Is this the face of a crazy man? If so, then what of the men, both Republican and Democrat, who want to detain American citizens indefinitely without trial?

Ron Paul promotes “crazy” conspiracy theories, according to writers such as Leon H. Wolf on RedState. What frequently goes unasked is, in comparison to what?

Some of Paul’s beliefs are odd, but they’re not nearly as insane or dangerous as the war on drugs or the war on terror. One really can’t say with a straight face anything Ron Paul believes, in concert with his libertarian outlook, would result in the mass incarceration or murder of thousands of innocent people. That distinguishes Paul from his opponents.

In any case, let’s not forget: Conspiracies do happen, sometimes with the participation of thousands of people in government. One of the worst in contemporary history was the Vietnam War, about which the government lied wholesale to the American public for more than two decades (read Daniel Ellsberg’s book Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers or watch the documentary featuring Ellsberg, The Most Dangerous Man in America). And let’s not forget the Tuskegee experiments. Let’s also not forget the racist origins of the drug war or the CIA’s using drugs to fund covert operations, some conspiracies about which Ron Paul was right. And this is a doozy: The US government murdered thousands of people during Prohibition by poisoning alcohol supplies.

Given the breadth and horror of US government conspiracies that have become public knowledge, some additional conspiracy theorizing shouldn’t seem “insane” at all.

I break with Ron Paul in that I am more firmly grounded in rational skepticism, and I require more than folk tales and ambiguous circumstantial evidence interpretable in multiple ways before I accept a proposition, such as a conspiracy theory. Just because something is possible doesn’t mean it happened.

But, because it’s possible—because it’s the kind of thing the government is widely acknowledged to have done before—running with it isn’t really “crazy” or, as far as I’m concerned, a disqualifier for public office. Indeed, after the past decade of politicians and their media lapdogs preaching faith in the government, I’d rather a candidate have an abundance of suspicion of the government than a dearth of it. We could’ve used more suspicion when government foreign policy “experts” were telling us Saddam had WMD’s and supported terrorists.

I feel like some Americans haven’t absorbed what’s happened to this country. Our economy has been trashed. Our prisons are full of Americans rotting away even though they’ve done nothing wrong. Our police act like gangs, beating people without cause and stealing property via asset forfeiture. Our Congress is deliberating on whether to censor the Internet and allow the indefinite detainment of American citizens without trial. Our president, Barack Obama, thinks he can start wars by himself and kill American citizens without accountability.

The people who let all this happen and want it to continue? They’re the serious ones. The people, like Ron Paul, who might perhaps be too suspicious of the establishment and want to reverse the assaults on our honor and our liberty? They’re nuts.

Which I find crazy! To me, authoritarianism and murder, and the prejudice and avarice that lead to them, are so completely beyond the limits of moral behavior that nothing else—especially a few off-the-wall conspiracy theories that aren’t so much more outlandish than anything we know the government’s done—can possibly compare.

Maybe Americans have become so used to their country’s brutality it doesn’t even register for them anymore as the ghastly moral crime it is.

See also

The sharp-as-usual Conor Friedersdorf wrote a smart post about Ron Paul and conspiracy theories.

Now let’s get crazy

Think Ron Paul is crazy? Check out his opponents. is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

Voters have tired of Republican President George W. Bush for his ignorance of reality in Iraq and abuses of power at home. And Americans have soured on Republican custodians of Congress for lining their pockets with lobbyists’ bribes and concealing the depredations of individual congressmen. Because of these failings of national Republicans, the incumbent Republican Senator for Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee, must win re-election this year against the Democratic challenger, former Rhode Island Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse.

The son of long-time Rhode Island Senator John Chafee, Lincoln Chafee has demonstrated stoutness of heart and independence of vision in the United States Senate. Whereas every other Republican—alongside many Democrats—voted for the war in Iraq, Chafee opposed it. Whereas many GOP lawmakers retreat from environmental protection, Chafee embraces it. In recognition of Chafee’s efforts for the environment, the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters have endorsed Chafee in this election. Also, whereas the Religious Right scorns the legality of abortion, Chafee respects the right of women to choose it. Consequently, the National Abortion Rights Action League has endorsed Chafee as well.

