I don't get it. Ostrich nominalism is not that hot a topic.
By the way, my ComBox is not for your self-promotion. Try it, and you will have wasted your time. Comment moderation is on, and I have an itchy 'delete finger.' Trackbacks are off. What a worthless utility that turned out to be.
As magnificent a subject as philosophy is, grappling as it does with the ultimate concerns of human existence, and thus surpassing in nobility any other human pursuit, it is also miserable in that nothing goes uncontested, and nothing ever gets established to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners. (This is true of other disciplines as well, but in philosophy it is true in excelsis.) Suppose I say, as I have in various places:
That things have properties and stand in relations I take to be a plain Moorean fact beyond the reach of reasonable controversy. After all, my cat is black and he is sleeping next to my blue coffee cup. ‘Black’ picks out a property, an extralinguistic feature of my cat.
Is that obvious? Not to some. Not to the ornery and recalcitrant critter known as the ostrich nominalist. My cat, Max Black, is black. That, surely, is a Moorean fact. Now consider the following biconditional and consider whether it too is a Moorean fact:
1. Max is black iff Max has the property of being black.
As I see it, there are three main ways of construing a biconditional such as (1):
A. Ostrich Nominalism. The right-hand side (RHS) says exactly what the left-hand side (LHS) says, but in a verbose and high-falutin' and dispensable way. Thus the use of 'property' on the RHS does not commit one ontologically to properties beyond predicates. (By definition, predicates are linguistic items while properties are extralinguistic and extramental.) Predication is primitive and in need of no philosophical explanation. On this approach, (1) is trivially true. One needn't posit properties, and in consequence one needn't worry about the nature of property-possession. (Is Max related to his blackness, or does Max have his blackness quasi-mereologically by having it as an ontological constituent of him?)
B. Ostrich Realism. The RHS commits one ontologically to properties, but in no sense does the RHS serve to ground or explain the LHS. On this approach, (1) is false if there are no properties. For the ostrich realist, (1) is true, indeed necessarily true, but it is not the case that the LHS is true because the RHS is true. Such notions as metahysical grounding and philosophical explanation are foreign to the ostrich realist, but not in virtue of his being a realist, but in virtue of his being an ostrich.
C. Non-Ostrich Realism. On this approach, the RHS both commits one to properties, but also proffers a metaphysical ground of the truth of the LHS: the LHS is true because (ontologically or metaphysically speaking) the concrete particular Max has the property of being black, and not vice versa.
Note 1: Explanation is asymmetrical; biconditionality is symmetrical.
Note 2: Properties needn't be universals. They might be (abstract) particulars (unrepeatables) such as the tropes of D. C. Williams and Keith Campbell. Properties must, however, be extralinguistic and extramental, by definition.
Note 3: Property-possession needn't be understood in terms of instantiation or exemplification or Fregean 'falling-under'; it might be construed quasi-mereologically as constituency: a thing has a property by having it as a proper ontological part.
Against Ostrich Nominalism
On (A) there are neither properties, nor do properties enter into any explanation of predication. Predication is primitive and in need of no explanation. In virtue of what does 'black' correctly apply to Max? In virtue of nothing. It just applies to him and does so correctly. Max is black, but there is no feature of reality that explains why 'black' is true of Max, or why 'Max is black' is true. It is just true! There is nothing in reality that serves as the ontological ground of this contingent truth. Nothing 'makes' it true. There are no truth-makers and no need for any.
I find ostrich nominalism preposterous. 'Black' is true of Max, 'white' is not, but there is no feature of reality, nothing in or at or about Max that explains why the one predicate is true of him and the other is not!? This is not really an argument but more an expression of incomprehension or incredulity, an autobiographical comment, if you will. I may just be petering out, pace Professor van Inwagen.
Can I do better than peter? 'Black' is a predicate of English. Schwarz is a predicate of German. If there are no properties, then Max is black relative to English, schwarz relative to German, noir relative to French, and no one color. But this is absurd. Max is not three different colors, but one color, the color we use 'black' to pick out, and the Krauts use schwarz to pick out. When Karl, Pierre, and I look at Max we see the same color. So there is one color we both see — which would not be the case if there were no properties beyond predicates. It is not as if I see the color black while Karl sees the color schwarz. We see the same color. And we see it at the cat. This is not a visio intellectualis whereby we peer into some Platonic topos ouranos. Therefore, there is something in, at, or about the cat, something extralinguistic, that grounds the correctness of the application of the predicate to the cat.
