It's Been One Month Since the Newtown Massacre: What Should Change?

Seriously, you want to divide people up on which one of these is important.

Mental Health legislation is clearly VERY important, Since President Reagan essentially closed down long term government supported mental health for the totally insane in this country, it has gotten worse and worse. That decision should be reversed. If someone is found to be clinically insane they should be institutionalized until they are better OR if they cannot get better -- that isn't their fault and we shouldn't punish them for it -- if they cannot get better then we the people should in fact and in deed foot the bill to keep them for their natural lives.

Gun policy also does in fact need to be reviewed. Why are there no criminal background checks nationally enforced? In many, many places a convicted felon, even a person who is a violent sex offender can walk into a gun show or even shop and buy a semi-automatic or automatic weapon without a check. Really? How many of you REALLY believe that's appropriate???? Not what does some whack job like Limbaugh say, do YOU, the you with children and family, REALLY think that's ok??? Really??? How many of you that hunt REALLY think that a rifle with a full auto setting and a 30 or 50 bullet drum is needed or even appropriate for hunting? REALLY??? Again, not what did someone TELL you, what do you REALLY believe? What about a street sweeper? Do you think that is an appropriate weapon for hunting? Or for anything except killing a large number of people in a small area? Should we have guns available to the people? Absolutely, we have an older rifle and are planning on buying a deer rifle soon and we support the second amendment, but the second amendment does not say anything about high powered murder weapons that kill 30,000 or whatever it is people a year, nor does it say anything about unrestricted access for the insane and the criminal or about a lot of other things that some would like to assert it does.

And yes, school safety policies should be examined and updated to deal with what is happening in the real world. I have small children, I want to see them safe.

Now, to a failed point from the other side (which is normally my own side). To those who say "there's no need for guns to hunt with now because we don't hunt to put meat on the table." SHAME on you for marginalizing over 10% of the American people. From a different perspective you are doing the exact same thing to a group of America's most vulnerable people (Rural poor) that the Right does to a different group (Urban poor).

Set aside the fact that my father hunted. He did it for sport although he believed that not using all of the meat and skin of the deer was a terrible waste that was deplorable, so we did eat it - but honestly we didn't need to. I can however look beyond myself. My family now as an adult is lucky enough that we are both well educated with solid jobs and a large income which we live FAR within the means of (we owe literally no appreciable debt at all). Not all families are.

We moved out of the city, beyond the burbs and bought a large home in a rural area. I can tell you right now, there are significant numbers of people where we live that would NOT have meat without hunting. Furthermore, a friend I've known for many years from another rural area hunts regularly, and his family and children would not have meat either. They live in the most primitive conditions in many ways, but they have running water and he works "full time" on a local farm and they grow a great deal of their own food and he hunts for their meat.

There is NOTHING wrong with him and NOTHING wrong with his way or life or the way of life of many of the people where we live either.

Don't fall into the trap of tacit prejudice that the Right wallows in - and be reasonable. There is no logical reason people can't have guns. The president's suggestions are reasonable for both sides if people were willing to actually look.

Excuse me -- even if what you said was true - which as far as I can tell it is not and which you present no objective support for -- but even if it were true that this happened and he is now forwarding a policy that he "wanted" -- that isn't fascism.

Most scholars agree that a "fascist regime" is foremost an authoritarian form of government, although not all authoritarian regimes are fascist. The model is 1920s and 30s Italy, where Corporatism blended with conservatism to create a hybrid under Mussolini.

Generally scholars agree that when considered as a modern movement there are both left and right influences on fascism and that regardless of that, fascism, once in power, has historically attacked communism, mainstream conservatism and mainstream liberalism, attracting support primarily or even solely from the "far right" or "extreme right and not from any mainstream group at all -- this has been true repeatedly in country after country (see Laqueuer, 1996 p. 223; Eatwell, 1996, p. 39; Griffin, 1991, 2000, pp. 185-201; Weber, [1964] 1982, p. 8; Payne (1995), Fritzsche (1990), Laclau (1977), and Reich (1970). [Eatwell, Roger. 1996. Fascism: A History. New York: Allen Lane; Fritzsche, Peter. 1990. Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany. New York: Oxford University Press; Griffin, Roger. 1991. The Nature of Fascism. New York: St. Martin’s Press.; Laclau, Ernesto. 1977. Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism, Fascism, Populism. London: NLB/Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press; Laqueur, Walter. 1966. Fascism: Past, Present, Future, New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996; Payne, Stanley G. 1995. A History of Fascism, 1914-45. Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press ISBN 0-299-14874-2; Reich, Wilhelm. 1970. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Weber, Eugen. [1964] 1982. Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the Twentieth Century, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.] ). Unless you know something about President Obama that I don't - such as a devotion to hidden Right Wing doctrines -- then I think the possibility of anything resembling fascism from him to be vanishingly small.

Further, the man is not an authoritarian to start with and he certainly is not a Leftist (the other canard used against him) As a person on the Left let me assure you that I am under no delusions. President Obama is a centrist liberal. Yes he is left of center, no question - but he is NOT on the Left, even the American Left. He is center-Left or at most Left-center.

Failing to recognize that won't change it. Oh, and yes, language matters -- if you meant something other than what you said - then be clear about what you are proposing please.

Regards.