Posted on 06/10/2002 3:32:17 PM PDT by tarawa
WHY BE AN ARMED LIBERAL?
I’ve actually gotten a fair number of emails asking me this; they presuppose that the only valid position for a liberal is to be disarmed, and the only valid position for a gun owner is to be a conservative. I’m neither. I own guns, and have spent a fair amount of time, energy and money becoming at least moderately competent with them. And let me state bluntly that while the politic thing for shooters to say in public is "I just shoot [trap and skeet] [a few targets] [to hunt birds].", that I do all those things, and in addition have trained hard to become competent in defending myself by, if necessary, shooting people.
I’m also a liberal, who believes that the government has the obligation, not just the right, to work to make our society, nation and world a better place. Which better place ought to be one in which fewer people are physically threatened seriously enough to need to resort to shooting people.
The intersection of those two beliefs – which on their face seem to be incompatible, but which I believe are not – defines a lot of what I believe about politics and the nature of good government.
Let’s talk a little bit about the armed side of it. Why be armed in today’s society?
Well, I’ll suggest four reasons:
1) It’s fun. Shooting is a pleasurable sport, things go “bang!!” loudly; well-hit clay pigeons gratifyingly disintegrate into a cloud of dust.
2) It is moral. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that people who eat meat and have never killed anything are morally suspect. Some creature gave its life for the chicken Andouille sausages in the pasta sauce I made tonight. Pork chops and salmon don’t start out wrapped in plastic on the grocery shelf. I have hunted deer, wild pigs, and birds, and I can say with certainty (and I imagine anyone else who hunts can say) that it fundamentally changed the way I look both at my food and at animals in the world. I respect the death that made my dinner possible in a way I never would have had an animal not died at my own hand.
When I have a gun in my possession, I am suddenly both more aware of my environment, and more careful and responsible for my actions in it. People who I know who carry guns daily talk about how well-behaved they are how polite they suddenly become. Heinlein wrote that “an armed society is a polite society”, and while in truth I cannot make a causal connection, when you look at societies where the codes of manners were complex and strong, from medieval Europe or Japan to Edwardian England, there was a wide distribution of weapons.
I know several people who are either highly skilled martial artists or highly skilled firearms trainers, and in both groups there is an interesting correlation between competence (hence dangerousness) and a kind of calm civility – the opposite of the “armed brute” image that some would attempt to use to portray a dangerous man or woman.
3) It is useful. The sad reality is that we live in an imperfect world, one in which some people prey on others. They may do it because it is a kind of crude redistribution (you have a BMW, he would like one); because they are desperate, or because they are deranged. They may have been damaged in some way by their genetic makeup or their upbringing. Or they may just be evil.
Bluntly, at the moment I am under threat, I don’t care why they do it. My response is not very different from my response to my friends who said that “America had it coming” on 9/11. “Maybe. So what?” People who attack me or mine need to be stopped. If the only way I have to effectively stop them is to kill them, so be it. Once I am out of danger, I am happy to consider what it will take to improve education and job opportunities in the central cities, or to talk thoughtfully about helping the Palestinians figure out how to become a nation and a state.
There are bad people out there, folks. Some of them are tormented by what they do, some don’t care, some may revel in it. Someday, you may be confronted by one. What will you do?
4) It is the politically correct thing to do. I say this with all appropriate irony, but I am also a believer that an armed citizenry does two important things to the American polity:
a) it fundamentally changes the nature of the relationship between the individual and the State. I am pretty dubious about the apocalyptic fantasies of those who believe that a cadre of deer hunters could stand up against the armed forces of the U.S. or some invading army. In reality, I think that the arms possessed by the citizens of the U.S. are primarily symbolic in value, much like the daggers carried by Sikhs. But, having lived in Europe, I think that the symbolic value carries a political and social weight;
b) it makes it clear that we as citizens have some measure of responsibility for ourselves. The tension I talk about above is one between self-reliance and mutual reliance. In England today, a subject (I am careful not to say citizen) faces increasing limitations on the right of self-defense; the State is moving toward an absolute monopoly on the use of force. It should not be hard to imagine that the character of both the relationship of the individual to the state and of the individual’s relationship to society is vastly different under those circumstances. By being armed, I am taking responsibility – literally, the responsibility of life and death – on myself. When the state cannot entrust individuals to act with some significant responsibility, except as an adjunct of the state, we will have truly lost something that is a key part of what makes our politics work (note that I think that the same thing is happening in the EU today, with the same effect).
There’s more, which can be put simply that people will sometimes do stupid or evil things with their freedom. But without their freedom, they will seldom do great things. So by protecting society against one, you also deprive it of the other.
Sometime soon: how to be a liberal in a society that values freedom, and why freedom is critical to building an effective and durable liberal society.
Know your enemy and all that I suppose....
Well, you know, all those hateful white male conservatives, of course.
I dunno, I kinda like this guy...
It is hardly a fantasy when we see a government fantasizing about the sinlessness of itself when it justifies shooting down with a F16 airliners, but cannot find pilots too sinful to carry fire arms as a last line of defense in a war.
Admitedly, doomsday people tend to be self righteous, but gees, I wonder what feeds this self righteousness? Could it be the government and liberals are setting an example?
It is hardly a fantasy when we see a government fantasizing about the sinlessness of itself when it justifies shooting down with a F16 airliners, but CAN find pilots too sinful to carry fire arms as a last line of defense in a war.
Admitedly, doomsday people tend to be self righteous, but gees, I wonder what feeds this self righteousness? Could it be the government and liberals are setting an example?
It is the interposition of the state that comstitutes the fundamental difference between liberal and conservative (at least in their modern American definition). And as firearms possession is an individual right this fellow, although well-intentioned, must sooner or later come up against that.
He seems to share the same view of government as many on this site...."I'm also a liberal, who believes that the government has the obligation, not just the right to work to make our society, nation and world a better place."
There are so-called 'conservatives' posting here who have a similar view.
How anyone could see governments as having 'rights', or how anyone could imagine a government making any part of the world a 'better place' is beyond me.
But millions disagree. ;^)
Many members of the armed forces, though not all unfortunately, understand that they are not a police force. It would be a mistake to assume that the military could be used effectively to settle domestic disputes. The few times the military has been used, they ended up recognizing that they were in the middle where they didn't belong. The Bonus Army, the guardsmen at Kent State, the military who supplied equipment used at Waco, etc. As the incidents unfold, there are significant numbers of the military who will recognize the evil that has been unleashed and will resist.
US Military know that they are not protected by claiming "I was just following orders". I said on a different thread that F-16 pilots must refuse the duty of responding to a hijacking by shooting down an airliner whose crew has been disarmed by the F-16 pilot's Commander-in-Chief. They must make it clear that it is not their job to kill victims who have disarmed by the government.
What an a$$ , why bother learning to defend yourself, just sit back and let the gubmint take care of you!
He has made his forst step on the road to Damascus there are more steps coming.
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
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This typical liberal thinking reminds me of a scene in the latest Star Wars film. Annakin is talking to Padme and when she points out that in a democracy, people will always disagree, Annakin tells her that government should "make them agree". She tells him that that is dictatorship, not democracy, and he replies "Whatever works". That just about sums up liberal thinking. I'm glad this guy gets it on guns, but he doesn't get it on the role of govt. in general.
Oh, and government has no "rights" under the Constitution.
The last thing we need to do is to become pushy, and intolerant- like most Liberals! Shooting can be an in-road to Conservatism for these folks. If we Conservatives show ourselves to be good, and decent people of character.
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