In the interests of fostering debate, would anybody like to draw parallels between gun control and nuclear disarmament?

Isn't the proliferation of nuclear weapons for the same reasons as the right to bear arms? It is a form of intimidation, a defense against being attacked in kind. Should, therefore, all countries be likewise encouraged to stockpile nuclear weaponry against those that currently hold such power?

I understand that there's a myriad of differences between the two, but I'd like to hear what you guys think about it.

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I've often argued that it's morally indefensible on the part of the United States to stockpile its own nuclear arms -- or, for that matter, chemical and biological weapons -- while denying other sovereign nations the same fundamental right, and I've drawn the same parallel you just did. The United States has no more nor less intrinsic right to "weapons of mass destruction" than any other country. The only counterargument anyone has ever advanced to me is that other nations "are crazy" and "hate freedom" and that therefore, we can't let them have nuclear weapons. That's a spurious argument at best, since no matter how "crazy" we might deem them to be, no nation is going to launch weapons that are as likely to cause irreparable harm to its own people as to the enemy except as an absolute last resort. (And that doesn't take into consideration the irony that the ostensibly sane and freedom-loving United States is the only nation known to have ever launched nukes.)

When I've demanded to know what gives the United States a moral imperative to deny other nations the fundamental right to self-defense, I've actually had self-professedly Christian conservatives admit that their argument boils down to a simple declaration of "might makes right," and that they're comfortable with that fact. By that standard, Jared Allen should be able to deny me the right to bear arms, simply because he's bigger, stronger and more conservative than I am. Of course, they're not equally ready to concede the possibility that China, 1.2 billion citizens strong, in possession of 40% of foreign-held US federal debt, and rapidly modernizing its military, might someday have the "right" to tell the United States it can't have nuclear weapons. Because, you see, Communist China "is crazy" and "hates freedom." Gotta love the moral relativism of supposedly freedom-loving Americans. They fail to understand that the intent behind the right to bear arms is to protect the little guy from the big guy (in the case of the 2nd Amendment, citizens from the government), not to perpetuate the hegemony of the strong over the weak. And before someone protests that people can die when other nations exercise their right to bear arms, let me point out that that can happen any time anyone, individual or nation, exercises its right to bear arms (and it certainly happens every time the United States itself does so).

I'm convinced that the greatest threat to liberty this nation faces is not liberal politicians, terrorism, or rogue dictators but rather well-meaning but misguided religious conservatives. I'm too tired after staying up all night watching NFL football to make a cogent argument, though, so I'll let former Supreme Court Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis speak for me, even though his words are probably more directly applicable to the topic of healthcare reform than nuclear proliferation:

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Again....America is ALOT different then other countries. We arn't run by a dictator that would think nothing of using a nuke to "get rid" of who he doesn't like.
Non.....let me ask you this question. Do you not see any difference between the United States, and say, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and so on?
Have you ever heard of Adolph Hitler? Saddam used gas to kill his own people. Do you not think that if he had the chance he would have used a nuke? The ONLY reason the nut job running N. Korea doesn't use his nukes is that he KNOWS we would jump to the defense of any country he did that too.
We have been the "police" of the world for MANY years. Jumping in to help weaker countries. If we give up our nukes, we will be at the "mercy" of all the nut job dictators out there. That's fact. Do you REALLY want that?
Do you think the U.S. would just launch nukes for the hell of it, like those dictators would?
If you don't see any difference, then i feel sorry for you. Just because YOU are capable of intellegent thought, doesn't mean the dictators of other countries are also capable.
You think Al Quida wouldn't nuke us if they had them? If they did, what would we use to defend ourselves?
The reason I keep a loaded gun in the house is with the HOPE that I NEVER have to use it. And it IS the same as America having nukes. A criminal is the SAME as a nut case dictator. They don't CARE about "laws" or "respect of others", they want THEIR WAY and don't give a DAMN how they get it.
It IS the same.

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Which is exactly why I hate airport security.

I'm not sure I should add yet another 2.34 cents of mine here or not, but here goes:

1. TheEngineer's request for parallels between gun control and nuclear disarmament is a good one. In my opinion, however, the two issues are different in kind.

The issue of gun control is either a debate over individual rights vs. the power of the state (my position), or a debate over the relative importance of different individual rights (most people's "erroneous reading of the Constitution" positions. 🙂 ). But nuclear disarmament is a debate of the rights (or power) of one sovereign nation/state vis-a-vis the rights/power of another sovereign nation/state.

To my mind, they are the same question only in the very limited case where the "disarmament" one is talking about is the individual possession of nuclear weapons. Which, save for a few [strike]fruitcakes[/strike] people far farther out there than even me, I don't ever recall anyone seriously considering a debatable question.

However, if they are questions different in kind, I think they are also questions that can be connected.

For example, I would argue that the people most likely to push the nuclear button, are tyrants and true believers. (And the true believers include a certain subset of the religious right Nonstopdrivel is worried about; as Heinlein pointed out seventy years ago in "If This Goes On____".) But I would also argue that the best defense against tyrants and true believers is a well-armed populace.

