This year is food at the folks. In spite of my offers if I eat at the folks my offers of help are always turned down. So it's bound to be utterly delicious and decadent, with too many pies on offer, and vegan options for the vegans that are attending.

It's all pretty traditional stuff, though the folks are religious so no alcohol will be at the proceedings.

EDIT: This was the recipe used two years ago for the vegans, minus the cheese. Plenty of coconut milk on hand as well for both cooking and breakfast. Make some additional stuffing too so that it's not cooked in the turkey, plus the bread on hand, and there's plenty for non-meat folk.

Jonah Goldberg's intent is not academic -- he even says as much in the beginning of the book -- but political. Rather than elucidating fascism he is arguing against a cultural meme that the right of the USA is fascist, and that the liberal left is anti-fascist, by going back into the history of fascism, finding progressive liberals who defended fascism as a good thing, and drawing parallels between the fascist program and progressive liberals today.

What this misses is Paxton's insight -- that fascism wins adherents by using the language of the left, that they are motivated by similar ills, but:

... the methods of intellectual history become much less helpful beyond the first stage in the fascist cycle. Every fascist movement that has rooted itself successfully as a major political contender, thereby approaching power, has betrayed its initial antibourgeois and anticapitalist programs. The processes to be examined in later stages include the breakdown of democratic regimes and the success of fascist movements in assembling new, borad catch-all parties that attract a mass following across classes and hence seem attractive allies to conservatives looking for ways to perpetuate their shaken rule. At laster stages, successful fascist parties also position themselves as the most effective barriers, by persuasin or by force, to an advancing Left and prove adept at the formation, maintenence and domination of political coalitions with conservatives. But these political successes come at the cost of the first ideological programs. Demonstrating their contempt for doctrine, successfully rooted fascist parties do not annul or amend their early programs. They simply ignore them, while acting in ways quite contrary to them. The conflicts of doctrine and practice set up by successful fascist movements on the road to power not only alienate many radical fascists of the first hour; they continue to confuse many historians who assume that analysing programs is a sufficient tool for classifying fascisms. The confusion has been compounded by the persistence of many early fascisms that failed to navigate the turn from the first to the second and third stages, and remained pure and radical, though marginal, as "national syndicalisms" — Paxton, p 14 -- 15

Goldberg's interest is not in understanding fascism. It's in flipping a cultural script within the United States -- one that is partially manufactured, since his characterization of the progressive left is largely based off of memes and cultural feelings -- so that the right is not fascist, but the left's roots are, because fascism seeks to change society.

But the change of progressive politicals, the change of Marxists, the change of the Left differs markedly from the change sought by fascism. In addition, it is impossible to separate out the intellectual notions of fascism from the historical events of fascism. This is where we get to see the real impact of fascism. In particular it is noteworthy that fascists were not coherent. They were populists -- and so they would have to ally themselves with the working class at some point, just as they had to ally themselves with the conservative forces at another point. They wanted to fuse the classes into one structure, the state, and by that method overcome class divisions. This isn't even close to bread-and-butter progressive politics.

((EDIT: It's worth noting that Goldberg is a senior editor for the National Review, -- given this position it makes sense that his aims are more political than academic, so seeking to learn about the nature of fascism from his book is a poor decision. He's talking american politics more than he's talking about fascism in that book))

Mostly the people. I figured that this is why I come to a philosophy forum, and so it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The other features are also nice. ;) But that was my main metric.

I don't think your list is conclusive. I'm not sure what a conclusive list would look like, and by what I'm trying to argue at least, I would say that such a list would have to be reformed with the passing of history. But it's a good enough start to highlight that the state isn't the only way to organize people on a large scale, and without the state all we have is nomadic tribes.

