A Few Thoughts About Sarah Palin

The pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin by John McCain has certainly created a buzz, undoubtedly one of the main reasons the McCain campaign selected her as the Republican nominee for vice president. Unfortunately, not all of the buzz has been positive. Amid all the revelations about Ms. Palin’s background—“Troopergate” (why does every potential scandal HAVE to have the word “gate” attached to it? Is it now a required suffix like “ism” is to political and social movements???) and Palin’s teen-age daughter’s pregancy—I offer a few thoughts about Ms. Palin’s positive and negative impacts for the McCain campaign:

POSITIVES:
* She shores up the Republican social conservative base. There has been a lot of moaning and crying from the “Base” for many months now. Pastors like James Dobson and right-wing radio talk show hosts, including the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, at various times over the year vowed to sooner vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama than McCain, or not vote at all. McCain’s nomination was the destruction of the Republican Party to hear the conservative pundits tell it. However, with Ms. Palin’s selection—and in the background of the shrieking banshees of socially interfering “conservatism” essentially backing off of their fatalistic prophecies and generally coming around to supporting McCain over the last month or two—the social conservatives are mollified. This is a woman who believes that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape or incest, who does not believe that global warming is due to human activity (and may believe that it is not occurring—this is unclear), believes creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools, and feels that the only form of sex education should be abstinence, not birth control (do you think she has changed her opinion in light of her daughter’s failure to abstain?). Hardcore social conservatives love her. They’ve got their person on the ticket.

* She’s a woman. The McCain campaign felt it had to do something to combat the historic nature of Barack Obama’s candidacy, as the first mixed heritage / African American on a major political party’s ticket for president. So they selected a woman for the veep spot, and a very photogenic one at that.

NEGATIVES:

* She’s a woman. Clearly, this is a pick that was motivated in substantial part to gun for disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters. I may be proven wrong by the exit polls, but I think that the reverse will occur. I think that female Hillary Clinton supporters will be insulted that the McCain campaign thinks that just by nominating a woman, it—he—sews up their votes, even though she is diametrically opposed to just about every position Hillary Clinton has taken and stands for.

* She’s so obviously unqualified to be “ready on day one.” McCain’s mantra leading up to his selection for the VP spot was that he would pick the most qualified person to be president in the event of his incapacity or death. Then he picked Palin. Now his campaign’s mantra is that she really “complements the ticket.” Republican claims to the contrary—she’s governor, uh, of the state, uh, closest to Russia (seriously, this is something I have heard)—she has no foreign policy experience and is completely unready to be commander-in-chief. Her selection deprives McCain of any semblance of an argument that Barack Obama is unready to be president, since Palin has less experience with foreign affairs and far less time in public office than Obama. The experience argument could have been a good one.

* She’s got baggage. As the whole Troopergate controversy and unwed teen-age daughter revelations demonstrate, picking someone whom no one knows anything about results in intense media investigation and unwanted and unforeseen revelations. Additionally, because most people (other than people in Alaska, an electorally insignificant state) have no idea who she is, she risks being defined by salacious, scandalous stories, because they’re good news copy. We’re not going to hear a lot from the mainstream media about how she is adored in Alaska or led some tough negotiations with BP.

In sum, I think Ms. Palin was kind of a mixed bag for McCain. He was definitely going for shock value, and he got it. But he has to take the good with the bad. On balance, I’d say he could have done better (I was terrified he would pick Kay Bailey Hutchison), but the election will still be about McCain and Obama.

And... at least we don’t have to listen to Mitt Romney for the next 2 months.

Is Citizenship a Fungible Commodity?

Some of you may have heard about the Becky Hammon situation. For those who haven’t, Becky Hammon is a star player in the WNBA—the women’s version of the National Basketball Association. She was left off the American Olympic team over the summer; there have been varying reasons given, but the impression I have gathered from the reading I have done is that there is personal tension between Ms. Hammon and the coach of the American national team, Anne Donovan. Fairly or unfairly, Becky Hammon was left off the team. (As a side note, Ms. Hammon also comes off as quite charasmatic, as fawning and apologetic story after story appear to prove. See: Yahoo sports columnist).

