Apparently the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence Executive Director, Thom Mannard, thinks McDonald was a front for corporations who just want to make a profit off selling guns. Complete denial that this is a grassroots civil rights movement. I wonder how he’d react if he knew that the gun industry was completely on board with the Gun Control Act of 1968, since the importation restrictions greatly benefited a domestic industry that was hurt by cheap surplus imports. Let’s also not forget the industries attempts in the 1990s to make nice with the Clinton Administration by accepting gun control arrangements. Hate to tell Thom Mannard, but it’s his fellow citizens, not the gun industry, that are driving this movement.
But I suppose it’s easier for him to live with himself if he believes he’s fighting some faceless “gun lobby” and dispassionate “gun industry” rather than trying to deny a retired veteran living in a gang infested neighborhood his God-given right to defend himself.
My model of his (and many other) claim of “gun lobby profits” and such things is that they can’t imagine individuals actually wanting a gun unless they are a criminal or they have been duped by the “evil corporations”. I could be wrong, but it seems to me a great number of them think in terms of “everything bad is due to capitalism” or even more general in that “freedom is the root of all evil”. Their vision of utopia is government planning and control of everything.
Because of this if they don’t get their way it cannot be “the fault” of the individuals. It has to be influence of the evil capitalists. Why do you think the “progressives” want to silence their opposition (most recently Fox News, in years past it was “Fairness Doctrine”)?
As one admitted Marxist told me, “I believe in the good of society over the good of the individual.” Society/Government/Intellectuals/The-Central-Committee should make the decisions. Capitalists with their influence are the only real threat to “Society” and they should always be suspect because their motives are money and not “the good of society”. Only those untainted by Capitalist urges can be trusted to be pure and good.
At least that is the way I see their delusions working.
Although we’ve tended to embrace the term “Capitalist”, I have become very wary of that word. In the past months, I’ve decided to describe myself as a “conservative libertarian”–conservative, because I believe that people need to learn right from wrong, and do right–but libertarian because I believe laws shouldn’t force people to do what’s right.
I’m for privatizing government (Medieval Iceland is a model I look to for inspiration), but I don’t like to call such a system “anarcho-capitalism” because it really isn’t anarchy. And, as I’ve thought about “capitalism”, I’ve come to realize that it really isn’t Capitalism, either.
“Capitalism” is a word that, if Karl Marx didn’t originate, he vulgarized, to mean “A system by which people who own things de-facto rule”. He considered the United States to be “Capitalist” under this definition at a time when approximately 70% of America’s population owned land.
While the right to own things is important, that isn’t what our system is about–and it isn’t what gives our system its power. The United States is special because it is the first system of government founded on the belief that natural rights to life, liberty, and property are fundamental, and should be protected. It is our freedoms that make us great!
But then again, if Marx came out and called this system “Libertism” and said we need to control everything by “Communism”, his philosophy might not be so popular. Indeed, he’s so popular because he somehow associates “Capitalism” with slavery, and state controlled “Communism” with freedom (freedom to act vs. freedom from failure, essentially).
While I was reading “Musings of The Geek With a .45” (http://geekwitha45.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html#116288095791191566), I looked at the pair “Communism” and “Socialism”, and it hit me: our society isn’t *Capitalist*! It’s the polar opposite of these two things! It’s “Individualist”!