We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Charles Dodgson at Through the Looking Glass takes us to task regarding our views on the interblog gunwars. Whilst some of his points just boil down to a matter of opinion, he also spectacularly misunderstands a few things. In this discussion we are dealing not so much with the rights or wrongs of guns but whether there is actually any point in owning arms as a hedge against tyranny.
Take, for example, Waco and Ruby Ridge. Both of them show American law enforcement at its absolute bloody worst, actually killing civilians; I would have liked to see some of the officers involved in these fiascoes go up on manslaughter charges at least. The victims in these cases had significant arsenals which proved, in the end, to do them no good at all. The reverse, if anything, at Waco at least; the Feds were at least nominally there to arrest the folks they wound up killing on weapons charges — if not for the guns, the Feds would never have showed up in the first place.
That is a strange way of looking at it, blaming the victims for, well, being the victims. It is rather like saying if people didn’t have valuable stuff worth stealing, they would not have to worry about being robbed. Certainly the US security apparatus is more than capable of picking off groups like the Branch Davidians or Randy Weaver if it is thus inclined, no argument there. Of course I would argue that looking at those incidents is rather incomplete unless you look at all the consequences, namely Oklahoma. One does not have to agree with or admire Tim McVeigh to see that the action he took in response to those events does seem to have raised awareness amongst the jackboot tendency in all governments that there can be costs to the application of tyranny beyond immediate calculation. If a few more Waco’s were to happen, I have no doubt more Oklahoma’s would have followed. Guns themselves are just part of the equation. It is just a matter of whether a critical mass of a society is involved or just a disliked fringe like the Branch Davidians.
Of course, I’m not arguing here that the answer to homicidal loons in the ATF is unilateral civilian disarmament.
Actually I suspect he is probably arguing for incremental civilian disarmament, but we’ll let that slide for now.
There are plenty of good reasons for responsible civilians to have access to firearms — self-defense, hunting for food, just plain sport. What I’m arguing against is the Samizdata crowd’s faith in gun ownership as a way for people to defend their other civil rights. When used for that purpose, the damn things just don’t seem to work.
It seems to have worked in Northern Ireland, regardless of whether or not you think Sinn Fein’s objectives are admirable or not. No superpower assistance required.
What makes the Samizdata claims here even harder to swallow is that they’re talking about loosely organized civilian irregulars repelling not just squads of rogue cops, but the combined United States military forces — the most fearsome military machine that has ever existed on the planet — on its own home ground. That may have made sense 200 years ago, when it’s how we kicked out the British. (Oh wait, it’s not. Never mind). But that was then; this is now.
Now here is where Charles really blows it. He seems to be describing a scenario in which a tyrannous US state is able to turn the US military, not just the thugs of BATF or the FBI, against a section of their own people without question. And just whose ‘home ground’ is Charles describing? The home ground of the families of those self same people in the US military. It is one thing killing Afghans from 20,000 feet up. It is rather different telling folks in the US military to fire on people in Kansas or Florida.
Forget the guns. Where are these guys getting the bullets? Sustained combat operations of any kind chew up ammo at a ferocious pace, and current American combat doctrine seems to begin with the interdiction of supply lines, disruption of communication channels, and destruction of stores. Camouflage can delay this a bit, but the activity around these sites is more than likely to give them away eventually. Any industrial-scale production is likely to glow like a beacon on IR. And it’s difficult to deny the United States Air Force air superiority over East Texas.
Here Charles has a very strange view of the nature of insurgency. The US had air superiority over South Vietnam too and it was that sort of thinking which lost that war. The US military has lots of lovely ammo and in such a scenario, that is where much of the insurgent’s supplies would come from… this is ‘Insurgency 101’ stuff to be honest.
And from there, the comparisons get even sillier. Take Algeria, where Islamic fundamentalists are trying to mount a rebellion against a secular government.
Actually I was referring to the Algerian war of independence against France, not the current fun and games. And interestingly many French make the same claims that ‘France won the war but just lost the will to fight’. Funny that.
Which leaves Northern Ireland. I’m not sure which collection of homicidal maniacs Perry has cast as the freedom fighters here, or what he thinks they’ve achieved, but I don’t think the upshot there was fully protective of anybody’s civil rights.
