Where I Am Not Liberal
Published by Antigone May 22nd, 2008 in Punkass!, Circle Jerking, Liberal DemocratsI promise to get some serious posting to make up for my lack of posting later. Until then, enjoy!
Here in the soaked-red state of North Dakota, I am basically considered to be a hippy/ liberal freak. My friends, mainly moderate, apathetic, or conservative basically think I’m just a little bit to the right of Karl Marx. However, there are some places that I split with liberals, and join in with my conservative brethren.
1) Gun Rights
While it is true that I do believe in reasonable restrictions, generally I do believe that gun rights are an individual rights issue. Guns are a tool, like anything, can be used to harm….or they can be used for fun, like most gun-users do. I flinch every time a fellow liberal brings up the stereotype of the racist, sexist, ridiculously macho, mistakes-his-guns-for-his-penis gun owners. While it is true that I have met gun-owners that do fulfill parts or all of that stereotypes (I worked as a puller in a gun range for chrissake: you see all kinds), most (I would say the vast majority) of gun-owners are normal people. My friend PE likes Soviet rifles, because he likes the history of them. Hubby and I have grown up our entire lives with hunting rifles and shotguns. I have a few outliers: my friend Grunt has a weird fascination with his AR, and my friends WA, A, and B have a little bit too much paranoia that the government/robbers are out to get them, but that’s rather harmless, really.
I am to the left of my friends on this one, however slightly, on what constitutes “reasonable restrictions”. Pretty much everyone agrees with the background check, and the three day waiting period, but I also want a mandatory gun safety class for every licence. I also don’t think the right to bear arms encompasses fully automatic weapons, and I think there is a strong enough argument to make that banning them constitutes a compelling state interest (which is the standard a state would be held to if the 2nd Amendment was incorporated). I also would like gun registration, but I wouldn’t actually advocate for it, because I have never seen a government capable of registering that wouldn’t also use this information to take it. Finally, I’d like to see strict enforcement of gun laws: if you commit a crime with a gun, you get lose that right.
Honestly, this is one of those things that I don’t understand the left’s position at all. It feels ideologically inconsistent. If I had to sum the left’s philosophy, it would be “individual liberty, collective responsibility”. Restricting an individual from participating in a harmless pastime seems like something that conservatives would worry about, not progressives. And, at it’s root, target shooting and hunting are no more dangerous that any other sports. Which brings me to…
2) Animal rights
When it comes to treating anything that can feel pain with respect, I’m right there. Torturing animals is cruel in and of itself, and often times rings serious warning bells for larger psychological problems. But, where I draw the line is with PETA*, vegans, and other animal-rights activists. I wear dead animals, I eat dead animals, and use the products of animals. Silk is my favorite fabric, fur is the warmest thing I can wear, leather is great for hiking, and you can take my meat when you pry it from my cold dead hands. I do support organic meats: I think factory farming is cruel (going back to point one) and when you kill an animal, it should be done so that it does not feel any pain. But seriously: a cow or a chicken has no purpose other than to feed or cloth humans. They are the most thoroughly domesticated, ridiculously stupid creatures on the planet. You don’t exactly see herds of cows roaming in the wild; if we did not have ranchers, we would not have cows. The only way to keep them from going extinct is by using them. As with hunting, I support that for the same reason that I support voluntary childlessness: there is only so many resources to go around. Deer hunting is a great example of it: if left to propagate, deer become a danger to themselves and others. When it comes down between car vs. deer, both always lose. And a quick shot through the head is much better than dying of starvation.
Those of you reading might notice a common thread: I seem to value the lives of humans more than the lives of animals. And you would be right: I absolutely do. Human beings are sentient: we are self-aware, we have emotions, we know we are going to die. I do not believe that this is an insignificant trait, and I do believe that it means that we are more important than animals. This is a major shift from most progressives.
Important note: because I am not vegan or vegetarian does not mean that I don’t support that decision for all who make it. Each person has to decide what they need to do for him/herself. I respect it as a valid and a legitimate choice.
There are smaller points of policy that I shift rightwards from the average progressive, and others where I shift leftwards from the average progressive, but those are the two main ones. How about everyone else? Where do you differ from general progressives?
*This doesn’t even address their horrible, horrible sexism.
Crossposted at Teller of Truths
I like guns, ’cause guns like me–I know how that SOUNDS but what I mean is, I grew up in Kansas and my best friend lived on a farm and yep, we went huntin’ once a year. (I went hunting once a year with them, I should say. They went hunting a lot more often than that.) My best friend was a lot like an older sibling in that her sincere and deep love for me was definitely tempered with that big-sister disdain–she admired my book-smarts but she thought I was pretty pussified compared to her (which I totally was, she was a toughasshit country girl and if you’ve ever known one, you know exactly what I mean). However, it turned out that I was a natural dead shot (this got me at some respect, which helped later on when I almost passed out trying to help her mom devein the venison for jerky). In the Army I went on to nab expert badges in every trigger-equipped piece of military ordinance they put into my hands. It’s hard not to love something you have a real gift for, even if the nature of the gift causes internal conflict at times– oh great, I can kill anything that moves!
