Hail The “Lock N’ Load” GOP

(This program note – posting will be sporadic as we get closer to Thanksgiving and “Black Friday.”)

You can probably imagine how I felt when I read this Letter To The Editor published in the Philadelphia Inquirer this morning…

There is one good thing that came from this election. It shows that the Republicans are better losers than the Democrats. George Allen, being the gentleman that he is, conceded. If the shoe had been on the other foot, with Democrats as the losers, this would not have so easily happened.

George Bush is reaching out as he did in 2000. I just hope that the Democrats do not stab him in the back this time. He worked with and praised Ted Kennedy; then Kennedy turned on him. Last year, he appointed Bill Clinton to a prestigious job, and then Clinton trashed Bush during a trip to Europe.

The wayward Republicans were sent home or to jail. The wayward Democrats were sent back to Washington.

Charles M. Jones
Lansdale

Oh, that’s funny Charles. May I call you Chuck? I’m not trying to demean the legendary Warner Brothers cartoonist and producer, but it’s just that it helps me to think of Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff and hitting the ground far away with a tiny puff of smoke. I wish that would happen to your letter.

If Ted Kennedy “turned on him,” it’s because Dubya promised to sign onto Kennedy’s education reforms as part of “No Child Left Behind,” and then refused to fund them, making Kennedy look like a chump for trusting Dubya (a familiar reaction with this guy). And I don’t recall what he’s talking about with Clinton, though I’m sure that’s lacking the proper context also.

And in terms of recent freeper newspaper correspondence, it has only gotten worse from there.

As for the Bucks County Courier Times, they published Guest Opinions this weekend from Scott Bartie, who belittled Democrats and liberals for doing what we could to fight global warming, and Don Mihalek, who said that anyone who didn’t vote for Mikey Fitzpatrick in the recent PA-08 U.S. House election won by Patrick Murphy was guilty of inflicting “collateral damage” (just so precious, and I have it on good information that a response is on the way to both of them).

I was going to let all of this rest until I read the following rant that the Courier Times published this morning (“words of wisdom” from Charles Lauble of Langhorne Manor, a life-long resident (of course) and historian - ?).

If Lauble hadn’t said that liberals were cowards or if he hadn’t attacked Ed Rendell, I would have left him alone with his misty Mayberry-esque memories.

Reading the local newspapers and watching television over the past few weeks has been very depressing considering the hundreds of murders in Philadelphia and the devastating tragedy in Lancaster County which resulted in the deaths of several young Amish girls.

The most depressing part is that few of the liberal politicians or the mainstream media have the courage to address root causes of our society’s escalating problems. They only want to deal with symptoms, taking the cowardly approach to our rapidly deteriorating culture. These “leaders” and we ourselves are enabling and promoting the perversion and evil that is breaking down our civil order.

Being a 66-year-old, life-long resident of Bucks County, I can relate to how our area has declined. Years ago there were actually rifle clubs in the local schools and students brought their rifles to school and put them in their lockers. Did anyone even think about committing an act of violence? No!

The vast majority of households had loaded firearms back then. As teenagers, we carried rifles through Langhorne, stopped at the hardware store, got ammunition and headed north along the Neshaminy Creek for target practice. Did anyone in town call the police because they felt threatened? No!

In elementary school, some of the most popular Christmas presents were pen knives and cap pistols; we took them to school to play with at recess. With our knives we would play Mumbly Peg or carve whistles. Did our teachers fear us? No!

From the 1930s to the late 1950s, the Niebauer Bus Lines ran from the Harriman section of Bristol, Pa. to Newtown. Hunters would ride the bus to their hunting location in the country carrying their firearms and then get back on the bus to go home carrying their catch of the day. Was anyone scared or in fear of his or her life back then? No!

What has happened to today’s society? How come the terrible atrocities that occur with regularity in our country today were so foreign 40 years ago?

It began in the late 1960s, when morals, ethics and virtues began to be challenged. This initiated the decline of our culture.

Back then, our teachers and parents were role models who taught us to know control and to sacrifice thyself (sic). They also taught – and enforced – that freedom and rights come with duties and responsibilities. The schools at that time were not infested with drugs, violence, suicide, and the rationalizing of socially maladjusted students’ behavior and lack of self-discipline. Is there some correlation here?

Our teachers and parents from long ago stressed that the undisciplined exercise of our rights and freedoms leads to violence, anarchy and destruction. It now appears that our mentors were in actuality predicting our future.

The breakdown of the family has been socially accepted and even celebrated. Children no longer grow up in the stable environment of a father and mother and one home to live in. They grow up with the perverted morality of the streets. These perverted lifestyles and traits are rationalized and defended by liberalism and “mainstream” media today.

Today these liberals (the majority being Democrat – of course, Lauble forgets the “ic” – but there are many Republicans too) come up with pabulum for solutions that don’t deal with the real problem of our decline. There’s one in Harrisburg who was mayor of Philadelphia for eight years. Another is the current mayor. Murders are an everyday occurrence and children are in the line of fire constantly. Has the drug traffic and murder rate in the city been controlled? No, it’s gotten worse.

We need moral, ethical leaders with courage, virtue, wisdom, character, and common sense who challenge the masses to embrace a moral culture, and forcefully encourage those people and institutions that contribute and perpetuate our social decline for us to be a good and great nation.

If you care about your children and grandchildren’s future and safety, wake up, and do your part to reverse our cultural decline!

Since Lauble provides no specifics (typical), I will focus on only one aspect of his argument, and that is the cheap and easy availability of guns in Pennsylvania.

I guess Lauble believes that we should allow gun clubs to flourish once more. This is not only a laughable sentiment, but a truly dangerous one, given the fact that, according to Bucks County law enforcement authorities, gangs based in Trenton are making their way into this area (with “shock troops” leaving calling cards with graffiti full of coded messages in visible areas).

And though it’s disingenuous at least to see Lauble pretend to care about Philadelphia, does he know that the homicide rate is influenced heavily by the “straw” purchases of guns that could be regulated if Harrisburg weren’t completely beholden to the National Rifle Association (with “liberal” governor Ed Rendell among other politicians, most notably Dwight Evans, trying to pass legislation to end this madness)?

And by the way, I have a message for Lauble and anyone else out there who believes that gun deaths in Philadelphia are attributable to liberal social engineering gone wrong, perpetuation of a culture of laziness and a lack of personal accountability, and any of the other freeper boilerplate when it comes to gun violence.

I absolutely dare you to stand up in the middle of a viewing or a funeral for another victim of gun violence and spout this blather.

I absolutely dare you. Leave the security and confines of your workstation or Internet café somewhere and try spouting this nonsense in front of a grieving family member, relative, friend, or parent.

Far from being “better losers than the Democrats,” as Chuck Jones said above, in the aftermath of the recently passed election, I see the Repugs and their sympathizers showing themselves to be the callow, uninformed whiners that they are now and always.