Opinion Editorial
March 28, 2000

By Linda Gorman

The peculiar mix of doublespeak and intransigent intolerance that characterizes the Left was on full display in three separate incidents last week.

Before Charlton Hestons March 21 speech at CU-Boulder, the Colorado Daily reported that 2nd Amendment defenders protested loudly but peacefully outside Macky auditorium  until a large contingent of gun-control advocates arrived. [1]  Tensions rose.  Mr. Robert Howell threw a punch at another man, scuffled briefly, and was wrestled to the ground by police officers.  The Denver Rocky Mountain News reported that Mr. Howell is vice-president of the Boulder chapter of the Bell Campaign.[2]  Charitably speaking, the Bell Campaign consists of utopian dreamers who would consider even complete gun prohibition a reasonable restriction, and who believe that when guns are outlawed not even criminals will have guns.  Its accuracy can be gauged from its web page where, as of this writing, it calls Boulder a suburb of Denver.[3]

In an Orwellian twist worthy of President Clinton, Boulder chapters president, Sam Cole, told The Denver Rocky Mountain News that the group was going to adopt new guidelines for protests because Our protesters and members are a very peaceful group of individuals that believe in nonviolence, and we have a zero tolerance for violence at demonstrations.  Given that new guidelines are evidently needed to rule out assault and battery, one wonders what the old ones were.

Evidence that the Left believes in freedom of speech only if it does not involve dissent from politically correct orthodoxy was provided by the ruckus created over UCSU Legislative Council representative Regan Alperts FlatIrons Review editorial.  Ms. Alpert pointed out that the practice of pigeonholing Americans into bureaucratically convenient identity groups undermines American identity and threatens to divide the country.

Readers should be aware that this practice also menaces the publics health.  Reports indicate that Americans across the country are being made sick to their stomachs by Census advertisements ceaselessly exhorting various pigeonholed groups of government dependents to stand up and be counted.  Otherwise, they are warned, other porkers may crowd them out of their rightful place at the government trough.

As penance for her sin of pointing out the obvious, Ms. Alpert was subjected to a variety of illogical rantings by a crew of politically correct demonstrators.  There are things you cannot say, one reportedly said, and if youre going to say them, you have to take responsibility for them.  Our culture is not a grouping.  Ideas have consequences.  You said something that threatens our existence.  You said something that threatens who it is we are.[4]

If this demonstrators our culture teaches him that his very existence is threatened when Ms. Alpert calls him an American, it must be even less robust than his logic and he is quite right to worry that it is endangered.  In an effort to build characters capable of withstanding mild adversity, American parents used to tell their children that sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never harm me.  This man appears to have skipped that lesson.  Like the average two-year-old aspiring to be a professional inhabitant of the state of high dudgeon, he responds to anything that a challenges his right to rule the universe by donning the mantle of victimhood and throwing a fit.

Evidence of the Lefts tendency to destroy those who stand in its way was provided by Democratic Attorney General Eliot Spitzer of New York.  Mr. Spitzer does not like the fact that guns are still legal and people still buy them.  He and a coalition of politicians unable to convince legislatures to pass the laws they want are scheming to get their way by improperly using the powers of their offices to force gun manufacturers to voluntarily comply with a trumped up regulatory scheme designed to put them out of business.  Mr. Spitzer says he plans to squeeze manufacturers like a pincers and hurt them in the marketplace.  His ally, Mayor Bill Campbell of Atlanta, promises that gun manufacturers will comply or they will cease operations.[5]

Gun manufacturers sell a safe, effective, well-engineered product that saves millions of lives each year.  Hypocrites all, people like Mr. Spitzer ooze concern for the weak and defenseless while plotting to deprive them of the most effective means of self-protection ever invented.  Democrats who are autocrats in disguise, they will deprive you of your paycheck without a qualm if you happen to get paid for making a legal product not to their liking.

They got away with these tactics once when they targeted tobacco companies.  Now they are after gun manufacturers.  Soon they may be after you.  Let them get away with this and anything, including your SUV, your beer, or your favorite form of entertainment, will be at risk.  They say that they care, but their actions speak louder than their words.

Notes:
[1] Terje Langeland. 22 March 2000.  Holy Moses! A brawl!, Colorado Daily web site as of 22 March 2000.  http://www.codaily.com.
[2] Carla Crowder.  23 March 2000.  Two sides of gun debate clash, The Denver Rocky Mountain News, online edition.  www.insidedenver.com/news/0323fite1.shtml as of 23 March 2000.
[3] The Bell Campaign as of 23 March 2000.  Chapter Information, Chapters Developing: Focus on Colorado, p. 1.  bttp://www.bellcampaign.org/chapter/Colorado.htm.
[4] Julie Gordon.  20 March 2000.  UCSU rep in firestorm, Colorado Daily, as posted at http://www.codaily.com/Headlines/headline1.htm on 20 March 2000.
[5] Lawrence L. Knutson.  22 March 2000.  Cops To Favor Cooperative Gun Companies, Washington Post, Online edition as of 23 March 2000.  http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000322/aponline212606_001.htm.