Door Number Three

I had an "Aha!" moment yesterday, and I'm feeling unsettled by it. It may be something that seems both obvious and not at all unsettling for many reading this, but understand--until this realization, I had always felt that the political left and right in the United States took precisely the opposite positions on gun control from what they should have taken, if they were being intellectually consistent. It seemed obvious to me that the "do your own thing," revolutionaries committed to equality and empowering the downtrodden should be arming minorities, women, the elderly, the disabled, and so on. And it seemed just as obvious to me that the folks who practiced the civic religion of worshiping the flag, the military, and the police, and who were always calling for harsher punishments of criminals and crueler treatment of the poor would be the ones wanting to strip the weapons away from the populace to make it easier for the government to maintain order and compliance.

It truly baffled me why this was not the case. I chalked it up to being some combination of the Left's embrace of pacifism in the latter half of the 20th century, and the media playing the two sides against each other. Plenty of people disagreed with me, but none bothered to educate me. Those on the Left simply ran away and stuck their heads in the sand when they saw the word "gun." The Right verbally abused me for being stupid and unpatriotic, but couldn't provide an explanation that made any sense, because most of what the Right believes about the Left is wrong*.

I get it now, though. The key for me was looking at some of the arguments on the Left about other issues--arguments I myself have made on unrelated topics, like universal healthcare.

"It is scandalous that on the richest nation on Earth, we have people dying of treatable diseases."

"Why is there hunger in a country that throws away millions of pounds of food every day?"

They see resources as being something we all own (or should own) collectively. They feel that these resources are being misallocated, and that this is why some people don't have enough. The thinking is, "There's plenty to go around. The government should take some away from people who have too much, and give it to the people who don't have enough."

The conservatives respond, "I don't need the government to give me anything. I could take care of myself just fine if only the government would keep its mitts off my money and leave me alone."

They take the same approach to public safety. The conservative says he can defend himself just fine if only we'd let him arm himself as he pleases. The liberal wants the government to provide protection services. She wants to ride a public bus or train so she doesn't have to own a car, and she wants the police to be her bodyguards so she doesn't have to fight for her own survival.

I get it now, but I'm not entirely comfortable with either of these views. The conservative view is sensible, within the tiny bubble of concerns it considers, but it is myopic. Yes, maybe your business pays you enough to buy what you need for a comfortable life. But how comfortable will you be in a world full of thieves and beggars because the masses are left poor for the benefit of a handful of billionaires? There's a certain amount of psychopathy inherent in conservatism--an attitude of, "Screw you, I got mine," as though your neighbor starving or being victimized has no affect on your own life.

Liberals, though, are naive. I've heard them say things like, "I shouldn't have to take precautions against getting raped, because it's the rapists' responsibility not to rape me." Also, "If a robber threatens you, just give him what he wants. You don't have to fight," as though criminals haven't killed people just for thrills, from today's gang initiations back to Vikings killing unarmed monks. Tell Emmit Till that he should have just given his attackers what they wanted.

I don't like either of these views. We shouldn't have to choose between being an antisocial island or being dependent infants with no autonomy. I'm not comfortable with the dystopia that either of them presents as their utopia. Instead, I'd like to do what may sound impossible: marry these two views into a single vision that should appeal to both sides. To me, that would look something like this:

It is your civic duty to be as useful as possible. You can be a hero to your community by having skills and resources to share with them. Take pride in empowering others. "Teach a man to fish," if you can. If you can't, then share your fish with him so he can be free to do other things for you and your community.

I want you to learn to safely handle guns and keep one in your home, not because I want my neighbors to shoot each other or so you can wreck our society by overthrowing the government. Rather, I think the day may come when our government needs your help defending us all. Our military could be crippled and our leadership compromised. If we get to that point, I don't want it to be every-gunman-for-himself, with the gentle people left to perish. I want people of conscience, who care about their communities, to be available to grab their personally owned weapons and assemble into an ad hoc defense force to repel invaders. I want neighbors to take care of each other such that the police can just come when called instead of patrolling our streets like an occupying army. That's my vision for America--a nation of Minutemen Hoplites, not survivalist hermits or cities of sheep.

And it's not all about guns. I want as many of you as possible to know as much as possible about how to do everything necessary for survival. I want you to know how to grow food and how to process, preserve, and cook it. I want you to know how to fix each other's homes and furnaces and pipes and cars. I want you to know how to rig up a water purification system and electricity generation, whether it's your family, your neighbor, or your whole town who needs it. I want you to respond to tariffs on imports by saying, "So what? We can make that here." And I want the most celebrated people to be the ones who can help the most people in the biggest ways.

I want liberals to be more independent, and conservatives to be more empathetic. I don't think that puts me in the middle or makes me a watered-down thing we call a centrist because of its fear of choosing sides. This is option "C," where people show their love for their community by strengthening all individuals.


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*I was going to insert a link here, but I can't find it now. Cards Against Humanity did a poll to find out what Democrats and Republicans believe about each other. Both sides had many errors, like Republicans overestimating the percentage of Democrats who were gay, or Democrats overestimating the percentage of Republicans who were white supremacists, but the Republicans polled were generally more wrong than the Democrats were. That is to say, while both sides believe inaccurate stereotypes, the Republicans were more likely to have a view of their opponents that bore no actual resemblance to reality.

Mother of Exiles

714,984

That was the population of Columbus, Ohio, when I moved here in 2000. In 2018, the population was estimated at 879,170. That means that in just 18 years, this city has grown by 164,186 people. It wasn't because the birth rate exceeded the death rate by that much. It's because people came here from other places...people like me.

