WHEN THE LEFT TAKES OFF THE MASK

This is going to be a long post. It is going to touch on the issue of "gun control," but I am not trying to pre-empt the post on that subject that our co-blogger LMC has promised; my real subject is the real nature of leftism, and what you see when a leftist removes the mask of philanthropic altruism that leftists use to hide their real nature.

I apologize to my co-bloggers and readers for having been too busy to blog for too long a while, and I apologize to Reliapundit, who wants us to post more frequently and more concisely, but I think that what I am going to try to show you is worth a long post, and will contribute to what Reliapundit recognizes as a key front in our struggle against terrorism and tyranny.

If we fail to debunk and discredit leftist ideology here at home, our nation will be so weakened by defeatism and self-loathing that the United States will be unable to defeat abroad the enemies who have taken up arms to kill us all.

Here goes.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which does happen to publish the excellent writer an thinker Jack Kelly.

The Post-Gazette also has a columnist on its editorial board named Dan Simpson. He is described as a former American diplomat; it seems that his diplomatic career was spent mostly in Africa and in the Arab world. He is an unabashed "liberal" who has spewed moire than a little ink criticizing what he considers to be the extra-legal and anti-Constitutional excesses of the Bush Administration.

Here's a typical example. In January of this year, he published a column entitled "Our Misguided Quest for Security -- The U.S. is abandoning its principles at home and abroad." In this column, Simpson attacked what he saw as a threat to our Constitutional liberties:

We also have done damage to ourselves at home in response to the post-9/11 obsession with security. Last week we learned that President Bush had approved opening Americans' mail without the required court order. That followed on his taking the same position with regard to the National Security Agency's intercepting Americans' telephone and e-mail communications, in direct violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Last weekend it was his administration's taking the position that the Pentagon and the CIA could obtain Americans' financial and banking records and store them in a Defense Department database, again without court order.

The United States is trashing its system of justice, the approach to freedoms and rights that is at the core of its principles, principles that have made our country different from the Iraqs, Afghanistans and Somalias of this world.

Can you imagine? Entirely legal programs, developed with the participation and oversight of Members of Congress, vetted by the Courts, yet in Dan Simpson's view, "trashing" the American system of justice.

Why, we haven't heard such an attack on a wartime President's attempt to use the Executive powers delegated to him by the Constitution since Clement Vallandigham castigated Abraham Lincoln's (Constitutionally legitimate and Supreme-Court-validated) suspension of habeas corpus!

More recently, however, Dan Simpson decided to remove the mask of a civil libertarian, to show the world what he really thinks of the Constitution. And, incidentally, what he really thinks of his fellow Americans.

On April 29, he published a column entitled "Disarm America? Here's how." In his liberal zeal to make political hay out of the carnage at Virginia Tech, when a psychotic individual (who was allowed to attend classes despite the fact that his behavior and his writings were so frightening to his fellow-students that most of them refused to sit in the classroom with him) took advantage of the University's gun-free zone to methodically murder 32 students and faculty members, Simpson judged that the time was right to let you in on what he really thinks.

And in contrast to most of his columns criticizing the Bush Administration, from which are absent any clear description of what he would do differently, or better, in this column, Dan Simpson gives you the details:

When people talk about doing something about guns in America, one of the points that comes to the fore is, "How could America disarm even if it wanted to? There are so many guns out there." Today I want to address the question of "how" -- if we decided to. Since I have little or no power to influence the "if" part of the issue, I will stick with "how."

He has a carefully worked-out plan. He's evidently been thinking about this a lot:

Now, how would one disarm the American population? First of all, federal or state laws would need to make it a crime punishable by a $1,000 fine and one year in prison per weapon to possess a firearm. The population would then be given three months to turn in their guns, without penalty.

Got that? From out of the blue, an ordinary, God-give, Constitutionally-protected right that Americans have enjoyed even for centuries before the Constitution was enacted, would be negated by "federal or state laws." Mere possession of a firearm would become a felony.

And that would include even antique, two-hundred-year-old flintlocks, like those America's heroic forefathers used at Lexington and Concord:

All antique or interesting nonhunting weapons would be required to be delivered to a local or regional museum, also to be under strict 24-hour-a-day guard. There they would be on display, if the owner desired, as part of an interesting exhibit of antique American weapons, as family heirlooms from proud wars past or as part of collections.

Can you believe that? Your family's heirlooms would be confiscated and put on display in a museum, if you so desired, where even you would be allowed to see them!

And that's not all:

Hunters would be able to deposit their hunting weapons in a centrally located arsenal, heavily guarded, from which they would be able to withdraw them each hunting season upon presentation of a valid hunting license. The weapons would be required to be redeposited at the end of the season on pain of arrest. When hunters submitted their request for their weapons, federal, state and local checks would be made to establish that they had not been convicted of a violent crime since the last time they withdrew their weapons. In the process, arsenal staff would take at least a quick look at each hunter to try to affirm that he was not obviously unhinged.

