we’re not taking your guns, really.”

You’d do a lot better, if insisting that they come to the table in good faith, to make sure that they understand “good faith” means not only being willing to listen, but to know what it is that you want, and what that means, and what the people you’re allying yourself want.

Until then, fuck off. There are plenty of people out there who will agree with you on every point you bring up and still say “but they look scary and no-one needs them, so no one should have them”. They have no intention of changing their mind, or of paying attention to what the people they ally themselves with are actually doing, regardless of what they say.