- Invisible Men: We now send so many people, especially young black men, to prison – where they are not counted in most official government statistics – that it badly distorts statistics on high school drop-out rates, employment, wages, and voter turnout. “…inmates and ex-inmates are at once constantly under surveillance and effectively unseen.”
- America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead Eliminating lead from children’s environments might be the most important anti-crime measure we could take. Kevin Drum has been writing up a storm about this; here’s a round-up of his lead blogging.
- Thirteen theses on cannabis policy
- Seventeen Magazine Promotes Body Hatred by partnering up with the TV show “Biggest Loser.”
- The Transformation Of Labor Unions From Opponents of Immigration Reform To Its Biggest Champions
- Children, Parents and Mass Incarceration
- Player Piano Roll Copying is Killing Music (And It’s Maybe Illegal)
- In New Castle, Pa., trying to break free of poverty. A long but very interesting story about one teenage girl’s struggle to climb the economic ladder.
- A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible. This comic strip cracked me up.
- Melinda Gates’ New Crusade: Investing Billions in Women’s Health.
- Robert George explains natural law. (PDF file).
- Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy | Naomi Wolf
- A Letter To The Guy Who Harassed Me Outside The Bar
- House Republicans Derail Bill Targeting Rapists
- “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.” – Judge Colleen McMahon, regarding the Obama administration’s secret rules for deciding when it’s okay for the US government to assassinate US citizens. (Via.)
- Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld’s Sermon on Same-Sex Marriage: An Appreciation
- Back when 50 miles was a long way. A very neat historical map of travel times.
- President Obama Would Choose to Fight the Horse-Sized Duck
- “…As I sit here in my skinny jeans and fitted top, for the first time in my life I am fat, female, and unashamed.”
- Ten Rules for Fat Girls
- A Rape At Burning Man
- Is there objective morality in the Universe? – The Good Atheist
- Cartooning Plagiarism Scandal: It’s About Time!
- Plagiarism allegations hit Bill Day in closing days of fundraising campaign. And as well as reading that, it’s hard to appreciate what an embarassment Bill Day is to political cartooning without at least skimming through That Cartoon Critic.
- To Stabilize the Debt, Policymakers Should Seek Another $1.4 Trillion in Deficit Savings — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
- ‘There’s nothing mutual about it’: White evangelicals, privileged distress and grievance envy
- ” Does the right to religious freedom include the right to impose your views on others? Does it include the right to impose your views on a diverse workforce? On customers and patients seeking your services you offer the public? Does it include the right to close the door – in your office or your bakery or your emergency room – because you disagree with the person seeking services?”
- “Justice Clarence Thomas broke his nearly seven-year silence at Supreme Court oral arguments Monday. But no one is sure exactly what he said.”
- Petition: Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz.
- Anti-Feminist Press Crows Over Book Celebrating Domestic Abuse, Then Finds Out How Bad It Can Get
- Sex, Stereotyping, and Same-Sex Marriage
- “She’s the first ever out trans person in the United States to compete in the Miss Universe pageant system and has the goal of attempting to become the first trans Miss USA and trans Miss Universe. “
- The White House’s official reply to the petition to “Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.” This, and also the ducks video, via Elayne.
- Covering Up Climate Change | Andrew Sullivan
- An oldie but a goodie from Garfunkel and Oates:
Nobody, LOL! I honestly haven't run into that factoid before.
About comment editing: The Ajax Comment Editing is broken. The next step is to upgrade to the lastest version of WordPress, since it’s possible that the new version of Ajax Comment Editing just isn’t backwards-compatable.
The problem is, I refuse to upgrade without a new database backup, and the database backup isn’t working (possibly because the database is so friggin large).
So I’m having a backup done by the tech guy, and that’s going to take a day or two. After which I’ll upgrade wordpress and see if that fixes the Ajax Comment Editing.
Meanwhile, I’ve added a “preview” button, which isn’t as good, but it’s what I can do.
Hey, thanks so much for fiddling with this editing stuff. As if you didn’t have enough to do. I can’t believe that cock-sucking son-of-a-bitch Robert keeps riding yours ass about this. If I were you, I tell him to shove his crappily-written driwpj
OH SHIT. Look, I wasn’t through editing that last post. I was just kinda spit-balling here and — well, I guess it’s too late now.
Gee, sorry ’bout this, Robert. You know I’d never really say anything like that about you; it’s just kinda a big typo. I’d certainly clean it up, if only I could. But alas, no luck. But hey — maybe I can clean it up tomorrow or something?
In the meantime, it’s kinda comical. Kinda.
Well, except for the discovery that your go-to insult is homophobic. :(
The comments here about post-scarcity got me thinking that I should reread Kiln People by David Brin. It portrays a post-scarcity economy.
Is it really good? I’d be interested in reading about a post-scarcity society.
U.S. 7th Court of Appeals upholds Wisconsin Act 10.
The court rejected the concept that the State’s refusal to collect dues for a public employee union suppresses that union’s First Amendment rights, so the State has every right to collect dues for one such union while not collecting them for another. On that basis, the fact that such an action can be perceived as punishing unions opposing the Governor’s election while favoring those supporting him is moot. Act 10 is upheld in it’s entirety, reversing the lower court that suppressed part of the law.
Can someone explain to me the definition of self-plagiarism in the cartooning world? The linked articles talk about it as some kind of horror, but I don’t understand why recycling images that you yourself drew is some kind of problem. (Yes I know it isn’t the main part of the articles, I’m just confused about that point).
If you’re a syndicated cartoonist, the expectation of newspapers who subscribe to your cartoon is that you are expecting that you are giving them fresh material every day. To constantly recycle cartoons the way Bill Day does is selling the newspapers one thing (fresh content) but giving them another.
Then there’s the just plain “you are a hack and there are better cartoonists who deserve your spot” issue. Which isn’t ethics, exactly, but it’s annoying as heck to cartoonists like Matt Bors who aren’t too lazy to do their job.
@Amp–I read it about 10 years ago… I remember thinking it was good, but the details are fuzzy. The Kiln People of the title are cheap copies that people make of themselves, often to do boring tasks, which I think is part of the reason for the post-scarcity economy. Most people don’t have jobs but redistributionist policies ensure everyone gets enough income to stay out of poverty. The main character’s wife or girlfriend is in a National Guard type occupation (they would use the cheap copies of themselves to do the actual fighting–there isn’t a war going on in any case). It has a slightly noir-detective feel (the main character is a detective), although the overall future is not dark. In fact, one of the ways that Brin stands out from other science fiction authors of today is that he’s quite optimistic.
If you’d like to read a short story by David Brin before committing to a novel, here’s one I’ve read a couple times (once recently) and is one of my favorites, or at least one of the most memorable.
Since you’re a cartoonist, it may interest you that there is a graphic novel, The Life Eaters based on one of Brin’s short stories, “Thor Meets Captain America” (Not the Marvel Thor or Captain America).
Best. superhero. story. ever.
I read Kiln people a few years ago as well. As far as I remember, it was quite entertaining as a detective mystery, but I don’t think I found the society described particularly convincing as a depiction of a realistic human social structure.
@Robert: I agree!
I notice Jeff Fecke’s Twitter feed isn’t present on the sidebar. Is that a glitch, or has he parted ways with Alas?
He read my witheringly magnificent “j’accuse!” post on the racism of Alas typographic choices and is completing a multiyear sabbatical to purge himself of his font-based racist uses of text.
Jeff hasn’t posted on Alas in six months, so I assume he’s parted ways with Alas. (I also removed Julia’s twitter feed, for the same reason). Both Jeff and Julia would be welcome to return, if they want to.
Hey Richard Jeffery Newman, any thoughts on the Obama billboard in Iran?
On the billboard itself, not really, except to say that it’s fascinating and I am not surprised. My feelings and thoughts on the sanctions themselves, and on how the US and others in the West are dealing with Iran are a good deal more complicated, both because I know less about them in detail than I should and because I know people in this country who are being hurt by them. (That last bit might seem like a stretch, but I’m not going to give any details, so you’ll have to take my word for it; and I will also say that I do not think this fact in and of itself is a reason not have the sanctions in place.)
