DOUGLAS OLSON -- The lunatics, knaves, and fanatics who rule us

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The Olson file
 

The lunatics, knaves, and fanatics
who rule us

By DOUGLAS OLSON
 

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Very few people on Earth would not have empathized with Carolyn McCarthy in 1993. In one single moment of racial madness, the New York nurse/housewife's husband was killed and her son seriously injured in the "Long Island Railroad Massacre."

On that occasion, one Colin Ferguson, a Jamaican immigrant, opened fire on white and Asian passengers seated on a commuter train just as it crossed from New York City into Nassau County. He later explained that he did not want the incident to reflect badly on David Dinkins, the city's first black mayor. Six died and 19 were wounded in the close-quarters assault, which would have continued if three unarmed men had not wrestled Ferguson to the ground when he stopped to reload for the third time. The gun, a Ruger P-89 pistol, was legally purchased.

Notes were found on his person after the shooting that expressed hatred for whites, Asians, and "Uncle Tom" blacks.

Although he was taken into custody at the scene and more than a dozen witnesses identified him, Ferguson insisted that he had not done the shootings and that he was being framed by a mysterious black man living at his address who had stolen his gun while he was sleeping. Then he claimed that a white man had done it. "This is," he asserted, "a case of stereotyped victimization of a black man and the subsequent conspiracy to destroy him." Charged with 93 counts — although not, of course, with committing a "hate" crime — he conducted his own defense and was promptly sentenced to 200 years by a judge who denounced him as a "selfish, self-righteous coward."

Carolyn McCarthy, her life shattered by Ferguson, felt an urge to "do something." We might reasonably have expected someone in her situation to become an anti-immigration activist or victims' rights spokesman, or to seek tougher penalties for murderers — or even advocate better control of Negroes, just as many of those attacked by individual pit bulls or rottweilers demand restrictions on the entire breed.

Instead, McCarthy reacted by getting angry — not at the killer, but at the inanimate tool he used. Against all rationality, she channeled her anger and rage into the anti-gun movement.

Think about that for a moment. If someone's husband and child were killed in an automobile accident, and as a result she demanded that all cars be taken off the road, she would rightly be branded a lunatic. There is no difference between that theoretical case and this actual one — except that the media and an unfortunately sizeable segment of our slimy politicians are more than willing to use this terrible case to further their own selfish and sinister ends.

In 1995, McCarthy unsuccessfully lobbied Rep. Daniel Frisa (R-N.Y.) to vote against repeal of a ban on assault weapons. A nominal Republican at the time, McCarthy was a political ignoramus; she did not even know who House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt was. Angry over Frisa's rebuff, she naively approached the local Democratic party about running against him.

Democrats, who had been eyeing the seat but had no candidate, jumped at the opportunity to exploit the pathetic, deluded woman's misery for their party's benefit. A naturally sympathetic candidate in spite of her strident anti-gun rhetoric, McCarthy buried the incumbent by a 57-41 percent margin in the 1996 election.

Her irrational obsession still rules. In her congressional biography, McCarthy lists herself as "Nurse, 1964-93; Gun control activist, 1993-96." She has fought for mandatory trigger locks and has advocated fines for parents whose children find their handguns and show them in public. She wants jail terms for parents whose guns are used by their children to commit a crime. Although just a freshman legislator in 1997, she defeated a proposed amendment by longtime Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) to allow importation of World War II-era guns.

***

Unfortunately, Carolyn McCarthy is not unique in Congress. For every person there simply to enrich himself in money and prestige, there is at least one who has a more ominous purpose.

What sane person would spend millions of dollars of his personal fortune to win a position that pays $160,000 a year? Senators John Edwards (D-N.C.), Jon Corzine (D-N.J.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va.) did. Such people are obviously bored with money, and have no challenges left except a lust for power, which it is far too easy to purchase in America today.

An astonishing number of people apparently believe that Congress is a family business, and that they have a right to be there because a parent or other relative "served." The following current members were preceded in office by husbands, parents, or siblings: Reps. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), Mary Bono (R-Calif.), Lois Capps (D-Calif.), Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.), Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), Sander Levin (D-Mich.), Mark Udall (D-Col.), Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.), John Dingell (D-Mich.), William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), Walter Jones, Jr. (R-N.C.), Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), Harold Ford, Jr. (D-Tenn.), John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-Tenn.), and Charles Gonzalez (D-Tex.); and Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), and Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.).

Then there are the crusaders, determined to impose their own prejudices and obsessions on the American people — McCarthy, Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), "Holocaust survivor" Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.), most members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and far too many others. As H.L. Mencken once observed, "The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic."

Congress is a cesspool — always has been, always will be. Don't vote. It only encourages the bastards.

October 27, 2004

© 2004 Douglas Olson. All rights reserved.


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