Carlos Eire was born in Havana and is the T.L. Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University. His memoir “Waiting for Snow in Havana” won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2003.
Unfazed
by the howls of indignation — honest or feigned — over his recent
praise of communist Cuba, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has reaffirmed his
admiration for the Castro regime’s social policies over the past few
days. He has done so while simultaneously insisting that he’s “very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba.”
But
can the achievements of any monstrous regime ever be praised? Is it
really possible to separate the cruelty of any dictatorship from any of
its policies? In the case of communist Cuba, a further question arises:
Is it possible to believe any of the claims it makes for its own
achievements, given that it generates its own statistics and promotes
its own version of history?
One
has to wonder how accurate the Sanders version of Fidel Castro’s
literacy campaign really is — whether it truly was an unalloyed success,
good and noble enough to justify the firing squads, torture chambers,
gulags and other disagreeable inconveniences that were inseparable from
it. And anyone who would care to do some fact-checking, as did The Post’s Glenn Kessler a few years ago, will quickly discover that the Sanders version of Cuban history is far from accurate.
First,
consider the issue of literacy in Cuba before Castro came along. Was
pre-Castro Cuba a nation of illiterates, and Castro’s literacy campaign
as great an accomplishment as Sanders avers? Not at all. A Cuban census
from 1953 found that 77.9 percent
of the island’s total population was already literate, and that in
urban areas the literacy rate was 88.9 percent: among the highest in
Latin America and higher than in some benighted rural counties in the United States. Seven years later, in 1960, according to data compiled at Oxford University, the literacy rate for the entire island was 79 percent.
So
the scope of Castro’s 1961 literacy campaign, much admired by Sanders,
is more myth than reality. Moreover, the image of pre-Castro Cuba as a
primitive society rescued from poverty and illiteracy by a so-called
revolution is a deceitful caricature, one brilliantly conceived by the
Castro regime to make its brutality seem less offensive — merely
“authoritarian” rather than monstrous
Second,
consider the real purpose of Cuba’s literacy campaign. Can it be
totally disassociated from the repression that accompanied it, as
Sanders would like you to think? Far from it. At the very same time that
it was teaching illiterate Cubans to read, the Castro regime was busy
stifling all freedom of expression. It banned any books that displeased
it, shut down all newspapers and magazines, and flooded schools with
texts that were pure propaganda. It turned each and every school on the
island into an indoctrination camp in which no deviation from Marxist
orthodoxy was ever allowed.
In
other words, the literacy campaign was designed to enhance a
totalitarian state’s control of its people. The fact that it lent a
falsely benevolent sheen to Castro was an added bonus, but there is no
denying that the Maximum Leader taught Cubans to read so that their
thinking could be more carefully controlled by his propaganda machine.
Sanders
and his fellow liberal-progressives are always careful to balance their
praise of communist Cuba with some measure of disapproval for its
“authoritarian” excesses, assuming that it is possible to balance these
two contradictory attitudes toward repressive regimes or to isolate the
social policies of any dictatorship from its brutality.
But
there is willful blindness at work on the part of those who make such a
specious distinction, as well as more than a smidgen of hypocrisy. Try
to imagine Sanders or any other leftist ever insisting that it is
“unfair” to deny the Third Reich praise for some of its accomplishments,
such as the building of the Autobahn.
The
“good” things Sanders finds in communist Cuba should seem immensely
disturbing to Americans, even frightening. His vehemence in defending
these “good” things, which in truth are hollow victories stained with
blood, should also set off alarms, for this peculiar obsession reveals
more than some character flaw.
Sanders’s
insistence on finding positive things to say about Fidel Castro might
be the clearest indication he has yet given American voters of his own
sources of inspiration, and of his vision for the future of the United
States.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Like many liberals, Lara Smith considers herself a feminist, favors abortion rights and believes the nation’s immigration policies under the Trump administration have just been “vile.”
But when it comes to guns, Smith sounds more like a conservative: She opposes reviving the nation's assault weapons ban, enacting red-flag laws or creating a registry of firearms. The 48-year-old California lawyer owns a cache of firearms, from pistols to rifles such as the AR-15.
Smith and liberal gun owners like her face a quandary as voting in the Democratic primary intensifies with Super Tuesday next week. They are nervous about some of the gun control measures the Democratic candidates are pushing and are unsure who to trust on this issue.
“You’re alienating a huge part of your constituency,” Smith says of the Democratic field’s gun proposals. “You have a huge constituency that is looking for something different and when you are talking about restricting a right which is so different than everything else you talk about, you are being anti-liberal.”
Gun owners have long been seen as a solidly Republican voting bloc, but there are millions of Democrats who own firearms, too.
Many of them are feeling increasingly disillusioned by their party as it lurches toward the left on the Second Amendment, but they're also wary of President Donald Trump for a variety of reasons: his conservative leanings but a track record in office that has led to several gun restrictions, such as the banning of bump stocks.