And here Charles entirely misses the point as well has having a rather poorly informed view of the realities on the ground. The political policies of the IRA are not the issue in this discussion, their methods are. The fact is, Northern Ireland is the best analogy of all. The British have been unable to force its rule on a significant armed section of society and if circumstances ever drove a significant section of US society to do the same, all the fancy toys in the hands of the US military would count for as much as they do for British Army in Northern Ireland. As for what armed violence has achieved, would you argue that the civil rights of Catholics in Northern Ireland are not better now than they were in 1968? Of course they are. And why do you think that is? Reasoned political discourse backed up by women singing kumbayah? I don’t think so. If enough people support it, even if it is only a minority within a minority, as is the case in Ulster, violent insurgency does indeed work.
I am not arguing that is what the US should be headed for, of course not, but the fact is that arms in civilian hands are far more effective against one’s own state than a foreign one and all manner of fancy tanks, ICVs, artillery, aircraft etc., do not make a damn bit of difference in those sort of situations. The RAF has air superiority over Ulster too.
Now that the Euro is a fait accompli, the long slow glide begins, perpetually pointed just below the distant horizon. The interest rates prevailing across a very significant area of the industrialised world will now be set to suit the business cycles of France and Germany. Many predict that once the economies of Europe are integrated like that of the United States, that will cease to be a matter of concern. And of course they are correct, once the fringe economies are flattened.
As the structure of Europe’s diversified economies are slowly legislated into highest common denominator standards of ‘social fairness’ in order to protect the interests of French and German trade unions, uncompetitive businesses and their social democratic backers, a gradual leaching process will set in. Economic cycles will continue as ever, but each down turn will squeeze the non-core economies just that little bit more each time, favouring the parts of the economies whose main role is to service highly regulated French and German dominated sectors, rather than independent global export or entirely domestic sectors.
When economic dunce Ross Perot predicted a ‘giant sucking sound’ of jobs heading south of the border into Mexico, he did not seem to realise that all manner of spontaneous market mechanisms were also inexorably moving to adjust, rather than destabilise, the economies of the United States and Mexico. Mexican interest rates and currency fluctuations, and not just lower labour costs, were also of huge importance. Although trade was greatly liberalised, there was never any attempt to impose the US dollar on Mexico (or Canada), or make the writ of Alan Greenspan extend over the whole of NAFTA.
All that is different in Europe because whereas NAFTA has purely economic objectives, the Euro has mostly political ones. Sophisticated and relatively efficient European core economies will no longer have to deal with defensive depreciation of Spanish, Italian, Greek or Irish etc. currencies and will simply wipe out pools of local capital that might have buoyed up less effective local producers. This in and of itself is not automatically a bad thing, provided the local capital markets can adjust… which of course they will not be able to do. The mid to late 1990’s surge in the US economy was a disaster for Argentina, whose currency was pegged to the greenback, because unlike the US, it was not experiencing an economic surge. No mechanism was readily and incrementally available to off-set the asymmetries by allowing the currency to naturally devalue. With the Euro, which is in effect an ersatz Deutschmark/Franc hybrid, this same toxic effect will happen to Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Portugal etc. with one big difference… it will probably happen to many of them at once when the cycle begins, as it surely will.
Even the obvious aspiration to challenge the US dollar as a global reserve currency is doomed. The welfare states of Europe simply cannot compete on equal terms with the less regulated US economy, either in terms on underpinning asset returns or total global liquidity. For all its faults, such as the current lunatic credit binge, the dollar will remain the international reserve currency for the foreseeable future.
Although I have not been bullish on gold for a very long time, any European portfolio might do well to tuck a little yellow ‘mad money’ away and just forget about it for 10 years as a hedge against economic apocalypse, particularly as dollar interest rates are so unattractive right now. Anyone who is actually confident about the future of not just the Euro but the Euro zone, well I have this bridge in Australia I would like to sell you.
The Samizdata legion of wild-eyed but erudite libertarians continues to grow apace. Our lastest regular contributor is Tom Burroughes, who has been known to moonlight as a journalist at Reuters for his measly paycheck when not more productively spending his time with Libertarian Samizdata. Expect to see him poking a pointy stick in the eye of irrational socialists of both left and right on a regular basis.
Also expect a steady flow of guest articles from people such as author of Statism Sucks! Ver 2.0, the redoubtable Andrew Ian Dodge and many other such folk in the New Year.
New Years greetings from Britain, Europe and North America to readers and fellow bloggers down-under. Special greetings to the redoubtable Aussie firefighters who, judging by the reports in the British media, are still in the midst of their finest hour. Godspeed gentlemen.
Over on Inappropriate Responces, the every readable Moira Breen analyses…no, dissects…hmm, no… I’ve got it…Moira Breen mercilessly crucifies Roger Owen, who is the director of the Arab Contemporary Studies Program at Harvard University, in her article “B.S” SCREAMING FROM EVERY PIXEL.