Hey, folks, the “edit comments” function has been restored. You can once again edit your comments. Any remaining inability to correct your mistakes you may experience is your own look-out.
Of interest here, I think:
Shaming fat people into losing weight is the only way to solve obesity epidemic, leading health academic claims
Via Althouse
Yeah, that would work, because society doesn’t shame or beat up on fat people now. It’s just one big Festival of Pudge Acceptance, 24/7. It’s not that there is zero truth to the idea that shaming can drive positive behavior, but smokers getting shamed and beat up on, to whatever extent that ‘helped’ them quit, started out from a place where smokers were normal and even valorized. Heaping additional shame on people who already get shamed all the time seems very unlikely to modify their behavior.
“Your kids are pottymouthed brats because you never spank them” might be true. I cannot conceive of a situation where “your kids are pottymouthed brats because your regular severe beatings of them are insufficiently severe” would be true.
I think that’s a good analogy, Robert.
There’s also the fact that “fat” is not a behavior the way smoking is, but a physical state that’s affected by not just behavior but genetics and environment too. It’s less like shaming smokers and more like shaming anyone you hear coughing and assuming that the cough is because they’re a smoker and if they’d just quit, it would go away, and continuing to bully them even when it’s been proven that a large number of the people you’re bullying don’t actually smoke, or used to smoke but don’t anymore.
Amp, I just happened to notice that the missing article from May ’10 you restored a couple weeks ago is gone again. (And there are still no articles from May ’10 in your archive.)
I’m working on getting the entire month restored, but in the meanwhile, I took that one article I had essentially recreated from scratch down, because I was worried it might gum up the works of restoring the whole month.
I kept the file, and if restoring the whole month doesn’t work out, I can put it back with a few keystrokes. But I want to try to restore the whole month (I hope with the comments) first.
No problem! I just wanted to let you know in case there was some sort of recurring glitch.
@Robert & KellyK:
Wanting interventions to be evidence-based goes completely out the window when fat is involved. There are plenty of studies showing that shaming is, if anything, likely to make people fatter. But people just sort of flail around and think, “Well, we’ve got to do something!” without looking at whether it works. And yes, Robert, it does seem as though adding more shaming/stigma will have diminishing returns. For people who are fat now, adding a few posters and making it more acceptable to ask them if they are aware that they’re fat is unlikely to make the difference.
(Before the obesity epidemic, there were still a lot of fat people, so any shaming technique that reversed the BMI distribution to pre-epidemic levels would have a lot of collateral damage even after everyone who was going to get thinner did so.)
It is interesting to consider what the difference is between fat and smoking. One possibility is that the shame part isn’t the primary factor for smoking. I’m not entirely sure about the causes of the obesity epidemic, but if it’s increased availability of (certain types of?) food (or more normalization of grazing/snacking, which is in some ways “increased availability”), that somewhat parallels with decreased ability of smokers to smoke conveniently. We’ve got the shame in both cases, but perhaps it’s the inconvenience that the shame led to that reduced the incidence of smoking.
I think there’s something to KellyK’s comment about the type of shame, too. The shaming WRT fat seems a lot more personal to me. Some of it’s probably about how smoking is a behavior and fat is a personal trait. You smoke, you are fat. Smoking is disgusting, fat people are disgusting [is society’s view]. I don’t think smoking is seen so much as a reflection of one’s character. Cigarettes are bad and addictive, fat people are bad and weak-willed [is society’s view]. It could be that shame directed at a behavior is more effective than shame directed at a personal trait. If you’re shamed for a behavior it may make you want to alter your behavior, if you’re shamed for the way you are, you may just hate yourself.
closetpuritan, yep, pretty much everything you said. There’s also the common HAES principle that you don’t take good care of something you hate.
Lacking a crystal ball, I can’t say for sure, but I have a hunch that if I’d spent less time hating myself for being “fat”* through junior high, high school, and college and gone on a few less diets, my overall metabolism would’ve been in better shape when I developed hypothyroid in my 20s, and I would’ve gained a lot less weight. (For that matter, had my first endocrinologist actually treated my thyroid instead of telling me to diet, that would’ve been useful too.)
*”Fat” in scare quotes because I ranged from a size 12 to a size 18 during that time period, so not so much fat as in-betweenie/chubby/fatter than my size 6 classmates.
Well, this is going to get interesting:
[Moved here from the single dads in movies thread, since it was off topic there.]
Ballgame wrote:
Ballgame, I suspect you have no idea that statements like the one I’m quoting above make you sound like an obnoxious, condescending asshat who has only sneering contempt for feminists.
But they do, and I’d appreciate it if you’d try to dial it down several notches (or at least leave out the gratuitous slams on feminists). At least while you’re posting comments here on Alas.
(My guess is that if I showed up on your blog and said your comments “embody the weakness of arguments which emerge from an insular androcentric rhetorical environment,” that comment would set the teeth of nearly all your regular comment-writers on edge.)
That’s great, Ron. Of course, actual non-discrimination would be better, but even this is such an improvement on the status quo. It would really be lovely if I could enroll my kids in Boy Scouts (like I was, and like my father was) without simultaneously teaching them hate and bigotry.
—Myca
That is great, Ron. If this passes, it will be a big step in the right direction. And I appreciate you keeping us up-to-date on this issue.
Two questions for you. First, do you have any sense of if this proposed change is likely to become boy scout law when the council votes on it?
And second, do you favor this proposal becoming boy scout law?
(I suspect “boy scout law” is the wrong term for it, but hopefully you know what I mean.)
Amp, I deleted the ‘do try to keep up’ remark just a couple of minutes after I posted it precisely because I thought that some people might fail to get that I was being self-deprecating with that paragraph, despite the cues I left that I originally thought would make it pretty clear.
I don’t agree with you about the second paragraph, though. I wasn’t slamming feminists, I was referring to a certain kind of ‘just so’ argumentation that seems particularly prevalent in gynocentric discussions, and which Richard’s specific assertions here seems to embody. (Perhaps it’s just as common in other arenas, but I just don’t notice them as much because I don’t participate as much in those arenas.)
As for what impression your hypothetical ‘counter example’ might make on FC commenters, I don’t think that would particularly matter to me as long as you subsequently made logically rigorous issue-based arguments, and didn’t refer to your rhetorical opponents as “asshats” or whatever. But, that’s probably a digression.
Anyway, my rebuttals to Richard’s arguments were pretty forthright, so I’ll take your advice and try to be cautious about anything that might smack of rhetorically ‘rubbing salt in the wound’ going forward.
In the debate over this issue the policy proposed above is known as “local option”.
I have mixed emotions about this.
My personal viewpoint differs based on whether we are talking about youth or adults. As far as adults go, I have no big issue with it. When I was Scoutmaster of my Troop I recruited a young man (~ 23) who turned out to be gay. I didn’t have a problem with it. He is an Eagle Scout, knew the program well, taught the kids the program and it was all cool. The kids loved him. He wasn’t out to the kids or to the adults, but any adult (at least) with a working brain figured it out quick enough. If a unit wants to have gay leaders I don’t care in the slightest.
I think that a gay kid would be at much higher risk of abuse – sexual and otherwise – from other kids. I have seen kids be AWFUL cruel to other kids, and we can’t watch every kid all the time, especially in their tents at night. We can take action once the abuse has occurred and we find out about it, but by that time the abuse has occurred. If a gay kid wants to join, I’m going to sit down and have a talk with that child’s parents and let them know what I see as risks.
For my unit; I’m my unit’s Chartered Organization Representative. I have authority to accept or remove adult or junior leaders subject only to the authority of the priest that runs our church, and frankly he’s not likely to overrule me. If a gay or lesbian with a kid in our unit wanted to join up as a leader with this policy in effect I’d say “fine by me”, with two caveats:
1) Being “out” and the kids know it is fine. Give your boyfriend a kiss if he drops you off to go on a campout, O.K. But your primary purpose as a leader is to help run this program, not to promote to the kids that being gay/lesbian is a great thing.