An estimated 23 percent of Democrats nationally lived in households with guns in 2018, according to the General Social Survey, which is conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. And roughly 20 percent of gun owners — about 12 million people — identify as liberal, according to results from survey between 2014 and 2018. More than a third describe themselves as moderates while just under 45 percent call themselves conservatives.
The liberals who are opposed to gun control are at odds with a broader trend among Democrats when it comes to tougher firearms restrictions. According to polling by Gallup last year, 88 percent of Democrats said laws governing firearm sales should be made more strict, up from 77 percent in 2015 and 63 percent in 2010.
The political dilemma for Democratic gun owners grew when former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg entered the campaign. Bloomberg heads one of the most politically active gun control groups and has spent vast sums of money pushing his agenda in races around the country.
All the Democrats running for president are seeking one form or another of gun restrictions. But current frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders finds himself under attack for being too pro gun. Bloomberg launched an attack on Sanders' gun record this week, noting he had been endorsed by the NRA earlier in his career and balked at expanding background checks.
The candidates brought up guns on several occasions during Tuesday's debate in South Carolina, held in the city that lived through the mass murder of nine black church goers by a white supremacist in 2015.
David Yamane, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University who studies American gun culture, said polarization over the issue began in the 1970s in the wake of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which was enacted amid national outcry over the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Subsequent efforts by the NRA to seize on gun rights as a partisan issue only heightened the divide.
Before that, gun politics wasn't divided so sharply on political lines. One Democratic president, John F. Kennedy, was actually a member of the National Rifle Association.
Liberal gun owners, Yamane said, are generally newer to gun ownership and are less likely to be the stereotypical face of gun owners: older, white men. It's a dynamic that doesn’t “get as much play because the public/political ‘face’ of gun owners for many remains Wayne LaPierre,” the firebrand leader of the NRA.
Yamane himself is part of the Democratic gun-loving public, describing himself as a “liberal snowflake gun owner."
Kat Ellsworth, from Chicago, was firmly against firearms and favored gun-control until just a few years ago, when she went with a friend to a gun range and discovered a love for guns and shooting.
As she looks at the upcoming election, she’s torn as a self-described liberal and registered Democrat. With the Illinois primary approaching in mid-March, she is leaning toward Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, two candidates whose gun-control positions she doesn't believe are all that rigid.
“They were both slower than others to develop and make public their proposals for gun control policies, and I believe the reason is that both of them are really not as anti-gun as they are forced to show publicly,” she said.
If she could give Democratic presidential candidates any advice, she said, it would be this: “I feel like they would really gain a lot more votes if they would just drop the gun-control crap.”
The Democratic stance on guns is directed at multiple constituencies — suburban voters horrified by school shootings and urban voters fed up with gun violence in their neighborhoods.
When it comes to black voters, Kevin Dixie sees guns in a different light. An African American, Dixie grew up in St. Louis and experienced firsthand the toll of gun violence.
He believes that gun rights are about empowering communities of color and ensuring freedom is available to every American, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender. He runs a firearms training business called No Other Choice.
One of his aims is to turn around the perception of firearms, especially within minority and urban communities, as being something that is only for criminals or police.
“This is much deeper than guns,” Dixie said. “It’s not just about owning a gun, it’s about maintaining your freedom, and we shouldn’t be politicizing it."
Less than a week before the California primary, Smith is she's still unsure who she'll vote for. At the top of her list are Sanders and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, two candidates she believes gun owners could at least have a conversation with. But she worries about the impact a Bloomberg candidacy might have on the Democratic field, pushing them even more vigorously toward gun-control.
“I think liberal gun owners have no good choice here,” she said.
I'm a liberal gun owner as well, but I don't feel any particular sense of conflict on the issue. I think something has to be done in this country to change the violence trajectory so some common sense limitations are fine with me. An outright ban on handguns, rifles and shotguns will never happen (Heller v DC assured that for our lifetimes), so nothing else in any of the reforms I have seen bothers me.
I'm a liberal gun owner as well, but I don't feel any particular sense of conflict on the issue. I think something has to be done in this country to change the violence trajectory so some common sense limitations are fine with me. An outright ban on handguns, rifles and shotguns will never happen (Heller v DC assured that for our lifetimes), so nothing else in any of the reforms I have seen bothers me.
It comes down to people wanting to be 1 issue voters or not. If you agree with a majority of things but you vote for the guy you think is a sexist, racist, idiot because of guns (or abortion for that matter) you are at the very least an idiot.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Like many liberals, Lara Smith considers herself a feminist, favors abortion rights and believes the nation’s immigration policies under the Trump administration have just been “vile.”
But when it comes to guns, Smith sounds more like a conservative: She opposes reviving the nation's assault weapons ban, enacting red-flag laws or creating a registry of firearms. The 48-year-old California lawyer owns a cache of firearms, from pistols to rifles such as the AR-15.
