Is it selfish to say that I refuse to place babies in debt to pay for my social services? Is it selfish to want a sound dollar, free from the inflationary powers of the welfare state? Is it selfish to have an understanding of economics that prizes creative destruction, and understands that the correlation between welfare and crime and illegitimacy is strong? If this is selfish, I stand guilty as charged. I do not believe that government policy that monetarily reinforces not just bad behavior, but sin, is acceptable. Nor do I believe that being generous with someone else’s money is a praiseworthy virtue, or that stealing (through inflation) from those who save–the elderly– is Godly. It doesn’t matter who you give the money to.

Also worth noting is that protecting the right to bear arms is not the same thing as waging ethnic warfare against blacks. I’m going to ask you to please consider the fact that you just likened discriminatory religious persecution to allowing a group of people to run with scissors. The former is inter-cultural, the latter is intra-cultural.

Take this example, for instance: is the crime of any particular city the fault of all people in that city’s country? And if the people in that city cannot handle the responsibility of constitutional liberty, should the country be forced to forego theirs? Wouldn’t taking away the primary defenses of the majority’s liberty in fact be an imposition of a minority’s punishment upon an overwhelmingly undeserving group?

I couldn’t help but notice that Detroit has incredibly high rates of rape and illegitimate childbirth, along with all the other extremely liberal cities in the nation. I’m absolutely sure this isn’t due to poverty. Please explain this, and also explain why extramarital sex hasn’t been banned throughout the US because of Detroit’s rape addiction.

In order to deny an entire community such basic equality and justice one would have to completely violate the 15th amendment…

I feel that your views espouse no clear understanding of the tension between liberty, justice, individual rights and equality. One reason populism is a violation of modern democracy is because it sacrifices individual rights for collective desires…

It sounds like the line of reasoning that your blog advocates, if taken to its logical extent, would sacrifice a lot more than just the supposed preciousness of our right as Americans to have an assault rifle. If a legal framework was created that allowed a majority rules premise to take hold, imagine what could happen to bible thumping evangelicals?

And this is where the path of logic you are using leads!

Furthermore, in the context of our relationship with the Lord, this entire conversation is pretty much moot. I really don’t think the Lord cares much about our Republic as a national entity. We are totally self consumed, and the conservative ethic proves this as much or more than the liberal ethic you argue against with such tenacity.

God cares about humanity; he cares about His people. Our opportunity to fulfill Jesus’s command that we love our God and love our neighbor would only be strengthened if our government went the direction you fear. So whether or not we lose the right to bear arms, which we won’t I am fairly certain, it’s a win win situation, unless we syncretise our Christianity with Americana and in doing so build walls between us and those the Lord has called us to reach…

Kyle, I’m of the belief that ideals influence behavior, and thus social outcomes. Do you believe that poverty comes from lack of structure, or lack of structure from poverty? This is a pretty big difference between liberals and conservatives, because conservatives tend to believe that all human beings have the ability to make decisions that affect whether or not they rape and murder. Rewarding immorality with fiscal outlays and ignoring the root problems only leads to more problems.

I know you’ll probably hate this, but here’s another article I wrote about that very subject, and how philosophies of the Left and Right differ substantially on the ideas of poverty, crime, and ideals.

http://americanclarity.com/2009/03/22/of-conservatives-and-dogs-combating-stupid-bumperstickers/

James, I have one question to ask you: if liberty itself was incapable of being safely used by a minority group, would you advocate the banning of liberty for the safety of that group? Is liberty only to be had if everyone involved is doing well?

We have duties to our fellow man: in this you are correct. But liberty isn’t something to be tossed away because someone can’t handle it. Liberty is always bought with blood (even the spiritual liberty we cherish), and we need to treat it as such, knowing that after we refuse to, blood will be required to reestablish its position in our lives. The right to bear arms is one of the cornerstone liberties this Republic will need in order to remain free from oppression.

Thanks to both of you, and I’ll be checking your blog out today, James!

In “On Liberty”, the philosopher John Stuart Mill engaged what he called the “Tyranny of the Majority”. Essentially he argued that as the majority elects to pursue certain societal directions it may do so at the price of violating the welfare of minorities. While I appreciate your caveat regarding the dis-empowerment of minorities due to the constantly circulating rhetoric of racial politics, I am dismayed at your reference to the will of the majority as being something to uphold, apparently, at great cost. I am also dismayed and offended at what seems to be the capstone of the article, the statement that “The reason we need to ask this is because politicians need Americans to feel as though they’re under siege in order to pass these laws, and the truth is that the siege exists… but only for Black, criminal, and liberal city-dwellers.” We stand and fall as a community, not as racial groups, not as majorities, not as minorities groups….And just because such people groups may be associated with violence does not mean it is just their problem, nor does it mean the issue is endemic to their racial association. As a nation we must take responsibility and work on a solution for equality across the boards. Jesus never advocated rights, only duties born of love. This simple truth, in my mind, challenges the core of the American myth, and much of what you claim in your article.

The key here is not that those are liberal cities, but that there are high concentrations of poverty and relatively low opportunity in those cities. Detroit is probably the most obvious example of this.

You are right though in that gun control doesn’t always correlate with low homocide rates (at least in the US), but you need to explain why the entire rest of the developed world has a lower homicide rates, including those liberal bastions as Norway, Finland, France and Germany.