Ms. Hammon, being 31, felt that this would be her last chance to participate in an Olympics. Similarly, she believed that her time for earning money as a professional athlete was running out. So, in what has been rumored to be a package deal, she was given a contract by a Russian team to play women’s basketball in a Russian league that worked out to about $1 million a year, became a naturalized citizen of Russia, and joined the Russian team. She is now in Beijing competing for an Olympic medal; I think the Russian team made the medal round and may actually play the U.S. today or tomorrow.

Her coach has accused her of being un-American, as have a couple of Team USA players (most notably, Lisa Leslie). Her coach actually called her a “traitor.” Ms. Hammon insists that it is just about basketball, that she’s a true American patriot.

I have vacillated on this issue a bit. One the one hand, I feel outrage that someone can so casually take on another country’s citizenship purely for convenience—and personal gain. Such a step seems to me to disrespect our country. The Olympics, as I understand them, are not about the best athletes coming together from around the world to compete, but the best athletes from the various nations around the world coming together to compete. If it were solely about the best athletes, we would have probably 5 American basketball teams and 5 non-American basketball teams going for the gold. Professional leagues are where the actual best athletes in a pure sense compete. To make an end-run around this concept by taking on another nationality seems cynical. It also smacks really strongly of sour grapes.

I am betting that the founders of the Olympics never thought this would happen.

On the other hand, perhaps it is a good thing that nationality does not matter much to some people nowadays. The fact that some feel that one place is just as good as another is not such a bad thing—it shows a level of optimism about the future of world. And there have certainly been enough conflicts that have arisen from a sense of “us” versus “them.”

It seems to me, however, that the age of nations (and nationalism) is still alive and well. Perhaps-- as the old Coca-cola commercial and song went-- if the whole world sang in peace and harmony, it would not matter a hill of beans what country you represent. But right now, it does mean something. And it means a heck of a lot more when you choose your citizenship and whom you are representing, as opposed to simply being a citizen by virtue of your birth.

In the backdrop of the Georgian conflict, would you choose to be a citizen of Russia, to proudly represent Russia around the world? How proud can Ms. Hammon really feel when “her” country of Russia is responsible for the invasion and destruction of Georgia? (And to forestall Iraq comparisons, folks, Georgia has a democratically elected government that is not terrorizing and torturing its people). Of course, to her, it’s not about citizenship or values, it’s about basketball.

That attitude makes her a mercenary. History does not treat mercenaries kindly for good reason: they show no moral conscience. In my opinion, this decision is a moral one. Even if Ms. Hammon fails to recognize or frame it as such, this is not a case where not recognizing the issue excuses moral culpability. By failing to understand the amoral decision she has made, she effectively elects it. It is a complex issue, but this was the wrong decision. She deserves criticism for it.

"Support the troops, not the war"

One often hears the liberal shibboleth, "support the troops, not the war." "Support the troops: bring them home," reads one popular left-leaning bumper-sticker. Let us assume for the moment that the Iraq war is not justified and may be not only improvident, but also immoral. Why, then, support troops when they are the voluntary agents of an unjust war? If those troops generally consent to prosecute war, and then do intentionally prosecute an unjust war, then are they not responsible for their actions?

If they are not, then why not? Perhaps troops are not responsible because they are the mere unfortunate instruments of an unjust and unwise war policy a general or president directs from the top. It is that general or president who is responsible, then, not the troops. So most soldiers enlist primarily for reasons unrelated to the job, i.e., for the reasons most people get jobs: wages, health care, security, etc., and now cannot quit the job for fear of forfeiting those benefits. Moreover, and crucially, because desertion is a criminal offense, soldiers risk court-martial and imprisonment if they refuse to follow orders. There is a whiff of duress, then, in how soldiers are made by law and contract to follow orders, and so their consent and hence responsibility for their actions may be somewhat diminished.

