Are you ruled by your cultural rulebook?

April 13, 6:20 PMDallas Libertarian ExaminerGarry Reed

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New York state's copy of the Bill of Rights dated March 27, 1790. Not a
good rulebook for freedom-haters. (AP photo)

It may require some serious professional psychological sleuthing to understand why Marxist socialist left liberal progressives are so anti handgun.

But even a rational layman can do a certain amount of surmising.

Guns are just tools like screwdrivers and hammers and trowels.

Load a Glock and place it on a table. Watch what it does. It does nothing. It isn’t motivated. It’s not self-animated. It won’t jump up and shoot someone all by itself, any more than a screwdriver resting on the same table will leap into the room in search of a screw to tighten, or the hammer will suddenly take it upon itself to bang the head of some hapless nail, or the trowel will go flying out of your house in search of somebody’s wet cement to smooth over.

A gun will not jump out of a holster, a glove box or a dresser drawer and into a person’s hand all by itself either.

Is it possible that our Marxist socialist left liberal progressive friends just don’t know these things because they never use guns or screwdrivers or hammers or trowels? Maybe they’ve never heard of a person defending his own life or seen how a house is built or a sidewalk is finished. This would be true if they spend all of their time reading postmodern novels or tasting wine with a raised pinky finger or gushing over abstract art or pontificating about the superiority of their Marxist socialist left liberal progressive values to other equally uninformed Marxist socialist left liberal progressive friends.

The most likely explanation is that hating and fearing guns is just a part of their Marxist socialist left liberal progressive catechism.

If you’re a good Catholic you don’t eat meat on Friday. If you’re a practicing Pentecostal you might speak in tongues. If you’re a regulation issue American woman you don’t like spiders and snakes. If you’re a traditional John Wayne manly man you don’t say “That’s fabulous” or wear bright pink shirts. If you really are a libertarian you don’t advocate initiation of force or the threat of force or fraud against others.

These things are in the rulebooks. Once you settle on your identity you also adopt the rulebook, knowingly or not, that comes packaged with that identity. Some of these rules are perfectly reasonable. Some of these rules are merely arbitrary. Some of these rules are outright irrational.

So the surmising of the rational layman comes down to this: Marxist socialist left liberal progressives fear and hate guns because the Marxist socialist left liberal progressive rulebook says they should.

There is a word for people who harbor an irrational fear of guns. The word is hoplophobe.

The problem here is that nobody forces Friday fish-eating on others, or arrests Glossolalia speakers, or outlaws spiders and snakes, or dictates what manly men may say or wear, or conscripts anyone into the libertarian movement.

The exception to all of this is the Marxist socialist left liberal progressive, who insists that everyone must be forced to abide by the Marxist socialist left liberal progressive rulebook.

And that's what makes these folks exactly like their purported opposite number, the evangelical rightwing ultra conservative authoritarian neocon, who insists that everyone must be forced to abide by the evangelical rightwing ultra conservative authoritarian neocon rulebook.

To understand why this is so takes more than mere surmising by rational laymen. And it takes more than professional philosophical, political, or ideological analysis. It certainly requires intensive psychological study.

But that would be another rant.