#474: What Would King Say?

      Had he lived, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have turned 90 this past week.  As the nation celebrates his birthday, it is easy to honor King as a champion of civil rights, perhaps even easy to note that in 2019 America risks losing some of the gains he championed. 

But it is much harder for us to actually honor him as our national prophet--as America’s conscience--because that means honoring all the causes he stood for.  And those causes taken together, have not merely lost ground; they have nearly disappeared from our public discourse. 

Let me survey what King called the “three great evils,” and ask two questions: What would King say now?  And: Who in our public life still speaks for King? 

Racial Injustice.  Most celebrations honoring King focus on him as leader of the civil rights movement.  And surely a key message in his mission was that people be judged not “by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” By 1968 King had witnessed many gains, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  And since then, African-Americans have continued many gains. 

Still, were King alive today he might well say that too often people continue to be judged by the color of their skin, whether in efforts to suppress black votes, or in cases of police shooting unarmed Blacks, or in the rollback of the Voting Rights Act itself. 

And more recently the challenge of accepting people of color has increasingly focused, not only on the descendants of slaves, but also on immigrants and their children (indeed, our first Black president was the son of an immigrant, not the descendant of slaves).  And while King did not face the same issues over immigration that we face now, it’s easy to know what he might say--in fact he already actually said it:

“We may all have come from different ships, but we're in the same boat now."

Indeed, by the end of his career King would be increasingly clear that the evil of racism was not just a problem for U.S. blacks, but for all those oppressed by others:

“In one sense the civil rights movement in the United States is a special American phenomenon which must be understood in the light of American history and dealt with in terms of the American situation. But on another and more important level, what is happening in the United States today is a relatively small part of a world development.”

Looking around today, King might well say we remain far from fulfilling the goal of racial justice for all.

Inequality.  In later years King spoke more and more about economic inequality.  He often called it “poverty,” since up to 1968 the middle class was still gaining in wages and benefits, so it made sense to focus on those below the poverty line.  But since King’s death, the U.S. has seen nearly 50 years of steadily declining real wages even for the middle class, and we now see a wealth gap worse than any time since the great depression of the 1930s.  So when King spoke of poverty, he said:

“Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.”

This question of a “broader distribution of wealth” has changed since his death, with fewer below the poverty line but more struggling to make ends meet as wealth has been even more concentrated.  This makes King’s view not less, but even more timely.  Today he would surely repeat these words:

“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children... God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty.”

War. King lost many supporters and became an even more controversial figure when he campaigned against the Vietnam War.  Even other civil rights leaders felt this was not his role.  But they did not realize that, for King, this was the inevitable result of his own growing vision. 

Once he decided that nonviolence was the key to fighting racism, and once he incorporated the theories of Gandhian nonviolence into his own Christian theology, that naturally altered his views on war, as he moved from a “just war” perspective to pacifism.  He called this his “pilgrimage to nonviolence”:

“I felt that while war could never be a positive good, it could serve as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force. War, horrible as it is, might be preferable to surrender to a totalitarian system. But now I believe that the potential destructiveness of modern weapons totally rules out the possibility of war ever again achieving a negative good.”

Indeed, King seemed to know that without a concerted anti-war strategy, the threat of mass destruction would spread.  Today’s worries about North Korea, Iran, and the U.S. abandoning the INF treaty all echo King’s warning:

“Nations are not reducing but rather increasing their arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The best brains in the highly developed nations of the world are devoted to military technology. The proliferation of nuclear weapons has not been halted…On the contrary, the detonation of an atomic device by the first nonwhite, non-Western, and so-called underdeveloped power, namely the Chinese People’s Republic, opens new vistas of exposure of vast multitudes, the whole of humanity, to insidious terrorization by the ever-present threat of annihilation.”

When accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King made his rejection of militarism clear:

“I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear annihilation... I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow... I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed.”

I have no doubt that he would say matters now have only become worse.  Since 9/11 the U.S. has engaged in multiple, seemingly endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere. And unlike the Vietnam era, these wars are not even especially controversial.  In the 1960s a band of public leaders loudly opposed U.S. war policy: King, Robert F. Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, and many others.  In 2019, who are the public leaders opposing our warlike foreign policy? 

Yet our troop deployments and arms sales (not to mention defense pending) far outstrip all other nations.  It is as if Americana have accepted that war is inevitable and peace is impossible. King would disagree:

“World peace through non-violent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Non-violence is a good starting point.”

For Catholics today, King’s views are important for three reasons. 

