Maybe the issue is just that not enough people give a shit about guns, if both sides are resorting to dabbling in other issues:
“Gun control advocates shift attention, money to other issues ahead of midterms”
I think NJT is right: there’s a viable “gun rights only please” coalition. There actually isn’t one for gun control. But both sides are seeking safety in broader coalitions. It’s hard to read the pitching seas and know what direction to steer the ship. It’s comforting to follow. But are you following everyone to disaster?
The fundamental problem is in a realignment like we’re going through, no one knows where your pet issue will end up. There’s strong temptations to seek out coalition partners that might make sense in the short term, but in the long term aren’t beneficial. You just want to get through the storm.
Yeah. Up in Washington state, you see Bloomberg’s name on a disastrous pollution tax initiative that’s going to make gas and groceries more expensive. They’re going to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of unelected bureaucrats.
Which he would f— off back to New York and leave us alone.
We, whether you define that as firearms people or some larger conservative coalition, will never be safe as long as the Left controls about half the population and most of the economic and cultural institutions. They have been relentlessly trying to destroy us for at least 50 years.
The realignment that makes since is to realign the leftist strongholds right out of the country. Use legal and political means to make their lives so miserable that they secede and then let them go, with the only condition being that they have to allow sub-state secession of communities seeking to stay in the US. It is important that they and not we secede. With them gone, then we can reestablish the constitutional republic. Otherwise the forks in the road lead to surrender or civil war.
That’s really the only peaceful option I see. Let them go or force them out.
They will never give up their desire to control us.
Its time for us to separate the political bands which have connected us with them.
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
The cause is really very simple: TANLOC. I don’t know if the Left would say this but they certainly act that way.
The problem is, when you look at the practicalities of separation: California has a huge naval base and the country’s busiest port (Long Beach). The other busiest port is is the Port of New York and New Jersey. What do you do there? There’s also a huge naval base in Hawaii. We need those. Also, who gets the nukes? When you start working all this out, the solution sounds a lot like federalism :)
I am not talking about building a wall. Just getting them out of our faces on politics. The upside for them is we get out of their faces. If both sides see it in their interest to work a deal a deal can be worked. One the other hand, ask yourself who gets the nukes in a civil war.
Federalism is a crock because the Left will never abide by its tenets.
Yes, one way to cope with our national discord is to strengthen Federalism.
But the other side is pushing the opposite direction and then some. Not only weakening Federalism but also strengthening Internationalism. Their dream is a EU style empire which absorbs America, with American rights under the heel of an international bureaucratic ruling-class.
How could the political alignment of gun rights advocates change?
There are some shakeups going on, but the paradigm of urban->Democrat and rural->GOP seems to be very firmly in place for the foreseeable future. A party that wants to maintain its hold on the rural areas cannot give up guns, and a party that wants to pander to rich white urban progressives and poor urban minorities cannot give up gun control.
Of course I guess our allies on the right could change as other subgroups in the right-wing coalition wax, wane, and shift.
One of the parties is going to shatter catastrophically and the other one will absorb the splinter groups and fission; with one half keeping the original brand of the fissioning group and the other taking the brand of the shattering group.
I think it’s going to be the Dems and the Pubs, respectively. But I have been wrong before.
Which one ends up with the gun rights faction I wouldn’t even come close to wanting to predict.
It’d be nice if we could get a low tax, pro-gun, anti-regulation, and anti-drug prohibition coalition that also eschews identity politics and leave the race-baiting authoritarian commies to the other party.
It’d be nice, but a libertarianish coalition never seems to emerge.
There aren’t enough libertarians to do more than move the needle a couple points. In a parliamentary system, that would make them kingmakers, but the can only slightly broaden the tent in our system.
(Kingmakers don’t get what they want all that often, either, in Westminster. It just gets them more press)
If Trump proves anything it’s that people are fed up with the overregulation of the government. A smart Libertarian party could form a coalition of like-minded but imperfect allies and exploit that. Libertarians, however, seem more interested in ideological purity than actual progress.
It’s a mistake for the long term. We’ve seen what inter-sectionalism leads to with progressive clauses. You end up with Lesbian parade organizers harassing gay Jewish marchers. It will eventually make your cause more exclusive, not inclusive. like has happened with the NRA.