“The Gun Supremacists’ Folly”: Guns Are Not A Religion In Most Countries
Have we gone stark raving mad?
The question is brought to mind by the gun law signed last week in Georgia by Gov. Nathan Deal. You might have thought that since the United States couldn’t possibly have more permissive firearms laws than it does now, nothing more could be done to coddle the gun lobby and tip the balance of our statutes away from law enforcement. Alas, you would be wrong.
The creativity of the National Rifle Association and other organizations devoted to establishing conditions in which every man, woman and child in our nation will have to be armed is awe-inspiring. Where imagination is concerned, the best absurdist artists and writers have nothing on the NRA. No wonder Stephen Colbert has decided to move on from the realm of satire. When parody becomes reality, the challenges facing even a comedian of his talents can become insurmountable.
You might not have thought that the inability of people to pack while praying was a big problem. Georgia’s political leaders think otherwise, so the new law allows people to carry guns in their houses of worship. True, congregations can set their own rules, but some pastors wonder about the confusion this provision will create, and those who would keep their sanctuaries gun-free may worry about being branded as liberal elitists. Maybe the Georgia legislature will help them by requiring a rewrite of the Scriptures. “Blessed are the peacemakers” can become “Blessed are the gun owners.”
You will also be able to tote weapons into bars and their parking facilities if the bar grants you permission. I can’t wait to see the next beer ad depicting a gunfight over who pays for the next round.
Georgia thinks you should be able to take guns into government buildings that don’t have screening devices or security guards. Second Amendment enthusiasts tend not to like tax increases, but as the Associated Press reported, the city of Vienna, Ga., (pop. 3,841) would have to shell out about $60,000 a year to increase security at city buildings. “Do we raise taxes to provide the police protection or do we take the risk of potential injury to our public?” asked Mayor Pro Tem Beth English, who also is president of the Georgia Municipal Association. Too bad if this gun lobby subsidy comes out of the school budget.
Oh yes, and while conservatives claim to hate the centralization of power, this law wipes out a series of local gun regulations. The gun supremacists just don’t trust those pesky local elected officials.
People with a gun license who try to carry a weapon onto an airplane get a nice break under this bill. If they’re caught with a gun at a security checkpoint, nothing happens as long as they leave the area. Try, try again. Watch out if you connect through Atlanta.
And law and order goes out the window. As Niraj Chokshi noted in The Post, this statute gets rid of state requirements that firearms dealers maintain records of sales and purchases. Databases on license holders that span multiple jurisdictions are banned. Those who commit gun crimes must be chuckling, “Can you find me now?”
Nothing better reveals the utter irrationality of our politics for the whole world to see than this madness about guns — and no issue better demonstrates how deeply divided our nation is by region, ideology and party.
The New York Times reported that in the 12 months after the Sandy Hook shootings, 39 laws were enacted tightening gun restrictions; 25 were passed by state governments under full Democratic control. Seventy laws were passed loosening gun restrictions, 49 of them in Republican-controlled states. The Wall Street Journal cited data showing that 21 states strengthened firearms restrictions in 2013 and 20 weakened them.
Nowhere else in the world do the laws on firearms become the playthings of politicians and lobbyists intent on manufacturing cultural conflict. Nowhere else do elected officials turn the matter of taking a gun to church into a searing ideological question. But then, guns are not a religion in most countries.
The program for the NRA’s annual convention, held over the weekend in Indianapolis, listed sessions on “Survival Mindset: Are You Prepared?”; “Creating a Constitutionally Centered Estate Plan”; and “Refuse to be a Victim.”
Party on, guys. I can’t wait for you to figure out the ways in which even Georgia’s law is too restrictive. In the meantime, the nation’s unarmed majority might ponder how badly we have failed in asserting our own rights.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 27, 2014
“Irrational Exceptionalism”: America Is Exceptionally Dumb When It Comes To Guns
While Americans typically laud our national “exceptionalism” — a sense that the trajectory of history has bestowed greatness upon the United States — there are a few of our distinctive characteristics that don’t deserve celebration. On the subject of firearms, for example, the United States is exceptionally irrational. No other nation has set guns aside as an object of worship.
We have let a blood-soaked gun lobby dictate our laws and regulations on firearms; we have passed “stand your ground” laws that allow violent and angry men to murder unarmed people; we have given the mentally unstable the ability to buy military-style assault weapons with which they wreak havoc on crowds. Last week, Georgia governor Nathan Deal signed a bill into law that would allow denizens of his state to carry firearms into government buildings, bars and, God help us, churches.
In addition, we have allowed the gun lobby to suppress research into the public health consequences of our firearms-worshipping culture. Indeed, U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) — running in a crowded GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat — has recently reversed himself, going back on an earlier pledge to support such studies. It hardly gets any loonier than that.