These may be reasons to feel sympathy for soldiers caught in a difficult position; however, they are not moral reasons to support those soldiers in their choice to continue fighting an unjust war, or a fortiori moral reasons for those soldiers themselves to choose to continue fighting. Even in cases of incontrovertible duress, as when someone forces a person to commit a crime by holding a gun to that person's head, then the duress constitutes at best only an excuse, not a justification, for the performance of the immoral act. The act performed is still morally wrong, morally unjustified, though we may excuse it. Those who act under such duress may not deserve punishment - they may be excused - but from a certain purified moral point of view, they should not have done what they did, and no one should support them in so doing. We therefore should not support troops choosing to perform immoral acts such as killing people in support of an unjust war, though we may in some cases excuse them from punishment if we believe that the threat of court-martial and imprisonment or execution, as well as the loss of other benefits, is great enough to constitute duress. Reasons related to duress are in fact strong reasons to support soldiers who refuse to fight, because those are the soldiers who are going to need our support, as they will then probably face grave punishment for their ethical choice. But I doubt "support the troops, not the war" is intended to apply only to troops who refuse to fight.

If Nazi soldiers continued fighting because they feared court-martial, or Sauron's enthusiastic orcs - heh - continued fighting because they feared his wrath, then no one would say these soldiers are making an ethically sound decision, though many people may feel sympathy for their plight, and may even excuse them for not standing up against Hitler (or Sauron), given the circumstances. No one would say "support the troops" in these cases, unless they meant only "feel sorry for the troops." But if a war policy is patently immoral, such as those of the Nazis or Sauron adduced here, then there may not even be room for this weak sense in which we support troops by feeling sorry for them, and excusing them from blame.

Or is there some reason to support troops engaged in an unjust war simply because they are a part of a nation's military organization, because they are our troops?

Perhaps a reason we should support troops engaged in unjust war is that we as a nation need a credible, effective military, and our military would be feckless and unreliable if soldiers could abandon a campaign whenever they morally disagreed with it. There would always be some soldiers who would object to a war mission, and others who would feign moral objection so as to avoid personal peril, and so as a matter of pragmatic course we strive to inculcate in our soldiers an ethos of strict unthinking obedience and loyalty to their military superiors. Hence when we say "support the troops, not the war," we mean support this ethos of obedience that makes our troops effective, so as to preserve and strengthen our nation's military power in general, no matter how wrongly it may be deployed at any particular time.

From this point of view, soldiers are more like tools or other military hardware than they are like independent moral agents. We have to keep these tools in proper order if we want to use them effectively in the future. So "support the troops, not the war" means something like keep our tanks well-oiled, or our machine guns fully-loaded, because if we did not in general support the troops' efforts to carry out their orders, whatever those orders may be, then the troops may start to question what they are doing and become the disorganized ragtag group the rest of us with our differing moral viewpoints often are, and not obedient soldiers at all. Is this the sense in which we mean to "support the troops, not the war"?

I certainly hope not. The virtues of the good soldier should reside on a different, lower plane from those of an ethical human being. Loyalty, sacrifice, and obedience to superiors are indeed necessary for soldiers to make war, and may mean the difference between life or death for a soldier in the field, but these skills and practices of war are not required or even salutary for good moral decision-making as to whether war is justified. To make such weighty moral decisions, it seems to me that patience and wisdom, and above all, a strength and independence of mind, is critical; one should not be unduly swayed by those with vested interests in one's moral decisions. If an Olympic basketball player decides to protest the immoral social policies of the host country by not playing, then that choice has nothing to do with the habits of discipline, obedience, and teamwork the player may have developed in order to be a good basketball player. The purpose of a player's playing skills is to win the game, and those skills have nothing whatsoever to do with whether the player should be playing the game in the first place. Likewise, the purpose of the obedience and loyalty a soldier learns is not to weaken that soldier's independent moral judgment, but instead to enable the soldier to fight well, should the soldier choose to fight. The soldier's duties to obey and be loyal are instrumental virtues that serve his or her purpose in being an effective fighter; they have no bearing on whether that fighter should fight in the first place.

