One has to wonder if the New York Times editorial board has any access to normal human beings outside of their insular bubble; perhaps if they did, they might grasp that their hyperbolic missives strike adults trained in the basic skills of logic and reasoning as little more than the funny pages.
Columnist Thomas Friedman provides an example of this unintentional hilarity with his latest column, “Why I am Pro-Life,” in which he grandly eschews any extremism not his own.
Friedman is appalled that a number of Republican Christian candidates actually maintain positions consistent with church doctrine towards the sanctity of human life in regards to the unborn. There can be few things as troubling as those views that attack his secular progressive theology, and Christianity is one of two direct threats to his position on human life.
The other direct threat to Friedman’s view of life is the problem of biology. It is a biological fact that vertebrate animal life begins at conception, without exception. Biology does not consider the living, gestating being to be a “lump of cells” or non-human, purely because of the leftist political necessity. Friedman and his pro-infanticide allies would ask you to believe that a baby within the uterus isn’t a baby, but once several inches removed, is a human. It is a completely illogical position where proximity dictates humanity.
Then again, there is a certain perverse, nearly logic-like construct in Freidman’s brain regarding proximity and worth, considering his contempt for those on the wrong side of the Hudson.
As a student of history I find Friedman’s views towards firearms to be even more absurd. I had to stifle a chuckle and a role of the eyes through several gems such as this:
In my world, you don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and be against common-sense gun control — like banning public access to the kind of semiautomatic assault rifle, designed for warfare, that was used recently in a Colorado theater.
“In my world,” indeed; his world is a curious place, where denizens are unable to recognize that “semi-automatic” and “assault rifle” are opposing and exclusive terms. An assault rifle, by definition, must be selective-fire. The rather slow-witted Mr. Friedman should have said what he actually meant, which is that he would ban access to common rifles, and the action type of most guns in the United States.
The Smith & Wesson M&P15 carbine used by James Holmes is a branded version of the most popular variant of centerfire rifle manufactured and purchased in the United States. The AR-15 (AR is short for Armalite, the company inventor Eugene Stoner worked for when he created the rifle) or copying designs are produced by 12 of the top 20 long-gun manufacturers. Semi-automatic firearms are the most popular handgun and rifle designs. No other action type — bolt-action, single-shot, pump-action, revolver — comes close.
These are not “weapons of war.” These are firearms popular in sport shooting events, such as “three gun” competitions and National Match events. They are firearms completely modular in design, and used from hunting everything from small game to large herbivores such as deer and elk, and dangerous game such as bear and boar. They are chosen for their ergonomics and their accuracy. I can personally attest to the fact that an accurate AR-15 with good optics can make accurate, repeatable hits on softball-sized targets out to more than 500 yards. They are, quite simply, “America’s gun.”
From that perspective, perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that Freidman would want them outlawed.
After digesting that, Friedman presents us with another howler:
And there is no way that respect for the sanctity of life can mean we are obligated to protect every fertilized egg in a woman’s body, no matter how that egg got fertilized, but we are not obligated to protect every living person from being shot with a concealed automatic weapon.
I would like to issue Mr. Friedman a simple challenge.
Assign the crack research staff at the New York Times to document every recorded incident of a legally owned and concealed automatic weapon used to shoot someone in United States in the past, say, fifty years. It might be easier if they focused on fatalities only.
The simple, unvarnished truth is that every person killed with a legal, concealed automatic weapon in the past fifty years would fit in Friedman’s overstuffed chair, with plenty of room left over for Friedman. There have been none. Not one. You’d be more likely to be struck by lightning while being mauled by a grizzly than encounter Friedman’s absurd fantasy.
Only in Friedman’s warped world are being pro-life and pro-gun rights opposing views. Being pro-life means protecting life inside the womb. Being pro-gun means protecting life outside the womb from criminals and tyrants, the later of which have murdered more than 100 million in the last century alone.
Friedman takes the opposite view, where he is pro infanticide-on-demand, and favors disarming the American people so that criminals and the government share a monopoly of force, assuring tyranny is unopposed. Only someone perversely ignorant of history and human nature –or who is pro-tyranny — could argue for his position.
But that is Friedman, isn’t it? Absurd fantasy, wrapped in unearned elitism, without a basic grasp of facts in fields as diverse as biology, engineering, or law. No wonder he favors the tyranny of small minds.
It’s the best audience for a clown.
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