First, his views on race, economic inequality, and peace fit almost exactly with Catholic Social Teaching of the last 50 years--especially with the teachings of the last four popes.  You can look it up! 

Second, King agrees with the Church that these three issues are linked:

“We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together…you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others…the whole structure of American life must be changed.”

Third, King’s vision of the contemporary world exactly matches the Catholic vision emerging from Vatican Council II (1962-1965).  The Council saw technological progress as the hallmark of modern life, and praised such progress but offered this caution: technological progress confers new power, but the good use of that power requires a matching progress in wisdom and goodness. 

Here is how King saw the same “moral lag”:

“Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this.”

For King, as for Vatican II, this “moral lag” is at the root of what he calls the world’s three great evils:

“This problem of spiritual and moral lag, which constitutes modern man’s chief dilemma, expresses itself in three larger problems which grow out of man’s ethical infantilism. Each of these problems, while appearing to be separate and isolated, is inextricably bound to the other. I refer to racial injustice, poverty, and war.”

And for King, as for Vatican II, the challenge lies in our moral progress catching up to our technological progress:

“Mankind’s survival is dependent upon man’s ability to solve the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war; the solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon man squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress, and learning the practical art of living in harmony”

Based on his own words, then, King’s voice still speaks to our time, much the way Catholic Social Teaching does.  Taken together, they represent our brightest wisdom and our clearest hope--but who will champion of such vision? 

On a day when many seek to fence in King’s legacy to narrow questions of race, we should rededicate ourselves to his broader cause of waging nonviolent combat against racism, inequality, and militarism. 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2019

#455: What Would a “Trump America” Be Like?

Base on Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, it is possible to project the impact of his proposed policies on American Life.

 I have decided to try a thought experiment.  I’ll assume Donald trump is a serious political leader.  I will assume he wins November’s election.  I will assume he follows through on his acceptance speech agenda. I will even assume he is successful in implementing his proposed policies. These are all big “ifs,” but they allow us to imagine America under the leadership of Donald Trump, and to compare that image with Catholic Social Teaching.

Based on Trump’s own words, we can expect the following;

In Foreign Policy: We can expect less war and occupation aimed at nation building and regime change.  We can also expect more war against ISIS and other terrorist organizations, and more conflict with Iran.  We can expect special support for Israel, with no stated concern for the Palestinians or their supporters. 

We can expect expanded defense spending to “rebuild our depleted military.” We can expect a trade war with China. 

The first of these expectations is clearly in line with Catholic Social Teaching, as almost all Catholic leaders opposed the invasion of Iraq and other similar attempts at regime change or nation building.  All the other elements are more or less in conflict with Catholic Social Teaching, which has expressed concern for the Palestinian people, and shown a preference for diplomatic agreements (like the one with Iran) over confrontation. 

Catholic Social Teaching has also long shown a major concern for the relation between the advanced industrial nations and the developing world. On this significant issue, Trump was totally silent during his speech. His “America First” agenda is concerned about globalization’s impact, not on developing nations, but only on the US.

On Public Safety and Social Harmony: Based on Trump’s “Law and Order” rhetoric, we can expect more emphasis on police power and its militarization, with no attention to the problem of excessive police force.  Trump also expressed no particular concern about (let alone a solution) for the continuing problem of mass incarceration. 

We can expect some kind of ban on immigrants (and even tourists from France?) from many countries, based either on their faith or on some other type of profiling.  We can expect to see a “Fortress America” with a wall along its southern border, and tightly guarded entry from all sources.  We can expect that many families would be torn apart by deportations due to visa problems and undocumented legal status. 

We can expect full support for the expansion of gun ownership and markets under Trump, who boasted of his support from the National Rifle Association.  We can expect churches to have a tax-exempt license to engage in partisan politics.  And we can expect the culture war issues to be largely ignored, with the possible exception of LGBTQ rights. 

On nearly all of these issues Catholic Social Teaching takes positions significantly different from Trump’s.  This is especially true with regard to Trump’s positions on immigration, as shown by the recent verbal clash between Trump and Pope Francis regarding the U.S.-Mexican border, in which Francis proclaimed that it was “not Christian” to build walls preventing migration. The Church regards migration “for a better life” as a human right, a concept unknown to Trump based on his words.

On Economics.  Trump proposed reducing taxes for everyone.  Thus we can expect that (1) rich Americans will pay less tax, and that (2) income inequality will become even worse than it is now.

