Cross-posted from Eclectablog.com.
Two days ago, I wrote about incoming Michigan Republican and off-the-charts tea partier Todd Courser and showed a photo he had posted on Facebook of one of his kids with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle. That photo was not the only one he's posted of his kids with these weapons, however. Below the orange squibbledigibbet are a few others (click the photos to go to the original Facebook posting):
Courser posted these three photos to both his personal Facebook page where they are visible to the public as well as his "fan page". For those of you who are squicked out by my posting photos of his sons, I would suggest that Courser is proud that he put this weapon into his young sons' hands and the he wants people to see the photos. Otherwise why would he post them to not one, but TWO Facebook pages?
When Courser posted the fourth photo I showed in Wednesday's piece, he had this highly disturbing comment with it:
Doing a little modern musket training. Elijah said, “its beautiful! I’m in luv!” I was inspired yesterday. Funny thing is the gun is just one vital tool to train up my four children as the weapons for liberty that will impact the future both for freedom, but also for Christ. The 2nd Amendment is but one important part of our history that every citizen needs to be acquainted with and no one should be afraid of. Trained children equipped in every aspect of the cause of freedom are the bulwark against tyranny.
I don't begrudge anyone their Second Amendment rights. However, I also have my own First Amendment right to express my disgust at this sort of display. For an incoming state legislator to talk about semi-automatic AR-15 rifles as "modern muskets" and "weapons for liberty" is frightening. "Training up" children to use these weapons as a "bulwark against tyranny" suggests that Courser is advocating a violent overthrow of the very government he is now a crucial part of.
If you follow Courser's Facebook diatribes about our government, it's clear that his threshold for "tyranny" is very low and he has a long history of describing things such as the Affordable Care Act and expanding the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act as "liberty-killing" things that strip us of our freedoms. When describing the training he is receiving as an incoming legislator, he wrote, "I have to tell you it has all made me think about children who are subjected to radical leftist ideology and have not even the slightest notion of how they are being shaped against liberty and freedom and away from God." Yet, Courser himself appears to be espousing the radical view that our children need to be trained with military-style weaponry so that they can use them against our own government.
Jamison Foser of Media Matters makes this spot-on observation:
By the way, you know who else trains young kids to shoot military-style weapons? ISIS:
Their guns are as big as they are — which is not saying much.
On the streets of Syria and Iraq, ISIS militants are building a small army — literally. The use and recruitment of child soldiers is a war crime. It's also a practice which ISIS has boasted of in photos and videos splashed across the Internet with titles such as the "Cubs of the Islamic State."
Instead of archery and merit badges of Cub Scouts, these boys learn how to clean, disassemble and shoot machine guns. While their peers in the U.S. build campfires, ISIS' diminutive devotees go from Quranic recitation drills to the front line of battle.
“They teach them how to use AK-47s,” one Iraqi security official told NBC News on condition of anonymity.
It's one thing to petition your government to lower taxes or to pursue any of the other items on the tea party agenda. That's democracy and it's precious. It's entirely another thing, however, to be advocating for the use of violence against our government to achieve your goals. When Courser talks about training up his four children to use guns "as the weapons for liberty that will impact the future both for freedom, but also for Christ", he has crossed a line.
In my book, it's un-American.