Using roll call votes for 2005, National Journal calls Lincoln Chafee the most liberal Republican in the Senate. According to the Journal, Chafee is more liberal than 57 percent of other senators in economic matters, more liberal than 60 percent on social issues, and more liberal than 58 percent on foreign affairs. Overall, Chafee ranks as more liberal than 59.2 percent of his fellow senators.

Linkages of Chafee to Bush from the Whitehouse campaign are patently hyperbolic. While the White House (pun unintended) and the Republican National Committee indeed back Chafee, such is because he is the only Republican with a hope of winning in Rhode Island. In this narrow circumstance, then, necessities of politics and not bonds of affection have brought Chafee and his more right-wing brethren together. And Chafee will owe them nothing in return.

At this point, one could reasonably ask, why not support Whitehouse instead, if Rhode Island wants a senator who won’t follow Bush’s lead? As much a maverick as Chafee might be, after all, his Democratic opponent could distance himself from Bush further still.

The answer is, these troubling times have shown the need for people of valor and conviction in Washington. America requires statesmen who will resist political temptations and say “no” when their own party errs. Senator Lincoln Chafee has shown himself to be such a leader. Nothing indicates Whitehouse would act similarly.

Furthermore, Republican moderates like Chafee would have to rescue their party from the clutches of evangelicals and neoconservatives who have badly led the GOP. In the process, the Republican Party would look more and more like the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower. The resurgence of that grand old party would greatly benefit American politics.

Chafee for Senate is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

Oh, what a difference a few weeks have made! Now, I say, impeach and remove this dangerous man. Bush’s profane abuses of his office cannot stand before history as acceptable behavior in a president.

Why have I resolved thusly?

Bush approved of a torture technique, waterboarding, used by Spanish inquisitors and punished as a war crime after World War II.

First, indications have accumulated Bush indeed condones torture of detainees, despite his pleas to the contrary. The military has used doctors to exploit detainees’ weaknesses and monitor their health during harsh interrogations, which participants have said leave the subjects injured or, sometimes, dead. A doctor who investigated the abuse reports:

The range of interrogation techniques, or abuse techniques, is pretty much the whole array of usual stuff that happens in countries that torture. It includes beatings, suspension, near-asphyxia, chemical burns—there were instances of burns with lighter fluid—kicks, slamming against the wall. There was at least one thumbscrew I saw. Electrical shocks with, in our case, external electrodes. I did not see any internal electrodes. There were instances of asphyxiation, food and water deprivation, deprivation of access to toilets, deprivation of access to medical care, forcing people to urinate on themselves, forcing people to masturbate, to renounce their religion, to put the urine or feces of other people on themselves, other forms of nudity, forced fondling, verbal abuse, threats against family, mock executions, forcing the victims to watch other family members being abused. They also used what’s called “perceptual monopolization,” which included… loud noise… (Emphases mine. Source: “The American Way of Torture“).

Besides which, the Bush administration has confessed to allowing waterboarding, a technique that entails submerging detainees underwater so they believe they’re drowning. This, as well as the tactics described above, is torture.

Even under the most Machiavellian considerations, interrogators shouldn’t torture captives in their charge. People will tell their tormentors anything, true or not, to make the horrors stop. This floods intelligence services with bad information. (I wonder if that helped the Bush administration conceive a bogus vision of Iraq’s WMD program.) So, practically speaking, condoning torture is stupid policy.

In addition, of course, torture violates the most cherished ideals of the American people. Our country stands to shine benevolent hope into the world, not darken it with the same barbaric cruelty our enemies do. For Bush to lower his administration to the level of thugs and terrorists destroys his moral authority to lead not only our good nation, but the free world. In so doing, he damages the Presidency of the United States.