Possibly there are those in power who would prefer soldiers not to consider the morality of a war or campaign, to blindly carry out whatever violent action is ordered. But it seems to me a very good thing, and a powerful brake on despotism, that our soldiers remain independent moral agents. Our military has recently converted an entire fighter wing from manned to unmanned jets. If we "support our troops" despite their entanglement in an unjust cause because we fear weakening our military power in general, then we should greet this new robotic fighter wing with some relief, as its existence will now resolve our moral tension: "support the troops, but not the war" would then quite plainly mean keeping these robotic troops in prime condition so that they may one day fight a morally justified, necessary war, perhaps by "bringing them home" before they are destroyed or damaged. But I doubt we mean to support soldiers as if they were good tools or robotic air wings.

The ancient Greeks at Thermopylae distinguished themselves from the Persian invaders by asserting that they were not slaves fighting out of fear of their masters' whips; unlike the Persians, the Greeks freely chose to fight. Perhaps our troops should likewise be free to selectively choose not to fight a particular war, and only employ the soldierly virtues of obedience and loyalty, and self-sacrifice, for causes they deem just. There may then be fewer troops available for any particular campaign, as many will choose not to fight, but those who do choose to fight will not then be in the awkward moral position of one acting somewhat under duress or of a person treated as a mere instrument of another's moral will, like a drone or robot. And those who support or oppose them could do so wholeheartedly, without the uncertainty as to whether the troops act in moral confusion, and without resorting to tortured political slogans.

Decisions that Come Home to Roost

I am not an international security expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I would like to pose a question: Do you think that Russia would be doing what it is doing right now in the Republic of Georgia were it not for the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq?

It seems to me that we set up such a situation by engaging in peremptory war (for shifting policy reasons offered by the Bush Administration). We, being the biggest, most powerful superpower, demonstrated our disdain for the international community by flexing our “hard power.” (While not an expert in international security, I DO know this term, which means military might, versus “soft power,” which means diplomatic and economic pressure.) When others protested or asked for more time, we forged ahead, needing really only a bare pretense, a thin reason, to move forward. In our case, it was the declaration, based on terribly shaky intelligence, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (“WMDs”—remember that term? Not a lot of chatter about it nowadays, is there?). Russia, also, has the thin and debatable reason for crushing Georgia: Russia claims to be preventing the genocide of the South Ossetians at the hands of the Georgians. Of course, the reports out of the region are all about Russian tanks and planes ravaging Georgia, but that doesn’t really matter. The reason seems quasi-legitimate, or at least sounds like it. That was good enough for us when we invaded Iraq, so, of course, our chief rival (this is debatable, but they at least think they are our chief rival) will act in the same manner we did.

This is, of course, cynical policy under the cover of a sort of bizarre PR campaign. I say “sort of bizarre” because anyone with half a brain observing either conflict knows that the proffered reason (the PR) simply cannot be the reason for the action taken. At least in the 19th Century, expanding territory or extraction of resources were sufficient reasons for imperial powers to go to war, and they did not claim to be going to war for some other purpose. I suppose when a country’s government makes a transition from autocracy or monarchy to democracy (or, in the case of Russia, pseudo-democracy), an extra layer of political correctness is required. We've got to fool ourselves, in other words.

The context of each conflict— the war in Iraq and the current conflict in Georgia-- is different, and I am sure that the war in Iraq and the Georgian conflict can be distinguished on a number of factual grounds, but the reaction— swift, aggressive, powerful, and violent-- cannot. Russia’s reaction and disregard of international protest was, I believe, at least partially influenced by our own government’s arrogant refusal to pay proper respect to the international community leading up to the war in Iraq.

Will Nader Please Just Stop?

