Collectivism is a church, or a grange, or a group of neighbors getting together in living rooms near you talking about political activism or health care.
Tomorrow's story will be about camping, anarchy, and the beauty of Alaska, but today is looking at Memorial Day.
I'm thinking about making a progressively written cookbook published live and unedited on this blogspot site. The idea is to weave the recipes into stories of past adventures, and especially cruise-line shannanigans. So stay tuned.
This year, Memorial Day really seems like the whole weekend because of an e-mail I got from a former math-tutoring student of mine. The cartoons, whose messages were essentially 'thank and remember our veterans, don't just party on memorial day' were very thought provoking. I got this sense that most people think of the military on memorial day, but I'm concerned that everyone thinks of the military in a particular way. I worry that our national consciousness completely accepts the idea that "freedom isn't free," and I believe such rhetoric going unexamined and unquestioned makes us inherently unsafe in our modern world.
Fact is, no one wants to dishonor any veteran. I'd contend, that in an ideal world, we wouldn't even dishonor prisoners, poor people, or Downs Syndrome people, as doing so serves no righteous cause other than inflating our own egos (not that it will necessarily happen, but from what I've studied, I'd say having an In-Group/Out-Group mentality, while functionally helpful to society, is one of the biggest things that holds us back as a species). Since there is no counterbalance to the people who deeply revere veterans (and I don't deny that doing so is worthwhile and moving to many people), Memorial day seems to only speak with that one voice - we don't do enough for the people who wield guns in our name. Left out of the Memorial day message is the voice of all the dead soldiers: "don't send my younger brothers and sisters off to war unless another Hitler is upon us."
What do I mean by all that? Simply this: violence begets violence; honoring soldiers without pushing against the "need" for their slaughter is just another kind of violence and injustice done to the world. Christianity is not my thing, but I seem to remember something in it about "shalt not kill." Yet, people who want to give all their problems to jesus all the time really seem just as ready to let the Flag-bearers blame everything on Saddam, or Iran, or Vietnam and Communism. As far as I can tell, their stated evidence for believing in the "enemy" usually goes no further than television heresay. God even told W. to go and kill people in the name of freedom, and of course he felt obliged to tell his country that god told him so. How many truly religious people would abhor that idea? How long before truly religious people give their piety to a god that doesn't command them to kill and conquer for freedom and country? Not long I hope.
If you take a step back from yourself, it is interesting to look at Collectivism and Individualism and what type of people such societies create. Individualism ascribes a person's priorities automatically into the self-and-related category. As long as we all live by fair laws and wait our turn, all the people in an Individualist country may proceed to consider themselves similar or different from everyone else as they see fit. Given the freedom to make that choice, most people tend to believe they are different from everyone else, since making that cage of uniqueness and cutting yourself off from everybody is cool in the U.S. and being the odd man out is everyone's secret indulgence. Being a sheep is worth deep ridicule in this country, even while our pastures grow denser and denser populated with people unwilling to examine the dischordant values they espouse (like that the ten commandments should be stamped on courthouses where we shalt sentence to kill via lethal injection). I don't claim to hate sheepdom for myself. In fact, I wish more people grazed at the pastures where evolved forage is found - humanity is capable of so much more than instant gratification and entertainment, the crowning achievements of Capitalism.
Whereas all that may apply to Individualist societies such as where we live, Collectivist societies are a different ball game. In a place like China, if you claim a religion makes you different, better, or more special than everyone else, you're given a one-way ticket to jail or worse. Though the punishments and restrictions on such activity may lessen as the execution of such non-collectivist ideas becomes less and less necessary to maintain the status-quo (and since executions tend to cause revolutions), in the end we see that China's entire population, through their ancestry, has been naturally selected to believe the doctrines behind such punishments. Just like the death penalty here, enough people believe with their hearts that the State has a right to take life, that even those who abhor such punishment rarely use the argument that the State should generally not be an agent that takes human lives. That argument simply isn't effective in persuading people here, just as saying the State shouldn't have the right to dictate belief systems isn't an effective argument to persuade people there.
