Make Way for Ducks

Cultural Bias and Gun Control

It’s long been obvious that liberals’ desire for gun control simply doesn’t reflect any sort of rational policy calculus.

As Americans are increasingly realizing, no gun control policy short of outright confiscation (and probably not even that, since government could not get the guns of the violence-prone) has any hope of reducing gun violence.

Liberals, for example, simply ignore the fact that the 1994-2004 assault weapons ban had no detectable effect on gun violence.

Neither do they pay any attention to the fact that the best scientific studies of local gun control ordinances show little if any effect.

Then there is the fact that concealed carry laws, according to the best social science evidence, create no increase in gun violence, and may well have a strong deterrent effect on crime.

So what is going on here? The impetus for gun control is simply the cultural hostility of liberal elites toward gun buffs and the sort of people whom they stereotype as liking guns. For example, one columnist for the New York Daily News said of Sarah Palin’s appearance at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston:

Sarah Palin showed up at the NRA convention the other day, which was merely perfect. She belonged there as much as anybody in the hall just because from the start, from the time John McCain picked her out of the chorus, Palin has most appealed to mean, dumb, angry crowds exactly like the one she found in Houston.

Then, of course, there was Josh Horwitz of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, who told USA Today of the people attending the convention “The world’s changing around them, and they’re hunkering down.”

Ironically, the attitudes of the American people are changing, and they are becoming more supportive of gun rights.

This kind of contempt for gun rights people was clear in the tantrum that Obama threw when the Manchin-Toomey bill went down in the Senate. He whined that:

“The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill.” The Senators who voted against it are cowardly and had “no coherent arguments as to why we wouldn’t do this. It came down to politics.” And finally “a minority was able to block it from moving forward” through “this continuing distortion of Senate rules.”

By the time the bill came to a vote in the Senate, it had been watered down to contain little more than an expansion of background checks. Supposedly, 90% or so of Americans favored that, and it seemed reasonable enough. Unfortunately, as the Wall Street Journal noted:

Mr. Obama is technically right that Manchin-Toomey [gun control compromise bill] would not create a federal firearms registry. Then again, its most clamorous supporters are also contemptuous of the Second Amendment, and they are explicitly hoping for a fifth Justice to overturn the Supreme Court’s landmark gun-rights rulings. Manchin-Toomey opponents can be forgiven for worrying that gun controllers will attempt to build a registry from whatever records they get.

Of course, if there were the slightest whiff of a possibility that the government might build a database of people of whom liberals are solicitous (left-wing teachers or Muslims with some distant connection to terrorism, for example) the “civil libertarians” would be out in force, denouncing the incipient police state. But the “civil libertarians” don’t like gun owners. At least, they don’t like white male gun owners in red states. Minority teen gang bangers, the people most likely to actually harm somebody with a gun, are another matter.

Ultimately, for liberals it was not about reducing gun crime at all, but rather sticking it to the NRA, and to those red state voters they consider ignorant rubes.

As local talk show host Charlie Syles said on Right Wisconsin:

There was in Obama’s view no principled opposition. There was no rational basis for not giving the president what he wanted. His opponents did not simply have other ideas that needed to be respected and accommodated; they were cowards and liars.

His message to Red State America: I really, really despise you.

Obama’s attitude is not new, of course. Longtime students of the president will recall his 2008 characterization of his fellow citizens: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment …”

Bitter, ignorant, and bigoted.

This was not a gaffe or a slip; it was a revealing glimpse into Obama’s political id, the full-on sneering contempt of the academic/political/media elite in its fullest expression.

Why does the president feel free to express such naked disdain for his countrymen? Because they are not his voters. And the media will not call him on it because, by and large, they share his attitudes.

In the wake of the 2012 election, liberals somehow believed that they were in control, and that the evil forces of reaction and ignorance had been forever routed. Greek dramatists had a word for that sort of thinking: hubris.

[Update]

More cultural bigotry on display from CNN in an opinion column. The writer says that:

The annual festival of conspiracy theorizing, belligerent fist-shaking and anxious masculinity known as the National Rifle Association convention came to Houston over the weekend, and it was everything the organizers hoped it would be.

And at the end of the column:

. . . the NRA has become even more extreme, even more paranoid, even more ensconced in its self-reinforcing world in which guns are all that matter. There may be a few Republicans who now have the courage to stand up to them. But there are still plenty such as Perry, Cruz and Palin, who will troop to their convention and jump into their festering pool of anger and fear. They don’t seem to realize how it makes them smell.

