Originally published July 24 2015
With military bases as 'gun-free zones,' America has passed the point of Idiocracy
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) In the 2006 movie Idiocracy, the Pentagon selects Pvt. Joe Bauers, an "average American" played by actor Luke Wilson, to participate in an experiment for a top-secret hibernation program. Over the years, the study, like Bauers, is forgotten about, and eventually he awakens some 500 years in the future. What Bauers discovers is a society so dumbed down that he emerges as the most intelligent person on the planet.
While the movie was a comedy, it was likely inspired by today's society, which is increasingly dominated by the inane, the absurd, the frivolous and the farcical. So much of what passes for political debate, so much of what is adopted as public policy, and so much of what we "care" about versus what is truly important to the perpetuation of our species and our way of life has been turned on its head, and just like in Idiocracy, an ever-increasing number of us don't even see the trend, much less understand its implications.
If we keep going the way we are, five centuries from now, the world quite literally could be will be filled with fools, dimwits, idiots and other mentally challenged souls, none of whom will have a clue of just how ignorant they really are.
Just one case in point: our failure to understand that a rising threat to our uniformed military personnel has reached a point where decisive action to ensure that they are able to defend themselves should be a given but instead has fallen victim to political correctness and dithering.
Increasingly, troops are being targeted
As a former member of the U.S. military and a combat vet, it pained me to see four Marines and a Navy sailor cut down by a lone jihadi in Chattanooga, Tenn., on July 16. This latest attack has, once again, launched a discussion about why U.S. military members are not armed when they are on post or at an off-post duty station (like a recruiting center).
Ordinarily, I will admit, there is no need for most members of the U.S. military to be armed. When they are not operating in a war zone, threats to their lives from hostile actors have historically been no more or no less significant than to the general public at large.
But these are not ordinary times. Today, America's uniformed service members face increased risks from precisely the threat that killed the Marines and sailor. That threat is growing and, in fact the Obama Administration and the Defense Department have known this for some time.
As early as October 2014, the Army warned its personnel that leaders of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, had directed supporters and sympathizers to scour social media sites in an attempt to identify military members and their families, with further instructions to show up at their homes and slaughter them. Subsequent warnings by the military and the FBI followed, with this warning to members: Scrub your social media sites of any indicators that you are in the military.
But the Obama Administration continues to prevent our military members from arming themselves, on base and wherever their duty stations take them. In other words, they are charged with defending the Second Amendment but are unable to actually utilize it.
Insanity
The most common argument against arming military personnel is concern for civilian casualties should they have to respond to an armed action against them. But you could argue this is the same concern that many people have with local police and federal agents.
Others say that military members are not "experts" in handling firearms and are not as "well-trained" as civilian law enforcement and security personnel. If that's true, then how can we justify sending such untrained loose cannons off to war in places where rules of engagement include provisions to effect maximum avoidance of civilian casualties? Granted, there are a number of military specialties -- intelligence, clerical, human resources-related -- that are not "combat arms" and whose personnel don't have frequent weapons training opportunities. But all personnel have some training -- many train much more often than the average police officer or federal agent.
Some bold governors have ordered their National Guard forces to be armed, so we haven't reached the point of Idiocracy yet. But the Pentagon, under direction from the Commander-in-Chief, flat-out refuses to afford active duty forces the same protection, even though they're obviously being targeted.
This is not merely unacceptable; it is madness.
Maybe, in 500 years, it won't seem so.
Sources:
http://www.imdb.com
http://www.foxnews.com
http://www.military.com
http://abcnews.go.com
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