The Second Amendment

As long as guns are easily obtained by anyone who is not already a convicted felon or certified as mentally ill there will be random acts of horrific violence in this country.  That much is indisputable.  The questions are: Does the second amendment require us to allow anybody not convicted of a serious crime or certified as mentally ill to be allowed to obtain them.   And do we accept that easy access to guns is essential enough to our society that we just have to accept random massacres as the price?

There are some who argue that gun ownership is the only thing standing between the American people and a dictatorial government.  (Most of those people actually believe we have a dictatorial government now.)  During the US revolution the populace was able to use their arms to overthrow British rule.  Perhaps having an armed populace helped keep dictators at bay at the beginning of the new country.  Now democratic institutions and a democratic ethos pervades this country.  I have met very few people, especially those in the armed forces, who don't have an almost religious devotion the democratic principles this country was founded on.  Reverence for our democratic institutions is inculcated in our children from kindergarten on.  I have full faith in the american people that no clique could pull off a take-over.  There would be such a backlash against anyone who would try it from every part of the military, the government, and the rest of society that a successful coup is beyond imagination.  Another factor making it ever more unlikely is the growing ethnic diversity of  the county.  The diversity guarantees that no one group could gain enough power to take-over.  I can't imagine in my wildest dreams that this country could possibly be taken over from within by a non-democratic forces.  Occasionally a politician seems to endorse policies that don't appear to be totally democratic.  The best bulwark against them has never been armed insurrection, but public debate and press coverage.  In my mind this is the most direct evidence that the old saying is true:  the pen is mightier than the sword.

Others argue that they use guns for hunting and sport.  I have a lot of sympathy for rural people who have grown up with guns and consider them something akin to a cross between a hammer and a football.   I have to say that when it comes to balancing a minority's desire to participate in a sport against the many lives lost due to gun violence it seems a no-brainer which side wins.

Some argue that they feel they need guns for self-defense.  My understanding is that there are statistics that show that unless a person is very used to using guns, like a police officer or a military person, they will not use it effectively if they are attacked.  It is more likely that the gun would be taken away from them and used against them. Also, if the owner has children it is more likely they will harm themselves or others than it will be effectively used to defend them.

Of course the supreme court has said many times that the second amendment does not guarantee a citizen the right to bear arms.  It guarantees a well regulated militia the right to bear arms.   Having said that if we imagine that the supreme court was and is wrong in its many pronouncements on the subject I would suggest this:  The founders were referring to the arms available to them at the time.  Not to the high-powered automatic weapons of today.  So lets let the right to bear arms be granted to the average citizen.  Arms as understood by the founders:  Single shot guns and riffles that were difficult and time consuming to load, often misfired, and were not accurate beyond 20 feet.

Having said all that, the least we can do is put the same requirements on gun ownership as we put on car ownership:  registration of the gun, licensing of owners, and special registration and licensing of trucks (i.e. high-powered or automatic guns).

The Volunteer Army and War

The Vietnam war showed the country how divisive a draft could be for an unpopular war.   During Vietnam the question of whether we should be at war shedding American blood on the other side of the world was hotly debated everywhere.  Since then, the wisdom of being in the first Gulf war was debated, the need to invade Iraq, and the need for our continued presence in Afghanistan was and still is debated.  There is no doubt that if there were drafts for the current wars popular unhappiness with the length and cost in blood with the wars would have ended them much sooner.  Also, it is much less likely that the US would have gone into Iraq.  The debate on war would be at a much higher decibel level if there was a draft.  A draft focuses the attention of the populace because it potentially involves every family in the country.   A volunteer army only involves a small, self-selecting, and somewhat isolated section of society.  This allows the politicians much greater leeway in starting and prosecuting wars.  I have no doubt, that if the politicians of either party had their way, they would have an army of foreign mercenaries, like the French Foreign Legion.  For their purposes the ideal army would be composed of soldiers who had no relatives among the electorate to bring pathos to an anti-war debate.  The benefit of this would be that the military would be freer to prosecute wars the way they saw fit.  This would probably lead to cleaner  The danger is that the electorate might become enamored of war since they had no personal connection to its horror.

Did George Bush Ignite the Arab Spring?

If Al Gore became the president in 2000 the US would of undoubtedly not invaded Iraq.  I hope we would have gone into Afghanistan although that is uncertain.  The take of most people was that the invasion of Iraq was justified by blatantly incorrect information and that Bush pushed us into it.  Iraq has been a very costly war in terms of money and life on both sides.  No-one regrets the loss of Saddam Hussein but people often question whether we should have done it.  For years many people, including me, have argued that it was tremendous and costly mistake that only served to energize anti-American sentiment across the middle-east.