That alone would warrant Bush’s impeachment. As Alexander Hamilton says in Federalist 65:

A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.

A president need not commit a legal crime for impeachment to commence. “High crimes and misdemeanors,” instead, encompasses violation of trust and harm to society that can fall outside the strict boundaries of law. (If “high crimes and misdemeanors” meant literal crimes, a president would be impeachable for jaywalking. That’s absurd.) Under this criterion from the Federalist Papers, Bush’s abuse of power in authorizing systemic torture qualifies as an impeachable offense.

President George W. Bush and his political adviser, Karl Rove, swagger along.

Still, many people might not see brutal treatment of foreign alleged terrorists outside American borders as important. It’s not happening in the United States, as far as they know, so it?s a foreign policy problem remote from their concern. But, sadly for us, that’s not the extent of Bush’s transgressions.

The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution protects American citizens from government searching and snooping without a warrant. When Bush ascended to the Oval Office, he swore to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” And yet he has flouted that very document. Showing his isolation from reality, Bush has matter-of-factly—as if he can’t understand why anyone would be upset—admitted to ordering the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens on multiple occasions. No courts issued warrants for these invasions of Americans’ privacy. They transpired at the sole behest of the executive.

So not only has Bush adopted the tactics of an authoritarian regime abroad, but he’s also done it at home, trampling the Bill of Rights with his cowboy boots. Bush loves to pontificate about freedom, warning us of the danger terrorists pose to it. If terrorists are the enemies of freedom, as Bush maintains they are, then he has become their collaborator.

To borrow from the president’s father, President George H. W. Bush, “This will not stand.”

If Americans value their rights and liberties, then they cannot allow a man who defies the Constitution to remain in office. Such would encourage not only Bush, but future commanders-in-chief, to encroach further on American freedoms. To the Congress of the United States, I say, impeach Bush now. And then kick him out of the West Wing.

Impeach Bush now is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, though, I believe we can soberly and fairly assess the responses of local, state, and federal governments to the crisis. Reason, not partisanship, will be our guide.

Clearly, no government at any level responded as it should have. Let’s start from the bottom:

• The media has lionized New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, but he shares responsibility for what happened in his city. His government knew thousands of people wouldn’t have financial or logistical means to evacuate New Orleans. Yet he didn’t use dozens of available school buses to help evacuate people, so they sat empty on their lots. Instead, Nagin arranged for the Superdome to become “a shelter of last resort,” without first adequately stocking it with food and supplies. Also, even though New Orleans knew one day wasn’t enough time for an evacuation, Nagin didn’t issue an evacuation order until the day before the storm hit. In addition, Amtrak offered its last train out of New Orleans, with room for several hundred passengers, to the city for evacuation efforts. Incredibly, Nagin’s government rejected the offer.
• Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco waited a few days before agreeing to an evacuation order. Also, after Hurricane Katrina struck, Blanco didn’t call in the National Guard for a day. Blanco obstructed relief efforts, too, by refusing to allow the feds to take command in New Orleans. She feared an effort by Republicans to portray the action as an admission her government bore responsibility for the catastrophe in New Orleans.
• Of course, the federal government under the command of President Bush deserves blame. For nearly a week after Katrina, the federal government had no personnel in New Orleans. The absence of FEMA workers and military forces during that time permitted starvation and chaos. If a government can’t take care of its citizens, it surrenders its legitimacy. The government of the United States has dangerously approached that point vis-a-vis New Orleans. Rank incompetence from our government officials has exacerbated public anger over the slow response. For instance, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, didn’t know refugees were suffering and dying in a New Orleans convention center, after the networks had been covering that situation incessantly. The (now thankfully former) director of FEMA, Michael Brown, overshadows Chertoff’s idiocy, though. He, too, had no idea about the conditions in the convention center. He wasn’t cognizant of the flooding in New Orleans. And, after the dreadful response of his agency to Katrina, Brown professed not even to know why anyone had a problem with him! I guess, however, we couldn’t expect anything more from a former horse breeder… who was fired. Bush makes much ado about his ability to delegate. His delegation of authority to unqualified boobs who supported his campaign instead of intelligent administrators with decades of experience should indeed earn the attention of the American public. They should punish Bush and his supporters for it in the midterm 2006 elections.
• Attempting to defend the performance of his department, Chertoff raised a good point: FEMA was designed to work with local government personnel after a disaster. It wasn’t set up for a calamity in which local governmental infrastructure has collapsed. That doesn’t excuse the national government’s five day delay in reaching New Orleans. But it raises the important question, just why wasn’t FEMA prepared to handle a disaster so massive, it might have to work on its own? During the reorganization of the federal government after September 11, 2001, the Congress and the President should have taken their time to make the Department of Homeland Security more efficient, and FEMA itself more robust. After all, what if terrorists pulverized a region with an atomic strike? Or, what if a natural phenomenon destroyed an area, which has actually happened? The federal government had an excellent opportunity to strengthen FEMA for such catastrophes, but neither the Congress nor the President took advantage of it. Their short-sightedness haunts us now.

