Tag: Philosophy

“The Number of Guns” – or “Why isn’t America Like Europe?”

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In the aftermath of more rampage shootings, Quora has become, unsurprisingly, a hotbed of gun control questions, such as:

Why are guns still legal?

Why does America allow the general public to keep guns?

What would it take for there to be a genuine shift/change in America’s views on, and relationships with guns?

Why do so many Americans conflate “gun control” with “gun bans”?

Why do we allow politicians to dance around gun-control legislation? Would it bother you if assault weapons were illegal in civilian hands?

As someone who is pro-gun, are you able to understand the reasons for banning guns?

Et cetera,et cetera, et cetera.

Then there are questions like these:

Research suggests that reducing the number of guns can save lives.  How can we convince gun rights advocates that this is the case?

Are there any gun enthusiasts who see the logic that the number of guns in circulation needs to be reduced drastically to reduce the killing of civilians?

Why isn’t there a prohibition on the number of guns a person can own?

Do you support the gun ban and confiscation proposed here as the best way to immediately reduce the number of guns in the US?

 Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

You see, The Other Side™ has determined that the number of guns in private hands is The Problem®, and all we have to do is reduce it to prevent all these “gun deaths.”   Only we gun-loving troglodytes can’t or won’t see that and willingly surrender our evil death machines for the betterment of society.

One of the best expressions of the difficulty with “reducing the number of guns” in private hands I’ve ever seen came from the 1982 meta-study of gun control legislation commissioned by the Carter Administration in 1978.  It was published under the title Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime and Violence in America.  Remember, this was more than 25 years ago.  From the books conclusion, all bold emphasis mine:

The progressive’s indictment of American firearms policy is well known and is one that both the senior authors of this study once shared. This indictment includes the following particulars: (1) Guns are involved in an astonishing number of crimes in this country. (2) In other countries with stricter firearms laws and fewer guns in private hands, gun crime is rare. (3) Most of the firearms involved in crime are cheap Saturday Night Specials, for which no legitimate use or need exists. (4) Many families acquire such a gun because they feel the need to protect themselves; eventually they end up shooting one another. (5) If there were fewer guns around, there would obviously be less crime. (6) Most of the public also believes this and has favored stricter gun control laws for as long as anyone has asked the question. (7) Only the gun lobby prevents us from embarking on the road to a safer and more civilized society.

The more deeply we have explored the empirical implications of this indictment, the less plausible it has become. We wonder, first, given the number of firearms presently available in the United States, whether the time to “do something” about them has not long since passed. If we take the highest plausible value for the total number of gun incidents in any given year – 1,000,000 – and the lowest plausible value for the total number of firearms now in private hands – 100,000,000 – we see rather quickly that the guns now owned exceed the annual incident count by a factor of at least 100. This means that the existing stock is adequate to supply all conceivable criminal purposes for at least the entire next century, even if the worldwide manufacture of new guns were halted today and if each presently owned firearm were used criminally once and only once. Short of an outright house-to-house search and seizure mission, just how are we going to achieve some significant reduction in the number of firearms available? (pp. 319-20)

—

One could, of course, take things to the logically extreme case: an immediate and strictly enforced ban on both the ownership and manufacture of all firearms of every sort. Let us even assume perfect compliance with this law — that we actually rounded up and disposed of all 120 million guns now in circulation [Remember, this was 1982. – Ed.] that every legitimate manufacturing establishment was permanently shut down, and that all sources of imported firearms were permanently closed off.  What we would then have is the firearms equivalent of Prohibition, with (one strongly suspects) much the same consequences. A black market in guns, run by organized crime (much to their profit, no doubt), would spring up to service the now-illegal demand. It is, after all, not much more difficult to manufacture a serviceable firearm in one’s basement than to brew up a batch of home-made gin. Afghanistani tribesmen, using wood fires and metal-working equipment that is much inferior to what can be ordered through a Sears catalog, hand-craft rifles that fire the Russian AK-47 cartridge. Do we anticipate a lesser ability from American do-it-yourselfers or the Mafia? (p. 321)

