I find myself in the odd position of commenting on one of my own articles. Regular readers know that SMM is not a confessional blog dripping daily with my existential angst. I’ll be frank (who would you like to be?): I generally consider that sort of thing to be far too self-absorbed and doubt that readers are much interested in that sort of navel-gazing. After all, I’m not a big-busted starlet, and I assume, gentle readers, that you have lives that occupy you sufficiently that trying to live vicariously through me is not only unnecessary, but tiring.
This little bit of navel-gazing is occasioned by an article recently published by the good folks at The Truth About Guns, one of the most trafficked gun blogs: “Why It’s So Hard To Discuss Guns Rationally With Some People.”
In essence, the brief article was nothing more than a primer on Progressive/statist philosophy regarding the Second Amendment. I linked to that TTAG article at SMM with “Self-Defense and God.”
Actually, the article contained only a brief reference to God, a reference I naively thought would be non-controversial. Silly me. Here is the offending passage that caused a great many readers to ignore and/or misunderstand the rest of the article, indeed, the point:
The common man isn’t capable of knowing what’s best for them. In order for statism to exist and flourish, individualism and individual rights must be continually diminished. The rights of the individual can’t be allowed to hinder the inevitable growth and power of the state and the wise and benevolent diktats of the elite ruling class. It is this attitude, and the second factor, that allows the progressive/statist to deny that unalienable rights exist. The foremost of unalienable, natural rights is the right to self-defense. Without it, what other right truly matters?
The second factor: a refusal to acknowledge the existence of any power higher than themselves. In essence, they refuse to acknowledge the existence of God. For some, this lack of belief is nothing more than being made uncomfortable by the idea that there is One greater than themselves, than their current maximum, cult-of-personality leader, than the state itself. For others, progressivism/statism takes on all of the characteristics of a religion; it become a matter of unquestionable faith. For such people, believing in God is essentially apostasy.
As it relates to the Second Amendment, these two factors make it not only possible, indeed, mandatory for the progressive/statist to deny the unalienable right to self-defense. If there is no God, the individual human life has only the value recognized by the state at any given moment. The individual exists only in service to the state, and the value of their life is measured by the individual’s adherence to the state’s goals and their usefulness to the elite ruling class. That being the case, there’s nothing particularly unique or precious about any individual, therefore an unalienable right to self-defense is nothing but an annoying impediment to the larger, more important goals of the state.
Help me out here, gentle readers; I need your feedback. In making this point, I was making primary reference to the natural rights argument that inspired our Constitution. Notice that I did not demand anyone believe in God or suggest that if one does not so believe, their arguments are invalidated. Nor do I suggest anywhere in the article that if one is not a believer, they may not support the Second Amendment, or their support is somehow illegitimate or unwelcome.
In the very next paragraph I acknowledged that God need not be involved in this debate to understand progressive/statist thinking:
Indeed, God need not even be involved for the committed statist to deny the existence of any right of self-defense. Any unalienable right is an inherent limitation on the power of the state, and no such limitation can be acknowledged. Whether such rights are bestowed by God or invented as a result of human philosophy matters not. The power of the state cannot be diminished, and if the individual is allowed control over their own existence — if that control is bestowed by God which is far more powerful than the state — the power of the state becomes illegitimate and unquestionably hampered.
In response, “joleme,” whose comment is representative of many, wrote:
Am I wrong in believing “joleme” is reading much more into my argument than is actually there? In fact, I was partially inspired by no less a progressive/statist (/Marxist?) than President Obama himself, who in 2008, speaking to a group of progressive supporters and thinking no “non-believers” would hear him, explained what non-progressives believe, saying:
Credit: riehlworldview.com
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Mr. Obama was referring to small-town Pennsylvanians, and by implication, all Americans living in fly-over country. He was quickly obliged to engage in damage control:
I said something everybody knows is true, which is there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my home town in Illinois, who are bitter,’ he said on a visit to Muncie, Indiana. ‘So I said when you’re bitter, you turn to what you can count on. So people vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community,’ he said. ‘Now, I didn’t say it as well as I should have. If I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that.
So Mr. Obama regretted that people were offended by what everyone—at least all good progressives–knows is true, which is non-progressive, flyover-country Americans are bitter, hate immigrants and foolishly cling to God and guns. If no less an authority on progressive/statist thought than Barack Obama raises the issue of God and guns, linking them, am I constrained from addressing the same?
