Guns: The New Cross
It is common knowledge that there’s a great divide in our society, and the meaning of guns is at the crux of the different realities that American’s inhabit. Each of us lives in the world that we and others have jointly fashioned, or put differently the mind organizes reality in terms of the relationships and the discourse that takes place between ourselves and others.
The spirit, the atmosphere within this Starbucks in Geneva, Illinois is markedly different than would be the case if in the imagination this room were in Dallas, and those around me were Texans. The difference of most importance would not be the cowboy hats worn by the males. The cultural difference of the profoundest significance would be the likelihood that any number of patrons around me would have a personal weapon at hand, concealed in a purse, or holstered at the waist. Texas is one of the more heavily armed states in the country. More than a third of Texas households have a gun.
I will hasten to my point. Presently gun ownership is viewed as a God-given right in this country. That is palpably so in Texas, as well as other “red” states. The mythology surrounding “the gun” is the axis around which the worldview of many of our fellow citizens revolves.
I expect to compose several more posts to express my sense of what this means for us. Today I have some thoughts on those lines from the Declaration of Independence, those phrases interpreted as a God mandated (sacred) duty to protect oneself by unrestricted possession of firearms. There’s a line in the Declaration of Independence – that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This language is linked to the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution. Said plainly, your sacred duty is to protect your life and especially your immediate family with a gun, God’s will for your life, and as a sign of Christian Faith. Have we not been “one nation under God,” from our founding? So goes the reasoning as I understand the POV of my pro-gun acquaintances.
Is there a good response to this interpretation of these phrases from our Declaration of Independence? What words are available,… Other than mute silence, an inability of offer any response to a adamant obsession with God and the gun, what could I possibly offer?
This!
1. GOD says hello! Since you are alive, present here in this time, you are a winner holding the winning ticket when the odds against you having been born were astronomical. Two singular sperm and egg united within your mother, and here you are! That you received the nod for life, rather than another kid-that-became-an-adult is illogical, extraordinary, not to be taken for granted.
2. LIFE, yes you a winner, a recipient of the gift of life. As such the biological imperative of survival is built in, encoded if you will, within every living entity. You are not special in that respect from any other living organism. That is the most common dimension of all living things.
3. FREEDOM/LIBERTY is another way of saying, that you are meant to thrive. Fulfillment is the optimum destiny, the endpoint for your type of organism, a language enabled mammal, for homo sapiens of which you are a member.
4. “THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS”…. The discovery of your singular form of individual happiness will be, — a lifetime of insight, of enjoyment, of engaged pursuit. Naturally you cannot achieve this alone. Any runner knows, a race is improved in many respects by the proximity of other runners. We are “pulled along” inspired to a more satisfying performance by others.
And that’s what I wish to say this morning. It will be up to you the reader to decide what if anything this has to do with the ownership and use of weapons. What manner of life do you envision for yourself and others? What do we need to address, to work on, in order to pursue “happiness?” What shall we do next?
Will have more to say on another day.
4 thoughts on “Guns: The New Cross”
Most assuredly, it’s pretty hard to enjoy liberty and to pursue happiness without that key ingredient, life.
I imagine the Declaration and Amendment writers would weep to witness the carnage that their unintentionally puzzling language has wrought. The venerated Second Amendment did specify “a well-regulated militia,” although the phrase’s awkward, vague placement at the beginning of its sentence usually causes it to be discounted. Writers further should have spelled out explicitly that they meant to safeguard a “right to keep and bear” muskets and (dueling?) pistols — but how could they possibly have foreseen the apocalyptic “arms” that their destructive descendants would invent, revere, and then indiscriminately justify with the Founders’ own words?
I doubt Texas would certify my right to carry a hand grenade and a tranquilizer dart gun on the street, though those function as “arms” too. Meanwhile, has TSA restored my right to carry paper scissors and a nail clipper while flying? Neither clippers nor air travel are in the Constitution, you know …
Ambiguity is always an aspect of language. Terms derive their meaning from context. Vocabulary coming from the experience of the most precious, the supremely important foundations the aspirations for ourselves as human, — inevitably will entail the widest latitude of meaning. The Founders wrote as they were directed by their judgment, and the rest, interpretation is up to every generation. Does anyone think the Founders had intuition of a complex, affluent, violent society “armed to the teeth?”
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property Rights…
Arguing from Founding Father’s First Principals is the Conservative’s Dream: Nothing has changed; Nothing can change; Nothing should change; Except how the Conservative is enabled to apply these First Principles to new situations in any manner suiting their convenience.
