Shall Not Be Questioned

Joe Huffman makes the legitimate observation that most of the issues I mentioned in the last post were pretty easy, but mentions they can be harder:

How about question such as banning all semi-automatic firearms? Or nationalization of the banking industry? Nationalization of the oil/energy industry? Nationalization of telecommunications industry? Nationalization of health-care? Nationalization of the software industry? Nationalization of all corporations? Confiscation of all real property?

With the exception of the banking industry, and possibly health care, most of those aren’t currently on the table, and I was more attempting to frame the issue in what we’re dealing with today.  Even Obamacare doesn’t go as far as nationalization of health care (so far), and governments have been so heavily involved in banking since modern banking emerged, that I’m not as concerned about the prospects of some banks being nationalized, especially if it’s under the auspices of the FDIC process for insolvent banks.

But there’s little doubt we’re slowly moving toward many of these things.  I don’t think there’s an easy answer to the problem. Unless there’s some majority, or even a sizable minority, I’m not sure how you have an organic “people” who can offer legitimacy to a government through their consent to be governed by it.  If a majority of people are happy or indifferent with a slow creep toward social democracy, I’m not sure what can be done to stop it. In other words, I don’t think the Second Amendment provides a solution for the boiled frog problem.  The idea being if you want to cook a frog, if you throw him into boiling water, he’ll just jump out.  If you put him in cold water, and slowly turn up the heat, he’ll never realize he’s being stewed.

I heard it suggested tonight that John Edwards is actually right, and that there really are two Americas.  I sometimes wonder if our political discourse is devolving to the point where the two Americas won’t be able to tolerate being in one America with the other.  Last time that happened, things got ugly.

SayUncle brings up a post from a blogger who is unhappy about some of the stuff appearing on the Free Republic.   Stuff which is pretty tame by Internet standards.  SayUncle comments:

Any way, I don’t mind so much. The Bush years turned a lot of lefties into gun nuts. In fact, the picture that Mr. Fifth Of November Poser used was prominent on a lot of lefty, pro-gun sites. Looks like the Obama years will get a lot of righties back into the gun rights movement.

I agree with Uncle to the extent that it’s making people understand, in an abstract way, why the Second Amendment is important, but I can sympathize with concerns about people speaking of revolution as a means for resolving disputes among political factions.  When I think about the Second Amendment philosophically, at least its collective purpose rather than its personal one, I think of it as a means for ultimately enforcing Popular Sovereignty as the source of government legitimacy.  It restricts the government’s power only to those actions which embody a will of the people as a whole, and seriously raises the cost of defying that will.  In other words, you “vote from the rooftops” because you can’t, in a meaningful way, vote from the ballot box. I’m less sanguine about arms as a means for resolving domestic political disputes between quarreling factions.  Down that road lies disaster, and the end of our Republic.  Political disputes should be resolved with words, ideas, activism, organization, campaigns, and civility.  Arms are for extreme circumstances.

I am sympathetic to those that believe Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner, and the Second Amendment was meant to allow the well armed sheep to contest the vote.  I do not believe we ought to worship at the altar of Popular Sovereignty to ridiculous levels.  If a majority of Americans ever vote for a government that advocates exterminating an unpopular minority, I will agree we ought resist it, with violence if necessary.  If a majority acquiesce to Congress unilaterally dissolving our Republic and reforming it around a Parliamentary model, I would agree that should be a deal breaker as well.

But no one is seriously proposing these things, and what is being proposed is in the realm of peaceful partisan politics.  I’m not going to machine gun my fellow man over medicare, or take out a tank over taxes.  I won’t shoot it out with a subgun over the stimulus, nor defend my construction of the commerce clause with continuous cannonade.  We have a system that allows us to redress that peacefully, and without annoying, aggravating alliteration.  While I share Uncle’s sentiment about making more people see the importance of the Second Amendment, I worry greatly about what people are thinking it’s actually for.