I can’t believe the myopia of partisan commentators who insist either the federal government or the local/state governments bear complete responsibility for what Katrina’s aftereffects have wrought. Anyone with the slightest ounce of objectivity could see this constitutes failure of government at all levels.

Blame for Katrina spreads all around is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

Now, I must ask another question: Do we set up the American government to fail in our eyes?

In the modern era, we expect the federal government to solve all our problems. Americans perceive their government officials not as maintainers of law and order, but as wizards who can ameliorate every difficulty. One of the problems that exists with this mindset, though, is the nonexistance of any such wizards. The bureaucrats and politicians who comprise our national government are human beings, just like the rest of the populace, who have superhuman expectations to fulfill. When they can’t meet those expectations, Americans believe they have failed in their duties.

Let’s examine reactions to Hurricane Katrina, for example. Regardless of how lean our government might have been, time would have been necessary for FEMA units and National Guard contingents to reach New Orleans and stabilize the city. This is especially true considering New Orleans still had thousands of people trapped inside. Any operation to rescue and evacuate them would have required extensive preparation. The alternative would have been rushing in half-cocked and doing less good in the long run.

Yet within a day or two after Hurricane Katrina, many people condemned President George W. Bush and every politician down the line for not doing enough to help New Orleans. One could legitimately criticize the government for not having a skeletal presence in New Orleans, at least to reassure the victims help was there, and more was on the way. But expecting enough government agents and equipment to assist thousands of people to materialize in a day reeks with absurdity.

Many critics have also lambasted the government for not doing enough to fortify New Orleans to withstand a Category Four or Five hurricane. These criticisms have validity; the federal government could have done more to help New Orleans prepare for the strongest possible hurricanes. Still, money and time are finite, and the national government must help guard regions all over the country against disaster. One could understand federal reticence over the decades to pour cash into New Orleans for protection against a hurricane with little chance of occurring.

By not understanding the limits of government capabilities, through such examples as I’ve outlined, do we make government failure, as far as the public’s concerned, inevitable?

I think the answer is yes. This could spark widespread dissatisfaction with our government that no politician could resolve, which could erode the authority of government. That could imperil the government’s ability to maintain order in this country.

So, how do I react to Katrina?

I won’t condemn government officials as failures for their policies in the past. They were human beings trying to administrate a whole country. Mistakes are inevitable. I would just like for them not to repeat errors.

My point with this screed, however, isn’t to insist we shouldn’t be angry about the government’s slow response to Katrina. We should. Americans should temper their rage, though, with the knowledge government can’t optimally solve all problems. We should stay our final judgment on the government’s competence or lack thereof.

Do we set up the government to fail? is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

This, naturally, entails a massive bureaucracy that can’t help but act inefficiently and slowly.

