Monday Musings: A Gun For Teacher

I just can’t believe that anyone is really making the argument that it would be a safer country if more people were packing heat.  And I can’t understand what sort of person watched the coverage of Friday’s massacre of six and seven year olds and reached the conclusion that what we need is for elementary school teachers to have guns in their classroom.  I can think of nothing better than a loaded gun in close proximity to little kids.  I can think of nothing better than every idiot out there who now just snarls and gestures at me when I don’t drive fast enough having a gun to make their point more clearly.  What planet do you people live on?  I really want you to stop making these silly suggestions unless you have some small bit of evidence to back them up.  And data from Australia in 1998 doesn’t count.  Even if you find evidence, I still want you to stand in front of me, look me in the eye, and tell me that everyone out there that you want to arm with a gun is going to correctly perceive danger and use that gun to act in a level headed and measured way to address the danger.  The idea that the solution to controlling violent crime in the country with more guns than any other is to increase the number of guns is utter and complete nonsense.  Arming everybody is not the answer.  You don’t need guns to protect you from the government.  Obama isn’t coming to get you.  The time has come for us all to get serious.  We aren’t getting rid of guns.   We also don’t need assault rifles.  We do need common sense regulations on who can purchase a gun and how they can purchase it.  The time for channeling John Wayne and Tombstone is over.  It's time to step out of the fantasy and into reality, and to deal with that reality rationally, logically, and together.

Monday Musings: "Without Representation"

“Without representation.”  These are two very important words that folks seem to forget.  The American Revolution was not a fight against taxation, it was a fight against taxation “without representation.”  The idea is not that it is wrong to contribute to roads, bridges,  schools, and the like … but that it is wrong to contribute to those things and have no say in their planning or construction.  We now have representation, so taxation should be OK.  Since taxation is OK, we can stop it with the no tax pledges and the opposition to any tax and allow our elected representatives to get down to the business of working together to solve our financial problems with every tool at their disposal.  

Free Friday: The Freedom To Not Get Shot

Freedom is a funny thing.  It’s one and it’s many.  It’s simple and it’s incredibly complex.  It’s huge and it’s microscopic.  It’s wonderful and it’s horrific.  If you are stuck in traffic and are going to miss the traditional family caroling adventure, then it feels as if it was right there in your hands and has been snatched away.  If you are in a field of flowers on a sunny day and can see all the way to the horizon and seemingly beyond, there are no limits to it.  If you are in a political science class or, god forbid, a Constitutional Law class, it is under the microscope and divided up and dissected in innumerable ways.  When you see your letter to the editor in the local paper or can go to the local polling place and vote for the first African American President, it is truly beautiful.  When you learn that five year old children have been shot to death in their classroom, it is so ugly it is hard to accept.

                               

Freedom is an amazing and wonderful thing, but like most amazing and wonderful things it is incomplete, imperfect, and capable of disappointing and hurting us.  No one is truly free.  It just isn’t possible.  Fundamentally, if I am perfectly free than you are not.  My freedom is not independent of yours.  My freedom isn’t even fully compatible with yours.  The freedom that exists in a world of independent individuals is illusory, so we have all agreed to give it up.  We have decided that there are particular freedoms that are important, so we surrender other freedoms to come together to protect those that are most important … most fundamental.  Even within a society, however, the freedoms we seek to protect can clash.   So, we are forced to negotiate about how our freedoms will intersect and interact.  That is why no freedom is absolute.  That is why our government can impinge on any freedom, even the most fundamental, if there is a good enough reason.  My freedom to say whatever I want can be limited if it puts you in harm’s way.   My freedom of movement is restricted by your right to have property and privacy. 

So, this begs the question, on a day when we mourn the lives of children gunned down in their classroom by a man using guns that his mother legally owned and might have purchased at Walmart, why do we act as if your right to own a gun trumps everything else, including my right to live and breathe?  It really is pretty simple.  The imposition on my freedoms and rights of your being able to own an assault rifle or purchase a gun at Walmart without going through an extensive background check, mental health evaluation, and training regimen is just way too great.  It is not justified by a cultural connection to hunting, by a Constitutional Amendment aimed at maintaining an active militia, by a crime ridden neighborhood, or by a powerful lobby.   

Freedom can be a hard thing to grasp … a hard thing to deal with.  Dead children are hard things to deal with too.  Putting limits on people’s freedom to own and operate guns, however, should not be hard at all.  

