Just over the transom an e-mail from someone who wants me to review Nassim Taleb's latest book. So I asked Mr. Google to tell me who this Taleb fellow is and he referred me to Nassim Taleb's Super-Simple Argument for Banning Semi-Automatic Weapons. After reading this incoherent Facebook posting of his, I decided that time spent reading anything further by Taleb would probably be wasted.
Beware of wasting time on the latest stuff. What is hot now will be forgotten tomorrow. Here is some good advice from Leo Strauss on reading and writing.
UPDATE (1/2): This parody further dissuades me from reading Taleb. There is a strong temptation to want to be be up on all the latest stuff. But isn't it foolish to succumb to this temptation if there are great books you have never cracked? Life is short. Spend it well.
At bottom, the gun debate boils down to a conflict of visions, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Sowell. This is well-explained by Mchael Medved in The Liberal God Delusion. Excerpt:
Consider the current dispute over the right response to gun violence. At its core, this argument comes down to a visceral disagreement between relying on self-defense or on government protection. Gun-rights enthusiasts insist that the best security for law-abiding citizens comes from placing formidable firearms into their hands; gun-control advocates believe we can protect the public far more effectively by taking guns away from as many Americans as possible. In other words, conservatives wantto address the threat of gun violence by giving individuals more power while liberals seek to improve the situation by concentrating more power in the hands of the government. The right preaches self-reliance while the left places its trust in the higher power of government.
The same dynamic characterizes most of today’s foreign-policy and defense debates. Right-wingers passionately proclaim the ideal of “peace through strength,” arguing that a powerful, self-confident America with dominant military resources remains the only guarantee of national security. Progressives, on the other hand, dream of multilateral consensus, comprehensive treaties, disarmament, grand peace deals, and vastly enhanced authority for the United Nations. Once again, liberals place a touching and naive faith in the ideal of a higher power—potential world government—while conservatives insist that the United States, like any nation, must ultimately rely only on itself.
For the liberal, the weapon, not the wielder, is the cynosure of his moral disapprobation, and it doesn't matter whether the weapon is a semi-automatic pistol or a nuclear device. It is baaaaaad, as such and in itself, and so must be banned. For the conservative, the focus is on the wielder, not the weapon, for only the wielder is a moral agent. If Israel has nukes, that is not a problem. But it is a big problem if a rogue state such as Iran does. Iran does, but Israel does not, call for the destruction of other states.
The difference between my shotgun and Stanley 'Tookie' William's shotgun resides not in the shotgun but in the fact that he is or (thankfully) was a moral cretin whereas your humble correspondent, despite his manifold minor faults, does not deserve such an appellation.
It's the wielder, not the weapon, that counts. Wise up, liberals.
What follows is a reposting of an entry that first appeared in these pages on 19 July 2010. The reposting is prompted by the following surprising statement by Joe Nocera: "But it is equally true that anyone who goes into a school with a semiautomatic and kills 20 children and six adults is, by definition, mentally ill." (Emphasis added.) Well, maybe it isn't so surprising given that Mr. Nocera is a NYT op-ed writer. Surprising or not, Nocera's claim is not only false, but illustrative of complete confusion about the meaning of 'by definition.'
Suppose a Palestinian Arab terrorist enters a yeshiva with a semi-automatic rifle and kills 20 children and six adults. May you validly infer that the terrorist is mentally ill? Of course not. He may or may not be. Were the 9/11 hijackers mentally ill? No. They collectively committed an unspeakably evil act. But only a liberal would confuse an evil act with an insane act. Suppose a young SS soldier is ordered to shoot a group of 26 defenceless Jews, toppling them into a mass grave they were forced to dig. He does so, acting sanely and rationally, knowing that if he does not commit mass murder he himself will be shot to death.
Conceptual confusion and emotive uses of language are trademarks of liberal feel-good 'thinking.' To give one more example from Nocera's piece, he refers to semi-automatics as "killing machines." Question: would a semi-auto pistol or rifle be a "killing machine" if it were used purely defensively or to stop a would-be mass murderer? Is an 'assault weapon' an assault weapon when used for defense? Is a liberal a liberal on the rare occasions when he talks sense?