“Hannibal,” apparently thinking along the lines of Mr. Obama, said:
Did I suggest that one must believe in God in order to “believe in self-defense? I believe I specifically made the opposite point. And on that side, is “Another Robert,” who said:
As I noted in the original article, if God doesn’t exist, the individual life has only the value allowed by the state. But that allowance is not dependent, one way or another, on the existence of God. Man is more than capable of denying the humanity of others, of making some animals more equal than others and therefore more deserving of human rights, and of denying those rights—such as self-defense—and the means to best achieve it, to others without Divine involved of any kind.
Perhaps I needed to provide a variety of disclaimers, to wit:
(1) While I believe in God, I do not in anyway denigrate or look down upon those that do not.
(2) The God-given, natural rights view of unalienable rights is not the only way to understand those rights.
(3) My belief in a God-given right to self-defense is, far from an impediment in securing that right, but an additional and powerful moral argument, but surely one that must be rejected by most progressives/statists.
(4) Religious faith and support for the Constitution are not mutually exclusive, nor must they coincide.
(5) In drawing a parallel between faith in God and faith in government, I make no demand that anyone worship God.
(6) In writing this primer, I do not believe or suggest that this is the only way to understand the thinking of the progressive/statist, merely one way to do so, a way based in the study of the writings of former progressives/statists that have explained their conversions, and on my own observations.
Obviously, many of those commenting made the assumption that because I did not make these specific disclaimers, I must of necessity be arguing that every progressive/statist thinks precisely as I suggested, all supporters of the Second Amendment must be “Bible thumpers,” and if they are not, they are somehow illegitimate, and even the mention of God in this debate is somehow divisive and damaging to the Constitutional, pro-freedom side.
How one may successfully square this with the indisputable fact that totalitarian governments ruthless suppress faith in God as a direct competitor to their legitimacy is anyone’s guess.
It is a source of never-ending fascination that those claiming ownership of tolerance and diversity are so often neither tolerant nor diverse. The consideration of theology is surely a legitimate topic of debate, for it encompasses the very nature of Man and of his obligations and rights. There can be no doubt that many, probably most, progressives/statists are irreligious. They admit as much, many indignantly and proudly. That state of belief is not an accident, and it has consequences, not only for personal philosophy, but for public policy. One need not be a Christian to aspire to live a moral life, or to fully support the Constitution, but when one considers the alternatives, it is arguably helpful, for freedom of all kinds—not merely religion—flourishes in free societies and is ruthlessly eradicated in tyrannies.
What’s that you say? You’re not a Christian but you believe there is an unalienable right to self-defense and fully support the Second Amendment? Good for you. Welcome to the team and have a comfortable seat on the bandwagon. We’ll begin and sustain our relationship on that basis, and if, someday, you are moved to discuss faith, I’ll be willing. Until that time, I’ll not raise the issue or try to impose my belief on you—actually I’ll never do that; it’s not Christianity–trusting that the way I live my life will be testimony enough, and a better persuader.
So, gentle readers, what do you think? Did I provide a useful analysis of political thought, or am I an intolerant Bible thumper alienating potential allies?
Stately McDaniel Manor 
Meh.
I suspect that those who protest the loudest are merely projecting their own biases toward people of faith, as well as their own crises of confidence in their own beliefs.
Personally, I am of the C.S. Lewis school of thought: without a Supreme Moral Being, the very concept of morality is a fiction, and therefore the very idea of individual freedom is likewise a fiction. If we are all merely products of chance and natural selection, then we are no better than our instincts, for there is nothing greater to which to aspire.
Without a Supreme Moral Being, morality is merely a coincidental human fabrication. Thus, if one does not believe in God, in order to be intellectually honest, one must ascribe to Nihilism. There are no natural “rights”, because to define a “right” would be to create an unnatural limit on the machinations of instinct and natural selection.
Sorry, atheists. You don’t get to have it both ways. Natural rights are derived from God, and from God alone. God defines right and wrong, and God bestows intrinsic, sacred value upon humans.
Omnipotent.
Omniscient.
All Good (we think, at least).
Sorry deists, but those three ideals can’t exist as described from current written collections. This would means He knew Adam and Eve would break His word, dooming them and mankind following them to whatever concoction of punishment He saw fit for a no win situation He knew He would create. This gets repeated at least one other time in the Bible on a grand scale, and a few times on a smaller, because His own creations (even the ones without free will) some how defied Him and hung out with us rather than whatever parallel dimension they might exist in.
To further complicate this issue of free will is the issue of Moses and the Pharaoh. I mean seriously, why harden his heart if the goal is for us to get a sympathetic audience to leave, and if Pharaoh has free will, how is it moral for a Supreme Moral Being to change his mind for him.
