Everyone Needs to Read This Piece

The New Authoritarians by Alex Gutentag, Tablet Magazine, March 29, 2022.

Excerpt:

It is only by painting themselves as victims fighting against their oppressors that college-educated professionals can rationalize their own authoritarianism. The cult of victimhood conjures the specter of fascism, misogyny, or white nationalism in order to justify blatantly repressive measures. This is why, for example, the professional class consistently portrayed unvaccinated people as Trump supporters even though in many major cities vaccine passports mostly excluded Democrat-voting Black residents from indoor establishments. Under the guise of combatting anti-vax extremism, woke liberal politicians embraced segregation and the exact kind of “systemic racism” they claimed to oppose. While considering themselves to be on the side of righteousness and rationality, commentators called for hospitals to reject unvaccinated patients, and some even celebrated their deaths. This is precisely the type of punitive, regressive tendency that progressives warned would be a consequence of Trump’s election.

RTWT.

And Then There Were 23

Alabama joined the family of Constitutional Carry states, or at least it will as soon as the law goes into effect on January 1, 2023, and it is joined by Ohio where Gov. Mike Dewine signed their bill into law, effective June 12, 2022. Indiana’s law is sitting on its Governor’s desk waiting to be signed.

Slow and steady wins the race.

And Then There Were 22

Here’s the current map of progress in concealed carry law nationwide. At present there are 21 “Constitutional Carry” states, 21 “Shall Issue” states, 8 “May Issue” states, and none that are “No-Issue” by law (though try to get one in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, etc.)

And now there will be 22 “Constitutional Carry” states: Alabama House Approves Bill to Let People Carry Concealed Handguns without a Permit. Of course there’s always the wailing of the gun-ban crowd about Wild-West shootouts in K-Mart over blue-light specials:

Susan Kirkpatrick, a volunteer with the Alabama chapter of Moms Demand Action, said in statement last month as the bill advanced through the Republican-dominated legislature that lawmakers “ignored research, reason, and expertise — choosing violence over public safety and jeopardizing the wellbeing of our communities.”

“This vote has moved us another step in the opposite direction of where we should be headed,” she added.

Which has never happened anywhere “shall-issue” has passed. But they can’t give up on it. It’s all they have.