Thistle Thursday

Eeyore has always been my favorite denizen of the Hundred Acre Woods.  He isn't entirely powerless, too young, too empty headed or likely to end up with diabetes, too bouncy, too long winded, too motherly, or too anal with vegetables.  He is gloomy, slightly depressed, and entirely pessimistic.  He has even been followed by a dark cloud.  He is not, however, a dark cloud himself.  He is a good friend to Pooh.  He is open to diversity, becoming good friends with his polar opposite (Tigger).  He is even a doer (albeit at a slow pace) ... being a whiz at Pooh sticks and sometimes even able to find his own tail.   Most of all, he is a cold realist ... a fan of reason, even when it is more than a bit depressing to be one.  Throw in the voice, and you have George Carlin meets Henry Kissinger meets James Earl Jones.  It's what we need the most right now, a cute and likeable guy who tells it like it is in a voice you want to listen to.

W-etiquette Wednesday: Four Way Stops

I'll make this simple.  If someone gets to a four way stop before you they get to go first.  Period.  All the time.  It doesn't matter if they got to the intersection after you, you who were behind another car that was actually at the stop sign.  If they get to the stop sign first, then you have to wait.  You don't get to follow the car in front of you through the intersection.  You aren't teammates.  And it doesn't matter if you have somewhere to go, or are late, or are driving a want to be monster truck with testicles hanging off of the trailer hitch.  You still have to wait for the stay at home dad in the miniature mini van.  Sorry.  Often life is complicated, but this isn't one of those times.  Not getting this is kind of like not understanding that evolution is real, not understanding that the Constitution increased the power of the Federal Government, not understanding that Obama was born in Hawaii, not knowing that Paul Revere was warning the British, not allowing people to marry whomever they want , not ... oh, I get it now.  I guess that's why we have horns in our cars.

Tuneful Tuesday: Republicans are Human Too

Republicans are worried about backing off on their no tax pledge and settling for something less than closing down the Federal Government in order to avoid falling off the fiscal cliff.  They seem ready to be reasonable, to enter into a compromise and even to admit it.  They just seem unsure as to what they should tell their more Libertarian and Tea Partying followers.  Well, I want to help out and I know just what they should do.  They just need to look to the Human League for guidance … and here is what they should say:

                                                        

Hey, person who thinks government is evil and the earth was created in six days complete with dinosaur fossils, dry your eyes.  Wipe those tears away.  We don’t want to see you cry.  We wouldn’t try to hurt you, we just needed to talk sense for a while in order to avoid economic oblivion.  We’ve made some mistakes, after all we are only flawed humans born to sin.  We really do long to be back in your arms.  Heck, maybe the tears you all are crying aren’t tears of pain.  Maybe they are only to hide your guilt and shame.  Maybe you’ll forgive us and ask us to forgive you, because maybe while we were off solving problems you were human too.

Monday Musings: All or Nothing

Statements that start with “all” or “always” are usually wrong.   

All killing is wrong.  It sounds great.  “Thou shall not kill.”  Problem is, sometimes it is necessary.  And the thing is, no one really disagrees … but still lots of folks say that abortion is wrong simply because it involves killing.  It might be wrong, but if so it is because it is not an instance when we can justify killing and not because it involves killing.

All taxes are bad.  This sounds great too, until you realize that without taxes there is no collective and no society.  If we don’t contribute to the collective, why should we have a collective?  And, for the record … the Boston Tea Party was about taxation WITHOUT REPRESENTATION.  Just so you know, we have representation now.

Anything now done by the government could be more effectively done by private enterprise.  The free market is always the answer.  This is all silliness.  It is hard to see how anybody could believe any of this.  It is clear that the key to economic success is a partnership between government and business, and instead of wasting our time in the realm of absolute silliness, we should be talking about what the ideal nature of this collaboration should be.  As far as the free market goes, that was debunked long ago as the ideal solution to every problem.  Need I say “child labor’ or Upton Sinclair?

All Muslims are terrorists in waiting.  The truth is, if you are going to go with this than there are some equally unflattering things we ought to say about Christians.  And we better not get started on all White Folks.

I think you get the idea.  The world has a bit of nuance to it.  It can be frustrating, but it is the truth.  Dealing with the truth, leads us to cooperation, collaboration, compromise, and solutions.  Living in a black and white fantasy world leads to self righteous satisfaction and one impasse after the other.  I’ll take the truth, at least most of the time.