It's the Laws, It's the Principle; It's Not the People

I have a grand-niece named Carrie.  Young Carrie is a graduate student at a large public university, in a doctoral program in neurosciences.  She is only 21, a pretty bright young lady and, when she is not halfway across the country engaged in her research, writing and studies, and she visits family here in Virginia, I enjoy her company.  I particularly enjoy talking politics with her, because she does feel passionately about it and because she is intelligent enough to have a reasonable approach to discussing it.

Of course, that "reasonable approach" is pretty much to avoid discussing it with relatives, almost all of whom are somewhere between "more conservative than she" and "far more conservative than she".  In other words, she is squarely in the age susceptible to the "Clemençeau's son syndrome" as related in this piece.

On the rare occasion that she does discuss it in my presence, she is careful to say little, as if equally trying not to offend us, and trying not to allow the discussion to progress before switching the topic.

It is that tendency that made me think a little about political discussions.  There's no question that I think that Barack Obama is an ideological extreme socialist, and Hillary Clinton is a pathological liar with a large helping of megalomania.  However, I would never try to argue a political point by saying what a despicable being Obama is, or what a compulsive, power-mad liar Hillary Clinton is.  That kind of stuff wouldn't work on me in reverse; why would I try to use it?

By that I mean that I really don't want to hear from someone that we shouldn't pass laws or write regulations to control the importing of Syrian refugees because "well, Trump is a bigot."  The implication is that no idea of his is worth auditing because, a priori, it came from him.  

If something is a good idea -- or a bad one -- then the proper approach to debate is to defend one's position or postulate by saying that the principle is correct; that it is morally sound, that the means of implementation is likely to work, and that the means have been successful elsewhere in a comparable situation -- or at least have not failed everywhere they've been tried.

In other words, ideas need to stand on their merit, not on the mendacity or profligacy or infidelity -- or even the ideological bent -- of the person speaking on their behalf.

If you think that bringing 10,000 unvetted Syrians claiming to be refugees over here and dumping them in the USA on the taxpayer's dime is a good idea, then make the case.  What problem are we trying to solve; how would we protect American citizens; how would we ensure no ISIS jihadists are in the mix; what will we do if they are found; where has this ever worked and been a good idea; where might it have failed miserably?  Answer all that, please, without using the name of Donald Trump, and we'll have a good conversation.

It's the same with gun control, right?  Mass shooting happens ... and from the White House comes the usual blather about "common sense gun control laws" being needed because of the big bad NRA that everyone hates.  Well, I don't oppose the White House in all that just because I can't get behind anything Obama says, and I don't oppose gun control laws just because the NRA opposes them.

In fact, if you can demonstrate to me that there are laws that would make a tangible impact on murder rates, and have done so successfully in a suitable sample population without hamstringing ordinary citizens' capacity to defend ourselves, I'll be happy to listen to you.  I'm actually willing.  The fact that there are no such proposed laws is because they simply don't work, and there's no way around that.  The two ISIS people who carried out the San Bernardino murders had someone else buy the weapons for them.  Where there's a jihadist will, there's a way.

I bring my grand-niece into it because not only does she avoid political discussions as much as possible, when she does engage, she conspicuously avoids arguing principle by vilifying the proponent or opponent.  That's quite a mature attitude for a person who is still allowed to be a communist for nine more years (easy, folks; she is not one).

She teaches me, too.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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