I sit here at my desk completing my preparations for my Monday lecture, in which I will finish up my exposition of the fundamental theorem of Game Theory and then discuss some of its applications, before turning in my final lecture to a full-scale formal analysis of the central argument of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice. I anticipate this weekend the arrival of my son, Patrick, with my grandson, Samuel, for a brief visit during their tour of colleges and universities as part of Samuel's preparation for next year's applications. I am following with enjoyment the seemingly ever more rapid development of the variety of legal cases against Donald Trump and look forward to the time when he will be under indictment in three or four separate jurisdictions. Despite the constraints upon me imposed by my Parkinson's disease, I feel alive, engaged, fully myself.
And yet, in a few years – perhaps more, perhaps less – I shall no longer exist, I shall be dead for all time. I have been aware of this all my life, of course. When I was a teenager the prospect of my death frightened and obsessed me, but for 70 years or so I was able, as it were, to put it out of my mind.
It is all very well to repeat Dylan Thomas villanelles to myself, but beautiful as they may be, they are in fact no comfort. As Emily Dickinson observed in one of her poems, it was rather odd of God to arrange things so that we must die to meet Him.
59 comments:
No words of wisdom can bring solace to the final passage, but the following last words may bring a smile:
“Go on, get out – last words are for fools who have not yet said enough!”
– Karl Marx (1818-1883)
“I must go in, the fog is rising.”
– Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
“OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”
– Steve Jobs (1955-2011)
“Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
–Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
“Friends applaud, the comedy is finished.”
– Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
“I should have never switched from Scotch to Martinis.”
– Actor Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957)
“I’m bored with it all.”
-Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
And my last words, which I am rehearing”
“Why is the grim reaper so grim, he gets to continue to live!”
"Altogether, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."
WC Fields
I am rehearing them as I rehearse them.
And just for laughs, puppy love:
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/04/05/long-distance-doggy-romance-moos-cprog-orig-bdk.cnn
Listening to Rep. Justin Jones address the Tennessee House of Representatives, challenging the motion for his expulsion.. He is phenomenal. The cadence of his oratory is magnificent. The persuasiveness of argument is superb.
The Tennessee House of Representatives just expelled Rep. Jones for his activism in support of gun control legislation. Disgraceful.
I always take (a perhaps illogical) comfort in the likelihood that I will not be aware that I have ended, though others, some few of whom might actually care for me, will. Hence, as far as I'm concerned, my own life will be, after my own fashion, endless.
Maybe a bit of Walt Whitman lurks here? But whether it does or not, I am lending him a bit of an afterlife.
The Tennessee legislature voted to expel a Black man and then just voted not to expel a white woman. Both were charged with the same offenses. They now take up the third case - a Black man.
Tennessee can make one lose their sleep.
I never expected to reach age 77 and I'm genuinely surprised that I'm still alive and in relatively good health.
When I look at the world around me, I feel privileged that I'm not the victim of a violent crime, that I've been spared the experience of extreme poverty, that I've never been in a war, that a few people care about me, that my mind is still lucid enough to write this comment.
I'm not an optimistic or an upbeat person by nature, but every day surprises me that I'm still here and functioning.
At age 77 death scares me a lot less than senility or incapacity does. When it's over, it's over and when I look at the fate of so many people, I've been very lucky in my stay here. That's not a pose, I genuinely believe that.
One of my favorite movies is Abbas Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us. It tells the story of a documentary filmmaker in Iran who has gone to a remote village to record a mourning ritual. But, wouldn't you know it, the ailing aged woman doesn't die, and so the ritual remains unrecorded. The movie ends with the filmmaker on the back of a motorcyle driven by a doctor who, as the two travelers course through great fields of tall grasses, discourses on life and this world and the unknown that follows: "When you close your eyes on this world, this beauty, the wonders of nature, and the generosity of God, it means you'll never be coming back." Etc.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaEnKGkj_cM&ab_channel=DevalShah
Professor- you don't absolutely 'know' what will happen when you die. None of us know that. Perhaps you can take comfort in that 'not knowing for sure' aspect. Hope is a real thing. Don't rule it out.
I have been interested in the concept of time, from a theoretical physicist point of view, for quite some time.
