Nugent said, "The gun debate is about good people having the
individual right from god, guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, to stop
evil people.
My
father, as I have related here on other occasions, was a racist. He
didn’t much like Jews and he didn’t like blacks – but I can say this for
him: he equally loathed what he called “white trash.” He taught us kids
that there were different classes of people, white trash being, to his
mind, the lowest of the low. I think he saw them as an embarrassment to
that nebulous and often changing state of being called “white.”
This “class” idea went contrary to my early egalitarian spirit, but
in time, as I got out in the world and began to experience things for
myself, I began to believe he might be right about that much at least.
In his mind, these classifications of people were based not on birth or
genetics but on upbringing and behavior. A person revealed himself in
how he acted. I remember many profanity-laden “discourses” on the
subject.
I do believe he thought people could “improve” themselves, though
being a cynic, he probably considered such instances unlikely. Having
grown up abandoned to an orphanage, he came by his cynicism honestly and
I suspect now that he saw himself as evidence of this potential for
upward mobility. And he did indeed change and even soften in some of his
outlooks in time.
I would now go farther, and perhaps regress myself: I think Ted Nugent, who the other day in an interview with Guns.com
(where else?), called President Barack Obama a “chimpanzee” and
“subhuman mongrel,” actually proves my father’s point about classes of
human beings.
See what you think:
I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not
shame enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago
communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman
mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama
to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States
of America. I think America will be America again when Barack Obama,
[Attorney General] Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, [Sen.] Dick Durbin,
[former New York City Mayor] Michael Bloomberg and all of the liberal
Democrats are in jail facing the just due punishment that their
treasonous acts are clearly apparent.
Ted Nugent cannot, of course, point to any actual treasonous
activities by the president, and there are, I believe, good reasons for
this. Rather than simply dismiss Nugent as the douche he no doubt is, I
would like to talk about these.
Cicero said “A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
Ted Nugent is deficient on a number of levels. His education, for
one. Now, while I understand we are all to some extent victims of our
flawed educational system, which is more or less better or worse
depending on the luck of the draw, a person can always overcome that
deficit through reading, and, more importantly, thinking about what he
has heard and read. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth
living.” Ted Nugent might know that if he had heard of Socrates, but I
find that unlikely because Ted Nugent quite clearly doesn’t care for
being educated. If he did, he would not be so ignorant. In this day and
age, there is simply no excuse for the levels of ignorance he
demonstrates on an almost daily basis.
It’s breathtaking. Witness his answer to Guns.com’s request for Nugent to define himself:
The gun debate is about good people having the individual
right from god, guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, to stop evil
people. If you find fault with that you’re on the side of the evil
people — duh.
Duh. Indeed. This utterance at least explains how Nugent could think President Obama is guilty of treason.
I happen to think my third grader could do better. Not only does the
Constitution not grant the right to people to “stop evil people,” it
does not define who or what “evil people” might be. It grants, for the
purposes of a well-ordered militia in the days before a standing army,
the right to bear arms. Therefore, to the thinking of the Founding
Fathers, an evil person is certainly not anyone who disagrees with you.
Thus, while it is tempting, I cannot accuse Nugent of having the
mentality of a third grader.
Perhaps not even a second grader. But his mentality and intellectual development is definitely childlike, and childish.
Abraham Lincoln said, “Achievement has no color.”
Nugent is also a bigot and a racist. Now, I should say here too that I
was brought up to be both. I also overcame both. As I grew into
adulthood, I started thinking for myself, always questioning my early,
ingrained assumptions and preconceptions. Actually seeing and meeting
and talking to people as opposed to simply being told about them by your
parents, tends to have this effect on an open mind.
I came sooner rather than later to the belief that my parents were
wrong on a number of levels, and this process of self improvement has
continued all my life long. I am constantly having to re-adjust my
thinking in light of new facts and I am proud of this fact. I can very
much appreciate President Barack Obama’s emerging thoughts about
marriage equality because if you’re worth the weight of your component
parts, you will have experienced the same sort of evolution in thinking
about the world around you. Change is not evil; it is good.
Nugent, quite clearly, has no more desire to overcome this moral
deficit than he does his educational deficit. Unlike Socrates, he has
not begun to examine his life. He is, to put it bluntly – as witnessed
by his utterances in recent years – content to be a despicable and
ignorant cracker, or “white trash” in my father’s words,. I could joke
that perhaps the “Cat Scratch Fever” got to him, but this isn’t a joking
matter, and I’m not willing to cut him the kind of slack that would
make him a victim of circumstances beyond his control. No adult is a
prisoner of his own ignorance. Nugent has it in his power to be a
different person, a better person, but he chooses to be numbered among
the dregs of society instead.
Anne Frank wrote, “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t
dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to
carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still
believe that people are really good at heart.”
I grew up very much admiring Anne Frank, but Anne Frank was wrong on
this score. The Nazis were not really good at heart. Neither is Ted
Nugent, who, in the essentials of his thinking, is only a haircut away
from being a Nazi himself. But J.R.R. Tolkien was certainly right when
he wrote, “There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting
for.”
It is people like Anne Frank who make it worth writing for and it is
people like Ted Nugent we are fighting against. The only problem with
fighting against the Ted Nugents of this world is that we are left with
the disagreeable task of dealing with ignorant hicks like Ted Nugent and
the people they inspire. We can’t ignore them; they won’t go away
quietly if we do.
Nugent laments that he has “failed to galvanize and prod” but there
are those who hang on his every word, because it excuses their own
failings as human beings. Misery, as they say, loves company. So, too,
apparently, does ignorance.
Today is - Thomas Crapper Day 