Smith and liberal gun owners like her face a quandary as voting in the Democratic primary intensifies with Super Tuesday next week. They are nervous about some of the gun control measures the Democratic candidates are pushing and are unsure who to trust on this issue.
“You’re alienating a huge part of your constituency,” Smith says of the Democratic field’s gun proposals. “You have a huge constituency that is looking for something different and when you are talking about restricting a right which is so different than everything else you talk about, you are being anti-liberal.”
Gun owners have long been seen as a solidly Republican voting bloc, but there are millions of Democrats who own firearms, too.
Many of them are feeling increasingly disillusioned by their party as it lurches toward the left on the Second Amendment, but they're also wary of President Donald Trump for a variety of reasons: his conservative leanings but a track record in office that has led to several gun restrictions, such as the banning of bump stocks.
An estimated 23 percent of Democrats nationally lived in households with guns in 2018, according to the General Social Survey, which is conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. And roughly 20 percent of gun owners — about 12 million people — identify as liberal, according to results from survey between 2014 and 2018. More than a third describe themselves as moderates while just under 45 percent call themselves conservatives.
The liberals who are opposed to gun control are at odds with a broader trend among Democrats when it comes to tougher firearms restrictions. According to polling by Gallup last year, 88 percent of Democrats said laws governing firearm sales should be made more strict, up from 77 percent in 2015 and 63 percent in 2010.
The political dilemma for Democratic gun owners grew when former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg entered the campaign. Bloomberg heads one of the most politically active gun control groups and has spent vast sums of money pushing his agenda in races around the country.
All the Democrats running for president are seeking one form or another of gun restrictions. But current frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders finds himself under attack for being too pro gun. Bloomberg launched an attack on Sanders' gun record this week, noting he had been endorsed by the NRA earlier in his career and balked at expanding background checks.
The candidates brought up guns on several occasions during Tuesday's debate in South Carolina, held in the city that lived through the mass murder of nine black church goers by a white supremacist in 2015.
David Yamane, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University who studies American gun culture, said polarization over the issue began in the 1970s in the wake of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which was enacted amid national outcry over the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Subsequent efforts by the NRA to seize on gun rights as a partisan issue only heightened the divide.
Before that, gun politics wasn't divided so sharply on political lines. One Democratic president, John F. Kennedy, was actually a member of the National Rifle Association.
Liberal gun owners, Yamane said, are generally newer to gun ownership and are less likely to be the stereotypical face of gun owners: older, white men. It's a dynamic that doesn’t “get as much play because the public/political ‘face’ of gun owners for many remains Wayne LaPierre,” the firebrand leader of the NRA.
Yamane himself is part of the Democratic gun-loving public, describing himself as a “liberal snowflake gun owner."
Kat Ellsworth, from Chicago, was firmly against firearms and favored gun-control until just a few years ago, when she went with a friend to a gun range and discovered a love for guns and shooting.
As she looks at the upcoming election, she’s torn as a self-described liberal and registered Democrat. With the Illinois primary approaching in mid-March, she is leaning toward Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, two candidates whose gun-control positions she doesn't believe are all that rigid.
“They were both slower than others to develop and make public their proposals for gun control policies, and I believe the reason is that both of them are really not as anti-gun as they are forced to show publicly,” she said.
If she could give Democratic presidential candidates any advice, she said, it would be this: “I feel like they would really gain a lot more votes if they would just drop the gun-control crap.”
The Democratic stance on guns is directed at multiple constituencies — suburban voters horrified by school shootings and urban voters fed up with gun violence in their neighborhoods.
When it comes to black voters, Kevin Dixie sees guns in a different light. An African American, Dixie grew up in St. Louis and experienced firsthand the toll of gun violence.
He believes that gun rights are about empowering communities of color and ensuring freedom is available to every American, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender. He runs a firearms training business called No Other Choice.
One of his aims is to turn around the perception of firearms, especially within minority and urban communities, as being something that is only for criminals or police.
“This is much deeper than guns,” Dixie said. “It’s not just about owning a gun, it’s about maintaining your freedom, and we shouldn’t be politicizing it."
Less than a week before the California primary, Smith is she's still unsure who she'll vote for. At the top of her list are Sanders and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, two candidates she believes gun owners could at least have a conversation with. But she worries about the impact a Bloomberg candidacy might have on the Democratic field, pushing them even more vigorously toward gun-control.
“I think liberal gun owners have no good choice here,” she said.
Not one explanation of why they believe there shouldn’t be “red flag laws” or why there shouldn’t be an assault weapons ban or a gun registry. If they’re “responsible” gun owners, what’s the issue for them? Nobody is going to take away their “freedom” and yet “there’s no other choice?” Sounds like gun nutters from the other side. Nothing can be done. Hopes and prayers.
