Conservatives: Insensitive and Mean-Spirited

Donald Kaul is a retired columnist with a career spanning fifty years until he suffered a heart attack last summer. Up to that point, he wrote regularly for OtherWords.org  - a liberal/progressive web site.  Kaul was no dabbler; at one point during his long career he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. 

Following the shootings at Sandy Hook, Kaul took pen back in hand to write a piece for the Des Moines Register. In part:

“Here, then, is my “madder-than-hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-it-anymore” program for ending gun violence in America:

• Repeal the Second Amendment, the part about guns anyway. It’s badly written, confusing and more trouble than it’s worth. It offers an absolute right to gun ownership, but it puts it in the context of the need for a “well-regulated militia.” We don’t make our militia bring their own guns to battles. And surely the Founders couldn’t have envisioned weapons like those used in the Newtown shooting when they guaranteed gun rights. Owning a gun should be a privilege, not a right.

• Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal. Hey! We did it to the Communist Party, and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did. (I would also raze the organization’s headquarters, clear the rubble and salt the earth, but that’s optional.) Make ownership of unlicensed assault rifles a felony. If some people refused to give up their guns, that “prying the guns from their cold, dead hands” thing works for me.

• Then I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control.”

Now, many of my liberal friends chide me for speaking out against what I regard as liberal/progressive idiocy.  Sometimes I am accused, like many conservatives, of being "insensitive" or "mean-spirited" - the two forms of opinion that seem to trouble liberals/progressives the most. 

We conservatives can be critical so long as we use nice, politically correct language.  Liberals/progressives - and especially the liberal press (read: mainstream media) - hasten to sound the klaxons whenever a conservative sounds too - well - "uppity."  However, when a liberal/progressive like Kaul make "insensitive" or "mean-spirited" remarks, a stillness comes over liberal land.  In that silence, or so I imagine, liberals/progressives are quietly nodding with their internal voices saying, "well, maybe I don't agree entirely but, hey, he's one of us and disagreeing would be insensitive to his righteously held mean-spiritedness."

When caught out, Kaul quickly claimed (in, where else, Otherwords.org) that it was all satire.  Defending his original column, he rescinded his call to hitch McConnell and Boehner to a Silverado.  About repealing the 2nd Amendment, his mea culpa was a less clear saying at one point that he didn't really want to repeal it but that his column was "thoughtful and well-reasoned."  He stood by his words regarding the NRA, however.  Mean-spirited though they may be.

Well, for Mr Kaul and those who sympathize with his point of view, allow me to offer this insensitive and mean-spirited public service announcement.