What They Mean by “We”
8th March 2018
Freeberg turns over a rock.
One of the fundamental concepts that are being bifurcated by this disagreement, is “we.” I, along with other people who are capable of thinking like responsible adults, do not believe life automatically becomes better when we have more rules. I’m more of a believer in what Tacitus said, “The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.” Gun control offends me, partly because it’s right in our Constitution that we aren’t supposed to have gun control of any kind. But it offends me even more when I recognize what it is: Something bad was done by a bad person, and so we come up with some restrictions to be placed on the ones who did not do it.
Most Proglodyte Dreams involve forcing people to do things that proglodytes have no desire to do or intention of doing. No proglodyte would be inconvenienced by a total ban on private firearms (except the ones caught defenseless in a ‘gun free zone’ when the next nutcase shooter with an illegal weapon comes along). When proglodytes say that ‘we need to do this’ or ‘we need to do that’, they never include themselves in that ‘we’.
There can be some difficulty in noticing this within certain issues. On the gun-control thing for example, people who want more rules about guns usually have no intention of ever owning a gun themselves. Many of them are protected by armed bodyguards, and intend to continue enjoying the benefits of this weaponized perimeter after they’ve won their latest victory and gotten the laws to work the way they want them to work. But on social justice issues and/or environmental issues, the man-is-outside-of-nature types don’t include themselves in the “we” when they speak of how toxic “we” are. Guilty-white-liberals droning on about white privilege, do not include themselves in the complaint even though I notice many among them are, and have been for awhile, quite privileged.
Those who complain most bitterly about ‘white privilege’ are themselves almost always white and very privileged.
Those who complain most bitterlyl about ‘income inequality’ are themselves almost always in the upper 5%, if not the %1 — and not one of them spends any noticeable amount of time giving of their unequal incomes to those poorer than themselves.
Those who complain most bitterly about ‘unaffordable’ health care are themselves almost always able to afford the best care that money can buy. The same goes with housing.
And we’re all familiar with the ‘environmentalists’ who complain about fossil fuels destroying the planet while swanning around in SUVs and private jets.