The Logic of My Cold Dead Hands

The recent mass shooting including the murder of six people in Tucson Arizona would have grabbed mass media attention had the victims not included a U.S. Representative, a child, and a Federal Judge. That said, the range of media commentary and self-reference (often without valuable introspection) would likely not have been so great had the victims been migrant workers. Commentaries have appeared with regards to the vehemence of political rhetoric, media bias, and of course gun control.

Venting on the failings of people in positions of social responsibility is not my strong suit (though that has not kept me from trying from time to time), but I have been on occasion known to use logic decently well. As the debate over the second amendment again rises to the forefront of the national stage, there is an opportunity to apply logic, that oft neglected capacity, to the political discourse. This argument does not directly support one side or the other of the gun issue, but rather says that the debate is misplaced. Beyond the federal government making sure that every person has the right to bear some kind of arm, it is not a federal issue. The state or local governments should sort out the details.

First to the logic, and please forgive the simplicity with which this is put forth, but it allows for clarity in analysis. The argument is:

1. The second amendment to the Constitution states that we have the right to bear arms. It does not specify beyond the word 'arms.' It does not say 'some arms' nor 'all arms.'
2. If some arms are banned legally, then it would follow that the second amendment does not guarantee the right to bear all arms, but at least some arms.
3. Some arms are legally banned, such as nuclear arms, therefore the second amendment guarantees the right to bear some, but not all arms.
4. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that one branch or another of the Federal Government (including the Supreme Court) has the power to specify which types of arms are protected under the second amendment and which are not.
5. The tenth amendment to the Constitution says that the powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people.
6. Because the power to determine what sorts of arms are permitted and what sorts are not is not delegated to the federal government at any point in the constitution, that power rests at the state or local level.

In more plain English, if we accept that individuals should not be allowed to own nuclear weapons, a type of arm, then some arms can be restricted as long as some other arms are protected. But the Constitution itself provides no more specific guidance as to what can be allowed or disallowed. It says that any issue not specified in the articles and amendments laid out should be left up to the states to decide. Therefore, as specific arms are never detailed in the Constitution, it must be left up to the states to decide whether they wish to allow automatic weapons, tasers, swords, or lead pipes and candlesticks. The debate should not be on the national stage, but on fifty or more state and district stages. The federal government, beyond guaranteeing that the right to bear some arms is protected, should not be involved.

A second point is more of a supporting practicality than an argument in itself. It is simply to say that given the difference of lifestyle and prevailing opinion in the diverse locations across the nation, it makes more sense to have state governments debating what arms are to be allowed than having a federal decision. Of course someone living on a ranch in Nevada will have a different take than someone living in Washington D.C. It makes sense that they should be allowed to regulate their right to bear arms differently. This means if the people of one state vote overwhelmingly to allow unregistered automatic weapons, then they should be allowed in that state. Similarly, if the people of another state or district vote to disallow handguns, then that should be upheld in that region so long as the region specifies what type of arms are allowed (halberds, perhaps?). It would follow that if a case went to the Supreme Court, they would uphold the local decision so long as there were provisions as to what sort of arms were allowed. If the local decision were an outright ban on all arms, then it would have to be struck down.

In the recent case of McDonald v. Chicago it was ruled that the fourteenth amendment protected an individual’s right to bear arms, unhindered by state or local intervention. That would be true, or logically valid, if the Federal Government had the power to determine what arms a person can bear. But if we apply logic to the premises given in the Constitution, the Federal Government does not. That power should belong to the state and local governments in the first place. The only place the Supreme Court would have a place in overturning a local decision would be if no arms were stipulated to be permitted, as that would violate a person’s right to bear arms.

Tackling Taboo Territory: A Cultural Commentary

On Culture

The word ‘culture’ in everyday conversation often refers to the shared customs of a group of people. Dance, music, and religious practice all form a part of this concept, but that is not all. At dinner table discussions one hears broad statements referring to preferences and isms belonging to a culture. American culture has instilled in me some aspects of individualism, and also consumerism, for better or for worse. From a folk-anthropological standpoint, culture is something sacred. It should be studied but not criticized or judged. In the most limp-wristed blather, gratuitous wrongs can be brushed off as having been the product of a person’s culture. These overlapping ideas add up to an ambiguous and misunderstood concept of Culture, kept all the more ill defined by the fear of addressing it. To address Culture in any but the most reverent terms is to risk being seen as discriminatory, ethnocentric, racist, or simply as a basic, run of the mill jerk.

