MAGA Is the Essence of Trump's Reply to Progressive Thieves Trying to Steal America

THE REAL NEWS IS THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP UNDERSTANDS PROGRESSIVES AND HOW TO DEAL WITH THEM. This simple truth was driven home to me on Wednesday when I read two National Review articles on gun control and the NRA. One was by a real conservative -- Michelle Malkin. The other was by a traditional Republican neo-conservative. • • • MICHELLE MALKIN CALLS FOR "FALLACY CONTROL." Malkin's idea is that "the nation is suffering from an outbreak of illogical thinking. In response to senseless violence, clear-headed citizens deserve a safe space from the 24/7 barrage of rhetorical nonsense." She analyzes four elements in the fallacious thinking of gun control spokespeople. • First, they are all celebrities and politicians with no understanding of guns or how their purchase is already controlled. She calls this "Argumentum ad celebritum," and it consists of "empty talking points" that become somehow "factual" when uttered by Hollywood stars. Of course, Malkin's example is late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who has been suddenly anointed “America’s conscience” and “voice of reason.” His rant on TV Monday night against politicians doing “nothing” to stop mass gun violence, was accompanied by his he sobs as he insisted, “there’s a lot of things we can do about it.” Yet, Kimmel acknowledged that Mandalay Bay gunman Stephen Paddock had passed multiple mandated background checks and had no criminal history. Moreover, Paddock bought his guns legally from Nevada and Utah gun shops subject to a thicket of local, state, and federal rules -- and reportedly carried 23 of his weapons into a casino/hotel that already operates as a gun-free zone. Malkin then points out that federal studies show that only 1% to 3% of all guns are purchased at gun shows, but that didn’t stop Kimmel from tossing around non sequiturs attacking the “gun-show loophole.” Malkin calls it "a mythical exemption in federal law for private weapons sales at gun shows or online intended to drum up hysteria about unregulated gun sales. In reality, firearms purchased through federally licensed firearms dealers at gun shops, shows, garage sales, or anywhere else are subject to all the usual checks and restrictions. Only a narrow category of same-state transactions between private individuals not engaged in the commercial business of selling firearms (family members or collectors, for example) are unaffected by those regulations. There is zero empirical evidence that banning these types of transactions would do anything to prevent gun crimes or mass shootings. But who needs evidence when Jimmy Kimmel is bawling on stage 'intensely'? The tears of a clown outweigh the sobriety of facts." • Second, Malkin points out the "Argumentum ad populum and argumentum ad hashtag." We are all familiar with actors like Billy Baldwin, says Malkin, who unload fallacies. Baldwin asserted that “the overwhelming majority of Dems, Reps & NRA members endorse #GunSafety,” so “how can we let the #NRA hold us hostage like this? #NRATerrorists.” Claiming that an “overwhelming majority” of people agree with you doesn’t make your argument sound, says Malkin. Nor does citing polls showing support for “gun-show loopholes” that those surveyed don’t understand. Nor does attacking the character of your political opponents and hashtag-smearing them as “NRATerrorists” for holding political viewpoints different than your own. • Then there is Malkin's third example of illogical thinking on gun control -- "Straw men and red herrings." This, she says, is "grossly oversimplifying support of ineffective or superfluous gun-control measures as “#GunSafety” [that] allows celebrities, politicians, and activists to prop up their favorite hollow debating tactic : asserting that gun owners, NRA members, and Republicans don’t care about gun safety and want more innocent people to die. Malkin points to Democratic representative Ted Lieu, who used a similar diversionary tactic by waving the red herring of a “gun silencer bill” and demanding that GOP “COWARDS” vote against deregulating such suppressors; and to Hillary Clinton, who demagogued the issue, ghoulishly tweeting : “Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get.” Her running mate and Virginia senator Tim Kaine parroted the propaganda, claiming that Paddock “was only stopped because he didn’t have a silencer on his firearm, and the sound drew people to the place where he was ultimately stopped.” The fact is, says Malkin, that "Police, however, took 72 minutes to locate Paddock; it was the sound of hotel fire alarms