I am a conservative. I say this because it is true, though some may doubt it. I have always been conservative, always slow to accept change, always cautious, always preferring the tried and true to the new and exciting. People have come to accept certain policy positions as conservative and others as progressive, but in actuality it is not policy positions that define whether you are conservative or progressive. It is something more like temperament. My daughter, Libby, for example is a natural progressive. She enjoys the thrill of rising to a challenge, putting out a fire, or rescuing our dog from the river. She will be inclined to press for change just to see what will happen. I am more inclined to advocate for the status quo for fear that what will happen will involve more effort or unintended outcomes.
When it comes to policy positions, I am harder to classify. I am pro-life because I believe unborn children deserve opportunities to grow and develop as much as born children do. I am opposed to the death penalty. It serves no rehabilitative purpose, and as punishment, it is cruel and severe. It is also too often unjust. I am a feminist because I believe women are people who deserve the same respect and autonomy accorded to men. I support relatively open immigration because I believe a continuing influx of new people with fresh perspectives and ideas can only make America stronger. Besides, if you are worried about losing your job to an immigrant, you should know that they don’t have to come here to take it. For the most part, I am in favor of policies that help people and opposed to those that harm them. I believe most people are good—not in the absolute, theological sense—but in the common, quotidian sense that most people are eager to be well-thought of and act accordingly. You can trust most people most of the time as long as you don’t tempt them too sorely. Strangers will help you. The clerk will run after you if you forget your change.
It is because I am a conservative with a generally positive view of people that I intend to vote for Hillary Clinton for President. She is the most conservative candidate from a major party. She represents the status quo. She will, for the most part, continue the policies of the Obama administration. Those policies have generally been good for the US. They have lessened the impact of the recession. They have strengthened the United States globally. They have encouraged people to seek redress of grievances through democratic means.
Some of my friends, relatives, and acquaintance who have fed themselves on right-wing “news” sites will not see any truth at all in what I just wrote. They will have heard nothing but evil of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They will blame her for the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. They will claim that her use of a private email server while Secretary of State jeopardized national security. They will point to rumors and conspiracy theories about her, claiming that there is no smoke without a fire. Some may even point to prophets who admonish us that a vote for Hillary will help usher in the Great Tribulation. Most of these claims are either completely without foundation or wildly exaggerated. Hillary Clinton is not evil—or at least no more evil than the average politician seeking to do the job they were elected or appointed to do.
Lastly, there are some who will see Donald Trump as a conservative candidate. There is nothing at all conservative about Trump. He has threatened to jail Hillary Clinton, though she has been found guilty of no crime. He has threatened to muzzle the press, despite its being protected by the first amendment. He has threatened to treat Muslims as potential terrorists, despite that being a violation of the freedom of religion and rights to due process. He has threatened to suspend the rule of law and impose his will by force if necessary. He has hinted that his followers should lead an armed rebellion if he is not elected. He has confessed to having said vile things about women and treating them as objects available solely for his own gratification. There is nothing conservative in any of these threats or actions. If allowed, he would overturn our centuries-old traditions of deciding hard issues by ballot and replace it with a system of rule by fiat. His one and only aim in everything he does is to glorify Donald Trump. There is no one on earth he admires more than himself. His is no ordinary self-interest, but an all-consuming desire to be universally acclaimed as the best, the brightest, the greatest man who ever lived. He is not a conservative but a radical, advocating for radical changes in our country, our government, and our way of life.
Some see these changes as a return to glory days of yore, but there is no going back. You can’t unscramble an egg; you can’t put the omelet back in the shell. The hard-fought gains made by people of color and women and gays and lesbians and other marginalized groups will not be easily yielded up because President Trump says so. The nation cannot be made more Christian by discarding all the teachings of Jesus Christ and replacing them with laws to make people act as they ought. Trump cannot do the things he has promised. If he tries, he will fail but not without wasting a lot of resources on grandiose pipe dreams.
Of course, I can’t tell anyone who to vote for, and there’s no way to prevent some from thinking I’ve succumbed to some kind of liberal spell. I have not. My mind is in good working order. More than that, my sense of decency is utterly repulsed by Trump. Clinton is not the best possible candidate for President, but she will be a pretty good one, and she is undoubtedly qualified.
Since the tragedy at Sandy Hook, plenty of Facebook friends have weighed in on the need for gun control or gun safety laws. Some have been well-reasoned. Most have been incendiary and polarizing. Against them and equally polarizing have been defenders of the second amendment, most adamantly refusing to admit a need for any kind of regulation beyond what we already have. Except for passing on a few moderate articles, I have stayed out of the fray. But now I feel I can contribute something in a small way.
Significant change in gun control is not going to happen. The Constitution does not allow it, and the Supreme Court has consistently held that the second amendment, whatever its authors may have intended, means that individual citizens have a right to own guns. Some changes are likely, but they will not be significant. Here are the changes I expect to see along with reasons why they are unimportant. The stated aim of most of these proposals is to decrease the likelihood of another Sandy Hook. None of these proposals can actually fulfill that aim.