Funny thought, a Supreme Immoral Being might accomplish the same things as a Moral one.
You completely misunderstand that passage.Pharaoh’s heart was already hardened; he had already made up his mind. So God respected Pharaoh’s free will.
You mention free will, but you completely ignore the logical consequences of it.
As parents, we love for our children and want them to love us. But unless they have free will to chose *not* to love us, then they can never truly love us. Love must be freely given, not demanded nor compelled like a manipulator controlling the actions of a marionette.
Yes, God knew that Adam and Eve would sin. But that’s the price of free will, isn’t it? It’s a principle that plays out almost daily between parent and child. We know they’re going to make a mistake, and yet we let them. Not because we don’t love them, but because we do love them. We understand that they must learn to exercise their free will in a mature, responsible manner – something they can’t do unless they learn how to do so, through their failures.
But God did something that we as parents can never do: he bore the eternal consequences of our own sin. He came to earth and died for us.
Greater love has no man than this: that he lay his life down for his friends.
“.Pharaoh’s heart was already hardened; he had already made up his mind. So God respected Pharaoh’s free will.” — Not quite… It started off as such, but then….
Exodus 11:10
“Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his country.”
Exodus 9:12
“And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he listened not to them; as the LORD had spoken to Moses.”
(biblehub.com/exodus/9-12.htm for various alternate translations and interpretations)
“But unless they have free will to chose *not* to love us, then they can never truly love us. Love must be freely given, not demanded nor compelled like a manipulator controlling the actions of a marionette.” — so then a punishment need not be applied, either, otherwise its still a bribe or a demand. Its not ‘free’ will if there is a consequence.
Thanks for confirming that you are neither serious nor sincere; it will save me from wasted time and effort discussing the topic with you.
Free will does not negate the consequences of the actions of the one exercising that free will. If you jump off of the Golden Gate Bridge, the consequences are both known and inevitable, due to the law of gravity and the surface tension of water. Parents use discipline (of which punishment is but a small subset) to teach their children to understand the existence of consequences (both positive and negative) external to, but resulting from, their actions, and to evaluate their actions in light of those consequences before they choose to act.
No rebuttal about the scripture? Pity.
Chip, when you discuss punishments from rules being broken and gravity doing its thing, that’s all well and good, but I am not talking about touching the stove or not going to bed when dad says to.
Love me, or burn in Hell. Can you honestly say that love is freely given, that there are no strings of a puppeteer when that is the criteria? ” Love must be freely given, not demanded nor compelled like a manipulator controlling the actions of a marionette.” Then you cannot in turn punish some one for not loving you. Under threat of Hellfire, love me. You cannot ‘freely’ give something under that.
RoO, you forgot “sovereign” and “inscrutable”. Created beings inherently don’t have the standing or capacity to form legitimate criticism of their creator. In scripture an analogy is made to clay criticizing the potter, in Isaiah 45:9, Isaiah 29:16, Jeremiah 18:1-11, and Romans 20:21.
Theology is fun, but remember it’s a serious field which has been pondered by some of history’s greatest minds. It’s not going to be undone in a paragraph.
He is beyond reproach because He gave me a book saying He is.
Cool story. To clarify, here is the argument I am coming from: Omnipotent. Omniscient. All Good (we think, at least). Sorry deists, but those three ideals can’t exist as described from current written collections.
I am not saying He doesn’t exist. Only that what we are lead to believe through what written works we have now doesn’t add up. If anything, this particular ball of dirt strikes me as a combination of petri dish and group psychological experiment, neither of which are being cultured and conducted for our overall benefit. Were I a timeless, ageless, omnipotent, (sort of) omniscient, entity I would crave attention on my level to be engaged, not blind adoration brought about from parlor tricks, or the treat of an eternal torture for not blindly adoring me. If anything, I feel that is what our time here is for. At some point in the distant future, He will finally have a playmate that is not something He conjured up, our collective accomplishments as a specie will finally put us on some level of interaction that is more meaningful than flaming bush or voice from the clouds.
Mike, I think we all too much ignore the ‘condition whiters’, who live out their lives in the paradigm of a world of safety and police protection. God may be part of their lives but they’re never around guns. “Gun Free” zones give them an extra feeling of security, as in their mind of social contract everyone is abiding the rule, period, don’t even have to think about it. I lived that for more than fifty years. These are not progressives or statists. They are more worker bees just trying to earn their living and have something for old age.
A single, even small, event can rattle this ‘mind innocence’. In my case it was a home burglary, in which our home was broken into and thieves ransacked the place, taking several valuables, etc. Subtly and suddenly all that was inviolate was now vulnerable.