2) What do the rest of the adults think? I’m not going to approve it if everyone else is going to quit. I don’t think that would happen, but I’d ask. I’d bet we would lose a few.
From a National viewpoint: this may very well cost the BSA anywhere from 13% to 30% of it’s membership. Thirteen percent of all Scouts are in units sponsored by Mormon stakes. They have threatened more than once that they’ll pull their Scouts and units out entirely if “local option” is passed. The Roman Catholic Church has not been quite as explicit, but it’s been pretty skittish about sponsoring units lately. As things stand there have been dioceses that have banned sponsoring Scout units because of the risk of having to deal with yet more questions of child molestation. I imagine that will get worse – and 10% of all Scouts are in units sponsored by the RCC. And the Lutherans are not all that on board, either. And I believe that there are many people unaffiliated with any of these organizations (or who may belong to them but have their kids in Packs, Troops, Crews, etc. that are not sponsored by them) that will simply pull their kids out.
I doubt seriously that there will be any great upsurge of kids from families heretofore not members who will join because this has happened, and I also doubt seriously that there will be any great upsurge of organizations who have up to this point not sponsored units who will start doing so because of this change. My expectation is that this is going to spark a significant net drop of membership in the B.S.A. I hope I’m wrong.
I’m not sure at what level this policy has to be voted on to become official. It might be handled by the Executive Board, which has a regularly scheduled meeting next week and will discuss this. Doubtless the Relationships Commitee – which is comprised of representatives from all the major sponsors of Scouting units and which rejected this two years ago – will weigh in. That’s where the “You do this and we’re walking” threats will come from. Reportedly the Mormons have done that publicly in the past and I doubt they’ve changed their minds.
My guess is that in order for this to take effect it will have to be approved at the next Annual Meeting, which would be all the members of National Council (the E-Board is a subset of that and is elected by it). For example, the Council President and Council Commissioner of each Council is automatically a member of National Council. My guess would be that all the urban councils will vote for it, the rural councils will not, and the suburban councils will … who knows?
Try as I might I can’t find the date or time of that. Last year’s was May 29th to June 1st. The search engine on the B.S.A.’s web site is legendarily bad, and I can’t find it with Bing or Google either. If they vote it up I imagine it’ll take effect soon thereafter.
I think that’s a valid concern, but my question is how the potential for abuse of kids who are gay or perceived as gay would be *worse* than it is right now. Currently, there’s an environment where Scouts are explicitly taught that being gay is incompatible with being a good Scout, and where figuring out that you’re gay after having joined Boy Scouts means quitting, lying about it, or getting kicked out. (Expecting a six-year-old Cub Scout to know enough about his sexuality to self-select out of scouting is a pretty high bar.)
After all, BSA found out that Ryan Andresen was gay in the first place because he wrote a letter about the bullying of gay kids, including himself and a younger troop member. Instead of support or help, it got his Eagle Scout denied. (Though, happily,the Board of Review gave it to him anyway, so I just learned: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/ryan-andresen-gay-eagle-scout_n_2432564.html)
(I’m also really not a fan of attempts to protect kids from bullying that are all about changing the bullied kid or restricting their activities, while not doing anything to change the *bully’s* behavior.)
Because, remember, kids, it’s not religious freedom unless you can make *everybody else* live by your religion too.
It’s too late to edit, but I hope it’s apparent that my angry, eye-rolling sarcasm isn’t directed at Ron, but at Mormons and Catholics not being content with just being allowed to discriminate against gay kids and leaders in troops they run, but insisting that secular or UU or UCC groups do so as well, even if that’s blatantly against their beliefs. (Navigator Scouts were founded by a UU congregation that had previously sponsored a Boy Scout Troop.)
That gay Scout whose Eagle app was approved by his local Council? He’s not an Eagle until National signs off on it. What National will do with it is anyone’s guess. But until it comes back to the local Council after having been approved by National, he’s not an Eagle.
Expecting a six-year-old Cub Scout to know enough about his sexuality to self-select out of scouting is a pretty high bar.
He won’t. What will happen is that he’ll go through the Cub Scouting program with no problem and then either never join Boy Scouts or drop out of the BSA after a year or so.
Got cut off on the last post. The other alternatives are:
He stays in Scouting because either:
a) he’s late to the party as far as puberty and figuring out which team he plays on
b) he’s closeted
c) he’s in a Troop where they are supportive and he doesn’t land in the papers talking about being gay in Scouting.
There’s gay kids in Scouting. Gay leaders, too. Again presuming that this policy is passed – and I see a lot of presumption on the part of the MSM – there’ll be more. What that does to the number of straight kids in Scouting remains to be seen ….
Have you read in all the various anti-2nd Amendment civil rights screeds that no one needs an AR-15 for personal defense? Well, guess who disagrees? Why, the Department of Homeland Security. They’ve got a RFQ out for thousands of rifles fitting precisely the description of AR-15s with those eeeeevil 20- and 30-round magazines. And what’s the title of this RFQ? Why, Personal Defense Weapons Solicitation.
Schedule C on that link gives the precise specifications for the weapons. Oh, and guess what? See section 3.9.2 of that spec and you’ll see that a personal defense weapon should be not just semi-automatic but full auto! There’s also flash suppressors (3.14.3), pistol grips (3.16), a retractable or foldable buttstock (3.17) and 30-r0und magazines (3.21.2), all of which qualify it under Sen. Feinstein’s bill as an “assault rifle”. But the DHS sees it as a Personal Defense Weapon. Guess they didn’t get the memo.
That there are already gay kids in scouting was kind of my point. It seriously weakens the argument that gay kids should be kept out of scouting for their own good because they’ll be bullied.
I don’t feel like reading the whole RFP (I do enough of that at work, thanks), but do they happen to mention *where* these personal defense weapons are being used or *by whom*? Because I can see wanting an AR-15 for personal defense too…in a warzone or during a terrorist attack. In a random suburb, less so. (Which is not to say I think they should be banned, just that “the average citizen doesn’t need X gun” and “X gun was ordered by some government agency and called a personal defense weapon” aren’t really mutually exclusive statements.)
“do they happen to mention *where* these personal defense weapons are being used or *by whom*?”
No. And I did look, reading every attachment to that RFQ.
As far as personal defense goes, having a semi-automatic weapon for self-defense makes a lot more sense than a single-shot one. There’s a big difference between target shooting on the range and having to deal with someone who wants to do violence to you, especially when you have been taken unawares. If you’ve got a single-shot weapon, what happens if you miss? As you are very likely to do. You’ve been surprised, adrenaline has been dumped into your bloodstream, your hands are shaking, etc. Also, even if you hit the target, one shot may not get the job done. In the recently publicized incident where a woman had to fend of an attacker who had broken into her home and threatened her and her two children, she shot him 5 times before he was driven off – and he was still alive and was picked up by the police, who were responding to her 911 call.
An AR-15 is also a much more practical self-defense weapon than the average hunting rifle or shotgun as it is much lighter and easier to handle. Depending on options, an AR-15 weighs between 5 to 7 pounds. That’s a lot easier to quickly and properly aim than a shotgun, especially for people who don’t have a lot of upper body strength and/or practice time on the range. The 15-year old young man who shot a man breaking through the door of his home – after 911 was called but before the cops arrived – used an AR-15.
Before you make a judgement regarding what kind of gun people need for a given purpose I’d suggest that you a) try shooting the various kinds of guns yourself and b) talk to people who have used guns for such purposes and see what their experiences have been.
And, in the annals of people who shouldn’t own guns, we have this guy. Phillip Walker Sailors. 69-year-old white guy. Former military. Former missionary. Murdered a 22 year old Cuban kid for mistakenly pulling into his driveway.
Guns sure are awesome. Especially when they’re in the hands of someone trained! And god-fearing! And white!
—Myca
Sure. Pump shotguns and semiauto pistols and revolvers are all in that category, right?