Is Sanders campaign anchored to his Jewish identity?
talk about deflection. An overwhelming minority voted for m4a and chaos is talking about religion? Is chaos a Nazi because no nazis are running for the nomination? What the heck does any of that have to do with the fact that very few democrats have voted for m4a?
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Like many liberals, Lara Smith considers herself a feminist, favors abortion rights and believes the nation’s immigration policies under the Trump administration have just been “vile.”
But when it comes to guns, Smith sounds more like a conservative: She opposes reviving the nation's assault weapons ban, enacting red-flag laws or creating a registry of firearms. The 48-year-old California lawyer owns a cache of firearms, from pistols to rifles such as the AR-15.
Smith and liberal gun owners like her face a quandary as voting in the Democratic primary intensifies with Super Tuesday next week. They are nervous about some of the gun control measures the Democratic candidates are pushing and are unsure who to trust on this issue.
“You’re alienating a huge part of your constituency,” Smith says of the Democratic field’s gun proposals. “You have a huge constituency that is looking for something different and when you are talking about restricting a right which is so different than everything else you talk about, you are being anti-liberal.”
Gun owners have long been seen as a solidly Republican voting bloc, but there are millions of Democrats who own firearms, too.
Many of them are feeling increasingly disillusioned by their party as it lurches toward the left on the Second Amendment, but they're also wary of President Donald Trump for a variety of reasons: his conservative leanings but a track record in office that has led to several gun restrictions, such as the banning of bump stocks.
An estimated 23 percent of Democrats nationally lived in households with guns in 2018, according to the General Social Survey, which is conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. And roughly 20 percent of gun owners — about 12 million people — identify as liberal, according to results from survey between 2014 and 2018. More than a third describe themselves as moderates while just under 45 percent call themselves conservatives.
The liberals who are opposed to gun control are at odds with a broader trend among Democrats when it comes to tougher firearms restrictions. According to polling by Gallup last year, 88 percent of Democrats said laws governing firearm sales should be made more strict, up from 77 percent in 2015 and 63 percent in 2010.
The political dilemma for Democratic gun owners grew when former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg entered the campaign. Bloomberg heads one of the most politically active gun control groups and has spent vast sums of money pushing his agenda in races around the country.
All the Democrats running for president are seeking one form or another of gun restrictions. But current frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders finds himself under attack for being too pro gun. Bloomberg launched an attack on Sanders' gun record this week, noting he had been endorsed by the NRA earlier in his career and balked at expanding background checks.
The candidates brought up guns on several occasions during Tuesday's debate in South Carolina, held in the city that lived through the mass murder of nine black church goers by a white supremacist in 2015.
David Yamane, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University who studies American gun culture, said polarization over the issue began in the 1970s in the wake of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which was enacted amid national outcry over the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Subsequent efforts by the NRA to seize on gun rights as a partisan issue only heightened the divide.
Before that, gun politics wasn't divided so sharply on political lines. One Democratic president, John F. Kennedy, was actually a member of the National Rifle Association.
Liberal gun owners, Yamane said, are generally newer to gun ownership and are less likely to be the stereotypical face of gun owners: older, white men. It's a dynamic that doesn’t “get as much play because the public/political ‘face’ of gun owners for many remains Wayne LaPierre,” the firebrand leader of the NRA.
Yamane himself is part of the Democratic gun-loving public, describing himself as a “liberal snowflake gun owner."
Kat Ellsworth, from Chicago, was firmly against firearms and favored gun-control until just a few years ago, when she went with a friend to a gun range and discovered a love for guns and shooting.
As she looks at the upcoming election, she’s torn as a self-described liberal and registered Democrat. With the Illinois primary approaching in mid-March, she is leaning toward Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, two candidates whose gun-control positions she doesn't believe are all that rigid.
“They were both slower than others to develop and make public their proposals for gun control policies, and I believe the reason is that both of them are really not as anti-gun as they are forced to show publicly,” she said.
If she could give Democratic presidential candidates any advice, she said, it would be this: “I feel like they would really gain a lot more votes if they would just drop the gun-control crap.”
The Democratic stance on guns is directed at multiple constituencies — suburban voters horrified by school shootings and urban voters fed up with gun violence in their neighborhoods.
When it comes to black voters, Kevin Dixie sees guns in a different light. An African American, Dixie grew up in St. Louis and experienced firsthand the toll of gun violence.
He believes that gun rights are about empowering communities of color and ensuring freedom is available to every American, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender. He runs a firearms training business called No Other Choice.
One of his aims is to turn around the perception of firearms, especially within minority and urban communities, as being something that is only for criminals or police.
“This is much deeper than guns,” Dixie said. “It’s not just about owning a gun, it’s about maintaining your freedom, and we shouldn’t be politicizing it."
Less than a week before the California primary, Smith is she's still unsure who she'll vote for. At the top of her list are Sanders and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, two candidates she believes gun owners could at least have a conversation with. But she worries about the impact a Bloomberg candidacy might have on the Democratic field, pushing them even more vigorously toward gun-control.