But, a unique strength lies in a Collectivist society that America will have to figure out how to match if we're to avoid being overwhelmed in the future: any Chinese is far more willing to act for the greater good of society as a whole than Americans are. When financial crisis or disease or any other interruption of our daily order arrives, which society do you think will be better able to cope? The society where an individual believes themselves to be roughly equal to everyone else, or a society where any individual courts the notion that they are somehow more important than their neighbors? A society where every day, the citizens vote to support government programs and decisions with their actions, or a society where far more than half the citizens don't care to vote?
Obviously I don't really know what the future will bring and whether our way is better than other ways or not. Obviously, we could end up having more pockets of surviving civilization after world catastrophe hits (here in the place where only the strong have survived in many places for a while now). But, my point is that competition and individualism should have limits. If you buy that then you're less likely to believe it when they tell you that National Health Care is Socialism, and saying such a thing will no longer be sufficient for you to dismiss it out of hat.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Obama is Not A Socialist (Though I'd Personally Be Okay With It If He Was)
Post #10
The following is a conversation thread from facebook that prompted me to write the above column as my latest reply.
It came from a random group I joined called Six Degrees, which claims to be some sort of social experiment (though I'd guess it'd be easier to prove mathematically that the theory is true or false).
Post #1
Friday, May 15, 2009
Technicalities of Gun Control in the U.S.
Reposted from www.nysun.com
Reposted from www.talkleft.com, 10th Circuit: No Individual Right to Bear Arms By Jeralyn, Section Constitution Posted on Wed.
After Supreme Court Ruling, N.Y. Gun Laws Eyed
New York City, which has some of the most restrictive and perhaps even unconstitutional gun laws in the nation, will become a flash point in the legal battle over gun control, as civil rights proponents turn their attention to enforcing the historic gun rights decision issued yesterday by the Supreme Court.
For the first time in the nation's history, the Supreme Court has recognized that the Second Amendment affords individuals the right to keep a gun at home for protection.
"The movement to end private firearms ownership in America is over," the gun rights attorney who argued the case before the federal high court, Alan Gura, told The New York Sun.
Yesterday's 5-4 ruling, which declared a Washington, D.C., handgun ban to be unconstitutional, will put advocates of municipal gun control on the defensive. Gun proponents say to expect new suits challenging handgun bans and licensing restrictions from New York to Chicago to San Francisco.
Reposted from www.talkleft.com, 10th Circuit: No Individual Right to Bear Arms By Jeralyn, Section Constitution Posted on Wed.
10th Circuit: No Individual Right to Bear Arms
By Jeralyn, Section Constitution
Posted on Wed Mar 24, 2004 at 08:53:00 PM EST
Tags: Second Amendment (all tags)
Posted on Wed Mar 24, 2004 at 08:53:00 PM EST
Tags: Second Amendment (all tags)
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals joins a growing number of circuits in holding that the Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to bear arms (pdf). For those who haven't read it lately, the Second Amendment says:
“A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The court reaffirms prior decisions holding that:
...to prevail on a Second Amendment challenge, a party must show that possession of a firearm is in connection with participation in a “well-regulated” “state” “militia.”.... The Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual the right to keep and transport a firearm where there is no evidence that possession of that firearm was related to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.
The Court notes that the 5th Circuit (which includes Texas) is the only circuit to hold the Second Amendment conveys an individual rather than collective right to bear arms. In the Emerson case in the 5th Circuit,
The Second Amendment “protects the right of individuals, including those not then actually a member of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to privately possess and bear their own firearms.”
Here's where the other circuits stand:
In contrast, the Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits have adopted the most restrictive interpretation (also known as “the collective rights model”) of the Second Amendment. Under “the collective rights model,” the Second Amendment never applies to individuals but merely recognizes the state’s right to arm its militia.