Irrelevant. Sure, it’s hard to aim a shotgun if you’re shooting skeet. Almost anyone can aim a shotgun well enough to hit a man-sized target at close range if they have a second or two to aim. And of course a pistol is even lighter, right?
um… so what? Would he be more or less dead with a revolver or pistol or shotgun? And who’s to day that “dead perp!” is what we’re going for anyway?
Yup.
Survey says: pump shotguns rule.
1) Almost never jam, since you can pump a new round;
2) Easy to aim; easy to shoot;
3) extraordinary stopping power if you actually need to shoot something;
and best of all, from the personal defense standpoint,
4) Arguably the biggest visual deterrent you can get. Big barrel; big hole, and (even better) a nice loud recognizable “I’m loading a round now” noise. People who aren’t deterred by a small .22 pistol (which can kill you just fine) will be deterred by a shotgun.
And from a public-safety standpoint,
5) Widely configurable for particular settings (you can select a load which will kill an intruder but which won’t easily penetrate walls, and which won’t kill the passerby across the street.)
6) No sniping ability: loud, can’t be suppressed; and even a rifled shell has relatively low range.
7) Hard to hide;
8) slow to reload, even with speed tubes
9) limited magazine capacity (though it has more than plenty for any normal personal defense situation); and
10) limited shots-per-second capacity.
I am curious if you can identify a situation where there’s a real benefit to an AR-15 over a Mossberg 500. What would it be?
“I am curious if you can identify a situation where there’s a real benefit to an AR-15 over a Mossberg 500. What would it be?”
A situation where I want an AR-15.
The benefit would be, me making the decisions about my life and not being subject to the preferences of strangers five thousand miles away who have no personal stake in the outcome and will pay none of the cost of any negative consequences I incur in adhering to their preferences.
But Robert, that explanation would also lead to the conclusion that if you want to buy a hundred military-grade landmines, or a bomb big enough to destroy your entire town, or a tank, or a missile, or anthrax, the government has no business interfering with you.
Also, it’s a bit rich for you to cry crocodile tears about decisions made by people “who have no personal stake in the outcome and will pay none of the cost of any negative consequences I incur in adhering to their preferences.” When your house gets robbed and those cop-killer bullets you felt you needed for self-defense are later used to blow away a cop in Vermont, or a school shooting in Oregon, what responsibility will you take for that? What negative consequences will you face for that? Where’s your personal stake, other than having lost the $800 or whatever you paid for the gun?
Is it likely that the specific ridiculous guns you own will be the ones that wind up being used in a crime? No, it’s not. But neither is it likely that you’ll ever in your life face a situation where you need an AR-15 for self-defense because a shotgun wouldn’t have worked.
Is it likely that the situation that the “No limits on guns! Ever!” mentality makes a lot of crimes, including mass shootings, more frequent and more deadly that they would likely be in a country that wasn’t awash with guns? Yes.
Sure.
That’s also the argument for private ownership of Gatling guns, which I assume (maybe wrongly!) you oppose.
So since we agree that there’s a line somewhere, and are therefore trying to determine where that line is, gin-and-whiskey’s question about relative merits of these two guns as regards public safety and personal defense seems relevant, no?
If you agree that it’s relevant, maybe a less cut-and-paste “git the gubment outa mah sock drawer” answer would be useful.
—Myca
You miss the point.
Amp, you have the right to free speech, which means among other things that you can draw a cartoon about just about anything you wish. However, you are not obliged to show WHY such a cartoon is socially acceptable or valuable, or why it should qualify for 1st amendment protection. If I, in my role as protector of America’s nuclear secrets or preventer of pedophilia or whatever, think that your work is so awful that it infringes, *I* have to prove it. You don’t have to prove the converse.
Amp, do you ever worry about the liability not being taken on when people steal cars, and then later use the cars in crimes? No, you don’t – because we have a pretty good model of liability in this country. You’re obliged to responsibly take care of your stuff, but someone who steals it, generally, takes the liability along with the Glock or the car. Leave your dynamite in a locked concrete building, or have your gun at home behind four walls, and you’re not liable for what bad people come around and do, and the reasons why are obvious.
So, wait.
Do you think that private ownership of nuclear devices ought to be legal?
—Myca
No, I don’t. First, I don’t think an explosive device is ‘arms’ in the sense intended by the Second Amendment. Second, even if they were held to be arms in that sense, then like Gatling guns the state would be able to show that they are too destructive of good public order to be permitted.
But as a general rule, as I understand it, explosives and similar ordnance are not really ‘arms’. Arms means guns, which means something that uses physical processes to propel a projectile.
Robert, let’s change the question.
Instead of “I am curious if you can identify a situation where there’s a real benefit to an AR-15 over a Mossberg 500. What would it be?”
I now propose this question:
Assume you’re living in a hypothetical place which is conveniently just like the U.S. except that gun owners (together with those who don’t own guns) have an obligation to explain and justify their desires. neither side gets to say “because the law.”
In that context, I am curious if you can identify a situation where there’s a real benefit to an AR-15 over a Mossberg 500. What would it be?
Also in that context, i am curious if you disagree with my very specific examples of the overall benefits to everyone ELSE of a Mossberg 500 over an AR-15.
G&W, my preference and my right to choose *is* the ‘real benefit’.
If you mean, what would the tactical advantage be of one weapon over the other, or under what circumstances would one be preferable to the rational shooter, I do not know. Despite the fact that I am a fervent gun rights nut, I haven’t touched a rifle since my days in the Boy Scouts, 30 years past. I could go Google what gun owners and users say, but so could you.
Offhand, your list of benefits to everyone else seems all right, though a bit strained. Sniper scares are not a major item on the national fear agenda.
However, your posts sound very much like a guy who likes small-breasted Italian women trying to convince everyone else in the world that small-breasted Italian women are the bee’s knees, and that anyone who likes short blonde Danish girls with big tits is a jackass.
Even from a tactical standpoint, if Jane is comfortable with an AR-15 but doesn’t like shotguns – for whatever reason, even if you think the reason is stupid – then the shotgun isn’t going to be the weapon she would choose. There is a point where choice can be overridden by social needs; I might choose to drive a 60-foot tractor-trailer around the block 40 times a day, eventually my neighborhood covenant association is going to tell me to knock it the hell off. But that override comes on big items and huge problematic behaviors, not people who choose a gun that’s a little scarier to antigun liberals but that basically works like every other gun out there.
If Jane can *have* a shotgun – and she can – then she can certainly have an AR-15. She certainly should not have her preference negated because some jackanapes on the Internet thinks that Italian women are hotter.
“Is it likely that the situation that the “No limits on guns! Ever!” mentality makes a lot of crimes, including mass shootings, more frequent and more deadly that they would likely be in a country that wasn’t awash with guns? Yes.”
Is it likely that the “alligators have rights too!” movement makes for a lot of alligator attacks, more frequent and more deadly than they would likely be in a country that wasn’t chock-full of alligators?
Absolutely – because we are cleverly eliding two comparisons, between a country with lots of alligators vs. a country with few, and a country with a strong alligator lobby vs. a country without. The valid comparison is “Two countries are awash in alligators. One of them has an alligator-rights movement. The other does not. Does the country with the movement see substantially more alligator attacks?”
Is it POSSIBLE that our my-cold-dead-hands attitudes lead to more gun crimes being committed, than would occur in a country with just as many guns but where everyone is a wimpy liberal? I suppose. But it’s very difficult to tease that out of the data. They don’t ask many mass murderers about their personal commitment to the 2nd amendment.
Now, what is true is that a country that has a cold-dead-hands attitude is likely to be a country where there are a lot MORE guns – and since you have to have a gun to commit a gun crime, you might well see more gun crimes in such a country. And indeed, the US does have more gun crime than countries with far fewer guns…we also have less of some other kinds of crime. It’s not a simple picture.
But your phrasing implies that you believe, oh, if only we weren’t so hardcore about our 2nd amendment rights, that – alone and all by itself and without any other change in American society – would lead to some major reduction in gun violence. I don’t think that’s accurate, and I doubt that you do either, really.
That is pretty damn funny, I have to say; I didn’t realize that you had so little of an idea what you’re talking about.
