Democrats See Political Opportunity in Newtown Deaths

Jan, 2013

Ed Rendell, former Pennsylvania Governor and influential Democrat, drew no gasps of surprise or shocked response from his fellow liberal travelers when he recently articulated the left’s position that “the good thing about Newtown is, it was so horrific that I think it galvanized Americans to a point where the intensity on our side is going to match the intensity on their side.”

Approving nods and continued conversation ensued.

I would like to presume the vast majority of Democrats and Obama voters consider Rendell and his fellow liberals to be pariahs, not just for what he said, but because they truly believe their political ends justify the slaughter of twenty innocent children and lifelong emotional wounds endured by the friends and families of those souls. What’s missing is public national outrage from the left, fearsomely shredding the reputations of Rendell, Alex Wagner and the rest of the MSNBC panel. They need to be taught that the murders of children are not “good,” even when it helps them market their political beliefs. Where’s the cringing outrage from liberals?

The next question is, “Who is this “our side?'”

“Our side” for Rendell and his liberals is not any group of Americans who value the lives of our children above all else. “Our side” in this context must describe people who are convinced that military style rifles are the central cause of violence, and their dissolution would bring ultimate relief. The “other side” would then be dangerous people who keep scary guns in their homes and cite dangerously radical writings from frightening people who believe “Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence.” Or, “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”

You know, radicals like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and other such miscreants.

Ben Shapiro of Breitbart.com articulated this point well, explaining to the provocateur liberal royalist Piers Morgan that we may not need protection from tyranny today, but we may in 50 or 100 years from now. “They may not turn on me; they may not turn on my children. But the fact is this: history is replete with democracies going tyrannical. It happened in France in the 19th century, in Spain in the last century, happened in Germany, in Italy. It has happened repeatedly, it has happened in Japan.”

These words from people not on “our side” frighten liberals who have come to trust government so much that you will hear them speak earnestly of abolishing the second amendment. Thankfully, we do not live in a time of tyranny and so the thoughtful protestations of our founders are easily dismissed. And while those who exercise their first amendment rights in a country founded to protect such individuals, they might want to remember that the second amendment is the real enforcement of the first.