To: The Reverend Nancy Nord Bence
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Think. Think Really Really Hard
Rev. Nord Bence,
Over the weekend, you posted this on “Protect” MN’s Facebook page:
Over the years, I’ve pointed out – with absolute accuracy – that you have never made a single statement about guns, gun owners, gun history, gun laws, the 2nd Amendment or gun crime that was simultaneously substantial, original and true.
Here’s the good news: your claims above are substantial, and, er, “original”. But they are howlers.
Run Awaaaaaaay: First – you say “police in Minnesota can already use the Stand Your Ground defense”.
Well, yeah. That’s right. The police don’t have a “duty to retreat” when doing their jobs. Unlike civilians, they are supposed to run toward trouble.
They don’t have “Stand your Ground”. They have “Qualified Immunity” – not only no obligation to try to retreat, but a mulligan for mistakes made in generally good faith in the line of duty.
Question for you, “Reverend” Nord Bence: Would you prefer that police also be required to run away from criminals?
Just curious.
Shoot Off Your Unqualified Mouth First, As Questions Later: Next comes the notion that self-defense reform would give citizens “the same right to shoot first and ask questions later” that cops “have”.
Nope. It merely means that citizens don’t have to convince a county attorney that they tried hard enough to run away from a threat (that was otherwise a reasonable threat of death or grave injury), provided you were anyplace you had a legal reason to be.
That’s it.
It’s not a license to kill.
And I suspect you know that – and are lying anyway, to logroll the gullible dolts who take you seriously.
Either that or you are a deeply, deeply stupid person.
My money says “both”.
That is all.
My God, this woman is a moron!
According to a simple lookup on Wikipedia, we see that Officer Yanez was CHARGED with second degree manslaughter, a far cry from “Stand Your Ground”.
The fact that Yanez was acquitted has little bearing on the fact that he was charged. John Choi is a hack of the worst sort. He is the piece of human excrement who released “Woody” Kaine, former vice president Tim Kaine’s terrorist son, after Woody attacked a group of senior citizens and children who were peacefully gathered to support the president. He then attack a police officer. To bad she didn’t “Stand Her Ground” and shoot the son-of-a-bitch.
That’s actually a very fair, unsaid tangential point about the Woody Kaine incident. Any armed security there, or police officers who responded, would have been found justified in shooting balaclava wearing bomb throwers.
It’s very interesting that a movement as filled with lawyers as the gun control movement cannot apparently find any lawyer to help them state the facts on gun laws. For that matter, it’s somewhat shocking that a pastor like Nord-Bence–someone theoretically trained to handle written documents well as well–cannot do so as a full time employee.
Except for the apparent fact that she’s paid to lie, of course.
Why worry about facts, bb, when comfortable lies delivered as truths works just as well. Dialectic is hard, rhetoric is easy.
Ah, stupid me. Thanks for the rebuke, JDM. :^)
(but seriously, isn’t, classically speaking, rhetoric supposed to proceed from dialectic? We could call N-B’s comments many thing, but “decent rhetoric” is not among them!)
BB, to be honest, I don’t know the answer to your question. The two terms, as I know or use them, refer to emotional manipulation with only a tenuous or superficial usage of facts versus the unemotional exchange of ideas and debate using facts.
Using these terms – perhaps incorrectly – I’d have to say that N-B is a fine rhetorician. Her group continues its efforts and continues to get funding even tho’ Our Host routinely pokes huge gaping factual holes in her arguments.
… sorry, forgot to mention that as Vox Day has pointed out, knowing the capabilities of the audience is of primary importance. Many people are only convinced by rhetoric, facts be damned – and vice versa.
I’d split hairs and define what N-B is doing as “flowery language”, or perhaps more accurately “Bovine scat”, but whatever. :^) I would agree that very few today use the word rhetoric in its historical sense.