But dude, just because you’re clueless doesn’t mean you should be accusing me of bullshitting. It just means that you should get off the damn soapbox and leave the discussion.
You successfully inferred my (extremely obvious) meaning. A country in which we had reasonable gun control laws for, say, thirty years and counting, would be a country significantly less awash in guns than the country we currently live in. Less guns, less gun crime.
Which crimes do we have less of? And compared to which countries?
Of course, I’m very skeptical that we’ll ever have reasonable gun control laws in the US. Another policy that might reduce homicide a lot (although not mass shootings) is legalizing most drugs, but unfortunately, I doubt that’ll happen either.
So for crime reduction purposes, I think lead abatement is probably the best policy we could pursue that might actually be possible to pass, although even that seems very uncertain.
So wait, why does your defense of private ownership of AR-15s not apply to Gatling guns?
I mean, I want a car-mounted Gatling gun – or its more modern and deadly decedents, that don’t require hand-cranking – for, uh, self-defense, yeah, that’s the ticket. Who the hell are you to tell me I can’t have one, you goddamn nanny-state bureaucrat, you?
“I didn’t realize that you had so little of an idea what you’re talking about.”
I have not in this venue, or in any venue or time that I can remember, opined about the tactical merits or demerits of various guns, other than to pass along conventional wisdom to people who did not know it and were asking.
That’s why, if you can scrape enough of the smug off your face to actually read what was written, you will see me talking, not about the tactical merits, but about the underlying right and the balance of obligation between regulator and regulated.
“But dude, just because you’re clueless doesn’t mean you should be accusing me of bullshitting.”
I’m not accusing you of bullshitting; I’m pointing out WHY your opinion doesn’t matter, even if your specific knowledge of the topic is superior. I may know more about movies than you do, but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong to have different tastes than me; a choice of weapon is very largely a question of taste, of comfort; the gunners who I know do not say “look at the specs and pick the one that best fits your set of parameters, and order it online”, they say “pick it up and hold it and see what you think.”
“So wait, why does your defense of private ownership of AR-15s not apply to Gatling guns?”
One, it is not my defense. It is the settled law of the United States as interpreted by the Supreme Court.
Two, unfortunately for clarity (and probably wishing to preserve their own prerogative to refine the line at a later date), the Justices give us only broad phrasings to justify where the regulatory line is: unusual and dangerous weapons were Scalia’s phrase. Machine guns, which are primarily military weapons, fall on one side of the line; AR-15s, which are simple light rifles suited to a variety of functions, fall well on the other. Although the 2nd amendment is not *about* hunting, you can use hunting as a very, very broad tool to gauge the suitability or regulatability of a weapon; you can hunt with a shotgun or a rifle (or a pistol, but those are generally considered less lethal than long arms) but a machine gun would be of no use. That’s a back-of-the-envelope metric, not Holy Writ, but it’s a pretty good guideline.
Three, you don’t have a car so it’s a moot point for you anyway.
I don’t think the meaning of Heller – beyond saying that total bans on assembled handguns in the home are not acceptable – is at all clear, when it comes to an assault weapons ban. But we’ll have to wait and see on that. At one point in Heller Scalia strongly implies that banning assault rifles is acceptable:
The M-16 rifle is very similar, although not identical to, an AR-15. There is no reason to think that a M-16 couldn’t be just as effective as a hunting rifle as an AR-15. I think you’re reaching if you imagine that AR-15 bans have clearly been found unconstitutional.
NO CAR?
But I’ve now got the top bid for the Gatlin gun on eBay. You know, the one with the car-mounting package and the automated crank that plugs into the cigarette lighter. It was going to be a birthday present!
But without a car, where are you gonna mount it? Cuz, did I mention, it’s gotta be someplace with a cigarette lighter?
Well, shit. If you’re speaking metaphorically, I wish you’d note that somehow.
Anyway, happy birthday. I guess you’ll have to find some other way to keep all of Robert’s alligators at bay. The gun would’ve just hacked off all those alligator rights people anyway….
Robert:
Or knives, or swords, or any other thing you might be able to use for personal defense. Anti-tank rockets, nuclear weapons, etc. even when used properly can’t be expected not to affect other people besides the user and the target, so it’s reasonable to control their use.
G-i-W:
Yup, pump shotguns are the tool of choice for many people. But they have their drawbacks. It takes a lot more arm strength to operate the pumping mechanism – and time. Additionally, the pump action will pull your aim off target while you do it so that you have to re-aim, giving the perp time if you miss with the first shot. The shotgun itself is a lot heavier than an AR-15 and is thus slower to bring and hold on target – arm strength again, and remember you may be dealing with a moving target. It’s also longer, so if you’re working in close quarters, such as your own home, you may hit the closet door or the dresser while you’re swinging it around where you wouldn’t with an AR-15 and thus fail to bring the shotgun on target. And the pumping noise gives away your position – upon hearing the first pump (you’re not storing this guy with a round in the chamber, are you?) the perp may just start firing towards the noise. Plus, you were hoping you wouldn’t have to kill anyone and that the perp would just walk on by the closet, grab your wallet off the dresser and leave. But maybe not, if she hears the pump she may just start shooting. You may not think these things are an issue, but other people do.
Amp, one big difference between the M-16 and the AR-15 – the M-16 can be operated full auto, the AR-15 is semi-auto or single-shot only. And that difference is essential.
I don’t know if this is settled law or not, but it seems to me that if you want to limit a Constitutional right, the onus lies upon the people who wish to restrict that right to prove that a particular benefit to the public is so overwhelming that it justifies restricting that right, as opposed to those who wish to preserve that right having to prove that there is a benefit to retaining it.
Amp:
Really? What 2nd Amendment civil rights restrictions (often euphemistically referred to as “gun control laws” in order to hide their true intent) do you suggest be enacted that would reduce the number of guns in the United States?
But very likely far more violent crime and property crimes, as perpetrators now know that there’s much less likelihood that prospective victims can defend themselves.
Nit pick: “Fewer”, not “less”. Guns and crimes can be enumerated. I have an apple pie. In one of the acts of selfless generosity for which I am renowned, I cut it up into 6 pieces and give you a piece. I now have less pie. I have fewer pieces of pie.
Amp:
There’s millions of AR-15’s in private hands in the U.S., so they are definitely not unusual. Seems to me that would exempt them from this. And I’d quite disagree with what I perceive is your implication that a fully automatic rifle (such as the M-16) is not significantly more dangerous than a semi-automatic rifle (such as the AR-15). Certainly our legislatures have thought so. Fully automatic rifles have been banned at the Federal level (except for a very few special cases) from civilian ownership for almost 80 years, but semi-automatic rifles have never been so banned.
Amp –
What’s an assault weapon?
Ron, thanks for the fewer/less distinction. I didn’t know that. (And probably I’ll need to be reminded more times before I get it straight.)
Why d0 you say that, Ron? After all, according to your standards, shouldn’t the onus be on you to prove that the benefit to the public of banning full auto guns is so overwhelming that it justifies restricting that right?
For that matter, I’m not sure I buy your anti-tank gun argument. It seems to me that if Nobody.Really, being a wealthy landholder, wants to own some anti-tank guns – and for that matter, some tanks – for the purpose of defending his many hundreds of acres of private property, it’s not self-evident that those weapons “when used properly can’t be expected not to affect other people besides the user and the target.”
You’re assuming what it at issue. There is no widespread agreement or Supreme Court ruling that establishes a Constitutional right to own semi-automatics rifles, large-capacity cartridges, etc.. What’s been firmly established, as I understand it, is that no local or federal government can flatly ban handgun ownership in the home, or flatly require that all handguns in the home be kept locked or disassembled.
As for the benefits of banning private ownership of semi-automatic weapons, including A15s, it’s self-evident that we might be better off if people like Seung-Hui Cho and Adam Lanza’s mother hadn’t had legal access to semi-automatic weapons, high-capacity cartridges, and hollow point bullets.
