I’m posting this in Conservative because Discourse Magazine is produced by The Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a conservative think thank.
It’s always fascinating to me when reactionary institutions produce pieces like this.
In her new book “The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves,” Alexandra Hudson makes the case that these trends are real and disturbing. But she argues that addressing the merger of politics and entertainment and the politicization of the quotidian doesn’t require big, elite-driven social change. Rather, it begins with each of us—and daily decisions we make about how we relate to others.
Traffic jams, double parking, and car bombs all make use of the same tool as well, but it would be asinine to put them all into the same bucket when they have entirely different causes.
Look at it this way, nobody is trying to put self harm via knife in the same category as some drug deal gone south involving a knife. So why is it reasonable to do the same when the tool is a gun? Both murder and suicide happen regardless of guns, and looking at statistics across places with more/less guns regarding murder, guns are an entirely irrelevant factor.
Changing your means of transportation fixes all of those problems (well, not really car bombs…). Cyclists don’t get stuck in traffic jams. In places where you can lane split, motorcycles can also avoid traffic jams. All of those problems (except car bombs) stem from the fact that
people suck at drivingcars, trucks, and SUVs are not efficient modes of transportation.Similarly, firearms are an very efficient mode of killing people.
I’m having a really hard time understanding this. It’s like saying we can push nails in with a hammer or the back of a screwdriver; why does it matter which we use? In either case, the nail secures two pieces of wood. But…hammers are made for driving in nails. That is their purpose. That’s why it matters the we use a hammer to drive nails rather than the back of screwdriver.
But you’re saying the purpose of the tool doesn’t matter, right? The intent is the same in either case, to kill someone else or one’s self. And it’s the intent that matters more the effectiveness of the tool.
Analogically, it’s totally reasonable to construct houses by driving nails in with the backs of screwdrivers because a house gets built, the real intent.
Oh, I think I’m beginning to understand our difference: I just assume people will want to kill other people. Safety for me isn’t eliminating the desire to kill (as nice as that’d be), but reducing the chances that I’ll die should someone try to kill me. Having neither been shot nor stabbed, research suggests that I should prefer the proliferation of knives over firearms if I’d like to live another day.
Good choice for building? Meh. But “houses built” would certainly be a much better category than “things done with hammers”.