Image via WikipediaYou may not agree with him, and I don't always agree with what he says, but I appreciate Maher's opinion and sense of humor and he quite often says exactly what I am thinking-- albeit a lot more eloquently.
Leno asked Maher for his take on the recent tragedy in Arizona, where 18 people were shot, six killed, and an assassination attempt was made on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, now in critical condition due to a gun shot wound to the head.
Maher's response was something I've been saying since this happened: something needs to be done about the way we embrace guns in this country. There is no reason anyone needs a clip that shoots so many rounds, as they're solely designed to kill lots and lots of people. That's all they're good for, and not too long ago it was illegal to sell or buy these "extended clips." They shouldn't be legal now. In fact, all of these assault weapons should be illegal.
Watch this video!
Another point that Bill Maher made was about how Democrats, and all Liberals, should make it their duty to reclaim patriotism. "Paying taxes is patriotic, making sure that every American has Health Care is patriotic..." and he's right.
What's not patriotic is wanting to pay no taxes but then having the audacity to complain about potholes on your roads and the length of time it takes the police to show up at your house. That's not patriotic. If you care about your country, you should pay your fair share. Hell, I don't mind paying my fair share and I don't even have a job, but I realize how important taxes are and all of the good social services they pay for.
I'm going to go off on a tangent, but this reminds me of an argument I got into with some person who said this oxymoron: "I'm socially liberal but I'm fiscally conservative." Sorry, but that doesn't make sense.
If you support helping the public and ensuring that all kids in public schools get a decent education and that police officers make a good salary and poor families get a good meal every day, well you gotta pay for it somehow, right? How do you pay for all of those things? With taxes. Duh.
Conservatives and rich people who don't want to pay taxes usually couldn't give a damn about the kids in public school or crime in the inner cities because it doesn't affect them the way it affects most constituents (it affects us more because we don't have private compounds to hide out in).
My point in this tangent is just, keep it real. If you're a conservative who doesn't think people should pay taxes, don't pretend that you care about serving the public because you don't. And don't give me some lame argument about government waste, because no one is for government waste. And some of the biggest wasters are conservatives, so please. Really.
And you see what I did there? I just listed out all of my thoughts and opinions and though I disagreed with this person, I didn't resort to alluding to shooting them nor did I put a target over their head, or anything like that. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all sit around and argue without breaking out this language of violence?
There has been a lot of talk about it recently in the wake of the Tucson, Arizona shooting, but is anyone going to do anything about it? I will not link the language to the tragedy, because there is no solid proof connecting the two, but just for the sake of it, don't you think people should tone it down?
They probably won't, but they should. There's no reason to resort to violence, even if it's just "rhetorical."
0 comments:
Post a Comment