[size=4]Arguing with the Insane[/size=4]
[b]Seeing through the legitimatization fog.[/b]

On September 15, 1999, eight Christians were slaughtered in a church in Fort Worth, Tex. The killer, Larry Ashbrook, shouted things like, [b]"What you believe is bulls**t!"[/b] The media covered the story almost entirely as a gun-control issue, much to the chagrin of conservative media-watchers who'd seen Matthew Shepard and James Byrd — victims of particularly heinous murders and "hate crimes" — celebrated for their status in the identity-politics pantheon even as white Christians slaughtered by a religious bigot were dismissed out of hand.

Whether this was a fair criticism or not, the gun-control issue was absurd. Ostensibly sharp folks in editorial rooms in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., believed, for some reason, that if a sign had been posted outside the Church saying "No guns allowed" this deranged maniac wouldn't have killed anybody. [b]Laws against murder have no teeth, you see, but laws against handguns are a serious deterrent.[/b]

This was, in essence, the selective application of reason typical of reformers of all stripes. The thinking behind such movements — be they for prohibition, gun control, or campaign-finance "reform" — is always the same: [b]New laws will somehow deter people who were perfectly willing to break old laws.[/b] Perhaps the greatest example of such a mindset was the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which "outlawed" war. "Now, why hasn't anybody thought of outlawing war before?" the intellectual class seemed to ask itself, smacking its collective head in what amounted to an international "V8 moment" (don't tell me you don't remember those commercials).

See remainder of commentary at:[url]http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg.asp[/url]

Eric The(Impressed,AsAlways)Hun[>]:)]

Hmm, a good one...