Dissident Veteran For Peace: February 2020

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Wednesday, February 05, 2020

Quotable: The Politics of the Parkland Massacre

I did not want this book to be political. I was never a political guy. I never even voted until 2016. After Meadow was murdered, I wanted to fight for something that I thought all Americans could come together on: school safety ...

I've been over every inch of what happened. The NRA had nothing to do with it.

This happened in a Democrat county with a Democrat sheriff, a Democrat superintendent, and a Democrat school board, implementing Democrat ideas on criminal justice, Democrat ideas on special education, and Democrat ideas on school discipline. And after Democrat voters gave all these Democrats a resounding vote of confidence in the school board election, the Democrat teachers union president, Anna Fusco, wrote in a Facebook group about our campaign for accountability: "Now you can all shut up!"

Meanwhile, at the national level, Democrat organizers swooped in and weaponized my daughter's murder for their Democrat agenda and to fund-raise to elect more Democrats.

Source: Andy Pollack, father of slain high school student Meadow Pollack, in Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies That Created the Parkland Shooter and Endanger America's Students (New York : Post Hill Press, 2019) pp. 267-268.

Labels: children, civil liberties, crime, Democrats, guns, politics