Yes, a lot of liberals really, really hate NRA members, as well as the mass of gun owners who don’t belong to the NRA, but don’t want their guns taken away.

Obama and Religious Freedom

Liberal Elites and Sarah Palin

Sometimes the most revealing things happen in e-mail exchanges, and this is one we got copied on.

From my good old friend Edd some interesting I’m sure known facts about Ms. Palin

Cousin,

I hope that you are keeping up with the seemingly never ending trail of white trash evidence that we are finding out about Sarah Palin and her family. I sure am. First of all, what would the late great George Carlin have to say about her kids names, Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow and Piper, not to mention the husband, Todd. We all have heard the bit. Some of my favorites from this weeks edition of “Are the Palin’s bigger pieces of White Trash than Lyndi England (you might remember Lyndi from her work stacking naked Iraqi’s into a pyramid and taking a picture giving a thumbs up)” Sarah’s Husband, Todd, not only has 2 DUI’s, races snowmobiles, and was a former member of the Alaskan secessionist party, but he recently referred to himself as “the first dude.” And what can we say about young Bristol? What a peach she is, and she sure knows how to pick ‘em too. Enter Levi Johnston, who describes himself as a “f**king redneck” on his myspace page. The only positive out of this is that if McCain were to be elected and something were to happen to him and he dies, we are now part of our own live version of “King Ralph.”

The friend of ours who forwarded this also forwarded his response:

Incredibly, incredibly judgemental and condescending, coming from someone who obviously considers himself part of the “diversity” crowd. . . . As if George Carlin’s comments or potential comments (were he still alive) are to be gospel for politics or... hmmmmm, let’s say.... religion? A further question--define “white trash” you guys... As opposed to what -- black trash? If you mean uncultured thugs who demean women and see white people as either sources for easy cash or an easy target for their own community’s failures, I would like to see the liberal elite “trash” them equally with hicks and their fellow travelers . . .

I, for one, much prefer the company of simple countryfolk (both black and white)--who at least have viable families and a discernable moral compass--over spoiled whiners who make up much of the voting base of the Democratic Party in places like River West, Shorewood, etc. . . . God f**king forbid that they actually take some responsibility for their actions and do some inner reflection! As opposed to smugly putting down snakehandlers and Alaskan snowmobilers to make themselves feel like part of some select few of Gnostic know-it-alls who can easily dismiss much of America as unworthy simpletons. . . . An overdeveloped guilt complex has proven to be, from what I know of human history, much more socially-constructive than moral relativism and outright hypocrisy in putting down other people’s lifestyles while making no apologies for faults in your own... It at least engenders quite a bit of humillity, while the latter makes one feel entitled to socially engineer to one’s heart’s content (see Wikipedia under “National Socialism” or “Stalinism,” for example)!

I have been involved in politics long enough to get to know people on both sides of the aisle and, I have to admit, the snobbery I’ve heard on the left wing far outshines the judgementalism of most conservatives I know (who often turn out to be a bit Manichean, yes, but at least honest more often than not). . . . On numerous occassions, I have heard liberal politicos and elected officials actually say: “People don’t know what’s good for them.... That’s why they voted for Bush, etc. etc.” People don’t know what’s good for them???? I, along with most of my fellow believers in the inherent value of moral agency in determining communal life, send to such people a well-deserved and long-coming “arm of honor” (as the French say)!!!!! I don’t know what’s good for me??? That’s for me and God to decide, you freaking walking windbag of complexes!

Guys, seriously--I will happily read such comments from serious and well-intentioned liberals that used to make up, say, FDR’s voting base. But outright garbage like this, please don’t send. . . . Mr. Pailin or future son-in-law at least have the gall to admit that they’re “f**king rednecks”... Why don’t Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, or the rest of the liberal cognisenti add to their MySpace pages the label: “f**king bleeding heart who knows what’s good for you -- Trust me, I do”?

Probably because they know that most of America retains the common sense God gave us all and upon which the Founding Fathers had such enduring trust that they would run them out of freaking town, much or less elect them to public office! I love you guys, but please don’t push my buttons like this! Serious and honest discourse, as you well I know, I absolutely love, but talking down to my well-intentioned, though sometimes misguided, countrymen frankly pisses me off! Amen!