We can expect that markets will be unchecked under a president committed to growth at all costs.  We can also expect unchecked industrial practices under a president who opposed regulations.  Finally, we can expect exploding carbon emissions once Trump “lifts restrictions” on energy businesses and coal, oil, fracking, and nuclear energy go unregulated (while renewable like sources like wind, solar, etc got no mention).  We can expect worsened environmental damages and pollution in the absence of regulations on environmental impacts.

All this flies against Catholic Social Teaching’s long-standing critique of “unbridled capitalism,” its calls for income equality and even the redistribution of wealth (Pope Francis labels income inequality “the worst of all social ills”), and conflicts as well with its more recent support  for environmentalism as “care of creation.”

On Climate Change.  In his acceptance speech, Trump was totally silent about climate change; on other occasions, he has been a climate change denier.  So we can expect, not only little US initiative to combat and adapt to climate change, but we can even expect the promotion of policies that will accelerate climate change, such as the removal of restrictions on energy practices.  This is clearly contrary to Catholic Social Teaching in general and to the specific concerns of Pope Francis in his major encyclical “Laudato Si,” in which he linked climate change to nearly all global and social unrest, including global poverty and terror.

On Social Welfare and the Safety Net: Trump said almost nothing about policies regarding jobs, student debt, poverty, crime, mass incarceration, social security, etc.  But his speech implied, and earlier speeches have made explicit, that he expects an unregulated market to generate “trillions of dollars” in a free market expansion that would automatically fix all these problems.  In short, Trump presents himself not as a neo-conservative, not as a neo-liberal, but as a classic laissez-faire liberal capitalist, who expects the unbridled forces of the market to resolve all social problems. Catholic Social Teaching, meanwhile, has long rejected this idea, which Pope Francis himself has referred to as a fraud.

On the Supreme Court: Trump has promised to name strict constructionists to the Supreme Court, so we can imagine the likely outcome: a SCOTUS more conservative than any we’ve had in our lifetime.  From the point of view of Catholic Social Teaching, this would be a mixed blessing, raising the prospect of the reversal of Roe V Wade, but at the same time holding the prospect of many decisions inhibiting the advancement of a freer, more just society.

In short, the American we can imagine under Trump mixes a few ideas congenial to Catholic Social Teaching (he is less combative about international relations), some other issues where he simply remains silent (like climate change, income inequality, and third world development), and many more issues where his position conflicts implicitly or explicitly with Catholic Social Teaching. 

Personally, I believe my assumptions at the outset are highly problematic.  I do not find Trump a serious leader, I do not expect him to win, I doubt that he would succeed in achieving his goals even if he actually pursued them.  Yet it is still instructive to understand exactly what the man is proposing for our country, and how it fits--or does not fit--with the propositions of our faith. 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2016

#453: To Honor the Dead: Pursue Peace—or Perpetual War?

I could not avoid a strong sense of irony during the week leading into Memorial Day 2016.

Last week saw President Obama’s appearance at Hiroshima, a report on US-Russia-China nuclear talks, a trade opening to Vietnam, and my personal viewing of two movies about bombing: “Children of Nagasaki” and “Eye in the Sky.”

The observation of Memorial Day itself remains full of irony, inasmuch as the original practice of the holiday promised a different message.  At first “Decoration Day” aimed only to honor the fallen Union Soldiers of the Civil War, but the actual observances soon included decorating graves of Confederate soldiers as well, even though many southern states kept a separate holiday for this purpose. Then, after World War I, the focus enlarged again to include all fallen America soldiers in any war.

The irony is that, while this history acknowledged the dead on both sides of the Civil War, no other war gets the same recognition. The assumption is that the Civil War is unique because, even though they fought for two separate countries under two different flags, the dead on both sides were Americans. In short, only American lives matter on Memorial Day. “Enemy” lives from other wars do not--nor do civilian lives (the so-called “collateral damage") that typically outnumber military deaths in modern war.

"Collateral" remains

Had Memorial Day’s focus enlarged further to remember all war dead, it might have become our national day for reflecting on the tragic loss of tens of millions of lives in wars world-wide since the Civil War. Instead, it has become a patriotic celebration in which we remember only the service of soldiers, and only US soldiers. The focus is less on the tragedy of war and more on glorifying the sacrifice of our warriors. Instead of citizens wearing poppy pins or black armbands to remember war’s fallen, we see ballplayers wearing camouflage on their baseball caps.

