Making Fascists Fear Again

The NRA just produced this ad, which is a paranoid, apocalyptic open call to violence in order to protect "us" against "them" and "they".

The text, voiced by no-name college drop-out and wanna-be-famous right wing nut job Dana Loesch:

They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse “the resistance.”

All to make them march. Make them protest. Make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding — until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.

And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.

I’m the National Rifle Association of America. And I’m freedom’s safest place.

You know why I have guns?

Because fascism is real and it looks just like Dana Loesch.

Fascists have been banging the drum against they (Jews) and them (Blacks) and those people (immigrants), and you know (gays) for a hell of a long time. Women? Muslims? Catholics? Mormons? Yep, all them too. The worst.

The good news is that our Founders knew fascists were out there, and they wrote the Second Amendment for ALL Americans, same as the First.

Some years back I wrote a post called The Liberal Case for Gun Ownerhship:

What were our Founding Fathers thinking when they wrote the Second Amendment?

Well, they were not engaged in narrow partisan politics. They were not posturing for Fox News or trying to “make nice to soccer moms.”

These were serious men who came fresh from the white-hot forge of revolution. A war had just been fought to overthrow the yoke of an oppressive and unresponsive Government that invaded homes without warrant and which exposed the populace to "dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within."

In short, while it was a bit hotter back then, the issues we face today are not so completely different.

As left-wing, NPR-loving Virginia author Joe Bageant notes in his book Deer Hunting With Jesus:

”With Michael Savage and Ann Coulter openly calling for putting liberals in concentration camps, with the CIA now licensed to secretly detain American citizens indefinitely, and with the current administration effectively legalizing torture, the proper question to ask an NRA members these days may be 'What kind of assault rifle do you think I can get for three hundred bucks, and how many rounds of ammo does it take to stop a born-again Homeland Security zombie from putting me in a camp?'

"Which would you prefer, 40 million gun-owning Americans on your side or theirs?"

Bageant is not a new liberal, but an old liberal – the kind that once protested things and took to the streets in opposition to stupid wars, and which stood up to be counted when civil rights were being violated.

The old liberals know the value of guns.

They know that after the Civil War, southern whites denied blacks the right to own guns, because it was easier to lynch an unarmed black man than it was one who owned a deer rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition.

Some gay Americans have discovered this secret knowledge as well. As Jonathan Rauch wrote in Salon magazine back in March of 2000:

"Thirty-one states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible."

If this sounds like Revolutionary talk, it is. It is the kind of language our revolutionary Founding Fathers might have used if they were gay, or black, or Hispanic, or Muslim, or Jewish and living in America today.

”Don’t Tread On Me,” was not a bumper sticker back then – it was a warning every bit as ominous as the shake of a rattlesnake’s tail.

The notion that our Founding Fathers contemplated armed insurrection inside the United States seems to surprise some people.

But it shouldn’t.

The Good Old Boys of Virginia -- Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington -- knew that power belonged to the people only so long as the power of the state could be met with an equal power organized by the populace at large working in tandem.

Guns were not to be used capriciously, but they were part of the long term plan crafted by our Founding Fathers to protect this great nation from powerful, cunning and patient forces of oppression -- whether those forces came from within or without.

To be clear, Dana Loesch, there are more of US than there are of you.

More Americans believe in the right to vote than there are racists who support voter suppression.

More Americans believe in public schools than there are college dropouts who are home-schooling their children.

More Americans believe in E Pluribus Unum than there are folks reading KKK literature.

More Americans believe in family choice -- reproductive choice, marriage choice -- than those who believe in coercion and hate.

More Americans are environmentalists than there are polluters.

And yes, we are armed.  Real guns. Hundreds of rounds.

We will defend America against fascists, and Russian communists too.

Why does that terrify you so?