Heresy! “Scientific” Orthodoxy Allowed to be Challenged in Louisiana

From National Review online:

To the chagrin of the science thought police, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal has signed into law an act to protect teachers who want to encourage critical thinking about hot-button science issues such as global warming, human cloning, and yes, evolution and the origin of life.

Opponents allege that the Louisiana Science Education Act is “anti-science.” In reality, the opposition’s efforts to silence anyone who disagrees with them is the true affront to scientific inquiry.

Students need to know about the current scientific consensus on a given issue, but they also need to be able to evaluate critically the evidence on which that consensus rests. They need to learn about competing interpretations of the evidence offered by scientists, as well as anomalies that aren’t well explained by existing theories.

Yet in many schools today, instruction about controversial scientific issues is closer to propaganda than education. Teaching about global warming is about as nuanced as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Discussions about human sexuality recycle the junk science of biologist Alfred Kinsey and other ideologically driven researchers. And lessons about evolution present a caricature of modern evolutionary theory that papers over problems and fails to distinguish between fact and speculation. In these areas, the “scientific” view is increasingly offered to students as a neat package of dogmatic assertions that just happens to parallel the political and cultural agenda of the Left.

Real science, however, is a lot more messy — and interesting — than a set of ideological talking points. Most conservatives recognize this truth already when it comes to global warming. They know that whatever consensus exists among scientists about global warming, legitimate questions remain about its future impact on the environment, its various causes, and the best policies to combat it. They realize that efforts to suppress conflicting evidence and dissenting interpretations related to global warming actually compromise the cause of good science education rather than promote it.

The effort to suppress dissenting views on global warming is a part of a broader campaign to demonize any questioning of the “consensus” view on a whole range of controversial scientific issues — from embryonic stem-cell research to Darwinian evolution — and to brand such interest in healthy debate as a “war on science.”

The Louisiana Science Education Act offers such teachers a modest measure of protection. Under the law, school districts may permit teachers to “use supplementary textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner.” The act is not a license for teachers to do anything they want. Instruction must be “objective,” inappropriate materials may be vetoed by the state board of education, and the law explicitly prohibits teaching religion in the name of science, stating that its provisions “shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine.”

The law was so carefully framed that even the head of the Louisiana ACLU has had to concede that it is constitutional as written.

Of course, this bill only allows balanced treatment of “hot button” scientific issues. It doesn’t require it, and it should -- with the unfortunate proviso that teachers who want to present one-sided indoctrination will do so, regardless of any state mandate.

(My students tell me that teaching of abstinence was required in their high-school sex education classes, but it was a “joke” since liberal teachers sneered at the idea that teens should abstain from sex.)

The author goes on:

Second, the idea that the current scientific consensus on any topic deserves slavish deference betrays stunning ignorance of the history of science. Time and again, scientists have shown themselves just as capable of being blinded by fanaticism, prejudice, and error as anyone else. Perhaps the most egregious example in American history was the eugenics movement, the ill-considered crusade to breed better human beings.

During the first decades of the 20th century, the nation’s leading biologists at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Stanford, as well by members of America’s leading scientific organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, the American Museum of Natural History, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science were all devoted eugenicists. By the time the crusade had run its course, some 60,000 Americans had been sterilized against their will in an effort to keep us from sinning against Darwin’s law of natural selection, which Princeton biologist Edwin Conklin dubbed “the great law of evolution and progress.”

Today, science is typically portrayed as self-correcting, but it took decades for most evolutionary biologists to disassociate themselves from the junk science of eugenics. For years, the most consistent critics of eugenics were traditionalist Roman Catholics, who were denounced by scientists for letting their religion stand in the way of scientific progress. The implication was that religious people had no right to speak out on public issues involving science.

Of course, the proponents of scientific orthodoxy turn suddenly open-minded about heterodox ideas that serve their interests, or come down on their side of the Culture Wars.

Economic science condemns the minimum wage as forcefully as biology affirms evolution. But nobody would think of questioning a teacher who presented arguments in favor of the minimum wage.

Conspiracy theories thrive among high school teachers. These range from the entirely unsupported notion that the Oil Companies are conspiring to fix prices, to bizarre conspiracy theories about 9/11, to the more popular (but disreputable in the history profession) theory that a conspiracy killed John Kennedy.

So liberals are perfectly tolerant of dissenting and heterodox opinions -- except where they run afoul of their anti-religious biases (being critical of evolution) or their interests (global warming).