(Since you’ve now admitted that the traits of the weapon make a difference to how deadly it is – hence the ban on fully automatics – please don’t try to now claim that someone like Lanza would have done the same amount of damage using a simple, non-semi-automatic handgun.)
I think Obama’s proposals, plus the currently proposed assault weapons ban (Robert, see that link for an answer to your question) would be a good start. Like much legislation, it might need to be fine-tuned after implementation.
And you’re again assuming what’s at issue regarding the 2nd amendment.
That all depends on how the Courts end up defining ‘unusual.” I’ve seen it estimated that about 3 million private citizens in the US own AR-15s (some of them own more than one). If so, that would mean that a bit over 99% of Americans do not own AR-15s. I don’t know if that qualifies AR-15s as “unusual” or not, but I don’t think it’s the slam-dunk argument you think it is.
I don’t think there’s any question that handguns are more broadly owned than AR-15s.
So an assault weapon is a rifle, that has some cosmetic features that look kind of scary? None of those features have anything to do with a weapon’s lethality. A gunsmith could design a gun with all those features, that wouldn’t be capable of terrorizing a rabbit colony, and then turn around and make a gun without any of those features that could wipe out a platoon.
I think you’re absolutely fooling yourself about what Heller means, and either you don’t know or don’t care that most weapons today (pistols and rifles) are semi-automatic; all semi-automatic means is that you pull the trigger one time for one bullet. (As opposed to a gun where you have to manually chamber a round every time.)
You and I will be gay-married in Texas with George Bush Jr. presiding and Maggie Gallagher weepily throwing rice at us, before semi-automatic weapons as a class are meaningfully restricted by the Court.
Why, Robert, I had no idea you felt that way…. This is all so sudden, so new, I don’ t know what to say… but.. Oh, YES, Robert! Yes, yes, YES!
Amp:
The right to own a handgun, a machine gun or a semi-automatic rifle are not all separate Constitutional rights. There’s a single Constitutional right to keep and bear arms that, like First Amendment rights, are subject to restrictions. It’s been established that it’s legitimate for the state to restrict that right by forbidding the ownership of cannons, grenades, missiles and automatic weapons. It’s been established that forbidding the right to own handguns is an illegitimate restriction. It has not been established whether forbidding the right to own certain kinds of semi-automatic weapons is a legitimate restriction or not. That seems to me to be the issue. It seems to me that, like other civil rights such as the freedom to speak or publish or worship, the right should be unrestricted unless the people proposing restrictions can prove otherwise.
So far. We’ll see how far it gets if another “assault weapons” ban makes it through Congress, which I doubt.
We have an interesting situation coming up in Illinois. A 3 judge panel of the 7th Federal Court of Appeals has told the State of Illinois that it’s almost complete ban on concealed carrying of guns is unconstitutional and given it 180 days (from a couple of months ago) to pass a new law that will meet Constitutional muster. The Illinois Attorney General – Lisa Madigan, the daughter of Mike Madigan, who in turn is the Speaker of the House in the Illinois General Assembly and the undisputed most powerful person in Illinois politics – is mulling over whether to appeal to the 7th Court en banc or to the Supreme Court or to simply comply.
But that leads to an interesting situation. For years the pro-civil rights legislators in the G.A. have been trying to get the anti-civil rights legislators to agree to pass a less restrictive law. The anti-civil rights crowd, led by Mike Madigan, have turned them down cold. Now that Mike will have to turn around and craft a new law and get it passed, the pro-civil rights legislators find themselves in an interesting situation. The old law expires in a few months. If they don’t help pass a new law, there will simply be no law, and no restriction on a legal gun owner’s right to concealed carry. So now they’re telling Mike, “You had your chance. Why should we cooperate with you now?” We could go from the most restrictive law to the least restrictive in one moment.
Amp:
If I had sought to limit 2nd Amendment civil rights to that extent, yes – the burden would be on me. But it was done back in 1934, so it definitely wasn’t me and apparently that burden was met then – at least, in the viewpoint of any courts that may have seen a challenge to it. I have no idea what the details are.
Nope, I won’t agree it’s self-evident. I’d have to see a full study on how such equipment has been used in the U.S. for self-defense and other uses before I’ll accept that argument.
“As for the benefits of banning private ownership of semi-automatic weapons, including A15s, it’s self-evident that we might be better off if people like Seung-Hui Cho and Adam Lanza’s mother hadn’t had legal access to semi-automatic weapons, high-capacity cartridges, and hollow point bullets.”
Not sure if you’re weaseling or just writing fast – but self-evident that something might be? Not exactly the Maginot Line in terms of firmness, there.
It’s self-evident that we would be better off if the specific criminals who committed specific crimes with guns had not had those guns to do the crimes. Similarly, it’s self-evident that we would be better off if Stephanie Meyer didn’t have 1st Amendment rights, and had been ruthlessly censored and locked up. Alas, we don’t have the power to pass a law taking away Ms. Meyer’s free speech alone, or to prevent people who are going to do horrible things in the future from buying a gun today.
So we have to ask, would be better off if the roughly half of American households that had guns in them, yet committed no crimes at all, had those guns taken away? The nexus between widespread gun ownership, crime, and crime prevention is somewhat murky – but what I read with an open mind suggests that certain types of crimes are moderately to strongly deterred by a culture of gun ownership, while other types of crimes are made somewhat more common.
But it is far from self-evident that one state of affairs or the other is superior; taking the US vs. the UK as one reasonable set of comparisons, I can see people who would prefer either country’s situation over the other, as reasonable people. The US has far more gun murder and significantly more murder in general; the UK has way more rape and burglary. There are trade-offs in public safety from having different cultures of gun ownership.
Personally, I think anti-gun folks would be much more successful in trying to advocate for more responsible gun ownership – mandatory training for everyone in basic firearms safety, for example – than in trying to roll back a civil right.
By the way, I have to buckle down and write comics now, so don’t look for any further gun talk from me today.
If you think you’re gonna be lazing around the studio with your ‘artist’ friends all day once we’re married, bub, you gotta another think coming. You’re getting a real job.
Re: Scouting
I hadn’t actually realized how much of the homophobia of the scouts actually came from the fascism of Scouting founder Robert Baden-Powell.
The linked article is amazing. He apparently praised Mein Kampf (“a wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organisation etc.”), wanted to establish ties between the Scouts and the Hitler Youth, and, upon hearing that a German scout leader had been sent to a concentration camp, dismissed it, saying the scoutmaster had been taken away for “homosexual tendencies.”
WOW.
Compared to “It’s okay to murder them for being gay,” just not allowing gay scouts to participate seems positively progressive.
—Myca
Yeah, he was quite a character.
Odd, though, I thought it was silly to focus on what the leaders of a group were saying and doing a hundred years back. Wonder what progressives were saying and doing back then.
Ah, the answer is “fighting the Nazis to save the world for Democracy.”
Wonder what conservatives were doing then?
Anyway, yeah, I generally think that historic gotchas are dumb. I bring this up because of the explicit link to current BSA policies. If the Democrats were endorsing segregation in their 2012 platform, it would make a lot of sense to talk about how they started the Civil War and were filthy slave-owning southern white racists.
—Myca
Great — Robert’s got a car, so the Gatling gun is now a wedding present.
Congrats, you crazy kids. This one’s been a long time coming.
Aww…but I was going to get them the Gatling gun!
I want a prenup.
I wanted Neil Patrick Harris. We all make adjustments.
The linked article doesn’t give much for primary source material. So B-P had a meeting with the Nazi Hitler Youth folks in 1937? From what I read a lot of people were fooled about the Nazis in 1937. And I’ll ask your forgiveness for not taking Christopher Hitchens’ interpretation of what he’s read as gospel.
Hey, my wife and I honeymooned at a Scout camp (off-season). Want me to set the two of you up for the same deal? I’ll get you set up in a heated cabin and there’s skiing nearby!
Don’t put any cash down, Ron, Amp has two big mountains to climb first. First he has to get America to decide not to have guns (basically). Then he has to persuade a burned-once-by-divorce-already guy (me) to give him a prenup, which, ha ha hahahahahahaha.