—

Even if we were somehow able to remove all firearms from civilian possession, it is not at all clear that a substantial reduction in interpersonal violence would follow. Certainly, the violence that results from hard-core and predatory criminality would not abate very much. Even the most ardent proponents of stricter gun laws no longer expect such laws to solve the hard-core crime problem, or even to make much of a dent in it. There is also reason to doubt whether the “soft-core” violence, the so-called crimes of passion, would decline by very much. Stated simply, these crimes occur because some people have come to hate others, and they will continue to occur in one form or another as long as hatred persists. It is possible, to be sure, that many of these incidents would involve different consequences if no firearms were available, but it is also possible that the consequences would be exactly the same. The existing empirical literature provides no firm basis [my emphasis] for choosing one of these possibilities over the other. Restating the point, if we could solve the problem of interpersonal hatred, it may not matter very much what we did about guns, and unless we solve the problem of interpersonal hatred, it may not matter much what we do about guns. There are simply too many other objects that can serve the purpose of inflicting harm on another human being. (pp. 321-22)

During the intervening 25 years the media has tried to convince us that there are fewer and fewer people owning more and more guns, as the total number of guns purchased by individual citizens has skyrocketed.  I’ve addressed that previously.  But in the early 80’s the estimated number of guns in private hands (and it’s just an estimate – without universal registration, no one knows) was ~120 million.

I’ve seen a reasonable argument that today it’s more like 500 million.  The minimum number is on par with the present U.S. population – one gun for every man, woman and child in the country.

So I have to concur with authors Wright and Rossi, the “time to do something” about the “number of guns” has long since passed.  The horses are out of the barn, pandora’s box has been opened.

The UK managed to (mostly) disarm its citizens by a slow, incremental process that began in 1920.  First a permit required to purchase a handgun – a simple matter of going to a post office and paying a fee.  Then, slowly over the decades, ramping up the restrictions on purchase and possession until only the wealthy and dedicated would jump through the hoops necessary to (legally) possess a firearm.

Each additional rule or regulation was supposed to make the British citizen safer, but never did.  Oh, for certain the number of killings with firearms was reduced, but murder rates there have continued to climb, decade on decade, while overall violent crime there has skyrocketed since the 1950’s.  Sure, you’re not likely to get shot there.  You never were. But after all that “gun control” you’re more likely to get shot than you were in 1919 when there was no gun control.  And you’re a helluva lot more likely to get stabbed or beaten.

The Other Side™ has, since the 1930’s attempted to implement such laws here, but were stifled by the Second Amendment protection of the right to arms.  They were able to get the 1934 Gun Control act by passing it as, not gun control, but a revenue enhancing measure.  In 1968 they took advantage of high-profile assassinations of public figures to enact sales restrictions and import bans.  And they spent decades trying to convince the public (and federal judges) that the Second Amendment didn’t mean what it said.

And they were pretty successful at that.  Until the Supreme Court heard D.C. v Heller in 2008.  Even then the call to repeal the 2nd Amendment and get rid of all guns was still being repeated.  Daily Kos for example put out an op-ed in 2012 that detailed the path to a gun-free future. It was basically,

  1. National Registry
  2. Confiscation
  3. “Then we can do what we will.”

But regardless of whether or not there’s a legal protection to the right to keep and bear arms, the thing that no one but us gun owners seem to understand is the American attitude towards guns.

Steven Den Beste (PBUH) wrote an interesting piece many years ago entitled “A Non-European Country.”  It had nothing to do with gun ownership, and everything to do with philosophy.  He said, of the people who come here to be Americans:

It’s true that America is more like Europe than anywhere else on the planet, but it would perhaps be more accurate to say that the US is less unlike Europe than anywhere else on the planet.

Someone pointed out a critical difference: European “nations” are based on ethnicity, language or geography. The American nation is based on an idea, and those who voluntarily came here to join the American experiment were dedicated to that idea. They came from every possible geographic location, speaking every possible language, deriving from every possible ethnicity, but most of them think of themselves as Americans anyway, because that idea is more important than ethnicity or language or geographical origin. That idea was more important to them than the things which tried to bind them to their original nation, and in order to become part of that idea they left their geographical origin. Most of them learned a new language. They mixed with people of a wide variety of ethnicities, and a lot of them cross-married. And yet we consider ourselves one people, because we share that idea. It is the only thing which binds us together, but it binds us as strongly as any nation.