Folkbum: 9/11 No Big Deal

From Keith Schmitz, posting on Folkbum’s Rants and Rambles, a rather rambling post (I guess the name of the blog justifies that) about Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem and New York and Rudy Giuliani. But in the middle of the meandering little essay we get this:

The answer in part lies in the fact that Rudy is desperate to become president, and he has to appeal to the base of the Republican base to get to the nomination.

In part this impugns on [sic] the people who are active in the Republican party who want to be treated like rubes. Yes, 9/11 was terrible, but 5,000 planes went up that day and 4997 planes landed, as have pretty much all the planes since 9/11.

That’s what being a liberal does to your mind. You not only label as “rubes” those people who care about 9/11, you assert that the murder of 3,000 Americans is no big deal!

And you lose the ability to count!

Schmitz goes on as follows:

This country is hungry for positive leadership, for vision and for our cities to be rebuilt. This is the type of boldness many of our Democratic leaders sad to say lack.

This is the type of leadership that a great country has, and Rudy could run on that if he didn’t have to cater to those in his party who spout macho but who cower in fear when they see someone in a turban get on their plane. Rudy could do this but his die has been cast and it would be tough to shift gears at this point.

This fear that politicians have ginned up through this decade has cost us and squandered opportunity in ways we have yet to appreciate.

Yes, those airline passengers who fear for their safety are cowards.

And it can’t be that there is a real terrorist threat, or people who really want to kill Americans (an odd notion coming from folks who are constantly touting the death toll of American soldiers in Iraq). It’s all just the invention of those evil politicians.

Right. And Hitler didn’t have any territorial ambitions in Europe.

Democrats and NASCAR

A lot of Republicans (and a Democrat or two) have had some good fun with the Democrats’ notion that NASCAR fans are a bunch of hicks who have all sorts of communicable diseases.

“Democrats should know that there is no preventive measure yet designed to ward off the blue-collar values and patriotism that NASCAR fans represent,” said Linda Daves, the chairwoman of the North Carolina Republican Party. “If they aren’t careful, they just might catch some of it.”

Republican Rep. Tim Walberg, whose district includes the Michigan International Speedway, said Democrats must not understand the term “rubbin’ is racing.”

“To suggest that vaccines are needed to attend NASCAR races is insulting to millions of hardworking Americans who love their country and the smell of burnt rubber,” he said.

Republicans said the suggestion of vaccines usually recommended for travel to Third World countries showed that the Democrats were out of touch with real Americans.

“While red-blooded, patriotic Americans were packing their coolers and gathering their families in preparation for attending last week’s race at Talladega, a leading Democrat was advising staff to get immunized,” said a news release by the National Republican Congressional Committee titled “Talladega Frights: Democrats Allergic to NASCAR Nation.”

“If anything, it’s the NASCAR fans who should get immunized against Washington officials, not the other way around,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C.

A Tolerant Atheist

Via Heart, Mind & Strength, an account of an atheist who gave a major contribution to Catholic education.

According to the New York Daily News:

The wealthy philanthropist who gave $22.5 million to help Catholic schools doesn’t think much of theology - in fact, he’s an atheist.

But even though Robert Wilson doesn’t believe in God, he does believe in giving poor kids a chance at a quality education.

“I am an atheist, [but] it’s far more than about religion,” said Robert Wilson, who was raised as an Episcopalian. “It’s about getting an education. The donation has nothing to do with religion.”

The statement didn’t exactly sit well with Edward Cardinal Egan, who joked that Wilson might need a bit of an education himself about what goes on in Catholic schools.

“Mr. Wilson and I are going to [be] spending a lot of time together,” Egan quipped.

The donation - the biggest in Archdiocese of New York history - will help 3,000 kids from poor families pay for Catholic schools in New York City during the next five years.

Wilson, 80, suggested he would have considered supporting public education, but wanted to sink his money into what he considers a higher-quality school system.

The former Wall Street investor, who is listed among BusinessWeek’s “50 Most Generous Philanthropists,” blamed the teachers union for crippling public schools with what he termed selfish and greedy demands.

“They oppose any effort to help private schools,” said Wilson, who usually shuns the limelight. “They’ve opposed any kind of help to the Roman Catholic system.”

According to Bloomberg, Wilson said:

“Let’s face it, without the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no Western civilization,” Wilson said. “Shunning religious organizations would be abhorrent.”

As the culture war has heated up, expressions of venomous hostility toward Christianity on the part of atheists have been front and center in the media, and even in the local leftist blogosphere.