Well, there are a couple of direct quotes, like the one praising Mein Kampf.
Of course Chris Hitchens had an agenda … he generally did. I’d need to do some more reading of my own to get all the details, it was just the first I’d heard of this, and I was honestly shocked.
1937 was not the early 30’s. My impression (maybe wrong) is that it was pretty clear by then that Hitler was a monster.
—Myca
“My impression (maybe wrong) is that it was pretty clear by then that Hitler was a monster.”
He was Time magazine’s ‘Man of the Year’ in 1938.
Thinking Hitler was OK was undoubtedly a sign of short-sightedness in 1937, but the short-sighted are legion and millions desperately wanted to believe there could be peace; the knowledge that Hitler was a monster made war logically inevitable; therefore, there was considerable desire in the minds of otherwise decent people to leave mental space for the possibility that Hitler was NOT a monster.
You also have to remember that Hitler didn’t start the overt Holocaust until the war was well underway. Jewish life in Germany became increasingly unpleasant during the 1930s, as repressive measures spread and intensified, but – by the historical standards of anti-Jewish law and action – nothing particularly unusual for the world was going on in Germany. What was unusual was that it was happening in *Germany*, which had enjoyed an increasing, and deserved, reputation as the place in Europe where Jews were treated as decent citizens and not singled out – but that unusualness didn’t outrage very many people who weren’t Jews.
It would be as if some arch-Catholic took over Vermont and started reducing the civil status of gays and lesbians…but only to the level of where that status is in, say, Oklahoma. The gays would be up in arms. The militants would be militating, the activists activating, there’d be all kinds of coverage in the media…but the world would not be shocked or outraged, much. A progressive salient reverts to baseline orthodoxy; news at 11, but bumped for a kid-falls-in-well story.
So, by 1937 it was obvious to any sensible person that Hitler was a Bad Guy, but then as always, sensible people are very badly outnumbered.
And the Ayatollah Khomeini, Vladimir Putin, Josef Stalin (twice!), and Chiang Kai-shek.
Time has gone to great lengths to indicate, over and over, that it’s not intended as an honor.
—Myca
Time’s Man of the Year story for Hitler can be read here. They call Hitler “the greatest threatening force that the democratic, freedom-loving world faces today.” So yes, not a positive portrait.
Also not a “Shrug. No big deal.” story.
They describe the rise of Hitler as, “the issue of civilized liberty v. barbaric authoritarianism.”
They write:
Those boys of ten with their hand-grenades? Those are the Hitler Youth Lord Baden Powell so approved of. Time’s revulsion is instructive.
In 1937, the Night of the Long Knives had already happened. In 1937, he’d already outlawed political opposition. In 1937, it was pretty damned clear.
—Myca
Right. But Khomeini, Putin, and Chiang Kai-Shek were not monsters, and Stalin’s monstrosity was largely rejected by the ‘Time’ set, or unknown at the time of writing, or yet to occur. They were/are all bad men, but bad men acting on a stage full of other bad men in a world of bad acts.
Maybe Khomeini would burn six million men, women and children alive in ovens if he had the victims and the ovens to hand, but he didn’t.
The point of the Times status is not that it means everyone thought Hitler was great, but that he was not rejected as unconscionably wicked and outside the pale of humanity.
I have to assume you posted this without seeing the comments Amp and I just posted.
Once again, Time’s Man Of the Year designation indicates relative importance. It indicates nothing about whether someone is “unconscionably wicked and outside the pale of humanity.”
In fact, someone unconscionably wicked and outside the pale of humanity who also managed to seize the reins of one of the most powerful nations in the world is fairly assured to gain a spot. Much more assured, I’d say, than someone mild and reasonable.
—Myca
OK.
If it’s about importance only, then why the profile in 1938 when Hitler had yet to initiate a conflict and had yet to kill anyone (in numbers, anyway)?
Why not 1939, when he was considerably more prominent?
Why not 1940 and 1941, when he looked like he was about to *successfully conquer the world*?
Yes, Time SAYS that there is no judgment involved. But that is obviously fallacious. They are not automata; they are not following a mathematical formula which permits no individual nuance of judgment to intervene.
You are looking back from the viewpoint of someone who has seen all of Hitler’s crimes and know what develops from the early seeds. But they did not know that at the time. In 1937, Roosevelt was engaged in vigorous diplomacy with Hitler to try to preserve peace. He’d been doing it for four years, and he’d do it for three years more. Shall we add, tried to make peace with the Devil, to the list of progressive war crimes of the WWII era?
No, because that would be stupid. Some people of insight suspected, but nobody KNEW, the evil that was to come. You say ‘the night of the Long Knives’ like that was some singular atrocity that rings across the ages. It wasn’t; it was just a fairly typical putsch/purge. A couple hundred people died, maybe. Worse things have happened this year. If Hitler had died in a traffic accident the next week, you wouldn’t know what the phrase referred to unless you were an absolute scholar of arcane and obsolete German political history; you wouldn’t know who Hitler was unless you were a professional historian or a very astute layman.
You think that you would, because you know what a monster Hitler was. But if he’d died in 1937, you’d have no history to inform you of it; as of that date, he doesn’t stand out from the long list of bastards who grab power in countries. At the time, yes, he stood out because people could see the potentialities. But it’s the fact that those potentialities were realized that informs us, of later generations, of just how bad he was.
(Maybe in the better timeline where he snuffed it in August 1937, some really astute 21st century popular historian would write an alternative-history science fiction novel and make a surprisingly plausible case that this trivial figure in history was actually evil personified and could have done awful things if he hadn’t died suddenly.)
I don’t mean to be a dick about it, and I rarely argue from authority. (I argue authoritatively, which is different. Because I say so, that’s why. ) But on this topic, I know far more than you do, and I wrote in response to your ‘maybe I’m wrong’ humility to inform it, not to argue it. Yes, you were wrong, though its something understandable to be wrong about.
Baden-Powell’s views, whether benign or virulent, can stand or fall on their own and can be critiqued or praised without the necessity for linking him to the unshocking and common, at that specific time, offense of ‘Hitler-threat-appreciation-failure’.
Dude, all I know is that Amp and I provided links and quotes, and you’ve provided talk about how you’re right because you know more. Which … hey, maybe you are and maybe you do, but if that’s the case, pony up, you know?
—Myca
What kind of evidence do you want?
Do you want proof that diplomats in the west spent the 1930s talking to Hitler, rather than waging war against him?
Do you want proof that large numbers of Germans supported him, and that he was still very popular in 1937-1939 (especially after Munich)?
Do you want proof that, as of 1937, the crimes of Hitler and his organization were certainly real, but nothing extraordinary as far as power-seeking machines go?
For all of those things, I will recommend straightforward history books. Wikipedia will do if you don’t mind running the risk that someone went through and replaced ‘reichstag’ with ‘reichswag’ and thought it hilarious.
I’ve asked you questions, I’ve presented counterfactuals, I’ve talked about the nature of the repression of the Jews in the 1930s and the wider context for that oppression. I’ve talked about the timing of the Holocaust and the historical lens through which we latter-day folk view Hitler. I’ve talked about the psychological need of decent, peace-seeking (and war-scarred) people to believe that he was reachable, that war was not inevitable.
So far your argument in response has been to repeatedly assert that Time naming him man of the year didn’t mean anything about how people viewed him. Even if you are 100% right about that and I am 200% wrong, so what? What evidence do you have that the conventional view in 1937 was that he was a MONSTER? Your quotes from Time show that they disapprove of fascism and prefer democracy. Well, so do I and so do you; good for all of us, virtuous partisans of nice politics. “Fascist” and “genocidal Hitlermonster” are not exactly identical; there have been lots of fascists. None of them were very nice, but relatively few of them were Adolf Hitler.
What the Time piece doesn’t discuss, which it can’t discuss because the events *hadn’t happened yet*, are the things for which we rightly condemn Hitler as monstrous: genocide and aggressive world-wide total war.
The question isn’t, ‘was Hitler super evil?’ DUH. We all know that now.