For condition whiters people don’t come into your house and steal things. They don’t do that, you know they do that and that’s why you buy alarm systems, etc., but not to me. My belief or non-belief in God notwithstanding, the world lost it’s ‘white’ status that day permanently. Started to anyway, was a slow and long transition.
Having read a substantial amount of your musings, I found your ‘God’ article rational, insightful, and interesting/entertaining, as I find most of your blogging. Feel like I know where you’re coming from possibly a little more than some of the commenters that followed that TTAG article. It’s my belief that there’s a massive set of people that don’t get accounted for in this discussion. They would be more concerned about accidental discharges and ‘knuckleheads with guns’ that might shoot in anger during an escalated argument but are otherwise ‘good people’, than they are about active shooter events. They sit at dinner after watching news reports about Sandy Hook and play the “Ain’t it Awful” game, and then move on back to their condition white world. They never have to worry about self-defense, it’s just not necessary.
Until it is….
Mr McDaniel,
What you wrote is accurate. The reason for their venom is simple: The progressives/socialists do not believe in Liberty. They can’t be superior if God created every one equally. They are entitled to have armed security, but not the rest of us. They are entitled to be rich but not the rest of us.
Keep fighting the good fight…and keep your powder dry.
Dear Phil:
Thanks, and I’ll do my best.
Mike,
I have been struck by the general aggressive resentment and willful ignorance about religion which pops up in public discourse. There’s a type of evangelical atheist who can’t tolerate the mildest mention of God.
Any discussion of natural rights, human dignity, or moral absolutes is incomplete — if not totally baseless — without mentioning God. Jefferson didn’t hesitate to mention the Creator in the Declaration of Independence, John Locke’s philosophy wasn’t barred from the creation of our country because of its religious perspective. St. Thomas of Aquinas’ explanation of the theory of double effect as he applied it to justified killing is still the moral basis of self defense law.
Your mention of God is appropriate, in my opinion. Excluding any mention of God from the gun rights (or any other rights) debate only serves the cause of moral relativism.
Dear Joey Miller:
Well said; thanks!
” There’s a type of evangelical atheist who can’t tolerate the mildest mention of God.”
Remember the ‘You didn’t build that’ speech? How aggravated people got that the president could even hint at the possibility that their success was not entirely of their own doing?
Now imagine how pissed off some one would be if you told them ‘You’re free because of something you don’t believe in’, and more over, your proof of the matter hinges on YOUR faith, not theirs. Nothing you have is because its self actualized, or part of a social contract, or inherent to a just and noble society, it came from a supernatural entity you don’t believe in.
Your God given right to self defense came from Horus. Don’t resent this, he is a well known deity of defense, and your personal patron for such endeavors.
RoO, I’m not religious. Neither do I view the religious beliefs or disbelief of others as aggravating. It does not piss me off that other people disagree with me, and a mention of religious belief does not compel me to the strange, antisocial, uncivil habit of “evangelical atheists” to exploit every opportunity to derail the conversation into low-level bickering. Personally, I believe that this sort of socially oblivious behavior is linked to the prevalence of autism-spectrum disorders.
Religion is a human phenomenon which is present in every culture. Christianity has enormous relevance in Western civilization including America. Being familiar with Christianity, and being able to discuss things with Christians, is part of cultural literacy here.
Your view of religion is just fine, but to put a bow on it. A pal of mine paraphrased the situation as God not offending him, the kicker is that he has to cater to what others believe. Telling some one their rights derive from a deity rather being self evident falls in that scope.
Dear RuleofOrder:
Remember, I noted quite clearly that one need not believe in God to believe that human beings have an unalienable right to self-defense. While I believe that God bestows such rights, and is the Creator, and that belief in him and working every day to live as He would wish gives purpose and meaning to life, as Thomas Jefferson said, it neither breaks anyone’s nose or picks their pocket that I hold such beliefs, and it harms me not that others do not. No one must cater to anyone–in America–where religion is concerned.
“It does not piss me off that other people disagree with me”
That is the essence if Liberty. You understand that your rights can only be sustained if you respect the rights of others. You are free to listen to any music that you choose, but the volume at which you listen is limited by your neighbors right to some peace and quiet.
Too many people still fail to understand that the progressives/socialists HATE the whole concept of Liberty. They can’t be special if everyone is equal. They are not misguided or misinformed. They are enemies of Liberty and therefore of the US Constitution. This hatred of Liberty explains most of what Pres Obama has done.
Do not underestimate them.
Dear Phil:
What you said.