The American middle class is once again under a targeted attack. I am not referring to the economic middle class we are accustomed to hearing about but rather that plurality of Americans who make up the political middle between the two extremes. In spite of being the largest part of the electorate this middle class has been in political decline for decades.
Ironically, this middle class is the only protection against the extremes creating the tyranny that both minority factions want.
Although it is not obvious to everyone just yet, the supporters of the Second Amendment are losing their fight.
The “cold-dead-fingers” crowd still claims to be willing to defend the right to own guns until the death but those who would take your guns won’t engage that way.
There is an ever-expanding attitude in this country that those who would resort to the use of a gun for personal or property defense are more dangerous than any threat from government.
One of the parasites which is weakening the public perception of private gun ownership is the gun culture itself.
These are the gun owners who believe their guns make them somebody, and that fact justifies their lack of responsibility for when and how their firearms are used, because for them to exercise restraint is to infringe upon who they are.
Without these negative representations of gun ownership, of which there has been an avalanche the last few years, legislators would have less justification for writing law to limit citizen access to the 2nd Amendment, and more justification for defending the right.
This, like the systematic muzzling of free speech, will be just one more liberty to fall victim to the apathy the middle class has shown for its responsibility to defend these rights against not only those who would eviscerate them but also against those who would pervert them.
We can’t solve the problem of gun violence until we take the gun out of the conversation, because as even those who don’t believe in personal gun ownership for defense of person and property sometimes admit, the gun didn’t do it.
The federal government is set to launch a suicide hotline program costing billions of dollars to set up and operate. Suicide is, at its core, evidence of a belief that one’s own life has no value.
How is a federal suicide hotline not a red flag that our society has made some seriously flawed decisions to get to this place?
How did we arrive at a place where randomly shooting people is socially acceptable, or the solution to anything? When did the taint of being the person with no honor become something to be proud of?
Maybe it was when the middle class let themselves be conned into believing people should be allowed to just be themselves.
Ironically, we have eroded the value of life in the name of personal freedom, even to the point of barbarism. And, we have allowed a gangster, criminal, drug culture, and its lack of social decorum to become main stream. Themselves, it turns out, without personal restraint, are about two degrees away from barbaric most of the time.
In today’s social environment where everyone has to be indelibly marked as either a victim or a victimizer, neither of which comes with the requirement that the person so branded has actively participated in earning the designation, is it any wonder that responsibility, which is the glue that holds free society together, is becoming less and less in evidence? So, prejudged, why take responsibility for anything?
It is about time that we of the middle class who believe in the enduring logic of our American founding – which wasn’t slavery, by the way – to start taking our country back from the tyrannical minorities on either pole of our political spectrum.
We need to stand up and rail against the candidates the parties put forward to craft solutions to our greatest problems who shouldn’t even be allowed to participate in extinguishing a simple dumpster fire.
We of the middle class are the historical heart of We the People.
It is about time We take back our responsibilities, and work for solutions to the problems we face, for the greater good, not the benefit or satisfaction of the tyrannical minorities.
If we don’t, the right to exercise our 2nd Amendment guarantees will not be the last right that will be taken away from us because we haven’t approached our responsibility to defend them seriously, with resolve and intelligence.
