Mitch Berg loves guns and is delighted by Heller, the Supreme Court ruling striking down DC's anti-gun ordinance:
By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court of the United States today ruled in the Heller case that the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution is exactly what the founding fathers intended; that a right “of the people” means “people”, not “the National Guard”.
The court dealt forty years of erosion of civil liberties and contempt for the law-abiding citizen a sharp kick in the groin with pointy boots. The decision stands as the capstone on one of the most remarkable bits of grassroots politics in American history - a three-decade battle where the nation’s people, black and white and Republican and Democrat, fought their elites first to a standstill, and then came back to an escalating series of victories, starting in the courts of public opinion, extending through legislatures and city councils around the nation, to today.
Many liberal legal observers find the Scalia reading of the "ambiguous" Second Amendment strained and unpersuasive [as John Paul Stevens said]. In addition, it's long seemed weird to me to call the right to carry a gun a civil liberty. But I realize Mitch Berg disagrees with me; herewith, a few questions:
Long ago, I lived in Taiwan for almost a decade, where gun-related fatalities occur at less than 3% of the US rate. Gun ownership is severely restricted in Taiwan, a quite democratic island polity of 21m people, about one-sixth the size of Minnesota. I never met any citizen there who believed his civil liberties were paltry due to his inability to legally purchase a gun. In addition, Taiwan was, for decades, much praised and supported by the American political right, as a bastion of anticommunism and capitalism. And even among this right-wing crowd, I never heard any of Taiwan's American conservative supporters argue that civil liberties in Taiwan were unimpressive and insufficient, due to gun control. By refusing to criticize Taiwan for its highly restrictive anti-firearms laws, conservatives implicitly acknowledge that the individual's right to legally own a gun may be a fine policy preference, or an American peculiarity--but it is in no way a fundamental civil liberty, nor is it required for democracy to flourish.
Agreed, Mitch?
Thursday, June 26, 2008
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3 comments:
Agreed, Mitch?
Sorry but, broadly, no.
Defending life, property and liberty from crime and aggression is a pretty significant ideal.
Comparing the US - a huge, multicultural nation with many divergent views and a grab bag of intersecting pathologies - with Taiwan, a relatively homogenous society (yes, I know, there's a difference between native Taiwanese and mainlanders) with fairly high social cohesion is kind of misleading. You can't really compare the crime rates.
And Taiwan's been a functioning democracy for, what, 15 years? Ask us in about 200. While I respect Taiwan's sovereignty, capitalism, anti-communism and newfound love of democracy, as a matter of course I have questions of any government that doesn't trust its citizens with the right to defend life, liberty and property.
I give 'em a B.
My main argument questioned whether it makes sense to refer to the right to own a gun as a civil liberty. When we call something a civil liberty, we underline the centrality of a right to democracy. What if we found a country which didn't allow a free press, didn't allow people to petition the government for redress of grievances or didn't allow religious freedom? It is inconceivable that Mitch Berg would bestow a B grade on such a country's civil liberties. But Mitch admits a country whose government allows virtually no private firearms ownership can still get a passing grade on civil liberties. So--my interpretation--Mitch implicitly admits that, to be a reasonably democratic country, a Second Amendment is of minor importance. (My position differs from Mitch's in that while he considers it of small importance, I view it as being of no importance, in constituting a decent democracy, in 2008.)
There are so many ways to respond to that, Gavin. I'll try to give a couple of 'em in a nutshell.
The Psychology of Crowds: Population that can't respond to crime, thuggery, terrorism necessarily depends on government to respond to them. A population that depends exclusively on government for its security is more likely to approve of limits on, and tolerate abuses of, other civil liberties. This is not hypothetical; the Japanese tolerate outrages against the accuse that would set the ACLU's legal machinery on "puree". During the seventies and the heyday of euroterrorism, the French tolerated abuses of the accused that'd make your blood boil.
The Final Check and Balance: Government needs to realize that, if the thought of suspending the Constitution ever did cross its mind, that there is the potential for a cataclysmic response from The People. The strawman response is "you can't fight an Apache gunship with a hunting rifle"; the response (other than "we should legalize Stinger missiles") is "of course you don't; you fight the truck driver who hauls the fuel to the Apache").
In short, the right to keep and bear arms helps reinforce the citizens' stake in all the other rights. As such, it is not of "little" or "no" importance, but indeed it ranks right behind speech, press and assembly as the most important civil right. Democracy in Taiwan, Germany, Japan and Austria exists purely at the sufferance of government; in the US (and other nations with armed citizenries, like New Zealand and Switzerland), government has one more speed bump to cross.
I could go on, but you get the point.
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