Also, there are far-right political positions which disagree with libertarianism, even, and dream of a post-state world wherein everything is organized along corporate lines. I certainly disagree with such dreams, but that doesn't negate their existence (or the fact that, at least at this point in time, corporate structure heavily relies upon states, moreso than they'd like to admit ;) )

I also obtained permission from Sally Markowitz to make a .pdf of her paper which argues in favor of abortion with respect to feminist values -- something which I find interesting because most discussions of abortion focus on the morality of the act, but she defers said discussion on the basis of her political orientation, saying that the moral discussion can't take place until this wider issue is addressed. (Reversing the hierarchy of values, in the popular sense).

I went hunting for some ethics papers last month because of the dearth of ethics papers. I didn't post them in time to be considered last month, nor this month, but seeing as I'm behind the times on both I thought I'd go ahead and post the pdf's I found online here for future consideration:

http://www.unc.edu/courses/2009spring/plcy/240/001/The_Solution_to_World_Poverty1.pdf

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/phil/teach/pp/B%20%20%20NO%20PUB/B2%20%20%20Right-Libertarianism/Hospers%20-%20What%20Libertarianism%20Is.pdf

http://businessethics.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/files/2012/01/Nielsen.pdf

http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/83825/excerpt/9780521883825_excerpt.pdf

http://web.ntpu.edu.tw/~language/course/research/lifeboat.pdf

http://myweb.facstaff.wwu.edu/nmarkos/Zola/Thomson.Abortion.pdf

http://faculty.polytechnic.org/gfeldmeth/45.marquis.pdf

http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/phil1200,Spr07/singer.pdf

http://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil3140/Taylor.pdf

But they are correct on that point, at least. The hope, from their perspective, is an abolishment of the state in favor of corporate ownership of the world. They go so far as to characterize governments as corporations. But this totalizing viewpoint is what I'm trying to shrink -- so that we can see that the state is not inevitable, or even inevitable so long as we discount nomadic societies. There are many forms of society aside from these two. I'd go along with @Bitter Crank's list above. And there can be others that have yet to exist, too.

I don't endorse right-wing abolishment of the state by any stretch. But I certainly don't think, despite their beliefs, the state is the only thing keeping us from social darwinism. Heck, we see clan v. clan type organizations develop within the state.

I would say they are unique to their time and place, rather than being states. I agree that human beings are always organized into some form of rulership. As Aristotle says, man is the political animal. I'm just questioning the state form of rulership as some kind of inevitability -- and classifying it as one of the kinds of rulership, rather than as some advanced form of rulership to which all other larger-scale organizations gravitate towards, and certainly rather than the final form of human social organization.

I wouldn't say that writing is the basis of state-hood, either. I wouldn't pin bureaucracy and records as the defining feature of states as much as I would pin geographic boundaries, cultural hegemony, and legitimated violence.

I'd call a settlement a settlement, rather than a state. Perhaps the beginning of a city. I am not familiar enough with the history of China to comment, to be honest.

Woah, cool!

$$\int_{a}^{b} x^2 dx$$

It's an interesting question, for sure. I don't know. Fascism is fascinating to myself -- it seems to cut across the left/right spectrum. It's scary as hell to see in practice, even when isolated, but I still have this intellectual curiosity about the workings of fascism. @unenlightened recommended a nice book to me some time ago http://www.whale.to/b/reich.pdf that I would like to read more of -- since you are asking the question, you may find it interesting too.

Deleuze and Guatarri's Anti-Oedipus also explores this question by asking and attempting to answer "How can people desire their own oppression?" -- but that book isn't as straightforward as the Reich book.


I agree with Umberto Eco when he states:

6) Fascism is derived from individual or social frustration — Cavacava

Frustration, humiliation, defensiveness all given easy answers which are even fun to pursue after you stop thinking of your enemies as humans: violent action that is more than mere violence but is also spiritual. In short: Fascism feels more than good, more than great, it is a realization of the beyond in our lives now. It fulfills both our base desires for violence simultaneously with our higher desires for God -- and makes God real, to boot.

