When an Islamic terrorist gunned down defenseless US servicemen at Fort Hood in 2009 we were told it was workplace violence. When Islamic terrorists gunned down local government employees at a picnic in San Bernardino in 2015 we were told to withhold judgment until the facts were in even though minorities and women were hardest hit.
But now that an Islamic terrorist has killed 50 at a gay bar in Orlando, Florida, our rulers are calling it "terrorism," even President Obama, even on the first day after the shooting.
Now I define government as "an armed minority occupying some territory, and taxing the inhabitants thereof to reward its supporters."
It is interesting to me that the government apparently was not too exercised when a bunch of soldiers were killed, even though soldiers are the actual men with guns that keep the rulers in power. It is interesting that the government wasn't too exercised when its local minions were gunned down, even though they are the functionaries that keep us "inhabitants thereof" properly subordinated to the rulers and that "make us legible" to the rulers by counting us and taxing us as James C. Scott writes in Seeing Like a State.
But this time it looks as though ISIS or its associates have really gone and done it. It demonstrates, I suppose, just how central gays are to the identity and the throbbing heart of the Democratic Party.
You can kill a few soldiers, or wipe out minorities and women at a government agency picnic, but you'd better not mess with gays. Because this means war. If the Democrats cannot protect gays from rampaging Islamic terrorists, what are they for?
Hey gays! Maybe your support of the Democratic Party is not such a good thing after all. Maybe the gay Hispanic Republican, Juan Hernandez, who supports Donald Trump and got beaten up for his trouble in San Jose a while back, is on to something.
According to my instinct, governments operate in two modes. In wartime mode they are ruthless killers, mobilizing the people and the economy of the nation to fight the foe and not rest until they have defeated the evildoers and received their abject surrender.
In peacetime mode governments are working hard to reward their supporters with pensions, subsidies, and general free stuff.
Of course, governments all originate in war, just like our own U.S. government that began as a bunch of hotheads that weren't going to take those British taxes any more, and that determined to do something about it. But once they switch to peace, governments find it hard to switch back to war. At least our rulers do, especially our current Democrat rulers that don't believe in nation states, don't believe in western civilization, and don't believe in winning. So President Obama responds to the shooting by blaming assault weapons.
(Ahem. Did you know that "powerful assault rifle[s]" are illegal in America, Mr. President? You seem to have got confused with the gun-control lobby's notion of "assault-style" rifles that merely look like the real thing.)
So governments -- certainly democratic governments, especially peace-and-justice governments -- find it hard to deal with the fact that the world is a dangerous place and governments are all about men with guns defending us from enemies foreign and domestic.
I wonder if we are reaching the point where ordinary Americans -- including ordinary Democratic voters -- are going to want a president that does not speak in meaningless platitudes about "our values." Americans might want to think about a president that proposes to halt immigration from Muslim lands until we can figure out what is going on.
It's a wonderful thing to have a government pumping out free stuff to its citizens. It's a wonderful thing to have a government that gives meaningful employment to people that want to save the planet from climate change. It's a wonderful thing to have a government dedicated to fighting the "rape culture" on college campi. But none of that is really the job of government.
The job of government is to defend us from enemies foreign and domestic. In return, we the people recognize that the government needs to take money from us by force, and put young men into harm's way in order to do this.
If it takes the foul murder of 50 gays in a bar in Orlando, Florida, to finally get our ruling class serious about its fundamental task, then so be it.
But I would ask our gay friends, after grieving for their dead compadres, to lay off on the Christian bakers and pizza parlors for a while. If we are to fight Islamic terrorists it does no good to be punishing your domestic enemies for WrongThink.
We need to come together. And that means putting off our little local quarrels until later.
Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also see his American Manifesto and get his Road to the Middle Class.
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