A related argument. I say, 'Max is black.' Karl says, Max ist schwarz. 'Is' and ist are token-distinct and type-distinct words of different languages. If there is nothing in reality (no relation whether of instantiation or of constituency, non-relational tie, Bergmannian nexus, etc.) that the copula picks out, then it is only relative to German that Max ist schwarz, and only relative to English that Max is black. But this is absurd. There are not two different facts here but one. Max is the same color for Karl and me, and his being black is the same fact for Karl and me.
Finally, 'Max is black' is true. Is it true ex vi terminorum? Of course not. It is contingently true. Is it just contingently true? Of course not. It is true because of the way extralinguistic reality is arranged. It is modally contingent, but also contingent upon the way the world is. There's this cat that exists whether or not any language exists, and it is black whether or not any language exists.
Therefore, I say that for a predicate to be contingently true of an individual, (i) there must be individuals independently of language; (ii) there must be properties independently of language; and there must be facts or truth-making states of affairs independently of language. Otherwise, you end up with (i) total linguistic idealism, which is absurd; or (ii) linguistic idealism about properties which is absurd; or (iii) a chaos, a world of disconnected particulars and properties.
The above is a shoot-from-the hip, bloggity-blog exposition of ideas that can be put more rigorously, but it seems to to me to show that ostrich nominalism and ostrich realism for that matter are untenable — and this despite the fact that a positive theory invoking facts has its own very serious problems.
Metaphilosophical Coda: If a theory has insurmountable problems, these problems are not removed by the fact that every other theory has problems. For it might be that no theory is tenable,while the poroblem itself is genuine.
Those who must wrest a living from nature by hard toil are not likely to see her beauty, let alone appreciate it. But her charms are also lost on the sedentary city dwellers for whom nature is little more than backdrop and stage setting for what they take to be the really real, the social tragi-comedy. The same goes for the windshield tourists who, seated in air-conditioned comfort, merely look upon nature as upon a pretty picture.
The true acolyte of nature must combine in one person a robust and energetic physique, a contemplative mind, and a healthy measure of contempt for the world of the human-all-too-human, or to transpose into a positive key, a deep love of solitude. One thinks of Henry David Thoreau, who famously remarked, "I have no walks to throw away on company." Of the same type, but not on the same lofty plane: Edward Abbey.
A lonely soldier cleans his gun and dreams of Galveston. Marty Robbins messes with the wicked Felina in El Paso and catches a bullet for his trouble. Joan Baez sings of a jilted lover and her counterfactual conditional, "If the ladies was squirrels with high bushy tails, I'd load up my shotgun with rock salt and nails." Gene Pitney sings of the The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. And from 1943, here is Pistol Packin' Mama by Al Dexter.
Kevin W. writes and I respond:
A fellow philosophy friend has been making the argument that we have a conflict of intuitions concerning the Second Amendment. He argues that if it is the case that the Second Amendment allows citizens to arm themselves in order to defend against a tyrannical government, then citizens ought to be permitted to own tanks, fighter jets, and maybe even a nuclear device. Yet, many of us would be highly uncomfortable with citizens having anything like that level of military hardware. So we have a conflict of intuitions.
BV: This is an old slippery slope argument often adduced by anti-gunners. Slippery slope arguments are notoriously invalid. There is no logical necessity that, if you allow citizens to own semi-automatic rifles, then you must also allow them to own machine guns, grenade launchers, chemical and biological weapons, tactical nukes . . . . At some point a line is drawn. We draw lines all the time. Time was when the voting age was 21. Those were the times when, in the words of Barry McGuire, "You're old enough to kill, but not for votin'." The voting age is now 18. If anyone at the time had argued that reducing the age to 18 would logically necessitate its being reduced to 17, then 16, and then 15, and so on unto the enfranchisement of infants and the prenatal, that would have been dismissed as a silly argument.
