Edit: I have some reason to believe that Mr. Virtue has seen this challenge. If I am right, let us see if he can manage to rise to the occasion. The comments are open for you, David.
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Most of you in our shared Anglican circles know David Virtue and his news congregator/blog Virtue Online, "The Voice For Global Orthodox Anglicanism."
David is an expatriate Kiwi, who actually believes that New Zealand provides some sort of model for rational government that the United States should emulate, is left-leaning and therfore actually irrational on this issue and no doubt others, as so many in the Commonwealth are. They mindlessly defer to their goverment and the elites who run them. They have no understanding of our contitutional government and how it has preserved the historical rights of Englishmen, whereas the UK and the Commonwealth, rejecting that legacy, have failed to do so.
This became clear to me a number of years ago when I debated him off and on about the right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. He ended up blocking me on Facebook and apparently has made it impossible for to me post comments on Virtue Online articles. Oh well.
The following is a representative example from a friend's Facebook page of his latest "thoughts" about this issue.
Virtue: "Until we bring gun madness under control it is all going to get worse, nothing can stop the uncontrolled killing, nothing. America is doomed,only and unless America follows NZ and Australia and bans semi automatic weapons."
Interlocutor: "Yes and be under the authoritative thumb of govt as AU and NZ are today. We're good. Drugging kids up is bringing society down. Marriages, divorce, God are much larger components. Totalitarianism is horrific."
Virtue: "New Zealand and Australia are democracies you idiot. They have free and fair elections, they don’t elect malignant narcissists like trump…and they don’t allow guns as European countries don’t either and their life expectancy is eight years better than America."
Interlocutor: "Idiot? You are joking right? You can't own a gun to protect against anyone including over reaching govt. You're DICTATED to get shots which haven't been vetted. They are closing in on homeschoolers. They have their own thought police and "disinformation bureau. Add in England as well which is also seeing an uptick in guns and deaths by knives. Please David. . . . not elected narcissists? NZ minister shuts down entire country. Australian govt arrests parents who aren't COVID shot? Narcissists?"
Virtue: "The odds of someone appearing at your front door with a loaded gun is .0000000002 percent, and if they did you would not know and could not protest yourself anyway. No civilized country allows its citizens to own a AR15s and 9 millimeter glocks. NZ and AUSTRALIA allow hunters (and the police) to have guns and they have to lock them away till needed, Only AHOLE America allows any citizen with $100 bucks to buy a gun and let's see if we can raise the death from 40,000 to 100,000 a year along with the one million idiots who would not take the vaccine."
Virtue: "America has a pop.of 330 million, there are 400 million guns. America is awash in guns…the killings will continue. America as a democracy is done for.
It's hard to know where to begin with all this. Mr. Virtue says we are doomed unless we adopt the draconian gun control legislation of Australia and New Zealand. He avers that AU and NZ are "democracies", and anyone who demurs or who sees the devil in the details is an "idiot", and then launches into a rant fueled by his obvious Trump Derangment Syndrome. Then he cites the low risk of some criminal appearing at our front door, leaving us wondering if he has any insurance policies. Then he says, "No civilized country allows its citizens to own a AR15s and 9 millimeter glocks", begging the fundamental constitutional question as far as the United States is concerned. Then, in exemplary Christian fashion, he refers to "AHOLE America" (stay classy, David) and sets forth some fantasy about arms being available for $100.
And then goes off about the vaccination controversy. What!?
Mr. Virtue's rant is a veritable bird's nest of mental confusion and mistatement of the facts wrapped up in an exercise of pure, unfocused rant.
St. John Cassian said (paraphrased), "Anger dulls the intellect", and it surely does in Virtue's case.
We are not the UK, Canada, Australia or New Zealand, David. We are the United States of America, and in the United States of America we have the right to keep and bear arms, including scary black ones, and we're not about to listen to Kiwi hoplophobes like you.
Part 2