…………………
What is wrong with the following sentence: "Excellent health care is by definition redistributional"? It is from a speech by Donald Berwick, President Obama's nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, speaking to a British audience about why he favors government-run health care.
I have no objection to someone arguing that health care ought to be redistributional. Argue away, and good luck! But I object strenuously to an argumentative procedure whereby one proves that X is Y by illict importation of the predicate Y into the definition of X. But that is exactly what Berwick is doing. Obviously, it is no part of the definition of 'health care' or 'excellent health care' that it should be redistributional. Similarly, it is no part of the definition of 'illegal alien' that illegal aliens are Hispanic. It is true that most of them are, but it does not fall out of the definition.
This is the sort of intellectual slovenliness (or is it mendacity?) that one finds not only in leftists but also in Randians like Leonard Peikoff. In one place, he defines 'existence' in such a way that nothing supernatural exists, and then triumphantly 'proves' that God cannot exist! See here.
This has all the advantages of theft over honest toil as Bertrand Russell remarked in a different connection.
One more example. Bill Maher was arguing with Bill O'Reilly one night on The O'Reilly Factor. O'Reilly came out against wealth redistribution via taxation, to which Maher responded in effect that that is just what taxation is. The benighted Maher apparently believes that taxation by definition is redistributional. Now that is plainly idiotic: there is nothing in the nature of taxation to require that it redistribute wealth. Taxation is the coercive taking of monies from citizens in order to fund the functions of government. One can of course argue for progressive taxation and wealth redistribution via taxation. But those are further ideas not contained in the very notion of taxation.
Leftists are typically intellectual cheaters. They will try to bamboozle you. Listen carefully when they bandy about phrases like 'by definition.' Don't let yourself be fooled.
"But are Berwick, Peikoff, and Maher really trying to fool people, or are they merely confused?" I don't know and it doesn''t matter. The main thing is not to be taken in by their linguistic sleight-of-hand whether intentional or unintentional.
"One of my New Year’s resolutions is to work harder to persuade ideological friends and foes alike that the way to reduce partisanship and maximize happiness in America is to embrace federalism — the view that we should push as many decisions as possible to the lowest local level feasible."
If it is a mere absence of sound, why is it so delicious? Turn off some noisemaker and the silence is there, palpably. It is supereminently there if you succeed in turning off that most noisy and hard-to-turn-off noisemaker, your own mind.
Max Picard proved unhelpful. His effusions are vaguely suggestive but neither fish nor fowl, neither philosophy nor poetry. More help is to be had from the Beatles: "Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream. It is not dying, it is not dying . . . ."
How close dreams are to waking reality is shown by the need we sometimes have to remind ourselves that something seemingly remembered was merely dreamt. I wake up from a dream in which an enemy has acted in a friendly and conciliatory manner. I remind myself that the conciliatory behavior was merely my dreaming mind's invention.
It can depress one's mood to realize how one's mood is depressed by the gloom and brevity of December days. Mortal man, who would soar so high, like Icarus toward the sun, is brought down to ground by the thought that his sunny mood is affected by — the sun.
Isn't this a delightful topic? But it is important that you inform yourself and do your level best to form correct opinions about these matters.
Liberals routinely pose the rhetorical question, Why would anyone need a semi-automatic rifle? You need to have an answer at the ready. When 'Assault Weapons' Saved Koreatown
William Spengler, the miscreant who ambushed NY firefighters, killing two of them, was a convicted felon out on parole. In 1981 he was convicted of killing his grandmother with a hammer. Two points. First, if he hadn't been let out he couldn't have committed arson and murder, outside the prison, leastways. This supports my claim that it is liberal culture, not gun culture, that is the real problem. Liberals have a casual attitude toward criminal behavior. Second, as a convicted felon, Spengler illegally possessed the guns he used in his rampage. Liberals need to reflect on the fact that criminals, by definition, do not respect laws or the rule of law.
