Recently the San Francisco Board of Supervisors officially proclaimed something that has been a common cry for Gun Control activists that the National Rifle Association is a ‘Domestic Terrorist Organization.’ This is absurd when shouted by protesters and idiotic when made as an official statement from supposedly cooler heads.

Terrorism is the use of force with the principle intent of utilizing fear to affect a political process. Certainly some of the cowardly mass murderers were terrorists, slaughtering helpless people at worship, while shopping because of racist and bigoted ideologies, particularly to ignite a ‘race war’ is terrorism. It is also true that the ideology behind it is a terroristic one, without hopeless odds to induce their twisted bigoted beliefs through the political process, no matter the recent successes of blatantly racist politicians and candidates, the ‘radicalization’ of angry young men continue to generate these cowardly murders.

However, that is a long way from the NRA being itself a terrorist organization.

A player, though its powerhouse days may be behind it, in the American political process, the NRA has never sanctioned, endorsed, or encouraged any of the mass murders. The NRA, its endorsements, and its financial contributions have serous impact on the political landscape seriously undercutting any reasonable attempt to define it as a ‘terrorist’ organization.

Labeling the NRA a terrorist organization is not reasonable but it is understandable.

While the NRA has not in any way encouraged or endorsed these murderous attacks it has displayed a callous indifference. Offering nothing more than the empty phrase ‘thoughts and prayers’ while pointing accusing fingers at video games the NRA stubbornly refuses to take any action to prevent these evil acts giving the impression that no amount of bloodshed or pain can ever matter more than their own narrowly defined self interest.

This heartless inaction, in my opinion, will, in the end, cause greater harm to the organization’s goal and objectives than any minor or modest legislative compromise. As I have argued before eventually a cultural tipping point will be reached, a like a dam bursting, the flood that follows will wash away everything that came before. I think it is instructive that in the 2018 election cycle the Democratic Party did not run and hide from a solid stance in favor of more gun control. The old collations have passed away and in this delicate time new ones are forming. Trump harms the Republican’s ability to reach beyond their core base with the college educated and far less devoted suburbs already fleeing to the Democratic party just new cycle of re-districting is about to be begin. The 2020 election will impact the next decade and the dam may already be bursting.

Often my mind will wander down counter examples when I hear a familiar phrase or explanation. For example many years ago during a conversation when a friend who had been in the US Navy with me discussed a bit of debauchery ashore during liberty in a foreign port he excused his behavior by saying ‘I’m only human.’ It occurred to me that no one ever says that when doing good actions even though altruism is also a very human thing to do.

Recently my mind has tripped over a familiar construction and the missing parallel to it, Judeo-Christian.

The phrase Judeo-Christian is often used as a stand in for Western European, though both elements of the phrase originate from the Middle East. Judeo naturally relates to Judaism, that ancient religion tracing its history back through Genesis and Adam and Eve. Christian of course refers to the religion that sprang up around Jesus, a Jewish holy man from the early Common Era and whose life and teachings represent the fundamental break between the two religions. The two religions have had a quite contentious and violent history as over the centuries followers of the Christian faith have engaged in pogroms, Inquisitions, conspiratorial slander, and murderous hate against the Jewish minority. This recent and mostly fictional welding of the two philosophies in a single Judeo-Christian tradition is really at odds with their history and is primarily propaganda. A propaganda that for the most part the Jewish people are not participants in. Consider this counter construction, Judeo-Islamic.

Islam, just as with Christianity, traces its history and origins through the Jewish faith and traditions. Where Christians believe Jesus was the final prophet from a long line of Jewish holy men and the living god made flesh the Islamic faith views Mohammed as the final Prophet that culminate the linage begat in the Old Testament. Where the Jewish faith traces its origins to Abraham’s son Isaac, the Islamic tradition is to trace their heritage Abraham’s other son, Ishmael. All three religions site Abraham as the man God selected to give birth to a chosen people and the followers of these major religions are often referred to as ‘The people of the Book’ because of their common origin and yet I have never heard any speak of a Judeo-Islam culture or tradition.

It has been brought to my attention recently that there are still, and I imagine going on forever, people insisting that Nazis are actually socialists and by extension left wing politically. The arguments fail to convince me and I’ve laid out in other posts why I think the Nazi fall clearly on the right. What I find fascinating about this argument is contorted logics employed in services of preconceived conclusions; they are rationalizations and not reasons.

Back in 1985 I engaged in the strange habit of renting the worse movies I could possibly locate on VHS. A little mom-and-pop shop just around the corner from where I lived had the most interesting collection of odd movies with titles such as Hitchhike to Hell  and then one night the gem A Certain Sacrifice  appeared on the shelves. This micro-budgeted movie shot in 1979 and 1980 and looking as though the film stock was all of 8 mm wide included an unknown performer, Madonna. By the mid 1980s her stardom had exploded and the filmmaker capitalized on this by releasing his movie on home video. Thought Madonna attempt to stop the release she failed in the courts and I was treated to a truly terrible movie.

What does this have to do with the question if Nazis were or were not socialists?

After watching the film with my roommate one of the games I engaged in was arguing that A Certain Sacrifice  was not in fact a bad movie but a masterpiece of filmmaking rich with metaphor and symbolism. My arguments were artistically sound and of course utterly untrue. The fact that I could spin a consistent narrative that ‘explained’ all the bad film choices as something smart and creative did nothing to change the facts of the matter. The same is true in this political argument.

