'You Are a Citizen'

. . . Says Mike Beard, president of a group that would reduce us to no more than subjects. I have written much about Mike Beard's Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV)--especially that group's startling and chilling assertion that government must have a monopoly on force. This week, though, he says that "You Are a Citizen," in a blog post that tries to sell itself as a celebration of American liberty.

To make his "point" (being generous here), he quotes the late Molly Ivins (herself no friend of the only sure means of defending freedom).

A few years ago, Molly wrote an essay exhorting Americans not to be cynical, to treasure the most magnificent political legacy any people has ever received.

In her words, we inherit certain powers and rights just by being born in this country:

...For more than two hundred years people all over the world have been willing to die for a chance to live by these ideals. They died in South Africa, they died at Tiananmen Square ... You have more political power than 99% of all the people who have ever lived on this planet. You can not only vote, you can register other people to vote, round up your friends, get out and do political education, talk to people, laugh with people, call the radio, write the paper, write your elective representative, use your email list, put up signs, march, volunteer, and raise hell. All your lives, no matter what else you do...you have another job, another responsibility; you are a citizen. It is your obligation and requires attention and effort. And on top of that you should make it into a heck of a lot of fun.

As far as it goes, I would call that some of Ivins' better work--she at least makes a valid point that freedom is wasted on those unwilling to do the work of enjoying the liberties paid for with so much blood and sacrifice.

Then, Beard gets to the punchline.

Let us make one more New Year's resolution: to have a heck of a lot of fun pushing the Obama administration, the new Congress and our state legislators to seek creative solutions to the tired old problem of gun violence. It is our duty as citizens. Happy New era!

I don't know how much "pushing" the Obama/Biden administration (and this "New era's" Congress, and many state legislators) is going to need to seek these "creative solutions" (what might those be, anyway--"creative solutions" like giving a rabidly anti-gun Attorney General the power to unilaterally "ban guns at will"?).

Beard says that "[i]t is our duty as citizens" to render ourselves (and our fellow "citizens") powerless to resist the whims of the government--to make "Defiance" of whatever tyrannical edict is handed down by the government impossible.

Go ahead and try it, Beard--but I seriously doubt you and your fellow travelers are going to "have a heck of a lot of fun" doing it.

III