Just in time for my previous post, we have more gun-toting dumbasses showing up to Obama events.
One particular cowboy receives special notice. Partly because he is Black, and partly because he chose to brandish two loaded firearms: a Glock 17 at his hip and an AR-15 strapped to his back. Now, admittedly, when I first saw this on the news, I couldn't hear the accompanying audio and didn't know whether he was just another nut case anti-Obama kook, or a somewhat overzealous Obama supporter attempting to make a point.
Turns out he's a Libertarian. And, oh, how I love me some Libertarians.
In a Youtube video they show him "reasoning" with other event attendees. In one of his early rants, he's accusing the government of thievery, making brilliant analogies through hypothetical sarcasm such as "Oh, I want education and I'm just going to take it from you", apparently unaware that public education already exists through taxation. Should I presume he has something against education? Or those paved roads he's walking around on? Or those publicly-funded police officers who are present protecting his right to open-carry, which was granted him by government officials who are also paid with tax money? Or the military industrial complex which provided the R&D that lead to the design of his beloved guns? Or the government-ran regulating bodies that ensured that the garments he's wearing were safe for consumption and presented him no eminent danger of bursting into flames, or that his motorcycle was safe for transportation, or that the money he used to pay for either held any value? He ends this particular tirade with "Taxation is theft...all taxation".
Now, while we're discussing theft, perhaps he's unaware that the capitalistic system that he depends on to earn the money he used to purchase those firearms is based upon theft in the form of profiting off of other's labor. Or that the very land he standing on was stolen, or that it's highly likely that the fact he's even standing there is due to the theft of his ancestors. I'll assume he's oblivious to the fact that he'd probably find it quite difficult to gather enough resources to pay for those weapons or that spiffy shirt and tie if, instead of living in a cooperative society of 312+ million people, he was a loner scrapping out an existence in the wilderness all by himself. Perhaps he would barter off some livestock or other fruits of his labor to the local gunsmith in return for a sleek semi-automatic military-style assault rifle, but, OOPS!, if it wasn't for a division of labor and the manual drudgery of other people in society, there would be no food surpluses to enable the idle time utilized to developing and manufacturing such material possessions.
He then parrots the insane and willfully deluded thought process that the world would be a safer place if everyone carried firearms. I'm sure he doesn't really mean "everybody"; that he has definite restrictions in mind. Now, I won't bother to attempt a debate about firearms, pro or con, but if anyone seriously thinks you can take a crowd full of people who honestly believe public option health care is socialism, government death panels will euthanize grandma, and Obama is comparable to Hitler, mix in some guns, and the end result will be an increase in safety...well, they have quite frankly lost their fucking mind.
He also thinks it would be "insane" NOT to constantly be armed, citing the "dangerous world" we live in as rationalization. Here's where I could—and probably should—cite a multitude of sources showing how ridiculous the "dangerous world" fairy tale is in our particular society, with a dash of stats showing that the one thing that actually is dangerous about our society versus comparable others is the prevalence of, what else, guns. But again, I won't. I'll just ask him when was the last time he had to fend off roves of raping and pillaging lunatic thugs.
At one point (3:13 into this video) he utters a rational thought and illuminates that merely having melanized skin tends to make people nervous. Although his tense ("at one time" and "made") is way off, I'm sure there's a reason he chose to dress in the manner he did. I'm somehow sure that, deep down, he realizes that people like our government officials—who are paid by taxes—and fellow tax-paying citizens—whom he doesn't feel any allegiance to in the form of assistance—made it possible for him to even be considered a full five-fifths human guaranteed the rights by our Constitution that he is speaking so in favor of. All while he hints at the better times of wise men when that Constitution was written: times when he would have most definitely had a very, very different perspective on things.
One particular cowboy receives special notice. Partly because he is Black, and partly because he chose to brandish two loaded firearms: a Glock 17 at his hip and an AR-15 strapped to his back. Now, admittedly, when I first saw this on the news, I couldn't hear the accompanying audio and didn't know whether he was just another nut case anti-Obama kook, or a somewhat overzealous Obama supporter attempting to make a point.
Turns out he's a Libertarian. And, oh, how I love me some Libertarians.
In a Youtube video they show him "reasoning" with other event attendees. In one of his early rants, he's accusing the government of thievery, making brilliant analogies through hypothetical sarcasm such as "Oh, I want education and I'm just going to take it from you", apparently unaware that public education already exists through taxation. Should I presume he has something against education? Or those paved roads he's walking around on? Or those publicly-funded police officers who are present protecting his right to open-carry, which was granted him by government officials who are also paid with tax money? Or the military industrial complex which provided the R&D that lead to the design of his beloved guns? Or the government-ran regulating bodies that ensured that the garments he's wearing were safe for consumption and presented him no eminent danger of bursting into flames, or that his motorcycle was safe for transportation, or that the money he used to pay for either held any value? He ends this particular tirade with "Taxation is theft...all taxation".
Now, while we're discussing theft, perhaps he's unaware that the capitalistic system that he depends on to earn the money he used to purchase those firearms is based upon theft in the form of profiting off of other's labor. Or that the very land he standing on was stolen, or that it's highly likely that the fact he's even standing there is due to the theft of his ancestors. I'll assume he's oblivious to the fact that he'd probably find it quite difficult to gather enough resources to pay for those weapons or that spiffy shirt and tie if, instead of living in a cooperative society of 312+ million people, he was a loner scrapping out an existence in the wilderness all by himself. Perhaps he would barter off some livestock or other fruits of his labor to the local gunsmith in return for a sleek semi-automatic military-style assault rifle, but, OOPS!, if it wasn't for a division of labor and the manual drudgery of other people in society, there would be no food surpluses to enable the idle time utilized to developing and manufacturing such material possessions.
He then parrots the insane and willfully deluded thought process that the world would be a safer place if everyone carried firearms. I'm sure he doesn't really mean "everybody"; that he has definite restrictions in mind. Now, I won't bother to attempt a debate about firearms, pro or con, but if anyone seriously thinks you can take a crowd full of people who honestly believe public option health care is socialism, government death panels will euthanize grandma, and Obama is comparable to Hitler, mix in some guns, and the end result will be an increase in safety...well, they have quite frankly lost their fucking mind.
He also thinks it would be "insane" NOT to constantly be armed, citing the "dangerous world" we live in as rationalization. Here's where I could—and probably should—cite a multitude of sources showing how ridiculous the "dangerous world" fairy tale is in our particular society, with a dash of stats showing that the one thing that actually is dangerous about our society versus comparable others is the prevalence of, what else, guns. But again, I won't. I'll just ask him when was the last time he had to fend off roves of raping and pillaging lunatic thugs.
At one point (3:13 into this video) he utters a rational thought and illuminates that merely having melanized skin tends to make people nervous. Although his tense ("at one time" and "made") is way off, I'm sure there's a reason he chose to dress in the manner he did. I'm somehow sure that, deep down, he realizes that people like our government officials—who are paid by taxes—and fellow tax-paying citizens—whom he doesn't feel any allegiance to in the form of assistance—made it possible for him to even be considered a full five-fifths human guaranteed the rights by our Constitution that he is speaking so in favor of. All while he hints at the better times of wise men when that Constitution was written: times when he would have most definitely had a very, very different perspective on things.
