I’m going to join with Dennis Henigan for a minute in denouncing dangerous and inflammatory political rhetoric. So says Dennis Henigan:
It is too easy for politicians and political commentators to treat our increasingly incendiary political atmosphere as a product merely of disparate extremist individuals and groups on the fringes of our political system. Treating the problem as the product of a relatively few misguided individuals with bizarre violent fantasies misses a far more troubling reality. What we are seeing is the acting out of an ideology of violence as a tool of political power that has long had a home on the American right – particularly in the “gun rights†movement dominated by the National Rifle Association.
Bravo! Monsignor! Bravo! I heartily agree this ideology of violence, but have you ever looked at how far and deep the rot has run, Mr. Henigan? NRA’s inflammatory rhetoric is everywhere. In fact, I have fairly good evidence that NRA rhetoric is not only inflaming our present political situation, but must, somehow, be making its way to the past. For instance, take a look at this dangerous insurrectionist, going by the name of George Washington:
The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference – they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.
Clearly this man has been brainwashed into NRA’s “guns everywhere” mentality. But he’s not the only crazy wingnut preaching insurrectionist thinking from the past. Let’s look at a man who goes by the name of Thomas Jefferson:
“The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them and all partial distinctions, exclusions and incapacitations are removed.”
The horror. This Mr. Jefferson is full of seditious blather. Mr. Henigan is surely right about the right about this crazed militia nut. He even wrote a document that had the audacity to propose a framework by which it was even acceptable to wage violent war against one’s own government. Let me read a passage from it:
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience [has] shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”
This is crazy! How far off are we from blowing up federal buildings with maddening drivel like this floating around!?!?  Language like this only enables domestic terrorism. Let’s look at another dangerous militant known as John Adams:
“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
I think the Secret Service should consider paying this Mr. Adams a visit, before he gets any ideas. Same with his buddy John Hancock:
“. . .In defence of the freedom that is our birthright. . .we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the agressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.”
If this isn’t strong evidence of NRA’s message affecting even our past, I don’t know what is. Our nation never experienced any kind of armed revolutionary overtones before NRA started drilling their insurrectionist nonsense into the American Body Politic back in the 70s. I’m glad there are good Americans like Mr. Henigan out there exposing this dangerous undercurrent emerging in our political discourse, because clearly it is not just affecting our present, but our past as well.
Hat tip to Joe Huffman for the inspiration.
UPDATE: I’m told the first quote by George Washington was bogus. Thanks to Clayton Cramer for catching it. I have removed it.