However, this isn’t the reason I am a fairly big supporter of gun rights, in direct contrast to my generally liberal agenda. And it isn’t because I think guns are harmless fun either–quite the opposite. In a post a few weeks ago, someone was justifying someone else’s actions with a loaded gun–in my opinion, there is no justification, ever, outside of self-defense, for aiming a loaded gun at someone that should ever allow you to escape attempted murder or murder charges, unless you are literally so young or feeble-minded that you don’t know what a gun is. When you hold a loaded weapon, you are holding death in your hands, period. It has no other genuine purpose. My reasons are more Constitutional, in line with what I believed the Founders intended–a populace with guns is a populace that can only ever be oppressed so far by the government. It has not escaped my notice that historically one of the very first acts of any dictatorship regime is to seize all the guns from the citizenry.
“I also would like gun registration, but I wouldn’t actually advocate for it, because I have never seen a government capable of registering that wouldn’t also use this information to take it.”
So I take it you find liscense plates and VIN number the single biggest threat to our liberties today.
I’m sorry, but if we have a nationwide registration and tracking system for transportation vehicles, we can have them for devices with the sole purpose of killing.
This is why we call them gun nuts.
I agree with your stance on guns, and as a vegetarian, with your stance on animal rights. Regarding the guns, I’m very much for mandatory education. We require a certain amount of education with driver’s licenses because cars are rather dangerous, why not with deadly weapons?
The problem with Vegans is they are not actually ever going to clean up the meat industry because that’s not actually what they want. Even if the industry stopped forcing its animals in to dirty over crowded living conditions and over fed hormones and all that, many vegans and vegan groups would still be up in arms, because a lot of them seem to think the simple act of killing an animal is cruelty.
I was fairly sure this argument was going to come up, but I was sorta hoping it would not. There has never been a precedent in any country at any time that registering vehicles included the government coming to take them away. However, there is lots of precendents of governments forcing registration and then taking the firearms away.
We also do not have a constitutionally protected right to own a car. We do have one that says we get to own firearms. I agree with Lisa KS- firearms present a deterrant against the government from doing too much. I don’t think that my little .22 rifle is realistically going to do anything against a tank BUT it still consists of a threat (however weak) against the government.
Firearms sole purpose is to send a projectile flying through the air. I’m not going to be disambiguous: they were designed to kill people. But, we first developed nuclear technology to destroy, and now we use it for power (and the Russians used it for desalinization). The same thing for firearms: just because they were designed to harm doesn’t mean you need to use them to. I’ve shot firearms my entirely life: not once have I hurt anyone. Target shooting is fun: it is a way to develop great hand-eye coordination and muscular control. And there is something very satisfying in controlling an explosion, and I resent being called a “gun nut” because I enjoy something you do not.
Finally, one point of clarification: I said that shooting was “harmless”, that is not entirely correct. It can be dangerous: there are mechanical accidents and occasional misfires. If you are not acting in a safe manner, you put yourself and others at risk. What I meant by “harmless” is that it is no more harmful than any other sport. If you don’t act in a safe manner in most sports you end up injured or dead; shooting is no different. That is why there are safety courses, and the reason I advocate for liceancing.
I like shooting. It’s pretty hard to find a shooting range where I live, but when I get a chance, I’m right into it. I’m a vegetarian (though primarily for environmental reasons; I wouldn’t care if people ate meat if they could do it sustainably) and wouldn’t hunt, but I like the Zen moment of staring at a bull’s eye (or a Coke can) and pulling the trigger.
This said, a classmate of mine recently told a story about a first-grader who’d brought a handgun to her school. Loaded. Not out of malice—the kid had found it and brought it in for show-and-tell. Someone who keeps a handgun in their house to protect themselves from intruders is more likely to end up with their kid accidentally shooting himself than they are to stop a burglary. For this reason, I want compulsory safety courses, background checks, licensing, and so on. As well, I’d like to see shooting ranges where guns are kept in lock-up so that you can shoot for sport without owning a deadly weapon in your house.
First of all, I agree — I’m the only leftist in San Francisco I know of who voted against the handgun ban… I’m very pro gun rights. However, after moving to Baltimore, I’ve developed a slightly more nuanced position. It’s easy to support robust gun rights when you’re in a low-crime area with a strong hunting or outdoors culture. It’s hard to support gun rights when you’re faced with the consequences of person-on-person gun violence everyday. Restrictions on gun ownership and gun sales in high-crime urban areas are crime fighting tools, plain and simple. (There are problems with this tactic, like there are problems with most crime fighting tactics, but that’s a different issue.)
The second point I wanted to make was this: besides an all-out ban on hand guns, which I think is a rather ‘out-there’ position, what do you see as the “liberal” position on gun ownership that you disagree with?
The last point (I promise) is this: gun ownership is both an individual right and a collective right, like Lisa KS mentioned. The whole point is to combat tyrany, not to target shoot.