The bulk of the article (paragraphs 6-11) is essentially an exercise in issue-avoiding gobbledegook – you can see man burrowing through a steamin’ heap o’ stats, trying to find a pellet for face-saving spin. Owen argues not only that the only meaningful comparisons are local (previously undefinable MENA country to MENA country), but that an economy must be measured outside the vagaries of the global market: that the only proper benchmark is some mythical economic “normal” point, unaffected by oil prices, multinational hiring, emerging markets, and, bizarrely, better or worse economic management. As far as I can tell, his idea is to factor out just about everything that could be used for objective measurement and practical application.
Splendid stuff. If you are into blood sports the way I am, you will enjoy the whole article. Highly recommended
Just a brief exchange of munitions this time as I am up to my eyeballs in editing something for Natalija (which she keeps changing every 15 minutes).
Esteemed ace meta-blogger Tony Adragna from Quasipundit replied to my remarks below thusly:
Of course, rational libertarians don’t advocate “chaos or pious hopes”, but that is precisely where “spontaneous ways of deriving order in which guns tend to feature rather prominently” lead us sans some form of regulation. Even in Switzerland – every gun rights advocate’s favourite model of an armed citizenry – GUNS ARE REGULATED.
Quite so. But I have never been against the regulation of the actions of armed people (as in ‘a well regulated militia’) because I do not want to see my neighbour’s teenage son riding down genteel Cheyne Row on his mountain bike firing off a Kalashnikov in a fit of youthful exuberance. What I oppose is anything that would inexorably lead to prohibitions on ownership. I have no problem with seeing unreasonable endangering behaviour with weapons punished severely, just as my support of free speech does not extend to support for fraudulence and criminal liable… I have no desire to see voices licensed, just their misuse punished.
The key difference between Switzerland and the USA, is that the Swiss state does not pose a serious risk to the right of its citizens to be armed with military weapons… I am not completely uncritical of the structure of the Swiss state either but there is no Swiss version of a powerful figure like Senator Charles Schumer or his myriad of political and media supporters. The same cannot be said of the USA circa 2001 AD.
Perry takes me to task over my contention that we have at least de jure if not de facto protection from an overreaching state. Again, I admit that it’s a difficult argument for me to make, but then the real world is a difficult place to live – absent de facto protection from anything, I’m happy to at least have the de jure protection of my Bill of Rights.
As it clear from your own remarks that you are aware of your precarious position over exceedingly thin ice, I shall resist the urge to heave a stick of dynamite out onto the lake. Let me put it this way, you have just convincingly made my case for me: I support private ownership of arms because I do not actually think the state can ever be a reliable guarantor of my intrinsic rights. By agreeing that de facto protection from the state by the state does not in reality exist, you are actually saying the same thing I am, which is why I contend the state cannot be trusted to control to whom weapons are doled out.
Then you say you are happy with the de jure protection provided by the Bill of Rights, which in the previous sentence you admit means, de facto, not much. Tony, should you ever find yourself in a war zone, I strongly recommend against straw flak jackets that look good when worn and promise you invulnerability to the flying metal fragments of reality. I recommend the kevlar of objectively derived rights defended by a well armed culture of liberty. Accept no paper substitutes.
It is good to see views strongly and forthrightly put, but without rancour and rudeness. It seems that blog culture is developing along much more civil, albeit robust, lines than the puerile exchanges that characterize UseNet and e-groups.
Rather than fire off another long winded broadside in this quite interesting inter-blog debate, I shall confine myself to the most direct remarks by famed meta-blogger Tony Adragna from Quasipundit that are germane to the central argument here.
Tony accurately points out that the variously articulated Samizdata positions on gun ownership and that of Brian Linse (and himself) may be irreconcilable, as indeed they are… but Tony also unintentionally shows exactly why that is the case in his characterization of the duel as:
I have to throw in with Brian on the 2nd Amendment v. gun regulation debate.
In fact the debate is nothing of the kind. As I has said again and again, the Second Amendment is irrelevant. It is nothing more than a useful 200 year old honoured bookmark to remind people of certain things and has no intrinsic relevance to the discussion. If you genuinely think that the right to own weapons comes from the US Constitution, or that it can somehow protect that right from infringement, then I would urge you to take a look at a 1929 painting by the Belgian surrealist, René Magritte showing a picture of a pipe. In case you cannot speak French, the worlds within the painting translate as “This is not a pipe”. When you understand what that means in that context, perhaps you will also understand what the US Constitution actually is and is not.