But people who simply don’t believe in God are not necessarily bigots, nor necessarily enemies of Christians.

As for people like Wilson: Christians are going to pray that they will find Jesus. But regardless of that, he’s a good guy, and deserving of love as a generous and compassionate fellow.

Marriage: Gay & Straight

From Jeff Jacoby, some politically incorrect, but certainly sensible, thoughts on gay marriage.

Is marriage intrinsically connected to bearing and raising children? Advocates of same-sex marriage often argue peremptorily that it is not .

“In today’s society,” Yale law professor William Eskridge asserts in The Case for Same-Sex Marriage, “the importance of marriage is relational and not procreational.” The privileged status of marriage in modern society, in other words, has to do with the love and commitment of the spouses, not with the needs of any children those spouses may produce. In its 2003 Goodridge decision mandating same-sex marriage, the Massachusestts Supreme Judicial Court was even more emphatic. To the argument that the state’s interest in marriage is connected to procreation, the SJC replied categorically: “This is incorrect.”

As evidence that marriage and childrearing are not fundamentally related, same-sex marriage proponents frequently point out that married couples aren’t required to have children. No law prevents infertile couples from marrying or orders childless marriages dissolved. If procreation is so important to marriage, they say, why should elderly couples, or couples determined not to have children, be permitted to wed?

[. . . ] No mainstream opponent of same-sex marriage claims that having children is the sole purpose of wedlock. Marriages can serve any number of purposes, as diverse as the people entering into them -- cementing the bond between devoted partners, guaranteeing financial security, having a legitimate sexual outlet, ensuring companionship, and so on. People get married for various reasons; the desire to raise a family is only one of them.

What makes marriage a public institution, however -- the reason it is regulated by law and given an elevated legal status -- is that it provides something no healthy society can do without: a stable environment in which men and women can create and bring up the next generation, and in which children can enter the world with mothers and fathers committed to their well-being.

Because sex between men and women makes children, and because children tend to do best when raised by their mothers and fathers, society has a vested interest in encouraging long-term, monogamous, heterosexual marriage. True, not all married couples reproduce. But every opposite-sex marriage has the ability to give a father and a mother to any child the couple creates or adopts. That is something no same-sex couple can provide, which is one reason homosexual marriage has never become a social institution.

Of course procreation is not the only reason to marry, but to insist that marriage is not closely related to having children is like arguing, to use an analogy offered by marriage scholar David Blankenhorn, that cars are not intrinsically connected to driving.

“When you acquire ownership of a car,” Blankenhorn writes in his forthcoming book, The Future of Marriage, “society does not impose upon you a binding obligation to drive it. If you buy a car but fail to drive it, the state does not for that reason revoke your driver’s license. . . . Cars can be about many things, including pleasure, aesthetics, economic gain, and social status.” But whether any particular car is driven or not, cars and driving are intrinsically linked.

Similarly, whatever the circumstances of any married couple, marriage and procreation are intrinsically connected. Men and women make babies; babies need mothers and fathers. That is why there has always been a public stake in the marriage of husbands and wives. And why no such stake exists in the union of same-sex couples.

Jacoby omits another important reason to extend the right to marry to opposite sex couples who may not in fact bear children.

For government to determine who will and who won’t likely have children would be excessively intrusive.

Demanding that couples seeking a marriage license prove they are fertile, and demanding they swear that they intend to bear children simply isn’t acceptable. And even if it were, how would we enforce the promise?

Of course, we could deny the right to marry to couples until the child is born. But society has an interest in children being conceived, born and raised by married biological parents. We’ve long fudged on the “conceived” part, and more recently fudged massively on the “born” and “raised” part, but that doesn’t change the fact that society has such an interest. Indeed, the social cost of the fudging is now huge and obvious.

Liberals are always lecturing people about how one should not “impose ones moral views” on other people. They are most likely to do this when they are themselves trying to impose their moral views on others.

The simple fact, however, is that letting anybody get the special treatment that comes with marriage is an “imposition.” Society’s interests in the welfare of children may justify this imposition where heterosexual couples are concerned, but nothing can justify it where homosexual couples are concerned.

If one does not buy this argument, it makes more sense to privatize marriage entirely than to extend it to same sex couples.

We think of homosexuals demanding the right to marry as akin to pacifists demanding admission to West Point. One has a right to be a pacifist. We think that position is flatly wrong, but you have a right to it.

But social institutions have a purpose. When you freely opt out of the purpose behind the institution, you have opted out of the institution.