 But the chief irony came from President Obama himself, when he spoke at Hiroshima and called the atom bombing symbolic of the risks contained in humanity’s technological leap forward:

In the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction; how the very spark that marks us as a species -- our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our tool-making, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will -- those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction…
The wars of the modern age teach this truth.  Hiroshima teaches this truth.  Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us.  The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution, as well. 

I find this statement true, and important, but also ironic, for two reasons. 

First, because its message is nearly identical to the message delivered by Vatican Council II (1962-1965). Surveying the signs of the times to reset a vision for the future of the Catholic Church in the world, the Council called for wisdom sources to keep pace with modern technological power, to harness that power for good:

The modern world shows itself at once powerful and weak, capable of the noblest deeds or the foulest; before it lies the path to freedom or to slavery, to progress or retreat, to brotherhood or hatred…

Man judges rightly that by his intellect he surpasses the material universe, for he shares in the light of the divine mind. By relentlessly employing his talents through the ages he has indeed made progress…especially in his probing of the material world and in subjecting it to himself. Still he has always searched for more penetrating truths, and finds them...

The intellectual nature of the human person is perfected by wisdom and needs to be…

Our era needs such wisdom more than bygone ages if the discoveries made by man are to be further humanized. For the future of the world stands in peril unless wiser men are forthcoming.

So Obama’s point is well made, but more than 50 years later, and one can argue that those 50 years technological power has remained largely unchecked by wisdom, without much concern about steering that power in the right direction.

This problem is particularly acute if we talk about the role of the United States: are we helping wisdom to keep pace by promoting peace, or aiding runaway power in the form of perpetual war? Thus the second irony: the president’s good message risks contradicting many of his own administration’s policies

For example, the latest “START” deal to limit nuclear may do quite the opposite, as the New York Times recently reported:

The United States, Russia and China are now aggressively pursuing a new generation of smaller, less destructive nuclear weapons. The buildups threaten to revive a Cold War-era arms race and unsettle the balance of destructive force among nations that has kept the nuclear peace for more than a half-century.

In fact, the US is expected to "revitalize" its nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years at the cost of up to $1 trillion!

Moreover, the Times reported last week that a new Pentagon census of the US nuclear arsenal reveals that “Mr. Obama has reduced the size of the nation’s nuclear stockpile at a far slower rate than did any of his three immediate predecessors, including George Bush and George W. Bush.”

Also last week, the process of normalizing relations with Vietnam took a similar turn. President Obama announced that the US is lifting its decades-long embargo on military arms sales to Vietnam, saying: “The decision to lift the ban…was based on our desire to complete what has been a lengthy process of moving toward normalization with Vietnam.”

 This strikes me as a devil’s bargain: achieving further reconciliation with our former enemy at the cost of feeding the proliferation of arms in Southeast Asia.  But this of course promotes and extends America’s longtime role as the #1 arms dealer in the world.

None of these events mark America as a country dedicated to promoting peace.  Rather, they seem to reflect a belief in either the necessity or even the virtue of perpetual warfare.  At best this means that America is resigned to violent responses to violence around the world rather than leading us in a different direction.  At worst it means that we embrace the grip of violence because it is profitable for us.  As Pope Francis explained to schoolchildren visiting the Vatican last spring: "Many powerful people don't want peace because they live off war."

During Obama’s visit to Hiroshima, the media rehashed the old debate about the wisdom of dropping atomic bombs on Japanese cities. Most mainstream media admitted that the decision remains controversial, yet implied a near-consensus that the bombings saved lives by avoiding an invasion. 

There is of course no way to resolve the dispute because there’s no way to prove an alternative history that never occurred.  But these facts are true: (1) both General MacArthur and General Eisenhower declared the bomb unnecessary; (2) the Japanese with the high command was prepared to surrender if the emperor’s role was preserved; (3) the US instead insisted on “unconditional surrender,” which was a deal breaker; (4) after surrender, the emperor was protected anyhow. Arguably, then, an invasion was not necessary, except for American stubbornness. (See: http://swaincrosscurrents.blogspot.com/2015/08/ivespent-last-week-reflecting-on-70-th.html )

But the debate about Hiroshima and Nagasaki will continue because of two distinct moral views about the use of violence.  In one view (championed by the majority of characters in the new movie “Eye in the Sky”), killing, even at the cost of innocent lives, can be justified on the speculation that such killing will save more lives.  The other view (the minority view in the movie) is that the ends do not justify the means, that one must not kill innocents even in the hope of saving other lives. 