In the sidebar of the Samizdata is a little phase that explains why I keep hammering away at this point. I refuse to be drawn into defining moral theories which must underpin any legal discussion, within a meta-context in which the state, and its essential nature, is a given regardless of objectively derived first principals. I will not fight my battles on the ground chosen by liberty’s enemies. Tony presents himself as a realist faced with libertarian utopianism, but the reality is actually quite different. Rational libertarians do not advocate either chaos or pious hopes. What we advocate is merely more spontaneous ways of deriving order in which guns tend to feature rather prominently as in reality there is no assumption that people will always act in their rational self interest.
Tony correctly sums up both his and Brian’s position with a statist credo of earth shaking clarity and directness (no, I am not being sarcastic, I really mean it):
I acknowledge the evidence that suggests “registration leads to confiscation”, but how relevant is that evidence in light of our 2nd Amendment? Not very!
I shall doubtless be quoting this single bit of text as the simplest and most elegant possible distillation of the ‘Conservative Nicene Creed of Constitutionalist Faith’ imaginable. Evidence suggests the state will take our weapons but fortunately we have the state to protect us from that happening. Tony then consistently applies the same logic to forfeiture laws:
I also have a problem with part of the argument at Samizdata that deals with forfieture laws. Should the government prove “proceeds of criminal activity” prior to siezure? Yes, I agree! But, that badly enacted forfieture laws exist does not refute the argument that our constitution protects us, and grants redress from, government acts under those badly enacted statutes. OK, it’s hard for me to argue “protection” when there is no de facto protection, but is there de facto protection from anything. Not in the real world.
So here we have the contention that the state does indeed take property without due process because unconstitutional laws have been enacted by the state, thus it is fortunate we have the constitution to protect us from the state enacting unconstitutional laws.
I rest my case.
Take a peek at this unusual link: author Claire Berlinski has written an interesting novel called Loose Lips, a roman à clef about CIA training at ‘The Farm’.
Save the hapless Claire from a fate worse than death (teaching)… go read the intro to this interesting book (also linked in the side bar under the Samizdata link farm’s ‘sundry fertilizer’).
The rabid libertarian pack-attack on the hapless ace blogista Brian Linse continues unabated.
But I am addressing the issue, and I have over and over again. I think that the extreme anti-gun “wackos” are as much the problem as the “gun nuts”, and that the Brady Campaign folks are delusional morons. The difference between myself and Perry is that I posess a rational awareness of the fact that the Constitution and the government it guides will protect my liberties. It’s how it works here. Unlike many allegedly free and democratic countries in Europe, individual liberties are protected here.
I reject the link between ‘free’ and ‘democratic’. Britain does not have a written constitution that purports to greatly limit the scope of democratic legislation and is thus profoundly more ‘democratic’ than America… yet the British state restricts liberty in many ways far more than the less democratic USA. Liberty and democracy are only acquaintances, not partners.
But just how are individual liberties protected in the USA? Can I purchase a handgun for my individual protection, put it in my car and drive from New York to Florida without fear of arrest? No. Could my nephew and his 16 year old fiance freely wander the USA without risking arrest for statutory rape or ‘under age’ drinking? No. Can a Dutch tourist go into a café in Miami and smoke a joint as he could in Amsterdam without being arrested? No. Can I walk into a car showroom and pay cash for a car without the government being told of my ‘suspicious’ transaction? No. Even large withdrawals of cash from your own bank account can trigger a call to the IRS and DEA! Can the state make a homeowner responsible for maintaining property he does not even own and make liable for anyone who injures themselves on it? Yes, if a person slips on snow on a sidewalk in front of their house, they can be held liable for the action of a stranger on ‘public’ land. Freedom of religion is protected yet schismatic Morman polygamists face arrest. Not quite so free as you seem to be suggesting.
I am sure you think all these issues are petty but that is because they do not effect you. I am not claiming the USA is like Cambodia or the Soviet Union, but your sense of ‘freedom’ is in many ways an illusion. You live in a highly regulated nation which enforces many of its laws far more rigorously than in the European nations you say (correctly) are only ‘allegedly free’. By all means argue these many and varied US regulations are benign and that I am hypersensitive, but please at least acknowledge that they are there and that a highly regulated society cannot be a society in which the protection of individual liberty is foremost amongst the state’s objectives.
