A great post, as always. Some thoughts:
I think it is important for all who talk about freedom and democracy to reflect upon the fact that the majority won.
I've been reflecting on the apparent reality that so many people are embracing socialist ideals with a "the time has come" outlook.
Now let's look at the current situation: two messy wars and an economy that's gone south. Who do we blame for that? Barack Obama and the Democrats...? I don't think so.
Yes, we should have had less messy wars. But the economic meltdown we're experiencing goes directly back to the "progressive" ideals and "grassroots" activism of the left, supported by Democrats in Congress and in the White House that culminated in the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. Ironically it is the socialist ideals that were enshrined in the CRA that now lead so many apparently rational people to conclude that socialism is the solution to the crisis whose seeds were sewn a generation ago.
So how do we fix this? Well since this Forum is supposed to be about guns, the first thing we can do is ensure that the pro-RKBA arms groups have a well-funded war chest to wage the battle in congress. Second, we have to actually get off our asses that are so conveniently plunked in front of our computer screens and get out and support those people who support our causes.
+1 on expending every energy to defend RKBA. This is critical. Our ability to defend all of our freedoms will be measured by the extent to which our gun rights are furhter eroded.
How many of you actually voted? How many of you actually went out and supported a candidate of your choice in the last election? I mean worked to get him or her elected? Some people call for revolution, perhaps not fully realizing the implications that such a drastic action would take. But how many of these same aspiring revolutionaires actually participated in the political process over the past several years other than pay taxes and vote? If you weren't pouring money and time and talent into supporting your slate of candidates, but instead got on this forum dissed Obama, dissed the Democratic Party, dissed McCain for being too "liberal," dissed the NRA for being a big organization that you have personal issues with because you don't like the color of their baseball caps or something equally ludicrous, then you are just as responsible for the Barack Obama presidency as a person who voted for him. But now some of you are saying (some half in jest and others maybe not so much in jest at all) Revolution ! without ever having really participated in the system you want to overthrow.
I take strong exception to the underlined portion of your statement. I'm not sure if you're suggesting that anyone who didn't hand out pamphlets or man a phone bank are responsible for Republican defeat in this election cycle.
I see the current situation as part of an inevitable historical progression in our society from a condition of greater liberty and smaller government to the reverse. It has been a long time in coming, has involved the creation of a vested constituency of people dependent in ways great and small on government intervention in the economy and in our daily lives. We now have a permanent class of people dependent on direct government subsidy, and they will never vote for that subsidy to be removed. A generation has been raised and schooled to believe that socialist wealth transfers are not only neccessary but just. One poll I read, from a reputable polling firm, said that about half of Americans thought that "spreading the wealth around" made sound government policy.
I find little reason to be optimistic that we will ever return to a time when limited government and maximum individual liberty will be the ideal of an American nation.
Balkanized by multiculturalist philosophies, made needy by government handouts, diluted by unassimilated mass immigration ... this is not your grandfather's America. It took a full generation (or two) of leftist agitation and indoctrination to get us where we are. The Long March Through The Institutions is nearly complete and our current situation, I fear, is irreversable. In the time it would take to undo what has been done, we may no longer be a majority English speaking country. And it is easy to go from less government subsidy to greater. Going the other way is about impossible, without a major cultural shock.
Perhaps if more people had spent less time on this Forum bitching about things, and actually gotten out there and done something, maybe things would have gone differently. Instead you preached to the choir.
I suspect that many of us who vented our displeasure here have done so elsewhere as well. I don't think that there really is anything anyone could have done to reverse the socialist course on which this country is travelling. From The New Deal to The Great Society to Compassionate Conservatism to Fundamental Change in whatever form that may come, and with a healthy dose of self loathing and an institutional anti-patriotic indoctrination, we have come to be a nation dominated by weak-kneed and limp-wristed doubters and philosophically vacuous voters. We have committed cultural suicide. We're not the first society or civilization to have come to such an end, and I wonder if it is not simply an inevitable part of the birth, growth, decline and death of nations.
So what do we do now? We have to defeat Obama in 2012 and our campaign to accomplish this mission should have started on November 5, 2008.
I think the 2012 presidential campaign is already beginning. There will be enough political fuel provided by Obama and his minions to keep the right-wing activists active. If a new Fairness Doctrine does not silence the opposition altogether it may be possible to galvanize an inspired minority of freedom minded people to keep the fire burning and plan for some future time when we may emerge from the wilderness in some form.
For those of us who are Boomers I would point out that we helped bring down a President once and helped end a war (and pleeeeeease let's not get into whether Viet Nam was right or wrong, it's water over the dam now) A president that was one of the most left leaning Chief Executives we have ever had: Lyndon Baines Johnson. As generation we were committed to political activism and maybe some of our ideas were a little fuzzy, but we are mature adults now and we know the deal. But complacency has become our lifestyle. We can't be bothered with working with the process that is American political life.
Not all boomers were burning draft cards in the 60s. But those ones did get a lot of press. Today they are our teachers, professors, journalists, artists and sundry sentinels of society. Today's "youth" activists may one day come to repeat your words, which I underlined above, and ponder what kind of world they created for their children. I wonder.
Today more than ever, we must become activists. We confuse listening to talk radio, and posting to Forums such as this with actually doing something.
We lost big time a week ago Tuesday, but we only have ourselves to blame, so now let's pick ourselves up off the floor, dust ourselves off, and begin planning on how to win in 2012. It's going to require a level of commitment that many of us have not achieved for many years, if ever. It's really that simple.
I wonder if we shouldn't consider ourselves activists for a much more ambitious agenda. The last several elections have shown what I think is a permanently divided country, and the dividing line is a cultural/values-based one. The political parties have failed us. I emphatically
do not consider myself "to blame" for the shifting tides of history. The next two years will be telling. Is there a political solution within the current system? Or is something much different required to preserve the idea of individual liberty on this planet?