Given the current trending of posts amongst those folks I read regarding the topic of “needs“, I think it is time to dust off an over-two-year-old post and copy-paste it in its entirety (turns out I wrote some rather decent stuff back in the day):
You know what? I am getting really, really gorramed tired of the “need” argument coming up in reference to handguns, “assault rifles”, and all of the other fun, “evil”, nasty-looking firearms and equipments that are out there. You see it all over the place these days… “You do not need an ‘assault rifle’ to hunt/defend yourself/open a can of soda,” “You do not need that kind of caliber to stop someone from attacking you,” “Why do you need that many firearms?” Yadda yadda flipping yadda.
I am sorry, but who the frak died and made you grand bloody arbiter of what other people need and do not need? Piss off and mind your own gorrammed business, life, and matters.
I can guarantee you that at least 50% of the people driving SUVs on the road today do not “need” them.
I can guarantee you that a fair number of people in this country do not “need” houses as large as they have.
I can guarantee you that no child (or anyone else, for that matter) “needs” an XBox, Playstation, or Wii – books have worked pretty gorramed well for the past few hundred years, not to mention that wild and wooly “outside” thing.
I can guarantee you that few, if any, families “needs” more than one computer, or more than one television. Hell, a fairly decent argument could be made that no one really “needs” a television in general… how many do you have?
I can guarantee you that few people need as much heating and air conditioning as they probably pump into their overly large, not-”needed” houses… just put on or take off a few more layers if you feel uncomfortable.
I can guarantee you that few people “need” as much money as they make… oh, but wait – the great and almighty Obamamessiah has already seen fit to tend to that problem, has he not?
And that is what all of this comes down to it, is it not? Nothing more than a combination of abject jealousy and projection. On the one hand, we have a group of people being greedy little twits, approaching the world from a perspective of, “If they can have it, I deserve to have it too!” Well guess what dumbass – if you work as hard as they do, plan ahead as much as they do, and prove to be as productive a member of society as they are (or are otherwise extraordinarily lucky, depending), you can have all of their nice, shiny gizmos, too. And on the other hand, we have a (not-necessarily-distinct-from-the-last) group of people with the pathologically-childish mindset of, “If I do not need it, they do not need it either,” or, even worse, “If I do not feel comfortable/safe/responsible with Item X, they are obviously not going to be comfortable/safe/responsible with it either.”
With all due respect and politeness, fuck off.
What I “need” is a matter for me, and me alone, to decide. You can certainly provide input, you can certainly offer your own suggestions, and you can certainly help me if you want, but you damned well should not be able to limit me, just based on your own tastes and desires (insofar as what I decide I “need” does not infringe on anyone else’s rights).
But that is not the direction our country is headed, is it? No, it unfortunately is not. Today, people do not “need” rifles that just happen to look like military equipment, so they shall be banned. Today, people obviously do not “need” as much money as they make, so it will be “spread” around. Today, people do not “need” to take risks with the stock market, so their retirement accounts will be “guaranteed“. Today, poorly-managed and -run corporations do not “need” to fess up and learn from their mistakes, so they are being bailed out left and right (with your money, no less – if this was being done by the companies themselves, without the government acting as a middleman, it would be commonly referred to as “theft”).
And, tomorrow, what do you not “need” that is going to be arbitrarily taken away from you?
With the exception of reining in my language when I should have been more vociferous, I can find little fault with what I wrote back in 2008. My needs are for me to decide and me alone, and so long as my pursuit or achievement of those needs does not directly damage other people or their property, than everyone else is cordially invited to take a hike – in short, I do not need to rationalize my needs to anyone.
Let me make this as painfully simple as I can, for those anti-rights nuts out there who I know are not grasping the meanings of my words – my owning arbitrarily-identified “assault weapons” or magazines which are have a capacity over some arbitrarily-set limit directly hurts no one, so here is what you can do: take all of your idiotic “need”-based arguments, type all of them up (be as comprehensive as you can – this is important), print all of them out (and make sure to use a large font, so everyone can read them easily), take that resulting stack of paper, fold each piece until it is all sharp corners, and shove them all up your collective asses.
In the end, that is precisely what your “need”-based arguments are worth.
But I DO need dangerous, assault-style, high capacity, scary, “unnecessary” evil black weapons.
Why?
To shoot tyrants and other anti-liberty extremists who would try to take them away.
That is, of course, one of the many available, accurate rationalizations, others including “hunting”, “defense of hearth and home”, “because I damned well want one”, and so forth.
