It Depends

A couple weeks ago I was playing golf on a nine-hole cow pasture with a few guys from the Old Man’s League. After the round we sit around for a bit and chat. Somehow we got on a subject that prompted a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War to mention an interview he saw on TV of a guy who deposed a half dozen or so German Gestapo who participated in the horrific gassing of Jews during the Second World War. The interviewer commented that he must have been “looking into the face of evil” to which he replied “no I was looking into the faces of men”. This conversation prompted me to think about another comment I heard month ago made by a conservative congressman. The topic was torture and when torture was criticized, the Congressman not only approved of it, but proclaimed that the men doing the torturing on behalf of our country are heroes. The sixths of the Ten Commandments, given to Abraham by God which all three Abrahamic religions; Jews, Christians and Muslims, subscribe to, says “thou shalt not kill”. This seems rather straight forward and unambiguous. In Wikipedia the sixth commandment is listed as using the word “kill”. However, in some Biblical sites on the Net I looked at, ”kill” becomes “murder” which opens the door to killing under many circumstances where under law, it is not defined as murder. Though In some religious groups, “thou shalt not kill” is taken as a command from the Lord. The Christian Quakers and some Sufi Muslim sects take this commandment literally. There are also other sects, including the Non-Abrahamic Jane of India, that have a prohibition against killing under any circumstances and the Jane even takes it a step further prohibiting the killing of anything. Let’s, for the sake of argument, say that the Lord really meant “murder” and killing of our fellow man under some circumstances is condoned. For instance, killing an enemy in war, wrongdoers as defined by a given society or to protect one’s family and property is acceptable in most cultures. In some cultures killing for honor, homosexuality and adultery is acceptable. Ending suffering through euthanasia is becoming more widely accepted in Western Countries. It gets more complicated because it is not the act and circumstance but who is doing the killing. A soldier on our side who kills hundreds of enemy soldiers is a hero while a soldier who kills hundreds of our soldiers is a demon. A murderer is a monster but the executioner taking the murderers life is only doing their public duty. About a month or so ago President Trump (not a fan) was being interviewed about Russia. When the interviewer brought out the fact that Putin kills, he responded something like “so do we” .The acts of our “special” units from the CIA, Special Forces or Navy Seals are heroic, whereas the same acts perpetrated by operatives from Soviet’s KGB or Germany’s Gestapo were heinous. We watched the killing of Osama Bin Laden on TV and cheered while others cried. We watched the beheadings by ISIS in horror while its followers celebrated. We rightly criticize the interference of the Russians in our politics but don’t blink an eye when Israel, through the American Israeli Political Action Committee becomes the strongest lobby in Washington with great influence on our policies as they relate to the Middle East. The Quran has an explicit prohibition against killing of innocent civilians but radical Muslim groups like ISIS somehow find within the same Book justification for doing just that. Leviticus 20:10 says “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death”. There are other sections of the Old Testament that get into more detail of punishment depending on circumstances such as was the woman a slave and was she your slave. The one I like is the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus, when seeing a woman about to be stoned for adultery, says “let you who are without sin cast the first stone” The philosophical question of whether morality is absolute or relative leads to questions about the nature of evil. Immanuel Kant, a German 18th century philosopher, argued that there is a set of moral values that apply to everyone. The examples cited above indicate that our society as a whole, obviously does not subscribe to Kant, and even the Scriptures support the notion that everything is relative.

The Second Amendment

“Amendment II A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right to bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Since the recent tragic shooting in Las Vegas and a new push from progressives to improve gun control, I am reviewing my understanding of the gun issue. One often hears comments from the Left about not needing automatic weapons, silencers or armor piercing bullets to shoot “Bambi”. The Right argues that the Constitution guarantees our right to own guns. In reality I think the pro and anti-gun control people are talking past each other and not understanding what actually is at issue. The progressives have a very naive view of gun ownership while conservatives have a more nuanced one. If one takes a careful look at the second amendment there is not even the slightest hint of hunting or even gun ownership per se. It talks about “bearing arms”. Hunters don’t “bear arms, they “carry guns”. Combatants “bear arms”. Basically the amendment says that the bearing of arms may be needed to ensure a free state and thus this right cannot be abridged. Michael Lerner, a progressive San Francisco Rabi wrote a book entitles “The Left Hand of God”. The basic premise is that there is a continuum we all stand on and at the right end of which there sits a vengeful, thunderbolt wielding God smiting sinners, while at the other end there sits a loving, gentle God, forgiving sinners and caring for the needy ( the “Sermon on the Mount” God). Our general view of the world and our politics depend on our position on this continuum which in part may be influenced by our physiology and definitely our culture. At the right end we tend to be pessimistic, thinking everyone is grabbing all they can get and if we don’t get in and stop them or grab our share we will have nothing. At this end, politically we are conservatives. At the other end we view our fellow man as, for the most part, good with a few bad apples here and there, and tend to be progressive. People on the right end of the continuum, worrying about their fellow man’s aggression, want to have a gun in the house to protect themselves. People at the left end, being optimists, tend not to feel the need for this protection and think guns are more of a danger than a protection. Let me get back to bearing arms. From the right hand side of the continuum, the country is always under threat; from the Commies in the fifties, the Godless hippies in the sixties, the Blacks always, the Hispanics at the end of the last century and since 9/11, the Muslims. The government is always in danger of being overtaken by one of these groups and even it does not fall to any of them, it may be weakened and unable to protect us from them. In this case we need to be able to arm ourselves and form militias to not only protect ourselves but our very freedom. In fact, even as we speak, there are militias arming, training and organizing for just such an event. Given this outlook, it is only rational that the “arms” need to be military grade and not hunting rifles. Armor piercing bullets, automatic weapons, silencers and more are necessary. Even the argument of restricting weapons based on government screening to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people is a threat. A corrupt government could wrongfully claim certain citizens are not mentally stable and deny them the right to guns. (The Soviet Union had mental hospitals full of dissidents put into institutions instead of jails so as not to put them on a stand and give them an opportunity to voice for their arguments) Another move to protect ourselves is to militarize our police forces, getting retired heavy military weaponry into local control. Back a couple of years ago I read about a sheriff somewhere down South creating a posse armed to the teeth to protect their community from the oncoming Muslim plight. In pictures of this posse I saw trucks with heavy machine guns mounted on their beds, all proudly flying our stars and stripes, demonstrating their patriotism. (My gut reaction at the time was to think “what kind of a patriot are you when you think your country is so weak as to not be able to protect us and you from a bunch of guys in robes riding camels and carrying automatic weapons”.) Indeed each side thinks it is patriotic. The Right displays its patriotism by wanting to protect our freedom with arms if necessary while the Left with its faith that our government and democracy is strong, resilient and, as it had in the past, able to withstand foreign assaults (War of 1812) and local insurrections (Civil War). So the real discussion should not be what guns and what regulations but how do we ensure our freedom through our institutions and ensure that our government works for us, all of us, and not only for a small portion of the population.