And as I have stated before, if the US Supreme Court would make it clear the the 2nd Amendment is a protected individual liberty, there would be no need for the extreme rhetoric on both the left and the right. Chuck Shumer’s got no chance of taking my guns away, but it’s not because I’m better armed than he is, it’s because the Constitution and the representatives elected by the people won’t let him.
Yet the US Supreme Court has singularly failed to do that. US gun laws are moderate in some regions, yet severe in others. Am I free to arm myself if I live in a high crime area of New York City or Washington D.C. where I am most likely to need a weapon? No, I am not. If I live in New York City or the nation’s capital, Chuck Schumer and his cohorts have already had their way and deprived me of the rights you assure me will be protected by your yellowing piece of paper and stout yeoman democracy.
You dismiss the U.S. Constitution because of forefiture laws? I don’t know how better to explain it than to point out that there is no country on earth that enjoys the same freedoms that we do here in the US. Is it perfect? No, of course not. But it is a given that a hard core Libertarian will never see it that way. I guess I find Perry’s lack of faith inexplicable.
Ah yes, I hear what I call ‘The American Mantra’ again and again in e-mails to me from the USA. Certainly there are many very admirable aspects to the exercise of American liberty, such as free speech, and anyone who reads my remarks regularly can hardly have missed my pro-American tendencies. Yet what makes you think “no country on earth that enjoys the same freedoms that we do here in the US”? This seems to be an often repeated ‘article of faith’ rather than a real critical judgement. How many other countries try to tax ‘their’ citizens even when they do not live or work in that nation? Almost uniquely the USA does just that. It seems to suggest the US government actually owns it’s ‘citizens’ regardless of their location and therefore has a proprietary interest in their wealth regardless of where it is. Appalling.
How do you figure that forfeiture laws are not a huge issue? Certainly lots of your fellow countrymen disagree. The state can seize your property on the mere accusation of a crime, without actually even charging you, and even if you are never convicted, it is you, the owner of the property, who must go cap-in-hand with a lawyer for which you have to pay even if you are successful, to sue for the return of your property. If you don’t think that is a massive indictment of the system of US justice, they perhaps you can explain to me why you think that it is a trivial matter. The US Constitution is supposed to prohibit unreasonable search and seizure, yet under these laws you are effectively deprived of due process. My lack of faith in such a system is far from inexplicable.
The first axiom is, I believe, correct. The right to keep and bear is set forth in the Bill of Rights, and the limits that government can put on individual liberties so innumerated are subject to review by the Supreme Court. Just as we limit speech in certain narrow situations, it is perfectly rational and logical to limit gun ownership. If Perry’s logic were argued through, then it would have to be legal to incite to riot, or to falsely yell “fire” in a crowded theatre, etc. This is how the debate is framed.
In supporting the idea of an armed population, I am stating a rational critical preference: nothing more and nothing less. To thereby deduce my views would lead to supporting the right to shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre is to suggest that I support not liberty but rather chaos. However the very reason I support an armed society is the view that this is the best way to avoid chaos and disorder, not to mention tyranny. Whilst I distrust the motives of the US state as much as I distrust the British state, I have tremendous faith in the essential underpinnings of American society (more so in fact that British society to be honest).
To support ownership of arms is to support the ability to make choices. Yet to support the ability to choose is not to uncritically support whatever choices are in fact made. Advocacy of ownership of weapons is not to support them being fired off for the hell of it in a public street (the equivalent of your ‘shouting fire in a crowded theatre’). That is quite another issue again. The essence of libertarianism is not to advocate disorder but rather to advocate the right to choose and the right and obligation to reap the consequences of those choices, be they good or bad. If you yell fire in a crowded theatre or fire off guns in the street, expect severe sanction from the people who suffer as a result (be that in the form of the state or whatever proxy)… yet would you licence voices, as you would guns, for fear they be misused?
Is it a belief that these axioms are false that prevents Perry from directly addressing the illegal gun show purchases I’ve noted? Funny how no post in opposition to mine ever directly addresses these issues. Maintaining that the debate is framed by false axioms is a cop out. Show me why I’m wrong within the framwork of the laws that govern us, not the utopian fantasy of a Libertarian State that doesn’t exist.
