Forget your flu shot. It’s not influenza that infects our society. It’s apologies. We live in a land of near-Bubonic apology fever. Everyone is constantly being asked to apologize for something. (Apologize for eating a Big Mac. Apologize for saying Asians do better in math, etc., etc.)
These apologies range from the sublime to the ridiculous, but are mostly the latter. And the demand for the apologies comes almost exclusively from the left — a morally narcissistic group-think culture that relies on shaming others in order to obscure the truth and gain power.
A great deal of the success of Donald Trump can be ascribed to the fact that he recognizes this nonsense and wants no part of it. With a more intellectual, and often truly educational, style, Ben Carson has been largely the same way, so it was with some dismay I read his article in the Jerusalem Post, “‘Never Again’ means standing with Israel.” In response to accusations of “insensitivity to the Holocaust” on the part of the doctor for a statement he made saying that Jews might have been better off against the Nazis if they had had guns, Carson wrote the following:
In recent days I suggested that things might have unfolded in a very different manner in Europe had the Jewish people been armed and better able to defend themselves. What would have been the impact on Hitler’s war machine if his victims had had more access to guns? It is something that we will never know for sure.
What I do know however, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is that I never intended for my words to diminish the enormity of the tragedy or in any way to cause any pain for Holocaust survivors or their families.
No doubt, but no explanation necessary. It was obvious to all but the howling left that Carson meant no disrespect to Holocaust survivors. It was the reverse, if anything. Carson showed concern for the six million by suggesting some unknown number might have survived had they been armed. You would have to be delusional to think otherwise. The state of Israel exists, in part, in ratification of that.
Indeed, the whole history of how Hitler came to confiscate the Jews’ guns is a virtual primer on why we in America should cherish our Second Amendment. It’s the most instructional narrative imaginable of how a disarmed citizenry is subject to the worst totalitarian excesses, in this case genocide, from their government. For those unaware of how this evolved, National Review had an excellent account a couple of years ago:
The Weimar Republic’s well-intentioned gun registry became a tool for evil. The perennial gun-control debate in America did not begin here. The same arguments for and against were made in the 1920s in the chaos of Germany’s Weimar Republic, which opted for gun registration. Law-abiding persons complied with the law, but the Communists and Nazis committing acts of political violence did not.
In 1931, Weimar authorities discovered plans for a Nazi takeover in which Jews would be denied food and persons refusing to surrender their guns within 24 hours would be executed. They were written by Werner Best, a future Gestapo official. In reaction to such threats, the government authorized the registration of all firearms and the confiscation thereof, if required for “public safety.”
The interior minister warned that the records must not fall into the hands of any extremist group. In 1933, the ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power and used the records to identify, disarm, and attack political opponents and Jews. Constitutional rights were suspended, and mass searches for and seizures of guns and dissident publications ensued. Police revoked gun licenses of Social Democrats and others who were not “politically reliable.”
Fascinating, no? Yet still the cognitively challenged lefties at places like the Huffington Post think Carson’s apology was insufficient. Insufficient? It shouldn’t have been.
This smear attack on the neurosurgeon has nothing to do whatever with the Holocaust and everything to do with the American left’s inability to countenance a black conservative who happens to have a longer list of significant accomplishments than they could even dream of, not to mention a higher IQ. Worse yet, he believes in God. Such a person makes their reactionary heads explode. Too bad for them. As the French used to say, “Honi soit qui mal y pense.” Evil be unto him who evil thinks.
Roger L. Simon – Co-founder and CEO Emeritus of PJ Media – was nominated for an Academy Award in screenwriting for Enemies, A Love Story… a film about the Holocaust.
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