Best Comment of the Year

[FourScore]

Thu Mar 29, 2012 at 07:13 AM PDT

by EdinStPaul

This is one of the best bits I've read in a while. This is Linda from Oklahoma responding to Gail Collin's brilliant analysis of events related to the murder of Trayvon Martin:

"Why do lawmakers make it harder and harder to get an abortion, even in the cases where the mother will die, but easier and easier to get a gun? Do they only care about a life before it is born?
Why don't gun buyers have to follow the same rules women are forced to follow? Wait 48 hours after applying. View on ultrasound of a body with a bullet in it. Listen to the heartbeat of someone as they die of a gunshot wound. Get a lecture from a surgeon on what it is like to operate on a gunshot wound. After all that, if a person still wants a gun, he or she can buy one. Why should buying a gun be any easier than having an abortion?"

[WilliamPitt]

1. "Republicans believe life begins at conception and ends at birth." - Barney Frank

[SomethingFishy]

3. Republicans want live babies so they can make dead soldiers -George Carlin

[DirkGently]

2. Great parallel that illustrates a lot of the problem.

The answer as to "why," basically is entitlement. To life. "Stand your ground" laws mean men with guns can't be questioned on their supposed justification for killing. Any perceived threat, according to the killer, is enough. Kids in hoodies, and women's bodies, are property. Property must ask permission to live, or to exercise dominion over even their own bodies. Fetuses as well, are the property of their fathers; thus the rage at the notion that mere women would do anything other than submit to their roles as incubators.

Boiled down, if they could, American conservatives would go right back to white male landowners being the only beings with any cognizable rights. Everyone else may be coerced, threatened, or killed on a whim.

We use so much hyperbole that I want to be clear: This isn't. It's the real underlying logic we're dealing with here.