Thank You Delegates

Dear Delegates,

I wanted to write you and thank you for what you and your fellow Senators have done this legislative session.

I have become more aware of and more involved in the political legislating process in Maryland because of you, thank you.

Though I have been to Annapolis many times before to visit the Naval Academy, I had never been to the State House, the Senate office building, or the House office buildings before, but now I have seen all three buildings and I plan to see them more in the future, thank you.

Because of your work on the gas tax increase, death penalty repeal, and gun safety, I have been inspired to more closely follow state politics. I have learned that many sessions of the House, Senate, and committees are broadcast online live and archived for later vie wing. Interestingly, I was surprised to learn that committee voting sessions are not a part of this recording and archival process for some strange reason. Thank you for helping me learn this.

I have also learned that far too many elected legislators in Maryland care less what their constituents, the people who elected them, think and they care more for how their political bosses want them to vote. I have learned that some elected legislators are even willing to lie to their constituents or to change their votes at the last minute to please the higher ups in their party.

I have learned that politicians are willing to push through a vote on such important legislation late in the evening while many people in the state were distracted with Good Friday church services, Passover dinners, or preparing for the Easter weekend.

I have learned that despite overwhelming the Senate building & shutting it down for the first time due to the crowd size, despite over 1300 signed up testify against and only 30 testifying for this gun control legislation, despite overwhelming Senators and Delegates emails, faxes, phones, and offices since this process began, and despite the will of We The People of Maryland you have chosen to violate our natural, God-given, Constitutionally protected rights to keep and bear arms.

I have learned that despite being shown the truth & facts that this legislation will do nothing to keep the people of Maryland safer and keep violent criminals in jail, you have decided to pass this legislation. You have chosen to side with the violent criminals over the law-abiding in Maryland. You have chosen to be suspicious of the good guys and do nothing to stop the bad guys.

Thank you for teaching me this. I had hoped that if you were presented the facts & the truth you would have acted honorably, listened to your constituents, and killed this abomination of legislation. Instead you have bowed your knees and your wills to politics, self interest, and the will of the political elites.



After all you have taught me these past few months let me teach you a few things.

1. Governor O'Malley, who's bidding you are doing, does not care about you. He only cares about his future political ambitions and running for President.
2. In 2014 Governor O'Malley doesn't have to face the voters of Maryland, but you do. O'Malley won't be here to help you along in your reelection efforts.
3. There are many others like me in Maryland who have learned many of the same lessons I have learned. We are eager to learn more, this time to learn about the Primary and General elections in Maryland and to show how effective we will be in removing you from office for your acts against the people of Maryland and against the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
4. Lastly, you should know that We the People of Maryland are your bosses, we will remember your actions and your votes, and we will hold you accountable on election day.

YOU HAVE AWOKEN A SLEEPING GIANT AND WE ARE COMING

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Elliotte;2308144[SIZE="4" said:

]YOU HAVE AWOKEN A SLEEPING GIANT AND WE ARE COMING [/SIZE].

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I listened to some of the (unofficial :smile feed from the committee meeting Friday. I haven't had a chance to post since then, but here were my thoughts.


It's tragic enough that those twenty young people were deprived of a chance to live their lives by the incarnation of evil that, as chance would have it, befell their world this past December. Now their memory will forever be linked to the tyranny writ large that is being enacted in their name across this nation. It's shameful.

We dishonor them with these cowardly actions. We obscure what illumination their memory might provide by turning our frustration over their fate inward as pointless punishment heaped upon ourselves. We evince the worst parts of our human nature with the self-loathing, denied though it surely is, that alone can explain this push to further curtail our individual liberties. We show ourselves unworthy of the continued privilege which they so unfairly had revoked - the privilege of living in a nation that's supposed to stand like a beacon in the night for those that would have freedom as their guiding light. We fail their memory and we fail countless other young people to whom we owe better. It's shameful.

I'm speaking to you President Obama, and to you Governor O'Malley. I'm speaking to you Mayor Bloomberg, Senator Frosh, Delegate Vallario, and to all of the other legislators and government leaders across this nation that are succumbing to - and for some perhaps, taking advantage of - the misguided hysteria and calling for or enacting these liberty-encroaching, counter-productive, paternalistically-offensive new measures. It's shameful.

I give the benefit of the doubt that most of you mean well. But meaning well is not enough to absolve you of blame or insulate you from criticism. We've all heard it said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Many a would-be tyrant set off nobly on their path. Much oppression has sprung from the well of earnest concern. Leadership demands more than good intentions. It demands wisdom, not just conviction. It demands well-considered action, not just feel-good flailing. It demands insightful messages, not just passionate rhetoric. It demands focus, not just excitation. It demands purpose in course selection, not just wheels put in motion in hopes of happening on a desirable destination. It demands courage in the face of real enemies, not just tilting at windmills. You've given us plenty of those latter things, but too little of the former ones. It's shameful.

You don't realize it and you probably won't accept it, but you stand now with the villains, not with the heroes. You think you're doing good work, you think you're fighting the good fight; but you're allowing yourself to be an agent of evil. You're a different kind of agent than the Newtown killer was to be sure, let's make no mistake about that, but an agent of evil nonetheless. Where he was the wolf given a taste for blood by evil, betrayed by his longing for purpose; you're just the shepherd made negligent in your duty and tricked by evil, betrayed by your fear and naiveté. In the long run however, isn't your capitulation to evil more dangerous than his embracement of it? Where his transgression was acute, yours is chronic. You don't stand in opposition to his actions, you stand in exacerbation of them and in fulfillment of his purpose. You seek to codify the fear, the self-hatred, the helplessness that he inflamed. You enact the oppression that he could only hope to inspire. It's shameful.

No amount of elections won or appreciation received from impassioned, but ultimately misguided, constituents will ever wash away the shame you now stain yourself with. The outburst of evil in Newtown claimed 28 lives. But evil does not measure victory in lives claimed alone, it measures it in actions influenced, hearts possessed, and liberty denied. The victory you give it, with the evil you seek to enact by your votes and by your pens, will outweigh that which it manages to claim through murder alone. You do more violence to society, and to the beautiful embodiment of freedom that we call life, than could be done by a hundred nuts with a thousand firearms. Shame on you. And shame on the rest of us for letting you do it. On behalf of humanity, I apologize to those who lost their lives in Newton and whom we now use as the excuse for our latest round of societal masochism. May they rest in peace oblivious to what we do in their name.



So… A bunch of rhetorical flourish devoid of substantive argument you say? I'll give you that. It was a stylistic choice meant to reflect the lack of purposeful substance generally found in the latest "gun control" measures being advanced. For the most part those measures are little more than symbolic fodder for the undiscriminating masses seeking to satiate the impotence they feel in the wake of Sandy Hook. Besides, the substantive arguments have been well made again and again. Such substance seems lost on many, if it weren't these new gun control initiatives would have already been abandoned.

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