Did you get that? Do you see what he thinks of his fellow Americans, and in Pennsylvania, to boot, where hunting is practically the state sport. But it gets worse:

There also could conceivably be a rash of score-settling during hunting season as people drew out their weapons, ostensibly to shoot squirrels and deer, and began eliminating their perceived two-footed enemies. Given the general nature of hunting weapons and the fact that such killings are frequently time-sensitive, that seems a lesser sort of issue.

In Dan Simpson's feverish and fevered imagination, hunters might indulge in a "rash of score-settling" after checking out their rifles from his "heavily guarded" arsenal. He seems to think that only disarmament could prevent his fellow Americans from murdering each other at the slightest provocation. He's obviously been living overseas for too long, and has quaffed deeply from the draught of anti-Americanism that his Arab hosts spew when they get tired of anti-Semitism.

The idea that American hunters are itching for the opportunity to settle scores with their "two-footed enemies" is absurd and obviously false. But he is raising this specter for a reason.

He wants to justify how he intends to enforce his ban on owning even antique firearms:

The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling and empty building. Thoroughness would be at the level of the sort of search that is carried out in Crime Scene Investigations. All firearms would be seized. The owners of weapons found in the searches would be prosecuted: $1,000 and one year in prison for each firearm.

Clearly, since such sweeps could not take place all across a city, county, state or the country at the same time, guns would move. But fairly quickly there would begin to be gun-swept, gun-free areas where there should be no firearms. If there were, those carrying them would be subject to quick confiscation and prosecution. On the streets it would be a question of stopping and searching anyone, even Grandma with her walker, with the same penalties for "carrying."

There. Dan Simpson has finally let it all hang out, hasn't he? Remember Dan Simpson, the champion of your civil liberties? Who was in high dudgeon because the Bush Administration might actually use the Executive powers delegated to the President in the Constitution in order to fight the terror masters and their financiers?

Well, as it turns out, he doesn't really believe in your Constitutional rights after all, does he? "Special squads of police would be formed and trained" to confiscate your family's heirlooms, and the firearms that the Constitution specifically and categorically states are your eternal and inalienable right to possess -- and carry.

Sounds like "special squads" of storm troopers, doesn't it? This is exactly the way that the German people, beginning with the Jews, were disarmed by the National Socialist regime, and the way that the Russian people were disarmed by the communists.

And it's even worse than that, isn't it? "On a random basis," Simpson writes, "to permit no advance warning," entire neighborhoods, entire towns, perhaps entire cities would be "cordoned off, and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building." That violates several more Constitutional sections and amendments! There's no end to the laws that Simpson would abrogate, and the rights that he would trample, in order to disarm the American people. And he would imprison you for one year for each firearm he would illegally confiscate.

There it is. In all of its glory. In clear daylight. Tyranny. The absolute annihilation of individual rights, and the willful and premeditated violation of the Constitution.

Simpson would throw the second amendment in the trash:

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.

Simpson would throw the fourth amendment in the trash:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Simpson would throw the fifth amendment in the trash:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Simpson would throw the eight amendment in the trash:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Simpson would throw the ninth amendment in the trash:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Simpson would throw the tenth amendment in the trash:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

He would abrogate the Constitution in order to accomplish a social goal that he thinks is desirable.

Today that goal is the disarming of the populace.

Tomorrow it might be prohibition of alcohol.

If the jihadist Arab governments to whom he supposedly represented American interests had their way, it might be the confiscation of the Bible, and the prohibition of ringing the bells in a Church tower.

But no matter what the immediate goal, Dan Simpson has made it clear that he personally would advocate ruthless tyranny in order to accomplish it.

And that is the leftist mind in a nutshell.

Leftists believe that their goals are so altruistic, and their programs so beneficent, that they are authorized to use limitless coercion and the cruelest, most ruthless methods in order to accomplish them.

Which shows that they really don't love their fellow citizens; they don't grant their fellow citizens the right to live their own lives, leftists see their fellow citizens as mere objects to be used in order to make real their fevered, feverish leftist dreams.

We ignore the threat of leftism at our peril.

As David Horowitz has shown, leftists have since 1970 seized the academy. They use university faculties to promote an ideology of conformism and tyranny, and through the academy they spread a culture of cowardice, acquiescence to evil, obedience to leftist authority.

It is shocking to think that a man so filled with disdain for the United States Constitution, so filled with disdain for his fellow citizens, should have served as a representative of our Nation to foreign governments. It shows you that the cancer of leftism has deeply invaded the State Department. Dan Simpson's horrific screed reveals the motives of the State and CIA bureaucrats who have been at war against the Bush Administration since September Eleventh. They basically want to see a socialist tyranny in the United States. They are the latest representatives of the Harry-Dexter-White and Alger-Hiss school of treason. And to achieve their ends, they know that they must disarm America -- spiritually and materially.

To defend ourselves, we have to remember who they are and what they look like -- both as they really are when they happen to let the mask fall, but perhaps more importantly, with the mask on.