If the above anti-gun slippery slope argument were valid, then the following pro-gun argument would be valid: "If the government has the right to ban civilian possession of fully automatic rifles, then it has the right to ban semi-automatic rifles, semi-autos generally, revolvers, single-shot derringers . . . . But it has no right to ban semi-autos, and so on. Ergo, etc.
I have been speaking of the 'logical' slippery slope. But there is also the 'causal' or 'probablilistic' slippery slope. Supposing all semi-auto weapons (pistols, rifles, and shotguns) to be banned, would this 'lead to' or 'pave the way for' the banning of revolvers and handguns generally? 'Lead to' is a vague phrase. It might be taken to mean 'raise the probability of' or 'make it more likely that.' Slippery slope arguments of this sort in some cases have merit. If all semi-autos are banned, then the liberals will be emboldened and will try to take the next step.
There is no genuine conflict of intuitions here either. Who has the 'intuition' that citizens should be allowed full access to all available military hardware? No one who is serious maintains this. So this non-issue is a red herring.
We want the Second Amendment only so far as to justify our ownership of handguns and rifles and the like, but we don't want the Second Amendment to justify citizen ownership of these pieces of hardware. Yet, not owning those pieces of hardware would mean certain defeat by any government (one cannot fight off a drone attack with an AR-15). So this fellow philosophy friend would contend that the Second Amendment is out of date and perhaps need to be done away with.
Your friend's argumentation leaves a lot to be desired. Reasonably interpreted, the Second Amendment does not justify citizen ownership of any and all military equipment. The founders were not thinking of cannons and battleships when they spoke of the right to keep and bear arms. If you lived in Lexington or Concord, how would you 'keep' a battleship? 'Bearing' it would be even more difficult.
If you tell me that the founders weren't thinking of AR-15s either, I will simply agree with you, but point out that such a rifle is but an improvement over the muskets of those days. Surely the founders did not intend that the extension of the term 'arms' should be restricted to the weapons of their own day
It is also plainly false that to keep the government in check one needs the same sorts of weapons the government has at its diposal. The 9/11 hijackers dealt us a terrible blow using box cutters. I can't ward off a drone attack with an AR-15, but governments can be toppled by trained assasins using .22 caliber pistols. Imagine a huge caravan of gun-totin' rednecks descending on Washington, D.C. in their pick-up trucks. Something like a Million Redneck March. Would Obama use nukes against them? I don't think so. I reckon he likes his White House digs. A totalitarian government versus the people is not like one government versus another. Allied bombing raids against Axis targets did not degrade Allied real estate or infrastructure, but enemy real estate and infrastructure. As Walter E. Williams points out:
There have been people who've ridiculed the protections afforded by the Second Amendment, asking what chance would citizens have against the military might of the U.S. government. Military might isn't always the deciding factor. Our 1776 War of Independence was against the mightiest nation on the face of the earth — Great Britain. In Syria, the rebels are making life uncomfortable for the much-better-equipped Syrian regime. Today's Americans are vastly better-armed than our founders, Warsaw Ghetto Jews and Syrian rebels.
There are about 300 million privately held firearms owned by Americans. That's nothing to sneeze at. And notice that the people who support gun control are the very people who want to control and dictate our lives.
It's not about hunting. It's about self-defense. Against whom? First of all, against the criminal element, the same criminal element that liberals coddle. It apparently doesn't occur to liberals that if there were less crime, fewer people would feel a need to arm themsleves. Second, against any political entity, foreign or domestic, substate or state, at any level, that 'goes rogue.' A terrorist organization would be an example of a substate political entity.
Our question concerns the logical consistency of the following septad, each limb of which is a commitment of orthodoxy. See here for details. How can the following propositions all be
true?
1. There is only one God.
2. The Father is God.
3. The Son is God.
4. The Holy Spirit is God.
5. The Father is not the Son.
6. The Son is not the Holy Spirit.
7. The Father is not the Holy Spirit.
If we assume that in (2)-(7), the 'is' expresses absolute numerical identity, then it is clear that the septad is inconsistent. (Identity has the following properties: it is reflexive, symmetric, transitive, governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals). For example, from (2) and (3) taken together it follows that the Father is the Son by Transitivity of Identity. But this contradicts (5).