As a consequence the US take over of Iraq the first Arab democracy in the middle-east was created.  The new Iraqi government is tremendously dysfunctional and may not last very long.  That said, it did provide a model for other middle-eastern countries of a state where the dictator was overthrown and replaced by something resembling a democracy.  The Iraqis have had several elections and are, at least partially, attempting to move forward using the messy process of democratic rule.  One can't help but wonder if it wasn't at least one of the inspirations for the democracy movements that have sprouted during the Arab Spring.  During the run-up to the start of the Iraq invasion Bush argued that the Arabs were ready for democracy.  I am sure he feels some amount of vindication by the events of the last year.  His rederik at the time made it sound like he wanted to be the Simon Bolivar of the middle-east.  Thank god popular sentiment prevented him from going further.  If the US tried to "liberate" more countries we would have been demonized even more and there could have been a pronounced backlash.  The way things went and are continuing to unfold, with the US very reticent to get involved, is probably best in the long run.

Copyright is dead

For those of us over the age of 40, let me tell you the concept of copyright is dead.  I believe most people under 40 know this.  Those under 30, consciously or unconsciously, take for granted that they can get a copy of anything that can be digitized without paying for it.  The government, many commercial enterprises, and many individuals that rely on copyright to make profit or earn a living are slowly coming to the realization that copyright is no longer enforceable.   In the Internet age it is simply too easy to make perfect copies of anything that can be digitized.  It is also easy to post it on the web.  Once on the web it is thoroughly out of the control of the copyright holder.  It is impossible to know how may times a work has been copied and by who and to where.

For what its worth, I like the concept of copyright.  I think people should be able to make money from their works.  I don't make illegal copies of copyrighted information or encourage anyone else to.  I merely acknowledge the writing on the wall.  Eventually governments around the world will have to accept their inability to enforce copyright and it will become a quaint relic of the past.  The Internet will, again, prove to be an ungovernable, lawless, place.   Given the choice between an ungoverned Internet and a highly censored and controlled Internet most people will choose the former.   This will provide enough space for copyright piracy to flourish beyond government control.

Of course the end of copyright will have enormous economic consequences but eventually the world will adjust and will move on.  Brave New World.

What is Wrong with US Politics

As everyone knows, the political climate in the US is getting more and more polarized.  Politicians on the left and right take "principled stands" for positions at one extreme or the other.  This is for good reason.  If they don't they won't get elected.   They know this.   The reason for this is because so few American's vote.  Winning is all about getting enough people who agree with your positions, who might sit home, to go to the poles.   The number of people who agree with these extreme positions is usually not nearly a majority of the electorate, just more than those who disagree and turn out to vote.  So, the best strategy for winning is to "energize" your base by demonizing your opponent and predicting apocalyptic consequences if they win.  This strategy works because not enough people vote.  This strategy does not produce politicians who represent the consensus of the majority.

In this situation the incumbent is always at a disadvantage since he/she has to make policy and govern.   And, if they want to get re-elected, those policies have to pander to the extremes that got them elected.   All of this makes the incumbent an easy target for criticism and dooms-day predictions by those on the opposite extreme.  Which helps his/her opponent energize their base.

Most independent poles show that the American people, as a whole, are not any more polarized then in the past.  If everyone, or at lease most people,  voted then the "get the base energized and turn them out" wouldn't work.  They would be at the poles anyway.   The only strategy left would be to be to come up with broadly appealing platforms that would, of necessity, be near the center of popular opinion.  Changes in policy would be slow and require changing the opinions of the majority instead of whipping up fear and hatred in a vocal minority.

As it is, with low turnout necessitating the "energize and turn out the base" strategy, American politics will swing ever more wildly from right extreme, to left extreme, and back again, making the most powerful country in the world ever more unstable as its policies veer back and forth.

In this country to only way to ensure that most Americans vote is to make voting mandatory.   Of course this is unlikely to happen because more and more of the politicians from both extremes fear this.   They got elected by going to the extreme and vilifying their opponents.  They know that they would not be likely to get elected if suddenly everyone was voting and they had to appeal to a real majority of Americans.  Since this is not going to happen I expect American policy to continue to wobble from one extreme to the other and the American electorate to be more segmented between minorities voters at the extremes and a growing disaffected group of non-voting moderates.