From a scientific standpoint, there is no Culture. There is only experience, and the material on which that experience leaves an impression. In other words, there is your central nervous system, which is how experiences are received and processed, and the constant influx of information that is the world around you. Those experiences, in their entirety, are your culture. Your culture is absolutely unique to you. You are the only person who has had all of your experiences. You have been party to shared experiences, from which we derive the popular usage of the word culture, but the whole of it is yours and only yours.

There are those who wish to put people or peoples into glass jars, or have them live in grass huts for eternity, in the name of cultural preservation, or cultural rights. Who are we, they ask, we aggressors and exploiters of the modern world, to destroy their way of life? How dare we impose our culture on their culture? Their culture is something pure and unfettered. Ours is polluted by greed and waste. These long-distance defenders, with their vociferous arguments and vehement fist pounding, have their hearts in a good place. They are criticizing societal ills that deserve criticism. And I agree that anyone should have the right to live as they choose. But culture cannot be preserved. By its very nature it is always in flux. You experience the world constantly, and so your culture is constantly changing. Every moment it changes by infinitesimal increments, as does the culture of every other person on the planet. Trying to preserve culture in some artificial scheme of isolationism or cultural tourism is like trying to capture the entirety of a moment in a photograph. It denies the very nature of the beast. They want to preserve Culture, but Culture does not exist. It never has. There is only the constant change of more than six billion cultures, some overlapping, some more isolated.

Cultural Imperialism

It is a rare politician, professor, economist, or Nobel laureate who will say that development is a cultural issue. For the very reasons outlined above, the desire to avoid the possibility of being seen as a bigot or an imperialist, development has been pushed into a corner of economic opportunity and access to resources. In truth development is just as much an issue of culture as it is of market access or clean water or sanitation.

Before the label of cultural imperialist sticks too firmly to my back, allow a clarification. It is not just the development of the global south (formerly the third world) that is a cultural issue. It is just as much an issue in Europe, the United States, the former Soviet Union, China, and everywhere else. Development, often pigeonholed into economic terms, is at its heart a human issue, and culture is as much a part of the human being as is our health or our market connections. It is one thing to provide people with clean water, it is another to teach them why the water was contaminated, and both are necessary for good development. The error would be to say that it is only the experiences of the west that should be shared. It is a fact that access to clean water has been provided on a much wider scale in the ‘developed world’ than in the ‘developing world.’ That does not mean that there are no lessons of value that could be passed in the other direction.

I have encountered the attitude that if the American system were simply imported to and adopted by a developing country, its problems of development would be resolved. In addition to being rather arrogant, this idea assumes that American (or European or whoever the proponent chooses) systems have reached the pinnacle of achievement. The pyramid is complete, it says. On the contrary, the ideas that work best for our wellbeing wherever we are should be shared, and those that do not work should be left behind. Development in the global south takes on a more urgent air than that in the western world because of enormous economic disparities and grievous health concerns, but development is no less important in the United States or Europe than it is in Kenya. Development is the passing on of those parts of your culture you have found to be true and useful, and leaving behind those that turned out false. It is capacity building. It is education.

Is it imperialism? In the international context it does come with gross differences in power and wealth. Development has been linked to military objectives and alliances. Aid packages have come with strings attached. It certainly has been a branch of the imperial charter. Historically, cultural imperialism came from the view of one side knowing and having all, and the other side knowing and having very little. Carrots are offered with provisions for friendly economic policies or security agreements. But the exchange of ideas is not always a one-way street. I see my work more as empowerment than as forcing practices onto people, and I have consistently learned more from those I teach than I think they have learned from me. My own culture has been changed by my experiences in different countries and by the people with whom I have worked. With more accurate information comes a stronger capacity to choose both for me and for those I have worked with. It goes both ways. We get a better picture of the world around us, and we choose how to act, today more knowledgeable than yesterday. The only things holding back our development could be false information, the withholding of the truth, or a closed mind. If we eschew these, each of our choices will be more informed than the last. There is choice in what practices to adopt and what to pass on. There is a process of cultural selection at work in all of our interactions. Development is our cultural evolution.