So we have an inconsistent septad each limb of which is a commitment of orthodoxy. The task is to remove the contradiction without abandoning orthodoxy. There are different ways to proceed.
In a paper he sent me, Chad M. seems to adopt the following approach. Distinguish between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication, and construe (2), (3), and (4) as predications. Well, suppose we do this. We get:
2*. The Father is divine
3*. The Son is divine
4*. The Holy Spirit is divine.
But this implies that there are three Gods, which contradicts (1). The trick is to retain real distinctness of Persons while avoiding tritheism.
Chad also blends the above strategy wth a mereological one. Following W. L. Craig, he thinks of the Persons as (proper) parts of God/Godhead. Each is God in that each is a (proper) part of God/Godhead. The idea, I take it, is that Persons are really distinct in virtue of being really distinct proper parts of God, but that there is only one God because there is only one whole of these parts. Each Person is divine in that each is a part of the one God. The parts of God are divine but not God in the way that the proper parts of a cat are not cats but are feline. Thus the skeleton of a cat is not a cat but is feline. The skeleton is feline without being a feline.
But I have a question for Chad. On orthodoxy as I understand it, God is one, not merely in number, but in a deeper metaphysical sense. Roughly, God is a unity whose unity is 'tighter' than the unity of other sorts of unity. Indeed, as befits an absolute, his unity is that than which no tighter can be conceived. The unity of mathematical sets and mereological sums is fairly loose, and the same goes for such concrete aggregates as Kerouac holding his cat. Although we are not forced to take the whole-part relation in the strict sense of classical mereology, I think it remains the case that the unity of anything that could be called a whole of parts will be too loose to capture the divine unity.
For one thing, wholes depend on their parts for their existence, and not vice versa. (Unless you thought of parts as abstractions from the whole, which the Persons could not be.) Parts are ontologically prior to the wholes of which they are the parts. This holds even in the cases in which the whole is a necessary being and each part is as well. The mathematical set of all primes greater than 1 and less than 8 is a necessary being, but so is each element of this set: 3, 5, and 7 are each necessary beings. Still, the existence of the set is metaphysically grounded in the existence of the elements, and not vice versa. The divine aseity, however, rules out God's being dependent on anything.
So my question for Chad is this: does the view that God is a whole of parts do justice to the divine unity?
I tune in to CNN and hear about some academic who is taking a conspiracy line on the Sandy Hook massacre. Deplorable, but in compensation there is the fascination of watching one's country unravel. We owls of Minerva may not welcome the onset of dusk, but it is the time when we spread our wings. And there is the consolation of knowing that one is fairly well insulated from the effects of the unraveling, both spatially and temporally. Spatially, in that one can afford to live in a safe and defensible enclave. Temporally, in that one can reasonably hope to be dead before things reach their nadir.
Am I depressed? Not in the least. I wake up rarin' to go at another day of banging my head against this predicament we call life. It's all grist for the mill of Minerva: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the indifferent.
According to a news report I just heard, the Taft High School shooter targeted a bully. Rather than blame an inanimate object, the gun, which makes no sense, one ought to blame the parents, teachers, administrators, clergy, and other so-called 'authorities' who have abdicated their authority and allowed bullying to become a serious problem in schools. Which is a more likely explanation of the shooter's behavior, the availability of a gun, or his having been bullied? If had no access to a gun, he could have enployed a knife, a slingshot, a vial of acid, you name it. But if he had no motive to retaliate, he would not have sought any such means.
Again, the problem is not gun culture, but liberal culture.
Chad M. sent me a paper of his in which he illustrates the distinction between the 'is' of predication and the 'is' of identity using the following examples:
1. Joseph Ratzinger is [the] Pope
and
2. Water is H2O
where the first sentence is proposed as an example of a predication and the second as an identity sentence. If I were to explain the distinction, I would use these examples:
3. Joseph Ratzinger is German
and (for consistency of subject matter)
4. Joseph Ratzinger is Pope Benedict XVI.
(2) and (4) are clearly sentences expressing strict, numerical, identity. Identity is an equivalence relation: reflexive, symmetrical, transitive. It is also governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals: if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y, and vice versa. By these four tests, the 'is' in (4) is the 'is' of identity. The 'is' in (3) expresses a different relation. Frege would say that it is the relation of falling under: the object JR falls under the concept German. That relation fails each of the four tests. It is not reflexive, not symmetrical, etc.