In the 1990s, the National Rifle Association successfully stymied public health researchers who wanted to study the causes and consequences of gun violence. According to ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization, “funding for firearms injury prevention activities dropped from more than $2.7 million in 1995 to around $100,000 in 2012.”
The gun lobby clearly fears that science will discover that guns are dangerous and that, well, more guns are more dangerous. (To quote that famous philosopher Stephen Colbert, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”)
However, after the Sandy Hook atrocity in December 2012, it appeared that the dead bodies of 20 small children — and six adults — might be enough to finally restore some sanity to the national conversation. President Obama issued a presidential memorandum ordering the CDC to “research the causes and prevention of gun violence.” The National Rifle Association didn’t immediately object, since it recognized the fraught politics of that grief-laden moment.
Some of the NRA’s supporters, too, were muted, seemingly willing to consider modest measures to improve public safety. Kingston was among those willing to support more research on gun violence, saying, “Let’s let the data lead rather than our political opinions.”
At a Savannah, Georgia, gathering shortly after Sandy Hook, he said: “You have to be a pretty sick person to squeeze a trigger on a human being, particularly unarmed children at a school. I think if we focus and keep beating up on the weapon as the problem, we are missing the big picture of mental health that we can come together on as Democrats and Republicans. I spoke with the head of the CDC last week. I think we can find some common ground.”
But Kingston now finds himself in a GOP primary in which some of his right-wing opponents have tagged him as a RINO (Republican In Name Only), despite his solidly conservative credentials. That has left him desperate to court the crazies among his constituents, lest the “fire-at-will” crowd doubt his fidelity to the notion that every American should own his own shoulder-fired missile launcher.
So Kingston has dutifully signed up to block Obama’s request for CDC funding for gun violence research, telling ProPublica recently that “the president’s request to fund propaganda for his gun-grabbing initiatives through the CDC will not be included” in the next appropriations bill.
That means that some of the questions we desperately need answered won’t get the inquiry they deserve: Do background checks deter gun violence? How many mass shooters had a detectable mental illness? What is the link between suicide and gun ownership? Even Kingston’s question about a possible link between violent video games and mass shootings won’t be studied.
That’s just nuts, a reminder of our willingness to be exceptionally dumb about some things.
By: Cynthia Tucker, Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize For Commentary, is a Visiting Professor at the University of Georgia; Published in The National Memo, April 26, 2014
“There Is No Simpler Way To Put It”: Cliven Bundy’s An Old-Fashioned Racist – And He’s Not Alone
When I was a kid growing up in South Carolina, I was racist. I used the ‘n” word. I was taught that word by those around me, men and women who I looked to for moral guidance. My late father was a horrible bigot and he truly believed black people were simply beneath him. My late grandmother didn’t really use that word around me but she made it clear by her actions that anyone who wasn’t white was simply “lesser.”
Yet, these were two people who had more influence over me than pretty much anyone else in my youth. I loved them both and even today their deaths affect me emotionally.
When I was finally able to admit and embrace being gay to my family, something in me changed. I was moved from a place of hate to a place of empathy. I began to see the world not through the eyes of a privileged white Southern kid but from the perspective of someone on the other side of the railroad tracks. It was, in a word, sobering.
When I hear white people talk about race, I get a little clammy. When I hear Cliven Bundy talk about race, I get really pissed off. This “tea party” favorite, an American grandfather who’s a rancher with a very loyal family, seems to have bared his soul for the press. He likes the bully pulpit that comes from being a “taker,” a freeloader, a tax evader. He’s a man who doesn’t recognize the U.S. government in any way shape fashion or form. He’s also a man who said this, as reported by the New York Times:
“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.
“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”
The “negro?” Picking cotton? Seriously? Who the hell is this guy? Let me tell you who Cliven Bundy is. He’s a bigot who believes in “freedom.” In case it’s lost on you, Bundy is the ultimate government subsidy. He believes in feeding his cattle for free. He doesn’t believe he owes federal taxes. He doesn’t believe in the rule of federal law. Bundy is purely and simply a common criminal who deserves to go to jail.
He believes in using us in the press as his bully pulpit and we let him. Bundy believes in a land mass of 50 states, not one nation of 50 states. He’s a secessionist. He’s not a patriot as some have called him. George Washington was a patriot – who, not for nothing, used force to put down citizens who refused to pay the federal excise tax in the Whiskey Rebellion. Abraham Lincoln was a patriot, who by the way implemented the federal income tax. I’d love to hear Bundy’s wise opinion on Lincoln. No doubt he’ll tell us if we let him. No doubt we’ll give him that microphone. We should.