But we should not feel any motivation to provide those rationalizations on cue – they can “need” to hear our explanations all they want, but as with so many other things, if their “needs” require someone else to give up something against their will, they are politely invited to bugger off.
Now, if you want to provide those explanations, knock yourself out – but this growing atmosphere of, “You have to explain why you want X,” is a losing proposition once we go far enough down that road.
Missed this the first time around – outstanding. Linked.
No worries – I originally wrote it when I literally had all of two regular readers, including myself. Thanks for the linkage!
Bravo!
May I add to the list of “needs”? I do NOT need any ambulance chasing lawyers. I do not need a Communist media with assault typewriters. Basically, we need Freedom for that pesky thing the Declaration of Independence says “…pursuit of happiness”. I don’t need to take my shoes off in order to fly on an airplane because that leads to George Orwell’s future “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”
Once I performed an experiment. On a Saturday, I wrote down everything that interfered with my unfettered freedom, both good and bad from filtered water and GFE bathroom outlets to mandatory water heater safety features and seat belt regulations. I was unable to make it to lunch. As best I can tell the Nanny State has been quietly destroying Freedom ever since “Wickard vs Filburn”. I want to puke every time I hear “..but its for your own good” and “…well that Law doesn’t apply to THEM…” When the wicked witch of the West (nancy p) said that “health care is a Right”, she stole a little bit of Freedom because she took a tiny step towards watering down the basic human rights of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. When the wicked witch of the East (Hilary c) says “It takes a village”, she obviously does not include herself inside that paradigm. When she was questioned about her unique profits trading cattle futures, she said “I thought everyone did that” and obviously she is the village liar. When the troll of the South (Al g) says we all need to conserve, we don’t see him giving up his private charter jets and turning off the lights at his mansion. When the troll of the North (John K.) talks about raising taxes, he doesn’t mean on his yatch registered out of state to avoid Mass. property taxes.
Democrats are like Leona Helmsley “Taxes are for the little people” and her idea of spreading the wealth around is leaving her dog a $ 12M trust fund.
Next time your grandparents bore you with stories about fleeing Communism and oppression to come here to the Land of the Free, start asking them about K to 12 textbook reform.
[...] years ago tearing down the anti-gun crowd’s “you don’t need X” argument. Go check it out. (Language alert – he does drop a couple of f-bombs.) from → Gun Rights, Liberty, [...]
Heh, my grandparents’ grandparents came here to avoid famine and monarchy… thankfully, neither seem relatively pressing at the moment, but one never knows…
At any rate, all very good points, and they are all indicative of what I see to be the core problem: certain people believe that they can dictate other people’s needs to those other people, and, worse, they believe that the government should support their dictat. I would, and do, tell those authoritarian jokers to piss up a rope, but considering that they are largely from the government and here to help, there is scant little we can do as private citizens… And that is just another symptom of the problem. As you say, our governmental representatives have, over the years, crafted themselves into being the American nobility, and that simply has to stop.
And, honestly, the Republicans are just as bad at it at the Democrats – the only difference is the force/speed at which they do it.
How do we change it? We vote the bastards out, but until enough Americans are willing to actually identify their public servants as being part of the problem, we are going to get nowhere.
[...] Over at Walls of the City, Linoge has a nice little post about all of this “needs” or &#… [...]
Bravo!
You are going to tell me what my “needs” are?
Well then let me tell you I have a “need”!
A “need” for anyone telling me what I can or cannot do, buy or say to get the heck out of my life!!
This includes, private, corporate or any Guv’mint lackey or politician especially politician, from either side.
Reposted also..
Make it rhetorically easy on yourself:
Who needs to get their hair colored, their nails done, or more than two purses or pairs of shoes???
Also I’m living proof that noone “needs”
broccoli
asparagus
seafood of any sort
condoms (show some restraint!!)
tofu
movies produced by Oliver Stone
Lady Gaga
artificial contraception
salsa
lipstick
romance novels
etc…
@ maddmedic: Heh, is it not amusing how other people feel perfectly justified in telling you what you do and do not need, but have absolutely no interest in accepting any input from you? Or, on the flip side, they have absolutely no interest in allowing you to dictate their needs? “Like you and me only better” indeed…
@ DAve: And that is the problem with this particular rabbit hole… it has no end, and once you start dictating “for the good of the people”, your edicts need no further support.
Or so they think…
[...] those missing the sarcasm positively spraying off my keyboard, start here, then obviously move on to here, and then come back to this post. And, yes, I want one.) leave [...]