Demosophia

"Bearing Arms"

Someone from the anti-American left in England recently had this to say about the current goings-on in Iran, thinking she was making a concession:

If the Iranian people decide for themselves that they want a different society, and manage to create it without a civil war or any other kind of war, then great.

In other words, as long as the US doesn't get involved and as long as no one has to fight for anything a pro-Democracy movement would get grudging support, though not much respect.

This attentiveness of the left to the concept of "national sovereignty" struck me as out of whack, not just because it's inconsistent with the universalism of the socialist ideal, but because it doesn't really seem to understand the concept of sovereignty at all. The person who uttered this statement, by the way, doesn't seem to have nearly as much aversion to "civil war" if it's some sort of insurgency against "US Imperialism." And the more I thought about it the more I began to see the linkages between this neglect of individual sovereignty in favor of state sovereignty, and a general theme. It seems to have more in common with the "states rights" arguments of the Copperheads during the Civil War and the Jim Crow era, as well as current "enlightened" attitudes about "gun control," than it does with genuine liberalism. My guess (and it's no more than that) isthat the attitude rests on a bias that says that individual sovereignty must have relatively little value, because it's... well, an individual value. How could it possibly amount to much as a contribution to broader social value?

A recent survey of habitual criminals in the US indicated that what these law-breakers fear most isn't the police, but armed civilians. The notion that the people they're used to predating with impunity might be carrying a concealed firearm gives them the heebie-jeebies, as well it should. An armed citizenry not only raises the price of predation for criminals (especially if "concealed carry" raises the level of uncertainty about who might be armed), but it also fundamentally changes the relationship between the individual and the state, since citizens who assume part of the responsibility for their own protection no longer tend to see the state as the sole source of honey in the rock.

The argument for gun control is that it reduces a criminal's access to guns. I'd certainly prefer that no criminals had them. And it's probably true that there's a kind of "arms race" between the population/police and criminals that's fed by the availability of firearms. But the social contract that excludes firearms from the general public is no longer working, even in places that were the bastion of such "civilizing" laws, as the UK. The "solution" to crime is complex, but the key involves creating and maintaining intact families. (See Fukuyama, Armor, etc..) And disarming a poor population of law-abiding people in the inner cities is about that last thing you'd want to do to provide families with the security they need. So to reduce crime in the inner city one needs to, at least, raise the cost of predation to potential predators. But one also needs to increase the value of individual sovereignty, because only in that way do you make the value of opposing crime worth the price. Oppositon to crime, like oppostion to oppression, isn't costless.

Inner city gangs would start to evaporate if the citizens were armed, which of course puts the lie to left's whole "haves vs. have nots" nonsense. A good "concealed carry" law in the inner city would devastate the gangs, because there are a lot more law abiding people than gang members. And as families stabilize and children are nurtured by better home enivronments that value individual sovereignty, the enclaves of poverty would, themselves, begin to shrink.

But the inner city isn't the only place that cultivates social disruption. There's an analog with the "community of nations" as well. Citizens of free, law abiding, and prosperous societies have more to lose from criminal predation, but they also have greater resistance to predatory ideologies like Salafism and Qutbism, because they are able to maintain more individual integrity, rather than drawing their sense integrity and identity from the group. Citizens of such states also make better warriors, and contrary to conventional wisdom, are more willing and better able to fight to maintain their individual sovereignty. They are, however, generally more reluctant to choose violence as the initial resolution of disputes, again because they have more to lose. They prefer adjudication, and generally fight only when attacked.

And that's, ironically, one of the main reasons for the opposition to the Bush doctrine in the US and Europe. The doctrine has not been well explained or justified as an essentially defensive posture. (For a far better exposition of this reasoning than you're likely to see on the lips of any administration official see Armed Liberal's recent post on Winds of Change.) Such a policy is designed not to increase but to diminish long term violence (and not necessarily by the terrorists or terror states, either). The ultimate objective is to reduce the likelihood and necessity of our response, which has far more destructive potential than theirs.

Sovereignty is really the objective, and where national sovereignty impedes individual sovereignty don't expect the US to give the former much respect. We're finally getting our priorities straight. Now we need to do a little teaching and selling.

Posted by Demosophist at February 5, 2004 01:48 PM | TrackBack