Clinging to Guns

I plan to purchase a Smith & Wesson Model 629 .44 Magnum revolver with a 6 inch barrel. It's the Dirty Harry gun. Why? Something of romantic overkill, sure, but also self-defense, the much maligned concept that nonetheless persists with so many as practical and, well, human.

Classic scenario, if not over-used: when I'm travelling, my wife is in the home alone with our two children (8, 7 years old). We have a firearm, currently, in the home, which I taught her to use in the unthinkable situation where someone attempted to assault them. Now, living in the country, I can estimate (without claiming to precision), that it would take the local police force several minutes, and likely, say, upwards of ten minutes to respond to a 911 call. In that time, as I'm sure we can all imagine, so many horrors could be visited upon my wife and kids, that I'd rather not continue.

It works like this: people who live in major cities, see major city problems with guns. For those of us who live in the suburbs (read: in the country), the thought of having responsible access to deadly force is not problematic but comforting. I'm sure my neighbors have firearms as well. Bully for them.

It's difficult to see how the State could argue our comfort away; on what grounds? I, for instance, am not a felon, have handled firearms since a kid, taken gun safety courses, hunted my entire life, and on and on (same too, mostly, with my spouse). And so, the argument to deny me a firearm is...?

As to inner-city gun violence, I'm well aware. My point isn't a blanket argument about guns but rather a question of who should get them. I'm inclined to make the law strict in this regard. Apply for your firearm. If you qualify, wait a period, receive it. I'm not opposed to this.

Shifting gears, on a purely theoretical level, it's incomprehensible to me that somehow our relationship with the State should be such that the State controls, exclusively, the means of deadly force, and denies categorically the same to its citizens. Again, if organized law enforcement can't be everywhere, all the time, why shouldn't well-meaning citizens provide for their own protection? We are not, after all, children. The law provides (indeed, it's in the Constitution, not by accident) for citizens to have access to firearms. We're not children.

Finally (to munge many points together here), "self defense" for me includes also backpacking trips in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, where the chances of encountering a brown or black bear are non-trivial. Self-defense. I'm not interested in testing theories about playing dead; I'd rather my kids see me return home. Hence, a large-caliber handgun.

Inconvenient Truths

What happened to Global Warming? To the planet "having a fever", as Gore in his arguably more inconvenient than truthful oratory impressed upon us? Apparently we have bigger fish to fry now (with, of course, non-carbon emitting heat sources). The economic meltdown, for instance. More powerful than a war-on-terror, which, apparently, wasn't enough to keep the feverish planet out of the lime light. Not so the Credit Crisis.

So, perhaps, it's a good time to revisit what I've long suspected is an entirely suspect political/scientific cause du jour.

Plenty of facts to bore everyone to tears, but let me instead explain the type of argument that Global Warming seems to inspire. It goes a little like this...

First, we have scientific data. We have charts. We make the case. But next, inconveniently, some really smart people (e.g., professors at MIT) disagree. They have different data, or see the existing data differently, and draw, with MIT rigorousness, entirely non-Global Warming conclusions.

Now, when confronted with these nay sayers--and for no apparent political reason do they nay say (unless, perhaps, they wish to disintegrate their careers, for some unknown future benefit)-- the GW crowd goes democratic: "Well, most, indeed nearly all, of the scientists cut the political cake our way. There's consensus. We voted, and we won." More scientists said what they wanted them to say.

That's fine, but science is hardly a show of hands. Its evidence based. Just one well-informed person (expert) with something to say, ought to be heard, whether contradicting the bandwagon or not. Maybe he'll get less research money. But, if he or she is doing science, and if GW is so obviously right, it ought to be just easy then to rebut the dissenting view. Just prove the irritating dissenter wrong, if the theory is so obviously right. No need to vote. That sounds like politics. We didn't vote on General Relativity, after all. It just is, as any physicist will tell you.

The GW debate is so far from over, it just astounds me that its near-religious proponents want so desperately to slam the lid shut. I've heard mamby-pamby justifications for this non-scientific attitude like "Well, even if we're wrong, and there's not imminent catastrophic climate change, we should do something about our emissions." Yes, yes, yes. Of course. We should also import less foreign oil. Sounds like a win-win to me too, but lets do science as science. It's not pragmatism or policy, after all; it's supposed to be the search for truth. Let's find it, if we can.

At any rate, and to return, the Gore-scare seems to be largely over, for now, replaced by the Credit-scare. And so, if something needed to be done now to fix Global Warming (I mean Gore-now, right now!), we're either completely insane (worrying about this credit crisis crap), or less susceptible to b.s. than some would hope. An inconvenient truth, perhaps.