I realize that this is now sort of old news, but I have to comment on it anyway. Ralph Nader recently has fiercely criticized Barack Obama for what he calls “talking white”:

"There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American. Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson?. . .He wants to show that he is not a threatening . . . another politically threatening African-American politician. He wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he's coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it's corporate or whether it's simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up." <Attribution: Rocky Mountain News 6-25-08>

All right, I know that Ralph Nader is running for president for what seems like the thousandth time (4th time I think actually) and therefore needs to generate some buzz, but... c’mon, now... “talking white?” “White guilt?” Can he please, please, please just go away? Or start grinding away at the “evil” corporations themselves rather than perpetuate old and hateful (by the very resonance of the terms themselves if nothing else) racial themes and really poorly thought-out comparisons and arguments? I mean, “white guilt” derives from Europeans in the Victorian Age feeling sanctimoniously charitable to those poor Africans in the 19th Century—we all saw how that turned out, didn’t we? Africa is just a wonderfully politically stable region of the world thanks to the efforts of European powers over hundreds of years, isn’t it? Doesn’t sound like a winning tactic to me.

And “talking white” (or “acting white,” more frequently) is a particularly nefarious phenomenon that I have heard and read about in some parts of the African American community relating to critiquing peers who attempt to succeed in education and business. To succeed or be educated is apparently viewed as “acting white.” (For those who have not read or heard about this sad phenomenon in some schools and communities, much research has been done about it. Here’s a link to one study about it: http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/3212736.html). That is a ridiculous way to criticize Obama. First, it does not make sense: it actually is NOT bad to succeed and be educated. So what is Nader saying here? That he believes that succeeding is talking/acting white and that is bad? That intentionally failing is good? The whole concept is a nonsensical contradiction, which is, of course, why the phenomenon is so nasty and sad. Second, how does an old white guy level that kind of criticism? It’s terribly confusing, which no doubt arises from the fact that Nader had no idea what he was referencing.

Perhaps Nader’s reference to “talking white” refers more to the “Uncle Tom” criticism—that a black man “talks white” and is “safe” in order to cozy up to white people and get along, thereby betraying both his pride—because he has to dumb himself down and relinquish his ambitions to be safe—and his minority community. If that is the case—and, again, I would have to say that this would be the first time I have heard a white man criticize a black man for such activity—it is an even worse injection of irrelevant, hateful language from the past to dump into our collective ears. The man (Obama) is running for president. If he is trying to give up his ambitions or dumb himself down, that would not exactly help his cause.

Please! No more!

There are valid criticisms to be made of Barack Obama from the left. Hillary Clinton made one of them, that his health plan does not include everyone. The Green party will no doubt find some flaws in his energy plan. But injecting inflammatory racial rhetoric is not helpful, not even close to accurate, and, to someone like me, in my thirties, is terribly dated and out-of-touch (and really sad to hear, because it is like your 80-year old grandmother making those terrible racist comments that are so out of line now, but you cut her slack anyway, because the environment has changed so much. I suppose no one, not even Ralph Nader, is immune to old age).

Please stop, Ralph.

For the record... please note that I made NO REFERENCE to the fact that Nader’s collection of 2.7 percent of the popular vote in 2000 directly resulted in eight long years of “W.” Whoops, I guess I just did, didn’t I?

Thoughts on immigration

We all came from somewhere. Some before the United States came to exist, most after. And yet immigration has been – and remains – the thorniest of political topics. For the one thing we all seem to have in common, is once we – and by “we” I include our forebears – have arrived, we seek to restrict the flow of new arrivals. Today it is the Mexicans and other Latin Americans flowing north in search of jobs their own economies cannot provide, but during the latter 19th and beginning of the 20th century, it was the “yellow peril” threatening to overrun the western US as Chinese and Japanese immigrants came east. On the east coast it was the Irish and Italians beginning in the 1850s and continuing sporadically into the first two decades of the 1900s bringing the “scourge” of Catholicism. Most had one thing in common – they did not have “immigration” visas: the vaunted document that now separates “legal” immigrants from “illegal” immigrants.