Considering the morass in New Orleans, I’ve been wondering if all the bureaucracy weighing down government might have slowed its response. If the government didn’t need to allocate resources for the nanny state, perhaps it could concentrate its attention on areas such as law enforcement, national defense, and disaster response. Maybe that then would have allowed FEMA and the National Guard to respond more swiftly and effectively.

As events happened, President George W. Bush began to mobilize government responders for Hurricane Katrina before the storm tore across the Gulf coast. But they didn’t achieve a significant presence in New Orleans until a few days after the hurricane had hit! More victims probably died after Katrina, waiting for rescue or aid, than during the hurricane itself.

Maybe, if the government could have reacted more quickly, thousands of people would still be alive who perished in Katrina’s aftermath. Does a lesson exist there, not to pull the federal government in too many directions at once?

Could a leaner government have saved lives? is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

This is one of the most nonsensical, dangerous things I’ve heard in a long time. During this era of nonsense and danger, that’s saying something.

According to the left-most justices of our “illustrious” Supreme Court, local governments can use the police power of government to expel citizens from their homes to make room for new Wal-Marts and mini-malls. With this decision, the Supreme Court has given the finger to the Fifth Amendment of our Constitution:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

“Due process of law” and important “public use” are no longer requirements to take away one’s property. Now, all that’s necessary is a greedy city council and a wealthy entrepreneur who wants to make a bit more money. This is exactly the kind of action, taken by a strong and intrusive government, that would make the teeth of Thomas Jefferson gnash in agitation. (I refer readers here and here, for starters.)

Americans who cherish their freedom must act against this scourge. Go to the web sites of the House of Representatives and the Senate, find the contact pages of your representatives and senators, and tell them to do all they can to oppose eminent domain for the spurious benefit of private businesses. Write Letters to the Editor of your local newspapers and post to Internet message boards as well. Do not vote for any politician who speaks in favor of eminent domain abuse.

Ladies and gentlemen, we can take back our country. Let’s get to it.

Addendum: Castle Coalition, a group fighting eminent domain abuse, is worth visiting.

Eminent domain helps Americans pick up where Soviets left off is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

Really, how many people did the Michael Jackson trial affect? (I don’t mean, how many haters and fans had feelings about the issue, but how many lives were truly impacted by the trial?) What makes the sad case of Natalee Holloway in Aruba more significant than most of the other instances of missing children each year? Did a comatose woman in Florida merit substantially more attention than everything else happening in the country? Going even farther back, was the O.J. Simpson murder case much more compelling than the other crimes people had committed? Etc., etc.

Certainly, many of these kind of stories are interesting. Some attention to them from the media is due. But, in the coverage of news outlets who purport to tell us about the world, should these stories crowd out everything else?

No.

As someone who is studying journalism, I understand the media’s tendency to focus on these sensationalist topics. They are easy; all journalists have to do is talk to a few cops, lawyers, or celebrities, camp out in front of a courthouse or stay in a hotel, and then they have a story. They don’t have to dig through evasive, hostile, or obscure sources, and they don’t have to risk making anyone angry. Also, news organizations know their audiences will eagerly consume this fluff. It provides viewers or readers doses of excitement without challenging their preconceptions and worldviews much. Not even the Terri Schiavo affair did that, being as it was about a matter that was abstract for most people.

So, this whole cycle enables journalists to relax with unchallenging assignments, while still raking in the money. And it allows consumers to go through life without serious introspection of themselves and their societies.

But this process obscures issues that, even though they are difficult to cover and contemplate, still affect the lives and well-being of many Americans, if not all of them.