Running Stop Lights

I was driving down I think it was Lakeline a few weeks ago, and noticed a camera pointing down at me at an intersection. I stopped a little past the line, listening to music and I suppose not doing my best driving. At any rate, I had some spell of worry after driving away, as if, somehow, the technology would record not my running the light, but my stopping past the line. After a while I recovered from my Orwellian paranoia; glad to say I haven't received a ticket from this camera yet.

Later I talked with a friend about the privacy issue, and in particular the issue of whether cameras should catch red light runners regardless of whether any human (police officer) witnessed the event. My friend took a reasonable position, saying in effect that, look, you've run the light or you haven't. Why require that a cop be present at every light? Why not use technology, if it works? After all, we don't have existential angst about police having well-calibrated radar guns to catch speeders. Who argues with this?

It was a reasonable point, I suppose. But, after puzzling about it for a while, I smelled a rat. My question was simple: suppose we had a technology that was even better than cameras, or radar guns. It represented the completion of all such technologies. It rode along with us, and, if you broke a law, it would simply record the infraction, and send the ticket. So, if you run a stop light, you get a ticket. If speeding, a ticket. If you happen to be risking more serious infractions by driving after having too many, you'll be apprehended later, sure as the sun rises, and will spend the night in jail. And on and on. The perfect completion--just the logical extension--of cameras at stop lights. Any one for this?

My friend recoiled at the suggestion. I asked why, and after some mumbling and fumbling, just declared that it wasn't right. Right.

What's interesting is how, seemingly, more security makes such good sense, to a point, and then suddenly it seems positively distopian. We're all for better security when it doesn't feel like the State sucks away our autonomy. But, as my thought experiment suggests, once we do feel this way, we recoil.

It's worth thinking about the distinction between the two cases. Just decent (not omniscient) technology like cameras at stoplights sounds great. But better and better technology, and suddently we're holed up in Montana with guns. So where does the issue really stand? I wonder. Flipping the coin, consider it this way. Why should we be allowed to break the law, ever, and get away with it, just for lack of technology? We still broke the law. Why, then, recoil when law enforcement just works better?

Camille Paglia

Philosopher Edward Feser writes about libertarianism, and in particular its philosophical compatibility with Conservativism. It's a little dated now (2001), but still contains references to celebrity pseudo-intellectual libertines like Bill Maher. I wasn't shocked to see Maher depicted by Feser as a "self-styled 'libertarian'" celebrity "whose libertarianism amounts to little more than an enthusiasm for legalized abortion and homosexual chic...", but was suprised to see Salon contributor Camille Paglia on Feser's list (that is, of people we should not take too seriously when discussing libertarianism, and I think safe to say political philosophy generally).

Maher is, after all, a clever and cleverly misogynistic "shock" celeb with enough intellect to be dangerous; he never manages (or, I imagine, cares) to scrape too far below the thin veneer of sardonic humour while somehow staying in the vicinity of an actual point.

But Paglia? I keep seeing her on Salon (which, in spite of some invective I'll occasionaly throw its way, I will read). Her latest is some longish article with a section on why she likes Palin. For someone who professes to voting twice for President Clinton, her latest is quite a departure, it seems. Among the juicier tidbits: Pro Life feminists like Palin (does she mean Pro Life females?) will "be the next big shift in feminism", and "So she doesn't speak the King's English -- big whoop!".

I know very little about Paglia, other than she's been lampooned on the Internet as a light-weight masquerading as an intellect, and that Feser placed her on a list with Maher as examples of how-not-to-be a serious Libertarian (of Conservative fusionist stripes or not).

Salon, at any rate, must think something of her.

Hold the Phone

For anyone who remembers the foundering hopelessness of Democrats after President Bush's reelection in 2004, after the simultaneously stentorian and soporific John Kerry failed to deliver, we'd all be wise to take a chill pill before expatiating on the death of the Republican party.

American politics is cyclical, like democratic politics generally; back and forth between our two parties we always go. No need to dig deep into history tomes to get this, just read Wikipedia entries for a few minutes about past elections and it'll become clear. The elephant will return; I hope thoroughly modernized and with a clear, inclusive message that resonates and especially inspires.

At any rate, even if President-elect Obama is a two-termer (of course way too early to prognosticate about this), it's hardly that long in the wilderness for those roaming Dinosaur Republicans, when put in historical context. So, enjoy the moment, Salon. But chill. You don't want some new era of journalistic gloaters to dig up those now-embarassing backlogged 2008 articles, injecting them with glee into future discussions about Republican reemergence. Back and forth we go.

Man on Main Street

Sometime ago, I was on Main at dusk, standing facing a man I'd just met, smoking a fag. He was engaged about local political issues, which I knew little about at the time, but he was quite amicable, and before long I think we were mutually gay. I asked for one of his smokes (looked a bit like a cigar), and received first a queer look, then my (perhaps dubious) prize. I suppose his confusion stemmed from my prior proclamation of quiting; he laughed when I offered Mark Twain's famous quip that quitting was easy, as he'd done it at least a thousand times. At any rate, I'm sure he wanted to avoid appearing niggardly, with our chat going along so well.