EDIT: I have a bad habit of thinking of something new to say after posting. But one of the themes that emerges from both books I mentioned is that fascism is potentially appealing to all of us -- we all have it in ourselves to succumb to the appeals of fascism. Perhaps why it's scary to see someone expressing fascist politics in real life -- there's a sense in which we fear becoming them. In the U.S. the tea party serves as a good example, I think... though not obsessed with blood as much, they are obsessed with "being American", and there is an attendant mythology with that "being American". With the rise of Trump I think we're seeing them be more than a proto-fascist group, too -- since Trump clearly doesn't appeal to people because of reasoned argument or thought, but through pure emotional appeal to fictions people hold.

I agree that religion is tied with fascism, though I wouldn't say that fascism is the offspring of right wing Catholic political thought. The partially ghost-written essay The Doctrine of Fascism says as much, from a philosophical perspective.

many of the practical expressions of Fascism such as party organization, system of education, and discipline can only be understood when considered in relation to its general attitude toward life. A spiritual attitude (3). — The Doctrine of Fascism

But I don't think I could say that religion is more than nationalism. It's more like they lay on an equal plane to one another, in fascist thinking. The state is the religion and the leader is the physical manifestation of the state. Though perhaps there's a difference between the state being the religion and nationalism -- since one must have an identity outside of the state in order to identify as a nationalist, where the committed fascist seems to lose their sense of self in the state.

While this isn't a debate of fascism in favor or against, I've long appreciated Robert Paxton's take on fascism: http://academico.direito-rio.fgv.br/ccmw/images/0/00/Paxton.pdf

But if there are other ways to organize the pooling of resources and cooperative effort then "the state" is not some foregone conclusion. It's not like there's a historical hierarchy where first we had the tribe, then the city, then the empire, then the church, then the kingdom, and then the state. Culture doesn't function in this manner. Culture works more along the lines of history than along the lines of a natural science. The old positivists -- the ones from the 1800's, I mean, who were sociologists -- had such notions, but they just don't work. All you end up doing is looking at cultures along a developmental axis which, surprise, puts your own culture at the top of the hierarchy. But this is arbitrary -- because, surely, using the same principles, another culture can do the same, and it is our culture which is then still trying to develop towards their culture. But what we see are many cultures co-existing, many forms of organization, and neither leading to the other.

I agree with this. I don't mean my interests in the sense that Moliere wants cake and so the state shall supply Moliere with cake. I mean collective interests -- my people's interests, of which I am a part and therefore will benefit personally, but not Moliere's desire for cake.

You disagree - but you agree? — unenlightened

:D

That's probably the best way of putting it. Though the following makes a difference to my mind so maybe I don't disagree after all. I may just be being pedantic. I do see the state as being other from the people that compose it, at least -- I'm not sure if it's fundamentally other, but it seems quite different from people to me. But that wouldn't make any difference here:

I say that to the extent that people care about each others' interests, they will have a good state, and to the extent that they care only about their own, they will have a bad state. To measure the goodness of the state according to one's own interests is inherently despotic. — unenlightened

because you're stating what makes a state good, not what makes a state a state.

I would say that the state is inherently despotic. There's not quite such a thing as a good state -- there are better states and worse states, but no good states simpliciter. And if you do not measure the betterness of the state with respect to your interests then you won't get much out of it. I think this has to do with the nature of states, though, and not necessarily the nature of people.

((EDIT: Just to be clear -- I am very much in line with the thinking of Rousseau. Though I do not share his views on human nature -- I don't think people are inherently good in nature, or that goodness springs from sympathy -- I also believe that our societies structure who we are, and that the state is a part of society which structures us to be despotic. ))

So, after all this, do we agree on anything, here?

Is ISIS good, bad, or negligible?
— Bitter Crank

ISIS is bad. But I'll make the same point here as I made with Iraq back in the day when these things were discussed -- so is North Korea. Yet we don't go to war with them just because we believe they are bad. That is a marvelously bad way of making decisions.