You can quote from the early years of the Nazi party to prove points, ignoring the uncomfortable truth that those elements were brutally eliminated during the night of long knives. You can construct logical arguments that proceed from a foundation that everything totalitarian is socialist and get to your preferred conclusions, but linguistic dexterity and slippery arguments do not change facts on the ground.

But how can we know the facts on the ground? How can we test this concept?

Easy, watch actual Nazis and see where they place themselves politically.

It is on the right.

People giving Nazi salutes election night 2016 were not bemoaning a loss.

People marching by torchlight and chanting ‘Jews will not Replace Us’ did not organize a ‘United the Left’ protest.

It was not the Democratic Party that found itself represented by an actual Nazi in the 2018 congressional elections.

Nazis nearly always self-sort to the right, their behavior betrays their natural placement on the ideological spectrum.

I try to consume political media from a wide variety of sources, including news and opinion journalists. To me it is a firm truism that no person, party, or faction has a complete truth and as such I am always looking for new points of view, new ideas and solutions to the problems and challenges facing out nation and our world.

Finding liberal or progressive writers, commenters, and podcasters with proposed solutions is scarcely any trouble at all but the converse is not true for conservative thought. When I read or listen to conservative writers and podcasters it very quickly becomes evident that there is a real dearth proposed solutions. This is not to say that there aren’t things that the GOP and conservatives want to enact or achieve but it seems to me that everything on that list, be it ‘constitutional carry,’ tax reductions, or a lax regulatory structure, is something that they desire regardless of any current condition.

Instead when I read or tune into conservative media it is often about their state of  ‘siege.’ It’s endless vitriol, attacks, and frankly whining about the unfairness of the culture, exaggerated and imaginary dangers of ‘SJWs’ eradicating Christian culture, or pitiful attempts to re-play the cold war and depict every progressive proposal as the rebirth of Stalinism.

As a country, a society, and as a species we face serious challenges, stagnating wages, crumbling infrastructures, racial strife, rising authoritarianism, spreading mass murder, and climate change and yet one half the American political system offers nothing but platitudes.

This is terrible time and I fear it could become much worse before it gets better.

I am a big proponent of individual liberty. We have but one life here in the vast cold and unsympathetic universe and absent harm to other we should be free to live our short allotment of years as we see fit this included adhering to whatever spiritual or religious standard that we might adopt to give our years some sort of meaning.

Recently I listened to an edition of the podcast The Ezra Klein Showand his guest was conservative columnist and critic of popular culture Rod Dreher  If you know anything of Dreher’s writings and work then you know that one of his major themes and one he returned to quite often is that religious liberty, particularly for socially conservative Christians, is under assault with a coming Orwellian nightmare that promises to crush all dissent from the majority opinion. His opinion, if I hear and read it correctly, is that the ‘Culture War’ has already been lost and that protecting the rights of Christians as a beleaguered group under assault from a majority intent on eradicating that Christian thought is an essential role for government.  Well know cases that need protection or are examples of this crushing mindset include the bakeries that refuse to created wedding cakes for same-sex couples, pharmacies that refuse to dispense medications for some purposes, schools that are citizen for terminating the employment because of an employee’s private life, employers demanding exceptions to insurance regulations, and hospitals the refuse to allow certain medical procedures. In Dreher’s opinion each of these cases has at its core a deeply held, critically important test of religious conviction and a state that seems determined to crush religious beliefs where it conflicts with the greater culture. (There is an argument to be made that this religious belief defense is nothing but a cover shielding a deeper and hostile bigotry but true or not that is not thee point I am discussing today.)

A critical element common to all of these cases, and an aspect that I think is far more important, is that in none of these examples are we witnessing the convictions of religious individuals. Each and every one of these cases is an organization, a fictitious person, and often a licensed non-profit, insisting that the rules that apply to other corporations and company do not apply. It is important to note that the creation and protections of fictitious persons, companies, and non-profits, are an act of the state. It is a set of laws created outside of any religious sphere crafted with a secular intent for a secular purpose.  These laws, regulations, and structures in the commercial and profit driven world exist to help shield the assets of entrepreneurs to foster economic growth and stability. They, in effect, say, you John Smith, can create a business and we will treat that business as a person, it’s taxes will be separate from yours, it’s liabilities will be separate from yours, and it’s action will be separate from yours but under Dreher’s argument the companies get all these benefits granted by the culture and the law while also claiming a special protection based upon the creed of it’s owners, despite that business being a separate entity.

Moving into the issue concerning non-profits this becomes even more egregious. Non-Profits are specially licensed and sanctioned to serve a public good, receiving carved out protections backed by the secular state because their mission is defined as something that is intended to benefit society as a whole and not a particular isolated segment or population. It is a perversion of that intent to allow non-profits to discriminate. In South Caroline the governor has petitioned and received a federal waiver that permits a federally funded Christian foster agency to not only refuse to place children with same-sex couples for adoption but also allowing the agency to refuse to place children with Jewish homes because that is a ‘violation’ of their Christian beliefs.

Individuals have the freedom to believe what they wish, but not legal and financial support from secular society.