Knob Creek
NES Member
Altogether not a bad letter from the editor of the Standard Times
FROM THE EDITOR: Guns, moms and apple pie
The first is a single mom from Fairhaven with a teenage son, a good job in the medical field and a nice house with a garden.
The second is a couple who own their own business, live in a nice suburb north of here, pay thousands of dollars a year for private dance lessons for their daughters, and are preparing to send their oldest off to private college.
The third is a plumbing contractor with a manse in the woods on the Rhode Island/Massachusetts border. He and his wife drive his-and-her Harleys, several cars, snow machines and their own excavation equipment.
What do they all have in common?
They are arming themselves or getting ready to.
They are not alone. In case you missed it, guns are in vogue in a way they haven't been around here in decades, with gun permits increasing in Massachusetts by about 15 percent in the past two years — reversing a long decline in gun ownership in the Bay State.
None of the people I mentioned hunts. None has been a recent crime victim. None can explain clearly just why they want guns other than because they want to get them before the government tries to take their right to own them away.
The last is a tip-off that each spends time watching Fox News or listening to talk radio, where anti-government harangues are always in vogue and paranoia is the currency of the realm. Still, if any constitutional liberty is safe in the United States, it is the Second Amendment, thanks to recent Supreme Court decisions striking down state laws that would have imposed new bans or restrictions on gun ownership.
So what's going on?
Violent crime is down, according to the FBI, and my friends haven't all decided they want to become sport shooters or that their neighborhoods suddenly have become more dangerous.
The answer perhaps lies deeper, in the powerlessness more and more Americans feel as a result of the deep financial trouble we are in and of our skepticism in government's ability to do anything about it.
They are worried about what they see as a federal takeover of health care, the bruising business environment, the decline in the value of their homes, their tax bills, illegal immigration, the bank and automobile bailouts — the same things most of us worry about. They probably know deep-down that ordinary people have something to do with the problem, too, by spending more than they should and saving less than they might, but it is easier to be angry with the government than it is with an entire culture.
We the People vented our anger in 2008 by electing Barack Obama the first African-American president when he promised us change from the waning days of the Bush administration. Then a year later, Massachusetts voters replaced Ted Kennedy with Scott Brown... who promised a change from the 10-month-old policies of the Obama administration. At the same time we got the so-called tea party, whose founders like to see themselves as the inheritors of the revolutionary spirit of 1776.
This bipolar quality isn't unique to Americans, but it is characteristic of us as a people who don't share either an ethnic and racial background or any real ideology.
In the 1960s and '70s, the radicals were on the left, and today they're on the right. Forty years ago, protesters called the president a fascist. Today, they call him a socialist.
The only thing that's really changed is that today's protesters aren't college kids; they're middle-aged whites, people who feel betrayed by both major political parties, government at every level, the marketplace and almost everything else you can think of.
And when Americans get like that, when they feel powerless in the face of driving economic, cultural or political forces beyond their control, they find a measure of security in the self-reliance that limited government has required of its citizens from our founding as a nation. And in the United States, self-reliance and limits on government have always been reinforced by armed citizens willing to stand up to over-reaching federal authority.
I don't believe any of my friends are likely to arm themselves against the government — or against their neighbors. But what they are doing is as American as apple pie.
Bob Unger is editor of The Standard-Times. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at 508-979-4430.
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100530/OPINION/5300331/-1/OPINION0401
FROM THE EDITOR: Guns, moms and apple pie
The first is a single mom from Fairhaven with a teenage son, a good job in the medical field and a nice house with a garden.
The second is a couple who own their own business, live in a nice suburb north of here, pay thousands of dollars a year for private dance lessons for their daughters, and are preparing to send their oldest off to private college.
The third is a plumbing contractor with a manse in the woods on the Rhode Island/Massachusetts border. He and his wife drive his-and-her Harleys, several cars, snow machines and their own excavation equipment.
What do they all have in common?
They are arming themselves or getting ready to.
They are not alone. In case you missed it, guns are in vogue in a way they haven't been around here in decades, with gun permits increasing in Massachusetts by about 15 percent in the past two years — reversing a long decline in gun ownership in the Bay State.
None of the people I mentioned hunts. None has been a recent crime victim. None can explain clearly just why they want guns other than because they want to get them before the government tries to take their right to own them away.
The last is a tip-off that each spends time watching Fox News or listening to talk radio, where anti-government harangues are always in vogue and paranoia is the currency of the realm. Still, if any constitutional liberty is safe in the United States, it is the Second Amendment, thanks to recent Supreme Court decisions striking down state laws that would have imposed new bans or restrictions on gun ownership.
So what's going on?
Violent crime is down, according to the FBI, and my friends haven't all decided they want to become sport shooters or that their neighborhoods suddenly have become more dangerous.
The answer perhaps lies deeper, in the powerlessness more and more Americans feel as a result of the deep financial trouble we are in and of our skepticism in government's ability to do anything about it.
They are worried about what they see as a federal takeover of health care, the bruising business environment, the decline in the value of their homes, their tax bills, illegal immigration, the bank and automobile bailouts — the same things most of us worry about. They probably know deep-down that ordinary people have something to do with the problem, too, by spending more than they should and saving less than they might, but it is easier to be angry with the government than it is with an entire culture.
We the People vented our anger in 2008 by electing Barack Obama the first African-American president when he promised us change from the waning days of the Bush administration. Then a year later, Massachusetts voters replaced Ted Kennedy with Scott Brown... who promised a change from the 10-month-old policies of the Obama administration. At the same time we got the so-called tea party, whose founders like to see themselves as the inheritors of the revolutionary spirit of 1776.
This bipolar quality isn't unique to Americans, but it is characteristic of us as a people who don't share either an ethnic and racial background or any real ideology.
In the 1960s and '70s, the radicals were on the left, and today they're on the right. Forty years ago, protesters called the president a fascist. Today, they call him a socialist.
The only thing that's really changed is that today's protesters aren't college kids; they're middle-aged whites, people who feel betrayed by both major political parties, government at every level, the marketplace and almost everything else you can think of.
And when Americans get like that, when they feel powerless in the face of driving economic, cultural or political forces beyond their control, they find a measure of security in the self-reliance that limited government has required of its citizens from our founding as a nation. And in the United States, self-reliance and limits on government have always been reinforced by armed citizens willing to stand up to over-reaching federal authority.
I don't believe any of my friends are likely to arm themselves against the government — or against their neighbors. But what they are doing is as American as apple pie.
Bob Unger is editor of The Standard-Times. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at 508-979-4430.
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100530/OPINION/5300331/-1/OPINION0401