The question is, in 1937, was it obvious to all comers that Hitler was super evil? And the answer, plainly readable by anyone willing to pick up a book – I will provide recommendations if you honestly and truly don’t know these things – about the dictator and his life, is no. A few people did, but a lot of people were still fooled, or wanted to be fooled.
His popularity and acceptance broke in 1939, with the start of the war. In 1939, the answer to your question is quite different. Until then, people had enormous hope. Hope lets us lay down a lot of facades, and Hitler was a genius at using people’s willingness to deceive themselves, for his own ends.
Robert, I’m not even sure what you’re disagreeing with.
In 1937, did everyone know that Hitler would come to be known as History’s Greatest Monster? No, and no one here has said otherwise. When you’re arguing with us as if we had said anything of that sort, it makes it seem like you’re arguing with a person in your mind, rather than reading what Myca has actually said.
In 1937, did lots and lots of people know that Hitler was a fascist, an antisemite, a danger to democracy, and an all-around bad guy (albeit not History’s Greatest Monster)? I’m pretty sure yes, both from my general impression of history (contrary to what y0u seemingly think, you’re not unique in having read about this subject), and from that 1938 Time article (which you brought up as evidence, not us). I don’t think you disagree with that, but if that is what you’re disagreeing with, it would be useful of you to clarify that.
In 1937, did lots of people hope peace with Hitler was possible, and did lots of people see his program as admirable? Again, yes. But I think the “admirable” part of that was a more controversial view in 1937 than you’re admitting. But it wasn’t yet a view that would get one expelled from decent society. So if that’s all you’re saying, then I agree.
In 1937, would most ordinary Jews have assumed that someone who described Mein Kampf as full of great ideas was either an antisemite, or at least someone who didn’t find antisemitism objectionable? My impression is, yes. And they were right.
In 1937, did educated people who paid attention to foreign affairs know that Hitler was sending people to concentration camps? Definitely yes. (Although that they were death camps, rather than labor camps, was not yet widely known.) This included some Scout leaders:
I have no doubt that if Baden-Powell had lived, he would have made a point of public repudiations of Hitler by the mid-1940s.
I don’t doubt it either, other than to note that I’m pretty sure it would have been when war was declared in 1939, not in the mid-40s at which time the Allies had won.
I am disagreeing with Myca’s thesis that *in 1937*, when these statements were made by Baden-Powell, it was clear to most everyone that Hitler was a monster. Exact word: monster.
Yes, in 1937 people knew Hitler was a fascist and an anti-semite, etc. But “Fascist anti-Semite” != “monster”. These gradations are important. Hitler is worse than Mussolini; Mussolini is worse than my grandfather who (I think) didn’t care much for the Yids. At the time (because this was before Hitler gave the whole thing a bad name), fascism was a quasi-respectable political philosophy. True, it wasn’t compatible with liberal democracy, but neither was communism; all three philosophies were in open and relatively honest competition in Weimar Germany before Hitler closed the games.
Yes, in 1937 educated people knew that there were concentration camps in Germany – but they didn’t know that they were “death camps” *because they weren’t death camps yet*. The Holocaust did not begin in full-throated roar; it proceeded in tiny steps and hesitant testings of the waters, before the war provided the cover for the full grisly plan. In 1937 Dachau had been open for four years, and the people in it had been convicted by a court of law. A crapball Nazi court, true, but it was a Nazi country so who else?
*In 1937*, to be in a concentration camp meant to be in jail. A new jail, a jail representing an ominous trend, absolutely – political prisoners. But the system as a whole was in its infancy in 1937; in fact, in 1937 there were far FEWER people in the camps than there had been earlier. In the opening years of the thirties, there may have been as many as 100,000 prisoners in the camps – mostly Communists and other political opponents of the regime.
By the mid- to late-30s, the population had dwindled enormously, down to a few thousand. And no, it didn’t dwindle because they were killed; for the most part people were released. The function of the concentration camps was to intimidate the political enemies of the Nazi party, not to kill anyone.
The killing part began later, in 1939. From 1939 on, the population (and number of camps) exploded. From about 1935 until 1939, the camps were in a transition mode away from straight-up political prisoners to a more “racial enemies of the Reich” approach. So in 1937 the camps were beginning to become what has become infamous to us, but NOBODY outside of Germany knew it. It was just barely about to happen.
You phrase it “(Although that they were death camps, rather than labor camps, was not yet widely known.)”
And this is understandable, but wrong; it wasn’t widely known, or known it all, because it *wasn’t yet true*. It was ABOUT to be true; from our point of view the distinction seems unnecessary. That’s the great thing about Nazis, all those pesky moral nuances and hard calls are greatly simplified: “these guys are bad”. And generally that is a safe simplification – but when we’re talking about what people knew, we have to ask if it was possible for them to know.
Fair point on when the concentration camps became death camps. I actually did know that, but what I wrote was wrong, so thanks for the correction.
AFAIK, you’re mistaken to think that Baden-Powell would have publicly condemned Hitler in 1939; he didn’t die until 1940, and as far as I know he never repudiated Hitler or the Nazis in 1939. Maybe he did and I just don’t know it.
Finally, I think you’re making too big a deal of the term “monster,” said loosely in a blog comment. Within the range of 1938 Time’s more Proper and Objective Prose Style, I think it’s clear that they depicted Hitler as a monstrously evil person. The difference you’ve latched on to tenaciously- Myca used the word “monster,” TIME didn’t – seems to me to be more a matter of formal vs. informal language than a difference in substance.
Given how incredibly minor the differences here seem to be, I’m bewildered at how large an argument this has become.
If 1938 Hitler, by actions rather than inner soul, was a “monstrously evil” person per Time, what words would they have used in 1946?
As for minor differences:
“Go help your Uncle Jack off the horse.” vs “Go help your uncle jack off the horse.”
That’s just CAPITALIZATION, yet think how much you would prefer obedience to one of those commands over the other.
If the use of the specific word ‘monster’ is the issue, I’m certainly happy to abandon it, but I sense more than a little goalpost-shifting from you, Robert. You earlier talked about the sense of the day being that rise of Hitler was something that would be “bumped for a kid-falls-in-well story.”
The Time article talks about it as “the greatest threatening force that the democratic, freedom-loving world faces today,” and, “the issue of civilized liberty v. barbaric authoritarianism.”
Sure. Monster. No monster. Whatever. That’s not my point.
Also, Baden-Powell’s quote praising Mein Kampf is from a 1939 diary entry.
—Myca
Yes, and the Times was right. But note the word “threatening”, not “actual”. If he had died in a traffic accident the day after that was published, then Myca Jones, class of 2010, would not be learning about Hitler the Archdevil in general history class. The History Channel would have had to skip their whole Nazi Era and jumped straight to aliens*. If you saw a copy of the 1938 man of the year issue of Time, you would think either “who the fuck is Adolf Hitler” or “why the fuck did they think this guy was so important”.
Unless you were a scholar of early 20th century political science. Then you might know quite a bit about him, and even think he was actually pretty important for the time period. Nobody else would think so, though, because as of that date none of the things he did to make him imperishable in our memories, three generations after the war, would have happened. Every generation has its own icons and figures that generation will preserve; you and I will probably remember Carl Sagan and John Kerry 50 years from now, but it is unlikely that they will be touchstones of the culture for our great-grandkids. Whereas our great-grandkids probably will still know, for example, Einstein and Roosevelt. And Hitler.
“You earlier talked about the sense of the day being that rise of Hitler was something that would be “bumped for a kid-falls-in-well story.””
No I didn’t. I used that language for Vermont rolling back protections against gays, and in the context of what was the reaction to the specifically anti-Jewish sentiment and actions of Hitler Germany. Time might have mentioned anti-Semitism, but they were worried about a prospective war against democracy, not about what might happen to the Jews. Not very many people gave a damn about what happened to the Jews at that time, other than the Jews.
I recently heard about Jews leaving Germany when Hitler became Chancellor (1933), so at least *someone* was paying attention.
I’m pretty sure the source was a history of Jews in musical theater, which is worth watching in any case.