If you missed this story in today's Washington Post, you really need to give it a few minutes of your time.
Jim Zumbo, one of the most famous outdoorsmen in America, has had his career ruined because of a single blog posting. Here's what he said:
"Excuse me, maybe I'm a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity," Zumbo wrote in his blog on the Outdoor Life Web site. The Feb. 16 posting has since been taken down. "As hunters, we don't need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them. . . . I'll go so far as to call them 'terrorist' rifles."
The reaction from NRA supporters was so severe and so swift that Zumbo lost his jobs with the Outdoor Channel, Outdoor Life magazine, and Remington Arms Co. All in a matter of days.
Here's what the NRA has said in response:
The NRA on Thursday pointed to the collapse of Zumbo's career as an example of what can happen to anyone, including a "fellow gun owner," who challenges the right of Americans to own or hunt with assault-style firearms[...]
In announcing that it was suspending its professional ties with Zumbo, the NRA -- a well-financed gun lobby that for decades has fought attempts to regulate assault weapons -- noted that the new Congress should pay careful attention to the outdoors writer's fate."Our folks fully understand that their rights are at stake," the NRA statement said. It warned that the "grassroots" passion that brought down Zumbo shows that millions of people would "resist with an immense singular political will any attempts to create a new ban on semi-automatic firearms."
The NRA sees this as something positive. I cannot possibly see why. For decades, Zumbo has been one of the nation's most important advocates for the rights of gun owners. Now he is an outcast. All because he questioned the use of assault rifles by hunters?
The NRA has trained a generation of gun owning Americans to see gun rights as an issue on which no compromises can be made. Any guns, all guns, any time and all the time, no matter the consequences. And their agenda has become so radical that when one of their own dares question this orthodoxy, NRA members rise up in righteous indignation and ruin his life. The Second Amendment is apparently inviolable, but the First Amendment? Not so much.
In an odd way, it is yet another example of the damage that identity-based politics has done to our nation. When owning a gun isn't just a policy question but a measure of an individual's personal worth, no questioning or compromise is possible. If owning a gun isn't just what you do but who you are, incidents like this are the unavoidable result.
Historically, identity-based politics isn't the American way. Until the Baby Boomers came along and transformed our political culture in the late 1960s and early 1970s, identity-based politics had only very shallow roots in our history. But since then its all we've been about.
Identity politics divides us into warring camps. It separates us into groups designed to protect the differences upon which they are based. But this nation has always been at its best when it has based its politics around the belief that we have more in common that we do in difference. Our greatest leaders have been great because they understood that our better angels called on us to work together to minimize difference rather than amplify it.
Its time for identity politics to end. Its time to remember that the things we have in common are far more important than the things that divide us. Its time for all of us - each and every one of us - to step up and do our part to build a better future for ourselves and future generations. Its not just about you.
The NRA may think this is a sign of political strength, but I don't. Since when has there been strength in division?
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