Here are just a few more thoughts on guns:
First, let me point out the worthlessness of the way that certain progressives talk, namely those who use a Freudian interpretation to denounce gun lovers. Guns are phallic, they claim, after which they draw some harsh conclusions about those who love them. Now I have friends who are psychology professors, and their basic claim about Freud is that the guy’s views aren’t scientific, so using Freud to draw these conclusions is dodgy at best. This is just one more example of progressives not accepting science as much as they think they do.
Second, we are repeatedly told by multiculturalists that we must respect other cultures and that we must “understand” them, even if we find them repulsive. Yet, there is nothing about the current rage of progressives against gun lovers that suggests they respect gun culture or have any understanding of it, either in the ordinary sense of the word “understand” or in their sense, which means “accept.”
Finally, several people have linked to a wild claim (here) by someone named Jim Sleeper, who is a lecturer in political science at Yale. [hat tip: Keith Burgess-Jackson, where I saw it first (here)] Sleeper believes we can draw parallels between today’s gun enthusiasts and yesterday’s racial segregationists:
To understand what we're up against here, understand that many other gun enthusiasts ... see their critics as moralists addled by silly delusions about human nature. They alone uphold honor against depravity: Southern segregationists thought their way of life necessary to channel the violence at the bottom of all society toward a safer, more stable order, refined by codes of honor and masterful stewardship of Negroes wise enough to accept their place in it.
The basic argument here is unimpressive. It goes as follows:
1. Group A sees their critics as moralists addled by silly delusions about human nature.
2. Group B sees their critics as moralists addled by silly delusions about human nature.
3. Group B is morally reprehensible.
4. Therefore, Group A is morally reprehensible, also.
To begin with, this isn’t a valid deductive argument. To see this, just replace “sees their critics...” with “likes to eat.” The fact that two different groups both like to eat, together with the fact that one of the groups is morally reprehensible, is not enough to show that the other is also morally reprehensible.
It doesn’t work very well as an inductive argument, either, simply because there are dissimilarities between the two groups as well as similarities, and the dissimilarities make the difference. That is, what was morally reprehensible about racial segregationists was their insistence that blacks were inferior to whites, which either isn’t true of gun enthusiasts with respect to the rest of the population, or if it is, Sleeper hasn’t shown it. So all that fine talk about what racial segregationists were like is just wasted effort on his part.
First, let me point out the worthlessness of the way that certain progressives talk, namely those who use a Freudian interpretation to denounce gun lovers. Guns are phallic, they claim, after which they draw some harsh conclusions about those who love them. Now I have friends who are psychology professors, and their basic claim about Freud is that the guy’s views aren’t scientific, so using Freud to draw these conclusions is dodgy at best. This is just one more example of progressives not accepting science as much as they think they do.
Second, we are repeatedly told by multiculturalists that we must respect other cultures and that we must “understand” them, even if we find them repulsive. Yet, there is nothing about the current rage of progressives against gun lovers that suggests they respect gun culture or have any understanding of it, either in the ordinary sense of the word “understand” or in their sense, which means “accept.”
Finally, several people have linked to a wild claim (here) by someone named Jim Sleeper, who is a lecturer in political science at Yale. [hat tip: Keith Burgess-Jackson, where I saw it first (here)] Sleeper believes we can draw parallels between today’s gun enthusiasts and yesterday’s racial segregationists:
To understand what we're up against here, understand that many other gun enthusiasts ... see their critics as moralists addled by silly delusions about human nature. They alone uphold honor against depravity: Southern segregationists thought their way of life necessary to channel the violence at the bottom of all society toward a safer, more stable order, refined by codes of honor and masterful stewardship of Negroes wise enough to accept their place in it.
The basic argument here is unimpressive. It goes as follows:
1. Group A sees their critics as moralists addled by silly delusions about human nature.
2. Group B sees their critics as moralists addled by silly delusions about human nature.
3. Group B is morally reprehensible.
4. Therefore, Group A is morally reprehensible, also.
To begin with, this isn’t a valid deductive argument. To see this, just replace “sees their critics...” with “likes to eat.” The fact that two different groups both like to eat, together with the fact that one of the groups is morally reprehensible, is not enough to show that the other is also morally reprehensible.
It doesn’t work very well as an inductive argument, either, simply because there are dissimilarities between the two groups as well as similarities, and the dissimilarities make the difference. That is, what was morally reprehensible about racial segregationists was their insistence that blacks were inferior to whites, which either isn’t true of gun enthusiasts with respect to the rest of the population, or if it is, Sleeper hasn’t shown it. So all that fine talk about what racial segregationists were like is just wasted effort on his part.
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