Again you miss the point… as I do not regard these laws as legitimate, you cannot expect me (or Walter) to argue with you on the basis of how they can be made to work better. I don’t want them to work at all and neither does your chum the ‘gun nut’ who purchases weapons and then buries them as a hedge against future confiscation. You may not like the implications but he (like me) refuses to show you how you are “wrong within the framework of the laws that govern us” because he (like me) will not accept that framework. By his actions, your friend has decided those laws will not govern him and it is implicitly clear he places liberty above democracy. By doing this, he, and I, simply will not participate in a battle on ground of your choosing. He is indeed voting, just not in the democratic process you think so important. That is the libertarian fact, not fantasy. Pass as many laws as you like, in the final analysis reality is not made by congresses or parliaments or kings or pieces of paper, it is made on the ground by people deciding if they will cooperate with their own oppression…or refusing to cooperate. Your friend the ‘gun nut’ has made his position clear by his actions and so have Walter and I.
Sorry, Perry, but we are a government of laws, not a government of men. Natural Law underlies our Constitution, but it is the document itself that makes practical law out of philosophy. I’d rather continue to rely on the system of government that we have established with the Constitution, as opposed to a free for all where the guy with the highest caliber runs the show. Why? Because it works. And the reality is, that the guy with the highest caliber is always gonna be the government. Bottom line? I understand Perry’s views in the context of the Libertarian argument. I’ve got more than a few Libertarian views myself. But this is the very real United States of America, and there is no way in hell that the 2nd Amendment is ever going to be more important than the rest of the Bill of Rights.
That is a masterpiece of inductive thinking and selective logic. You say you support constitutional government yet it is you who seems to regard it as a smorgasbord to pick and choose from. The two salient parts of the second Amendment are ‘regulating’ (you may not shoot your guns off in the supermarket) and ‘keeping and bearing’ (you may both own and carry guns). No one is suggesting the Second Amendment trumps all the others… rights are rights. Yet keeping and bearing are very much infringed. You also contend that the only alternative to the current official (and widely resisted) system of overarching state control, is for the USA to descend into armed chaos similar to Lebanon circa 1988. Yet US history itself is replete with examples of heavily armed communities that were quite functional prior to the existence of BAFT. Laws can only be legitimate if they are based upon objective morality and objective morality does not spring magically from some scripture, be it the Holy Bible or the secular constitution. Morality is either objectively true or it is not and the best a successful constitution can do is to point that out.
There is also no way in hell that the government is ever going to take my guns away. Look, just as there are people in government who don’t want me to have the right to certain forms of political speech, there are also those who don’t want me to own any guns. But they will not succeed.
US gun laws are reasonable in some regions, yet are worse than some other nations in other regions. Am I free to arm myself if I live in a high crime area of New York City or Washington D.C. where I might actually need a weapon? No, I am not. It seem that if I live in New York City or the Capital, Chuck Schumer has already had his way and deprived me of the rights you assure me will be protected by your yellowing piece of paper and stout yeoman democracy. It would seem not.
And yes, Perry, the reason they will not succeed is the power of the Constitution and the moral authority of the peoples’ government.
You may feel ‘The People’s Government’ has moral authority (I cannot wait to get Natalija’s reaction when she read that phrase) to dispense violence backed regulation of fundamental rights, but if that is the case, why is your chum burying weapons in plastic tubes? ‘The People’s Government’ does not seem to have a whole lot of ‘moral authority’ to him… or to me. And why should it? You have given me no reason other than a vague deontological appeal for faith in the state’s exercise of authority.
The problem I have with the views of excellent blogista Brian Linse are actually the same as the one’s he has with Walter Ulhman‘s post to the Samizdata…
The problem I have with these posts is that they never address the real issues, choosing instead to just characterize the opposition as liberty-hating confiscators who are aware of their authoritarian motives in a conspiracy with evil forces in government.
Yet can Brian seriously read Senator Chuck Schumer‘s endless remarks on the subject and still say there is no foundation to the widely held view of ‘gun nuts’ that powerful factions within the state are indeed ‘liberty-hating confiscators’? How is that not a ‘real issue’? I think it is Brian who is not addressing the issue here, not Walter or Glenn.
Walter would no doubt argue that the existing laws should prevent this kind of activity, but the reality is that they do not work.
I would not normally presume to speak for another like this but I have known Walter extremely well for over 20 years so I will do exactly that: I rather doubt in reality Walter cares a hoot if it works or not (he may say otherwise if he disagrees). Both he and I support the idea of a free armed civil population and reject anything that makes that more difficult. Bad guys are also armed and will always be regardless of any number of idiotic laws. Just look at the rate at which armed crime is increasing in Britain regardless of law after law. If that is not enough, then let me point you at that part of the UK called Northern Ireland and suggest to you that it is demonstrably impossible to disarm a section of society if they refuse to comply. Bad people are already armed in every nation on earth (well, maybe not the Vatican and Sealand)… some of them are muggers, some of them are murderers, some of them are terrorists and some of them wear blue jackets with ATF or FBI or ‘Metropolitan Police’ printed on the back.