“I think liberal gun owners have no good choice here,” she said.
Not one explanation of why they believe there shouldn’t be “red flag laws” or why there shouldn’t be an assault weapons ban or a gun registry. If they’re “responsible” gun owners, what’s the issue for them? Nobody is going to take away their “freedom” and yet “there’s no other choice?” Sounds like gun nutters from the other side. Nothing can be done. Hopes and prayers.
I read that article looking for the gun owner concerns. What was in the article about that?
Are they concerned they will not get to own machine guns? AK-47s?
Are they concerned that in the United States ex con can buy a gun? Someone with mental illness? How do we know if we don’t require background checks?
Are they concerned you can buy an assault weapon in a red state and drive into a blue state and slaughter hundreds of innocents?
If my passion or vice was directly causing the deaths of thousands, should I support no regulation?
Is Sanders campaign anchored to his Jewish identity?
talk about deflection. An overwhelming minority voted for m4a and chaos is talking about religion? Is chaos a Nazi because no nazis are running for the nomination? What the heck does any of that have to do with the fact that very few democrats have voted for m4a?
Post edited by Spiritual_Chaos on
"Mostly I think that people react sensitively because they know you’ve got a point"
Is Sanders campaign anchored to his Jewish identity?
talk about deflection. An overwhelming minority voted for m4a and chaos is talking about religion? Is chaos a Nazi because no nazis are running for the nomination? What the heck does any of that have to do with the fact that very few democrats have voted for m4a?
The downside to Americans if Bernie Sanders is Jewish: $0 The downside to Americans if Bernie Sanders is in support of M4A: $50 trillion
You seriously think voters are commenting more about Sanders' Jewishness in their voting right now than his M4A support? You seem to have completely missed what Lerxst is very reasonably suggesting: the socialist utopia you've been on here telling us that we all want (regardless of the plurality that polls show), is not actually wanted by everyone. I'll get ready now.
"And now, below, here's a fun GIF from Spiritual_Chaos"!
'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
Is Sanders campaign anchored to his Jewish identity?
talk about deflection. An overwhelming minority voted for m4a and chaos is talking about religion? Is chaos a Nazi because no nazis are running for the nomination? What the heck does any of that have to do with the fact that very few democrats have voted for m4a?
Damn gotta double quote myself. How many comments on here was I defending Bloomberg, as a Biden supporter knowing Bloomberg hurts Biden the most. Maybe I support Bloomberg not knowing HIS religion.
The chips get tough one day for Bernie and chaos resorts to religion. There’s a well earned screen name!
The downside to Americans if Bernie Sanders is Jewish: $0 The downside to Americans if Bernie Sanders is in support of M4A: $50 trillion
You seriously think voters are commenting more about Sanders' Jewishness in their voting right now than his M4A support? You seem to have completely missed what Lerxst is very reasonably suggesting: the socialist utopia you've been on here telling us that we all want (regardless of the plurality that polls show), is not actually wanted by everyone. I'll get ready now.
"And now, below, here's a fun GIF from Spiritual_Chaos"!
Thanks. I WANT what Bernie wants. I’m pointing out a small percentage of DEMOCRATS are voting for that.
I KNOW America is not ready to vote for that and the Dems will lose congress and the presidency if they run on anything appearing to be socialist.
The downside to Americans if Bernie Sanders is Jewish: $0 The downside to Americans if Bernie Sanders is in support of M4A: $50 trillion
You seriously think voters are commenting more about Sanders' Jewishness in their voting right now than his M4A support? You seem to have completely missed what Lerxst is very reasonably suggesting: the socialist utopia you've been on here telling us that we all want (regardless of the plurality that polls show), is not actually wanted by everyone. I'll get ready now.
"And now, below, here's a fun GIF from Spiritual_Chaos"!
Will have to find a GIF good enough to respond. There are so many options.
"Mostly I think that people react sensitively because they know you’ve got a point"
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Like many liberals, Lara Smith considers herself a feminist, favors abortion rights and believes the nation’s immigration policies under the Trump administration have just been “vile.”
But when it comes to guns, Smith sounds more like a conservative: She opposes reviving the nation's assault weapons ban, enacting red-flag laws or creating a registry of firearms. The 48-year-old California lawyer owns a cache of firearms, from pistols to rifles such as the AR-15.
Smith and liberal gun owners like her face a quandary as voting in the Democratic primary intensifies with Super Tuesday next week. They are nervous about some of the gun control measures the Democratic candidates are pushing and are unsure who to trust on this issue.
“You’re alienating a huge part of your constituency,” Smith says of the Democratic field’s gun proposals. “You have a huge constituency that is looking for something different and when you are talking about restricting a right which is so different than everything else you talk about, you are being anti-liberal.”
