Now that the Democrats are in charge of the White House, liberals are doing all they can to suppress criticism of big government. The newest strategy is to link criticism of big government to unlawful acts of violence, such as the shooting at the Holocaust Museum or the shooting of the abortion doctor.
A good example of this phenomenon appeared in the Saturday New York Times in an op-ed by liberal columnist Bob Herbert. His liberal agenda includes gun control, which was the focus of his article.
Herbert took us back to the federal massacre of the Branch Davidians at Waco and Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City a year later. Guess where Herbert places the blame for the Oklahoma City bombing. He blames “right-wing craziness” in which gun-rights advocates were pointing out that the right to keep and bear arms “protects against the tyranny of our own government.”
In other words, if critics had remained silent about the Waco massacre and gun rights, McVeigh might never have committed his act of terrorism.
What palpable nonsense. When government massacres its own people, including children, it is the duty of the citizenry to criticize and condemn. This is especially true when there is significant evidence to suggest that U.S. officials intentionally injected flammable agents into the building with the intent that they would be ignited or when federal agents deliberately bulldozed the site after the massacre, thereby preventing a full investigation into the massacre.
Of course, Herbert is not unmindful of the fact that the Waco massacre occurred on orders of two liberal paragons: Bill Clinton and Janet Reno. In the immediate aftermath of the Waco massacre, it was the liberals who were questioning the patriotism of government critics. It was, after all, a liberal, Bill Clinton, who proclaimed, “You can’t say you love your country and hate your government.”
Fortunately, none of this dissuaded libertarians from criticizing and condemning the Waco massacre and challenging the official account of what happened there. In fact, it was the libertarians who led the way in persistently raising the conscience and consciousness of the American people to finally realize the horror that Waco represented.
Of course, we saw this same phenomenon, from both liberals and conservatives, after the 9/11 “blowback” from U.S. foreign policy.
Recall that after the conservative George H.W. Bush administration had imposed sanctions on the Iraqi people, the Clinton administration brutally enforced them for 8 years, contributing to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. As anger and rage boiled over in the Middle East, U.S. liberals remained silent, notwithstanding their purported love for the poor, needy, and disadvantaged. Madeleine Albright, who was serving as U.S. ambassador to the UN, perfectly expressed the liberal mindset when she proclaimed that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions had been “worth it.”
Then, when the 9/11 attacks occurred, both liberals and conservatives banded together to suppress any criticism of U.S. foreign policy. To place any responsibility for the attacks on the U.S. government would be unpatriotic, even treasonous, they suggested, and would only encourage and give comfort to the terrorists.
But libertarians would not be silenced. Just as we did after Waco, we have led the way in raising people’s consciences and consciousness about the horrors of U.S. foreign policy, including the brutal sanctions against the Iraqi people.
In an attempt to silence gun-rights advocates who have been warning about the danger of another gun ban, Herbert suggests that we can trust Obama not to follow in Clinton’s footsteps by enacting another gun ban. Why, just ask those liberal defenders of civil liberties how much Obama can be trusted. What Herbert, in his innocence and naïveté, fails to recognize is that given the right crisis Obama would enact a gun ban in the blink of an eye. Gun-rights advocates are wise to remember that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
Herbert pooh-poohs the principle rationale of gun ownership — to resist tyranny, notwithstanding that that was the express reason our American ancestors insisted on the inclusion of the Second Amendment. We can see the effects of gun control now playing out in Iran. The Iranian people can protest all they want but everyone knows that they lack the ability to resist the tyrants’ guns with guns. Of course, no doubt Herbert would agree with the Iranian tyrants — that the responsibility for bloodshed at the hands of government gendarmes lies with those who are criticizing the government rather than with those who pull the trigger.