[the] First, Third, Eighth, and Eleventh Circuits have all adopted a "sophisticated collective rights model.." Under this interpretation of the Second Amendment, an individual has a right to bear arms, but only in direct affiliation with a well-organized state-supported militia.
The Tenth Circuit joins the "sophisticated collective rights model" group of circuits. The Court also rejects a claim that authority to regulate the right to bear arms is reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment. It held that private citizens do not have standing to raise such a claim.
My view is in accord with that of the 5th Circuit, but we're not moving to Texas just to exercise our individual right to bear arms.
Then, in the comments section (a slightly opposing viewpoint that makes a whole heck of a lot of sense):
In the D.C. appellate opinion in Heller upholding the individual rights theory, it links reasonable regulations to public safety. See pages 53, 54.
The protections of the Second Amendment are subject to the same sort of reasonable restrictions that have been recognized as limiting, for instance, the First Amendment. See Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791 (1989) ("[G]overnment may impose reasonable restrictions on the time, place, or manner of protected speech . . . ."). Indeed, the right to keep and bear arms--which we have explained pre-existed, and therefore was preserved by, the Second Amendment--was subject to restrictions at common law.We take these to be the sort of reasonable regulations contemplated by the drafters of the Second Amendment. For instance, it is presumably reasonable "to prohibit the carrying of weapons when under the influence of intoxicating drink, or to a church, polling place, or public assembly, or in a manner calculated to inspire terror . . . ." State v. Kerner, 107 S.E. 222, 225 (N.C. 1921). And as we have noted, the United States Supreme Court has observed that prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons does not offend the Second Amendment. Robertson, 165 U.S. at 281-82.
Similarly, the Court also appears to have held that convicted felons may be deprived of their right to keep and bear arms. See Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 55, 65 n.8 (1980) (citing Miller,
307 U.S. at 178). These regulations promote the government's interest in public safety consistent with our common law tradition. (my emphasis) Just as importantly, however, they do not impair the core conduct upon which the right was premised.
Another paragraph I like in the Heller opinion, p. 23
When we look at the Bill of Rights as a whole, the setting of the Second Amendment reinforces its individual nature. The Bill of Rights was almost entirely a declaration of individual rights, and the Second Amendment's inclusion therein strongly
indicates that it, too, was intended to protect personal liberty.
Reposted from www.guncite.com/journals/kmich.htmlEqually ironic, the legal community's endorsement of the exclusively state's right interpretation has actually aided the gun organizations in one way. By concentrating attention on the state's right position, the gun-owner organizations have been able to avoid the details of their own individual right position, which seems inconsistent with the kinds of gun controls the organizations have themselves endorsed.[23] In almost every state, the basic handgun legislation, including (p.210)both the prohibition on the carrying of concealed weapons and the restrictions on gun ownership by felons, minors, and incompetents,[24] stems from the Uniform Revolver Act,[25] drafted and promoted by the NRA and the now defunct United States Revolver Association in the first three decades of this century.[26] However socially desirable these and other controls may be, they raise problems for the individual right interpretation which its proponents have rarely, if ever, attempted to address. For example:
(1) Since the amendment contains no express limitation on the kind of "arms" guaranteed, why does it only protect possession of ordinary small arms (rifles, shotguns, handguns)? Why not of artillery, flame-throwers, machine guns, and so on, to the prohibition of which gun-owner groups have readily acceded?
(2) Likewise, since the amendment's guarantee does not explicitly limit gun ownership to responsible adults, why does it not proscribe the laws restricting handgun ownership by lunatics, criminals and juveniles?
(3) Since the amendment guarantees an (apparently unqualified) right to "bear" as well as to "keep" arms, how can individual right proponents endorse concealed-carry proscriptions?
(4) Conversely, if all these controls are consistent with the gun-owner groups' position, how can they contend that registration and licensing requirements are not?[27]
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