Gun owners have long been seen as a solidly Republican voting bloc, but there are millions of Democrats who own firearms, too.
Many of them are feeling increasingly disillusioned by their party as it lurches toward the left on the Second Amendment, but they're also wary of President Donald Trump for a variety of reasons: his conservative leanings but a track record in office that has led to several gun restrictions, such as the banning of bump stocks.
An estimated 23 percent of Democrats nationally lived in households with guns in 2018, according to the General Social Survey, which is conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. And roughly 20 percent of gun owners — about 12 million people — identify as liberal, according to results from survey between 2014 and 2018. More than a third describe themselves as moderates while just under 45 percent call themselves conservatives.
The liberals who are opposed to gun control are at odds with a broader trend among Democrats when it comes to tougher firearms restrictions. According to polling by Gallup last year, 88 percent of Democrats said laws governing firearm sales should be made more strict, up from 77 percent in 2015 and 63 percent in 2010.
The political dilemma for Democratic gun owners grew when former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg entered the campaign. Bloomberg heads one of the most politically active gun control groups and has spent vast sums of money pushing his agenda in races around the country.
All the Democrats running for president are seeking one form or another of gun restrictions. But current frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders finds himself under attack for being too pro gun. Bloomberg launched an attack on Sanders' gun record this week, noting he had been endorsed by the NRA earlier in his career and balked at expanding background checks.
The candidates brought up guns on several occasions during Tuesday's debate in South Carolina, held in the city that lived through the mass murder of nine black church goers by a white supremacist in 2015.
David Yamane, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University who studies American gun culture, said polarization over the issue began in the 1970s in the wake of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which was enacted amid national outcry over the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Subsequent efforts by the NRA to seize on gun rights as a partisan issue only heightened the divide.
Before that, gun politics wasn't divided so sharply on political lines. One Democratic president, John F. Kennedy, was actually a member of the National Rifle Association.
Liberal gun owners, Yamane said, are generally newer to gun ownership and are less likely to be the stereotypical face of gun owners: older, white men. It's a dynamic that doesn’t “get as much play because the public/political ‘face’ of gun owners for many remains Wayne LaPierre,” the firebrand leader of the NRA.
Yamane himself is part of the Democratic gun-loving public, describing himself as a “liberal snowflake gun owner."
Kat Ellsworth, from Chicago, was firmly against firearms and favored gun-control until just a few years ago, when she went with a friend to a gun range and discovered a love for guns and shooting.
As she looks at the upcoming election, she’s torn as a self-described liberal and registered Democrat. With the Illinois primary approaching in mid-March, she is leaning toward Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, two candidates whose gun-control positions she doesn't believe are all that rigid.
“They were both slower than others to develop and make public their proposals for gun control policies, and I believe the reason is that both of them are really not as anti-gun as they are forced to show publicly,” she said.
If she could give Democratic presidential candidates any advice, she said, it would be this: “I feel like they would really gain a lot more votes if they would just drop the gun-control crap.”
The Democratic stance on guns is directed at multiple constituencies — suburban voters horrified by school shootings and urban voters fed up with gun violence in their neighborhoods.
When it comes to black voters, Kevin Dixie sees guns in a different light. An African American, Dixie grew up in St. Louis and experienced firsthand the toll of gun violence.
He believes that gun rights are about empowering communities of color and ensuring freedom is available to every American, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender. He runs a firearms training business called No Other Choice.
One of his aims is to turn around the perception of firearms, especially within minority and urban communities, as being something that is only for criminals or police.
“This is much deeper than guns,” Dixie said. “It’s not just about owning a gun, it’s about maintaining your freedom, and we shouldn’t be politicizing it."
Less than a week before the California primary, Smith is she's still unsure who she'll vote for. At the top of her list are Sanders and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, two candidates she believes gun owners could at least have a conversation with. But she worries about the impact a Bloomberg candidacy might have on the Democratic field, pushing them even more vigorously toward gun-control.
“I think liberal gun owners have no good choice here,” she said.
Not one explanation of why they believe there shouldn’t be “red flag laws” or why there shouldn’t be an assault weapons ban or a gun registry. If they’re “responsible” gun owners, what’s the issue for them? Nobody is going to take away their “freedom” and yet “there’s no other choice?” Sounds like gun nutters from the other side. Nothing can be done. Hopes and prayers.
I m definitely not a fan of red flag laws. A very slippery slope imo.
Comments
Pearl Jam bootlegs:
http://wegotshit.blogspot.com
and also very weird how you have decided to go full on Trump and call a woman "moron" for speaking the truth.
Carlos Eire was born in Havana and is the T.L. Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University. His memoir “Waiting for Snow in Havana” won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2003.
Unfazed by the howls of indignation — honest or feigned — over his recent praise of communist Cuba, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has reaffirmed his admiration for the Castro regime’s social policies over the past few days. He has done so while simultaneously insisting that he’s “very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba.”