Einstein, based upon his general theory, claimed that the past, the present, and the future all exist. This is sometimes referred to as the block universe which means, according to Einstein, that we never die in the conventional sense. Yes, our hour upon the stage is of limited duration, but we are still and forever doing our thing. That hour is always and forever happening!!
Go here to see Brian Green explain it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y-JmocB84Y&ab_channel=JamieC
start at the 16:00 mark
Jerry,
I do not believe this is quite right. I have read a number of books on Einstein’s Special and General Theories of Relativity, as well as on quantum mechanics, including Brian Greene’s. First, Einstein’s revolutionary thoughts about time and motion are based on his Special Theory of Relativity, no the General Theory. The General Theory dealt with the nature and source of gravity.
Under the Special Theory of Relativity, how fast time passes is dependent on the motion of the observer. The faster the observer moves through space, the slower time becomes for that observer. This is not saying that to the observer time appears to be slower. It actually slows down. The faster one moves, approaching the speed of light, the slower and slower time actually occurs for that individual . This has been proved placing time measuring devices on planes and rockets – the time measuring devices show different elapses of time depending on the speed of the vehicles on which they are placed.
This does not mean that for a given individual, the past, present and future coexist and never disappear. For any given individual, the past is still past, and the present is still present – they only elapse over different lengths of time depending on the speed of the individual at the time. The past of one individual traveling speed x may not be the same past as another individual traveling at speed y. The notion of simultaneity becomes confounded.
It is in the area of quantum mechanics that the notions of time and motion offer the possibility of the past, present and future co-existing. In order to explain the perplexing aspects of quantum mechanics and the dual behavior of light, i.e., waves and particles, Prof. Hugh Everett (whose son, a rock musician and composer was mentioned in an prior thread) proposed the existence of parallel universes, in which every possible different event occurs in different iterations in different parallel universes. (This was the subject of the movie which won the Best Picture Oscar this year, Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.). Under this theory, there are an infinite number of iterations of each of us, co-existing in different universes, with different characteristics.
Marc
In the General Relativity Einstein posited that time was just another dimension like space- hence 'spacetime', hence the idea that the future and past all 'exist' as in Parmenides and Spinoza.
Not sure how that gibes with special relativity and quantum physics
I did learn this at Stuyvesant which had really smart students I not being one of them
I think I once saw a cute anecdote in which Einstein tried to console someone at a funeral: "Our deceased loved ones actually still exist, just at a different time than you and I." (Paraphrasing, of course.)
I'm not a physics person at all, but I guess the idea is that the dead are not absolute non-entities; rather, I in "the present" may ascribe to the dead an existence in "the past" alone (i.e., the past relative to my temporal position), and moreover, there is really no reason to ascribe any uniquely privileged status to "the" present. No temporal position is fundamentally unlike any other, just as no spatial position is fundamentally unlike any other. (Fundamentally, the spatial coordinates at which the Eiffel Tower is now located are neither more nor less "special" than the spatial coordinates at which my laundry basket is now located. That's what it means for space itself to be homogeneous. Similarly for temporal positions and the homogeneity of time itself.)
It sort of sounds like: We survive eternally as "ideas in the mind of God."
Howie,
Yes, they all exist in space-time. but they do not all exist simultaneously for any given entity or individual.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says "No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel", not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
Aubade, by Philip Larkin. He deserves the credit.
Wittgenstein tells us that death is not an experience in life. Death is always what happens to others. I wish I could come back to see how well I died. All the thinking of all the wisest of humans will not change it. I have to own up to my own finite existence.
it was rather odd of God to arrange things so that we must die to meet Him
Perhaps, in other versions of the universe, you are already dead and have already met Her.
Prof Wolff, you might appreciate reading this obituary of a man with a remarkable (short-term) memory for names.
Professor Wolff --
One of the great things about being a teacher and having taught the many thousands of students that you have over your lifetime, is that they will carry your words and ideas on to their kids and perhaps students if they themselves become teachers. At least that is what I have done. Keep forging ahead I argue, keep forging ahead.
-- Jim
Somber thoughts on a pleasant Saturday morning:
The defeat of Hillary Clinton continues to have adverse repercussions which continue to reverberate. The decision on Friday of Texas federal judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, halting FDA approval of the mifepristone abortion pill, may prove difficult to overturn, regardless of its legal merits, or lack thereof. An appeal goes to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, a very conservative court which is likely to sustain J. Kacsmaryk’s decision. And from there to the S. Ct., where we know what to expect.
