The Watermelon Candidate
By Larry Pratt (09/02/04)
In some parts of Latin America, parties that sound conservative but are socialist in reality, are called watermelons -- green on the outside but quite red on the inside.
Rep. Brad Carson, the Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in Oklahoma, is proof that watermelon candidates are not unique to Latin America.
Carson talks conservative, but he hires socialist. Case in point: Blaine Greteman, an OSU graduate and Rhodes Scholar.
The Rhodes scholarship was funded by imperialist Cecil Rhodes over 100 years ago to train up a leadership class to rule the world through the British empire. The dream of British Empire is no longer in vogue at Oxford, but Rhodes scholars are still inculcated with Rhodes' elitist conviction that there are some who are suited to rule others.
Greteman demonstrated that he had learned his socialist lessons well as a university student in an article he published in The Daily Oklahoman on March 26, 1997.
Greteman is thoroughly politically correct. He does not believe in the rule of law which he dismisses as the "letter of the law." In Greteman's world of rule by the elite, the founders "surely would have been offended that some people now blindly substitute 200-year-old words for rational thinking." The founders actually spoke against the Greteman's of the world.
James Madison had this to say in response to the Greteman's of the world: "I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution." James Wilson, an original Justice on the Supreme Court, held to a similar view: "The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it."
For Greteman and the world of Rhodes scholarship, law is whatever is convenient for the ruling class. For example, Cecil Rhodes imposed gun control laws on Africans, and Greteman would disarm his fellow Americans just as well.
Because bad people can do bad things with guns Greteman draws this illogical conclusion: "And for that same reason, we should not have the right to assault weapons or handguns. That's right, I said (gasp) handguns." But, don't worry, Greteman will graciously allow hunters to have hunting guns (whatever those are).
For elitists such as Greteman, facts are not an obstacle to public policy directives. Ban assault weapons -- even though the guns so labeled are not used by one military in the world. And never mind that these guns are, and always have been, used in far fewer murders than are hands and feet.
The data was available when Greteman published his student article that showed that concealed carry laws (meaning mostly handguns, not shotguns) were lowering violent crime in the states that had adopted them. Violent crime rates in those states have fallen while non-carry states have seen increases, or much less of a decline. One would never know it from reading his Olympian pronouncement against handguns owned by mere subjects.
Greteman, as a true elitist, does not examine the consequences of the edicts he would pass down from on high. For Greteman there is no immorality in telling someone that they cannot protect themselves with a concealed firearm. Moreover, a handgun is more focused in its stopping power than the blunderbuss of the shotgun.
When you see Rep. Carson running for Senate, think, "Here comes the Watermelon Candidate." Carson's speeches are the green exterior rind, Greteman is the red interior.
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