I originally wrote a December post on the Newtown, CT
shooting, including an introductory link from the World Socialist Website; but
when I pressed the preview button on Google, I got a prompt saying it had been published. I subsequently looked at my blog and saw
nothing. As I’ve no idea how to retrieve
anything out of the blogosphere, I’m rewriting my thoughts, subsequently
updated.
At a recent gathering at my home at the Winter Solstice,
conversation inevitably turned to our most recent school-shooting tragedy. Someone had read an editorial in that
Friday’s New York Times elaborating
an opinion on Second Amendment rights. I
hadn’t known there was a conversation underway to repeal it.
And what was the reason for this amendment, he wondered, as
he was particularly troubled by the use of the word ‘militia’. I quickly jumped in, sensing an opportunity
to connect my own personal dots on the subject.
The Constitution grants us the right to dissolve our governance if it
improperly serves us, casts us into hopelessness and does not serve our
wellbeing. This undoubtedly was the
reason for the use of that word. How to
assail the existing powers, however duly constituted, without arms?
Later I reflected on the growth of gun culture in the United
States. I’d recently been told by a
colleague at my rehab program that guns are freely available, even placed on
tables for sale at gun shows. Then, in a
180 degree pivot that seems possible only in our culture, I heard in a television
news announcement tonight that areas in some states are publishing information
on the location of privately and legally held firearms, the disclosure of which
was not well received by all.
In evidence that the Civil War still stalks the political
landscape in this country, there is a widespread affinity among some to display
the Confederate flag. Overcoming my
repugnance, I now began to reflect upon the reactionary nature of this. The rebel yell is alive today in the
imagination of some who object to the indifference of American political
life. Into this sometimes also goes
racial prejudice, jealousy in the workplace and a resentment of the openness of
our immigration policies resulting in a concept of armed militias and a
revolutionary resistance, however simplistic.
The missing ingredient in this stew of constitutionally
allowable discontent is, simply, intellect.
The romance of bearing arms seems a reductio ad absurdum for the awesome
undertaking of reconstituting government.
Among this subculture of discontented shooters, who would have the
political imagination to forge a new constitution, a Bill of Rights? I think my biggest single argument with
American culture, besides its obsession with violence, is its discouragement of
intellect. In a clip I saw recently of
the film Lincoln, he is arguing
passionately for the phrase we hold these
truths to be self evident. Why would
he be so emotionally moved by what we take to be a tautology? Could it be because the power of his
leadership lay in his ability to be moved by what is freely available to all,
namely the simple use of logic and common sense?
We are then left with devastating explosions of
murder/suicide. The licentious
availability of firearms coupled with the painful mental and emotional
dislocations of American life from time to time produce monsters. We can’t then just turn around and say the
parents were oblivious, or our mental health system is deficient. We lack wholesomeness in the way we conceive
and think about our own governance.
Cynicism blunts intellect, and we all too frequently think not in
threads of conversation, but in ideologies.
I’m not one to blindly salute authority, but perhaps before we resort to
arms we should rethink our identity as Americans.
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