All you need to know about Judge Kacsmaryk:
From the Wikipedia article about him:
He graduated from Abilene Christian University in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude.
He was appointed to the federal District Court by former President Trump, after approval by Congress.
“The American Bar Association rated Kacsmaryk "qualified" for the nomination, which is the association's second-highest ranking, below "well qualified”.[10] However, Senate Democrats and a number of LGBT advocacy groups opposed his nomination due to his writings and comments on LGBT rights and women's contraceptive rights.[11][12] He has worked on cases opposing certain LGBT protections in housing, employment, and health care.[13] He has referred to homosexuality as "disordered",[14] and to being transgender as a "delusion" and a "mental disorder".[13] He opposed the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that had legalized abortion in the United States.”
A very scary thought:
From here on in, right-wing advocacy groups who oppose LGBTQ and other progressive civil rights, knowing they have a champion and standard-bearer for their causes in Judge Kacsmaryk, will file lawsuits in the Northern District of Texas, hoping their case will be assigned to him (supposed to be by random draw). There are 16 judges on the Northern District. If they can tailor their claims to appear similar to other lawsuits which J. Kacsmaryk has presided over, they can skew the assignment to him, by stating in the Complaint and filing forms that the claims are related to previously decided cases over which he has presided.
In spite of Marc's scary thoughts, we just have to keep forging ahead. Keep forging ahead. I think that the Wisconsin judicial result validates this approach.
-- Jim
On this beautiful Easter morning, I have a question for readers knowledgeable about Christianity. Yesterday, I was watching a documentary about Jerusalem which discussed the holy sites of the three religions which have an historical presence there. The narrator visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was built in the 4th century and is located in what is currently the Old City. The narrator stated that it is the most sacred site in Christianity because within it are the place where Jesus was crucified, as well as the location of the cave where he was resurrected. I though that both events were reported in the Gospels as having occurred well outside of Jerusalem. Am I mistaken? I checked the article about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Wikipedia, and it does not address this question.
At the time of the crucifixion, Calvary was located outside the walls of ancient Jerusalem. The Wikipedia entry on "Calvary" states this. Likewise the tomb.
Anonymous,
Thank you for this information. So, it follows, therefore, that the current location of the Old City is outside of where the walls of the ancient City were located?
Golgotha, etc. was just outside the gates near Herod's palace. Lots of maps:
https://external-preview.redd.it/KTsRAogoU492HfAZ5VPcSvaginMOUzXeVWMGLI5Q25o.jpg?auto=webp&s=d5a4a03d490dedb883b7a69ec4376d0e0d680e5c
http://www.albaillustration.com/images/full/4bc-map-lastdays-ealba.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/43/8a/3d/438a3d4d555da28a12abfae9a99a1314.jpg
https://www.google.com/search?q=map+of+jerusalem+over+time&client=firefox-b-1-d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiGjKq-np3-AhUmJUQIHa-2DkoQ0pQJegQIBxAC&biw=1368&bih=751&dpr=1.25#imgrc=FAOord2tGt563M
Somber thoughts on a beautiful Monday morning and another sad day in America. The weapon which was used in the Louisville shooting today which resulted in the death of 4 people, and the hospitalization of at least 8 others, was an AR-15 assault rifle. J. Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion in Heller v. District of Columbia, holding that the 2nd Amendment protects the individual ownership of guns does not apply to the kind of assault weapons used by the military. Legislation prohibiting their sale could be sustained as not violating the 2nd Amendment. Moreover, the estates of those killed, and the survivors of such assaults, could, and should, sue the manufacturers of such weapons. They could do so, but for a statute which immunizes the manufacturers of these weapons from civil lawsuits, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), 15 U.S.C. §§ 7901-7903. (The statute is available online.) Briefly, the statute is intended to protect gun manufacturers and merchants from being sued in federal or state court. The statute essentially requires that any court in which such a lawsuit is filed must dismiss the lawsuit. Its premise is that the Second Amendment protects the right of private ownership of guns – all guns, regardless their nature. But that is not what the 2nd Amendment states, even as explained by the staunchest proponent of 2nd Amendment rights, Justice Scalia. In sum, the statute overstates the scope of the 2nd Amendment protection.