Later, my new bitch trotted up to us, a Labrador. The man petted her briefly, then turned away to gawk, with me, at a passing jackass; perhaps it was a mule. It footed along the road in front of us, plodding a bit with the weight of several bulky burlap sacks. Strange.

We puzzled together at this for a few minutes, when a dick accosted us, pencil and paper in hand. He wanted to know about the jackass; apparently the owner suspected it had been let loose deliberately. After a curt and somewhat painful exchange the man jerked his thumb up Main Street, and the dick thanked us perfunctorily and went to apprehend the wayward ass.

I was, at this point, quite pooped, and so thanked the man with whom I had had such a gay time (in spite of the dick), and we parted ways. I saw the man just on one other occasion, standing out on Main, smoking a fag, animated in discussion about some island called Bali. I passed by without saying hello, but overheard some of his descriptive ejaculations, in particular his frequent use of the word "cock", embedded, it seemed, in a larger narrative about fighting. Balinese cock fighting, I later learned. What a man. A learned and I think good man. Queer, but smart, and gay as hell. Here's to you, man on Main Street. I hope someday we'll cross paths again.

The Problem of Eric Rudolph

The supermax incarcerated abortion clinic bomber, in his words:

"I'm here today to be sentenced for my actions on January 29, 1998. On that date I detonated a bomb at an abortion mill here in Birmingham, killing the abortion mill's security guard and injuring one of the abortion mill's employees. I had nothing personal against either of these individuals, Sanderson and Lyons. I did not target them for who they were - but for what they did. What they did was participate in the murder and dismemberment of upwards of 50 children a week."

"My actions that day were motivated by my recognition that abortion is murder. Because it is murder, I believe that deadly force is indeed justified in an attempt to stop it. I do not claim this as a right but rather consider it the moral duty to come to the defense of my fellow man when he is under attack. This is an essential concept embedded in Western Civilization - that we are our brother's keeper."

Crazy, of course. But from a philosophical standpoint, troubling. The problem is that his logic makes a certain sense, given the assumption that life begins at conception. Of course his violence is reprehensible, but it's a troubling case, because his words are bluntly consistent, given a literal interpretation of life at conception. I think it's his lunacy that ironically helps us search for sanity in the abortion debate. We'll find the lunacy on the Pro-Choice side as well.

So here goes, let's jump into abortion...

If life really begins at conception, isn't then abortion really murder? Think it through. Pro Life proponents say it's just so: life begins at conception. But they don't really believe this, because even hard core Pro Life types tend to make exceptions (e.g., for victims of rape). But if it's murder, it's murder, whether the life began with an act such as rape or not. The rhetoric isn't consistent with the policy. This is what I call the strange logic to Eric Rudolph, his (superficial) clarity. They kill defenseless persons. I kill them. He took the message on face value. Bully for consistency. But you're still crazy, Mr. Rudolph. We don't, in fact, treat a woman having an early stage abortion on a par with someone committing infanticide, or just killing someone else in the world. So something's gone wrong. Rudolph was wrong.

Now Pro-Choice types have their own problem: if it's just all about a woman's right to choose, if the life or possible life of the fetus is trumped by a right to privacy (poof!, our Roe V. Wade result...), then why not partial birth abortions? Why get weak-kneed in the third trimester? It's easy (and suspect) to say just that the right to privacy diminishes. Why? Because the cells in your body gained more mass? But why should this matter? Sounds like losing your nerve, mother-to-almost-be. Be strong. Privacy. Consistency. Eric-Rudolph-it.

Think of it this way, what's really the difference between an organism (I use this "person neutral" language just to get at the point) that exists, one moment, in its mother, and the next minute, in the world? A few minutes? That's the difference? What wonderous changes could have happened through the birth canal? C'mon. This too makes hardly any sense at all.

So, Pro Choicers supportive of third term procedures must, somehow, ignore weighty considerations of life, of human life, in their bodies. Strange that otherwise normal people can manage this particular moral magic trick. A judicially created right to privacy seems much too flimsy, obviously too flimsly, to cancel the empirically obvious fact of a human life. And their logic, like Mr. Rudolph's, leads them quickly into troubling waters. If they see no problem with third trimester abortions (especially in cases where the fetus could live outside the womb, if delivered), they ought not to balk at infanticide, also. Because, again, what's the difference? If the baby is alive now, the fetus was alive two minutes ago. (Running the argument the other way, if the fetus had no right to life a few minutes ago, how did the baby suddenly acquire it?)

Of course, the "infanticide" result is crazy too, just like Rudolph's "abortion is murder" interpretation. So we've never figured out this debate. It's horribly incomprehensible, when consistent, on both sides. Best left inconsistent? Hardly comforting.