Keiller TN
New member
Interesting article at http://www.worldmag.com/world/issue/09-09-00/opening_1.asp A columnist for the Washington Post makes a comparison of Al Gore's allegiance to the NEA and Bush's allegiance to the NRA. In World magazine Fel Belz shows the comparison to be illogical.
Here is an excerpt:
A third and important reason Mr. Peirce should not try to equate the two organizations and their causes is that one of them defends huge constitutional issues while the other is almost purely self-centered. Whatever else you think about the National Rifle Association, and whatever else you think about guns and their private ownership, it's pretty hard to ignore the plain language of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: "A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." Folks who don't like that foundational guarantee of the Constitution should remember there are others who similarly chafe at other guarantees—like the one for free speech. The modern television and entertainment industries, such people argue, have gotten so destructively rotten that we should dispense with the First Amendment as a means of self-protection. But, of course, few Americans listen to that—and we should be glad of that. Similarly, if the NRA and others who ardently defend private firearms occasionally engage in rhetorical excess, that's the privilege of those who live on constitutionally high ground. But never confuse those folks with the selfish money-grubbers of the public-school teachers' unions.
But the main reason Mr. Peirce was wrong to cast Mr. Bush's and Mr. Gore's "servitude" in the same light is that there's a vast difference between the distant possibility of severe and widespread damage, which is all critics of the NRA can suggest, and the stark and present reality of such destruction, which is what the NEA and the teachers' lobbies are already demonstrably guilty of.
[The whole article is good, but I don't post entire articles, because I feel that it robs publishers of their due.]
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"Unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain that build it:
except the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain." (Psalm 127:1)
"Freedom is given to the human conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility."
(Alexander Solzhenitzyn)
Here is an excerpt:
A third and important reason Mr. Peirce should not try to equate the two organizations and their causes is that one of them defends huge constitutional issues while the other is almost purely self-centered. Whatever else you think about the National Rifle Association, and whatever else you think about guns and their private ownership, it's pretty hard to ignore the plain language of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: "A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." Folks who don't like that foundational guarantee of the Constitution should remember there are others who similarly chafe at other guarantees—like the one for free speech. The modern television and entertainment industries, such people argue, have gotten so destructively rotten that we should dispense with the First Amendment as a means of self-protection. But, of course, few Americans listen to that—and we should be glad of that. Similarly, if the NRA and others who ardently defend private firearms occasionally engage in rhetorical excess, that's the privilege of those who live on constitutionally high ground. But never confuse those folks with the selfish money-grubbers of the public-school teachers' unions.
But the main reason Mr. Peirce was wrong to cast Mr. Bush's and Mr. Gore's "servitude" in the same light is that there's a vast difference between the distant possibility of severe and widespread damage, which is all critics of the NRA can suggest, and the stark and present reality of such destruction, which is what the NEA and the teachers' lobbies are already demonstrably guilty of.
[The whole article is good, but I don't post entire articles, because I feel that it robs publishers of their due.]
------------------
"Unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain that build it:
except the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain." (Psalm 127:1)
"Freedom is given to the human conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility."
(Alexander Solzhenitzyn)