If a statute purports to protect certain conduct which is not protected by the Constitution, and if that same conduct is inconsistent with a another provision in the Constitution which does not protect that conduct, then that aspect of the statute is unconstitutional, because it contravenes another provision in the Constitution. I submit that to the extent that the PLCAA purports to protect the manufacture and commercial sale of automatic and semi-automatic assault weapons, the statute is unconstitutional. Why? Because it contravenes the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which states, in relevant part: “No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The manufacture, sale and ownership of automatic and semi-automatic weapons – the manufacture, sale and ownership of which, according to the definitive majority opinion in Heller is not protected by the 2nd Amendment - is resulting in the deprivation of the life and liberty of thousands of American citizens every year.
(Continued)
A statute which states that those who manufacture and sell such weapons cannot be sued in a court of law, violates the Fifth Amendment and is therefore unconstitutional. It also violates the 1st Amendment provision which protects the right of American citizens to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” a right which the Supreme Court has held includes the right to sue in court. The statute also contravenes the 9th Amendment (“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”) and the 10th Amendment (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, or to the people.”) Consider: Could Congress pass a statute which prohibited states from prosecuting any individual who steals the property of another, or precluded citizens from suing such an individual in court? How then can it pass a statute which prohibits suing companies which manufacture products whose only purpose is to kill and injure people in mass numbers, when the manufacture of such products is not protected by the only provision in the Constitution which arguably applies, the 2nd Amendment?
The way to put an end to the use of these assault weapons to kill and maim American citizens, and tourists visiting the U.S., if Congress won’t act, is to pass legislation on the state level, as the expelled members of the Tennessee House of Representatives were agitating to have done, and/or to sue the hell of the manufacturers of these weapons and put them out of business.
The problem with state level legislation is the Trumped up Article Three federal courts. California's assault weapon law is again being challenged in Federal Court. There is also the "Chicago problem." Can't buy a gun in Illinois? Short drive to Indiana.
What we need are congressional majorities that will pass a permanent fix by amending the 1986 GCA to also ban semi-automatic center-fire rifles manufactured after May 19,1986 and do a mandatory buy-back of such firearms manufactured after that date. Grandfathered firearms would require state approval and the ATF Form 4 process.
What we don't need is another Mickey Mouse law that sunsets at some point. N.B. that such a majority would also allow for fixing the Article Three courts.
aaall,
A state law banning handguns cannot succeed, given the Heller decision. However, a state law banning the sale and use of AR-16's and other automatic and semi-automatic weapons could succeed and would be constitutional. The Heller decision does not protect them.
Bernie at his best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7bS3pxu124
Though Nietzsche had humor, and eternal recurrence seems, perhaps, parodic of metaphysical ambitions generally, it does work for picturing the idea of choosing the here and now versus looking too far ahead.
Marc, perhaps it's useful to consider the trajectory from Printz to Heller to McDonald to Bruen. The California assault weapon ban is currently being litigated:
https://www.firearmspolicy.org/miller
In McDonald the court held that the Fourteenth Amendment fully incorporated the Second Amendment (I believe Thomas would also resurrect Privileges and Immunities).
"Municipal respondents’ remaining arguments are at war
with our central holding in Heller: that the Second
Amendment protects a personal right to keep and bear
arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defense
within the home. Municipal respondents, in effect, ask us
to treat the right recognized in Heller as a second-class
right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than
the other Bill of Rights guarantees that we have held to be
incorporated into the Due Process Clause."
While Both Heller and McDonald involved handguns the majority repeatedly references "arms" which includes other firearms. Reading these cases in order leads me to believe that assault weapon bans will likely be struck down.
Meanwhile, in McDonald Alito repeated what Scalia wrote in Heller:
"We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as “prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,” “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” We repeat those assurances here. Despite municipal respondents’ doomsday proclamations, incorporation does not imperil every law regulating firearms."
Perhaps including assault weapons under 26 USC 5812 would have a better chance of surviving the Supremes. Also, Even of state bans survive, a state ban wouldn't stop the flow of assault weapons from states where they are legal to those where they are banned. The MAC 10 used in the recent Lunar New Year shooting in California is an example.