Indeed, it seems to bind us much more strongly than most nations. If I were to move to the UK, and became a citizen there, I would forever be thought of by the British as being “American”. Even if I lived there fifty years, I would never be viewed as British. But Brits who come here and naturalize are thought of as American by those of us who were born here. They embrace that idea, and that’s all that matters. If they do, they’re one of us. And so are the Persians who naturalize, and the Chinese, and the Bengalis, and the Estonians, and the Russians. (I know that because I’ve worked with all of those, all naturalized, and all of them as American as I am.)

You’re French if you’re born in France, of French parents. You’re English if you’re born to English parents (and Welsh if your parents were Welsh). But you’re American if you think you’re American, and are willing to give up what you used to be in order to be one of us. That’s all it takes. But that’s a lot, because “thinking you’re American” requires you to comprehend that idea we all share. But even the French can do it, and a lot of them have.

That is a difference so profound as to render all similarities between Europe and the US unimportant by comparison. But it is a difference that most Europeans are blind to, and it is that difference which causes America’s attitudes and actions to be mystifying to Europeans. It is not just that they don’t understand that idea; most of them don’t even realize it exists, because Europeans have no equivalent, and some who have an inkling of it dismiss it contemptuously.

It is that idea that explains why we think being called “cowboys” is a compliment, even when Europeans think it’s an epithet. It is that idea that explains why we don’t care what Europeans think of us, and why European disapproval of our actions has had no effect on us. It is that idea which explains why, in fact, we’re willing to do what we think is right even if the entire rest of the world disapproves.

Our supposed “betters” have pushed for decades to make Americans more European in philosophy.  America has been balkanized by public schools and media over the last century or so to the point today where we are pretty much two nations at each others throats, but the ones who embrace, even slightly, the idea of America understand this – that you as an individual have intrinsic worth.  That you are not a cog in a vast machine.  That you are responsible for yourself, and that what you work to earn belongs to you.  And that you consent to be governed, not ruled.

After the Dunblaine massacre in Scotland, the UK immediately considered the banning of handguns.  At first, only large-caliber handguns were banned, but what was the result of that? 

The resulting Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 banned all handguns over .22 calibre with effect from 1 October 1997. A hand-in exercise took place between 1 July and 30 September 1997 which resulted in 110,382 of these larger calibre handguns being surrendered in England and Wales, while 24,620 smaller calibre handguns were handed in voluntarily in anticipation of further legislation.

 Here we just had two mass shootings, both using semi-automatic weapons.  Another “assault weapons ban” is in the political news.  What do Americans do?  Well my friend the gun-shop counter guy, affectionately known as Merchant O’Death® wrote me after a long, long Saturday at the shop.

Yeah, we go buy what we think the .gov is going to tell us we can’t have anymore.  Barack Obama was the best gun salesman the U.S. has ever seen, and the gun industry misses him badly.

That Daily Kos piece?  The author wrote on the topic of the National Registry:

“We need to know where the guns are, and who has them. Canada has a national firearms registry. We need to copy their model. We need a law demanding all firearms be registered to a national database.

Except Canada only has a national registry for handguns dating back into the 1920’s like England.  They tried long gun registration.  It failed.  Spectacularly.  They estimated that there were about 8 million long guns in private hands.  Legislators were told that the registry would cost something like $119 million to implement, with $117 million of the cost covered by registration fees – so for $2 million, they’d be able to register all 8 million guns, and it would go quickly.

The law passed in 1995, with licensing starting in 1998 and all long guns were to be registered by January 1, 2003.  By 2000, it was obviously not going according to theory.  Registrations were backlogged and riddled with errors, and costs were WAY over estimates.  An audit in December of 2002 showed that costs were going to exceed $1 billion by 2005, with an income from registration fees of only $145 million – $28 million OVER estimates for well under the number of guns estimated.

That was due to lack of compliance.  By January 1, 2003, only about 65% of the estimated 8 million firearms were registered, and there was no reason to believe that the other 35% were going to be.

Finally in 2012 Canada scrapped its long-gun registry, after dumping an estimated $2 billion into it.  It solved no crimes, it apparently prevented no crimes, and it took vast quantities of money and manpower away from law enforcement with its implementation.

New Zealand considered it too.  They gave up on the idea 2004.  So when a whack-job shot a bunch of people there recently and they said “Mr. and Mrs. Kiwi, turn them all in,” compliance has apparently been in the single digits.  You see, they don’t know exactly who owns exactly what.