But can the achievements of any monstrous regime ever be praised? Is it really possible to separate the cruelty of any dictatorship from any of its policies? In the case of communist Cuba, a further question arises: Is it possible to believe any of the claims it makes for its own achievements, given that it generates its own statistics and promotes its own version of history?
One has to wonder how accurate the Sanders version of Fidel Castro’s literacy campaign really is — whether it truly was an unalloyed success, good and noble enough to justify the firing squads, torture chambers, gulags and other disagreeable inconveniences that were inseparable from it. And anyone who would care to do some fact-checking, as did The Post’s Glenn Kessler a few years ago, will quickly discover that the Sanders version of Cuban history is far from accurate.
First, consider the issue of literacy in Cuba before Castro came along. Was pre-Castro Cuba a nation of illiterates, and Castro’s literacy campaign as great an accomplishment as Sanders avers? Not at all. A Cuban census from 1953 found that 77.9 percent of the island’s total population was already literate, and that in urban areas the literacy rate was 88.9 percent: among the highest in Latin America and higher than in some benighted rural counties in the United States. Seven years later, in 1960, according to data compiled at Oxford University, the literacy rate for the entire island was 79 percent.
So the scope of Castro’s 1961 literacy campaign, much admired by Sanders, is more myth than reality. Moreover, the image of pre-Castro Cuba as a primitive society rescued from poverty and illiteracy by a so-called revolution is a deceitful caricature, one brilliantly conceived by the Castro regime to make its brutality seem less offensive — merely “authoritarian” rather than monstrous
Second, consider the real purpose of Cuba’s literacy campaign. Can it be totally disassociated from the repression that accompanied it, as Sanders would like you to think? Far from it. At the very same time that it was teaching illiterate Cubans to read, the Castro regime was busy stifling all freedom of expression. It banned any books that displeased it, shut down all newspapers and magazines, and flooded schools with texts that were pure propaganda. It turned each and every school on the island into an indoctrination camp in which no deviation from Marxist orthodoxy was ever allowed.
In other words, the literacy campaign was designed to enhance a totalitarian state’s control of its people. The fact that it lent a falsely benevolent sheen to Castro was an added bonus, but there is no denying that the Maximum Leader taught Cubans to read so that their thinking could be more carefully controlled by his propaganda machine.
Sanders and his fellow liberal-progressives are always careful to balance their praise of communist Cuba with some measure of disapproval for its “authoritarian” excesses, assuming that it is possible to balance these two contradictory attitudes toward repressive regimes or to isolate the social policies of any dictatorship from its brutality.
But there is willful blindness at work on the part of those who make such a specious distinction, as well as more than a smidgen of hypocrisy. Try to imagine Sanders or any other leftist ever insisting that it is “unfair” to deny the Third Reich praise for some of its accomplishments, such as the building of the Autobahn.
The “good” things Sanders finds in communist Cuba should seem immensely disturbing to Americans, even frightening. His vehemence in defending these “good” things, which in truth are hollow victories stained with blood, should also set off alarms, for this peculiar obsession reveals more than some character flaw.
Sanders’s insistence on finding positive things to say about Fidel Castro might be the clearest indication he has yet given American voters of his own sources of inspiration, and of his vision for the future of the United States.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
just remember that in July Bernie when you fall short of 50% and are asked to go home.
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/liberal-gun-owners-face-dilemma-193255043.html
Liberal gun owners face dilemma in 2020 field
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Like many liberals, Lara Smith considers herself a feminist, favors abortion rights and believes the nation’s immigration policies under the Trump administration have just been “vile.”
But when it comes to guns, Smith sounds more like a conservative: She opposes reviving the nation's assault weapons ban, enacting red-flag laws or creating a registry of firearms. The 48-year-old California lawyer owns a cache of firearms, from pistols to rifles such as the AR-15.
Smith and liberal gun owners like her face a quandary as voting in the Democratic primary intensifies with Super Tuesday next week. They are nervous about some of the gun control measures the Democratic candidates are pushing and are unsure who to trust on this issue.
“You’re alienating a huge part of your constituency,” Smith says of the Democratic field’s gun proposals. “You have a huge constituency that is looking for something different and when you are talking about restricting a right which is so different than everything else you talk about, you are being anti-liberal.”
Gun owners have long been seen as a solidly Republican voting bloc, but there are millions of Democrats who own firearms, too.
Many of them are feeling increasingly disillusioned by their party as it lurches toward the left on the Second Amendment, but they're also wary of President Donald Trump for a variety of reasons: his conservative leanings but a track record in office that has led to several gun restrictions, such as the banning of bump stocks.
An estimated 23 percent of Democrats nationally lived in households with guns in 2018, according to the General Social Survey, which is conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. And roughly 20 percent of gun owners — about 12 million people — identify as liberal, according to results from survey between 2014 and 2018. More than a third describe themselves as moderates while just under 45 percent call themselves conservatives.