set off by all the gun smoke that led them to the shooter. But let’s not let pesky facts get in the way." • The most often used argument pointed out by Malkin is to demand gun control by invoking kids -- "Think of the children." This, Malkin rightly points out, "is not an argument. It’s a timeworn appeal to emotion. Without it, however, gun-control advocates are all out of ammunition." Her examples include New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton -- “We as a society owe it to our children” to pass “common sense” gun control; the ever-present Senator Elizabeth Warren -- “Thoughts & prayers are NOT enough. Not when more moms & dads will bury kids this week, & more sons & daughters will grow up without parents;” and the actor Boris Kodjoe, who tweeted -- “My 10 year old asked me how the shooter was able to get his machine gun. I told him that pretty much anyone in the US can. ‘But why daddy’?” Malkin reminds us that Kodjoe’s kid will probably never know that daddy didn’t tell him the truth about fully automatic firearms (a.k.a. “machine guns”), "which have been effectively banned from private civilian ownership in the US as a result of federal gun legislation dating back to 1934. Nor will the children of the 'Think about the children!' brigade be taught the truth about defensive gun use or Second Amendment history and jurisprudence." • All that makes Malkin's point : "We owe our children critical thinking skills and evidence-based public policy, not knee-jerk slogans and tear-jerking treacle." • • • DAVID FRENCH TRIES TO EXPLAIN THE NRA TO THE LEFT. French states : "The NRA is not an all-powerful manipulator; it succeeds by reflecting the wishes of a large community. It never fails. Every single time there is a mass shooting in the United States, a huge section of the Left singles out a single political culprit. Yes, they condemn the shooter, but it’s almost as if there’s another murderer out there, lurking in the shadows -- the National Rifle Association. The NRA, you see, is to blame for America’s gun culture. It’s to blame for the lack of so-called 'common sense' gun regulations. It’s the puppeteer, and GOP politicians are its marionettes." French calls these Leftists purveyore of elitist pop-culture ideas : "Jimmy Kimmel earlier this week claimed that the NRA had Republican Senators’ 'balls in a money clip' -- and the elite Left analyzes the NRA’s influence like it’s breaking down the Zapruder film. Experts analyze the organization’s evolution from hunter-safety organization to gun-rights group, and left-wing social media pass around charts of NRA political donations as if those modest sums dictated the outcome of some of America’s most important civil-rights debates." Then, French gets to his point : "Journalists often treat the NRA differently from every other consequential activist group in the United States. Yes, they recognize that liberal groups like the National Education Association and Planned Parenthood are important, but they do not treat Progressive politicians as those organizations’ puppets. Instead, they do the accurate thing : They cast Progressive politicians and Progressive organizations as part and parcel of a larger Progressive community that shares certain ideas and values and speaks for tens of millions of American citizens. Why not treat the NRA in the same way?" French says : "No one who actually inhabits red America can credibly think that the NRA is the hinge, that disabling or transforming the NRA will decisively swing our national gun debate....While the Left, of course, has solidified its hold on progressive urban enclaves, it has been thoroughly and completely routed in much of the rest of the country. The debate hasn’t even been close. For almost a quarter-century, state legislatures have been steadily loosening gun restrictions, Americans have gone on a historic gun-buying spree, and citizens have obtained concealed-carry permits by the millions. In short, 'gun culture' has entrenched itself in American communities from coast to coast....The NRA is powerful for precisely the reason most potent Progressive organizations are powerful. Like those Progressive counterparts, the NRA is an effective part of a larger community, and it is effective precisely because it persuasively expresses the will of its members and allies. It represents those who understand and adhere to the central truths of American 'gun culture.' We each possess an unalienable and inherent right of self-defense, a lawfully armed citizenry is a free citizenry, and no government ever constructed has merited the total trust of its people." French drives home his conclusion : "The Left can challenge