So, one nation with the population of Louisiana (and nowhere near as many guns) and another with a population slightly smaller than California (and nowhere as many guns) couldn’t get their populations to register their guns.  Of course, Canadians are well known for their extreme orneryness.

 You see, everything hinges on registration.  Another question asked at Quora was “Doesn’t the registration of machine guns prove that gun control works?”  Sure.  If you can get people to comply.  It’s almost tautology to say “If there were no guns there would be no gun crime.”  It’s like saying “If there were no cars, there’d be no car crashes.”

But there are guns.  And they’re not going to go away.  And Americans aren’t going to register them so they can be, eventually, confiscated.  Because, as Tamara Keel put it,

“Where the hell do you get off thinking you can tell me I can’t own a gun? I don’t care if every other gun owner on the planet went out and murdered somebody last night, I didn’t. So piss off.”

Hey gun-grabbers:  Piss off.

The Jordan Peterson Phenomenon

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I finally got around to reading the op-ed linked below on Jordan Peterson. I’ll admit right up front that I’ve read neither of the two books he’s published, but I have listened to a LOT of his lectures and interviews. The author of the op-ed objects that Peterson’s Maps of Meaning is obscure, that he uses a lot of words but doesn’t really say anything, much less anything new, and he gives examples. I cannot argue with him over the selections he made. It reads like a PhD thesis.

But having heard the man speak, I think I understand why so many people pay money and stand in line to hear him. What I kept thinking while I read the criticism of Peterson was that a LOT of people seem to have benefited from what he has to say. This puzzles the people who hate him. He talks about personal accountability, duty, struggle, and most of all MEANING. And this morning my brain went “click” when I thought of a song that could be the anthem for a couple of generations of young men, and for that matter, women – John Mayer’s “Why, Georgia?” If you’re unfamiliar, the lyrics go:

I am driving up 85 in the
Kind of morning that lasts all afternoon
Just stuck inside the gloom
4 more exits to my apartment but
I am tempted to keep the car in drive
And leave it all behind

Cause I wonder sometimes
About the outcome
Of a still verdictless life

Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Why, why Georgia, why?

I rent a room and I fill the spaces with
Wood in places to make it feel like home
But all I feel’s alone
It might be a quarter life crisis
Or just the stirring in my soul

Either way I wonder sometimes
About the outcome
Of a still verdictless life

Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Why, why Georgia, why?

So what, so I’ve got a smile on
But it’s hiding the quiet superstitions in my head
Don’t believe me
Don’t believe me
When I say I’ve got it down

Everybody is just a stranger but
That’s the danger in going my own way
I guess it’s the price I have to pay
Still “everything happens for a reason”
Is no reason not to ask myself

If I am living it right
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Why, tell me why
Why, why Georgia, why?
Peterson tells them there’s meaning in life and how to go look for it. And that eventually there will be a verdict.

And that’s a good thing.

The Intellectual We Deserve

“We Have Met the Enemy, and He is Us.”

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The immortal words of the comic-strip character Pogo.

(Perusing my blog, I noticed that I had a half-dozen started essays that I’d never completed and published.  This is one of them from back in early 2016.  I thought I’d dust it off and hit “Publish.”  Comments?)

Here we are in the early stages of the Run for the Presidency, 2016, and the most likely candidates at the moment are a lying, incompetent carpetbagger from Arkansas and a blowhard billionaire whose only principles seems to be “make money” and “promote myself.”  The Vermont Socialist could still pull it out if he could get the Democrat Superdelegates on his side, but that seems unlikely at this point.  The Republican elite is shitting itself over the possibility that The Donald® might win the nomination, and the only other candidate with a chance is Ted “No Compromise” Cruz.  They could defeat The Donald® if they united behind Cruz, but as Rush Limbaugh keeps repeating, they hate The Donald®, they FEAR Cruz.

How the fuck did we get to this point?

Political commentator Henry Louis Mencken, an early 20th Century Cassandra wrote in 1920:

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

So a low opinion of politicians and the electorate both is nothing really all that new, but I wonder if Mencken really believed what he was saying, or was he instead writing a warning?  Doesn’t really matter now, though, because instead of electing a moron, we’re looking at electing an entirely different kind of disaster.

