Hurricanes, Massacres, and Other Conservative-Converting Disasters

18 January 2013

Time Magazine’s Recent cover feature about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie once again reminds us of the key limitation of the American Conservative’s political views. Until the American Conservative experiences a need or disaster first- or second-hand, he doesn’t believe that it exists.

In the Christie case, the Governor’s embrace of Democratic President Obama and the Federal Government’s FEMA services made a big-spending Liberal out of this candid, big-hearted guy.

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From the Perspective of the American political Center, we are of course familiar with this tendency: if all it takes to turn an American Liberal into a Conservative is a single case of being wrongfully sued, all it takes to turn an American Conservative the opposite direction is one first-rate disaster. 

For superlative example, why do so many elderly, otherwise-Conservative Americans support Medicare and Social Security? Because they know first-hand how essential this social “safety net” is to keeping them on solid ground. 

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Our Favorite Big-Hearted Cynic, columnist Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, takes to task both sides of the current assault-rifle-control controversy—the National Rifle Association and the President—for their use of kids in the discussion. 

The National Rifle Association [NRA] has come out big, as we all know by now, with its questionable-taste ad, holding President Obama responsible for the armed-guard protection that his two daughters get at their private school. But Mr. Milbank also accuses the President himself of using children as props, in his address seeking to garner public support for his various proposals for bringing down body counts when it comes to mass murder in America. To this point, Mr. Milbank writes:

“There’s an argument to be made that the horrific nature of the carnage justifies reminding the public that children are vulnerable, but partisans on each side will only dig in deeper if they perceive that the other side is using kids as props.”†

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If It Takes a Disaster to turn an ideologically constrained Conservative into a Moderate American— reasonable-enough to realize that the Federal Government plays an essential role in modern American life—then it makes sense for Barack Obama to show what an innocent child—at risk of assault-rifle attack at school or movie theater or mall—looks like, while as President, he speaks to the American people in this disturbing debate.

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Does Either Side, Left or Right, have any substantive answers to the epidemic of mass murder in America? Well, maybe yes, and maybe no. Vice-President Joe Biden, at the behest of the President, recently sounded out a lot of different sides about this issue. The President, surrounded by his innocent-kid props, put forth his findings from the Vice-President’s efforts. The NRA fired back. While some of us debate the regulation of gun-ownership and the use of kids as political props, every one of us awaits to learn the news of the next mass murder.

Regards,  

(($; -)}  

Gozo! 

P.S.: To put a nice wrap around this, Governor Christie has now spoken out against the NRA ad, as CNN reports here: TRENDING: Chris Christie Rails Against NRA, Calls Ad ‘Reprehensible’

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*See the NRA’s ad here: When His Kids Are Protected by Armed...

† Read Dana Milbank’s Washington Post essay here: The Gun Debate Is Nothing to Kid About

@GozoTweets 

“Chains” of Mental Illness, or the “Enslavement” of Gun Control?

17 December 2012

In “You keep saying semi-automatic…,” Ken Wheaton speaks to the mental-health aspect of contemporary American massacres, rather than to the aspect of weapons control.

Writes Mr. Wheaton:

“Me? I find myself not interested in arguing about guns. My mind’s kind of full=up with the sort of person, the sort of brain capable of committing such an act.”

Mr. Wheaton raises what seems to be a point more-important than what sort of guns mass murderers use, and how they get them.
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A compelling issue in Mr. Wheaton’s “gun control” or “mental health” question is the following:

The side of our political divide that is most-averse to controlling weapons is also the side most-averse to implementing a substantive safety net for issues of mental health.
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It also happens to be the side that takes least seriously the ramifications of the “touchy-feely” aspects of contemporary life:

That side’s loudest-expressed attitude toward such issues as “what sort of person” finds reverberation in the attitude that, as long as we have enough guns, we can handle the “sort of brain” that keeps coming into America’s schools and businesses and homes, and opening fire.
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These sorts of persons and brains open up fire, not for criminal gains, but for freedom from whatever chains enslave them.

Meanwhile, those on the “gun control” side see less of a distinction in the different forms of “chains,” whether of mental illness, of bad parenting, or of gun-control laws.
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The point about weapons-ignorance/gun-control versus mental health is sound.

But another good starting point seems to be the way that the different issues seem to align in sets along the opposing sides of our national, political divide.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

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This essay was originally posted as a comment at:
THE WORD O’ WHEATON

Keeping Guns Lethal—I Mean "Legal"

The Inarguable Truth About Guns in the United States is that their possession is constitutionally protected by the Second Amendment. But you already knew that.

Another Inarguable, if Irrelevant Truth, is that “guns don't kill people; people kill people.” I guess if military arms are to remain constitutionally protected—but we want to stop the crimes and bloodshed that they cause—we might protect the right to bear arms, but require that all gun-owners have their trigger fingers surgically removed.

At Least That Would Be One Solution. If not a good one.

Those of Us Who Ardently Defend the Right of Free Speech, which permits any American to say anything he damn well pleases—even on broadcast TV under the watchful eye of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia—should understand how those die-hard defenders of Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis movies feel about their own favorite constitutional right.

If You Were Not Ideologically Hamstrung, you might think the Left and the Right could hammer out some sort of compromise about these two issues. But given how unequivocal some are about “free speech,” it should surprise no one that gun-rights supporters feel equally strong. And that they feel equally threatened by anyone trying to take away their God-given Constitutional right.

So When Will We Learn to Respect the Constitution, and if necessary, work to amend the second amendment?

Regards,
(($;-)}
Gozo!