Firearms related, we are living in a great time in America. America has become more and more firearm friendly with each passing year. And aside from the nay-sayer/fearmongers that hate this current administration, there has been no real movement from the current administration or congress to act on restricting firearms. It has been decades since we have had such significant court ruling such as Mcdonald, and D.C.
First, let me be the first to say how genuinely surreal it is to encounter someone using the name Sylvia Plath on on a gun forum.
You are right, of course. This is an almost golden age for firearms owners. Regrettably, we may one day look back on this time as the "good old days." That is why it is wise to acknowledge the strides we have made, and keep our momentum so that things can only get better.
Beyond our rights, our options and choice as citizens, in terms of the firearms we can buy, is remarkable. I am speaking mainly in terms of the market: polymer carry guns to modern, well-engineered 1911s, to the AR-15 platform and all of the available accessories. It is appropriate to celebrate the ground we've regained.
I think that there is a lot of misinformation, and there are many groups of people who are capitalizing on the instability and flaming fear.
I have always felt that if someone needs to use fear to convince me of something or persuade me to do something, they do not have my best interests in mind. General fear is healthy, and a normal part of the rational human experience. But the level of fear being regurgitated day in and day out on some of these "news" programs is downright disgusting.
I agree with you, but that is you and me. At this point, having watched the actions of our government just over the past ten years, I wonder where the line between fear and vigilance is. Here is something to ponder: if the gun rights movement did not employ fear to motivate its rank-and-file, and as a result we had made no progress, if you had to choose would you rather fear and progress, or even-handedness and stagnation?
One of the things I say to my more liberal friends about the NRA is, that for all of its compromises, overall and in aggregate, the NRA and groups like it, work. I don't personally need "they're coming to get our guns" kind of messaging to be active or principled on this matter, but I suspect - unfortunately - some gun owners do. I wish it were not the case. I wish the movement could be dispassionate or cold even - and equally effective. The NRA, to pick one example, is one of the most feared lobbying organizations in the country. And yet it employs fear, and turns that fear into the juice it has in Washington. Do the ends justify the means? I don't know. My support of the Second Amendment solidified in a left-wing political science department (Rutgers). I realized I didn't trust anyone to make my decisions for me, and I also realized that there were a whole lot of people on the right and left who each insisted they knew what was best for me.
I tend to trust people as individuals. It is when they gather together in groups that they tend to worry me.
I am sure there were many things that were very good "back then." Just as there are many things good at this time.
There was a lot of social turmoil "back then." Brown v. Board Of Education--bad time for black Americans who had to go through the court system to go to, and receive a "white" education. WWII was a very bad time--Pearl Harbor--Hitler, etc. Prior, was that a better time, the Great Depression, WWI? Segregation, women not having a right to vote, slavery. Just when was there a "better time in America?"
I stopped being a conservative and started being a libertarian when I came to understand that it was the principle of liberty as it is which was important to me, and not the mythical and often distorted historical context that mattered. I still think we came out ahead after the 60s. I am glad the civil rights movement happened. I am glad there is no segregation. I am happy feminism happened and the sexual revolution happened. There are many kinds of tyranny over the individual and his or her mind that those who rhapsodize about the good old days don't recognize as such. But I do.
That said, and all due respect paid to this, there are things in the past, taken on their own, that I am nostalgic for. My grandfather's generation (WW2) seemed to have a classiness and principle and sense of community - that part of being an American was benevolence to others - that the modern world seems to be short on (not that it is nonexistent). As for the American Revolution, it is more the Age of Enlightenment and Age of Reason roots which interest me. Cynical historians have attempted to reduce the American Revolution to a kind of temper tantrum about paying taxes, and I have always resented this.
I am not a conservative - I have stated this before. But I share some ground with conservatives on matters mainly of personal honor. Honor is worthwhile because honor is worthwhile, not merely because it is something some people tend to associate with the past. I am more than willing to give aspects of the past a viking funeral - these things would include radial prejudice, slavery, sexism, and so on. I will not shed a tear for them. But the past is a mixture of the good and bad. The challenge is to carry the good with us and celebrate who we were *when we were at our best*, and more importantly - who we can be.
We can be a better nation than we are, and I believe all of us - myself most of all - can be better Americans than we presently are. In order to take proper stock of this, we must of course be concerned with modernity and our deficiencies and virtues measured against the modern world.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying there were not good things in the past, there are many good things. Baby boomers seem to thing that their era was the ideal era and it is not.
Every generation gets a bit silly with nostalgia. I grew up in the 1980s, and I run into people who insist the music was better and politics was better (Reagan) and so on. I don't remember it that way. I remember a shallow culture and bellicose flag-waving, not to mention a spendy government which expanded its powers in terms of the drug war and gun control. I try to be objective.
You know what counts with me most though? Whether people have the capacity to be kind to each other or not. My memory of the 1980s is distorted by having been young, but I keep getting the sense that we live in a nastier culture today. "I" is the most important thing in terms of constituting a government based on rights, but there is also "we" and "us" which forms the armor around our nationhood. I think too many of us are at each others' throats, misconstruing or purposely distorting each other's motivations (my own character has been smeared on this very forum), and not only is this counterproductive in terms of building solidarity among American citizens, but it makes it far more difficult to engage emotionally with my own country.
I am getting to the age where I look back when I was younger and think about "better days." I am only thirty-two, but remember a day when kids would go out and play. The neighborhood that we live in is full of kids who never go outside and play, even during the summer time. Sad.
And I think this is exactly right. I spent a lot of time outside, and then as a teenager riding my bike. Too much time in front of video screens now.
I have really struggled with this nostalgia that has seem to swept up individuals who make up The Tea Party. The Tea Party is a right wing organization who has taken on this idea of going back to a better time.
This is the sense I get too but it varies from place to place. The Tea Party in New Hampshire is my kind of Tea Party.
The single biggest problem on both the right and left is each side tends not to read and critically think about the other side's arguments. Each side begins with the foregone conclusion that the other side is bankrupt, and then each listens to the echo chamber confirming their own prejudices.
Discourse is dead in the United States because of this.