Taking a step away from the heat of the gun control debate for a second to think about how that, almost without fail, any time we face a crisis (either real or created), we seem to fall for the Something Must Be Done^tm mantra.

Notable Something Must Be Done^tm moments were:

• TARP
• The unstimulating stimulus
• Obamacare
• QE1, QE2 and on to QE infinity
• Auto industry bailouts
• Financial industry bailouts
• Green energy “investments”

These have all worked out so well, especially since the Chinese are buying up US financial companies and “green energy” companies at a discount, companies that we wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on (or put us on the hook with Chinese debt for).

Now that Obama is safely re-elected, it is OK to tell us what many of us without scales on our eyes already knew – that the taxpayer will lose around $40 billion on the GM “rescue” – but we “saved” GM and bin Laden is dead, right?

But wait…didn’t the government just make a ton of coin when they sold AIG? Maybe – if you don’t count the tax breaks given to AIG and the $2 billion + of AIG’s risk portfolio that was absorbed into the US Treasury.

Remember Rahm Emanuel’s paraphrase of Saul Alinsky?

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.

Now in the wake of a ghastly tragedy of Sandy Hook Elementary School, come the screams for “gun control!”.  Senatrix Dianne Feinstein is cackling that your rights are subject to Congressional approval – and even though she has a concealed carry permit, maybe you can’t be trusted to have one:

Is this the way we want America to go?  In other words, the rights of the few overcome the safety of the majority?  I don’t think so!  I think America is ready (on her intent to submit a gun control bill on the first day of the next session).

Just another example of a Something Must Be Done^tm moment – although 99.99% of legal gun owners never commit a crime or would ever contemplate one, your individual rights must be sacrificed for the greater good.

It is a crisis too good to waste.

How can you not look at the murdered children of Newtown and not know that Something Must Be Done^tm?

Even though I hate the race baiters that have claimed that this is only an issue because these were white kids, I do agree with one aspect of their reasoning – thousands of kids are killed in all sorts of violence across this country every day and it never generates the kind of energy that something like the Newtown atrocity did. It says to me that this isn’t racial – it is something even worse. It is political opportunistism. It is the physical realization of Alinsky’s tenets as expressed by Rahm Emanuel in the referenced quote above.

If you want proof, just remember this name – Trayvon Martin. The liberal contingent in America needed a tool to reinforce a racist meme to help get Obama elected so they created and nurtured an image of George Zimmerman standing astride Trayvon Martin’s cold, lifeless body as an allegory for how conservatives and gun owners hate blacks and are out of control.

Something Must Be Done^tm.

You readers on the left may disagree but if I may ask, where is the wall to wall media coverage of this case now? Where are the Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson rallies for “no justice, no peace”, those to be covered uncritically by MSNBC, of course?  Where did you say?

The dustbin of history, that’s where they are – because they are no longer useful.

Did you even know about the fact that Zimmerman is suing NBC for defamation through the broadcast of the edited 911 tape?

Of course you didn’t – because was a headline for about 20 seconds of a 24 hour news cycle and then it was gone.

I won’t say that conservatives are immune to such hyperbole but what is undeniable is that Democrats, liberals, “progressives” (and/or whatever the Hell they want to be called today to hide the fact that they are nothing but Marxists and communists) are never above standing on a tombstone of anybody to shout out their solidarity with the aggrieved party – as long as they can see a political gain – Obama just used 20 dead children to push for tax increases, so you liberals can just spare me your righteous indignation.

The problem with the Something Must Be Done^tm process is that it is no more effective than a kindergarten teacher taking a toy away from an unruly toddler. We all have seen intractable kids in the “terrible twos”. Children that are not capable of reason and understanding, they are only driven by want and desire. When two kids of this age want the same thing, they fight. One usually ends up crying and the other with the toy – unless the teacher steps in. Since the teacher knows that there is no reason involved and they are unwilling to punish or even assign guilt, they will inevitably remove the object of immediate desire, making both kids cry.

Does it stop it from happening again with another toy or at another time?

No, it doesn’t.

It doesn’t change human nature or natural law. This scene is played out all over the world no matter the county, the political system, ethnicity or economic level. It’s who we are. Don’t believe me? Just search YouTube for “baby fights”.

But it eventually does change. It changes because we change, we are taught to change our behavior to become creatures of principle. Removing the toys didn’t change root cause, we did. We matured in intellect and the behavior followed.

As blogger Skip noted at Granite Grok, Liberals “…call for increased gun control under the stereotypical Progressive rubrics of “Nobody needs that” and “I don’t know anyone that…” as if on their worldview, only their “acceptable” items should be purchased under some strange definition of “Freedom”.

Taking the toys from a two year old is an admission that the root cause is the behavior that is unmodifiable at that specific point in time and a realization that they can only offer a temporary solution to the problem. It is the same in politics – rather than address the root societal and sociological issues, our political class just wants to take the toys.

That is why “gun control” will never work – because the gun is not the root of the problem. It is a society that will not assign guilt, one that does not value human life, one that is rapidly losing its core values and as a result, simply wants to take the toys without addressing the real causes. That’s about all politicians are good for these days.We are presented with the illusion of action, with flurries of meaningless rhetoric and legislation.

As Shakespeare’s MacBeth would say:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

But remember: Something Must Be Done^tm.