Many of our First Principals can be understood from the opposing views of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke during the times around the English Civil War. Hobbes asserted that liberty brought chaos, that the worst government was better than no government—and that people owed allegiance to their ruler, right or wrong. Mobb Rule could never turn out well. The sovereign is the sole judge of what policies are required to create social peace, what should be taught, what laws and rules should be instituted, what decisions should be made by courts, issues of war and peace, the choice of ministers, counselors and civil servants, who and how persons should be rewarded and punished, and all other aspects of government.
John Locke expressed the radical view that government is morally obliged to serve people, namely by protecting life, liberty, and property. He explained the principle of checks and balances to limit government power. He favored representative government and a rule of law. He denounced tyranny. He insisted that when government violates individual rights, people may legitimately rebel. “Reason, which is that Law,” Locke declared, “teaches all Mankind, who would but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.”
Locke established that private property is absolutely essential for liberty: “every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his.” He continues: “The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property.”
So, with these First Principals how can we resolve the facts that John Locke was instrumental in owing an African slave trading company, in writing the South Carolina constitution granting absolute ownership of slaves, and whose concept of Property Rights was instrumental in white settlers appropriating land from indigenous peoples? And that women had rights, but only derived from their status as wives and mothers. Can we attribute this to simple hypocrisy?
The justification seems to go deeper, and more nefarious, than simple hypocrisy. We can have unalienable rights for some, white male landowners, as long as we define others as non-people. Any attempt by non-people to obtain rights comes as a challenge and threat to those holding the rights. Our rights must be defended, using our Right to Bear Arms, from any tyrant or non-person threatening our rights. It is a Patriots Duty to defend our Rights. To Locke, slavery was abhorrent, but only in the context of, “Englishmen shall never, never, never be slaves!”
Locke believed people legitimately turned common property into private property by mixing their labor with it, improving it. Locke’s central idea is that agriculturalists, by mixing their labor with the soil, thereby acquire a title to it. He immediately faces the objection that before the arrival of agriculture, hunters and gatherers worked on the land and gained sustenance from it. So, it would seem, the would-be farmer has arrived too late. Locke’s answer to this was twofold: First, there is plenty of land for everybody, so appropriating some land for agriculture can’t be of any harm to the hunter-gatherers. Locke’s second argument is that regardless of whether there is a lot or a little, uncultivated land is essentially valueless. All, or nearly all, the value, he says, comes from the efforts of farmers who improve the land. Since God gave us the land to improve, it rightfully belongs to those who improve it.
Locke had enormous foresight to see beyond the struggles of his own day, which then were directed against monarchy: “Tis a Mistake to think [tyranny] is proper only to Monarchies; other Forms of Government are liable to it. For where-ever the Power that is put in any hands for the Government of the People, and the Preservation of their Properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the Arbitrary and Irregular Commands of those that have it: There it presently becomes Tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many.” In this manner any taxes, particularly taxes re-distributing wealth from rightful property owners to the un-deserving, are instances of tyranny and must be opposed by true Patriots.
Thank you for the brief glimpse into the intellectual tenor of the times of our countries Founders. Hobbs, the unrepentant Monarchist vs. Locke the advocate for “the people.” I should say, “thus begins the lesson” because here we are several centuries later with a globalized economy made possible within a generation by recent improvements in the application of science, living in an affluent, violent, armed up society…
Where to from here? Things change but remain the same. The two sides of the game have flipped. The spiritual descendants of John Locke, the so-called conservatives, the rural folk, in the South and the West are tenacious to grasp their guns, resistant to any limits on what they believe is their right to resist “big gov’mt.”
The absolutists of our day are the CEOs of global corporations, particularly in communication and finance. Indeed every aspect of the economy been financialized. A transaction to purchase a cup of coffee is often run through the Visa or Master Card system. These entities are the true holders of power, with lobbyists influencing legislation, PR firms contracted to promote approval of their products among their customers. These 1 percenters would be the descendants of Thomas Hobbs, proponents of a controlled system. As history has taught us, we remain stuck in the ditch, the division between the ruler(s) and the people, the “haves” and the “have-nots,” the struggle which Marx observed between those who own the means of production and those who labor to “make ends meet.”
Is it not late in the day, high time that we begin to cut this Gordian Knot of unending conflict? Is it inevitable that my well being be rooted in the deprivation of someone else’s fulfillment? Daily in the New York Times pro-gun advocates reference the Founders, reference the Christian scriptures as a rationale for what they perceive as a bulwark to the loss of any more of their freedoms. Why bother with justifications, with the white noise, when ‘more guns’ is simply what is desired. Those who oppose them, feel no need to say anything, having achieved the luxury of not needing justification for taking what they desire. After all the lobbying and PR firms are well paid to deliver for those men who remain behind the curtain.
Is it not late in the day, what better time than now, to develop a new vocabulary, grammar and syntax to propose AN ALTERNATIVE to this cul de sac? Can we not end the interminable conflict, with inefficiencies and depletion of resources physical and spiritual which are critical for humanities survival?