The greatest danger of nuclear weapons comes from the perceived ability of the decision-maker to distance oneself from the consequences of their use. Why are so many boneheaded "military adventures" not boneheaded because of the military but because of the politicians? Because, in the end, with the exception of certain general officer types (politicians by another name), the military man makes decisions which require him or her to place himself/herself in harm's way.

But the politician, liberal or conservative or anything else, doesn't share that part of the burden of his choices. He might have to write some "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jones" letters, but, unlike the military officer, he's unlikely to ever get shot by non-friendly fire. And he has the Secret Service, the FBI, even the CIA, not to mention the Army and the Navy and the Marines and the Air Force and the Coast Guard, to insulate himself from the few shots that might be fired in his direction.

That lack of immediate personal accountability is what makes modern weapon technology so much more destabilizing. Indeed, its why, arguably, chemical/biological weapons should be considered even a greater danger than nuclear ones. They're easier to disconnect their consequences from the person deciding their use. Envelopes with anthrax in them and the like.

MAD worked for the Cold War, in that Nagasaki remains the last nuclear shot fired in anger, but it made for lots of anxious moments each time some leader or leaders came to power who thought "limited" or "tactical" use could be made to work. But because nuclear weapons were, and to large extent, I think still are, thought of as strategic weapons, they never have really been disconnectable from the MAD storyline: if country X, then country Y will use 2 on X, and so on until everyone (and most important from the advocate's point of view, the person advocating the initial use) is fried.

Until our current age of terror, of course. Now people worry about the suitcase nuke on the back of your average suicide bomber. Its tactics, not strategy anymore. And the crazy, be he an Osama type or some dictator with an Idi Amin complex, can export the suitcase and stay half a world away from the blast, insulated from paying the penalty by both the suicide bomber's inability to testify and the lack of evidence of his involvement.

Unfortunately, the traditional approaches to nuclear disarmament have typically all been based on visions of the power of states. You get at the incentives for individual dictators and policymakers, if you pay attention to them at all, through giving one state the power to threaten/use force against another. And that leads to either MAD or unilateral-disarmament-and-hope-bad-guys-will-start-acting-nice. One scary as hell and one naive as hell.

But nuclear disarmament (or bio/chem weapon disarmament) is more a problem of supply-chain management. The sovereign states can't be the focus; it's the links in the supply chain, be they the dictator, the bureaucrats, the company managers, the engineers, the semi-truck drivers, whatever.

2. I sort of agree with Nonstop on the "greatest danger" and sort of don't. On the one hand, as the late longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer pointed out many years ago, true believers are dangerous. And many of the religious right are in fact true believers, and like most true believers believers that force is justified in pursuit of their cause.

But I would argue that the problem is not the fact that they are "religious" or "on the right." The problem is that they are "true believers."

I think it is interesting that you both quote Brandeis in Olmstead v. US, and in your own dicta suggest that it might be more applicable to health care reform than, say, nuclear proliferation.

Olmstead, IIRC, was a case about wiretapping used to convict during Prohibition. The majority refused to extend the "search and seizure" protection of the fourth amendment to wiretaps, essentially reasoning that if america wanted to extend the protection to cover wiretap activities, they would have amended the constitution to say so. Brandeis rightly pointed out, and this is why his dissent has been cited with approval far more often than the opinion of the Court, that the search and seizure protection against state action should not be eliminable by technological change.

To be sure, Brandeis worried about those true believers, who are as often men of good will as they are men of evil. But his primary worry was about those true believers being able to act with the cover of state authority unencumbered by Constitutional protections.

His argument was that without the protection against "search and seizure" being extended to wiretaps, any true believers could abuse state power. Not any particular kind of true believer, but true believers in general.

The true believers of Watergate, for example, the ones that put Brandeis particular fears in Olmstead to the test, were not from the religious right. Okay, Chuck Colson arguably is now, but his religious awakening came after, not before his abuses of power. And I certainly wouldn't call G. Gordon Liddy a member of the religious right.

2B. I would further argue that the greatest danger to liberty in this country is not, in the end, the true believer, any more than it is liberal politicians (much as I scorn them), terrorists (much as I hate them), or dictators (bad as they are). The greatest danger to liberty is the one Edmund Burke warned about. The greatest danger to liberty is the American people itself. A people who only looks to government as "dealer with and solver of all problems", and in so doing leaves itself prey to the manipulation of those true believers, those amoral politicans, those terrorists, and even, occasionally, those foreign dictators.

But even Burke got only part of it correct, probably because even those radicals he most worried about (the Jacobites, the masses, the Paineites) were, compared the standards of today's mainstream American political discourse, highly informed and thoughtful. The problem has gone beyond "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing." Unfortunately, now it may be, "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to remain horribly ignorant."

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amazing post, wade. +1.

while i am certainly not an 'all-knowing' individual (well maybe on certain subjects 😉 but i digress...

i'll be damned if anybody, person, group, family member or friend will EVER tell me how i should feel, think, or act.

stupidity & apathy hurt us all.