Here's Bill Whittle with about as positive as you're gonna get and still be sane.
And here's Linoge on just what the stakes are.
Whittle is right, Prohibition was repealed. A whole amendment. And the federal Assault Weapons Ban was sunsetted, and the vast majority of the US is now shall issue. So, progress can be made.
But as Tam is wont to say, guns are easy. You know what a gun is, you can get people to agree that those are being taken away.
And here's Tam's thoughts. We're basically in a choice between someone who will definitely veto a repeal attempt versus someone who probably would, and someone who has a 100% chance of getting a liberal supreme court justice, and someone who has over 50% chance of getting a liberal justice too.
Oh that 50% isn't Romney, that's the Republican party as a whole. Funny how Democratic presidents always, always pick reliably liberal Justices, but it's a crapshoot with Republicans.
So on guns we have had some wins. The rest of the Crushing State? Well... the Progressives have the over-culture and the default, their ideology is "not ideology" and they can hold fast while everyone else compromises to them. And that's even if the opponents realize what's going on. Sure we had that with guns, but with guns we could get our side to form up and realize just how high the stakes were.
We were able to realize that the Antis had no compromise, no common ground. That they did not care about reality or principle or safety, only about power.
Look at how the left has gone from being at war with Eurasia to being at war with Eastasia in the snap of an announcement. Roberts is now a hero, when the day before the media was fretting over him and worrying. That's how it works, obedience to the Ideology is rewarded, deviation is punished.
Consider how Obamacare is a tax or not a tax depending on need.
Or even more telling that the term Obamacare itself is an insult and slur... if you're against it. If you're for it, well the administration is selling lots of I <3 Obamacare swag. Really. When facing that level of passion and willingness to ignore reality and principle in search of political and social power compromise becomes deadly. I suppose one advantage is the utter greed and total lack of altruism. We are dealing with a folk that see charity forcing someone else to pay at gun point.
The left will never put their own money into the pot, not unless they get something back. See Solyandra et al. As we saw with the public union protests and the like, they've gotta get paid.
So there's some advantage in that their ground game is dependent on a system where they force payment from others. There's also a great disadvantage as they have the money to pay a ground game, and have it be socially acceptable to pull out union workers and pay them to be protesters.
Break that cycle and they start to wither. We've seen it with the Antis.
We see why the Left is going to the mattresses to protect the automatic withdraw of union dues and the mandating of closed shops. Perhaps Wisconsin will turn the tide and show what can be done. Without the State forcing dues, the unions are seeing their numbers drop and more importantly their treasuries dwindle.
We've seen it with their pushing for dependency and outright bribery for votes.
The downside? Good luck breaking that cycle. Much of the public has learned that they can sell their votes for other people's money. And the only way out of that is for there to be no more money to bribe the public with.
As Klavan notes, if you sell your independence for baubles, you'll always loose in the end:
Entitlements are an act of force. Government wrests property and services away from one person to bestow them on another at its own will, by its own wisdom and ultimately to its own benefit. At first, the recipient may think that it’s only the rich man’s freedom which is being stripped away and what’s it to him? But soon enough he finds that government is now well within its rights to control whatever it is paying to support: his behavior, his consumption, his religion, his words. He may live well only as long as he lives in obedience.
This leads to the futher downside, once someone is dependent on the State, the state can throttle down how much they need to dole out to keep you loyal.
As Glenn Reynolds says "They'll make us beggars because beggars are easier to please."
Hold onto your hats.
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