This isn’t a continuation of my Small l post so much as a spur, a small branch line to an isolated resource hole somewhere.

Army of Dog had an interesting point today:

In the world of lefties taking guns away from law-abiding citizens who carry them for self defense will keep criminals and psychopaths from using guns to kill innocent people. Just how in the hell that happens no one seems to know. They just believe it and it doesn’t matter if banning guns makes you more, less, or equally safe, because as long as they can feel better about the situation, actual results are meaningless.

The difference between a liberal and a conservative is generally how they view the efficacy of governmental action. To understand why, let’s take a brief step into the wayback machine…

There’s just one problem - government actually is good at certain things. Government excels at solving any problem that the entire public, by necessity, is interested in.

The difference between liberals and conservatives is where, precisely, that line should be drawn. A liberal will tell you that the government is great at managing the economy and working the excesses out of it, and that it should because, by necessity, the entire public is interested in the economy. Conversely, a liberal will also tell you that the government is not so great at managing the private lives of its citizens - people will do what they want to do, after all, so there’s no point in regulating, say, what goes on in people’s bedrooms. A conservative will frequently issue the opposing position on both sides, declaring that government is more of a hindrance than a help in the economy, imposing unwanted inefficiencies and distorting market economics, but that government is great at handling moral issues, which the public, naturally, should be interested in. As a libertarian, I think both sides are right, wrong, nuts, and cogent simultaneously, which probably just means I need more medication.

Back to Army of Dog’s point, from a liberal perspective, they have a rather optimistic view of how well government can regulate market economics, which is precisely how they define gun control - if government eliminates supply, there will be no more guns. Of course, many of the same liberals that think that government can eliminate the supply of guns through market regulation are also the same ones that point out that the government can’t regulate drugs, but, realistically, we can’t ask all people to be as consistent politically and philosophically as yours truly, now can we? Point being, the reason liberals think that gun control works, regardless of statistics indicating otherwise, is because they believe in government and its ability to perform socially responsible actions for the public. More importantly, they believe that, since the government can be a force for public good, it is in everyone’s interest to allow government to solve these problems.

Of course, before anyone says anything, conservatives are absolutely no better at this - they just believe that liberals are focusing on the wrong problems. The approach is still the same - the government has the ability to positively mold the public. The difference is that, instead of gay rights, you have the protection of marriage. Instead of protecting the people from economic dislocations, conservatives prefer to protect businesses… and so on. If you have a conservative telling you that they should allow prayer in public school and a liberal saying they should ban it, they’re both talking out of the same side of the argument - government should have a role in whether there should be prayer in school or not. Is this right? Well, it depends on your point of view and whether you feel that the public should, by necessity, be interested in that specific issue.

Herein, of course, is the rub - we as a country really can’t agree what the government should be involved in. That’s why I said that government excels at solving any problem that the entire public, by necessity, is interested in - not should be interested in. When government attempts to tackle issues that the a significant portion of the public isn’t interested in, it fails miserably - see the War on Drugs, abortion regulation before Roe v. Wade, gun control, and more.

In the end, both conservatives and liberals enjoy talking about personal rights and liberties, and both conservatives and liberals have faith that the government can be used to affect positive changes in the issues they care about. From where I’m sitting, they’re both wrong, and I guarantee you I’m not the only one that feels that way.

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