Another thought about the Second Amendment.

First of all, there is an enormous amount of paranoia in this country about both guns and the Second Amendment. Paranoia is good for the people who want no restrictions of gun manufacture or sales because it keeps people in fear that they will lose their rights and their guns. That's why big money is in back of paranoia production.

In fact, no one in power is talking about eliminating the Second Amendment and no one is talking about taking everyone's guns away from them. So why don't we drop the paranoia and talk about what really matters, which is why the gun lobby has such a tight grip on Congress that it is impossible to do anything about regulating gun traffic. 

The Second Amendment talks about citizens bearing arms so that a militia is always potentially available to come to the country's defense. It didn't talk about people carrying guns into theaters and shooting obnoxious men who text their daughters during previews (which happened just yesterday) or arming heads of households so they could accidentally shoot their sons coming in late through the back door (which happened years ago). The arms of the time were muskets and pistols, not weapons of nearly-massive destruction. 

My point is that the Constitution is a living document, meaning that it has to be reinterpreted and advanced as the times change. With a well trained and supplied military and National Guard, we may no longer need every person to be prepared with military-style weaponry. Just because the Second Amendment gave us the right to have a musket or two, I don't think it is rational to believe that everyone today has an equivalent "right" to posses an assault weapon. 

I have a 12-gauge shotgun for hunting but the law says that I must keep a plug in the magazine so that I can load only three shells. I have a six-shot Ruger pistol but the law says (in California at least) that I cannot carry it concealed in any way and that I am responsible for keeping it out of accessibility to children. There are other interesting laws. One cannot fly an airplane without first taking training and qualifying for a pilot's license. One cannot drive an automobile on public roadways without a training, a driver's license, and sufficient insurance. All of these laws are in the name of public safety. But virtually anyone can buy an assault weapon capable of killing hundreds of people within minutes without training, insurance, or any other regulation.

Yes, guns don't kill people. People kill people with guns (and with other things). But it is terribly difficult to predict what people are going to kill. It is way too simplistic to say that law abiding citizens can do anything they please and criminals are the ones to be regulated. Unfortunately, we don't know who the criminals are until they have committed a crime. (The man who shot the texter, mentioned above, was a retired policeman.)

When I wanted to go hunting, I had to take a training class before I could get a license to hunt. I don't see anything wrong with that, and in particular I never saw it as a violation of my Second Amendment rights. 

Global Warming and the Big Freeze

Well, the eastern US (that is, just about everything east of the Rocky Mountains) has had an extremely cold and icy winter thus far. So, of course, those who disbelieve in Global Warming and Climate Change are out in mass yelling "victory." 

But not so fast! Global Warming does not mean that we cannot have winters --- even severe winters. Indeed, the seasons continue to cycle through just as the tilted axis of earth intended. Global Warming is an issue of averages and requires us to look at long periods. So neither spectacular heat waves nor spectacular freezes have very much to say about it. The real question is whether actual temperature records around the earth demonstrate a gradual increase and, if so, whether we can observe consequences of this gradual rise in temperatures. So far as I know, scientists around the world are indeed recording increases in average temperatures and, among other observations, they are seeing the disappearance of polar ice, including the withdrawal of glaciers. All of this is problematic, when viewed through well established theories of weather generation because the polar ice has a great influence over the ways that weather events are generated in the latitudes below. American winters, for instance, are greatly influenced by the position of the so-called jet stream. The average position of the jet stream as it comes off the Pacific Ocean can bring snow into the Sierra Nevada and rain into Southern California or it can hang us out to dry. And the track of the jet stream is heavily influenced by what happens in the far north. If you have been following weather maps for the last few weeks, you will have noticed that the jet stream has been coming off the Pacific up in Oregon and then diving dramatically to the south east of Nevada, bringing extreme cold and snow to everywhere east of that line.

This much can be measured and observed. What causes Global Warming is a matter for speculation, though scientists are now reasonably confident that the output of "green house gases" is the culprit. Here is where politics --- left and right --- comes to the fore. If scientists are right in believing that green house gases should be blamed for Global Warming, then we should probably do something about the production of these gases to avoid the disastrous results predicted --- rising ocean levels that may well flood coastal regions and even bury small islands, and dramatic changes in world-wide weather patterns (hurricanes, tornadoes, etc). The problem is that reducing our output of green house gases requires changes in our habitual lifestyles, and there are powerful people who have huge investments in maintaining our habitual lifestyles. So the more rational among these people want to assert that the science is incomplete and inconclusive, and they are partly right. Scientists base their expectations on theoretical models that can always be challenged and should be challenged. That is what science is about. But this fact alone does not mean that scientists are presently wrong in what they believe; it simply means that we have to continue working on this. 