In the first view, it is numbers that count: “The greatest good for the greatest number.” In the second view, it is intention and virtue that counts: “Do no harm,” even if one risks great sacrifice.  In the movie, these two views clash over the life of a single innocent girl.  But in real life, these two views may be the difference between policies of perpetual warfare and policies that move, however achingly, toward peace.

One “survivor” of the Nagasaki bombings (who later died of radiation sickness) wrote in 1946 about the experience of his family. His story, in its homespun, almost dull way, reflects the kind of fervent commitment to peace that has kept Japan free of nuclear weapons and strictly limited its military spending.

 But his memoirs did not appear for 20 years after World War II because the American “occupational censors” would not allow their publication. And the movie version of his “Children of Nagasaki” could not be made for 20 more years, finally appearing in 1983.  The irony here: the movie’s delay enabled the director, like the original writer a dedicated Catholic, to include footage of John-Paul II visiting Hiroshima to proclaim Catholicism’s anti-nuclear principles.

The censorship of this story, like last week’s opposition to any US apology for the bombings, reflects how the world’s most powerful nation continues to avoid acknowledging its part in the global devastation that marked most of the 20th century.  And we continue to pretend that we are not responsible for massive killings in the 21st century.

And so as Memorial Day arrives, we wave our flags and salute our soldiers and remember their service and sacrifice and feel proud of our nation.  We see little mention of the 140,000 who died at Hiroshima, the 80,000 who died in Nagasaki, the uncounted thousands who died of radiation sickness in the years that followed, the 3 million Vietnamese who died during the Vietnam War, or the 200,000 Iraqis who died following the American invasion.

We think of ourselves as the home of the free and the brave--and no doubt that is true.  But neither freedom nor bravery guarantees virtue.  And if we seek a future of peace rather than perpetual warfare, we will need a nation famous not just for its freedom, not just for its bravery, but for its goodness and moral courage.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2016

#379: The Money Scam

As we move from the Christmas season into Epiphany, one look back suggests how far we have YET go to honor the Christmas promise of Peace.

Traditionally, Christians celebrate the Feast of the Holy Innocents on the Fourth Day of Christmas, December 28 (http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?date=2012-12-28).  Thus for centuries Christians have used the Christmas season (December 25 to January 5) as a time to not only celebrate the birth of Jesus, but also to honor the suffering of innocent children as well. 

But this year, in the wake of the Newtown tragedy, some people are dishonoring those children with disingenuous arguments and self-serving proposals.

The NRA leadership says “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” This reminds me of the popup on my PC screen from a company offering, for a fee, to rid my computer of the very virus that same company had sent to my computer!  The scam is: cause the problem so you can offer to fix it.

If banning combat-style weapons is not a practical option, it is mainly because there are already 300 million guns owned by private citizens--some of them bad guys.  So now the NRA offers a solution (armed guards in every school) to the very problem they have promoted for decades: widespread easy legal ownership of weapons designed for mass killing.

It’s an old Fascist trick, of course.  In 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland in response to a supposed Polish attack against a German radio station, which in fact they had themselves faked. Hitler said: “In order to put an end to this frantic activity no other means is left to me now than to meet force with force.” Sound familiar?

The NRA is of course the main lobby for the weapons industry--and their efforts over the years have enabled the flood of weaponry that that now engulfs us.  Having succeeded in shaping a nation literally armed to the teeth, they now conveniently trot out the hypocritical notion that the only solution is more weapons in more places.

Supposedly appealing to common sense, they compare guns in schools to banks with armed guards. security in American airports, power plants, courthouses, sports stadiums and Secret Service agents.  But all analogies limp, and this one too: mostly those people have chosen to put themselves in harm’s way.  Would the NRA have us accept that the same is true of our schoolchildren?  That parents place them in harm’s way? That going to school, like being President or handling massive sums of money, inevitably brings a high risk that requires armed protection?

The underlying worldview is obvious: there is no such thing as a safe place, there is only a well-protected (i.e well-armed) place.  This implies that we are all in harm’s way, all the time, everywhere.  The inevitable alternative is armed protection for everyone at all times.

This idea of a fortress-culture, constantly threatened and vulnerable and surviving only by the force of arms, reflects a vision of lawless society unmatched even by the towns of the “wild west” (where, e.g., schoolmarms were not armed, and people checked in their guns on arrival).  It denies the long-held notion that in a civilized society public safety is the norm, and that police are capable of protecting the citizenry from widespread violence.