Just a quibble but the AR-16 was a military weapon in 7.62 mm NATO intended for export but I don't believe it actually entered production. The M-16/M-4 (5.56 NATO) family is the military version of the AR-15 semi-automatic civilian firearm (.223 Remington and other calibers).
aaall,
Thank you for bringing my attention to the Miller v. Bonta case that is pending in California, and now in the 9th Circuit. The case involves the constitutionality of California’s statutory ban on the sale and ownership of assault weapons, including the AR-15 rifle. The District Court judge, Roger Benitez, ruled that the statute is unconstitutional, and violates the 2nd Amendment.
Below is what J. Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion in D.C. v. Heller, stated towards the end of the decision:
“We …recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller [a prior S. Ct. decision] said ... that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.” 307 U.S. at 179. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.” ...
“It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service – M-16 rifles and the like – may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.” (Citations omitted.)”
Justice Scalia’s philosophy of constitutional interpretation is known as “originalism.” He and his conservative colleagues on the Court, including Justices Thomas and Alito, and now Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, adhere to the opinion that words in the Constitution must be interpreted in accordance with what those terms meant when the Constitution was ratified. Hence their opposition to the positions of the more liberal members of the Court, who believe that the meanings of the terms of the Constitution must incorporate the evolution of meaning as our society changes. These views, which the conservatives reject, have resulted in enlarging the scope of the right of privacy, for example, to include, the right of free choice regarding abortion. According to Justice Scalia, although the 2nd Amendment does protect the right of private ownership of firearms, the firearms in question are the kinds of firearms which were owned by members of the militia – the group of private citizens who come to the defense of their state and country – by bringing the kinds of firearms which private citizens commonly owned. Justice Scalia is expressly stating that such weapons do not include the kinds of weapons, like the M-16 rifle, which are used in the military. Most citizens do not own M-16 rifles – which is a semi-automatic weapon. Therefore, the 2nd Amendment, according to the majority opinion in Heller, does not protect the right of citizens to purchase and own M-16 rifles. Similarly, since automatic and semi-automatic rifles are not commonly owned by American citizens, and would not have been owned by members of the militia when the Constitution was enacted, there is no 2nd Amendment right to purchase and own automatic or semi-automatic rifles. Likewise, there is no 2nd Amendment right to purchase and own high capacity bullet magazines.
(Continued)
This is how Wikipedia describes the AR-15 rifle:
“An AR-15-style rifle is any lightweight semi-automatic rifle based on or similar to the Colt AR-15 design. … The AR-15 is closely related to the military M16 and M4 Carbine rifles, which all share the same core design.” The M16 rifle was used during the Vietnam War and was the weapon I was trained on when I was in basic training as a member of the Army Reserve in 1981. “A semi-automatic rifle is an autoloading rifle that fires a single cartridge with each pull of the trigger, and uses part of the fired cartridge's energy to eject the case and load another cartridge into the chamber. In contrast, a bolt-action rifle requires the user to cycle the bolt manually before they can fire a second time, and a fully automatic rifle fires continuously until the trigger is released.” So, the user of a semi-automatic weapon can fire bullets in multiple succession by applying repeated pressure on the trigger. It is distinguished from an automatic rifle, e.g., a “machine gun,” in which the weapon will continue to fire as long as pressure is applied to the trigger. In the semi-automatic rifle, the trigger must be released, and then pressure reapplied in order to fire. But it can still fire bullets in rapid succession, without taking time to reload. Clearly, semi-automatic weapons were not available when the Constitution was written, and was not used by American militia during the 18th or 19th centuries. And J. Scalia’s statement above that M-16 rifles are not protected under the 2nd Amendment applies to AR-15 rifles as well.
In his decision ruling that the California statute is unconstitutional, Judge Benitez (appointed by George W. Bush) stated:
“Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment. Goof for both home and battel, the AR-15 is the kind of versatile gun that lies at the intersection of the kinds of firearms protected under District of Columbia v. Heller … and U.S. v. Miller. Yet the State of California makes it a crime to have an AR-15 type rifle. Therefore, this Court declares the California statutes to be unconstitutional.”
I believe that J. Benitez’s ruling is clearly contrary to the unambiguous language in J. Scalia’s majority opinion, which stated that semi-automatic weapons like the M-16 are not protected by the 2nd Amendment. Nothing in U.S. v. Miller changes this. In fact, Miller, a 1939 decision by the Supreme Court, alters this. In fact, if anything, it provides additional support for the constitutionality of the California AR-15 ban. In Miller, the S. Ct. sustained the constitutionality of a federal statute which required the registration of 12-gauge shotguns with a barrel less than 18 inches long.