If ISIS is bad, what may, might, can, should, be done?

I don't rightly know. But I do know, based off of 9/11, that reactive military action hasn't exactly been very effective in defeating what's bad.

I meant that these conflicts relate back to British imperialism, which drew the state boundaries in the first place.

All the same I'd like to know --

what am I missing? I can certainly see how my own experience with the invasion of Iraq could be clouding my understanding. What are you proposing, precisely, that differs from the U.S.'s reaction to 9/11?

Yeahrp. A lot of this conflict, though it would be oversimplifying to say that there's a direct causal connection, can be traced back to colonialism and the imposition of the state in these regions.

I agree with that. But I don't see how bombing leads to that. It seems to me that this is more of the same -- and that the people who suffer most due to this are the innocent in both parts of the world who would be better off without yet another war.

You don't think what you've called for is the same as the 9/11 response? It strikes me as similar.

FWIW, this popped up in my twitter feed today and I thought it appropriate: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2343-isis-attacks-targeting-innocent-people-by-hamid-dabashi -- isn't there some truth to what he says there? (it links back to this story: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/11/je-suis-muslim-151114163033918.html which I'm still in the middle of reading)

Should we really be the world police in the first place? Isn't that what we're actually pushing in saying we should defeat ISIL/QSIS/ISIS? Or what am I missing, then? I can certainly see how my own experience with the invasion of Iraq could be clouding my understanding. What are you proposing, precisely, that differs from the U.S.'s reaction to 9/11?

Oh, I remember. Afghanistan, arguably, also had nothing to do with 9/11 considering how the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are organized. But how would an assault on QSIS differ from those invasions in their outcomes? Weren't these invasions, as far as the people of the U.S. and their allies are concerned, really motivated by revenge more than anything?

I think of the state as an entity which is more than the sum of its parts. There are other ways to organize large-scale society than through a state. The modern state is a relatively new phenomena, some odd 400 years or so. http://faculty.ucc.edu/egh-damerow/gov207hist_mod_state.htm

I don't mean to advocate for "the way things were", but only to point out that the state is a peculiar entity, a way of organizing that one does not need, but can abolish (without, thereby, abolishing the people that make up the state -- at least in theory) (just wanted to tag you @unenlightened bc. I think my response differs because I think of states differently)

And, so I would say, the abolition of the state is not a bad priority to hold. While I think there are better and worse states (because in politics you can't reason very well without a notion of better and worse), I don't believe that the state is the best possible manner of organizing people. I would prefer to abolish borders. I would prefer to abolish capitalism, which the state props up.

Which is pretty much how I'd answer your question -- the state is a menace to me and mine, because the US is concerned primarily with those who own the means of production. We can make things better(for us, of course), but the fundamental laws of the land -- private property and representative politics -- are opposed to working class interests.

I suppose I would say that it's not possible to have a friendly state, and that any attitudes of friendliness are out of place in assessing ones state. It's a collection of interests -- and it's goodness or badness is relative to what extent it represents your interests. It's not a universal-morality-machine, by any means, where we all look out for one another. That's just not the nature of state-centric politics. And as soon as it is then we really do become nationalists, which is just creepy in my opinion.

ISIS is winning in this area because it has a supreme confidence and idealism that is currently lacking amongst the liberal defenders of cultural diversity, freedom of speech, democracy, equality for women and gay people. That lack of confidence, if not outright scepticism and equivocation, is very apparent in this thread. — jamalrob

Hrmm, I wouldn't say that this is the case. I have no problem standing by my commitments. But the whole affair is so reminiscent of 9/11 -- it's not like Saddam Hussein was a leader for a free world, or anything. But, all the same, the amount of murder that has arisen out of toppling his regime far outweighs the number of deaths on 9/11.

