By John Seiler

The horrible killings in Newtown have brought to the fore the hidden totalitarian beliefs of many gun controllers. They’ve been saying that America should adopt the Maoist gun-control policies of Communist China. In the Financial Times, here’s Jacob Weisberg, chairman and editor-in-chief of the influential Slate Group, which is owned by the Washington Post, which basically is a propaganda organ for the U.S. Government. This is what America’s Establishment is reading, and thinking:

“Last Friday 20 children and six adults were shot dead at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. The same day a group of schoolchildren was attacked in China’s Henan province. There, the assailant wielded a knife and the result was injuries to 23 children and an adult but no deaths. This follows an established pattern. Like the US, China has experienced a spate of attacks on schoolchildren. But without easy access to guns, Chinese attackers seldom succeed in killing.”

Nowhere in the article does our esteemed and influential liberal writer point out that China still is run by the Chinese Communist Party. The Party has eased up on the socialism, generating great wealth. But it’s still the only party that’s allowed. And if you run afoul of their edicts, they send you to the Laogai concentration camps. According to one report, in the last 50 years, more than 50 million people have been sentenced to these camps.

Think that would happen if, as in America, there were as many privately held guns as there are people — which in China’s case would be 1.2 billion guns? Of course not. People would defend themselves.

Plagiarist

The ChiCom gun-control meme was continued in the Washington Post itself by Fareed Zakaria, the influential CNN host; former managing editor of Foreign Affairs, the Establishment’s top magazine; and plagiarist:

“A few hours before the Newtown murders last week, a man entered a school in China’s Henan province. Obviously mentally disturbed, he tried to kill children. But the only weapon he was able to get was a knife. Although 23 children were injured, not one child died.

“The problems that produced the Newtown massacre are not complex, nor are the solutions. We do not lack for answers.

“What we lack in America today is courage.”

He means the “courage” of the U.S. government to shred the Second Amendment “right to keep and bear arms” and to send Maoist Red Guards knocking down doors and scouring homes for contraband guns.

Zakaria also doesn’t mention that China remains a communist tyranny. So let’s remind him, and Weisberg, about what really has gone on in China.

China still imposes a draconian “one-child policy.” If a woman becomes pregnant with a second child, the government forces her to abort her baby.

The only way they can do that is because the Chinese people are disarmed. In America, the women I know never would let that happen because they’re armed — and so are their husbands.

Under the Chinese Communist government, which remains in power and never has been punished, an incredible 76 million people have been slaughtered by the government (not counting the forced abortions), according to R.J. Rummel, who keeps the tally. That occurred because the Chinese people were unarmed and couldn’t resist.

How can Zakaria and Weisberg — or anyone — believe China is a model for social policy for us to adopt?

But they have placed the choice before us: A free, well-armed society that has occasional horrific violence. Or a totalitarian society in which the government suppresses all rights and routinely slaughters millions.

Incredible. America now has more people in its stuffed prisons, 6 million, than were stuck in Stalin’s gulag prison system. Reports Fareed Zakaria on CNN.com:

“Is this hyperbole? Here are the facts. The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. That’s not just many more than in most other developed countries but seven to 10 times as many. Japan has 63 per 100,000, Germany has 90, France has 96, South Korea has 97, and –Britain – with a rate among the ­highest — has 153….

“This wide gap between the U.S. and the rest of the world is relatively recent. In 1980 the U.S.’s prison population was about 150 per 100,000 adults. It has more than quadrupled since then. So something has happened in the past 30 years to push millions of Americans into prison.

“That something, of course, is the war on drugs. Drug convictions went from 15 inmates per 100,000 adults in 1980 to 148 in 1996, an almost tenfold increase. More than half of America’s federal inmates today are in prison on drug convictions. In 2009 alone, 1.66 million Americans were arrested on drug charges, more than were arrested on assault or larceny charges. And 4 of 5 of those arrests were simply for possession….”

Yet, even in California, it’s hard to pass even the partial legalization of marijuana during a time of massive budget deficits. And new initiatives are failing this year.

People would rather go bankrupt than stop putting pot pushers in prison.

Meanwhile, if you want to, you can go to your local grocery or liquor store, plop down $5 for a fifth of Ol’ Skull Popper vodka, and really get wiped out.

I’m not advocating the use of marijuana, any more than I am saying people should get blotto on vodka. I’ve never sued illegal drugs myself.

But government bankruptcy is serious. It costs around $50,000 a year to keep a petty dope dealer in the klink. Don’t we have better uses of that money? (My favorite: cut taxes.)

Maybe the ongoing national and state financial disasters, which are only going to get worse, finally will push at least partial legalization of drugs.