I find myself increasingly amenable to Frank Rich's writing. And his keen use of hyperlinks.

"In April the Department of Homeland Security issued a report, originally commissioned by the Bush administration, on the rising threat of violent right-wing extremism. It was ridiculed by conservatives, including the Republican chairman, Michael Steele, who called it “the height of insult.” Since then, a neo-Nazi who subscribed to the anti-Obama “birther” movement has murdered a guard at the Holocaust museum in Washington, and an anti-abortion zealot has gunned down a doctor in a church in Wichita, Kan."

Sucks being prescient.
There are some people in this country who are so fiercely independent and libertarian as to border on anarchism (though a less cooperative form than that conventionally espoused); it is our right to carry guns, they would profess, that is the guarantor of our freedoms. Revolution-era quotes are dropped, Thomas' Paine and Jefferson are referenced as evidence that without the free and open possession of guns, our liberties would surely vanish like Lyndon Larouche's presidential prospects.

I will take the time to point out the obvious, an act so necessary in our time.

The American Revolution was fought against a monarchy, a system of government that places a single person at the top of the power structure. The power the monarch possesses is absolute, is not subject to popular participation, other than in the case of armed rebellion.

Here in the United States, in the year two thousand and nine, we have a system of government which allows any citizen aged 18 years to participate in the political process through elections at the federal, state, county, local (yes, local!) level and so on.

Anyway I am getting too tired to write about this. The point I was going to get to (quite eloquently, I might add) is that the use of guns through violence or intimidation in a political debate is tyranny in itself because it removes the evenly distributed power structure that democracies create, that each person has a vote, and an unlimited right to express their opinion, religion, etc. If you indeed believe that people have a right to carry loaded assault rifles into crowds at political rallies, I wonder where you would claim this right to cease. Can I bring a rifle with a scope to the top of my house and point it at people walking down the street? I'm on my own property, and democracies were created to protect property weren't they? And if my government won't protect my property my gun will, right? No, because I'd be threatening people's lives, that most basic of liberties.

I don't think that firearms have no place in a democratic society. Democratic countries have a pretty decent history of reverting to worse. You have your right to hunt, to shoot for sport, to keep a gun in your home as protection from the government or hoodlums, or on your person if you really wish. I do, however, believe that bringing guns to peaceful political events amounts to intimidation no better than this, and, legal or not, constitutional or otherwise, I think it's abhorrent, and anti-democratic, and I think it only serves to mute the kind of calm, reasonable political discourse that this country so desperately needs right now.

[nyt]