What I see is a really similar response as 9/11 -- feeling hurt and needing to lash out against an enemy and "show them" what happens when you mess with us. But, by this time, supposing we use that old standard of justice "an eye for an eye", I wouldn't be surprised if the number of innocents killed in Paris are roughly equal. However, a full on war would far outweigh that equality of killing. And, given the success of both Afghanistan and Iraq, it may not actually end or even result in the ending of QSIS. One article from the Atlantic is not enough to determine if that is a sound policy, I think.

I have read all the links posted here, and I have tried to be fair in reading them. Once again I feel that calls to either go on the offensive or no are not quite warranted. The most I could commit to would be to militarily support people who are already on the ground fighting that battle against QSIS. There are too many agendas in play to be able to safely say much more, even in light of these various articles. Even htough I wouldn't move there I am clearly sympathetic towards the plight of the Kurds [from our perspective, the PKK and the YPG are fine], and would think that utilizing them -- by giving them military support -- might be the best bet. But that may not actually collapse QSIS, who may find themselves contended with some land -- in the end.

Especially from where I sit... I just don't feel comfortable committing much in the way of military endorsements. There's too much noise, and I am not personally familiar with the situation, enough so that I don't think it right to commit. If I've learned anything in my involvement with politics it's that being personally involved really sheds light on the situation, and since I am not -- and I don't have access to people I know I can trust with respect to the situation -- I remain skeptical, overall.

I voted 1, but I agree with 3 as well. I suppose I wanted to say "Option 3, if no, then option 1" -- in general I like "likes" in formats like this because it keeps good housekeeping. It's a way of expressing approval w.o. cluttering the discussion with a bunch of "qtf"-style posts.

I suppose I look at it as a fledgling democracy where all the things you listed are true, to some degree, about it. I don't know if I'd say that each of those destroys democratic practice. Stupidity or "being hoodwinked", for instance, aren't part of the vocabulary of democratic practice. It may be true, but that's not something which makes a social system democratic is what I mean by that. Stupid people, hoodwinked people all have equal say in democratic social systems. I'm not so sure that party structures, even, subvert democratic practice. You have to be able to organize interests, especially in representative forms of democracy.

Corruption, wealth assymetry, and low turnout, so I would say, reflect the degradation of democratic values. The system, due to these influences, becomes less democratic. That's because each of these subverts the process where the majority beliefs of people are not represented, and the rights of people as both citizens and individuals are violated. So I supposed I'd lay the blame there for why the U.S. isn't democratic.

But, at the same time -- and even including the countries you have listed -- it seems to me that these are all fledgling democracies. It's not like any social system is born perfected. Considering where I lay the blame -- representative politics and property rights -- it's clear that these democracies would have to be reformulated at a pretty basic level. Since, in the US at least, those aren't looked at as bugs, but features of the political system. Still, I wouldn't discard democracy just because some greedy adventurers from way back when got it wrong.

Well, those were all the events I was thinking of. And I think you make fair points. Though I tend to think of the revolutionary war as a war of conquest, in addition to the French and Indian war. He may not have been a founder at the time, but it's not an unfair characterization to say that it was a war of conquest. The purchase of the Louisiana territory, while I grant that the massacre came later, was still itself conquest.

But, fair points. There's still a difference to be had in my characterization and Action Jackson. And I am certainly way off topic at this point too ;).

Not to be too trite, because I find the topic interesting unto itself -- but it seems that we are in agreement, then. Yes? I wouldn't disagree with what you have said here.

Yay. And though hollowed be their holy names, the founders were responsible for a fair amount of conquest.

Though I suppose you might say they are cleaner, because at least then we actually acquired land for the murder we perpetrated. There was something of a reasonable cause. These are more ideological, and therefore unwinnable, than all that.

That, I think, is the interesting question. As the laws are now it's no surprise that irresponsible persons obtained firearms.

I think licensing requirements to be a firearm distributor is where policy makers interested in tackling the issue -- rather than pandering to their base -- should target.

