BartCop:

Yesterday I was the recipient of an inane e-mail message from Peter Sliman.
In his puerile fashion, he objected to my quoting Sheridan's comparison of Texas and Hell.
He came to the defense of Texas, not Hell, in case you were wondering.
(Why would Peter think that he could insult a woman by calling her a "pussy"?
Poor boy, he does the best he can with his limited vocabulary and underdeveloped intellect.
Yes, Peter, I admit it -- I am effeminate.  On me, it looks good.)  I have the strong impression that
Master Sliman is not, as he presents himself, a man of minimal IQ who uses his wife's e-mail account.
That's no wife, that's his mother!
BartCop, when you're messing with Peter, I think you're molesting a child.

"The Patriot" was a stupid movie for stupid people.  The so-called patriot (played by the former
American, Mel Gibson) didn't want anything to do with the war, or the Declaration of Independence,
or fighting for freedom, or any of that stuff -- until one of his sons was killed by a Brit.  Then, of course,
things got personal!  (How did George Washington get involved in the American Revolution?
He didn't have kids of his own!)  One scene in the movie featured the British locking up people into
a church and then torching it -- another "historically accurate scene," in "Professor" Sliman's estimation, I'll bet.

The trouble is, it never happened.  The Nazis committed a similar atrocity against French civilians.
But for this movie, the British were the bad guys, so the scriptwriters attributed to them a Nazi war crime.
Anyone whose political opinions are reinforced by that movie may not be "too ignorant to be free,"
but he should be too modest to be so free with his ill-informed opinions.
"American patriots would not have been able to fight for their freedom without guns."
(Forget for a moment that guns also enabled the British to commit what the movie depicts as war crimes,
and that the "freedom" the colonists wanted was self-government under the rule of law.)  Yes, Peter, but that
was then -- this is now, and now we have the trained, well-equipped armed services to defend our borders
and the Constitution to enshrine our liberties.  Time to lower your musket and come out from behind that tree!
The government, the evil, coercive government (as if there's ever been a government based on persuasion),
the institutionalized Bad Mommy that denies you your freedom is -- you, and the rest of us!

What about the lessons of Ruby Ridge and Waco?  There's only one lesson, and it's this:  don't shoot
law enforcement officers.  If you kill one of theirs, two (or more -- many more) of yours will die.
(Oooh, it hit me like a mathematical equation.)  Their guns are bigger, and they have more of them,
and they'll be very angry when they come after you.  Got that?  Don't worry, you can still have your guns
-- to bully your neighbors, maintain your home's status as a prime target for burglars, and make every
domestic conflict an opportunity for tragedy -- just don't shoot a cop!  It's not Jim and Sarah Brady who
will come gunning for you, but your fellow handgun fanciers.  The last time I checked the list of right-wing
stereotypes, I did not find the police, the FBI and the BATF under the "liberals" category.  If Randy Weaver
and David Koresh were fighting for my "freedom," they really shouldn't have bothered; I'm not an antisocial
loser peddling sawed-off shotguns and I don't think I'm the messiah.  After Kent State -- the site of an historical
incident that occurred many years before you were born, Peter,  which involved children being shot by soldiers
in real life -- I don't recall that the conservatives of the time called on college students to arm themselves.
When liberals objected to government's sending young men to kill and die in Vietnam -- talk about  coercion!
-- conservatives called liberals many things, but "patriots" wasn't one of them.  I question whether the current
hysteria over the "right to bear arms" has anything to do with principled resistance to unjust laws; it's just another
way to separate fools and their money and/or their votes.

I don't doubt that every day, Peter Sliman feels under pressure from "those who are more qualified, capable
and intelligent."  He even has a name for the smart people who are out to get him: "liberals."  Those educated
spoilsports would point out to him that the oppressors -- for example, the Confederacy, the most notorious
enemy of freedom in our nation's history -- always have guns, too.  Firepower doesn't confer legitimacy.
History is not simply a record of who got the drop on whom.

When Peter grows up, if he wants to give his adolescent children access to guns, there will probably still be
no law to prevent him from doing so. Then his kids can hunt, shoot at targets, or perhaps join the ranks of such
famous freedom fighters as Luke Woodham (who also killed his mother), Michael Carneal (who shot up a
group of Christians in prayer), Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden (who shot at teachers and children from
hiding places in the woods), Kip Kinkel (who killed both his parents before he opened fire at school),
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Nate Brazill and Charles Andrew Williams.  The liberal tyrants who run this
country denied these patriots the right to drink alcoholic beverages!  Most of them didn't even enjoy the  right
to buy cigarettes or to drive, much less the right to vote!  Worst of all, they suffered under the oppressive law
that required them to attend school!  They opened fire on defenseless children, on their own parents,  in defense
of their lives, their fortunes, their sacred ignorance!  People in other parts of the world -- say, in Great Britain,
where a single schoolyard shooting by an adult "nutter" is treated as sufficient reason to  restrict private gun
ownership -- can only stand back in admiration and muse:  no one loves freedom like Americans!