Seventeen precious innocents were murdered by an evil young man in Florida in a very publicly announced “Gun Free Zone.” All the many in loco parenti could do was reach for a cellphone or in one case, a heroic adult, with nothing useful to reach for, simply used his body as a shield to protect our kids against the horror.
This week, in response, our very thoughtful and kind Rabbi looked out to us parishioners and argued that irrational fear is what is blinding the Democrats and Republicans from coming to better middle-of-the-road solutions for this awful issue of evil men shooting up our kids at school. I respect and admire his arguments. The Republican, the argument went, is mired in illogical fear, so he embraces even more his 2nd Amendment rights; he then loads up with even more ammo at WalMart to store in his bunker with his 2-year supply of dried beef jerky. The Democrat, the vast majority of Jews sitting in front of the Rabbi, in their own fear-laced emotional duress, want to make all of America, just like the Florida High School, a “gun free zone.”
The Democrats' position this week was echoed by another Jew, Bret Stephens of “the paper of record”, calling for a repeal to the Second Amendment. As a Republican Jew, a liberal, I appreciate the Rabbi’s work at trying to express a balanced approach, but I disagree with his view of my side. I’d say, no Rabbi, and no Mr. Stephens, we liberals, now called conservatives, are anything but blinded by fear. We see very clearly what is happening. We have some effective solutions.
We would say: You Democrats in the sanctuary this weekend, with all due respect, you are the blind ones, and in your blindness you are helping to create and nourish what happened in the high school this past week. You are blind to the fact that culture is a key reason why American boys, barely starting to even shave, are walking down high schools murdering 17 innocents or slaughtering 6000 this year in our Democrat-run cities.
Our liberal (now called conservative), God- fearing, Western American culture is being overthrown by radical secular leftism, a culture most non-orthodox American Jews embrace intentionally or not to varying degrees. Such a value system is directly linked to the carnage in the Florida school and our cities. That is a fundamental part of the issue, not NRA lobbyists, not bump stocks, not length of background checks, not 10 or 17 capacity magazines, not assault B B guns, assault Glocks or assault AR-15’s.
It’s also not even “the mentally ill.” How many mentally ill people versus those non -mentally ill disproportionately go about, or have ever gone about shooting up a school or murdering several thousand a year in our cities?
At the heart of the barbarity is the culture the Left has unleashed on America.
You could put a whole armory into the house of every traditional, conservative, Trump-voting Republican in America and we would live in a very peaceful country. In fact, that is what exists today. Tens of millions of these citizens possess and often conceal carrying a gun. Violence rates are almost un-measureable with these folks.
Human evil in its numbers or potency will not be significantly altered even if every Smith and Wesson in every drawer and closet of America were sucked up by some giant solar powered superconducting magnet.
When was the last time you read about an Evangelical Christian American farmer with his MAGA hat in Iowa taking out his 9mm MMP and murdering a kid in a drive-by shooting over a drug deal? How about a conservative, believing Mormon or Orthodox Jewish kid , a member of young Republicans, walking into a school to unleash his yetzer hara (evil inclination) on a few dozen pupils and teachers? Never. And it''s never, not because of 7- day waiting periods or good background checks in Utah or Brooklyn, it's because this part of America still embraces the remnants of a liberal, Judeo Christian, American Western culture.
These gun-toting folks, the remaining real liberals, reject Leftism and are not blinded to its poison. These are the Americans who are not mired in fear but are instead open-eyed and strong in their fight against the Left and the radical Supreme Court justices who erase God from America, who will fine or imprison a student or teacher who says “God bless my parents teachers, country and school” but will fight to the end for the right for hard pornography, intensely violent movies and video games to wash over every community in America.
These are the real liberals who say no to the New York Times blasting our President for talking up Western culture, our Universities turning into America and Israel hating Leftist indoctrination centers, Broadway shows making fun of Mormonism, Steven Colbert calling Catholicism a cult, Bill Mahr calling the Bible a joke, the comedian standing in public with a replica of a severed bloody head of our President, and the Democrat ACLU poised every moment to bring suit against the Ten Commandments. These are the remaining liberals fighting this hate-filled and hateful ideology of Leftism.
No Rabbi, we remaining true liberal Americans are not mired and blinded by fear. We see clearly what is going on and are not afraid to confront the darkness. We see the poison of leftism ravaging liberal American notions of respect for the sanctity of life, almost glorifying in the notion that killing 55 million American girls and boys since Roe v Wade is something edgy and progressive instead of generally immoral and barbarous.
We see the Democrat leftists poisoning our children with their nihilistic paganism, telling our boys and girls they are not boys and girls- telling them it doesn't matter if they have a Mom and Dad, banning the Bible and religious values from their schools and instituting, instead , “sex weeks” on campus or taking a knee at our football games while wearing socks depicting our wonderful policemen as pigs.
We see them pushing their lies and illiberalism down peoples' throats, telling them they are victims in a cruel racist, sexist, homophobic, capitalistic, xenophobic society built on the backs of slaves by white Christian heterosexual slaveholders. We see them weakening the spirit and character of our children telling them not to rely on themselves and their God given gifts, but wait for Government, socialism, or “the rich” to come and support them with all sorts of free stuff.
Regarding our liberal, God- given inalienable right to own a gun to protect ourselves, dear fellows on the American Left, we see clearly. We do not see through a lens of irrational fear. We do not see a terrorist behind every bush, a rapist in every dark parking lot, or an evil man outside each school door. What we see is the reality of life as given to us by a good, caring, but mysterious Creator of the universe . We see a world with very flawed creatures called humans.
We see a beautiful world but one now and forever tainted with human evil and a free will to unleash it anytime and anyplace. And that evil may not be wished or hoped away despite all the Democrat Leftist politicians and all the gun laws on all the books until doomsday. That human evil in its numbers or potency will not be significantly altered even if every Smith and Wesson in every drawer and closet of America were sucked up by some giant solar powered superconducting magnet . It is here to stay. And we remaining liberal, freedom- loving Americans thank God our founders recognized our natural right to bear arms to deal with such evil.
What a toxic brew we have allowed to stew here in America, a brew so sadly and particularly harmful, especially to our young. We stew them in the anti-American illiberalism and nihilism of leftism and so doing dismantle our Judeo-Christian American culture. No wonder the young are unleashed with their un-godly, pagan, barbaric behavior. As part and parcel of the attack on American culture , the Left trashes our great Second Amendment.
Both attacks leave our children spiritually sick and defenseless behind Democrat paid for banners in front of our Leftist public schools blazing forth the moronic illiberal messages, “Stop AR 15 Violence Now” “ Bad Guys, Beware, This is A Gun Free Zone” “ The State is What Connects Us All as Americans” “May Government Protect and Defend Us ” How pathetic. How illiberal and un-American. Shame on us adults.
Forget the left and their teachers unions, get those teachers some Glocks and teach them how to use them. And afterwards, nail up the Ten Commandments in each schoolroom and have the kids memorize them. Get those parents some school vouchers so they don’t have to suffer under the monopoly of our Democrat Leftist radically secularized public schools.
That’s what good, liberal, strong American adults do for their kids. They keep them safe and alive in the face of evil. They teach them our wonderful American history and culture. They fight evil and in so doing also reject leftism. No blinding fear here from liberal America Rabbis. It’s pretty clear to us remaining liberals.