What does it mean to be “legal” and when precisely did the term enter our national lexicon? A good question which requires further research, but which is beyond the scope of this article… I speak now from my personal experience of fighting through the “legal” immigration process with my Japanese spouse, and I can say with some certainty that process is a large part of the problem. For the problem with which we contend is not one of allowing only “legal” immigrants with skills into the country, but rather a problem of supply and demand. There is a demand for unskilled workers in the American economy to perform jobs our own citizens currently decline as being too menial or “beneath” their status – whatever that means to an unskilled, unemployed worker. Certain segments of our economy – especially the agricultural sector – still rely on the labor of itinerant workers to bring in seasonal crops. While this is not intended to be a discussion on the failings of our own populace to meet the demands of certain segments of the economy – the fact is American industry has a demand unmet by the domestic populace, and Spanish-speaking countries south of the US have an ample supply of excess labor. And yet, what remains the primary difference between these “illegal” immigrants and our “legal” ancestors? Time.
The United States is unique in the community of nations in that our national identity is predicated on immigration. While we retain a “special” relationship with our former colonial power, the relationship has only been truly “special” since the mid-1930s and is significantly based on the special relationship that developed between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Spencer Churchill – himself half-American; prior to the early 20th century, the relationship was more often hostile than not, and even after Pearl Harbor in 1941 many Americans remained isolationists. Unlike the rest of the nations spun off from the former British empire, we do not define ourselves as a member of the British Commonwealth; we define ourselves by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Statue of Liberty… we see ourselves as the city on the hill, a source of emulation, and a melting pot into which all are welcome, regardless of religion, ethnicity or pedigree. And yet while we tend to romanticize the way our own ancestors came to America in our national mythology (slaves being the exception), we simultaneously denigrate those seeking to follow in our steps. It is so much easier to deal in the terms of demagogues – CNN’s Lou Dobbs comes to mind – and equate all immigrants as vagrants living off America’s largesse, seeking to take good, hardworking Americans’ jobs and giving nothing back in return. It is much harder to look at how and why the current system is broken beyond repair and only encourages illegal immigration, vice preventing or deterring new “illegal” immigrants.

The path to legal immigration is neither easy nor cheap. In my own case, I was seeking entry for my Japanese wife, who hails from a close US ally with no recent history of illegal immigration. She holds a bachelor’s degree from a well-regarded Japanese university in Tokyo, speaks English fluently, and at the point of our entry into the immigration system, our relationship was nearly four years old. Her application should have been a no-brainer. And yet for her to attain “unconditional permanent residency,” the entire process took nearly three years over a period from 2004 to 2006, it took three visits to the US Embassy in Tokyo, a visit to a stateside US Customs and Immigration Office (two years later), and nearly $700 in total fees. In other words, an amount exceeding the average annual wages in most non-“first world” countries. That amount has recently been increased, and if I read the CIS fee schedule correctly, it is more if the applicant is not a family member of a US citizen. Additionally, if the application is rejected, the fees are not refunded, making the entire process a huge roulette wheel for the average would-be immigrant.

Between the time requirement, necessity to visit an embassy or consulate on more than one occasion, and the significant monetary investment, we effectively eliminate most applicants from legal entry. Making matters worse, we have no easy system to facilitate the legal entry of temporary workers. What our system does not well anticipate is the choice of a normally law-abiding foreign citizen who is being forced to make a choice between illegally entering the US, or staying where he is and allowing his family to go hungry. Granted, his family may be going hungry because his own economy cannot generate sufficient numbers of reasonably well-paying jobs, and he may have more children than he can afford, but regardless, this is the position in which many would be illegal immigrants find themselves. Decrying such a situation does not make it go away.

Until the United States Congress and the President are willing to deal with this very real problem in a meaningful way, we will continue to have substantial problems with illegal immigration. We are collectively kidding ourselves if we think this is a problem solvable by building more fences or kicking out all the “illegals.” First, it is not possible to build a fence around the entire US, and the pundits who decry our not having done so are scoring easy points at the expense of an ignorant general public. Second, as long as nearly half our border comprises water, it will never be possible to keep out all those determined to get into the country. Third, our system cannot handle the mass deportation of 15 million people – the current estimate of illegal immigrants living in the US. This would be tantamount to moving the entire population of Utah somewhere else. The logistics notwithstanding, we do not have a law enforcement apparatus capable of finding and deporting every illegal immigrant.
The basics of what is required is easy – a combination of a guest-worker program, a path to legalization for those already in the US and working in the “shadow” economy, overhaul of our visa-processing apparatus, and a healthy cost-benefit analysis of the true risk we face from “terrorists” attempting to infiltrate the US through illegal points of entry. But until we are willing to have a true national dialogue unencumbered by those who would rather get TV ratings or score political points against their partisan opposites than solve the problem, illegal immigration will continue to be a festering sore and a blight on our national image.