Ban on assault weapons. This is likely to happen simply because it happened before. It did not make a difference then, and it will not make a difference now. Any ban is likely to take the form of a ban on sales. It will have no effect on assault weapons already owned. Estimates put the number of assault weapons in the US between 3 and 4 million. The transfer of such weapons by sale would become illegal, but since there is no way to enforce a ban on private sales, they would likely continue anyway.
Restrictions on magazine size. This may happen because it is reasonable. No one who owns a gun for sporting purposes or for self defense needs a 30-round clip. (Of course, it is possible to imagine scenarios where a large clip would come in handy, but lets stick to reality.) Limiting magazine size, however, would not be an effective deterrent to someone determined to quickly kill a lot of strangers. It takes only a couple of seconds to eject an empty clip and install a new one. Those couple of seconds might be a window of opportunity for a trained officer armed and able to respond, but for unarmed people cowering behind any available cover, they are meaningless. In addition, there would be sales of extra capacity clips—legal or not—to circumvent the law.
Background checks. Background checks have a lot of popular support because we obviously don’t want to sell guns to known felons or folks with a history of violent mental illness. The problem here is the sheer number of guns already in existence. Access is not a problem either for criminals or for the mentally ill. Forty-seven percent of households reported owning a gun in 2011. Twenty-nine percent own more than one. With more than 300 million guns already in private hands, chances are good that the next Adam Lanza already lives in a household with multiple guns.
Waiting periods. The idea behind a waiting period is to prevent heat-of-the-moment shootings. You learn that your girlfriend is having an affair with your best friend, so you run out to K-Mart and buy a pistol and shoot them. If you have to wait seven days before you can take possession of your new gun, chances are you might re-think your future and decide on a less final solution. The problem here is that mass shootings usually require careful planning and preparation. A short waiting period is no deterrent at all if what you aim to do is prevent mass shootings.
Registration. This is perhaps the most contentious potential regulation. It is also the one most likely to make a difference. Gun rights advocates fear that this is first step toward confiscation. Require registration of firearms in order to build a federal database of gun owners. Then when the time is ripe, use the database to seize the vast majority of civilian-owned weapons. Gun control proponents scoff at this scenario, pointing to licensing and registration of vehicles as an analogy. If a registration law does go into effect, it will likely affect only new sales, not existing ownership, not only because of the power of the pro-gun lobby, but because enforcement costs for implementing a law requiring registration of existing firearms would be too high. Moreover, many people would no doubt refuse to comply. In any case, a national firearm registry would not act as a deterrent to someone planning a mass shooting.
Gun violence is an intractable problem in the US. On the one hand, we have a long tradition associated with the second amendment that guarantees citizens the right to gun ownership. On the other, we must acknowledge that easy access to guns has made America less safe rather than more safe. Gun rights proponents are fond of saying that the only effective deterrent to a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun. That is wild west thinking, good guys and bad guys, bang-bang! you’re dead. But for many of us, and especially for those of us who do not own a gun, the good man with a gun is the police officer or soldier who is paid to protect us. In truth, the only effective deterrent to a bad person is a good person. The gun is peripheral.
Read and comment on my blog.
Here is Newt Gingrich’s take on the Cordoba House, and here is a medieval historian’s response.
The idea of reciprocity sounds great. Muslims can worship freely in America if and only if Christians can worship freely in Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia. However, reciprocity is fundamentally unAmerican. It presupposes that the United States is a Christian nation and contradicts the first amendment protection of freedom of religion. The United States may be predominately Christian and does indeed have a long tradition of Christian influence. However, the Constitutional framers deliberately excluded any mention of God because they wanted to create a secular government completely independent of the church. They did this because they feared that an ascendant religious sect would seize the power of government to persecute and suppress other religions. They were familiar with the religious wars in England and the rest of Europe and hoped to prevent similar conflicts by safeguarding the government from religious control. They wanted to protect government from religion and also protect religion from the government.
At the same time they clearly recognized the value of religion, particularly Christianity, in shaping morality and ethics. They firmly believed that democracy could succeed only where the people were willing to submit their own desires to the common good. If the people—those who in a democracy constitute the government—simply voted for their own interests all the time, then the government eventually would be controlled by special interests, each intent on its own agenda. As Christianity has declined as a cultural influence in the United States, this is exactly what has happened.
Those who want to prohibit the Cordoba House would grant the government authority to persecute Muslims. Once the government has authority over any religion, it cannot be prevented from extending it over all religions. The result would be a secular state in which all religions, including Christianity, would be restricted. Those on the Christian right alarmed at the shift from “freedom of religion” to “freedom to worship” should be loudest in their defense of the Muslim’s right to build Cordoba House. By attacking it, they undermine their own liberty.