Now my problem is that I don't find (1) to be a clear example of a predication in the way that (3) is a clear example.
Although 'The Pope' is a definite description, not a name (Kripkean rigid designator), (1) could be construed as asserting an identity, albeit a contingent identity, between the object picked out by 'JR' and the object picked out by 'the Pope.' After all, the sentence passes the four tests, at least if we confine ourselves to the present time and the actual world. The relation is reflexive, symmetrical, and transitive. For example, if JR is the Pope, and the Pope is the vicar of Christ, then JR is the vicar of Christ. Furthermore, whatever is true of JR now is also true of the Pope now, and vice versa. So the indiscernibility test is satisfied as well.
Why not then say that (1) expresses contingent identity and that the 'is' is an 'is' of identity, not of predication? The fact that one could maintain this, with some show of plausibility, indicates that Chad's example is not a clear one. That is my only point, actually.
I grant that the notion of contingent identity can be questioned. How could x and y just happen to be identical? For Kripke, identity is governed by the Necessity of Identity: if x = y, then necessarily x = y. This has the interesting implication that if it is so much as possible that x and y are distinct, then x and y are distinct. (Shades of the ontological argument!)
But there are philosophers who propose to speak of contingent sameness relations. Hector Castaneda is one. So I am merely asking Chad why he uses the puzzling and provocative (1) as illustrative of the 'is' of predication.
There is a labyrinth of deep questions lurking below the surface, questions relevant to Chad's real concern, namely the coherence of the Trinity doctrine and its (in)coherence with the doctrine of divine simplicity.
Should one be bothered, morally speaking, that the mutual funds (shares of which) one owns invest in companies that produce alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, and firearms? I say no. 'Socially conscious' is an ideologically loaded phrase, like 'social justice,' and the loading is from the Left.
Alcohol
For some, alcohol is the devil in liquid form. They should avoid the stuff, and it is certainly within their power to do so. For most of us, however, alcohol is a delightful adjunct to a civilized life. What good is a hard run on a hot day that doesn’t eventuate in the downing of a couple of cold beers? To what end a plate of Mama Gucci’s rigatoni, if not accompanied by a glass of Dago Red? I am exaggerating of course, but to make a serious point: alcohol for most us is harmless. Indeed, it is positively good for healthy humans when taken in small doses (1-2 oz. per diem) as numerous studies have been showing for the last twenty years or so.
The fact that many abuse alcohol is quite irrelevant. That is their free choice. Is it Sam Adam’s fault that you tank up on too much of his brew? No, it is your fault. This is such a simple point that I am almost embarrassed to make it; but I have to make it because so many liberals fail to grasp it. So read your prospectuses and be not troubled when you come across names like Seagrams.
I would also point out to the ‘socially conscious’ that if they enjoy an occasional drink, then they cannot, consistently with this fact, be opposed to the production of alcoholic beverages. You cannot drink alcohol unless alcohol is there to be drunk. Consistency demands of them complete abstention.
Tobacco
As for tobacco, suppose we begin by reflecting on this truth: Cigarettes don’t kill people, people kill people by smoking cigarettes, or, to be precise, they increase the probability of their contracting nasty diseases (lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease), diseases which are often but not always terminal, by smoking sufficiently many cigarettes over a sufficiently long period of time. If X raises the probability of Y to a degree <1, I don’t call that causation; I call that probability-raising. It should also be obvious that correlation does not prove causation. So I don’t want to hear about causation in this context.
Nor do I want to hear about addiction. To confuse a psychological habituation with addiction is quite foolish. Addiction, if it means anything, has to involve (i) a physiological dependence (ii) on something harmful to the body (iii) removal of which would induce serious withdrawal symptoms. One cannot be addicted to nose-picking, to running, to breathing, or to caffeine. Furthermore, (iv) it is a misuse of language to call a substance addictive when only a relatively small number of its users develop — over a sufficient period of time with sufficient frequency of use — a physical craving for it that cannot be broken without severe withdrawal symptoms. Heroin is addictive; nicotine is not. To think otherwise is to use ‘addiction’ in an unconscionably loose way. That headache you have from abstaining from coffee is not a severe withdrawal symptom.
