The leaders of the collective are not calling for a gun ban because they have concluded it will reduce the number of killings in this country–they don’t start from scratch like that. They are doing it because their religion is Faith in Government. They believe without question that government can cure all the ills in the world, including insanity, and that it will if it is controlled by the “right” people. The logical implication of this belief is at odds with democracy, though, because true believers can’t risk letting the power fall into the wrong hands. (This is not theoretical, either. Remember during the Obamacare debate, Bill Maher, a high priest of the faith, implored Congress to forget the democratically established rules for a supermajority and just vote up or down; and Michael Moore, another high ranking church member, urged Obama to
“show some guts,” storm the S&P offices and arrest those responsible for downgrading US debt.) Gun control is part of this religion, it’s part of the dogma, like wealth redistribution, environmentalism, population control, and so much else. It is not a rational conclusion, it is an article of faith, similar to increasing taxes on the wealthy. Recall, when Obama was told that increasing capital gains taxes actually reduced tax revenue he said he didn’t care, it was just a matter of principle–it was a moral question to him. In order to be a member in good standing of the Church of State, you don’t need to seek and embrace truth–on the contrary, you must simply embrace the statist ideology in all its fullness without question. What most (but not all) of these worshipers don’t realize, however, is that the fundamental reason gun control is part of the faith is not a secular humanist concern for fellow men–many stats suggest that men of good will are actually better off with stronger gun rights, all other things being equal–but because their underlying moral code, instead of being based on individual rights and liberty, is based on enlightened, central control. Therefore, it must be a tenet of the system that only those at the top have real power, and because ultimately all state power rests on firepower, the state must have a monopoly on it. It must be a pillar of the ideology of central control that the citizenry is unarmed–there is simply no other way to implement the collective vision.
The caricaturish megalomaniac Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, is the very incarnation of this ideology. While us three-dimensional humans were still reeling in horror at the massacre in Newtown, Bloomberg leaped on the opportunity to pound the table for more gun control exclaiming, “This only happens in America.” A total lie, by the way. Bloomberg is the most blatant example of the power-hungry, anti-gun rights (not anti-gun), elitist typical of his church’s leadership, from his totalitarianboasting of “I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world. I have my own State Department,” to his unquenchable desire to control people’s lives (his latest diktat being maximum soda cup size), to his fervent desire that only the government and the government-connected be armed. Bloomberg was of course simply employing the tactic articulated by his fellow bishop of state, Chicago Mayor Rham Emanuel, who famously said, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that, it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” That’s how those in the inner sanctum deal with the inconvenience of democracy for now, but they may do away with the niceties of persuasion if they end up with all the guns and all the power.
Monica Perez
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