Friday, July 23, 2010

Interesting piece: Donald Berwick, the Pro-Gun Control Lobby, and Paternalism

So why do the health care and the gun control statists persist in their wrong views despite the evidence to the contrary? As writer Ayn Rand once noted, “the trouble is not in the nonsense they accept, but in what makes them accept it.” In this case, the statists are driven by a fundamentally flawed view of human nature.

Like Berwick, many gun control advocates disdain the rationality of ordinary men. As Jeffrey Snyder observed in “Fighting Back: Crime, Self-Defense, and the Right to Carry a Handgun“:

…[P]roponents of the “Dodge City” argument can only believe that common, ordinary law-abiding citizens are seething cauldrons of homicidal rage, ready to kill to avenge any slight to their dignity, eager to seek out and summarily execute the lawless. Only lack of immediate access to a gun restrains them and prevents the blood from flowing in the streets. They are so morally and mentally deficient that they will readily mistake their permit to carry a weapon in self-defense as a state-sanctioned license to kill at will. … People are basically accidents or crimes waiting to happen.

In contrast,

Supporters of shall-issue licensing laws … [hold] a decidedly different view of their fellow citizens — namely, that they are not creatures driven by impulse and desire but are entitled to the trust properly accorded a moral and rational being capable of exercising judgment and self-control. Supporters of shall-issue licensing laws implicitly believe that a person’s character and actions do not fundamentally change merely because he has a tool at hand with which he can more perfectly and readily act on his fleeting impulses and desires. … [P]ermitting them to carry a firearm (which they already have the de facto ability to do) will not change their character or fundamental nature or their actions.

In other words, both the gun control statists and the health care statists believe that we are fundamentally irrational creatures incapable of managing our lives. Hence, the government must restrict our freedoms for our own good.

The statists’ paternalistic view of human nature also explains their constant double-standards. Men like Berwick believe they are qualified to impose draconian rules over the citizenry, because we cannot make such decisions for ourselves. But as the wiser “leaders,” they need not follow the same rules themselves.

Hence, Berwick has exempted himself from his own Medicare restrictions. Similarly, many of the strongest opponents of gun rights have no qualms about using their political “pull” to enable themselves and their cronies to carry guns for self-protection.

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