I guess the question we must ask is, does Cliven Bundy represent a thin and narrow sliver of American society or is he something bigger? With freedom fighters and birthers and tea partiers and their ilk rallying behind him and his right to steal from the American taxpayer, I’m convinced this man is no sliver of hate. Clearly, the freedom fighters hate what America has become and they’re convinced President Obama is leading us all down the path to Hell. Their new spokesman? Cliven Bundy.
This Bundy fellow isn’t a one-off. Conservative opinion columnist George Will seems to think so. He has opined that Democrats scream racism anytime we don’t like what we’re hearing. I’d probably agree if this were just Bundy but it’s not. Just Google Cliven Bundy and you’ll see his following, his supporters, his freedom followers. Even fools like Allen West support this racist.
I don’t know Mr. Bundy but I knew his type when I was a kid. There’s not much difference between my father and Bundy. That makes me sad. I always held my father on a pedestal even with his grotesque flaws. When I hear the Cliven Bundys of the world spew out their filth, their racism, I’m reminded of my ignorant childhood, of my grandmother’s and daddy’s view of the world and I’m horrified.
By: Jimmie Williams, an MSNBC Political Contributor; Published in U. S. News and World Report, April 24, 2014
“Now We Know”: Economic Inequality Is A Malady — Not A Cure
It has been a long, long time since Americans accepted the advice of a French intellectual about anything important, let alone the future of democracy and the economy. But the furor over Thomas Piketty’s stunning bestseller, Capital in the 21st Century – and especially the outraged reaction from the Republican right – suggests that this fresh import from la belle France has struck an exposed nerve.
What Monsieur Piketty proves, with his massive data set and complex analytical tools, is something that many of us – including Pope Francis — have understood both intuitively and intellectually: namely that human society, both here and globally, has long been grossly inequitable and is steadily becoming more so, to our moral detriment.
What Piketty strongly suggests is that the structures of capitalism not only regenerate worsening inequality, but now drive us toward a system of economic peonage and political autocracy.
The underlying equation he derives is simple enough: r > g, meaning the return on capital (property, stock, and other forms of ownership) is consistently higher than economic growth. How much higher? Since the early 1800s, financiers and landowners have enjoyed returns of roughly five percent annually, while economic growth benefiting everyone has lagged, averaging closer to 1 or 2 percent. This formula has held fairly steady across time and space. While other respectable economists may dispute his methodology and even his conclusions, they cannot dismiss his conclusions.
As a work of history and social science, Capital in the 21st Century outlines a fundamental issue while providing little in policy terms. Piketty mildly suggests that nations might someday cooperate in a progressive and global taxation of capital gains, with shared proceeds. There isn’t much reason to hope for any such happy solution. But then it isn’t up to Piketty to solve the problem.
He has already done America and the world a profound service by demolishing the enormous shibboleth that has long stood as an obstacle to almost every attempt at economic reform, from raising the minimum wage to restoring progressive taxation: Only if we coddle the very wealthy – and protect them from taxation and regulation — can we hope to restore growth, employment, and prosperity. Only if we meekly accept the revolting displays of power and consumption by the very fortunate few can we expect them to bestow any blessing, however small, on the toiling many.
If you read Piketty – whose translation into English by Arthur Goldhammer makes macro-economics a literary pleasure – you will quickly realize that we’ve been told a big lie about this most basic social bargain. The stratospheric accumulation of rewards accruing to the top 0.01 percent of owners, at the expense of society and everyone else, is not only unnecessary to promote growth; in fact, that unfair dispensation retards growth.
Rather than argue honestly with Piketty’s findings, right-wing responses have varied from old-fashioned redbaiting, although he is plainly no communist, to juvenile misrepresentation of a book that at least one critic admits she didn’t bother to read! The boneheaded Tea Party reaction is to accuse him of demanding that sanitation workers earn the same salary as surgeons – although he explicitly agrees that a degree of inequality is important to encourage innovation, enterprise, and industry.
“I have no interest in denouncing inequality or capitalism per se,” he notes early in the book. But then the wing-nuts and trolls attacking him have no interest in debate, let alone knowledge. They hate social science just as much as they hate plain old science.
For the rest of us, Piketty’s opus poses an epochal challenge. Confronted with the truth about exacerbating inequality and the costs imposed on democratic society, what are we going to do about it? History provides a few clues if not a blueprint. The highest level of economic equality and social strength in the West arrived during the postwar era – back when unions were strong, taxes restrained the rich, minimum wages were higher, and redistribution was not a dirty word.
