A liberal ‘dragon-slayer’ enters the open carry debate
September 15, 2009

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

Chances are, Gun Week readers all over the country have seen syndicated Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr.’s liberal rant about firearms openly carried near a presidential appearance, as described in the skyline story on Page One of this issue. First published on Aug. 20, Dionne’s diatribe may be the ultimate expression of a liberal Democrat’s reaction to the open carry of firearms by people who may have been demonstrating against President Barack Obama’s health care “reform” initiative.

That Dionne supported the election of a “liberal” Democrat Obama in 2008 is well established. He is one of those elitists in the media who hated everything about the Bush and Reagan Administrations, made no bones about it and openly objected to their policies.

In his buttoned-down position, he has frequently objected to what those presidents and their White House staffs said, did and thought about. In addition, he is one of those who strongly supports a “government option” providing free medical care for all of those who can’t or won’t be able to afford private health insurance. Dionne is also a classical, left-wing anti-gunner who sees Obama’s original health care promise at risk because of growing public opposition. Of course, there are classical left pro-gunners, but Dionne would deny they exist.

So the open display of firearms by some people among those reportedly objecting to the public version of health care “reform” gave Dionne an opportunity to vent on two counts.

His column entitled “Leave the guns at home,” immediately assumed that anyone carrying openly in New Hampshire and Arizona was a conservative who supported the Republican presidents he detests. So he goes there first.

“Try a thought experiment: What would conservatives have said if a group of loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush?” Dionne began.

“How would our friends on the right have reacted to someone at a Reagan or a Bush speech carrying a sign that read: ‘It is time to water the tree of liberty’? That would be a reference to Thomas Jefferson’s declaration that the tree ‘must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.’ 

“Pardon me, but I don’t think conservatives would have spoken out in defense of the right of every American Marxist to bear arms or to shed the blood of tyrants.

“In fact, the Bush folks didn’t like any dissent at all. Recall the 2004 incident in which a distraught mother whose son was killed in Iraq was arrested for protesting at a rally in New Jersey for first lady Laura Bush. The detained woman wasn’t even armed. Maybe if she had been carrying, the gun lobby would have defended her,” Dionne added.

But apparently, Dionne forgot that the Jeffersonian sayings that adorned signs seen at the demonstrations were using words penned by the person alleged to be the founder of the Democratic Party. Dionne fails to link the concept of public protest to the public at large. Along the way, he forgot about the Marxists and socialists who have and may still support the right to keep and bear arms, and who saw that right as a deterrent to government tyranny.

But then Dionne sloughs off even the official government reaction to the openly armed citizens near presidential venues.

“The Obama White House purports to be open to the idea of guns outside the president’s appearances,” Dionne continues. “ ‘There are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally,’ Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said on Tuesday (Aug. 18). ‘Those laws don’t change when the president comes to your state or locality.’ ”

But then Dionne casts doubt on the sincerity of his President’s spokesman, saying “Gibbs made you think of the old line about the liberal who is so open-minded he can’t even take his own side in an argument,” a statement that clearly says Dionne is not such an open-minded liberal.

Then he gets to the core of his diatribe. “What needs to be addressed is not the legal question but the message that the gun-toters are sending,” Dionne wrote.

“This is not about the politics of populism. It’s about the politics of the jackboot. It’s not about an opposition that has every right to free expression. It’s about an angry minority engaging in intimidation backed by the threat of violence.

“There is a philosophical issue here that gets buried under the fear that so many politicians and media-types have of seeming to be out of touch with the so-called American heartland.”

That said, Dionne launches into pure left-wing catechism.

“The simple fact is that an armed citizenry is not the basis for our freedoms,” he says, denying the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the writings of the Founding Fathers, and the American Revolution.

“Our freedoms rest on a moral consensus, enshrined in law, that in a democratic republic we work out our differences through reasoned, and sometimes raucous, argument. Free elections and open debate are not rooted in violence or the threat of violence. They are precisely the alternative to violence, and guns have no place in them.”

So saying, Dionne denies the role of firearms on both sides in the capital-labor disputes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s.

Instead, he regurgitates other liberal denials.

“On the contrary,” he says, “violence and the threat of violence have always been used by those who wanted to bypass democratic procedures and the rule of law. Lynching was the act of those who refused to let the legal system do its work. Guns were used on election days in the Deep South during and after Reconstruction to intimidate black voters and take control of state governments.

“Yes, I have raised the racial issue, and it is profoundly troubling that firearms should begin to appear with some frequency at a president’s public events only now, when the president is black. Race is not the only thing at stake here, and I have no knowledge of the personal motivations of those carrying the weapons. But our country has a tortured history on these questions, and we need to be honest about it. Those with the guns should know what memories they are stirring.”

I won’t continue this page-by-page review of Dionne’s rant.

He didn’t mention—and he wasn’t the only one of his ilk— that the man who carried the so-called AR-15 semi-auto rifle in Phoenix was himself black. Nor does he mention that the man is not so much a Republican but a likely Libertarian. At least he sounded that way to me in at least one interview I watched on TV.

Nor does he mention how important firearms—openly and discretely carried by blacks and their white supporters during the 1960s helped turn the tide against racist and separatists.

Dionne is not the only anti-gunner trying to make hay out of open carry news events.

According to various news sources, anti-gun District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton wants guns banned anywhere in the vicinity of President Barack Obama, after armed citizens have appeared at anti-tax and health care “reform” rallies in New Hampshire and Arizona.

Norton, a Democrat, has called upon the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security to increase restrictions on concealed or openly-carried firearms because of those incidents. While she has no vote in Congress, Norton does sit on the Homeland Security Committee.

“It is clear,” Norton said in a statement quoted by The Hill, “that if the Secret Service can temporarily clear all aircraft from air space when the president is in the vicinity, the agency has the authority to clear guns on the ground that are even closer to the president.”
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