American Irony: This Facebook Page Will Destroy Your Faith In Humanity

Jack Baruth
by Jack Baruth

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time: in the wake of a national event that has a lot of people looking for a legislative solution, start a Facebook page which ostensibly calls for the banning of another controversial piece of machinery. As Generalfeldmarschall von Moltke once wrote, however, no plan survives the first contact with the enemy.

The Facebook page is question is called Ban The Ford Mustang and it contains a combination of deliberately provocative graphics like the one above and pictures of accident scenes where a Mustang was involved. The implication is that Mustangs are responsible for none of the fatalities; rather, it’s the drivers’ own incompetence or recklessness that caused the deaths. Since nobody is calling for Mustangs to be banned due to their high-speed capacity, presumably firearms in private hands should be extended the same courtesy.

There are a couple of problems with this analogy. The first one is that there are certainly a reasonable number of people who would be alive today had they chosen to purchase a Toyota Yaris instead of a Mustang. Fast cars get to dangerous speeds faster and many people are more prone to speeding and reckless behavior if they are behind the wheel of a fast car.

The second problem is that there are people calling for fast cars to be banned, whether for purposes of public safety or to prevent excessive resource consumption. It’s not a common viewpoint in the United States; anti-sports-car people here tend to use the soft attack of ridicule. But in the EU, it’s already been suggested once, and a quick trawl through the English-language Singapore and Hong Kong blogs shows it’s not exactly a forbidden concept over there.

Of course, the merits of the analogy have been lost on a significant percentage of the site’s commenters, who appear to take the call for the Mustang’s removal from public roads entirely seriously.

Yes, that man’s wearing a “5.0” sweatshirt. At least he spelled “pussy” correctly, placing him easily in the top quartile of intellectual capacity among the people responding to the page. A common complaint among these people is that the page is a plot by a disaffected Camaro owner hoping to ensure marketplace supremacy for the porky Chevrolet by actually having the Mustang removed from showrooms. Others want a similar page made for the Challenger, just in the interest of fairness, and also because the HEMI sucks balls.

In the end, “Ban The Ford Mustang” could be said to make precisely the point it had hoped to counter: people not only can’t be trusted to own guns, or Mustangs, they can’t be trusted to own anything, a computer least of all. This modern-day Jonathan Swift has found out that some people would eat children.

Jack Baruth
Jack Baruth

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  • Pch101 Pch101 on Dec 22, 2012

    "I’ve written articles for “gun sites” years ago" Well, that would certainly help to explain all of the highly inaccurate content and bogus quotations that can be found on gun websites. I'm sorry, but your responses have been a standard cut-and-paste job riddled with inaccuracies. Since I'm not going to devote my entire Christmas holiday to dealing with your nonsense, I'll dissect just a couple of more for the sake who is ever left reading this stuff. You attributed this alleged quote to James Madison: "Disarm the people- that is the best and most effective to enslave them." That sounds terrible, indeed. But your buddies on the internet usually attribute that one to George Mason. So you've blown it on the attribution. But wait, there's more. If you read the full quote from the debates of 1788, it's pretty obvious that (1) Mason was himself quoting somebody else and (2) that he was offering this quote in the context of his support for maintaining a "disciplined" militia as a precaution against the ills of a standing army: ___________ No man has a greater regard for the military gentlemen than I have. I admire their intrepidity, perseverance, and valor. But when once a standing army is established in any country, the people lose their liberty. When, against a regular and disciplined army, yeomanry are the only defence,--yeomanry, unskilful and unarmed,--what chance is there for preserving freedom? Give me leave to recur to the page of history, to warn you of your present danger. Recollect the history of most nations of the world. What havoc, desolation, and destruction, have been perpetrated by standing armies! An instance within the memory of some of this house will show us how our militia may be destroyed. Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia. [Here Mr. Mason quoted sundry passages to this effect.] This was a most iniquitous project. Why should we not provide against the danger of having our militia, our real and natural strength, destroyed? The general government ought, at the same time, to have some such power. But we need not give them power to abolish our militia. If they neglect to arm them, and prescribe proper discipline, they will be of no use. I am not acquainted with the military profession. I beg to be excused for any errors I may commit with respect to it. But I stand on the general principles of freedom, whereon I dare to meet any one. I wish that, in case the general government should neglect to arm and discipline the militia, there should be an express declaration that the state governments might arm and discipline them. With this single exception, I would agree to this part, as I am conscious the government ought to have the power. 3 Elliot's Debates, 380, June 14, 1788 http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28ed00315%29%29 ___________ So you've blown it yet again. You got the quote wrong, plus you've taken it out of context. There's no reason to take those of your persuasion seriously. Not only is your research sloppy and lazy, but you can't even quote people properly. Your technique is to post a barrage of "quotes" (including false ones) in the hopes that throwing enough crap against a wall will cause some of it to stick. That's just a variation of Goebbel's big lie technique, and not one that citizens of a democracy should indulge.

  • Pch101 Pch101 on Dec 22, 2012

    Here's another gem. The post above attributed this one to George Washington: "Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence..." Even the pro-gun Second Amendment Foundation acknowledges that this alleged quote is bogus: http://saf.org/pub/rkba/general/BogusFounderQuotes.htm

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