These People Scare Me

I read an article over the weekend in the local Atlanta newspaper about a group organized in Georgia called GeorgiaCarry.org that fights for everyone’s—and I am quoting from the website—“right to own and carry the firearm of their choice for any reason other than to commit a crime.” I.e., for no restrictions on firearms other than not to commit crimes with them. In the article, the founder of the organization talked about how he views his organization as Georgia’s newest civil rights group.

He may technically be correct. The Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms” is, as the Supreme Court recently confirmed in a contentious 5-4 ruling, a personal individual right that forestalls governmental interference (although reasonable restrictions are permissible; but such regulations are subject to strict scrutiny. It is my opinion that this decision is going to generate a storm of constitutional law holdings in the federal courts on this subject over the next several years). However, every time I read about what fierce gun rights proponents are up to, I cannot help but think: why are these people so uncompromising? Why is it so important to someone that he be allowed to carry a concealed firearm—obtained with as little government scrutiny and control as possible—wherever he goes, on the street, on the job, in the car, at work, in a public building, a restaurant, a bar, or even in an airport (the subject of GeorgiaCarry.org’s current headline-making lawsuit)? We accept reasonable limitations on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly—both of which are enshrined in our Bill of Rights in the 1st Amendment to the Constitution (and do not have murky and vague references to a militia being important, like the 2nd Amendment does. See the full text of the 2nd Amendment here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution. See the full text of the 1st Amendment here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment#Text). For example, it is against the law to scream “fire” in a theater, for the very good reason that the panicked stampede that may result could and has, in the past, killed and severely injured people.

I think if I posed the following question to a random collection of Americans:

“Which is more important, the right to bear arms or the right to free speech and assembly?”

I would get far more responses that the right to free speech is more important. Perhaps that is because the right to free speech actually is more important, for two reasons (among many others). First, we live in a democracy, meaning that WE control the government and ARE the government. We also have a mature, balanced, and reasonably fair legal system. Hence, the best, most powerful, and effective way to change (or support) governmental policy or to protect rights is to petition the government (collectively, in a political sense) or through redress in the courts, rather than grabbing your musket and taking up arms. Viz., the power of the pen is far more powerful than that of the sword, especially in the 21st century. Second, our country now has a professional army that has all kinds of crazy technological killing machines. Using your handgun—or even assault rifle—against the U.S. Marines to protect your individual autonomy from governmental inference is just not going to be terribly effective. It is no longer a realistic check on the power of the federal government.

I also do not understand the obsession with gun rights when so many of our other individual rights have progressively diminished. If you are that fired up about having your individual rights bulldozed, how about take on privacy rights? How about take on insurance companies that attempt to catalogue us and our health information as much as possible to maximize profit? How about take on marketing companies that vacuum up our personal information and sell it to the highest bidder? How about fight the battle of protecting our social security numbers from being required by healthcare providers, insurance companies, and banks to identify us (instead of, say, winning battles to prohibit the use of social security numbers being required for gun permits—as GeorgiaCarry.org apparently successfully did in Georgia). Aren’t these battles more worthy than fighting against controls on firearms sales at gun shows or waiting periods for gun purchases or the ban on assault weapons (although, I do understand that the deer are fighting back, now, so hunters may need some extra artillery) or any of the other fringe issues surrounding gun control?

I understand the passion for fighting corporatism and the government, but I do not understand the particular battle gun rights activists have chosen. Hence, l can only conclude that they just want to be gunslingers. And, therefore... these people scare me.