Posts by TonyL:
Left and Right, Right and Wrong
March 23rd, 2010I get myself in trouble with conservatives. It’s my fault – I tend toward caustic language which they easily find insulting and hurtful.
I’m a lefty liberal. It’s very easy for people like me to see conservatives as falling on the other side of the intelligence curve. That’s because most folks who aren’t particularly bright will tend toward conservative positions. Take the Tea Party crowd as a great example: because there are so many really dumb people involved, it’s easy to dismiss the whole movement as “stupid”.
That’s a mistake. There are brilliant conservatives. Left and right have nothing to do with intelligence or rationality. Our political positions come from our emotions.
You’ve probably heard someone say “There’s just no arguing with him” in a frustrated tone? Usually that’s because they have presented what they consider to be irrefutable facts in favor of some position only to have it dismissed out of hand. Set down a table of liberals and conservatives and you’ll see plenty of irrefutable arguments brushed aside and ignored. We talk past each other and we get nowhere.
The reason for that is that our positions didn’t come to us from logic. They come from deep within and we only use logic to justify them to ourselves and to others. The “irrefutable arguments” are afterthoughts. Brain imaging studies seem to bear this out – for many things, and particularly for political arguments, the emotional centers decide and then the rational centers make up a story to justify the decision.
Let’s ignore for a moment that none of us are fully left or right. I hold right-wing opinions on gun control, for example and if we search hard enough I bet we can find a staunch conservative who opposes me on that single issue. People aren’t usually monolithic.
But: I’m not a liberal because I examined left and right and found the left to be “right”. If that were true, then either all smart people would be liberals or all would be conservatives. Nor is my position on gun control the result of intellectual analysis – oh, I HAVE all the rational arguments to support all my positions, but that’s not where they came from. They came from emotion.
This is why we talk past each other. This is why we get angry, why we call each other “stupid” or “unrealistic”. You pay no attention to my perfectly logical arguments and I pay no attention to yours. The best either of us can do is make the other uncomfortable or embarrassed. In fact, embarrassment and social ostracism or disapproval are strong motivators to change political positions – rational argument almost never is.
I am a lunatic liberal. I could guess at some of the influences that drove me that way – I suspect that most of it comes from sympathy for the underdog, for those who are “different” and that sympathy plainly had its roots in being an “outsider” myself. I could argue against that, insisting that no, it was my questioning mind, my refusal to accept things at face value, my probing intellect that formed me, but really, I think that’s hogwash. I am what I am and everything else is just rationalization.
So – I’ll always vote for the most liberal candidates even if some of them are crooks and charlatans. I’ll always disparage a conservative candidate even if their motives are pure. And I’ll always rationalize every decision to convince myself that my actions are “right”.
So will you. So do all of us.
Toy Guns
March 19th, 2010
My grandfather was given a toy cannon when he was a child. I say “toy” because that’s how both he and his parents and even my father thought of it, but this was a working, albeit small, brass cannon. You could (and we did) load it with real gun powder and set it off quite dramatically. I suppose it is probably technically illegal just about everywhere save Texas, but it now sits as a decorative object on the hearth in my oldest daughter’s Virginia home. I would hope no one is foolhardy enough to load it up with black powder again (especially as my nephews put chewing gum down the barrel).
We also had a percussion cap rifle and a set of dress swords handed down from some Civil War relative. My older sister made use of the rifle to scare away an intruder one summer day; I imagine that our local police thought that was smart thinking on her part; today she’d probably have to see a probation officer for her “crime” (and my parents would be pariahs for having such things in the home). Actually, I don’t know why she didn’t grab the loaded .22 pistol that we all knew was in a cupboard drawer – perhaps she felt that was too small to be intimidating.
I currently don’t own any guns. Frankly, guns scare me and since I’m not a hunter, that’s the end of any thought process that starts with the idea of acquiring such. Besides, they cost too much: I’m too cheap to own a gun.
I bring all this up because the Supreme Court is about to consider whether or not the Second Amendment prevents States from interfering with gun ownership. Those of you who know me as a whacko ACLU liberal will no doubt be shocked to learn that I hope that the Court does tell the States to go pound sand. I want to have the right to own a gun without anyone standing in my way. Well, more accurately, I want my neighbors to be able to own guns – I’m still cheap and scared.
Our founding fathers understood that military governments can control the populace very easily if we are all weak and defenseless. Yes, I understand all the arguments against guns, all the terrible statistics and honestly, I don’t care: for the protection of our liberty, we need to retain the right to bear arms.
Of course I don’t think that should be without limits. I don’t want my neighbors owning nuclear rocket launchers. However, I don’t think it’s the business of States to set such limits or to restrict felons, the mentally incompetent and so on from brandishing firearms. Anything like that should be Federal – we should ALL live by the same rules.
That’s just my opinion, of course, and I’ll live with whatever the Court rules. I’m just hoping for the “pound sand” result.
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