Shooting- Possible News Error

Arizona Outdoorsman / AZOD

Re: Possible News Error
1/20/06

Dear Editor,

I think your news coverage is using terms such as "left" or "right wing" in a misleading way.

Briefly, when you represent politics as a straight line, to the left is socialism and to the right is fascism.

So when you describe a political effort as coming from the left, for example, you're really using a euphemism for some degree of socialist-style governance. Socialism is an avowed arch enemy of the American Dream.

The American Dream -- freedom -- stands precisely between the total state-control models of the far left and right. To the extent we sway either left or right, we weaken the very thing that makes us good. This is lost in reporting that broad brushes things as being simply left or right.

Our central ideals of rule by the people, limited government, delegated powers, ownership of property and the fruits of your labors, these make America great, a shining beacon still drawing immigrants. They are also liberties detested and lost as you stray left or right from the American center.

Now, "leftist" for example, does accurately portray many political entities you cover, like the welfare state, socialized medicine, government schools and such. "Right" however, is often incorrectly attached to things in the middle, for an interesting reason. An example illustrates.

Owning guns and lots of ammunition is typically characterized as right wing. But if you think about it, in this country, owning guns, ammo and knowing how to use them is precisely the baseline, the American way, practiced nationwide since that right appeared in our charter in 1791. This right to arms is something you do not and cannot have under left-wing socialism or right-wing fascism. It helps define those autocracies -- a powerless subservient populace.

To the extent any socialist- or fascist-leaning forces are active, they eat away at American principles balanced between them, in this example, the (some would say wild) freedom to keep and bear arms.

If the American left had its way, no one would have guns but the police, a classically socialist position. But here’s the rub: why doesn't the so-called right-wing also seek to disarm the populace, as fascism dictates? How can the strongest support for gun ownership actually come from the "radical right"?

Because those people aren't the right wing. Defending gun rights is centrist, not fascist. It gives people power, not government. The right to arms, like firm religious belief, a strong moral sense, reducing taxation, love of country -- things often portrayed as "right" are the classic American model, right in the middle. The media are getting it wrong. Here's why.

From the left, where most of America's anti-gun-rights sentiment resides, the American Dream is indeed to their right, but that doesn't make it "the" right.

The moderate, God-fearing, gun-toting, compassionate citizens with a set of moral values are central, the What-America-Is-All-About component, not right wing.

You see, it's not about the left against the right. The left is fighting the middle. America faces a battle between its core values, and socialism. And now we've come full circle -- because the arch enemy of socialism is us.

Walking the dynamic road between the left and the right, our American way is jeopardized every time a news outlet sugar coats a socialist-leaning (or less common but equally dangerous fascist-leaning) piece of politics by calling it merely left or right.

And characterizing fundamental elements of the American Dream as right wing, because they are to the right of the left, is simply inaccurate, not a proper policy for good journalism or reasoned debate, and should be abandoned.
(597)

Alan Korwin, Author
Supreme Court Gun Cases

The Uninvited Ombudsman

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Alan Korwin
Bloomfield Press
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