Politics Crazy quotes from the campaign

At least it sounds like Cain knew that the whole thing was a joke.

 

From Congressional campaign -- Joe the Plumber, Republican candidate in OH suggests gun control was responsible for the Holocaust and Armenian genocide. He loves America!



When questioned by the media, his campaign spokesman responded:

Should make one proud to be a Republican in Ohio.

 

Joe: "I wasn't talking about the Holocaust" when I said this in the video:

"In 1939, Germany established gun control. From 1938 to 1945, 6 million Jews and 7 million others, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated."​

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It's the left wing media's fault for misrepresenting what he said!

 

I don't understand two things-

1- Why did he try to "walk back" a factually correct statement? So far as I know, every single genocide of the 20th century was preceeded, and greatly simplified, by the disarmament of the targeted group. This is just a fact. It's a lot easier to round up and exterminate people who can't shoot back, after all. None of the facts he cites are anything other than that- facts. The Turks -did- disarm the Armenians, the Nazis -did- disarm the Jews and other non-Aryans, the Communists -did- disarm the Kulaks (along with the rest of the population), freedmen -were- disarmed in both the antebellum and postwar South (as were "swarthy immigrants and Irishmen" in the North) etc. None of this is even remotely open for debate.

2- Why does stating these simple facts make him some kind of a nutter? His observation is accurate. Not all gun-grabs lead to genocide, no- but the percentage is worryingly high, and civilian disarmament is a reliable sign of a government which respects neither its' citizens, nor their rights, nor their safety. And while not all gun-grabs lead to genocide, all genocides have been (again, so far as I know) been preceeded by gun-grabs. In Europe, the pattern goes back at least as far as Revolutionary France and the suppression of the Vendee. It is consistent to a disturbing, if logical, degree. So again- what part of this indicates that he's nuts? Looks more to me as if he's maybe cracked a history book sometime since 7th Grade.

 

To infer or imply that gun control in the US makes the US comparable to post post-Ottoman Turkey, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia , Pol Pot's Cambodia or any such oppressive regime is a gross distortion of the representation of those regimes and the role of gun control.

Joe's "cracking of history books" further ignores the fact that citizens of these countries have virtually no rights - to assemble and redress grievances, habeus corpus, a freely elected representative government, etc. - or such facts as having an independent judiciary. I would suggest that Joe's understanding of history is spotty and selective at best.

It is dishonest, disingenuous and yes, nutty to the extreme. Much like the rhetoric about Obama's secret plan "to remove the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights." (quote from NRA).

 

I know I'm going to regret posting in politics, but here goes:

While the idea that gun grabbing is will invariably lead to genocide is a stretch, dismissing such an idea as simply "nutty" is improper. Indeed, I think that speaks to a "can't happen here" mindset. Think about the concentration of executive power that we have witnessed over the last 12 years. Unilaterally authorizing military action in Libya, the targeted execution of an American citizen, and the issuance of an executive order that suspends enforcement of immigration laws. More apropos, may be the recent invocation of Executive Privilege in to the probe on Operation Fast and Furious.

To be honest, I think that's alarming, and maybe this might be appropriate for another thread, but I'm not comfortable with branches of government which flout the systems of checks and balances.

In sum, I disagree. Inferring gun control to a repressive regime is not nutty.

 

It is far more than a stretch, IMO, given the checks and balances and the means of redress that exist under the US constitution that did not exist in any of those regimes.

To point to those regimes and suggest it could happen here is nonsense and extreme, ie nutty.

 

I dunno Dux. What about Japanese Internment Camps and McCarthyism?

 

I believe the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of the internment camps and McCarthyism was fueled as much by right wing induced fear mongering as anything else, much like recent hearings on Islamic extremism.

 

Michele Bachmann earlier this week in an interview with the American Family Association:

The new McCarthyism?

 

So if right wing fear mongering is capable of producing internment camps, what's to prevent left wing fear mongering from achieving the same?

 

Right wing fear mongering produced McCarthyism, not the internment camps.

As I noted, the Supreme Court - the independent judiciary that does not exist in dictatorships or other oppressive regimes - ruled on the internment camps.

 

Mitt Romney, March 18, 2012: “He gets full credit or blame for what’s happened in this economy, and what’s happened to gasoline prices under his watch...



When gas prices hit a record high, Romney/Republicans attributed sole responsibility to the President. Suddenly, they are silent. When prices fall below $3/gal before Labor Day, will they give Obama all the credit?