I’m talking about subjects such as these:

• Government corruption. I don’t mean just malfeasance, but abuses of power that might be “legal” but still assault the principles our nation holds dear.
• Domestic ramifications of the War on Terror. In the news, the War on Terror appears as mainly a struggle in foreign lands. We know this War on Terror impacts life at home, too, and we need to understand more about it. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not comfortable being ignorant of these things. If the intransigence of the Bush administration prevents the media from covering this more thoroughly, then the media should make an issue of that.
• The histories and motivations of people around the world. As the events of September 11, 2001, showed us, Americans hardly live alone on this Earth. What other countries and societies do can affect us profoundly. Comprehending their thoughts and beliefs is, therefore, important.
• Related to the point above, but American news outlets should tell us more in general about what’s happening about the world. For example, the savagery of the Sudanese government in Darfur and the massacre of protesters in Uzbekistan should receive more attention in the American media. No country is an island, to borrow from an old proverb, and the tragedies of one region can eventually impact us. Besides which… The country from one of those examples, Uzbekistan, is an ally of the United States in our War on Terror! If our partners conduct state-sanctioned murder and other human rights violations, the American people should know that, and be able to pressure their government accordingly.
• The environment. The health of our planet impacts everyone. It merits more than the token quoting of a scientist source every once in a while. How are Americans to know what to do about the environment if the media doesn’t investigate and illuminate the issue?
• Crime and punishment. I don’t refer to telling us Mrs. Wutherford was mugged last night. Already, local newscasters and newspapers focus too much on criminal incidents. But what no media on any level examines is, how effective is our justice system in punishing felons? Do our cops and prisons serve as effective deterrents? Does capital punishment do anything to prevent heinous murders?

This is but a small sampling of the things on which the national media should focus. Will the media ever minimize their sensationalist fluff pieces in favor of these kinds of stories?

That depends on the American people. Above all, news corporations want to make money. Sadly, that is their driving force these days. If Americans tune out substanceless vapidity and demand actual enlightenment, then the media will have to respect that. Can something like this actually happen anytime soon?…

I hope.

Sensationalist media ignores real issues is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

“This is a great day in the histroy of America,” President George Bush said after the bill’s passage. “For the first time in millennia, Americans will be able to worship the creator of their choices, without having to tolerate the Islamic and the atheistic heathen.” After Vice President Dick Cheney pulled him aside and whispered emphatically into his ear, Bush returned to the podium and said, “Oops, forget I says that last part.”

In this election year, liberals who ordinarily would have opposed the creation of a government church instead voiced support for the plan.

“Anyone who would oppose this is nuts,” said Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Democrat from South Dakota.

Reaction outside the Beltway took on a markedly different tone. The hundreds of average Americans who pay attention to matters of government protested in various cities across the country against the bill. Five letters poured into congressional mailboxes objecting to the establishment of any state church.

“If I wanted to live in a theocracy, I’d go to Iran,” said one letter.

During a press conference late in the afternoon, a reporter asked presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer, “How does the president justify the bill’s obvious inconsistency with the First Amendment?”

“There is no inconsistency,” Fleischer replied. “The First Amendment only forbids the passage of any law respecting the establishment of a church.”

“Isn’t that what the bill would do?” pressed the reporter.

“Absolutely not,” answered Fleischer. “The word ‘establishment’ implies an already existing institution, and the word ‘respect’ implies the government will pay homage to it. What the bill in question will do is create a new institution that the government will control stubbornly. This is totally consistent with the vision of the Founding Fathers as expressed by Thomas Jefferson, who wrote about ‘divine Providence’ and a ‘Creator’ in the Declaration of Independence.”

When every hand in the press room immediately shot up, Fleischer said, “That will be all,” then rushed behind the press room curtains.

Little word has emerged as to how the Senate will vote on the bill, but given Daschle’s support of the bill, it will most likely pass.

House Votes to Establish Church; Politicians Defend Constitutionality is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

Conversely, when 15 students died from gunshot wounds during the 1998–1999 school year, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate, the national media evangelized endlessly about the evils of guns. Apparently forgetting that many of the kid killers, such as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, had obtained their weapons illegally, hordes of crusaders seethed that if guns weren’t legal and available, the school murders wouldn’t have happened. A few local governments, hoping to score political points, filed lawsuits against gun manufacturers, blaming them for the orgy of death and violence that seemed to have consumed America’s school system.