Liberals shirk the hard task of demanding strict enforcement of existing laws while opting for the easy feel-good call for new laws. They go hard on the weapon, soft on the wielder. That piece of stupidity is fallout from their worldview, one that denies free agency and individual responsibility.
Dianne Feinstein of San Bancisco is calling for a ban on the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of, among other things, "semiautomatic rifles, handguns, shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and have one military characteristic." (emphasis added) Well, the 1911 model semi-auto .45 caliber pistol has a detachable magazine and has arguably one military characteristic: " The M1911 is a single-action, semi-automatic, magazine-fed, recoil-operated handgun chambered for the .45 ACPcartridge,[1] which served as the standard-issue side arm for the United States armed forces from 1911 to 1985. It was widely used in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War." (See here.) So is the 1911 model pistol going to be banned?
Gun bans have worked really well in the U.K. : "Gun crime has almost doubled since Labour came to power as a culture of extreme gang violence has taken hold. The latest Government figures show that the total number of firearm offences in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year - a rise of 89 per cent."
Once again I am proven right: when you go hard on the weapon but soft on the wielder, at the same time stripping decent citizens of their right to the tools of self-defense, then you get more crime.
. . . then heaven is a joke, and so is this life, and there is no ultimate justice, hence no God.
Mobster Frank Calabrese Sr. has died in prison. Good riddance. I read the book by his son, Frank Jr. and came away impressed by him for courageously 'ratting out' his father: family loyalty is a value, but there are higher loyalties.
Unfortunately:
Frank Calabrese Jr. told the Sun-Times on Wednesday that that violent history made his father's death especially emotional.
"I believe he was taken on Christmas Day for a reason," he said. "I hope he made peace. I hope he's up above looking down on us. … He's not suffering anymore. The people on the street aren't suffering anymore."
With all due respect to Frank Jr., this is just morally obtuse. For it implies that how we live here below makes no difference to the ultimate outcome. It makes no difference whether one lives the life of a brutal murderer or the life of an Edith Stein or a Simone Weil. But then there is no justice, and this life is even more absurd than it would be were there no God or afterlife at all. The reality of the moral point of view cannot have the divine underpinning it needs unless God is the guarantor of justice. The following exchange between Drury and Wittgenstein is apropos:
DRURY: I had been reading Origen before. Origen taught that at the end of time here would be a final restitution of all things. That even Satan and the fallen angels would be restored to their former glory. This was a conception that appealed to me — but it was at once condemned as heretical.
WITTGENSTEIN: Of course it was rejected. It would make nonsense of everything else. If what we do now is to make no difference in the end, then all the seriousness of life is done away with. Your religious ideas have always seemed to me more Greek than biblical. Whereas my thoughts are one hundred per cent Hebraic.
(Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. Rhees, Oxford 1984, p. 161.)
What I like about Wittgenstein is that he was one serious man.
Well, you might be a rancher on the southern border whose property is routinely overrun by drug smugglers armed with AK-47s. Actual examples here.
Surely a man has the right to defend his life, his family, his property, and his livelihood from domestic and international criminals. Having that right, he has the right to appropriate means for conducting that defense. If you disagree then you are morally obtuse. If you say that the Federal government provides adequate control of the border, then you are badly misinformed — or lying.
Not only do the Feds not control the border adequately, the Obama administration had the chutzpah to sue Arizona over S. B. 1070.
The second rancher to be interviewed in the above linked article tells of an incident when his child was taking a shower. An illegal alien reached through the window and grabbed the kid, who for months thereafter refused to take showers! What really got me, though, was that the rancher referred to the alien as a 'gentleman.'
The Buddhist cure is radical all right: it goes right to the root, radix, of the matter: desire. But eschewing a salutary horticulture, it e-rad-icates the root. That is like curing a disease by snuffing out the life of the diseased. The problem is not desire, but misdirected desire. The solution is not the uprooting of desire, but its proper direction.
