Rant redux

I linked to this blog a year or so ago in a post, but as the next election approaches (seems one is always approaching) and the more I read, I think it is now  appropriate to link it again.  In the last few days I have seen some comments on some blogs where anti-gun folks basically said “When you support gay rights and abortion, I will support gun rights”.  I do not believe you.

Many of my friends or friends of friends disagree with me on the second amendment.  I know my colleagues in academia certainly do.  But I don’t much care.  I have found, lo these many years, that no matter which side one hears from, the lyrics change, but the beat remains the same. It is one of control.

Because it is consistent with this thought and the blog I linked above, I will point this at the “liberals” in the house, a group in which I have often mistakenly been thought to hold membership at various times in my life.  Why would people think I am liberal?  I support rights, like those noted above. They are not rights in which I have a personal stake, but I believe rights define freedom.  I need not benefit personally to believe a right should be defended (We all benefit in the end when we strengthen our freedoms).  But liberals think like just conservatives in a central way; they love to tell others what is right, what is wrong, what we can say and can’t say, and what we are supposed to believe.  They love to tell us we need “change”.  The message is the same; “We know what is right for you”; you need to think like we do, you need change, “these rights are good, but those are not”.

Well, I am happy with who I am. I do not need platitudes and meditations, do not need some form of communing with the cosmos, do not need your Tibetan monks, or magic potions, some improvement in my connection to all of mankind.  I respect people for who they are, AS LONG AS THEY RESPECT ME.  I do not need to be told who I should be and that what I am is not good enough.  I do not need to be treated like a criminal.  Isn't it interesting that when LEOs treat peaceful protesters like criminals, because a few among them commit crimes, there is a loud outcry.  Yet when a few people with guns commit crimes, all gun owners are seen as criminals and the left find nothing inconsistent in that.  Again “Rights for me, but not for thee”.  

I will chart my own course, now as I always have.  If you think you know the truth, go forth and do well, but keep it to yourself.  I do not need you to tell me what rights I have – they do not come from you.  You wonder why people call some folks “elitists”? What else would you call someone who thinks they know better than everyone else?

My biggest problem with this is one the Williamson blog identifies; the realization that most people are not really interested so much in “rights” after all.  They are selfish.  And, in the end, those who have bailed on me will have to fend for themselves.  I will no longer stand on the wall for those who would take my rights away.  When I am, in essence, called a criminal for exercising my rights then I give up on you.  You want to be selfish?  I guess I have to be, too.  See you when it all goes down.