Man (or woman) up; don't make excuses.
Liberals and leftists engage in this loose talk for at least two reasons. First, it aids them in their denial of individual responsibility. They would divest individuals of responsibility for their actions, displacing it onto factors, such as ‘addictive’ substances, external to the agent. Their motive is to grab more power for themselves by increasing the size and scope of government: the less self-reliant and responsible individuals are, the more they need the nanny state and people like Hillary, who aspires to be Nanny-in-Chief. Second, loose talk of ‘addiction’ fits in nicely with what I call their misplaced moral enthusiasm. Incapable of appreciating a genuine issue such as partial-birth abortion or the fiscal crisis, they invest their moral energy in pseudo-issues.
The main point is that tobacco products can be enjoyed in relatively harmless ways, just as alcoholic beverages can be enjoyed in relatively harmless ways. I have never met a cigarette yet that killed anybody. One has to smoke them, one has to smoke a lot of them over many years, and each time you light up it is a free decision.
Some people feel that smokers are irrational. This too is nonsense. Someone who smokes a pack of cigarettes per day is assuming a serious health risk. But it may well be that the pleasure and alertness the person receives from smoking is worth the risk within the person’s value scheme. Different people evaluate the present in its relation to the future in different ways. I tend to sacrifice the present for the future, thereby deferring gratification. Hence my enjoyment of the noble weed is abstemious indeed, consisting of an occasional load of pipe tobacco, or an occasional fine cigar. (I recommend the Arturo Fuente ‘Curly Head’ Maduro: cheap, but good.) But I would not think to impose my abstemiousness, or
time-preference, on anyone else.
Firearms
As for firearms, one can with a clear conscience invest in the stock of companies that manufacture them. One thereby supports companies that make it possible for the police and military to be armed. Think about it: without gun manufacturers, there would be no guns, and hence no effective police and military forces. And without gun manufacturers, decent citizens would be unable to defend themselves, their families, and their communities against the criminal element, something they do all the time, though it is rarely publicized by the lamestream media because it comports ill with their leftist agenda. The ‘socially conscious’ or ‘socially responsible’ want the protection afforded by the armed, but without getting their hands dirty. To be wholly consistent, they should go live somewhere where there is no police or military protection.
If the price of 'social consciousness' is logical unconsciousness, then I prefer to be socially unconscious.
Companion posts: Cigarettes, Rationality, and Hitchens Tobacco Insanity in Maricopa County and the Need for Smoke-Ins
By Steve McCann. Excerpt:
According to the current incarnation of the American left, who traffic constantly in victimhood and noble intentions, I should be in the vanguard of the mandatory gun control and confiscation movement. That somehow it was the inanimate object this soldier was holding and not him that was responsible for the attempt on my life or to ignore the fact that his mindset was such he would have used any weapon at hand to accomplish the same goal.
On the contrary, I own a handgun today because of the experience of coming face to face with the evil that permeates some men's souls. I and the girl I rescued were defenseless. There were no police or armed citizens around and the death of another homeless and unknown boy and girl, buried in an unmarked mass grave, would have been just another easily ignored casualty of the post-War period. I was determined that I would never again face a similar circumstance. I have had in my possession firearms for virtually my entire life, as I have been fortunate to live in the one nation on earth that has embedded in its founding document the right to bear arms.
Today, I am, along with a vast majority of my fellow citizens, being made the scapegoat for the failed policies of the so-called progressives — whether it is the inability of society to deal with extreme psychopaths or the mentally deranged, because the left insists they are entitled to the same rights as other citizens, or the never-ending attempt to rehabilitate criminals incapable of rehabilitation. Consistent with their inability to ever admit a mistake, the left and much of the Democratic Party instead focuses on symbolism over substance and the path of least resistance — going after the law-abiding hard working people who are the backbone of America.
But the motivation is more insidious than that. Those that self-identify as progressives, leftists, socialists or Marxists, have one overwhelming trait in common: they are narcissists who believe they are pre-ordained to rule the masses too ignorant to govern themselves. Over the past thirty years as these extremists fully infiltrated academia, the mainstream media, the entertainment industry and taken over the Democratic Party, the American people have lost many of their individual rights. They are now being told what they can eat, where they can live, who they must associate with, where and how their children must be educated, and soon what medical care they are allowed to access, as well as the type of car they can drive and the amount of energy they are permitted to use.
The last bastion of freedom is unfettered gun ownership, so that too must go. That the left is willfully and egregiously exploiting the actions of a deranged psychopath in the tragic death of 26 people (20 children) in Newtown, Connecticut to achieve this end exposes their true motivation.
1. Is anybody against gun control? Not that I am aware of. Everybody wants there to be some laws regulating the manufacture, sale, importation, transportation, use, etc., of guns. So why do liberals routinely characterize conservatives as against gun control? Because they are mendacious. It is for the same reason that they label conservatives as anti-government. Conservatives stand for limited government, whence it follows that that are for government. A simple inference that even a liberal should be able to process. So why do liberals call conservatives anti-government? Because they are mendacious: they are not interested in civil debate, but in winning at all costs by any means. With respect to both government and gun control, the question is not whether but how much.
2. Terminology matters. 'Magazine' is the correct term for what is popularly called a clip. Don't refer to a round as a bullet. The bullet is the projectile. Avoid emotive phraseology if you are interested in serious discussion. 'Assault weapon' has no clear meaning and is emotive to boot. Do you mean semi-automatic long gun? Then say that. Don't confuse 'semi-automatic' with 'fully automatic.' Bone up on the terminology if you want to be taken seriously.
3. Gun lobbies benefit gun manufacturers. No doubt. But they also defend the Second Amendment rights of citizens, all citizens. Be fair. Don't adduce the first fact while ignoring the second. And don't call the NRA a special interest group. A group that defends free speech may benefit the pornography industry, but that is not to say that the right to free speech is not a right for all. Every citizen has an actual or potential interest in self-defense and the means thereto. It's a general interest. A liberal who has no interest in self-defense and the means thereto is simply a liberal who has yet to be mugged or raped or had her home invaded. Such a liberal's interest is yet potential.
4. Question for liberals: what is your plan in case of a home invasion? Call 9-1-1? What is your plan in case of a fire? Call the Fire Department? Not a bad thought. But before they arrive it would help to have a home fire extinguisher at the ready. Ergo, etc.
5. The president and Congress are fiddling while Rome burns. Compared to the fiscal crisis, the gun issue is a non-issue. That really ought to be obvious. There was no talk of it last year. Why not? It looks to be a red herring, a way of avoiding a truly pressing issue while at the same time advancing the Left's totalitarian agenda. One can strut and posture and show how sensitive and caring one is while avoiding painful decisions that are bound to be unpopular and for some pols suicidal. I am talking about entitlement reform. Here's a part of a solution that would get me tarred and feathered. After a worker has taken from the Social Security system all the money he paid in plus, say, 8% interest, the payments stop. That would do something to mitigate the Ponzi-like features of the current unsustainable system.
6. Believe it or not, Pravda (sic!) has warned Americans about draconian gun control. 'Pravda,' if I am not badly mistaken, is Russian for truth. That took real chutzpah, the commies calling their propaganda organ, Truth. Well, the former commies speak truth, for once, here: "These days, there are few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bear arms and use deadly force to defend one's self and possessions." Read the whole thing. Some days I think the US is turning into the SU what with Obama and all his czars.
7. Nannystaters like Dianne Feinstein ought to think carefully before they make foolish proposals. The unintended consequences may come back to bite them. Gun and ammos sales are through the roof. Although more guns in the hands of responsible, trained, individuals leads to less crime, more guns in civilian hands, without qualification, cannot be a good thing.
8. It doesn't follow, however, that if, per impossibile (as the philosophers say) all guns were thrown into the sea we would be better off. The gun is an equalizer, a peace-preserver, a violence-thwarter. Samuel Colt is supposed to have said, "Have no fear of any man no matter what his size, in time of need just call on me and I will equalize." Granny with her .45 is a pretty good match for an unarmed Tookie Williams.
