What Makes You Think You Can Think?
One New Yorker’s view on gun control:
“There’s just too many incidents that are happening that you think could be avoided if there were stronger regulations about it,” one mother from Larchmont said, adding when asked if her children’s safety is her motivation, “Absolutely, I mean you can’t even send them to school now. Now my kids have police in front of their school. I mean you wonder how far it’s going to go.”
Her cure for creeping statism is — wait for it — more controls.
I keep thinking that I despise the term “low information voter.” The problem is, I can’t refute it. The deeper problem isn’t just that people are un- or misinformed, however. It’s that they can’t or won’t think. The contradiction in this mother’s “thinking” is glaringly obvious. But you get the feeling trying to explain that to her would about as fruitful, to borrow Heinlein’s phrase, as trying to teach calculus to a horse.
I’m not saying she’s a stupid person, either. For all I know, her native intelligence is quite high. But the ability to reason is no different from tying shoelaces — it’s an acquired skill, not a natural act.
Reminds me of a bit from Michael Crichton’s Lost World sequel to Jurassic Park. The velociraptors (this is the novel, not the movie) didn’t know how to behave like proper velociraptors, because as out-of-time clones, they’d never had proper training from proper velociraptors. Even wild animals require training to achieve certain skills and learn certain behaviors.
The art of thinking is no more automatic for humans than proper group behavior is for pack-hunting dinos. And as you look around, you see that we’ve stopped imparting those skills onto too many of our kids — who then grow up to be accidental statists.
Thinking. Feeling. Whatever…
‘Twas ever thus.
Heinlein could tell you that the percentage of people who both can and do think has always been low.
I keep thinking that I despise the term “low information voter.”
You’re welcome to substitute ‘useful idiots’.
I always ask liberals who ardently believe that “more government is the answer” why they are so interested in empowering Republicans and conservative Christians to run their lives?
Lately Ive been asking folks who want gun control why they are so interested in disarming women and minorities. I’ve discovered that most liberals never consider that such a thing would occur. They just naturally think of this as very one sided in its impact.
It never occurs to the statists that one day, while all the new found power of the government over the governed will stay, the people in government might change to be in the hands of those they dont like as much.
I think that’s the defining pathology of the “progressive”, they simply can’t wrap their pretty little heads around the idea that “what goes around, comes around”, and that changes they make to the rules to give themselves more more can come back to bite them in the ass.
See Senate Republicans in 2009 – 2012 filibustering in ways they didn’t do back in 1993 – 1994, before the Democrats set the new standard for the filibuster in 2003 – 2006. See the wails of agony from the same people who celebrated the actions of the Senate Democrats.
It’s not that they’re necessarily stupid. It’s just that they’re so amazingly self-righteous that they simply can not believe that THEIR actions could ever have any bad consequences.
I think we’ve identified a new category of voters in addition to LIVs, LRVs. Low Reasoning Voters.
“…you can’t even send them to school now. Now my kids have police in front of their school.”
Aside from the whole statist issue there is another more immediate matter staring Mrs. Larchmont Mother in the face. If she thinks the current school environment is so intolerable, dysfunctional and maybe even dangerous then perhaps it is time to pull her children out. There is nothing stopping her from teaching them herself or looking into private education. These solutions provide much better personal benefit to her and her family that she could customize to her needs. Who is forcing her or anyone else to wait for “the authorities” to “get it right”?
Will banning guns make the however millions of them already out there go away? No. Neither will it prevent more from being smuggled in from wherever illegally, if Prohibition and the War on Drugs is any precedent. Does this woman realize this? Maybe not, but I’m sure if someone explained this to her, I’m guessing she would become angry and stammer, “Well, we’ve got to do SOMETHING!” before stomping off in another direction.
And beneath that, I think, is the unpleasant realization that some problems simply cannot be fixed. Us, our children, everyone is always going to be vulnerable during their time on earth. Government banning guns is NOT going to protect children from violence at school any more than government banning meteors is going to prevent the school from being destroyed by one. The truth is, government is NOT superman, they’re not avenging angels, they’re just people like anyone else (albeit at the higher levels, generally more venal, power-hungry and egomaniacal than the average mom.) But this is not acceptable to many and it is in the interest of the venal, power-hungry egomaniac politician to make the voters believe it is not true. But it is.
“Neither will it prevent more from being smuggled in from wherever illegally, if Prohibition and the War on Drugs is any precedent.”
This is the part about proposed gun control that scares me. Since the 1930s the Tommy Gun and it’s siblings have all but disappeared from the scene in the US. There are plenty of non-automatic and semi-automatic models available on the civilian market that satisfy almost all needs, making true “machine guns” irrelevant. If the black market opens up wide, however, will we be seeing AK-47s and similar in street crimes?
Excellent point. If smugglers are going to take the risk to illegally bring firearms into the country, why would they bother with semi-automatics when a fully automatic is identical in size and shape, and could obviously be sold for a greater price?
That’s a good possibility. Part of why the whole Operation Fast & Furious was so ridiculous is that the Mexican cartels actually get a lot of M16′s and AK’s from the masses of such floating around Central America due to its many insurgencies.
There is a massive crisis of logic here in our modern society – people just lack the ability to think critically. I chalk it up to bad public education and a sensationalist media. Does that mother realize that her children have a far higher chance of dying in a car wreck than they do in a school shooting? She’s scared to send them to school, but probably has no problem putting them in a car everyday. Asinine.
– would rather die than think. And most do.
There used to be a single panel comic strip like “Grin and Bear It” that was called “There Oughta Be a Law”. It was a reflection of the absurdity of people like this. The problem was that everyone but them “got it”. These are the people who, like James Taggart, don’t want to be bothered – by anything. That’s why the rest of us have to pay attention.
Do we really need some new age PC-safe term for such people? Seems to me “f*cking idiot” is pretty tried and true. While that is also not a measure of relative intelligence– well, if the shoe fits.
Everyone has the ability to think, except the actual sub-80 IQ’s. It’s just that thinking is the hardest work of all. When people are forced to it by necessity, they find themselves quite capable of thinking. It is a slow process for them, at first, but they can do it. They would just rather not. Most people want to go through life doing as little thinking as possible. It’s an actual desire: not having to think.
Personally, I cannot relate. I cannot help but think. The idea of not doing so is abhorrent. That’s why I have never been drunk or high. I have no desire to be a mindless beast.
As for the woman, how about arming the teachers? You entrust your children to their care. Don’t you also expect them to defend your children as if they were their very own?