the NRA all it wants, but until it defeats those ideas, it will not transform American attitudes toward guns. Or let’s put it another way : In the Left’s fight for gun control, the great bogeymen aren’t the leaders of the NRA, they’re the Founders of our country. After all, it’s the Founders’ ideals the NRA defends, and should the NRA ever drop that standard, others would pick it up and carry it through the ideological wars to come." • • • WHAT TRUMP UNDERSTANDS ABOUT THE CONSERVATIVE-PROGRESSIVE SPLIT IN AMERICA. These two articles point out not just the facts around the "gun culture" in America, they explain indirectly the reason why fact-based arguments will never convert even one Progressive. The facts are not the issue. Progressives know that American gun control laws include pre-purchase checks, that criminals and psychotics cannot legally purchase guns, that the 'gun show loophole' is a fiction, that no amount of gun control, up to and including forbidding the personal ownership of guns, will solve the terrorist or lone-wolf-madman-mass-murderer problems. Progressives don't really care about all that. They want guns removed from American citizens' hands and facetious "arguments" -- loose emotional appeals to the good hearts of Americans -- are their tools. Conservative Americans -- the heartland in the "red states' who are despised as Deplorables by Progressive leaders such as Pelosi, Warren and Obama, with the likes of celebrities such as Jimmy Kimmel and MSNBC and CNN as their propaganda mouthpiece media -- keep trying to logically argue Progressives into seeing the American point of view. It will never work. Consider trying to persuade a Christian that God does not exist -- it is the same thing. AND, Donald Trump understands that. He gets that Progessives are not interested in factual arguments and do not respond to them. For Trump, experience shows that Progressives turn every fact into an emotional bullet to be fired back at Conservatives. The more facts Conservatives present, the more Progressives reject them and spout 'the children' types of arguments that demean and criminalize Conservatives. • • • DEAR READERS, Progressives use this tactic not just for gun control. They apply it to abortion, illegal immigration, climate change, voter fraud and every element that represents the America they despise and want to change. They use it to excoriate any Conservative who dares to call on the Constitution and Supreme Court decisions as the factual basis for any position that runs counter to Progressive globalist-socialist dogma. • So, why bother with the facts??? We all know what the facts are -- Progressives most of all because one must know the facts in order to pervert them -- but facts do not change dogma. President Trump often skips over facts to attack Progressives with the only tool they understand -- attacks that villify them and their goals. He calls on all "Americans" to rally with him to drive out of Washington the "Swamp" Creatures, to boycott Progressive fake news, to give America "back to Americans." In short, he is hurling back at Progressives tthe kinds of arguments they hurl at him and his Deplorables. And, it works. The only response Progressives can muster in response is to call Trump ignorant or stupid or unfit to be President. And, the more they try to paint him with these lies, the more Americans see the truth in Trump's attacks and rally to him. Facts are not the Progressive game -- annihilation is the Progressive game. Conservatives reject the destruction of their national identity. Progressives cannot tolerate the very idea of a nation state, let alone the constitutional ideas that created and sustain history's most successful nation state ever. To put it succintly, the Founders will never be the magnetic True North for the likes of Alinsky, Obama and Soros. Conservatives and Progressives do not simply have different views about the size and scope of government. They differ in kind -- two separate peoples in pursuit of two utterly different outcomes. The often-mouthed suggestion of compromise that GOP Swamp Creatures like to brandish about as the be-all-and-end-all of American politics, of reaching across the aisle, of bringing people together, is no longer relevant. It is, in fact, naive and futile. If Conservatives are to take back America, it will not be with facts, but with determined conviction and the realization that Progressives demand not facts but surrender. • "Make America Great Again" is not just a catchy slogan stitched on red baseball caps or stencilled on teeshirts -- MAGA is the essence of Trump's reply to Progressive thieves who are trying to steal America.