Why did 15 deaths related to high school football inspire scant attention, while 15 deaths resulting from gun violence kindled nationwide apoplexy?

Many right–wingers would simply answer, “Because the gun grabbers want to seize our weapons, they will ignore any fact that stands in their way!” These conservatives believe leftists across America want to confiscate firearms for the sole purpose of extending government control over the citizenry. But really, the notion that an enormous conspiracy, in which common liberals from all regions of the country participate, exists to subjugate the American people, is patently absurd. Most Americans care too little about politics and government to sustain such a far–reaching plot. Instead, the average gun control advocate honestly does believe that laws tightly regulating firearms, if not outright banning them, would reduce the number of Americans who die as a consequence of criminal attacks.

Gun control advocates amongst the populace acquire their ideas about firearms from news personalities and government officials who use guns as convenient scapegoats for this country’s high crime rate in order to avoid having to search for genuine causes and solutions. Whenever an event such as a school shooting occurs, the personalities and officials shamelessly exploit the opportunity to vilify guns and the individuals who own them. The real interest here is not to save lives, but to exacerbate public opinion against guns. That is why the whole world mourned the tragic deaths of 15 students from gunshot wounds during the 1998–1999 school year, but few people, if anyone, seemed to care that 15 high school football players died in 1999.

The truth about guns is that they save far more lives than they take. According to the Fall 1995 issue of The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, law–abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves an average of 2.5 million times per year, and only in less than 8 percent of these occurrences will citizens actually need to fire their guns, because most criminals will flee at the sight of a firearm. Of the 2.5 million annual instances of self–defense, 200,000 are cases of women defending themselves from sexual abuse. In contrast, accidental deaths, suicides, and homicides involving guns number, on average, less than 40,000 every year. This means that American citizens usually employ guns to defend themselves over 60 percent more times yearly than they do to kill, intentionally or otherwise.

According to the August 28, 1996, issue of The Wall Street Journal, states with looser gun control laws experience less crime than states with tougher laws. For example, in states that had begun to permit concealed weapons in the early 90′s, the murder rates fell by an average of 8.5 percent, the rape rates by 5 percent, the aggravated assault rates by 7 percent, and the robbery rates by 3 percent. Extrapolating from these data, if states that forbade concealed weapons instead allowed them, 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults, and 11,000 robberies annually would not have taken place.

The story of Australia demonstrates what could happen in the United States if the American government were to ban guns. After a nut conducted a particularly brutal massacre in the mid–90′s, Australia enacted laws disallowing personal firearms. By the end of 1997, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, crime had increased. The homicide rate rose by 3.2 percent, the assault rate by 8.6 percent, the armed robbery rate by 44 percent, the unarmed robbery rate by 21 percent, the unlawful entry rate by 3.9 percent, and the car theft rate by 6.1 percent. Even supposing that Australia’s new gun laws did not directly cause the increase in crime, the laws certainly did nothing to help matters.

Because guns are not the forces for evil the media and the government claim they are, no reason exists to forbid or to constrict the right to bear arms for law–abiding American citizens. Restrictions of freedom are only necessary and proper when their design is to prevent individuals from harming other people, which outlawing guns would not accomplish. Indeed, all the criminalization of guns would do is leave the average American defenseless against murderers and thieves who would retain their own guns, in natural contrivance of the law.

Rather than inhibiting freedom, the United States should err on the side of liberty, as per the Constitution, and allow its citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights as they have over the first 200 years of American history. (Contrary to the notion that the Second Amendment does not grant individuals the right to bear arms, the Supreme Court ruled in its 1990 decision U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez that the Second Amendment applies to “persons who are a part of a national community.”) As Thomas Jefferson, one of the most intelligent Founding Fathers, said, “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”

Gun Control Will Solve Nothing is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos