Piers Morgan Threatens to Self-Deport

My dad always had guns in the house, most memorably a WWII-era M1 carbine, with a small-capacity clip kept in his top dresser drawer in the master bedroom. And he was a die-hard Cold War Democrat. He's gone now, but I doubt he'd be pleased with the left's ignominious child-death exploitation and its depraved push for extreme gun control measures. In his last few years, when he was in his 80's and 90's, my dad kept a small handgun on the pillow next to him while he slept. He had it just sitting right there. He felt safer with it.

Anyway, I'm just thinking about this while reading Piers Morgan's commentary at London's Daily Mail, "Deport me? If America won't change its crazy gun laws... I may deport myself says Piers Morgan" (at Memeorandum):

I have fired guns only once in my life, on a stag party to the Czech capital Prague a few years ago when part of the itinerary included a trip to an indoor shooting range. For three hours, our group were let loose on everything from Magnum 45 handguns and Glock pistols, to high-powered ‘sniper’ rifles and pump-action shotguns.

It was controlled, legal, safe and undeniably exciting. But it also showed me, quite demonstrably, that guns are killing machines.

Rarely has the hideous effect of a gun been more acutely laid bare than at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, two weeks ago – when a deranged young man called Adam Lanza murdered 20 schoolchildren aged six and seven, as well as six adults, in a sickening rampage.

He gets all whiney and admits that losing his cool with gun rights advocate Larry Pratt triggered the massive public relations campaign against him. Boo hoo. What a freakin' baby. A baby who wants to confiscate guns:

President Obama seems to agree it’s time for action. After four years of doing precisely nothing about gun control in America, he finally snapped after Sandy Hook and said he’s keen to pursue a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. And he wants a closure of the absurd loopholes that mean 40 per cent of all gun sales in America currently have no background checks whatsoever – meaning any crackpot or criminal can get their hands on whatever they want.

These measures, which will be resisted every step of the way, won’t stop all gun crime. Nor all mass shootings. There are too many guns out there, and too many criminals and mentally deranged people keen to use them. But the measures will at least make a start. And they will signal an intent to tackle this deadly scourge on American life.

Obama should follow up by launching a Government buy-back for all existing assault weapons in circulation (as worked successfully in Los Angeles last week). I would go further, confiscating the rest and enforcing tough prison sentences on those who still insist on keeping one.

Either you ban these assault weapons completely, and really mean it, or you don’t.

It won't be just "assault" weapons, but progressives won't tell you that.

Continue reading.

At the essay's last line Morgan declares that he'd consider deporting himself if the laws don't change to reflect his decidedly un-American outlook.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, brother.

BONUS: A must-see entry at This Ain't Hell, "OK, CNN, you’re disqualified from the gun discussion."

UPDATE: EBL links, "Remember Piers Morgan is laughing all the way to the bank by making money off the blood of children." Thanks!

Erik Loomis Implosion: Do You Need a Ph.D. in Historical Dildology?

Robert Stacy McCain rips Professor Erik Loomis, who, before deleting his Twitter feed, was bragging about the awesomeness of dildo history. See, "Herbert Marcuse, Wile E. Coyote and the Auto-Beclownment of Erik Loomis, Ph.D":

The epic saga of University of Rhode Island Assistant Professor of History Erik Loomis shall live long in blogospheric lore. Twitchy is taking a victory lap over the professor’s unfortunate metaphorical seppuku: He had to delete his Twitter account, but not before Tweeting this:

“I love teaching books on the history of sexuality. I talked about dildos in a completely appropriate way in class today.”

Yeah: The taxpayers of Rhode Island (and the parents of university students) are paying Erik Loomis to teach kids the history of dildos.

Do you need a Ph.D. to do that? Where do you get a doctoral degree in Historical Dildology? Are there federal research grants available?

Humor aside, Instapundit exposes Loomis’s pretzel logic:

The anti-NRA syllogism seems to work this way: (1) Something bad happened; (2) I hate you; so (3) It’s your fault.

This is how people “think” when the object is not to find truth, but to justify their own prejudices. This is the dangerous logic of scapegoating. The characteristic viciousness of the Left stems from a radical certainty of their own moral and intellectual superiority and, by the obverse, the inferiority of the Right...

More at the link.

My previous entries on that violent idiot are here.

'Speaking out is one thing, calling for someone to be killed is another thing entirely...'

Professor Erik Loomis has deleted his Twitter account, but the backlash against him isn't slowing down.

Loomis' problem isn't just the one tweet calling for Wayne LaPierre's head on a pike. It's his entire personal footprint online. He's showed himself over and over again to be a vocal advocate for violent responses to political opponents, even retweeting specific calls for murder. Reading back over at the comments at Campus Reform, Sarah Spooner Curran, a moderate, explains how Loomis crossed the line:

Another embarrasement from RI. And another democrat wolf trying to wear sheeps clothing. Why does he go straight for the divisive card, suggesting that all NRA members must be republicans? I thought a college prof would be more thoughtful, as an RI taxpayer I do not want him teaching my children hate. A terrible thing happened, but I think we first must look at mental health issues and reforms before storming the doors of the nra, looking to lay blame on them. Mentally ill people need help, and parents need resources to help them. We need to also consider as a society how much we want to restrict ourselves, and while I agree that I see no need for a person not in the service/police to ever have a semi automatic weapon, I am not willing to say we should ban all gun ownership. I have a family member who is an avid sportsman, and is a member of the nra, and is the furthest thing from a "terrorist". URI needs to take a long hard look at mr loomis, for speaking out is one thing, calling for someone to be killed is another thing entirely.

There's lots more comments at the link, including some who've contacted the university's administration. Considering how Lawyers, Guns and Money is implicated, no doubt there's some karmic burn at work here. These people dish out the most vicious hate day after day and act with impunity, and now it's coming back to bite on Loomis, and hard. It doesn't look good for him at this point. He deleted his Twitter account and all kinds of people are contacting his university. The police visited him. It can't be fun, but you reap what you sow and in this case he's got a long trail of violent comments, advocating murder of his opponents. That's over the line for most people.

Again, check that Twitchy curation to recall the depravity, "University of Rhode Island professor’s retweet: Murder anyone who thinks teachers should be armed; Update: Police met with prof."

Plus, there's a Memeorandum thread linking Leslie Eastman at Williams Jacobson's College Insurrection, "Rhode Island prof demands NRA chief's “head on a stick” (Update - deletes Twitter account)." Also at Legal Insurrection, "Violent rhetoric for we, but not for thee (Update – Twitter account deleted)."

See Instapundtit as well, "MORE WITH THE anti-gun anger issues," and "ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC."

More at The Other McCain, "Is It ‘Metaphor’ to Suggest Erik Loomis Should Be Sodomized by Orangutangs? UPDATE: Is Professor ‘Head on a Stick’ Now Under State Police Protection?"

Well, I suspect he got a warning from the police, although the way it's going I wouldn't be too careful about some right-wing crazies showing up in that neck of the woods. Some folks might not take too kindly to Loomis' threats. The guy should be more careful.

Expect updates...

Obama and Progressives Exploit Child Killings to Advance Far-Left Agenda

Let's be clear about some things.

The response on the left to Newtown has been unanimous. Before the facts were known ghouls from every segment of the far-left political establishment went to work, exploiting the dead --- before families had even collected their loved ones --- and pushed to confiscate the guns of law-abiding citizens and to strip them of their constitutional rights to bear arms. This is not the odd left-wing wacko. This is the entire Democrat establishment from the president on down. And the politics is getting as extreme as I've seen in some time, and that's saying a lot considering how bad things have gotten since Barack Hussein's election in 2008.

Radical historian Erik Loomis is doubling-down on his attacks on the NRA and is upping the ante with calls to repeal the Second Amendment:

The NRA pushes for policies that make it complicit in mass murders in the US and Mexico. Repeal the 2nd Amendment.
— Erik Loomis (@ErikLoomis) December 18, 2012

It turns out that Loomis is getting some hard push-back after his calls for the assassination of the NRA president, discussed here. And now this idiot has written a post so stupid that it genuinely calls into question this man's qualifications, and his sanity, "On Metaphors and Violence." Loomis is blaming everyone else for his outrageous F-Bomb Twitter tirade. His tweets were filled with all kinds of violent agitation, retweeting calls for death to gun rights supporters, as this Twitchy curation shows, "University of Rhode Island professor’s retweet: Murder anyone who thinks teachers should be armed; Update: Police met with prof." Pretty much all of Loomis' violent tweets at that link, plus an apt observation:

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the need for access to mental health services. We hope Loomis seeks the help he so obviously needs.

For sure.

But again, it's the hardline progressive agenda that's the source of such violent ideological outbursts. Here's IBD's commentary on the president's statements at the Newtown vigil, "Obama Call For Change Exploits School Massacre":

By using the massacre in Newtown, Conn., to fire up the left's anti-liberty agenda, President Obama and other prominent liberal Democrats are taking Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's infamous maxim — "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" — to new depths.

At a Sunday night prayer vigil in Newtown, the president delivered words that on their face appear soothing, hope-filled and decisive — exactly what's expected of presidential leadership. "These tragedies must end," he said. "And to end them, we must change."

But when Obama repeats that single-worded slogan from his presidential campaign, we know what kind of "change" he wants.

Instantly after the attack, New York City Rep. Jerry Nadler declared war on the National Rifle Association: "We have to go to war against the people who enable the gun violence, the people who stop us from keeping guns out of the hands of mentally unstable people, of felons, and that means the NRA leadership."

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, proposing a massive package of federal gun-control measures, appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday and declared, "We don't need people carrying guns in public places."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is introducing an assault weapons ban, and second-ranking Senate Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois announced there will be Senate hearings on gun control.

Beyond banning assault weapons, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat Charles Schumer mulled limiting clips to 10 rounds and acting to keep guns from the mentally unstable. Schumer's laughable idea of compromise with the right is to "admit that there is a Second Amendment right to bear arms" — which would be kind of hard to deny since the Supreme Court's 2008 Heller decision confirmed it.

All this amounts to an attempt to take political advantage of the butchery of children. But Anders Breivik's slaughter of 69 attendees of a youth camp in heavily gun-controlled Norway last year shows the ineffectiveness of gun-ban laws, as does the violent crime in the big U.S. cities — such as Bloomberg's New York and Emanuel's Chicago — with the strictest gun control.

Indeed, as criminologists Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser found in an exhaustive 2007 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy study of gun laws and violence rates in the U.S. and Europe, "many high gun-ownership nations have much lower murder rates" than low gun-ownership-countries.

As the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin notes, "liberals' religious-like faith in government and in the ability of legislation to control and even perfect the human condition" is no protection against mass murderers, whose crimes do "not seem to be affected by the economy or by law enforcement strategies."

As you can see, the gun control fanatics are having an orgiastic outburst of gun confiscation fervor. I've been posting on freaks such as MSNBC's Ed Schultz and the stupid faux conservative David Frum. And Sunday's "Face the Nation" was a veritable who's who of fanatical anti-gun zealots.

Their program has the imprimatur of the man at the top of the left's political hierarchy, and the sick exploitation lobby goes down from the MSNBC journalists spouting editorial points while purportedly reporting the news, to the academic grandstanders among the left's professoriate, to the Democrats in Congress hot off the news pushing for new legislation, to the left's ghouls on Twitter trying to silence reasonable comments on the right to bear arms, and to the ASFL fever-swamp bloggers pathetically pushing the left's disgusting talking points.

This is a truly depraved time in this country. The threat to liberty and goodness is on the left. The country needs to mourn after these tragedies. And we need to think about how mental health services intertwine with the right to bear arms. But blanket calls to ban guns and strip Second Amendment rights from law-abiding Americans is pure political extremism, sick and reprehensible left-wing political extremism.

Added: At Twitchy, "Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis deletes his Twitter account."

The epitome of an Adult Sick Fuck Loser. Pray the dude gets the help he needs before he goes off on someone.

Radical History Professor Erik Loomis Calls for Assassination of NRA's Wayne LaPierre

This idiot gets more violent every time.

At Campus Reform, "Professor calls for assassination of NRA CEO."

Dear Republicans, Do you know the definition of family values? It's not having our kids FUCKING SHOT AT SCHOOL!! Fuck the NRA.
— Erik Loomis (@ErikLoomis) December 14, 2012

Also at the College Fix, "PROFESSOR’S TWEETS SEEK NRA CEO’S ‘HEAD ON A STICK’."

Loomis is yet another objectively bad person, a leftist literally pocked through with visceral hatred. (And right at home with his fellow ASFLs* at Lawyers, Guns and Money.)

PREVIOUSLY: "Erik Loomis, University of Rhode Island History Professor, Calls for 'Decades-Long Fight to the Death' Against Conservatives." He's obviously not kidding.

* "Adult sick-fuck loser" (cf. Amy Alkon).

David Montgomery, 1927-2011

David Montgomery, one of the leading labor historians of his generation, passed away this morning at the age of 84.

I got to know Montgomery's work as a graduate student. The Fall of the House of Labor was one of the most brilliant--and daunting--things I read as a first-year graduate student.  I don't think I ever had any aspirations to be a labor historian, but I remember feeling after reading Montgomery's book that I would simply be incapable of producing anything like that.  The sheer amount of knowledge about the particulars of various late nineteenth-century industrial trades was staggering to me.

I got to know David himself when he and I were among the founders of Historians Against the War (HAW).  Though David's academic work alone is enough to seal his reputation as a major figure in our profession, he also distinguished himself as an activist.  When I first met David, I remember being struck by what an extraordinarily down-to-earth and practical person he was (qualities which were, frankly, sometimes absent from my generation of academic leftists).  Getting to work with David was one of the great pleasures of my years in HAW. 

I heard the news of his passing in an e-mail communication to the HAW membership that included this nice recollection from one of our first co-chairs, Van Gosse:

David wrote the founding statement of HAW, huddling in a small group at the end of our first meeting, at the AHA in January 2003 in Chicago.  He was a very active member of the Steering Committee for some years, always a reasonable, steadying person, but also always up for more action.  He will be much, much missed.  David Montgomery, Presente!

There aren't many obituaries up yet, but there's a nice piece by Jon Wiener about David Montgomery at The Nation.

Tim's Light Reading (9-15-2011)

1. Rocky Balboa and America's Mid-1970s Identity Crisis

Ted McAllister reflects on Rocky as a film having more meaning than we might otherwise attribute to it. Here's a part of McAllister's conclusion:

Audiences could identify with the film as it at once gave expression to the frustrations and the ideals of many Americans—it pointed to what had gone wrong with the nation even as it pointed toward the ideals Americans invested in their nation. In 1976 many people yearned for a renewed sense of pride in the United States even as they had come to distrust their government and the many elites who, they believed, had brought it to ruin. In the coming years many Americans looked for leaders who understood their point of view, who could take America out of the hands of various elites, and who could project an image of a strong and prosperous America. This new populism made possible a political realignment that sundered the New Deal coalition that had dominated American politics since 1936.

As you can see from the last line, a large part of McAllister's essay deals with the 1970s conservative populism. He also relates the film to the American Bicentennial celebration.

2. The Meaning of Wal-Mart

An old colleague from my days at Loyola Chicago, Mark Long (now a history instructor at the University of Central Florida), reminded me of this excellent piece, appearing in 2004 in The New York Review of Books, on Wal-Mart's place in the history of labor and business. After reading the review, authored by Simon Head, I was struck by how it captured---nay captures---a large slice of the meaning of Wal-Mart to our society. Sure, the article is mostly negative, ignoring the company's ability to bring us "goods" at low prices. But that's my experience and memory of the company.

3. A History of Historians in the Public Sphere

This might deserve a post unto itself, but here is an essay by Thomas Bender on historians' past presence, and role, in the public sphere.

4. Long-form Reading, Students, and Teaching

I've been pondering, in a low-level way over the past few weeks, Alan Jacobs' take on the decline of "long-form reading" among students. While thinking about Jacobs I ran across this reply. Lee Konstantinou fairly characterizes, I think, Jacobs argument, and offers a reasoned appeal for action rather than the fatalistic sense of inaction---of abandonment---at which Jacobs arrives. I think Jacobs is trying as much to understand his own loss and renewed enthusiasm for long-form reading (from "deep attention" to "hyper-attention" and back again, through a Kindle of all things!) as his students' issues, but Konstantinou still generally gets Jacobs right. Here's a provocative slice from Jacobs' piece (bolds mine):

Over the past 150 years, it has become increasingly difficult to extricate reading from academic expectations; but I believe that such extrication is necessary. Education is and should be primarily about intellectual navigation, about—I scruple not to say it—skimming well, and reading carefully for information in order to upload content. Slow and patient reading, by contrast, properly belongs to our leisure hours.

Yes, I know that the word "school" derives from scholia, meaning leisure. I have tried that one on my students, with no more success than anyone else who has ever tried that one on students. When we say that education is a leisure activity, we simply mean that you can only pursue education if you are temporarily freed from the responsibility of providing yourself with food and shelter. Maybe this freedom comes from your parents; maybe it comes from loans that you're going to devote a good many years to repaying. But somebody is buying you time to read, think, and study. This is not just a legitimate but a vital point, one that every student really should remember. But it can only be misleading and frustrating—trust me, I've learned from experience—to call this leisure, because leisure for us has come to mean "what we do in our spare time simply because we want to." From this kind of leisurely encounter, education, however wonderful, must be distinguished.

5. Herbert Butterfield

Some professional historians may know Butterfield's name because of the term "Whig history"---the fallacious tendency of nineteenth-century historians (and some today) to see all history, and political history in particular, as progressing to some particular present point (i.e. as having a teleology). However, this review of Michael Bentley's The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield (Cambridge University Press, 2011) reveals the latter as a much more intriguing character than one might suspect. Butterfield did publish other works (not as much as he wanted), but also caused a scandal due to a love affair. - TL

Bowling Alone or Shock Doctrine?

I am not a social scientist nor a political economist, but the battles over union rights in an age of (what) anxiety seem to raise that age-old question of whether Americans are, at base, individualistic or communal. Robert Putnam argued in 2000 in his book Bowling Alone that Americans were impoverished in terms of social capital. In other words, we didn't want to hang out together, not in labor unions, not at bowling leagues (the photo to the left is a bowling alley laid low).

In her recent book, Naomi Klein suggests that in times of disaster, measures that would otherwise be relatively unthinkable become acceptable to large swaths of the public--or as Klein writes here: "using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- [free marketers] achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy."

Clearly, struggles in Madison, Columbus and Indianapolis have shown that Americans are not faced with a choice simply between being an individual or being part of a community. Yet, in the flurry of commentary about the impasse between governors and their state employees, what do we make of observations like the one detailed at PEW that Americans don't like unions or big business? I know there is the American allergy to "bigness" in the abstract and that scores of books have now been written on the left's ineffective attempts to awaken the people to their plight. But who out of Putnum or Klein has come closer to the key for understanding this cyclical problem?

Bowling Alone or Shock Doctrine?

I am not a social scientist nor a political economist, but the battles over union rights in an age of (what) anxiety seem to raise that age-old question of whether Americans are, at base, individualistic or communal. Robert Putnam argued in 2000 in his book Bowling Alone that Americans were impoverished in terms of social capital. In other words, we didn't want to hang out together, not in labor unions, not at bowling leagues (the photo to the left is a bowling alley laid low).

In her recent book, Naomi Klein suggests that in times of disaster, measures that would otherwise be relatively unthinkable become acceptable to large swaths of the public--or as Klein writes here: "using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- [free marketers] achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy."

Clearly, struggles in Madison, Columbus and Indianapolis have shown that Americans are not faced with a choice simply between being an individual or being part of a community. Yet, in the flurry of commentary about the impasse between governors and their state employees, what do we make of observations like the one detailed at PEW that Americans don't like unions or big business? I know there is the American allergy to "bigness" in the abstract and that scores of books have now been written on the left's ineffective attempts to awaken the people to their plight. But who out of Putnum or Klein has come closer to the key for understanding this cyclical problem?