Sometimes it takes an immigrant to appreciate what natives take for granted.
It is easier to see what is going on for what it is when you've seen what has happened in other parts of the world, and have made the effort to learn as much as you can about the history and founding principles of the country you have chosen to make your new home. This isn't true of all immigrants by a long shot, but it does seem to help those who opened their eyes and took a hard look at where this country was and where it is headed, from a more global perspective.
Personally, although I was born a US citizen, I was born and raised for part of my life in another country (a country that became Communist, no less), and I've found that it does make some difference in my perspective, as well. What we've seen elsewhere can happen anywhere, including the US, because at a fundamental level people are people--what's shocking is how the conditions evolved to this stage in the United States...so gradually...so subtly...escaping the notice of most of its citizens.
The conditions I speak of set the stage for the eventual loss of our liberty. Now they're going after our guns (again), but this time around we're not prepared for a violent revolution or reclamation of our country--we have the Constitution, but do not have the leadership in place. The powers that be are testing the waters, as they often do in many areas (e.g. illegal and indefinite incarceration, borrowing and printing money at a rate that will inevitably bankrupt the country)--they're baiting us to see how we'd respond.
All three were fantastic, but my favorite was Henson too.
As a fellow legal immigrant, I share his bewilderment about how all this can even happen here in the States.
Like I said, by and large people are people--the environment and conditions (including culture) are what change, and the people of the United States today are soft in comparison to the people who colonized this land. Time marches ever forward, and we as a people have been unable to fully maintain the same independent spirit we had started out with. Don't get me wrong, our culture remains largely intact and strong, but we're gradually being overwhelmed here.
The thing that sets America apart from the rest of the Western world is the Constitution.
Watching so-called 'Americans' trying to destroy this great nation from the inside out by attacking the Constitution is heartbreaking.
And for the most part, they're doing it with information, controlling (to a significant degree) what our children are taught in school and what we see through the media. They use bad words like "assault" to describe certain rifles with irrelevant features, which basically amounts to
begging the question, tainting any argument against a ban (infringement). Then they say things like "How should we address the gun problem in the US?" which intrinsically (and falsely, of course) implies that guns are the actual problem--another form of
begging the question; by the way, I put the links in because most people in this country don't even know what the phrase means anymore. It is amazing how such a simple type of logical fallacy, when used repeatedly throughout the media, can have such a devastating effect on our cause--we usually lose any argument before it even starts. Other basic logical fallacies are used heavily as well (often combined with emotions involving murdered children)--up to and including
doublethink--against which most Americans these days are helpless on an intellectual level, just as they have been conditioned to be.