In 2006 I pulled a Quote of the Week from an Orson Scott Card book I was reading:

(America) was a nation created out of nothing – nothing but a set of ideals that they never measured up to. Now and then they had great leaders, but usually nothing but political hacks, and I mean right from the start. Washington was great, but Adams was paranoid and lazy, and Jefferson was as vile a scheming politician as a nation has ever been cursed with.
…
America shaped itself with institutions so strong that it could survive corruption, stupidity, vanity, ambition, recklessness, and even insanity in its chief executive.

A couple of years later, I pulled that quote again for my post Restoring the Lost Constitution, and asked the question:

But can it survive enmity?
I don’t have an answer to that question yet, but it may be coming sooner than anyone would like.

Why You Need a Gun

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From Facebook:

A couple years ago I was working security at a bar in northern Virginia. I overheard a table of college kids arguing about gun rights and gun control and it was getting far too emotional so I did what any sane combat veteran would do and attempted to exfiltrate. I must not have withdrawn as surreptitiously as I intended, because I was stopped in my tracks when a 5-foot-nothing brunette seemingly leapt in front of me and blurted out “excuse me, can you help us?”

I’m sure I must have looked irritated as I cycled through the possible quips and excuses I considered available to me but being uncertain that she wasn’t some Senator’s daughter, I caved: “What’s up?”

She basically leads me to this table of 2 other females (probably both named Karen) and a very soft looking male.

Becky: “So, we were just talking about current events and, you know. So, you look like you’re probably in the military, right? Like the Army?”

(When you accuse someone of being in the military you probably don’t need to give an example)

Me: “Similar.. yea”

Becky: “Right. Okay. So, do you think civilians should be allowed to own guns?”

Me: “Most of us. Yes.”

Becky: (clearly not happy with my answer) “Okay, so, why do you think you need a gun?”

(At this point it’s almost 2am and I’ve just given up on patience. Hold my beer)

(With intentionally overt condescension): “Oh, honey, I don’t. I don’t need a gun.”

Becky stares at me blankly, so I continue, but with a more serious tone:

“I could follow you home, walk up your driveway, and beat you to death with the daily newspaper.

I could choke you to death with that purse.

I could take a credit card, break it in half, and cut your throat open with it.

With enough time and effort I could beat your boyfriend here with a rolled up pair of socks.

I could probably dream up six dozen other ways I could easily end your life if you gave me an hour or so.

If I wanted to, I could wrap my hand around that beer mug and kill all four of you before you could make it to the exit. The worst part is, in your utopian little fantasyland, there ain’t a thing any of you could do about it.

I don’t need a gun.

You need a gun.

You need a gun because of men like me.”

Call me a jerk, but if you want to keep your guns, these are the conversations we all need to start having.

A Half-Bubble Off Plumb?

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Okay, this post is about how I can believe in the power of prayer and still remain a small “a” atheist.

I am alive today, I am completely convinced, because thousands of people who I know and who I am completely unfamiliar with were pulling for me to survive. They prayed, they thought hard, they all wished me to recover.

I cannot believe in a God that allows young children to suffer agonizing death. Nothing in me can find justification for that to occur. Therefore I must believe that whatever “greater power” exists in the universe, it must be unconscious, uncaring, in fact not a thinking being at all. It’s just a mechanism inherent in the design,if you wish to call it that, of the universe.

The three laws of thermodynamics state in effect:

You can’t win
You can’t break even
You can’t get out of the game.

Those are the laws of entropy, the measurement of total disorder in a closed system. However if this were factually accurate then stars and galaxies could not form in our universe. All it would have is a cloud of cooling gas. So in localized areas, reversal of entropy is possible as long as the total entropy of the closed system continues to be the same.

Now It gets weird.

In subatomic physics they have broken the components of atoms down to particles called quarks. Each particle has multiple dimensions described by physicists with names like flavor, color, spin, etc. If two such quarks share precisely the same dimensions, as I weakly understand it, and one quark is affected by an outside influence, its matching quark, no matter how far away, responds as if it has received the same influence. It does not matter how far apart the two quarks are.

This is the idea behind Science Fiction’s instantaneous communicator. It violates Einstein’s “no faster than light” limitation. It means that instantaneous communication across vast distances is possible. It has been tested in laboratories and is freaking out the physics community. It may mean that faster-than-light travel is possible.

Here’s my theory: 

We as thinking beings are able by thinking the same thing at the same time, to affect local entropy levels and reverse entropy in a localized space. In my particular case, me.