This repugnant vision surrenders all hope of a peaceful society in which the average citizen can “hang up his gun at the sheriff’s office” and live secure from lethal attack. As both social vision and practical program, this approach is a scam.

Criminologists know from long study that there are three ways to protect the public against the kind of mass violence that struck Newtown.

First, we can better identify and control people who pose a threat to themselves and to others.  Time after time the killers turn out to fit the profile typical of sociopaths: reclusive, socially maladjusted loners, usually young white males, unable to function among their peers.  We have repeatedly failed to identify such people and provide the treatment, help, and control they need before their behavior becomes dangerous. (The NRA is at least right on one point: our media and video-game culture, by fetishizing gun violence, probably makes such people even more dangerous.)

Second, we can prevent the ready access of such people to victims.  No doubt this may mean tightening security in key places, including schools.  And given the entire NRA-fueled flood of guns in America, it may even require armed guards (after all, while I never purchased the virus spreaders’ “solution,” I still had to pay someone to fix my PC).

Third, we can reduce the ability of dangerous people to inflict harm.  The actual damage they do depends on the lethality of their weapons--and today’s weapons are far more lethal than any in our history.  The same week as the Newtown attack, a man in China armed with a knife attacked a school, stabbing 22 children.  Four were seriously hurt, but none died.  The main difference between that outcome and the 26 dead in Newtown was the weapon itself.

To get serious about protecting our citizenry, we must address all three of these conditions.  We must build a civil society where (1) dangerous people are identified and their behavior is controlled, (2) reasonable security systems are in place, and (3) weapons of mass murder are no longer a commonplace threat.

Behind such common sense principles are some controversial truths.

First, this is not a Second Amendment problem.  For one thing, the right to bear arms is no more absolute than any other right; it can be limited and regulated in the interest of public safety.  But more importantly, the Second Amendment applies to gun owners, not to gun makers or gun sellers. As Justice Scalia explained in his majority opinion in the Heller case:

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose...The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or 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.

 Thus:  A citizen’s right to bear arms does not give any particular weapons manufacturer the right to make or sell any particular weapon.  In short, citizens can bear whatever arms they can buy--but combat-style weapons should never be on the market in the first place!

The old IRA bumper sticker read, “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” But where do outlaws get their guns?  Obviously, they get them from the same gun makers everyone else does!  The only reason bad guys have combat-style weapons is because we allow their manufacture and sale to the general public. The real issue here is not gun control at all—it is the regulation of gun commerce.

Second, it takes no genius to explain why such weapons are on the market, in defiance of all logic and common sense.  The answer is: money.  The industry for which the NRA lobbies is perfectly content to sell us more weapons to prevent the very carnage that its previous sales made possible--but it is not willing to curtail any sales that limit its profits, and it spends millions annually on the lobbying to protect those profits.  The sad truth is, we are governed by leaders who have already been bought by an industry for which trafficking in arms trumps public safety.

Third, the money behind guns reflects a much deeper problem than mere private sales to individual consumers.  The attachment to guns is deeply imbedded in our public policy as well.  Since World War II, the U.S. has consistently been the world’s largest manufacturer, seller, and trafficker of all weapons from handguns to nuclear missiles.  Many of the world’s trouble makers (such as the Taliban in Afghanistan) rely on the firepower of U.S. weapons.  Many of the world’s trouble spots are fueled by “Washington bullets.” Weapons building brought the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression, and we have been the world’s arsenal ever since.  Indeed, worldwide U.S. weapons sales tripled in 2011, to $66.3 billion--more than three-quarters of the global total!

  The horrific truth is that our inability to stop the spread of guns is merely the byproduct of living in “Arsenal America.”

Fourth, people who tell us the problem is the “monsters” out there are deceiving both themselves and office.  While it is true that we cannot create peace and security by eliminating all evil, we are nonetheless wrong to buy the notion that America’s widespread violence is inevitably built into human nature.  This crisis is not natural, it is national.  No other civilized nation comes close to our violent crime rate, and few allow the sale of combat-style weapons.  Americans typically live in a bubble that defines our life in our own isolationist terms, without reference to the experience of other countries.  But in this case, to ignore how other countries have achieved the secure, pacific life we are failing to provide is nothing less than criminal blindness.

In future Decembers, the remembrance of the “Holy Innocents” will include not only those babies in first century Israel, but those schoolchildren for whom modern day America was a death trap.  We dishonor them, their families, their peers, and ourselves if we do not finally insist that their lives are more worth more than all the money in Arsenal America.

 © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2013