>
> > That same "things are different now" argument can be used to make
> damaging
> > inroads against all the other civil rights, which is why that argument
> > should never be accepted as valid.
>
> Not so. My argument that circumstances have changed - that the demand for
> arms is now coming from the right rather than from the constituencies we
> support, who now favour gun control - doesn't mean that I'm obliged, by
> extension, to support restrictions on our rights to assemble, to speak and
> publish freely, to organize trade unions and political parties, and to
> exercise other democratic rights.
Who said the demand for arms comes only from the right? Fully two thirds of Americans support the second amendment, remember? Do you have evidence that those two thirds are "the right"?
The "things are different now" argument is typically framed in certain ways. The flounders didn't envision fully automatic weapons (though they did caution against standing armies), etc. They didn't envision radio, television or desktop publishing either. Unless you are prepared to argue that the pen is not mightier than the sword, your mandate is to demonstrate why speech, the press, etc. should not be restricted by the same mechanism you would use to limit or remove gun rights.
> I don't have the slightest problem reconciling my unconditional support
> for these hard-won rights with my endorsement of efforts by liberal and
> radical Americans to place curbs on access to weapons by right-wing
> militias, criminal gangs, and confused individuals who represent a threat
> to their public safety and, in the case of the militias, potentially to
> their civil rights.
>
That is a canard. No one except bad guys want bad guys to have unfettered access to guns. Still, enacting legislation that affects the law-abiding but would not stop the crimes it is enacted for is a curious exercise, it doesn't take much cognition to see flaws.
> The decline of [the labor and socialist movements] has severely limited
> the possibilities for the left,
It is my theory that this decline is in fact self-imposed by virtue of being tied to the left allowing anti-gun liberals to put words in its mouth. With Fox News and others confusing so many as to what socialism is and is not, the irony of the Tea Party protesting to keep government out of Social Security and Medicare is lost. As is the opportunity to educate those very ignorant Tea Party members and rebuild needed movements along historically and philosophically correct lines.
I wonder, is the anti-gun and anti-gun rights ideology really a legitimate variant of leftism or is it a poisoned meme implanted by those who would keep the 99% fragmented and exploitable.
--ma