{"id":822,"date":"2003-03-22T17:54:43","date_gmt":"2003-03-23T01:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ogre.nu\/wp\/?p=822"},"modified":"2006-11-03T08:05:01","modified_gmt":"2006-11-03T16:05:01","slug":"squish-them-before-they-get-big","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=822","title":{"rendered":"squish them before they get big"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clayton Cramer<\/a> wrote, by way of introducing himself over at the Volokh Conspiracy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n . . . As I look back on my youth, growing up in Santa Monica, California, I can identify three defining moments in creating my political ideology.<\/p>\n

The first was a woman who worked at Baskin-Robbins, an ice cream store, on Wilshire Boulevard. She had a tattoo on her arm. . . . It was just a number. . . . <\/p>\n

The second defining moment was a teacher that I had . . . [who had worked] with the Dutch Resistance during World War II. . . .<\/p>\n

The third defining moment was living in Santa Monica in the late 1970s, when Tom Hayden and my fourth cousin, Jane Fonda, were running a little political machine that used rent control as their method of taking control<\/em> [emphasis added]. The power madness I saw there, both at City Council meetings, and when I ran for City Council in 1981, persuaded me that the totalitarian instinct is not limited to history books and foreign lands.<\/p>\n

These three events in my life play a big part in why I am a gun rights activist. Never again.\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sam Heldman<\/a> finds this “truly nutty”: <\/p>\n

\n . . . [for Cramer,] some Santa Monica rent control debates seemed so reminiscent of Nazi totalitarianism and genocide, that he became a gun advocate and right-libertarian. . . . Rent control: the sign of creeping totalitarianism, and the reason for all good men and women to take up arms to defend themselves against the state. Rent control: it reminds him of the slaughter of millions in service of Aryan ideology. Rent control: even just the most striking governmental misconduct of his formative years? I am stunned.\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Does anyone else think Heldman is being rather illiterate<\/del> unfair here? What horrified Cramer was not rent control itself but “the power madness” and “the totalitarian instinct” which, in that place and time, happened to pick landlords rather than Jews for scapegoats.<\/p>\n

Great evils start small, and today’s smarter totalitarians have learned not to dress up in military style and shriek race-war slogans; it doesn’t make them harmless.<\/p>\n

I’d describe Cramer as a conservative with some libertarian views, rather than “right-libertarian”. But he says (in mail, quoted with permission):<\/p>\n

\n I used to be a pretty doctrinaire libertarian; reading history, and living in Sonoma County, California, has made me a LOT more sympathetic to conservative ideas. I’m still more libertarian than conservative, but this latest stunt from the Stalinist wing of the homosexual movement (the straw that broke the camel’s back with Volokh Conspiracy) is making me more and more sympathetic to social conservatives.\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clayton Cramer wrote, by way of introducing himself over at the Volokh Conspiracy: . . . As I look back on my youth, growing up in Santa Monica, California, I can identify three defining moments in creating my political ideology. The first … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}