31 thoughts on “Hate To Break You The News, Shells…

  1. She obviously wasn’t listening during the previous hearings, and I doubt that she was even listening to Rep. Lucero’s fantastic response about the true purpose behind the 2nd Amendment.

  2. I have never seen a clearer illustration of the difference between liberal and conservative thinking.

    Conservatives believe that government must establish a compelling reason before taking any action. So, if it wants to build a road, it must show that a road is not only needed but is economically justified.

    Liberals believe that government does what it thinks best and that citizens must establish a compelling reason to stop government from doing what government wants to do. So, if the people do not want a road, they must not only show the road is not needed but that it is not economically justified.

    It is the difference between freedom and tyranny.

    So let’s discuss gun registration. On one hand, there are constitutional and privacy protections – and on the other hand, there is what? What compelling benefit exists to demand that law-abiding people register anything?

    Let’s chase down this rabbit hole…

    Why do we register cars? Well, they are expensive and titling proves ownership, thus preventing theft and making liens and loans possible. Titling also raises taxes to pay for roads and license plates aid in solving crimes and misdemeanors.

    So one could argue there is a compelling reason for law-abiding citizens to register their automobiles because the law-abiding owner benefits.

    What about gun registration?

    ….

    Bueller? Bueller?

  3. I know Shelly. She’s not an obnoxious lefty / anti-gunner. She is a teacher, with that probably speaking to the nature of the epistemic bubble she might reside in…

  4. The question Rep Christiansen is really asking in her fatuous style is: “I’m the Government, why wouldn’t you trust me?”

  5. Why wouldn’t you want to register your guns…..um, because it gives government a list of who owns guns for the purposes of confiscation, and in the 20th Century, that led to the murders of tens of millions of innocent victims?

    Honestly, if the Holocaust, Holodomor, the Gulags, the Cultural Revolution, the killing fields, and a lot more aren’t enough to put the kibosh on the idea, I don’t know what is.

  6. We never hear them talking about how they’re disarming criminals or enforcing current gun laws so I have to ask: besides the socialism they are so enamored with, what other policies are on their agenda that makes law abiding gun owners such a threat to them?

  7. Actually, Greg, I think it’s deeper than just being a liberal – and I don’t otherwise disagree with any of your points. The woman’s a Scandi (and with the -sen suffix, probably Danish).

    Scandis luv government because Scandi countries especially Denmark and Norway are [have traditionally been] small with high levels of social trust such that that comment quote above makes perfect sense. Ask a Scandi to interpret the phrase “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” and they will consider it a tautology. The notion that the phrase could be considered sarcastic will simply not occur to them.

    When you argue against their policies, they take it as a personal affront: I’m good, I believe in government, arguments against government policies taken personally.

  8. Christensen is her married name, she’s quite possibly not a Scandi-American herself

  9. If I owned any guns, I’d be perfectly happy to register all the guns in my gun safe (sadly, only holds a few since that tragic canoe accident two years ago). And when confiscation comes, feel free to take all the registered guns in that gun safe. I won’t complain, haul them away.

    But only the guns in the gun safe. No need to look in that closet, or behind that locked door, or in that big footlocker. Nothing to see there. No guns bought in private purchases, none inherited, not me. Nosiree.

  10. I admire her for actually saying what she feels, no pretense, this is what they believe.

  11. The question Rep Christiansen is really asking in her fatuous style is: “I’m the Government, why wouldn’t you trust me?”

    Mac you are 100% correct and my response would be, because our constitution warns us of you doing this.

  12. The fact that she’s a teacher, makes her seem all the more ignorant and unfit for public office. That question clearly illustrates that either she didn’t take a real history class (or didn’t pay attention while she was in class) or she did and ignored the parts about the start of the American Revolution or how every major despot in history started their reigns of terror.

  13. ^ She’s a bright woman generally who is not at all I’m sure versed in the topics of guns and gun rights in any way that deviates from the narrow understandings of those in her immediate clique.

    The district here leans red but she won it for her first term, and the DFLers think such is an example of ‘inroads’ into the suburbs. I’m not so sure about that. She could lose her next election as an aggressive anti-gunner here.

  14. I can excuse her ignorance about history as a teacher–I never learned about how Schicklgruber et al got started until I was in my thirties–but what I can not excuse is her ignorance as a lawmaker who has just heard testimony about gun registration’s role in gun confiscation and genocide.

    And seeing that she’s likely heard that from both fellow lawmakers and constituents, and repeatedly, the only conclusion I can come to is that she does know, but she doesn’t care. She can try to mask it with “well, not enough SA/SS/KGB/etc.. would have been killed to stop it” or something, but reality is that she doesn’t care.

  15. Well, I think we know that as a matter of ideology that progressives do not observe limiting principles in what they would do in their attempts to solve whatever they try to solve. That’s the thing here, and she’s unremarkable that way, you find that all over with progressives.

    She’s superficially qualified and accomplished enough to do the job and represent the district. She’s not say, Ilhan Omar that way…

  16. statements like this are why I majored in history, and love learning about it. “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” One of the best quotes of all time.

