NRA Unleashed on the World: Trashing the Global Arms Treaty

Congolese Child Soldier with “light arms”

[previously published at Examiner.com 7/15/2012]

Wouldn’t it be great if the arms-exporting nations of the world got together to sign an agreement banning the sale of arms to conflict zones, terrorists and murderous dictators?

Of course, the world’s largest exporter of arms, the United States, already has regulations prohibiting the sale of weapons to such people and places, but an international agreement could go a long way in limiting arms trade between nations that have few or no such regulations.

According to William D. Hartung, Director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, because American laws are already in place, such a treaty limiting arms sales would be asking far less of the United States than any other country. Signing the treaty would be “… a very small price to pay for an international agreement that helps keeps arms out of the hands of tyrants, terrorists and aggressor nations,” says Hartung.

With wholesale barbarity in such places as sub-Saharan Africa, Iraq and Syria playing out on the nightly news and the ever-present threat of international terrorism revisiting the United States, you’d think all Americans would support such a treaty — a treaty that would help bar the likes of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, the Lord’s Resistance Army and Al-Qaeda from the world’s arms bazaar.

Who could possibly oppose such a treaty?

A New Kind of Logic

Who, indeed.

The National Rifle Organization (NRA) is at it again — only this time, the “from my cold, dead fingers” folks are going global.

Despite the fact that the proposed United Nations Arms Trade Treaty would only regulate the transfer of weapons across international borders and has absolutely nothing to do with gun ownership or sales within the U.S., the NRA and its enforcers in Congress have mounted a campaign against the treaty that is as energetic as it is devoid of sense.

At the U.N. conference negotiating the ATT, NRA Executive VP Wayne LaPierre, told the conference that the treaty is “an offense to any American who has ever breathed our free air.” You gotta love him.

A letter to President Obama and Sec. of State Clinton signed by 130 NRA cheerleaders in the House of Representatives demanded that the treaty not include any restrictions on small arms or light weapons (you know, the AK-47 and other small arms that do most of the people-shredding around the world). The letter goes on to characterize the treaty as a threat to Americans’ constitutional rights.

Apparently, decades of success at blocking every common sense gun-control law proposed by legislators has taught the NRA to yell, “Constitutional rights,” whenever the words, “gun” and “regulation” appear in the same sentence — whether it applies or not.

When LaPierre accused President Obama of trying to take our guns by NOT proposing any gun control legislation, as LaPierre did in his speech to Florida’s Conservative Political Action Conference in September, I just figured LaPierre was having a bad logic day. After all, Obama, hardly a gun-control crusader, has repealed more gun laws in four years than George W. Bush did in eight — proving everybody can have bad logic days, now and then.

But now, with his full-throated and nonsensical opposition to the ATT, I’m beginning to wonder if LaPierre and the organization that keeps America awash in Saturday night specials and armor-piercing ammo just might be a few rounds short of a full clip.

Exporting Misery

By now we have gotten used to the NRA and its intransigence. We’ve learned to ignore its wild-eyed rhetoric and even LaPierre’s gross disrespect of the President and the presidency. We may even feel a little sorry for those members of the gun set who have bought into the NRA’s self-serving and paranoid fantasy pitting freedom-loving Americans against an evil, despotic government bent on seizing everybody’s guns.

Apparently, we also have learned to live with the 30,000 shooting deaths per year, a figure made possible, at least in part, by lax gun laws and NRA lobbying.

But letting the NRA loose on the rest of the world is just plain mean.

Fearing NRA reprisal, American politicians could very well vote this treaty into history’s dumpster and as a result, put more and more guns into the hands of the world’s bad actors, and, of course, more and more bullets into bodies.

As Americans, we deserve the NRA and the misery caused by the most liberal gun laws on the planet. We are the ones who keep electing politicians that march to the NRA’s tune.

What did the rest of the world do to deserve the NRA?

For a lighter look at the NRA, check out:    “Paranoid and Packing” plus repost of “Double-D Breast Implant Deflects Bullet: NRA Cries Foul”

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2012 Texas Republican Platform: A Frightening Look Inside the New Republican Brain

[Originally published in Examiner.com]

In a political landscape full of pundit-speak, spin and dancing politicians, it’s often difficult to cast a truly informed vote. So it’s good to know you can still get politics served up straight, bold and unapologetic in Texas.