Scott Adams, author of the Dilbert comic strip, set himself a goal through what he calls “the power of positive thinking” to become the highest-paid cartoonist in America. The odds against him were astronomical, but apparently he pulled it off. By himself. (But maybe his fans helped.)

I am firmly convinced that all these people out there wishing me best, praying for my recovery, and asking thousands of others who do not know me at all to do the same are responsible for reversing entropy and saving my life.

You can accept that or reject it, I do not care. This explanation works for me. I cannot stop thinking in a manner I consider to be rational.

Please argue away in the comments.

How Do You Have “Reasoned Discorse” With a Far Leftist?

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Over at Quora, I answered the question “What do most Americans fundamentally misunderstand about the U.S. Constitution?“

That the purpose of the Constitution is to establish the rules under which the Federal government is constructed, and that those rules are designed, as George Will once observed:
When James Madison and fifty-four other geniuses went to Philadelphia in the sweltering summer of 1787, they did not go there to design an efficient government, the idea would have horrified them. They wanted a safe government to which end they filled it with blocking mechanisms. Three branches of government. Two branches of the legislative branch. Veto. Veto override. Supermajorities. Judicial review. And yet I can think of nothing the American people have wanted intensely and protractedly that they did not eventually get.

 The world understands. A world most of whose people live under governments they wish were capable of gridlock, that we always have more to fear from government speed than government tardiness.

And:
The very virtue of a constitution is that it is not changeable. It exists to prevent change, to embed certain rights so that they cannot easily be taken away.

And we get this:

In the comments I had several exchanges with someone who is so far left I can’t even grasp it.  Here’s one:

Bhuvanesh Bhatt
“The reason that almost all “improvements” make matters worse is that most new ideas are false.”

Kevin Baker
I was quoting George Will, but in answer to your question let me recommend to you a couple of excellent books on the topic, The Burden of Bad Ideas, and Intellectuals and Society

Don Tracy
Honestly, I have never found any conservative ideology to even be readable. I would not waste my time on any proclaimed conservative because they write in a mysterious religious tone that is baffling to anyone used to rational discourse.

Kevin Baker
Translated: “There’s no talking to The Other Side™, because their philosophy is not understandable by my side of the aisle.” That way lies physical conflict.

Don Tracy
More accurate translation: “There’s no talking to the Republican/Conservative coalition.”

Kevin Baker
You’re falsely attributing to “the Republican/Conservative coalition” the beliefs of “murderous racists in Charlottsville” who are a tiny minority of the population.That’s called “Othering,” a necessary precursor to dehumanizing your opposition. Once they’re not humans, well then you needn’t regard their rights.

Don Tracy
You totally miss the point. The conservatives have never condemned the racist behavior and some actually blame the “non-conservatives” for instigating the trouble. I understand you truly believe in the “cause” but what gives you the right to be so twisted?

Kevin Baker
“Face it, non-conservatives are committed to respecting all people and their arguments with the expectation that they will play fair.”

Yeah, right. You’ve exhibited just that in this comment thread (not).

Don Tracy
I fully support and even believe in Antifa. They are freedom fighters.

Kevin Baker
So you’re good with Antifa violence? I thought you supported rational discourse. Yeah, we’re on very, very different sides.

Don Tracy
It is valid opposition. Trash can fires are a great way to get your attention.
As for different sides, I think you made a choice out of ignorance. If you would investigate with an open mind then you would have to agree with Antifa. Childish fear should never be part of decision making.

Kevin Baker
Not exactly “trash can fires.” Black-clad antifa members attack peaceful right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley

Don Tracy
It is still valid opposition and required to expose and castigate the un-American fascists leading our nation at all of our expense for their profit.

Kevin Baker
So you endorse their violence. Check.

Don Tracy
The violence is only in your imagination.

Kevin Baker
No, it’s reported in the media – which I’m sure you believe is right-wing. But I can point you to the people arrested at the Berkeley event as reported by the police there. Who’s ignoring reality now?

Don Tracy
That’s true – the media is entirely biased for the right wing. I don’t need it.

We live in entirely separate realities.

Other People’s Content

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As you may know, I frequent Quora.com. Recently someone asked the question:

What are the great ideas of progressivism distinct from liberalism?