My argument is more or less that the function of victory is not a single variable function where the input of said function is the technological ability to to kill.

I have two lovely books, if that be our preference, titled "150 questions for a Guerrilla", where a General Alberto Bayo -- who helped train Che, though I'm ignorant on the specifics of that -- lays out some basics of Guerrilla warfare for a rank-and-filer, and "FM 31-21" -- an old field manual written by the Army on how to conduct and support (and therefore reverse engineered to combat) guerrilla warfare. Not that this guarantees any sort of victory. But it shows that I'm at least not alone in the opinion that military victory is not solely a function of technological capacity to kill.

Is this what we are disagreeing over? Or are we just disagreeing over the particular example I used?

Hrmm, I dunno. I really couldn't say what it would take to secure such-and-such amount of land or a country at this point. I plead ignorance on that. But I would say that because war is largely political, especially when you are dealing with a guerrilla force, that I'm still convinced that a less advanced force can defeat a more advanced force. It just depends on whether or not you have the populace on your side [and by "on your side" I don't intend any particular method, whether it be fear or inspiration, only that the people of a land are where the fight is at]

I think war is more political than that.

We had committed considerable resources and held quite a bit of land, in the military sense. Vietnam was another example of a failed occupation/police action. Or do you think that if we had "stayed the course" that we'd be winning now? Were we winning prior to the scale back of troops?

I wouldn't say so. I would say that the Taliban won that fight, and continues to win. The reasons why are numerous and complicated, but it's a fair example of an organized force defeating a more advanced organized force all the same.

Not that that's a tragedy, by my lights. I don't think the US should be in the business of policing the world to spread goodness, etc. etc. It's better to look at it as a loss and cut our losses than to think there's some kind of achievable goal in "fighting terrorism" and continue to dump resources into that goal.

From the basic assumptions of existence (such as cogito, which even that is disputed), to grand metaphysical and ethical theories, to the existence of god, string theory, or whether or not the sun will rise in the east tomorrow; all of these cannot be proven without any doubt.

It is conceivable that we could actually find out something about the way the universe operates that makes the Earth suddenly turn on its axis, making the Sun rise in the west. Whether or not it will actually happen is unknown, but it is conceivable.

Similarly, it is conceivable for a utilitarian to read an argument tomorrow that will disprove utilitarianism.

Because of this, should we hold any positions at all? Sure, we can defend these positions, but it certainly takes a bit of the passion out of the debate if it is irrational to actually believe it is true. — darthbarracuda

I would draw these distinctions: knowledge and rationality, truth and rationality, certainty and rationality. I center on rationality because of your ending sentence and the title of the thread.

Rationality deals with a process for belief-acquisition. If you acquire a belief rationality, then you are the sort of person who follows a good process in acquiring said belief. Whatever that process happens to be is up for debate, but this is how I would tackle rationality in the abstract.

Knowledge is produced in communities of knowledge-producers. Communities of knowledge-producers create their own standards of rationality and enforce said standards. So, knowledge is a little less abstract than rationality as such -- in my accounting set out here -- because it is here that we can begin to reference particular actors and communities to begin sifting through what counts as knowledge. But you'll note that I do define knowledge as a cultural product, and not a particular belief some individual agent might hold onto [[which runs up against JTB]]

Truth is a value of some beliefs. One might taylor their rationality such that true beliefs are an objective for said rationality, but truth isn't that easy to acquire where you can just say "I want to believe true things", so rationality must include much more than this simple criteria.

