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27 December 2012

A Mission for the NRA

In its response to the Newtown, CT massacre, the National Rifle Association has missed an opportunity to transform its message to its gun-owning membership and the American public in general. It has espoused the unrestricted possession of firearms by U.S. citizens as a constitutional right that allows individuals to defend our nation’s liberty, as well as to enjoy the sporting use of guns and to protect themselves and their families from violent attack. The circumstances of the Connecticut grade school shooting, however, demonstrated the risk we take by not accepting the duty to take active responsibility for enforcing general adherence to common behavioral practices that are necessary to make a democracy work.

Yes, respect for individual freedoms, like the right to bear arms, is important. However, equally important are the demands that a democratic society makes on its citizens so that the exercise of such freedoms stays within the bounds needed for reciprocity. Whoever knew the shooter well, starting with his mother, had the obligation to prevent his access to the weapons that he showed the ability to use in an orgy of violence when his mental imbalance apparently and inevitably flew out of control.

There are many other ways in which the peacefulness, solvency, and stability of our nation is potentially threatened by our lackadaisical attitude toward the vigilance required of every capable member of a truly functional democracy. The continued existence of our democracy in anything but name is ultimately more threatened by indifference to the obligations of citizenship than by a possible attack by a foreign power or a group of terrorists. Certainly, the tragedy caused by a haywire gunman would be better avoided by preventing his access to weapons than by arming every potential venue for a shooting spree. The NRA would make it a worthy mission to lead its members in advocating the citizen vigilance needed to anticipate problems that arise from widespread gun ownership. This advocacy would also give the NRA a function to perform vis a vis unarmed civilians.

23 December 2012

Serf and Sovereign

The United States was founded with the people as the sovereign, not as serfs to a King or state. The libertarian view that there is no sovereign in the American system of government, as eloquently attributed to the Republicans by Alan Van Dyke in the December 22-23, 2012 WSJ, would lead us into chaos.

In fact, the founders of our republic invented a sovereign that consists of a system of electoral representative self-government, subject to built-in checks and balances but ultimately answerable to the will of the population at large. The only way to maintain their control, however, is for the people constantly to monitor the performance of their elected representatives. This function has been delegated over time to the public media and various NGOs, some of which have been coopted by special interests.

It is the complexity of governing a nation of the size and capacities that we have reached that has demanded as large and costly a federal bureaucracy and budget as we have. The federal government is not an imposition by a divinely instituted sovereign, but a necessity. Labeling big government as evil just because it is big is similar to the mistake reactionaries make in not recognizing that the increasing cost of national healthcare is heavily owing to the older ages we have been allowed to attain by the success of medical science in extending our lives, in part because of Medicare payments. (Putting an end to that feedback loop, of course, is politically impossible.)

Adhering to the solutions devised by our founding fathers to end the serf-sovereign model of government is no virtue when the circumstances of the republic over 230 years later have changed to a state they could not have anticipated. Let us not confuse their principles with their conclusions.

13 December 2012

The Lesson of 2012

If there is a lesson to be learned from the 2012 Presidential election it is that money alone can’t buy turnout of “the base.” The GOP, in ignoring the polled sentiments of its base, proved to be more susceptible to the messages of its financial supporters than the voters were.

My belief that sophisticated public relations techniques have become more reliable determinants of the behavior of voters (and consumers) than old-fashioned door-to-door contact and continual e-mailing turned out to be wrong. This was the insight that Jim Messina, David Axelrod, and others on the Obama campaign so successfully followed in mobilizing the Democratic base. Nevertheless, Republicans like Boehner, Graham, and others were even convinced that money could get Romney elected. Now they believe that it isn’t possible to fight the financial power of corporate, military-industrial complex, and wealthy high-income-capital-gains-earning interests because they can pay for the use of modern information technology to mold the minds of the slow-minded and passive electorate.

As Nicholas Christof pointed out in the 12/13/12 New York Times, the average American has gotten smarter over the last century. Apparently, conservative politicians’ strategy hasn’t taken that into account.

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