9. SCOTUS saw the light and pronounced it an individual right. You persist in thinking the right to keep and bear arms is a collective right? I wonder if you think that the right to life is also collective. If my right to life is an individual right, how can my right to defend my life and the logically consequent right to the means to such defense not also be an individual right?
10. My parting shot at the gun-grabbers.
And then there are the conservatives (liberals) for whom a refusal to demonize liberals (conservatives) makes you one.
Here is the first stanza of "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939):
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
I thank long-time blogger buddy Bill Keezer for pointing out something that should have been obvious. To read an online article at a money-grubbing site such as NRO, a site awash with advertising, moving images, noise, and what all else, click on the 'print' icon. The article should appear without the junk. But you knew that already.
I may not have the prettiest 'skin' in the 'sphere, but at my site you will find no advertising, begging, moving images, noise . . . just solid content day after day, year after year.
As one of my aphorisms has it, a blog is to be judged, not by the color of its 'skin' but by the character of its content.
I thank you for your patronage. Rare is the day when traffic dips below 1000 pageviews. In recent days spikes have been in the 3000-4000 range. 2012 was a banner year.
UPDATE: The ever-helpful Dave Lull e-mails:
Usually I prefer using the free Readability browser add-on (the page formatted for printing is often too wide for me to read comfortably and is sometimes not an option):
Which is morally worse, killing a pre-natal human being or keeping a loaded gun in the house for self-defense? The former, obviously. Both abortion and gun ownership are legal, but one would have to be singularly benighted to think that the keeping is morally worse than the killing, or even morally commensurable with it, let alone morally equivalent to it. It is the difference between taking life and liberty and protecting them. One is wrong, the other is permissible if not obligatory. Therefore, if it would be wrong — and certainly it would be — for a newspaper to publish the names and addresses of abortionists and of women who have had abortions, then a fortiori what The Journal News of White Plains, New York did is wrong. According to the NYT:
Two weeks ago, the paper published the names and addresses of handgun permit holders — a total of 33,614 — in two suburban counties, Westchester and Rockland, and put maps of their locations online.
[. . .]
But the article, which left gun owners feeling vulnerable to harassment or break-ins, also drew outrage from across the country. Calls and e-mails grew so threatening that the paper’s president and publisher, Janet Hasson, hired armed guards to monitor the newspaper’s headquarters in White Plains and its bureau in West Nyack, N.Y.
Personal information about editors and writers at the paper has been posted online, including their home addresses and information about where their children attended school; some reporters have received notes saying they would be shot on the way to their cars; bloggers have encouraged people to steal credit card information of Journal News employees; and two packages containing white powder have been sent to the newsroom and a third to a reporter’s home (all were tested by the police and proved to be harmless).
Note the double standard. Hasson hired armed guards. Two points. First, she apparently grasps the idea of guns being used defensively when it comes to her defense. Why not then generally? Second, these armed guards are not agents of the government. They are in the private sector. Why didn't she simply rely on the cops to protect her? After all, that's the liberal line: 'There is no need for civilians to have guns; their protection is the job of the police.' Hasson's behavior smacks of hypocrisy.
Threatening and harrassing the editors and writers at the newspaper is obviously wrong. But publishing their names and addresses cannot be wrong if what the paper did is not wrong. I say both are wrong. The publisher and the editor exercised terrible judgment in a misguided attempt to drive up circulation. But now it has come back to bite them, and one hopes they will be driven out of business for their rank irresponsibility.
Responsible people consider the consequences of their actions. Not everything one has a right to do is right to do. Responsible people also consider the consequences of their speech. Contrary to what some foolish civil libertarians think, speech is not just words. Not everything one has a right to say is right to say. To say or do anything that is likely to incite violence is ceteris paribus wrong, whether it is legal or not.
Example. Blacks as a group are more criminally prone than whites as a group. That is true, and one certainly has a right, in general, to say it publically. But is is easy to imagine circumstances in which saying it publically would incite violence. In those circumstances the saying of it would be wrong despite the truth and indeed the importance of what is said.
One might accuse me of being too reasonable with our enemies. One might remind me of one of my own aphorisms:
Time to be unreasonable. It is not reasonable to be reasonable with everyone. Some need to be met with the hard fist of unreason. The reasonable know that reason's sphere of application is not limitless.
