THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

On March 18, 2000, in "Our Masters Are Upset That They No Longer Own the Gun Permit Business", I explained that the 25,000 concealed weapons permit holders in South Carolina are a potent new force in our politics. They are organized in Grassroots, South Carolina, which is doing a really spectacular job of lobbying. We have a link with them here on the SCLoS site, and we can learn from them.

Grassroots South Carolina has won some victories, but it lost the big one this year. As I pointed out on March 18, the old gun permits, which were given out on the basis of political favoritism, had no restrictions on them. But when new permits were made available that you have to EARN, petty politicians loaded them with restrictions. One of the biggest is that if you go to any place that serves drinks, you can't carry your weapon with you to or from that place.

Well-dressed people going in and out of expensive restaurants are the prime targets for muggers, and they need to carry more than others.

Other states do not have this restriction and they have had no more incidents of trouble with permit holders than we do.

Which means NONE. If one of the hundreds of thousands of people who have had permits for the last five years of this decade did do anything bad, you may be sure the media would trumpet it from coast to coast.

The simple fact of the matter remains that honest citizens with guns are never the problem.

Contrary to what gun control advocates tell you, a policeman is not a god. A major part of his function is to be an honest, law-abiding citizen who is armed to protect himself and his fellow citizens.

We don't need Clinton's fake fifty thousand new cops as much we need hundreds of thousands of new permit holders to make crime a desperate risk for muggers.

Surprisingly enough, there was almost no opposition in the South Carolina legislature to this reform of the concealed weapons law. Twenty-five thousand people, militant and almost every one a voter, is a formidable force. The reform was going through easily until three legislators stopped it.

Guess what party those three belonged to?

I am not surprised that it was three Republicans who stopped the gun law reform. Remember, it was Republican governor David Beasley who switched on us on the Confederate flag. When a hot button conservative issue comes up, it is usually Republicans who take "credit" for selling us out on it. If a Democrat takes the lead on a liberal policy, he will pay for it in the next election. But if a Republican takes the lead, as Beasley did, he thinks he can gain liberal support and not worry about conservatives. They'll vote for him anyway. So he thought it it would pay him to turn on us.

We taught Beasley reality by voting for the Democrat running against him. We came very near to scaring the Republicans away from taking the flag down. But they still think they can sell us out on the flag and on gun control. The question is, can they? A straight Republican ticket in 2000 is a resounding "Yes!"

When Nixon withdrew recognition from Taiwan, he had the full backing of the Democratic Party. If you sell out people on your own side, you are safe from having a problem with it in the general election. After all, your most solid supporter on such issues is the party you will face in the general elections. Right after World War II, Jacob Javits decided to run for Senate in New York as a liberal Republican because the Democrats couldn't use his earlier Communist affiliations against him. As long as he called himself a Republican, he could do anything against the United States he wanted to. Most Republicans will sell anybody or any principle out in the name of Republican party loyalty.

It was the Republican Richland county sheriff Sloan who was a main advocate for gun control in South Carolina until his own incompetence finally got rid of him. As always, he could afford it, because Republicans would vote for him slavishly, principle be damned.

This slavish Republicanism has an another effect no one seems to notice: it keeps Democrats liberal. Politicians go for the swing vote. As long as conservative voters will back Republicans regardless, conservatives have no effect whatever on Democratic elected officials. Democrats will only do conservative things if they stand a chance of getting conservative votes for it.

Some Democrats did support the flag, and many more would have had there been some potential votes in it for them. It was a few conservative Democrats who dared speak up against our caving in to the Supreme Court's gigantic anti-constitutional power grab on the anti-miscegenation laws (See July 1, 2000, "We Cannot Criticize the Federal Courts Any More").

No respectable Republican would dare do that.

Now Republicans take the lead in betraying us on the gun issue, right after selling us out in a "compromise" on the flag. And the more blindly we support South Carolina Republicans the more they will do this to us.

Once again, in real world politics, you get no more than you demand.