Hence, we have certitude. I tend to think there's not much to any criteria for epistemic certitude -- I can make sense of attitudinal or psychological certitude pretty easily, but I'm less clear on the epistemic -- but, in the abstract, it's easy enough to think of certainty as a scale from some theoretical absolute point to another theoretical absolute point, neither of which are actually possible to obtain epistemically [though we may be familiar with them at the psychological level] (also, why I tend to be shy of epistemic certainty -- it's just so abstract that it doesn't actually seem to work as much of a practical guide, and I prefer to think of rationality/knowledge etc. in terms of praxis due to my emphasis on process). Certainty is just a measure of how much we ought to hold onto a belief in the face of contradictory evidence. So you are very certain that demons don't just appear, and upon seeing one, in spite of this strong evidence, you come up with other theories to explain said experience on the basis that you are very certain that demons do not exist -- at least until you see more than just this one demon when you happened to be under the influence. But suppose you are a forgetful person, and you think your keys are in your pocket. Upon looking you find that your pockets are empty. Knowing that you are a forgetful person you don't cling to the belief that your keys are in your pockets because you weren't terribly certain about that to begin with.


Given all that -- it is, indeed, rational to believe. And the fact that we may be wrong is just part of the rational acquisition of beliefs. EDIT: Though I might prefer to say that it is not irrational to believe -- since I would say that to believe is not necessarily rational. We are still irrational creatures, as humans, so it's not like believing necessitates rationality.

Haha. "Kant" is 13 clicks away. :D Squirrels appear to have something truly profound to say.

"computer" is a mere 9 clicks away.

I'd say that's too simplistic. The reasons why are complicated. Regardless, though, these and other similar occupations should be sufficient to show that an organized military need not be as advanced as their enemies in order to stand a fighting chance -- that the "tanks and planes" of the U.S. military do not necessitate victory against any other organized force.

Now, do I think Americans would win? At present, I do not. I don't think they have a reason to fight their own military. They're very pro-military and pro-USA. You wouldn't have popular resistance in most cases, today. But that's still different from the argument @Benkei is stating.

I don't think that this argument holds up too well against the facts. Though the U.S. might have a very advanced military, it is losing the battle in the middle east to armies largely composed of old assault rifles, and so forth. They don't want to admit that, of course, but it's not hard to see that these wars are being lost in purely military terms.

I tried to aim for a middle-of-the-road. I generally am not interested in gun control, but I certainly don't think that gun-culture, or the particular phrase, are worth defending.

EDIT: There's also a general problem with the phrasing "Gun Control" -- as if it were something you can increase or decrease -- which is a necessary result of politicizing any issue, but is problematic in finding any sort of real solution to the problem. This is especially so because laws around guns aren't like taxes or something. There's nothing to increase or decrease, in that sense. Rather, the need for good gun control laws needs to be tailored to the situation.

As it is, the frame is largely around an increase or decrease of gun control, followed by an attack on the culture of guns. But that's not really looking at the laws and finding sensible policies which would result in a better society. In the USA, at least, while one may desire a weapons ban or some such, generally speaking you'll probably just alienate yourself and bolster the NRA by proposing measures like that. An unfortunate result, considering how much far-right politics and the NRA are in bed with one another.

To judge by how many assholes live around here in spite of open carry. . . ;)

No, I don't think so. I also don't particularly like the implication of said phrase. A polite society that I'd want to live in has nothing to do with violence, but with compassion and respect.

Though I still like firearms. I've been shooting since I was 8, so I just don't have any sort of averse feelings attached to weapons. Weapons are killing machines. I suppose I just don't see the world in a way where I think we are actually beyond killing. It's in that frame that I think of weapons. I much prefer having the reality of our violent lives closer to home -- so that the question of violence is not a bar conversation and an identity to project, but a serious action that we take ownership over, or disavow. As it is state-sponsored violence is a reality that few countries can say they don't participate in. Especially in the United States, for what that's worth. If it is killing and massacres that we are concerned with, I'd start with talking about the military.

Plus, I am a leftist. And I'm not particularly keen on letting just the right-wing crazies own firearms. I'd much prefer reasonable folk who are averse to violence than those who fetishize violence as a means to manhood own weapons.

What would "sponsoring" entail? Money? Time? Both?