Murder in Tuscon
I was just finishing up a new blog on the responsibilities of freedom this morning when the networks were flooded by the news of US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and a number of others attending a meeting in a Tuscon parking lot, who were gunned down by a seemingly disturbed young man. The casualty count was twenty.
As I continued to listen I discovered that this young man was regarded by those who know him as a loner, who did weird things, who had been dismissed from college for unruly behavior in a number of classrooms that had required the attendance of security personnel, who had been rejected by the army and who had still managed to purchase an automatic pistol a short time before his murderous spree.
Ring a bell does it? How many times does this have to happen before any number of people and organizations in this country recognize that their responsibilities must take precedence over their wants.
I am a licensed gun owner and was formerly a Federally licensed dealer in firearms and explosive devices so before you start groaning about the whining liberal, know your source. I believe in the right of certain people to own certain firearms just as I believe in the right of certain people to own certain cars or certain people to fly certain planes. In case you missed it “certain” is the key word. I don’t want to turn this into a debate about gun control but guns are one of the three elements of responsibility or lack of it that led to this and other massacres that have taken place in our country in the last few years.
The other two are the individual citizens personal responsibility to the rest of their community and the responsibility of public figures and organizations to refrain from inflammatory public pronouncements. What am I talking about? Very simple, I heard a congressman speaking on Meet The Press this morning say that the police had to do a better job at keeping track of these potential nut cases. What a dumb thing to say. Like the cops have plenty of time to go out looking for these guys. Like they don’t have enough on their plates as it is. But maybe if they had been notified by some of the people who had noticed that the perp was acting weirdly, maybe, just maybe they would have taken an interest in him. So where does the responsibility lie; with the cops who had no knowledge of this guy or with the army shrink who rejected him, the campus police who had a regular thing with him or the people who knew him to be two minutes past normal? Do I even have to say?
On the level of public figure responsibility I will only give one utterly damming example. When Congresswoman Giffords was backing the President’s health plan, Sarah Palin’s political action committee issued an ad with crosshairs over the names of her political adversaries including Congresswoman Giffords. Now no one is going to suggest that this violent symbolism would drive any sane person to shoot the Congresswoman but neither is anyone going to suggest that all of Ms Palin’s followers are sane. Ergo.
And to get back, briefly, to the gun issue. I’m going to state this plainly and flat out. Just like with cars and planes, just like with being a doctor or lawyer, owning a gun should entail owning a license and in order to get that license one should have to display the knowledge and ability to safely handle and use that gun as well as a stability of personality that at the very least would enable one to be inducted into the nations armed forces. To borrow a line from the NRA, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” That’s why people should be regulated before they are free to own a gun.
Now I’m going to add the blog that I was working on when this whole issue exploded across the news. Maybe they have something to do with each other
Freedom
I was having a discussion the other night with a guy who identified himself politically as a Libertarian. This was a very sharp guy who had given up a serious, mid-six figure job to create his own company, which even in its current infancy was paying him over a six-figure income. Yet he was whining about how his freedom was being taken away from him. I didn’t want to mention to him that if we had been standing in many other countries he would be in danger of forfeiting his freedom for expressing this view.
It seems that since 2008 there has been a plethora of disaffected citizenry whose chief goal is to take their country back… from what? This roiling mass of disgruntled whiners seem to claim affiliation with either the Libertarians or the Tea Party and their war cry appears to be freedom without responsibility.
What this seems to mean is freedom from taxes and any kind of government regulation. It also seems to mean freedom from any kind of responsibility toward your fellow human beings. This is not to say that these people practice what they preach because many of them are generous to a fault and deeply involved in humanitarian causes. It’s just that they don’t want anyone to be telling them how and where they should be doing their good deeds. This would appear to be okay if it weren’t for the fact that you really can’t run a modern country without taxes and you do need laws and regulations to keep the bad guys from crapping on the good guys. And while I say you can’t do without taxes and regulations in a modern country, history has already told us that you couldn’t do without them at any time in the past so grab hold of reality all you Libertarians cause your desires are out of step with real life.
We already live in the freest country in the world. Right now, despite that, our country is having a lot of problems and part of the reason for those problems is the lack of personal responsibility that must be the handmaiden of freedom.
Freedom from taxes only works when one is willing to live without the services those taxes provide. I would suggest any one of a dozen current African countries where this situation is in full sway and ask the average Libertarian if they would wish to live under the conditions that exist in these countries in exchange for a zero tax rate.
The same is true for government regulation. It is a rare case when congress passes any sort of regulation. Passing regulation makes enemies and members of congress, who depend on making friends to keep their jobs, really hate making enemies, so you can bet that when they do pass any kind of regulation it’s only because some egregious act has been committed that hasn’t been covered under our existing criminal statutes. When Obama got his gutless Democratic congress to get off its collective butt and pass some all but toothless regulations aimed at our banks and Wall Street, the Republicans in congress voted 100% against them. The Libertarians and the Tea Party hated the regulations and did their best to vote out all those nasty Democrats that supported them in the 2010 election.
What was it about those regulations that got all these freedom mongers so bent out of shape? I’m sure they don’t all own banks or investment firms or even have significant jobs in them. Is it possible that they are so dumb that they don’t realize that these regulations, weak as they are, have the goal of protecting them from the kind of abuses that caused the recent crash? Look, if everyone was honest and altruistic we wouldn’t need those regulations but the history of our financial institutions from their very beginnings right up to today have shown us that they are often run by greedy, venal thieves who, if they aren’t regulated will steal everything that isn’t nailed to the floor.
Now try to read this very slowly. The * banks * and * Wall Street * must * be * regulated * or * they * will * steal * you * deaf,* dumb * and * blind.
There, that wasn’t so hard was it? Do you sort of get the concept? Good.