I'm an immigrant. I'm not what you probably think of when you hear that word. I was born in the United States. I'm a citizen. I'm white (with some Seminole and very distant African ancestry). English is my first language. The language spoken by the largest non-English speaking minority in my birthplace was German (Deitsch, specifically). But I'm not from here. I wasn't born in Columbus, not even in Ohio. I didn't need a passport or a visa to come here. No guards stopped me at the edge of the city. Nobody in the government of Ohio or Columbus or Franklin County gave me permission to come here, and I didn't have to risk my life swimming across a river to sneak in.

Like most immigrants to Columbus, I came here looking for a better life. My mother, widowed at the age of 22, brought me to Ohio from our hometown in Pennsylvania as she pursued an education in Cincinnati. Like so many immigrants, she found a new spouse in this new place and started a business--multiple businesses, actually. After moving around to a couple different places in the eastern and northeastern parts of the state, we finally settled in a deeply impoverished part of southern Ohio, a former boom town that fell into ruin when the steel mill and shoe factory both closed. The Appalachian accent was so alien to my ears that I struggled in school my first year there because I couldn't understand the teacher. I was mocked by other students for "talking funny."

I found myself ostracized not just because of my accent, but also because of my parents being "rich" (ie., not on welfare), and for being Catholic in an area dominated so heavily by a handful of Protestant denominations that it was a commonly held belief there that Catholics are no more Christian than Buddhists or Hindus are. Like many immigrants who "refuse to integrate," my mother moved me to a Catholic school and indoctrinated me in the belief that we were culturally and intellectually superior to the natives.

Twenty years later, after being immersed in Appalachian culture, marrying one of the natives, spending my twenties either unemployed or underemployed, and finally watching my marriage end, I fled to Columbus for a better life. I'd made new friends who offered me a place to stay and referred me to a job opening. I went from making $6.35/hr at a Wal-Mart in southern Ohio after having worked there for a year and a half to making $9.50/hr on my very first day as a maintenance mechanic in a distribution warehouse in Columbus, and got a one-dollar-an-hour raise after just a month.

Let me repeat that: For my own selfish financial advancement, I immigrated to Columbus without permission and deprived a Columbus native of a job that paid 65% more than I could earn back home. Like so many immigrants, I sent much of the money I earned back home to support my children, while I slept on the floor of an overcrowded apartment I shared with three other people. A few years later, I married another immigrant and we had a couple "anchor babies" born in a Columbus hospital.

Over a period of 18 years, 164,186 of us did this. Some of us came from poorer parts of Ohio, some of us from poorer states outside Ohio, and some of us from Mexico, India, Somalia, Nepal, and many other countries, all for the same general reason: to flee a bad situation and take part in the prosperity of Columbus. This city has not suffered for it. Rather, we have fueled its economy, labored in its businesses or started new businesses of our own, and helped the city to prosper and grow.

When people immigrate to the United States from other countries, they don't come to settle in some stateless, city-less area belonging solely to the federal government. They come to cities in states, cities they aren't from, just like I did. I didn't have to ask the federal government for permission, even though I crossed state lines to come here, and nobody else should have to, either. Even if my mother had had a criminal record, we wouldn't have been denied entry to Ohio. Nobody even checked. She didn't have to show proof of income or have an Ohio employer jump through any hoops to get us here. Had she been convicted of a crime in Ohio, she would not have been deported back to Pennsylvania. It should be no different for anyone moving to Ohio from Sonora or Ontario.

My point here, in case it's not yet crystal clear, is that if a new neighbor moves in next door to me, the effect on me, on the rest of the neighborhood, on the rest of the city, and on the rest of the state, is no different at all whether that person comes from California or Honduras. The only difference is a legal fiction, a difference that can vanish with the stroke of a pen. People favoring strong immigration enforcement will talk about the sanctity of "the rule of law." This argument reminds me of a scene in the movie "Labyrinth." The protagonist is stopped on her journey by a guard who says, "None may pass without my permission!" She simply asks the guard's permission, and he, somewhat confused, grants it. If the gravest offense of illegal immigration is simply that it's a violation of the law, all we have to do is repeal that law. Voila! It's no longer illegal! Think of how much money we could save by eliminating the Border Patrol, most of ICE, and that ridiculous wall project!

Culturally, economically, environmentally--in every way you might name, immigrants from California or Honduras impact us the same. It's one more person, taking up one more person's worth of space, eating one more person's worth of food, generating one more person's worth of garbage. Domestic immigrants, be they from Pennsylvania or Portsmouth, are every bit as much a burden as are immigrants from other nations, yet we don't restrict, regulate, or even monitor their immigration at all. Coastal flooding or some other disaster could cause a couple million displaced American citizens to suddenly seek asylum in Columbus, and we could not and would not do anything to stop them. In fact, the U.S. Constitution prohibits it. Rather, we might ask the federal government for help providing accommodations for the newcomers. More likely, we would just have a boom of new construction and businesses coming to the area to take advantage of the increased labor pool. Remember, in 1800, the population of New York City was just 60,000. In 2018, it was estimated to be close to 4.8 million. Did such growth bankrupt and destroy that city? Quite the opposite!

We let American outsiders move into our cities without raising an eyebrow. There is no moral or practical reason for it to be any different with newcomers from different countries.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows worldwide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

                                     - Emma Lazarus, 1883