It will be the task of the next generation to restore decency and democracy – and save the planet — against the ferocious political resistance of the super-rich. They can now begin by discarding the ideological illusions that Piketty has so neatly dispatched.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief of NationalMemo.com; Cross-Posted in TruthDig, The National Memo, April 25, 2014
“Race And The Supreme Court”: Furthuring The Racial Divide In Our Two Americas
When the United States Supreme Court upheld Michigan’s ban on affirmative action in higher education Tuesday, the justices weren’t just endorsing similar bans in seven other states and inviting future ones. They were, fundamentally, continuing a painful conversation among themselves, and between themselves and the rest of us, on the topic of race in America.
It is a conversation that has been ongoing in its present iteration since the Court’s ideological core shifted to the right almost a decade ago, following the resignation of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in July 2005. She was replaced by a far more conservative jurist, Justice Samuel Alito, the Court’s center of gravity then shifted from Justice O’Connor to the more conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, and the ascent of Chief Justice John Roberts, who replaced his friend and mentor Chief Justice William Rehnquist, made the Court’s transition complete.
And it’s a conversation that, judging from the past few related decisions, isn’t bridging the racial divide in this country but rather splintering it further apart. The Court’s ruling in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend would not have happened 10 years ago. We know this because Justice O’Connor herself, in Grutter v. Bollinger, another case out of Michigan, crafted a 5-4 ruling that gave such remedial programs another shaky decade of life. But now they are as good as dead and, as Justice John Paul Stevens said in another context, the Court’s majority didn’t even have the courtesy to give them a proper burial.
Instead, they will be killed over time by what Justice Anthony Kennedy labeled as the procedural necessity of allowing state voters to impose their will upon minorities. We aren’t ruling on the merits of affirmative action, the justice wrote, instead we are merely allowing the voters of Michigan to render their own judgment about affirmative action. And even though that action commands university administrators not to consider race as a factor in admissions, and even though everyone understands that the Michigan measure was passed to preclude what supporters called “racial preferences,” this democratic choice somehow does not offend equal protection principles under the Constitution.
Also unthinkable before the Roberts Court kicked into gear would have been its Court’s decision last June in Shelby County v. Holder to strike down the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act. And it would be a mistake today not to connect that ruling to the one in Schuette. They are different sides of the same coin. Shelby County told white politicians in the South that they could now more freely change voting rules to make it harder for minorities to vote. Tuesday’s decision tells white voters that they can move via the ballot box to restrict remedies designed to help minority students and, by extension, communities of color. In each case, the Court sought to somehow extract race out of racial problems.
In Shelby County, the Court’s majority refused to acknowledge the will of the people as expressed through Congress, which repeatedly had renewed Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act with large bipartisan majorities. Yet in Schuette, the Court’s majority rushed to embrace the will of the people of Michigan as expressed in their rejection of affirmative action. Contradiction? Sure. But what these cases have in common is clear: this Court is hostile to the idea that the nation’s racial problems are going to be resolved by policies and programs that treat the races differently. This is what the Chief Justice means when he says, as he did in 2007, that “the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race.”
In a perfect world– a post-racial world, you might say—the Chief Justice would be absolutely correct. But the problem with his formula is that he seeks to declare it at a time when there is still in this country widespread discrimination, official and otherwise, based upon race. It is present in our criminal justice systems. It is present still in our election systems. It is present economically and politically even though, as conservatives like the Chief Justice like to point out, far more minorities participate in the political process then did half a century ago. And so the idea that now is the time to stop reflecting this reality in constitutional doctrine is to me a dubious one. “Enough is enough,” the essence of Justice Antonin Scalia’s argument, is neither a solution nor a just way in which to end the experiment in racial justice we’ve experienced in America for the past 50 years. Enough may be enough for white Americans. But it’s not nearly enough for citizens of color.
And this surely is what Justice Sotomayor had in mind when she wrote her dissent in Schuette. What is the role of the federal judiciary if not to protect the rights of minorities against the tyranny of majority rule?
The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination. As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society. It is this view that works harm, by perpetuating the facile notion that what makes race matter is acknowledging the simple truth that race does matter.
This is the language that future historians will cite when they cite this cynical decision and this troubling era in America’s racial history. What’s the best evidence that the Supreme Court has it all wrong? Just consider how the two Americas, the two solitudes, reacted to the news of Schuette. The Chief Justice, in his short and defensive concurrence, accused Justice Sotomayor of “doing more harm than good to question the openness and candor of those on either side of the debate.” But to Justice Sotomayor, and to those who share her view, there is no debate. It’s already over. And the side that usually wins in America clearly has won again.
By: Andrew Cohen, Fellow, The Brennan Center For Justice at New York University School of Law; April 23, 2014
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