A law that doesn’t work is useless, and only serves as fuel for the wackos on the other side (Brady Campaign) to further polarize the debate. Walter describes gun shows as “…simply private commerce between individuals.” Well if Walter offered to sell me his sister for 50 bucks, that too could be called “private commerce between individuals”, but it would still be illegal and immoral.
I do not see your point here. Not that Walter actually has a sister, but if he did, certainly if she was unwilling then it would be immoral to force her into what would amount to slavery as she too is a free individual. Otherwise, I fail to see the problem… prostitution is the combination of sex and free enterprise: which one are you against? More seriously, here comes my profound ambivalence to democracy: I would prefer a bad law that does not work to a bad law that does. A law that doesn’t work can only come about if enough people refuse to accept it, regardless of its sanctification by some elected buffoons with media access who claim to speak for the very people who choose to break that law. I actually make a point of going out of my way to break laws I judge unreasonable restrictions on my liberty. If you choose to speed on an empty road, so do you.
Somehow I don’t think that 30 round magazines and SP-89’s illegally converted to full-auto would be much use against laser guided bunker busters and smart bombs.
I suspect the US Rangers who died in Somalia might have disagreed. You seem to think that some future tyranny in the US would find dealing with armed resistance by sections of US society rather like fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. I think Somalia and Vietnam and Northern Ireland and Algeria would be better analogies. It is hard to ‘smart bomb’ your own population into submission. Britain also has smart bombs and all the panoply of modern war, yet that meant nothing in Northern Ireland when a section of society refused to be governed.
Representative Democracy and the US Constitution are all the protection we need for our individual liberties.
Ah, that would explain US civil forfeiture laws then eh? Were they not passed by your beloved democratic representatives? So much for your mighty constitution. I find your faith inexplicable.
We currently live with a variety of laws that limit our rights to free speech. If we agree that there are legitimate restrictions on free speech, how can we ignore the same needs for limits on the right to keep and bear arms? How about addressing some of these question instead of endless polarizing rhetorical posts? Preaching to the choir is fun, but not very useful.
You seem to be demanding that Glenn and Walter argue the issue by first accepting your underpinning axioms (i.e. not ‘polarizing’ the debate): firstly it is legitimate to restrict the liberty to arm yourself and we should only be arguing about how much to restrict it. Secondly that the belief that the US system of government and its constitution are such sound and fundamental foils to tyranny that fears to the contrary are irrational.
I don’t know about Glenn but I am damn sure Walter and I will never accept either of those axioms as a basis for discussion. In fact I would say to do so would itself be irrational given the evidence that both views are false and it is you who are not really dealing with the issues by retreating into the comfortable fiction that the system in the USA is fundamentally okay. I beg to differ. American success and prosperity come not from its constitutional system and sure as hell not from it’s ghastly legal system: it comes from the fact a large and productive chunk of the population is imbued with a civil culture of liberty that transcends mere written laws… and my admiration for that aspect of America is boundless. The US Constitution is the actual source of precisely nothing and to argue on constitutional grounds, now that is avoiding the issue. The US Constitution merely enumerates some of the rights that people possess by right, whether those rights are written down or not. It is not a matter of laws, it is a matter of rights… but if you insist on arguing on the basis of a two hundred year old bit of paper, which part of ‘…shall not be infringed’ did you not understand?
It is almost inevitable that a degree of triumphalist intoxication starts to surge into commentary regarding the allegedly all-but-over war in Afghanistan. However in their eagerness to at last drive a stake through the heart of that American vampire-of-the-soul, Vietnam, people are starting to sound rather like the pundits opining on the future after every war since the industrial age started to make each war different than the one before. Television, internet and printing presses are humming with commentators who are making extravagant leaps of inductive thinking… never a good sign.
Victor Davis Hanson over on National Review is a case in point and has written an intemperate article called Glad We Are Not Fighting Us, that takes dramatic historical and sociological liberties with fact and evidence. Although I do agree with many of his points, others that he makes are very odd indeed.
America now enjoys a level of global military and political influence not seen since the Roman Empire in the age of Trajan.
This is a poor comparison. What of the Mongols? Theirs was a vast empire based on sheer military might into which the Roman Empire, even under Trajan, could have neatly fitted into one corner. The shadow it cast over the entire Eurasian world was every bit as profound as the US casts now and far harder to ignore.