Now the more-nearly irrational disbelievers want to claim that scientists have formed a large Climate-Change Cult that is trying to use government (especially the socialist Federal government) to ruin the American paradise --- especially their own wealth-producing paradise of "big oil." This claim, of course, just demonstrates pure ignorance of what science is all about and how it works. If there is a cult at work here, it is the cult of ignorance and anti-intellectualism that has plagued the American scene for centuries. 

Capitalism

The Conservative Right likes to see themselves as the guardians of Capitalism. Liberals, in the worst light, are viewed as Socialists at the very least and, when tempers get really riled up, Communists. The trouble with the Conservative Right's position is that they neither define nor justify the particular form of Capitalism which they are guarding, and Capitalism can have many forms depending on the character of the people involved.

In the most basic sense, Capitalism is simply an economic system in which there is private ownership of the means of production. At the time of our nation's founding, the economy was agrarian so the principal means of production was land and certain tools involved in farming the land. The majority of Capitalists were independent farmers, the very population upon which Jefferson rested his utopian concept of a democratic government. With so much in common, people would be able to come together to participate in government and solve their shared problems.

Of course, even in the infancy of our nation, there were already economic factors that, as they developed, would topple such a utopia. There was already an industrial-agricultural split between New England and the South. And Southern Capitalism depended upon slavery. In the North, the means of production was moving toward the tools and institutions of industry and away from mere land and cottage tools. In the era of industrial production, Capitalism took on an entirely different appearance. Since the means of production was becoming factories and large-investment machines, Capitalists were far fewer in number and the remainder of the population increasingly turned to laboring for their means of survival. As Marx saw it, Capitalist society became increasingly divided between the Bourgeoisie (Capital owning class) and the Proletariat (laboring class). 

The notion of "means of survival" is interesting in the context of this discussion. In a strictly agrarian society the "means of production" is equivalent to the "means of survival". That equivalence continues for the Capitalist in an industrial society but the remainder of the population is alienated from the means of production so that its survival becomes contingent. Capital is a means of survival for the majority of people only in the contingency that they are able to sell their labor at a price that can sustain them. Today, the vast majority of Americans depend on selling their labor in order to survive. While 80% of Americans were still small farmers in the late 19th Century, the percentage of small farmers now is so small that the US Census has dropped the category as inconsequential. But selling our labor depends entirely upon the management of Capital and that means an enormous division of power. Jeffersonian democracy is a thing of the past. However one wishes to characterize the American government today, it is no longer a coming together of equals to solve shared problems. It is far more like an "oligarchy in democratic clothing".

In fact, the system of industrial Capitalism places an enormous moral burden on a small number of people for the welfare and survival of the majority of their countrymen has become their responsibility. That is the sad truth --- "sad" because with only a few exceptions Capitalists have largely ignored this burden. The situation is rather like the situation of the doctor Plato describes whose true role is nurturing the health of patients but who becomes so involved in the making of money that his patients' health suffers. Capitalists of the late 19th Century enhanced their profits by buying labor at the lowest possible price which was established by the most meagre sense of survival --- the simple ability to get up the next day and work again. Anyone injured in the process or becoming ill or refusing the indignity could easily be replaced. So long as the aim of the Capitalist is simply maximizing profits all kinds of terrible things can happen.

I see no problem with the Capitalist system of economy if the moral burden is understood. That burden is to produce products of superior quality for delivery to consumers and to contribute to the well being and survival of the people who contribute to production by selling their labor. But this burden requires that Capitalists focus on other matters than pure profit taking. The quality of products is a simple matter of honesty. Caring for the well being of those who work for you is a less simple but still clear matter. The means of production are useless without the help of those who labor; hence, the welfare of those who labor is an obligation that must be met. It is not a matter of simply buying labor at the minimum wage possible; it is a matter of functioning as part of a cooperative community.

Three More Years

Congress finally realized that going over the debt ceiling cliff was going to do too much damage to the country and they pulled a last-moment deal. Unfortunately for all of us, it is not much of a "deal" because it merely sets us up for another crisis in January and February. The Republican Storm Troopers will again tie some piece of their "wish list" to continuing national solvency. If it is not the Affordable Care Act, then it will be Social Security or Medicare or Education or the EPA. Since they do not have enough legislative power they will continue to blast at the front door by holding the nation hostage when it comes to running government, paying thousands of government workers, and borrowing with excellent credit. Can we really take this for three more years?

Basically, a small faction of the Republicans want to crush national government and they came very very close to doing it this time. The irony is that these are people who have been elected to "govern." But instead of governing, they have done everything possible to cripple government. When government shuts down, food inspections stop; but food inspections have already been critically limited simply by picking away at funding. Likewise for just about every government program. 