This answer by Charles Tips is one of the best, most concise responses I’ve ever read, and I asked him if I could archive it here on my blog.

He said yes:

All of progressivism is distinct from liberalism. It rests on an idea I hesitate to call great, but which certainly has been workable. And that idea depends on a number of ancillary ideas and methods.

The modern reordering of politics

Monarchism enjoyed a long run of more than two millennia before being beset in short order by three new politics: Liberalism kicked in in the late 17th century. Bonapartism commenced in the early 19th century followed by Marxist socialism in the mid-19th century.

It was a rough time to be a monarch or aristocrat, institutions propped up only by myth (some are made of better stuff and are more beloved of God), militia (the finest knucklebreakers money can buy) and corruption (we give ourselves titles, offices and land; you can barely survive without paying us). If Napoleon wasn’t running roughshod over your turf exposing you as not so hearty as you claimed, Old Karl was filling your subjects ears with nonsense about class-free society.

But the real kicker was liberalism, which, with its economics of productivity, stood as a rival power center. When Richard Arkwright, a poor tailor’s son, died near the end of the 18th century worth half a million pounds from his inventiveness and enterprise, it sent shock waves through all of European society. The reverberation was especially strong in the courts of kings—scientists and tinkerers and commercial men now had an engine that could produce real wealth and offer useful employment to our subjects!

The gentry had laughed up their sleeves at the very notion of the United States of America—a class-free society… with no titles of nobility… with subjects made full citizens… and the leaders of government construed as public servants!!?? Preposterous! But it kept succeeding—not preposterous but prosperous.

Napoleon came and went, and his nephew was not the adroit he was. Socialism threatened wide-scale revolution then went quiet. But liberalism had bestowed commoners with the goose that lays golden eggs. What were thinking layabout sycophants to do? And then the United States threatened to split in two. Maybe liberalism was a dead end.

Monarchy rallied and soon King Wilhelm I charged Prince Otto von Bismarck to go out and get the many German principalities and duchies to submit to his rule. He needed an incentive, and the strongest appeal to the masses was socialism. He decided to explore and so had a famous series of private meetings with Ferdinand Lassalle, leader of an early social democratic party (that being the name communists had had to resort to in order to get around sedition laws).

Bismarck soon concluded, by God, this man is every bit the monarchist I am, just for the House of Lassalle rather than the House of Hohenzollern. I know how to work with such opportunists!

And so he stole Marx’s entire scheme and implemented it in the name of the King. He hired leading social democrats into his government, united all the German states under now-Kaiser Wilhelm I, created the paternalistic welfare state, and not long after made socialism illegal. As Bismarck explained:

My idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare.

The new myth: We Care. By swallowing socialism whole, he had lucked upon the means to protect privilege against liberalism. Item #2 in The Communist Manifesto had been a graduated income tax. Implement that and the political class then has a throttle on the personal wealth of the rising entrepreneurial class. All the goodies capitalism produces can be kept—the goose can keep laying the golden eggs; we just get our eggs off the top. And we need a lot of them because We Care.

Social democracy comes to America

The United States was birthed at the zenith of liberalism as the pinnacle of liberalism. Our Constitution guaranteed a society that was flat and free. Citizens were free to pursue their own self-interest because Adam Smith had shown that turns out to be good for everyone.

In order for an enterprising man to succeed, he has to create a win for his workers so that they willingly stay engaged in production. He has to create a win for his customers so that they keep buying his products. He typically must use the profits that eventually begin flowing in to shore up the business. It is only with a great deal of risk and fortitude that he himself can gain a win.

Modern free-enterprise economics had supplanted pre-modern non-productive economics, which was zero-sum (win-lose) and therefore produced no new wealth. In fact, the old non-productive economics was now referred to as corruption. Only, for those who were well-situated, it was so much less toil than productive economics. One could become wealthy not by getting in harness for the long haul but simply opportunistically by taking advantage of one’s status.

As word of the Bismarckian bombshell began arriving in the US, several things were going on.