He goes on to describe an America that will no doubt appeal to a section of his US readership but it is really nothing more than tub-thumping propaganda rather than sensible appraisal of the undoubted might of the USA.
But in the last two decades America, for better or worse, has evolved beyond the traditional Western paradigm, in reaching the theoretical limits of freedom and unbridled capitalism to create a technologically sophisticated, restlessly energetic, and ever-changing society whose like has never been seen in the history of civilization.
That is not just wrong, it is ridiculous… for one, I would argue that the United States was far more free in many ways, both in terms of general liberty and economically, prior to the First World War. The astonishing US forfeiture laws under which one can have property seized and then not returned even if not eventually convicted of a crime (and in some cases not even charged), make it clear that large chunks of the much hallowed Constitution are in fact a dead letter. Even more grotesquely obvious, one only has to look at the huge share of national wealth appropriated by the various tiers of American government and compare it to 100 years ago to realise the absurdity of claiming the United States is “reaching the theoretical limits of freedom”. Ethnic minorities and women are now freed from onerous restrictions compared to a century ago, yet what they may actually do with that restored liberty and economic power is drastically ‘bridled’ by the intrusive regulatory state as never before in American history.
In areas of US society where liberty is indeed in the ascendant rather than in retreat , it is due to the information technology and communications that are exerting their influence far beyond just America.
I would also contend that the Dutch in the 17th century and British in the first half of the 18th century were every bit as dynamic. And of course their pundits made much the same overarching claims about their cultures as well.
Hanson gets back on more solid ground by pointing out where the true root of America’s real comparative advantages lie by contrasting its freedom of expression with that found in other civilisations. Yet it does not take him long to stray back into questionable historical contentions
But unlike the Soviet infantry and armor doctrine of the 1960s and 1970s, which had changed little from World War II our new tactics are not static. We are just as likely to see armored divisions on the ground in Iraq, storms of cruise missiles in Lebanon, or covert assassination teams in Somalia or the return once again of the Afghani mode depending on the changing nature of our adversaries.
Here Hanson just does not know what he is talking about. Soviet infantry and armour doctrines evolved hugely after World War II and in the 1970’s, US doctrines might as well have been drawn up with the intention of maximising the Soviet advantages in combat mobility. Soviet military theories very accurately assessed US strengths and weaknesses, leading to the Operational Manoeuvre Group (OMG) doctrines. US Army reforms came belatedly in the 1980’s to address the weakness of US operational level doctrine compared to that of the Soviets (i.e. the introduction of ‘Air/Land Battle’ doctrines aimed at reducing the large Soviet advantage in combat mobility).
I cringe somewhat at Hanson using ‘covert assassination teams in Somalia’ as an example of American military superiority. What the last US adventure in Somalia proved was something rather different. As any NRA activist will tell you, never underestimate a pissed off armed civilian population. Sure, high tech and well trained US troops can probably kill a low tech bunch of Somalians at a ratio of 100:1… but at the end of the day, it was the Somali ‘warlords’ who held the field and watched the US retreat, because they, unlike the hideous Taliban in Afghanistan, commanded the genuine support of their population. It would be hard to overstress the importance of understanding the implications of this.
I came away with the impression that September 11 has supercharged rather than short-circuited this multifaceted engine of America. What were bin Laden, the mobs in Pakistan and the West Bank, the nuts in al Qaeda, and their opportunistic supporters in the Middle East drinking? We shall never know, but their attack on a country such as this was pure lunacy. Thank God we do not have to fight anyone like ourselves.
Yes, that is quite true and in fact much of Hanson’s article is spot on. However I do worry that in the wave of understandable euphoria following the destruction of the Taliban and the scattering of Al Qaeda, that an air of unrealistic expectation and ill conceived adventurism may replace the air of unrealistic pessimism so beloved of the dismal and irrational Buellers and Fisks.
The Christmas hacker vandalism that took blogger.com off-line for most of yesterday is all the more appalling when you consider that blogger.com are one of the Internet’s secular saints, when you think what they provide to us, the bloggers, and you, the readers, essentially for free.
I feel another bout of ‘hunt the advertisement’ coming on… remember everyone, if you see a banner advertisement on a blogpage, anyone can click on the ‘get rid of this ad’ link under the banner on anyone else’s site and contribute a measly $12 for 1 year of ad-free blog viewing for everyone. If all 300,000+ people who have blogs on blogger.com or the millions of readers who read those blogs contributed that paltry sum, blogger.com, which is run largely on good-will, would be able to afford more bandwidth and better firewalls and obviously that would be in all our interests.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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