The money is there, of course, if Republicans would allow even modest increases in tax revenues. But, of course, their battle cry is "no new taxes!" Meanwhile, the super-rich continue to get richer and the rest of the population gets poorer. It is, indeed, the super-rich, like the Koch Brothers, who are behind the Tea Party and other right-wing conservative groups. What they want is their own little playground in which they can do anything they want without interference from government.

This is by no means the first time in the history of the United States that wealthy Capitalists have taken control of government --- national and local --- but periods like the late 19th Century have never been economically productive or produced a prosperous middle class. I hope that we can avoid re-living that history.

Hostage!

The majority of Americans have become hostages of a minority, what we can broadly call the Tea Party. Basically, this group of people wants to destroy the Federal government and will do just about anything to accomplish their wish. Unfortunately, because the House of Representatives is now dominated by these people and because the House holds the National purse strings, the majority of Americans have to suffer their whims. Also, unfortunately, there is no way out of this situation because the districts out of which these representatives are elected have been so maliciously organized that they cannot be defeated. I don't believe this was ever anticipated in all the debates over the Constitution. 

What I do not know is whether the Tea Party is simply an extreme version of Libertarianism or whether they support state and local governments (which, I assume, Libertarians do not do). If the Tea Party does support state and local government, then it seems to me that a happy solution would be to simply exempt those states from any interaction with Federal government and wish their state governments "god speed." This, in fact, would be a benefit to the rest of us because I believe it has been shown that these same states currently require more Federal income than they contribute to the Federal government. This might be facilitated by combining these states with the Republic of Texas. We might coalesce into something called "Washoregonia," a Pacific Rim economy. British Columbia might even join us. 

I have to confess that I do not understand Libertarianism. What I see in it is a hatred of government and a hope for a mythic state of complete individual freedom. But I always thought that Locke and the rest solved the "freedom" issue a long time ago by showing that we are bound to the protection of all our possessions unless we come together into some kind of contractual understanding that institutionalizes the protection of property. Perhaps that's why they like guns so much because they think they can do it alone. 'Alone' is a key word here, I guess. Government IS the possibility of collective action. But if you think that "going it alone" is paradise, then I guess that collective action doesn't mean much. But I don't know what "going it alone" means when it comes to repairing the roads, inspecting the food supply, and keeping airplanes from colliding with one another.

I do wish some Libertarians would explain how the Libertarian paradise would work on a practical day-to-day basis. What I read in their web sites is mostly negative --- what they do not want --- and very little positive. 

SYRIA

Obama and Kerry are both very intelligent men. Why then are they both out beating the drums for military action in Syria. Don't they know what an entirely foolish idea that is? What is the ruling psychology in the US today? For it surely is "psychology" rather than reason. 

First of all, if Obama believes we are obligated to do something, we have to remember that it is Obama himself who put us under that obligation. He is the one who foolishly drew the poison-weapons line in the sand. He didn't have to do that. And didn't he realize he was creating the very mess we are now in? 

"The world" may have decided to ban chemical weapons after the horrors of the First World War, but "the world" no longer seems to feel that way --- at least Russia and China don't seem to care about it. Why can't we let the world figure this out. No one really appointed the US as the chief of police for the world.

Then, look at the practical side of all this. "Limited strikes" means that we are just going to go and mess around with Syria and try to avoid too much damage. But that means we will just piss them off and they will do even more to bate us. Once we have committed anything there we will be unable to hold back. So where is this all going? The first strike means we are at war with Syria. How do we plan to end that war? Just back out after a little hand slapping? Very unlikely. 

The IRS

Almost no one likes paying taxes and almost all of us know one story or another about how dangerous the IRS can be if you get on their wrong side. Well, now the dear junior senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, has the solution. In his TV advertisement he proposes that we follow him in abolishing the IRS. What could be better? Right? All our troubles gone in one swift blow.

Well, not quite so fast. What does Cruz really mean or what does he really intend to accomplish. The IRS is only the institution which collects Federal taxes. Does Cruz mean to abolish taxes or merely cripple the system of collecting taxes? Congress sets tax rates and also legislates the minute details of exemptions and favors that haunt the system. It isn't the fault of IRS. Granting their may be issues in the way IRS interprets or administers tax collections, but someone must serve this function if taxes are to be collected at all.

Does Cruz actually believe that Congress can create a "simple and fair" tax system for the US and that Americans will just mail their checks to the Treasury voluntarily? He's got to be kidding! Look at the lengths to which people and corporations go now to avoid or minimize payment while the IRS looks on and real penalties are possible. I suppose what is really behind this is the standard Republican agenda of impoverishing the Federal government. The tactic is not to bother with legislation that limits or better defines government powers but rather to just make it impossible for government to exercise its powers by starving it. 

So Cruz's TV advertisement --- just another cynical political ploy, standard among Republican parlor tricks --- make something sound really sweat but don't let on what the actual consequences might be.