—“In my latest at @nytopinion, I argue that the truculent response to @BetoORourke’s mandatory assault weapon buyback proposal betrays a disturbing hostility to democracy on the right. Why an Assault Weapons Ban Hits Such a Nerve With Many Conservatives. The premise of Trumpist populism is that the political preferences of a shrinking minority of citizens matter more than democracy.”–Will Wilkinson @willwilkinson
It’s not a hostility to democracy(Mob Rule), it’s a hostility to your continued undermining of Rule of Law (Reciprocity, Tort, Trespass), by incrementally deceiving the population that there any means, whether authoritarian, bureaucratic, representative, or democratic of legitimizing violation of Rule of Law.
I don’t know if you (Will Wilkinson) are ignorant or intellectually dishonest by inverting the relationship between Rule of Law and Democracy – where Rule of law consists in the spectrum: Reciprocity(natural) vs substantive(Rights) vs formalist (Procedure) vs Functional (arbitrary) – and Democracy refers to a means of choosing the priority of commons given scarce resources, within that law).
But Conservatism is empirical (evidentiary), not ideal(imagined) and we hold to rule of law (sovereignty, reciprocity, jury) and limit The State, Houses of Government, and Polity from violating that rule of law – and we are the only people to have built a civilization upon it, and a majority middle class because of it.
WE ARE SPECIAL BECAUSE OF OUR RULE OF LAW, NOT DEMOCRACY.
America, the anglo countries, and the germanic countries, are ‘special’ not because of government, but because we have rule of law. The world does not need democracy, and continues to rebel against it. They need rule of law. With rule of law the form of government is irrelevant.
Under rule of law people have no choice to obtain status and consumption by any other means that the voluntary service of others in markets for association, production, reproduction, commons production, and polity production. Every alternative is just one excuse or another.
YOU SEEK TO REPLACE RULE OF LAW WITH ARBITRARY RULE OF MAN
So if you are just mistaken, then it’s worth educating you. If you are instead, continuing your campaign to destroy the first written Constitution of Natural Law (reciprocity) for the first middle class civilization(the third way), then that is why we have arms – to stop you.
And every agitation you conduct against that law of reciprocity – our “political religion” – moves one step closer to turning this civil war from one of words, political infighting, and sporadic violence, into the bloodiest in human history – so, please, by all means continue.
THERE IS NO “WE”
There is no ‘we’. We can peacefully separate and return to a federation of states for the single purpose of defense, returning local control over local policy to the local people, or we will roll the dice on whether we win, you win, or, if it lasts six months, no one wins.
We have our weapons – because of you.