  • Resentment, reaching well into the North over Reconstruction and the three amendments with the effect of making former slaves full citizens
  • Former slaves from the South and Swedish farm boys arriving from the Upper Midwest looking for factory and trade work
  • The steady arrival of “new immigrants” on the eastern seaboard—Jews from Eastern Europe and Catholics and Orthodox from Southern Europe
  • The rise of industrial might and industrial tycoons
  • A rising number of politicians unwilling to be content in the role of public servant
  • The widespread adoption in genteel families of Victorian morality

Progressivism, the movement to implement Bismarckian social democracy in the US soon dominated both parties. However, the movement faced a huge impediment in the Constitution, a document crafted as a bulwark against statism. Here are some of the methods employed by progressives over the years in service of their great idea.

  • Law schools at Harvard, Yale and other leading universities devoted themselves to a democratic reading of the Constitution—majority rules rather than the republican idea that no law is valid that impinges on the rights of anyone
  • Doubling down on democracy with new voting methods—ballot initiatives, recall elections, referenda, direct election of senators and so on
  • Adoption of the Prussian Volksschule, geared to indoctrination, as our public school model
  • Alliance with the Conservative Democrat faction in the South
  • Scientism—Spencer’s popularized version of Darwinian evolution becoming the basis for eugenics and white supremacy
  • Amending the Constitution (XVI) to permit a capitation tax (previously disallowed) on income
  • The rise of Keynesian economics, an economics conceived specifically to allow for political control of the economy
  • After progressive numbers were halved in the wake of Prohibition, an increasing reliance on Fabian deception
  • The rise of administrative law together with federal agencies having police units not publicly accountable
  • Approval of public-sector unions, which has seen a rise in public-sector compensation outpacing that of all productive sectors and with union dues going directly to the Democratic Party
  • Political Correctness—the use of Gramscian ideas to control thought, meaning and culture
  • The rise of the deep state and “weaponization” of public agencies

To be sure, there are many branches to these methods, and this list is far from exhaustive. But all such methods are in support of the great idea of progressivism. In a nutshell…

And so our wealthiest neighborhoods now surround our political capitols, especially Washington, DC, and our politicians no longer see themselves as lowly public servants: United States order of precedence.

Damn, Charles, that was beautiful. And frightening.

Quote of the Day – Daniel Greenfield Edition

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Daniel Greenfield, Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, aka “Sultan Knish” has a piece up on Frontpage Mag entitled The Civil War is Here.  QotD:

We can have a system of government based around the Constitution with democratically elected representatives. Or we can have one based on the ideological principles of the left in which all laws and processes, including elections and the Constitution, are fig leaves for enforcing social justice.

But we cannot have both.

Some civil wars happen when a political conflict can’t be resolved at the political level. The really bad ones happen when an irresolvable political conflict combines with an irresolvable cultural conflict.

That is what we have now.

The left has made it clear that it will not accept the lawful authority of our system of government. It will not accept the outcome of elections. It will not accept these things because they are at odds with its ideology and because they represent the will of large portions of the country whom they despise.

The question is what comes next.

Yes it is.

RTWT.

Quote of the Day – Be Careful What You Wish For Edition

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Third QotD from Hillary Versus America: Knowledge Is Power. Seriously, read the whole thing:

All of this points to a basic, obvious truth of contemporary American politics: the Republican coalition is going to lose. Republicans are clumsy with power; they can’t seem to hold it for long, or ever use it to achieve any vision that fundamentally opposes the Democrats’. Republicans have been fatally outmaneuvered, flanked, and divided. The key institutions, the high ground, belong to the Democrats. Therefore, the Republican base is not going to get what it wants. The Democrats may offer a few expedient compromises along the way, but the state is well and truly caught up in the engine of “progress.” The total transformation of American social and civic life to align with the Democratic vision of the common good is a foregone conclusion.

And this basic truth, in turn, points to another. It’s this second truth that has become my singular political concern in the last several years. And this truth is one that the left has studiously ignored, because if they admit it, they will have to let go of their beloved vision of the common good. The truth is this: the right is not going to accept the left’s victory. The left has treated politics like a game, like a matter of points and position, like a matter of scoring goals and blocking returns. It isn’t a game. There are neither rules nor referees. At its base, the Republican coalition is furious, outraged, boiling. They will not quit the field gracefully. We are not heading into the fourth quarter. We are heading into an explosion. We are heading into civil war.

Everyone who is paying attention to politics knows this, by the way. It’s just something we don’t speak of. But if we want to survive, this silence has to stop. Each side has reasons for staying quiet, but it’s the left’s reasons that matter most. The left remains quiet about the civil war we all know is coming … because they think they are going to win it.