Review of J. Benitez’s decision is currently under review in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and I am cautiously optimistic that his decision will be overturned. In addition, if the plaintiffs in Miller v. Bonta obtained certiorari in the S. Ct., that J,’s Thomas and Alito, if they are intellectually consistent with their concurrences in Heller (a big if?), they will sustain the constitutionality of the AR-15 ban.
Post-script:
The AR16 rifle is another semi-automatic weapon similar to the M16. So a ban on the AR15 should apply with equal force to the AR16.
Correction:
My age is beginning to show. I was off by 10 years. I served my basic training in 1971, during the Vietnam War, not 1981.
There are two alternative interpretations of the passage I quoted above from the Heller decision regarding the kind of weapons whose ownership is protected under the 2nd Amendment: (1) only those kinds of weapons which actually existed when the Constitution was ratified, and which members of militias at that time possessed; (2) kinds of weapons which are actually possessed by citizens currently.
The problem with interpretation (1) is that the majority in Heller clearly held that the ownership of handguns was protected under the 2nd Amendment. Handguns did not exist in the 18th century. Which leaves us with interpretation (2). But that means that the 2nd Amendment protects weapons which are owned by a substantial percentage of American citizens, which changes, and is increasing over time.
This in turn means that as more and more people own AR-15s and other semi-automatic weapons, their right to own them under the 2nd Amendment gets stronger. This in turn entails that if we want to prohibit their ownership, the sooner we act, the better, before a significant percentage of Americans already own them. As of March, 2023, 1 in 20 Americans owned an AR-15 or other semi-automatic weapon. https://thereload.com/poll-one-in-twenty-americans-own-an-ar-15/ We had better pass legislation, either on the federal level or state level soon, before the percentage becomes 1 in 3, or higher. Even if this cannot be accomplished on the federal level, we are still better off banning them on the state level in as many states as possible. Although, as aaall points out, this will not prevent bringing a semi-automatic weapon from a state which does not ban them into a state which does, the more difficult we make it to obtain such weapons, the safer we will all be from the kind of mass shootings which are plaguing this country. (“plagueing” is apparently incorrect) Every state that succeeds in passing such legislation will demonstrate to other states that it can be done.
It may seem a bit absurd to decide what conduct should be protected, and what should be prohibited, based on how many people engage in the conduct in question – the more who engage in it, the greater legal protection it is afforded. I was first exposed to this kind of thinking when I agitated to have an ordinance passed to lower the speed limit on a local street on which a bicyclist had been killed by a motorist. The speed limit was 50 mph. I succeeded in getting the county to conduct a speed study to determine what the appropriate speed should be, thinking that the objective of the study would be to determine what the safest speed was for pedestrians and other motorists. Boy, was I wrong. The purpose of the speed study was to find out the range of speeds which motorists actually used on the street in question, and then set the speed at the median level. What sense did that make, since at the posted speed motorists were already authorized to drive at 50 mph? As it turned out, the median speed was still lower than the posted speed, and the speed was lowered to 25 mph, which, I believe, still saved lives.
Suppose God, in deciding what should be designated as a sin, used a comparable analysis. Then adultery, lying, stealing, cheating and using violence would all pass muster, and only being honest, faithful and peace loving would be designated as sins.
Clarification:
Above I stated that handguns did not exist in the 18th century. I should have more precisely stated that revolver handguns ("six-shooters") did not exist in the 18th century, which are the kind of handguns which have been deemed to be protected under Heller.
The champion of today’s Jeopardy is Prof. Ben Chan, professor of philosophy at St. Norbert College in Green Bay, WI.
Marc,
No news from Professor Wolff for almost a week and he didn't post a notice of a class by zoom on Monday.
Maybe you could write him to see how he is as you did previously.
s. wallerstein,
Good idea. Will do.
I'm sure that all of us are a bit concerned about Professor Wolff's health and that of his wife.
Thanks.
I have sent an email to Prof. Wolff inquiring about his health and will post his response (or he will post his response).
Great. Thanks again.
Prof. Wolff has responded and will be posting again soon. He has been spending time with his son and grandson.
