My reaction to the recent Ft. Hood shootings: freedom isn’t free. Or, as was noted in “The American President”, civil liberties sometimes come with a price tag attached. The liberties I’m thinking of here are religious freedom, and the right to keep & bear arms.
Regarding religious liberty: The Founders were actually quite familiar with the notion that religious beliefs might inspire believers to criminal or seditious behavior. Recall that Europe had been wracked by religious wars, and that England had had a long history of fearing (actual or purported) sedition from Catholics. It was for this reason that many early predecessors of the Free Exercise Clause were conditional: they extended religious liberty only to faiths that “did not disturb the public peace” (New Hampshire, 1784), or “justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of this State” (New York, 1777), or were “not repugnant to the peace and safety of the State” (Georgia, 1777), so as to permit denial of such liberty to faiths that did not meet such criteria (*). However, rather than mimic (say) Georgia’s religious liberty provision, the federal Free Exercise clause contained no such caveats or limitations; rather, it extended religious liberty to all faiths. Though it’s tempting to argue that such silence actually includes some implicit exemption for “seditious religions”, it seems to me that the Framers knew quite well how to include such an exemption if so inclined: state constitutions provided several examples. For better or worse, they didn’t, and so we’re stuck with our current Free Exercise Clause – a provision that implicitly accepts the possibility that religions will inspire violence, and grants them rights nonetheless.
As for the right to keep & bear arms: Though RKBA advocates are fond of quoting Heinlein’s dictum, “an armed society is a polite society”, in fact, this statement only applies if gun ownership is generally confined to those capable of wielding firearms responsibly (e.g., only in defense of self or others), and kept out of the hands of criminals, traitors, terrorists, etc. (Of course, it’s easier to do this for some (e.g., persons w/ criminal records or adjudged mentally unstable) than others (e.g., Islamist terrorists in a society that prides itself on freedom of religion).) Moreover, if a sufficiently large & cohesive minority within a society disagrees with the larger society regarding when it’s okay for private citizens to use force (consider, e.g., a nation with significant proportions of Islamists on the one hand, and Christian theocrats on the other), promoting widespread firearms ownership is less likely to produce civil peace than grease the wheels for the eventual civil war.
IMHO, Yglesias is right, when he suggests that incidents like the Fort Hood shooting are, to some extent, are the price we pay for the benefits of living in an armed society. Intellectually-honest gun-rights advocates will acknowledge this: that, while laws excluding criminals, the mentally unstable, etc., might help, nothing short of confiscation (& totalitarian enforcement thereof) will reliably prevent the occasional mass shooting. From time to time, some nut will get their hands on a gun, and this sort of incident will result. So long as the nuts, criminals, etc., comprise a relatively small proportion of society, this price will likely remain within acceptable limits; but it will not be non-zero.
(*) I’m indebted to Phillip Hamburger for noting this point. See Philip A. Hamburger, “A Constitutional Right of Religious Exemption: An Historical Perspective”, 60 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 915, 918-926 (1992); and Philip A. Hamburger, “More is Less”, 90 Va. L. Rev. 835, 838-841 (2004).
You are so correct here IMHO. I have held off writing on this as I would rather wait until all of the facts are in. Your points stand regardless of what they find out. I suspect that religion was a big factor, maybe even the only factor for Hasan. However, unless we want to repeal religious freedom, what are we proposing be done?
Same thing for guns. I just got a new .357 this week. As a responsible gun owner I do not plan to go randomly kill some people, but I could. It is a risk, part of the price as you phrase it, of freedom and liberty. On the whole, religious freedom and the right to bear arms has served us well. I find it disappointing that those who claim to believe in American values want to take those liberties away at the slightest provocation. People need to grow a spine. Grrr, I may have to give in and write a rant.
Thanks for your well researched piece. I appreciate your fact based arguments. Did you see Ackerman’s piece citing studies (study?) showing that there may be more self-starters out there than in the past? People with no contact with terrorist groups who just by reading stuff on the web decide to take up the jihadist’s cause. If true, this will be difficult to counter as long as we are occupying two Muslim countries AND we have folks like Herr Dreher claiming that all, ok most, Muslim leaders are teaching terrorism. Rather than make broad assertions with no factual data behind them, why not flatly state the problem and face it head on asking for help from the moderate majority?
Steve
Re: “an armed society is a polite society”–I once called in to a radio talk show on which Ms. Manners was the guest, to ask her why, if Heinlein had it right, people were so rude these days. Her response was that Heinlein’s Dictum applies only to people who care about surviving. The prevalence of “suicide by cop” suggests strongly that most of our thugs really don’t care about surviving.
Steve – didn’t see Ackerman’s piece (I’ve been stuck in the 19th century lately), but self-starters wouldn’t surprise me. I hope they remain rare, since, if they become sufficiently numerous, I could see them inspiring even more infringements of civil liberties in the name of security. E.g., enactment of something like the Emergency Detention Act of 1950 (or worse).
wiredsisters – I concur.
I think that implicit in the idea that ‘an armed society is a polite society’ is that in the early stages of implementing that social change, most of the impolite people will be dispatched as their anti-social tendencies become evident.
The full context of the quote:
An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.
The social context — one in which Heinlein showed a detailed understanding — concerns the two aspects of manners: doing things in a certain way (adhering to the rules of manners), or refraining from doing certain things. Being polite badly is not what he (and I) had in mind. It’s being deliberately impolite (even if that deliberateness is unthought) and having that come across as a threat.
Ms. Manners does not understand this. Thugs have no interest being polite, and will consciously see rudeness as a tool of their trade. In an armed society, it’s their survival that is in question, the rest being merely prepared for the more common situations where their survival may depend on being armed.