I’m speaking, of course, about the brand new 2012 platform of the Texas Republican Party. Epic in scope, breathtaking in its lunacy, this platform covers everything from evolution to space exploration and is a clear, unambiguous glimpse into the worldview of today’s Republican Party — a must-read for all who might be thinking of voting in that direction this November.

The Texas GOP platform reminds you that today’s Republican Party is not your father’s Republican Party. It’s not even his father’s Republican Party. As you read it, you’ll feel as if you’re being transported back in time to an age when scientists were considered evil sorcerers, women needed men and/or the government to decide how to manage their lives, and education was something you did to children, rather than for them.

Education

This is how the new GOP believes kids should be taught about theories of evolution and global warming:

“We believe theories such as life origins and environmental change should be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change as new data is [sic] produced.”

Sounds reasonable enough. But I wonder if it would be OK with Republicans if teachers teach their students that it was, indeed, only after many scientific challenges to both of these theories that scientists accepted them as the likely answers to the questions, “How did we develop as a species?” and “Why is the Earth getting so darned warm?”

Though today’s Republicans are big on challenging evolution and man-made global warming, it seems they don’t want children to challenge much of anything.

“We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

As Texas Christian University professor of economics, John T. Harvey, writes in his excellent piece at Forbes,

“… do they really and truly believe that teachers and school boards across the State of Texas are designing curricula specifically aimed at training children to challenge their parents?”

Actually, there are probably very few people who know exactly what the Texas GOP means about critical thinking “undermining parental authority” but they do manage to interject a little paranoia into the old “father knows best” adage.

Harvey continues:

“Were we to implement such a policy, we’d have to be certain that we had already identified the concepts and values that were ‘correct’ (whatever that really means). Even a cursory reading of their platform makes it very clear that this is precisely what Texas Republicans believe and what those concepts and values are. This begs the question, who is really aiming to force their beliefs on our children, Texas schools or Texas Republicans?”

If kids do have the temerity to think critically in class, though, Texas Republicans know what to do.

“We recommend that local school boards and classroom teachers be given more authority to deal with disciplinary problems. Corporal punishment is effective and legal in Texas.”

Women

Or how about Republican plans for women — more specifically, women’s bodies?

It may be approved by the FDA, considered safe and effective by the American Medical Association and available at your local Walgreen’s, but Republicans know better.

“We oppose sale and use of the dangerous ‘Morning After Pill’.”

In their ongoing attempt to send abortion back to its back-alley roots, Republicans want to place themselves firmly between women and their doctors.

“We support legislation banning of abortion after 20 weeks gestation due to fetal pain.”

Once again, the GOP knows better than them smart aleck research scientists, who find no scientific evidence to support such legislation.

The platform does make one sensible pronouncement regarding women, however.

“We strongly support women who choose to devote their lives to their families and raising their children.”

It’s just that the platform declares no such support for women who choose to do anything else.

Homosexuality

Americans are gradually warming to the idea that gay and lesbian folk are as good, bad, decent and indecent as we heteros. We are also beginning to recognize the cruelty, impracticality and unfairness of marginalizing this large segment of the American population. But, Republicans see it a bit differently.

“We affirm that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society and contributes to the breakdown of the family unit. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle, in public policy, nor should “family” be redefined to include homosexual “couples.”

Homosexuals have been part of the human family ever since Peking Man found another Peking Man attractive. Not to mention, same-sex attraction occurs in every species, from gut worms to primates. Doesn’t that qualify homosexuality as one of God’s “unchanging truths?”

Anyone thinking about homosexuality with a clear, bias-free mind understands that it is neither a choice nor harmful to society. Who would choose to spend his or her life fighting for rights we straights take for granted? And, can anyone explain to me how on earth I am negatively affected by another person’s fondness for members of his or her own sex?

Voter Beware

There are many more equally nutty views espoused in the platform, including support for returning the dollar to the gold standard, abolishing income tax in favor of a national sales tax, abstinence-only sex-ed, gutting public education and, of course, deregulation, deregulation and more deregulation. But this is what Republicans stand for today. By purging moderates and independent minded conservatives from its ranks, the Republican Party has managed to reduce itself to a thick soup of right wing extremism that even Ronald Reagan would have a hard time recognizing as his beloved Grand Old Party.

It seems every presidential election is hyped as “the most important election in history.” This time, however, it may very well be. And that makes the Texas Republican Party Platform equally important.

Read it, get to know it and then… run screaming back to the Democratic Party. Your nation will thank you.

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