Great!!!
Thank you, Marc.
Marc, baring judicial reform or a timely Act of God, the failure to include semi-automatic rifles in the 1934 law will likely be fatal to any attempt to deal with them now. Heller was convenient in that it allowed for the severing of "bearing arms as a long standing right" from a "militia" connection in a non-state jurisdiction. Handguns qua handguns were convenient but not essential as all "arms" are covered under the decision (the law also covered aspects of long gun ownership and storage). Of course, semi-auto and single shot handguns would also be covered.
Having cleared up the militia issue, incorporating the Second Amendment to the states was next with "keeping" and "bearing" (McDonald/Bruen). Sort of the evil twin of the NAACP/LDF strategy which started with law schools and worked its way down.
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) posted this family Christmas photo:
https://www.reuters.com/resizer/n4tiLLnRV6MjiFWt5oipz6JeVz8=/960x0/filters:quality(80)/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/OXUU3RSEIJJYRDXUWTHAHVTGK4.jpg
Seems he paid $160K for the M60 which is ~ double the current fare. His wife appears to be holding a M1A1 Thompson which usually go for somewhere in the mid-thirties. Heartwarming.
aaall,
I looked at the heartwarming Christmas photo.
This isn't a gun problem. It's a mental health problem.
David Zimmerman,
Erich Fromm has the concept of a sane society and Amerika is definitively not one.
Let's take Nazi Germany: we would not call it sane and yet there is no evidence that there were more people with clinic mental illness there than in, say, Denmark. In fact, the Israeli psychologists who examined Eichmann found him to be clinically "normal", not mentally ill.
So while I was wrong to say that there's a mental health problem, there is a psychic sickness which infects a large portion of Amerikan society, not everyone of course.
I write "Amerika" because since I took Spanish in high school as a teenager and my latina teacher told us that we are all Americans, including Central and South America and that it is offensive to Latinamericans not to include them in the category, I've avoided the use of the word "Americans" to refer to U.S. citizens. In Spanish there is a word "estadounidenses", which refers to them and avoids problems.
D.Z. & s.w., no need to get fancy with our terms. The United states is the only high income nation with a sizeable population that enables folks with mental health issues to easily and impulsively act out with firearms. Conservatives have seized on the "mental health" talking point because that's all they have besides five or six Supremes ("thoughts and prayers" no longer works). Reflection still gets us back to policies and laws that allow civilians to easily acquire certain firearms.
https://www.healthdata.org/sites/default/files/files/ActingOnData/2021/firearm_Page_1.png
Also, it would be nice if voters considered a candidate's judgment when voting for representatives. How stupid do you have to be to advertise on the internet that you own over $200K in automatic weapons?
aaall,
You've probably seen in Leiter that Georgia passed a law allowing people to carry handguns without a license or a background check.
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2023/04/georgia-secedes-from-civilization-fully.html
However, my point above is that there is something "wrong", not morally, but psychicly or spiritually or psychologically, about a family that poses for Christmas all smiling like idiots with an arsenal of military weapons as if they were holding their pet dogs.
There is also something "wrong" in the same hard-to-define sense about voters who elect someone who poses for a Christmas photo with an arsenal as their congressman, not to mention voters who elect Donald Trump as president.
From a clinic standpoint those voters and that family may be less neurotic than I am or than Noam Chomsky is, but there is something "wrong" about a society that produces people like that in mass. I can't define it, but I sense that it is there.
Just to contrast, when General Augusto Pinochet ran in a democratic election, in the 1988 plebiscite (which he lost), he did not pose in uniform with a machine gun or even with a pistol. Rather he took off his uniform, put on a coat and tie and tried, unsuccessfully, to come on as a mellow grandfather type.
Dear S Wallerstein, so you can't imagine why it's so fun to pose as a family with guns and therefore it's wrong?
How about a family posing with cigarettes?
Howard,
I tried to be clear above that I didn't think it was morally wrong, just somehow wrong, "out of joint" as Shakespeare says. Sometimes our categories are not sufficient to describe new phenomenona such as Trump and his supporters.
As for cigarettes, I'm old enough to have grown up in a society where the majority of adults smoked, so posing with cigarettes seems anachronic to me, something which probably occurred in the 1940's and 1950's.
Post a Comment