As I have said repeatedly, true “conservatism” is decidedly of the Middle, rooted in simple common sense which is constantly demonized as “far right” by “liberals” because common sense is incompatible with their neo-Marxist narrative.
The recent slaughter of over 20 innocent people in Lewiston, Maine, has predictably led many on the Left to call for gun control legislation which would severely limit the right to bear arms of anyone save those in law enforcement and the military. From their superficial point of view, the problem is with the availability of guns rather than the morality of those who choose to abuse them.
Here in Canada our Liberal government is seeking to utterly ban the purchase of assault style weapons by the general public. It is a piece of legislation which makes perfect sense to me. Problem is, the definition of what constitutes such a weapon is highly contentious, those who enjoy hunting maintaining that many of the approximately 1500 guns so designated, are not assault weapons at all. I lack the expertise to comment. But it is odd that our Liberals, no doubt motivated by anti-gun lobbyists, are also intent on freezing the number of hand guns in the country, proposing various restrictions on the sale of such in the effort to do so. The “logic” behind such initiatives would seem to be that fewer guns mean fewer murders. It is a simplistic approach to a complex issue which perfectly reflects the superficiality of the Left’s belief that it can control Man’s behavior by manipulating the conditions of the world around him. At the heart of Marxism, of course, is Materialistic Determinism, the idea that external factors and not Man himself are the architects of all human outcomes. It is an idea that makes the concepts of Free Will and Moral Responsibility obsolete. It is the idea that makes the contemporary Left impervious to the real source of Human Evil which is the Inner Life of Man.
On July 16, officials at West Point informed N.Y. police of the disturbing behavior of Robert Card, a member of the Army Reserve who, apparently motivated by voices in his head, had engaged in threats of violence towards others. He would subsequently spend two weeks in a mental facility. While Maine has a “yellow flag” law which allows the courts to deny legal gun owners their weapons should they show signs of mental dysfunction, it was not applied to Card. Joel Merry, Sherriff of the County in which he lived, when informed in mid September of Card’s potential for violence, was worried enough to send officers to his home to seek him out. When they could not find him, Merry informed police across the state to be on the alert. But it was what is called a File 6 alert, mandating not an aggressive search for Card but merely an awareness of his potential danger. Of course on Oct. 25 he opened fire in a bowling alley and restaurant in Lewiston, killing 18 innocent human beings!
For Leftist simpletons such as the self-righteous ladies of The View, the solution to such tragedies is a draconian assault on the availability of guns throughout the American population. But here’s what they are missing:
A primary responsibility of every government ought to be the safety of its law abiding citizens. Compassion for criminals, be they mentally ill or members of “oppressed” communities, in no way justifies putting others in harm’s way. This is simple common sense. In its treatment of Robert Card, the U.S. legal system utterly failed. That an individual with obvious violent inclinations was released from a mental institution while still potentially dangerous, is outrageous. That he was not stripped of his right to own a gun, is outrageous. That the police in his state were not urged to aggressively pursue him, is outrageous. But none of this is surprising given that a strict enforcement of the Rule of Law is now deemed a heartless “conservative” obsession, while such questionable policies as the decriminalization of various drug related offenses and a slackening of the criteria for bail eligibility have been initiated in a number of “liberal” jurisdictions across North America. Examples of the needless death of innocent people due to the Left’s refusal to hold criminals morally responsible for their behavior, abound. Sadly, Canada is rife with such examples.
In Sept. of 2022, Saskatchewan Indigenous Myles Sanderson killed 11 fellow Indians in a stabbing rampage that was truly horrific. Having been arrested 59 times, often for acts of violence, he had spent a little over 4 years in prison when, in Aug. of 2021, he was released. Given his pathological disregard for both the rule of law and other people, common sense would suggest he ought to have ben put away for life. But even more appalling than the limited term to which he was sentenced, is the fact that he was set free prematurely due to what is known as “statutory release,” a mandate here in “progressive” Canada which makes convicts eligible for release after serving only two thirds of their sentence. The result of this “compassionate” piece of legislation, the death of 11 perfectly innocent people! Given that they were slaughtered with a knife, perhaps the Left would like to see some restrictions put on that utensil!
The murder of an Ontario Provincial Policeman in Dec. of 2022 has led to a contentious discussion of the need for bail reform in the province. Randall McKenzie, the perpetrator of the offense, had been on the run from the law for approximately 5 months. Having been arrested for repeatedly ignoring court orders that he not carry a gun given his history of violence, he had nevertheless, after being denied bail, been released upon a review of his case because, according to Justice Harrison Arrell, his identity as an Indigenous entitled him to special treatment given the history of Canada’s oppression of his people. So an innocent cop is dead because of the freedom granted a despicable human being courtesy of the Left’s simplistic interpretation of events that happened decades if not centuries ago. I’m sure all this is quite comforting to the dead officer’s family.
The “conservative” sites to which I subscribe never stop reporting examples of legal gun owners who are still alive precisely because they were armed to defend themselves and their families against criminal assaults. Each and every such example validates the principle that guns are in no way an inherent evil. The absurdity of the anti-gun lobbyists of the Left is their failure to take into account the Moral Status of those they are seeking to deter, their failure to acknowledge that those inclined to Evil [ Robert Card, etc.] will acquire guns one way or another, whatever the difficulty of doing so. Thus while common sense would suggest our legislators give absolute priority to the rights of law abiding citizens, “conservatives” contend radical anti-gun restrictions actually handicap the righteous while encouraging their assailants! This tendency to encroach upon the freedoms of decent people in order to eradicate human evil, is, if one thinks about it, actually typical of the inherently fascistic Left.
Because some Capitalists are greedy bastards, the Left demonizes Capitalism itself, in many ways compromising the freedom of honest, hard working citizens. Because some on-line speech is in fact hateful, we now live in a cancel culture ruled by “progressives” convinced that only they have the right to distinguish hate speech from legitimate, rational criticism. Because some people drive like jerks, the city council of my home town [Hamilton, Ont.] has made driving a car in this city a form of torture, programming stop lights in such a way as to turn a 10 block trip into a 15 minute ordeal. The neo-Marxist sensibility that informs the Left is inherently Elitist and hence inherently anti-Democratic. Nothing better illustrates this than the fact that Populism is now generally portrayed as an evil in the mainstream press. I have before me dozens of articles making the argument that “conservatism’s” defense of the Rights of the Individual is actually a veiled form of Fascism. It is an argument, of course, perfectly aligned with the initiative to deny law abiding citizens the right to bear arms. Yet every individual alive today because they were able to defend themselves against some morally degenerate monster, is a repudiation of this typically simplistic Leftist solution to the problem of Human Evil.