In response to the pathetic display of Gabby Giffords in her recent editorial in The New York Times and a Tweet by her after the defeat of the Manchin / Toomey Amendment yesterday [after which Little Barry threw a tantrum] Glenn Reynolds responded with a Tweet that stated what many of us felt:
@gabbygiffords Try more respect and reason, less emotional bullying next time.
— Instapundit.com (@instapundit) April 17, 2013
In her hapless and undignified statements, Giffords was merely following the Leftist Playbook, which condones the using of crime victims to further the Leftist Agenda. This wretched tactic is a favorite of Barack Hussein Obama, who has used it time and time again, but not as shamelessly as he has used the Mothers and Fathers of many of those children murdered at Newtown over the past several months — or when he out-and-out lied about his Mother and what she went through as she suffered from terminal cancer.
Glenn has been catching a lot of flak for what he wrote, but he’s not backing down.
And he shouldn’t.
And we should back him up and join him.
Dan Riehl puts it damn well:
What happened to Giffords is tragic and she deserves our compassion and support. But no personal tragedy should ever empower an individual to usurp the rights of others, most especially through the sort of emotional blackmail in which Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly now routinely engage. Frankly, it’s shameful, non-democratic and all but anti-American.
Giffords did not take to the NYTs because the U.S. Senate is in the hands of some gun lobby. She did it because she tried and failed to place the U.S. Senate in her own hands. I am genuinely sorry for her loss and any pain and suffering she has experienced, or continues to endure; however, one must not confuse sympathy with surrender. And it is precisely that, a surrender of sorts to her in terms of our own rights and freedoms, that Giffords has somehow managed to convince herself she’s entitled to assuage her personal suffering.
That’s not the case and all it would really accomplish is to extend Giffords’ own victim-hood, in the sense that the entire body politic would become victim to the pain and suffering now evidently driving her on in a self-centered, if not outright selfish and misguided quest to usurp the Constitutionally-protected liberties of others. Frankly, it’s high time people start speaking out about it and speaking up to her, too.
Indeed.
Kevin Williamson comments [worth quoting in full][tip of the fedora to Glenn]:
While Ms. Giffords certainly has my sympathy for the violence she suffered, it should be noted that being shot in the head by a lunatic does not give one any special grace to pronounce upon public-policy questions, nor does it give one moral license to call people “cowards” for holding public-policy views at variance with one’s own. Her childish display in the New York Times is an embarrassment.
It is sad and pitiful.
However, as Glenn points out, the Left In America may have overplayed their hand this time:
…This emotional bullying stuff just doesn’t seem to intimidate people on the right anymore. I guess when you’ve been called a racist every time you disagreed with Obama’s healthcare policy, such things lose their power.
We must not be afraid any longer of what the Left says about us. They are nothing but bullying little weasels, cowards who hide behind the calumnies they hurl like badly made spitballs.
George Patton said, ‘Do not take counsel of your fears’.
Andrew Breitbart said, ‘Just say “So?”‘