  17. POD, even more fun than the study of history is the study of history itself. Every age wants to believe that it has the clearest view of history, ever. A few decades later that historical understanding is upended by the people of the new present moment.
    We still suffer, in popular conception, from a mistaken view of Medieval times. We think of Medieval times as dirty people living gruesome lives of poverty and misery, with an occasional plague or war thrown in.
    Yet, for some reason, when we think of, say, the classical Greeks of 400 BC, we think of clean gents in white robes discussing mathematics and philosophy.
    A lot of anti-Medieval history came to us from the Brits (who associated the feudal with despised Catholicism), and the French (who want to believe their revolution was beneficial).

  18. MP fair point and you see that in modern progressivism where they think they know better, and are smarter, than any humans who came before them.

  19. MP, never mind Monty Python, no? I remember visiting historical parks in Germany and the Netherlands (Trier and Arnhem, I believe), and thinking “that’s a nice little house” when going into Renaissance-era historical middle class homes. Not all “bring out your dead”, really.

  20. In the US & Europe the frameworks we use to build historical narratives were put in place by the British & French.
    The British were very bad at the Middle Ages before the 19th Century. Their universities had strong traditions of studying the Greek and Roman classics going back to the early 18th century (mostly because that is what you needed for the study of law). The humanist tradition formally rejected Medievalism, and while humanism is usually thought of as a revival of Greek and Roman learning, that is not quite true. Humanism was Greek and Roman learning seen through a Protestant lens. The humanists cherry picked Greek and Roman learning.
    Most people who read Tolkien know that he was professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. What they don’t know is that he was just Oxford’s second professor of Anglo-Saxon. The position did not exist until the late 19th century.

  21. Back to the subject, since we mention medievalism, I am reminded of some essays I’ve seen about the assault rifle of the medieval age, the staff of yew with a string. Seems I remember that a few hundred years later, the British insisted on a right to keep and bear arms as a price for the restoration of the monarchy, too.

    Plus what happened in Bible times when the Philistines controlled the art of blacksmithing (see 1 Samuel 13)….nah, it’s not like we might have some historical examples of what happens with an armed sovereign and unarmed subjects, or anything like that.

    Maybe John K’s got a point that progressives simply don’t see these historical points of reference as important.

  22. The lack of a sense of history (as well as a lack of imagination) is what will be the end of today’s Left. We’ve been through periods of ideological totalitarianism in the past. The witch hunting madness and religious wars of Europe were dominant in Elizabethan times, but had been swept away by about 1700. No one knows why, but one theory is that the totalitarian nature of religious thought had become unmanageable. You could not win that war, and fighting it was exhausting culturally, militarily, intellectually, and economically.

  23. “swept away by about 1700. No one knows why, “

    well the Thirty Years War and 8+million dead likely had some role in reducing the fervor.

  24. Real humans weren’t rationally considering the effects of the Thirty Years War in 1700. The people who formulate and enact policy aren’t historians. They are policy makers. You can’t find contemporary examples of policy makers writing “well, because we were abhorred by the bloodshed of the Thirty years War, we chose to become less sectarian and more humanist.”
    Here in the 21st century, we aren’t politically driven by reflection on human experience. Neither were the people of the 17th century.

  25. Actually, MP, real humans were considering that–keep in mind the Peace of Westphalia preserved the right of princes to set the religion for their principality, and that put the kibosh on a lot of the actions of the 30 years’ war, as nations loyal to the Pope also signed off on it.

    Also important; the Siege of Vienna was broken by an alliance of Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants, and the victorious army chased the Ottoman Turks all the way out of Hungary and Serbia. And at that point, the liberated peoples were able to tell their liberators exactly what Turkish domination meant, starting with the horrors of the harem system, and exactly why this was the bigger threat than the mass or the Solas.

  26. Not looking at the 17th century with the benefit of 300 years hindsight.
    The 1600s saw the emergence and rise of the mercantile class (merchants and skilled tradesmen) who increasingly resisted the influence of monarchs and cardinals in establishing policy. There was a stock market and by the 1630s a futures market in Amsterdam. This worked against the totalitarian elements because this merchant class were discovering that while war somewhere else may be good for business it was distinctly unprofitable in your own back yard. Pacioli’s text describing the double entry ledger had by the 1600s permeated the merchant class of Europe and in addition to tracking credits and debits was increasingly being used to plan and even predict future trends. Hence the development of a crude futures market. It also drove the demand for increased literacy beyond the confines of the ruling class. Disseminated knowledge is anathema to totalitarian elites. As bikebubba pointed out the concept of self determination took root and was significant result of the 30 Years War.

  27. MacArthur, I think you were stopped because you used the word “bikebubba”, or perhaps for referring to the bourgeoisie.

    :^)

    Seriously, the rise of the bourgeoisie may have even more to do with this, because it was always the merchant classes who would, or would not, lend monarchs the money they needed for wars. After the 30 Years War, they not only probably lacked that money, but also realized that lending the money was giving carte blanche for another monarch to destroy their businesses.

    (never mind many were Jews who for obvious reasons had no desire to promote warlike ambitions by their princes)

    Another possibility; the potato made it possible for peasants to dodge taxes and pillaging by telling tax collectors and invading armies “go collect your tax” while it was still underground.

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