Why the NRA wins. (4) [View all]

[rrneck]

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

If conservatives were left to run the country you’d have, well, what we’ve got. They’re just not very good at it. From human rights, economic parity, environmental protection, and international relations if you study what they do and then do exactly the opposite you’ll get it right. But they do one thing very well. They follow orders and fight. That’s right up their alley. That’s why they’re big on the military and guns. Guns have become their sacred totem. They rally around them like moths to a flame and the NRA makes money hand over fist cheerleading for their cause.

For liberals guns have become an anti-totem because they symbolize everything liberals would rightfully like to avoid. Guns are made to kill people, and killing people is wrong every time no matter the reason. If we want to survive as a species we have to learn to get along with each other and share the resources available to us.

Unfortunately, the more we embrace liberal ideology, the further we are drawn from the actual problem itself. Liberal public policy attempts to nurture a way to a solution by progressively micro-managing the economic, social, and cultural chain of custody related to firearms. They are efforts to create a support network that grows from impractical to absurd the more passionately one embraces nurturing as way to deal with violence after the assault has begun.

Mutual support and cooperation between citizens is how successful civilizations thrive. The chaos of violence, whether it happens between individuals or entire countries, is uncivilized, which is to say the network of cooperative nurturing has failed and does not exist. The absence of civilization and a means to deal with it lies beyond the ken most of liberal ideology. We simply don’t know what to do when the fight starts. Unfortunately, conservatives sit around and wait for that eventuality.

In the pantheon of human affairs liberal ideology works best almost all of the time. But there is one instance where the conservatives have us beat hands down. And when we venture out of the ivory tower of ideological theory into the real world, we will meet real live people that know that no matter how hard we may try, humans aren’t perfect and sometimes we fall to fighting. And the NRA sees the potential in that ghoulish market and exploits it to the fullest. And that’s why they win