Now I'm really steamed. I read a report in the local paper that some university in Colorado instituted a "no concealed weapons on campus" policy. Now, I'm not a gun nut; don't own a single assault weapon, but the whole tenor of the thing bothers me, for a couple of reasons.
First, what is it about liberals that they don't want people to be able to defend themselves? The reasons they give are pathetic. One is, "The police are there to protect you." That's false on two counts (Oh, oh, I'm getting buried in lists here). The first reason it's false is that, legally, the police are not, in fact, there to protect you. Oh, sure, they will if it happens to be convenient, but if they were really legally required to protect us, we could sue if they don't. If you don't believe me, just ask a jurist who will be honest with you. The second reason it's false is because they just aren't there to protect you most of the time. They're out giving tickets or eating doughnuts. You're on your own.
The second reason liberals give for taking away our means of protecting us is the old, "You can't take the law into your own hands," argument. Actually, we can. The law provides that we can use even deadly force to protect ourselves and those close to us.
Second reason I'm steamed: The university is both targeting the wrong folk and exposing them to danger. A "no gun" zone is, as I've mentioned before, a huge flashing sign to nutcases that says, "C'mon in with your AK47. There's no opposition. Shoot at will for 15 or 20 minutes until the fuzz get organized." (A cop told me that one) And, the argument that regular people with guns will shoot up the place is ludicrous. In my town, every tenth person carries a concealed weapon, and no one knows who is packing and who is not. Those people who have gone to the trouble of learning the laws of weapons and have qualified at the shooting range and the least likely to fire a shot in anger.
But reality has never made much of an impact on political stances.
Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Sex, violence, and evolution
This is going to take quite a while, so I may have to do it in more than one blog. That's cause a blog should be fairly short, in order to suit one's electronic attention span, which is short.
Anyway, I remember a question asked in the sixties that has followed me for a long time: Why is it that sex, which is lovely, should be kept secret, and violence, which is ugly, should be out in the open?
Remember that this is a sixties question, loaded with sixties assumptions about sex, love, openness, flowers, war, and police.
Nonetheless, it's an interesting question. Why are we so secretive about sex? I remember a mock editorial by comedian Pat Paulson, who said, about sex, "It's time to come out in the open and speak forthrightly and openly about . . . you know what."
At the same time, how is it that we can tolerate extreme violence?
As always, when faced with a problem like this, I always ask, "WWDD?" That's, "What would Darwin do?" That is, can we look at this problem in an evolutionary perspective, to see if these two traits had any survival value for our ancestors.
The first thing is, of course, to determine if these two traits are in fact human, or are simply Western, American, Puritan, or somehow or another culturally determined.
And, for purposes of this blog spree, I'm going to assume that they are in fact human rather than cultural. That is, they are part of our genetic makeup. I'm going to assume this based on information gathered from, in part, Pinker's book on the way the mind works. Note, mind you, that he never said this, but it's kind of extrapolable from what he did say.
Anyway, I remember a question asked in the sixties that has followed me for a long time: Why is it that sex, which is lovely, should be kept secret, and violence, which is ugly, should be out in the open?
Remember that this is a sixties question, loaded with sixties assumptions about sex, love, openness, flowers, war, and police.
Nonetheless, it's an interesting question. Why are we so secretive about sex? I remember a mock editorial by comedian Pat Paulson, who said, about sex, "It's time to come out in the open and speak forthrightly and openly about . . . you know what."
At the same time, how is it that we can tolerate extreme violence?
As always, when faced with a problem like this, I always ask, "WWDD?" That's, "What would Darwin do?" That is, can we look at this problem in an evolutionary perspective, to see if these two traits had any survival value for our ancestors.
The first thing is, of course, to determine if these two traits are in fact human, or are simply Western, American, Puritan, or somehow or another culturally determined.
And, for purposes of this blog spree, I'm going to assume that they are in fact human rather than cultural. That is, they are part of our genetic makeup. I'm going to assume this based on information gathered from, in part, Pinker's book on the way the mind works. Note, mind you, that he never said this, but it's kind of extrapolable from what he did say.
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