The liberals who are opposed to gun control are at odds with a broader trend among Democrats when it comes to tougher firearms restrictions. According to polling by Gallup last year, 88 percent of Democrats said laws governing firearm sales should be made more strict, up from 77 percent in 2015 and 63 percent in 2010.
The political dilemma for Democratic gun owners grew when former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg entered the campaign. Bloomberg heads one of the most politically active gun control groups and has spent vast sums of money pushing his agenda in races around the country.
All the Democrats running for president are seeking one form or another of gun restrictions. But current frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders finds himself under attack for being too pro gun. Bloomberg launched an attack on Sanders' gun record this week, noting he had been endorsed by the NRA earlier in his career and balked at expanding background checks.
The candidates brought up guns on several occasions during Tuesday's debate in South Carolina, held in the city that lived through the mass murder of nine black church goers by a white supremacist in 2015.
David Yamane, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University who studies American gun culture, said polarization over the issue began in the 1970s in the wake of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which was enacted amid national outcry over the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Subsequent efforts by the NRA to seize on gun rights as a partisan issue only heightened the divide.
Before that, gun politics wasn't divided so sharply on political lines. One Democratic president, John F. Kennedy, was actually a member of the National Rifle Association.
Liberal gun owners, Yamane said, are generally newer to gun ownership and are less likely to be the stereotypical face of gun owners: older, white men. It's a dynamic that doesn’t “get as much play because the public/political ‘face’ of gun owners for many remains Wayne LaPierre,” the firebrand leader of the NRA.
Yamane himself is part of the Democratic gun-loving public, describing himself as a “liberal snowflake gun owner."
Kat Ellsworth, from Chicago, was firmly against firearms and favored gun-control until just a few years ago, when she went with a friend to a gun range and discovered a love for guns and shooting.
As she looks at the upcoming election, she’s torn as a self-described liberal and registered Democrat. With the Illinois primary approaching in mid-March, she is leaning toward Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, two candidates whose gun-control positions she doesn't believe are all that rigid.
“They were both slower than others to develop and make public their proposals for gun control policies, and I believe the reason is that both of them are really not as anti-gun as they are forced to show publicly,” she said.
If she could give Democratic presidential candidates any advice, she said, it would be this: “I feel like they would really gain a lot more votes if they would just drop the gun-control crap.”
The Democratic stance on guns is directed at multiple constituencies — suburban voters horrified by school shootings and urban voters fed up with gun violence in their neighborhoods.
When it comes to black voters, Kevin Dixie sees guns in a different light. An African American, Dixie grew up in St. Louis and experienced firsthand the toll of gun violence.
He believes that gun rights are about empowering communities of color and ensuring freedom is available to every American, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender. He runs a firearms training business called No Other Choice.
One of his aims is to turn around the perception of firearms, especially within minority and urban communities, as being something that is only for criminals or police.
“This is much deeper than guns,” Dixie said. “It’s not just about owning a gun, it’s about maintaining your freedom, and we shouldn’t be politicizing it."
Less than a week before the California primary, Smith is she's still unsure who she'll vote for. At the top of her list are Sanders and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, two candidates she believes gun owners could at least have a conversation with. But she worries about the impact a Bloomberg candidacy might have on the Democratic field, pushing them even more vigorously toward gun-control.
“I think liberal gun owners have no good choice here,” she said.
So, 66% refuse to accept a jewish president?
Why is that @Lerxst1992 ?
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
talk about deflection. An overwhelming minority voted for m4a and chaos is talking about religion? Is chaos a Nazi because no nazis are running for the nomination? What the heck does any of that have to do with the fact that very few democrats have voted for m4a?
Are they concerned they will not get to own machine guns? AK-47s?
Are they concerned that in the United States ex con can buy a gun? Someone with mental illness? How do we know if we don’t require background checks?
Are they concerned you can buy an assault weapon in a red state and drive into a blue state and slaughter hundreds of innocents?
If my passion or vice was directly causing the deaths of thousands, should I support no regulation?
The downside to Americans if Bernie Sanders is in support of M4A: $50 trillion
You seriously think voters are commenting more about Sanders' Jewishness in their voting right now than his M4A support? You seem to have completely missed what Lerxst is very reasonably suggesting: the socialist utopia you've been on here telling us that we all want (regardless of the plurality that polls show), is not actually wanted by everyone. I'll get ready now.
"And now, below, here's a fun GIF from Spiritual_Chaos"!
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
The chips get tough one day for Bernie and chaos resorts to religion. There’s a well earned screen name!
poll respondents are looking for “who has the best chance”
I think SC the state, not the commenter, has shown us who.
the same rules that benefit sander now and on super Tues - he’ll be complaining about at the convention when the rules will hurt him
i’m not sure if you remember this Obama fella, but we need African Americans to be energized to win. Clinton too. Bill.
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;-)