For Progressives, the Founding was America’s “Dark Ages”

I started on a posting the other day about how a Supreme Court “dream team” of founding fathers would respond to the 2nd Amendment case currently in consideration, but my research and fact gathering for that piece (which I may yet publish when I think it’s cooked long enough) took me in a completely different direction that has leavened my thoughts with much more inspiration/consternation than the original topic. I stumbled across an editorial piece on USA Today’s website entitled “A liberal’s lament: The NRA might be right after all” by Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA Today’s board of contributors.

For the politically uninitiated, these credentials indicate that he is almost certainly a committed progressive (or, “flaming liberal“, in today’s history-agnostic vernacular). Indeed, Mr. Turley himself coyly implies throughout his introduction that he belongs to the “progressives and polite people” he is referring to, though he will directly admit only to being an “academic” (which, in turn, supports my long-standing theory that in contemporary academia, progressivism is not merely the norm: it is a presumption). Reading over his blog, I found ample confirmation of the appropriateness of that label, but also found plenty to convince me that he is possessed of an unusual level of intellectual honesty for a progressive. This fact makes his assertions in the article all the more interesting.

It was the juxtaposition of the word “liberal” and the phrase “NRA might be right” with naught but a colon separating them which initially caught my attention. Let’s face it: this just isn’t something you see very often. Aside from the Arch-demon Cheney, there is nothing which inspires such visceral hatred in progressives as the NRA. Behold the tirade that mere confessed membership inspires. So, this is big. I knew this would be a groundbreaking article just from the title. This article, despite its progressive condescension, should be linked off of every 2nd amendment article for the next two weeks and should be studied in social science classrooms for decades to come, because it casts things in such a stark light. Never have I found a progressive speaking with such candor, consistency, and honest self appraisal. In it, as you will see, is revealed the most basic kernel of progressive thought: the founders were Neanderthals.

Well, okay, they weren’t Neanderthals; but they were at best feudal thinkers or something about that level. But I am getting ahead of myself… or at least ahead of the article. Let’s see how we got here. After introducing the amendment in question as the “Voldemort Amendment” (which, I am told, is a Harry Potter reference indicating it is evil… I’ll take this for intentional hyperbole), Turley starts framing the progressive attitude toward it with remarkably candid language:

For more than 200 years, progressives and polite people have avoided acknowledging that following the rights of free speech, free exercise of religion and free assembly, there is “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Of course, the very idea of finding a new individual right after more than two centuries is like discovering an eighth continent in constitutional law, but it is hardly the cause of celebration among civil liberties groups. Like many academics, I was happy to blissfully ignore the Second Amendment. It did not fit neatly into my socially liberal agenda.

Wow. That was refreshing! I think I could debate this guy, not succeed in changing his mind, and still not want to punch him. This is an honest confession of what any originalist or conservative has observed when attempting to debate this issue in the public forum. Progressives just don’t even want to talk about it. Have you ever tried to debate a social conservative about pornography or public decency laws? They don’t really want to talk about it. They feel dirty even discussing it in specific terms and feel the subject beneath debate. If you are arguing acceptance of such behavior in law and custom, then you are a lecher and not really worth convincing.¹

This is exactly how progressives feel about discussing gun rights. If you are one of those types, you’re not really worth talking to. Are we really talking about this? Today? In the 21st century??!! We’re much more enlightened than this. They smile at you and shake their heads… and then they ignore you the same way one would ignore the incoherent outbursts of a holocaust denier or 9/11 conspiracy theorist. The truth is that they feel just as uncomfortable talking about guns as a prude feels talking about sex toys. They feel dirty even just discussing it. They would never touch a gun, and they feel uncomfortable in the presence of one. Start talking caliber and bullet designs and you will have them squirming in their seats.

After explaining how the recent case has forced him to countenance this ugly subject, he proceeds to brush aside the standard liberal arguments against an “individual right” interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. He dismisses the standard “militia” argument by noting firstly that the National Guard is, in fact, nothing like a militia and that the right guaranteed by the amendment would have been read out of existence by a “militia only” interpretation. Secondly, he notes that:

[...] the mere reference to a purpose of the Second Amendment does not alter the fact that an individual right is created. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is stated in the same way as the right to free speech or free press. The statement of a purpose was intended to reaffirm the power of the states and the people against the central government. At the time, many feared the federal government and its national army. Gun ownership was viewed as a deterrent against abuse by the government, which would be less likely to mess with a well-armed populace. [Link is his!]

Can it be??!! Yes, it is so. A progressive voice has uttered the unutterable: not only did the founders intend guns to be used for defense, they even intended that they be held in reserve against the encroachments of the government. This man has read his Revolutionary period literature. He doesn’t like it, but he faithfully reports it anyway. Good man. He chases it with the coup-de-grace:

Considering the Framers and their own traditions of hunting and self-defense, it is clear that they would have viewed such ownership as an individual right — consistent with the plain meaning of the amendment.

Finally, some honesty! I grow weary of reading tract after tract of revisionist history imputing to the founders attitudes towards the ownership of arms which are absurdly anachronistic and directly contradicted by their own words and actions as recorded in all available historical documents. So then… the gun-totin’ redneck mavericks actually have original intent on their side. Whither, then, the progressive in this bewildering predicament?

Turley, it seems, is ready to hoist the white flag and concede the point, but he throws in some rather telling condescension to soften the blow:

None of this is easy for someone raised to believe that the Second Amendment was the dividing line between the enlightenment and the dark ages of American culture. Yet, it is time to honestly reconsider this amendment and admit that … here’s the really hard part … the NRA may have been right. This does not mean that Charlton Heston is the new Rosa Parks or that no restrictions can be placed on gun ownership. But it does appear that gun ownership was made a protected right by the Framers and, while we might not celebrate it, it is time that we recognize it.

Oooohhh…. Did you catch that first line there? That’s the money quote. The “dark ages of American culture”. Delicious! He’s conceding the point that this amendment means exactly what conservatives think it means, but that’s okay because it is an anachronistic holdover from a less enlightened age. That was so long ago, they were practically barbarians. They clearly couldn’t understand the advanced age in which we live. Back then, the people had to have guns because they didn’t have the infrastructure of modern society to provide better ways of securing them or settling their differences. Clearly the “framers”² couldn’t have seen that today such a right would be not only superfluous, but, in fact, deleterious.

Behold, the spectre of chronological snobbery. This term was invented by C.S. Lewis and Owen Barfield to describe:

[...]the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also “a period,” and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.³

For its raw, ignorant hubris, chronological snobbery is of all logical fallacies the one for which I harbor the most scorn. Do we think our lives and understanding so much improved in every respect today that we are prepared to reject the wisdom and values of those who laid the foundation for our present success and prosperity? Fifty years ago weapons were plentiful and for the asking, but nobody strode onto college campuses for the purpose of playing Grim Reaper. But we’re the enlightened ones.

I must say, I like this guy. He’s honest and with this short piece he has helped me understand progressives better than I ever have before. I deprecate their presumptive enlightenment and notions of improving upon the contributions of our Founding Fathers, but nonetheless I can see better where they are coming from. I cannot but think that this conceit issues from an inattention to basic foundational history and civics in our educational systems—that the neglect of the classics of western literature and civics has led to a paucity of real understanding and appreciation for these giants of civic discourse and theory.

Fabius Cincinnatus

1—You will occasionally find one with the patience to explain to a libertarian why he feels it necessary to have laws regulating what might be regarded as private behavior, but only rarely. This protracted discussion on the validity of “victimless crime” reasoning is a discussion entirely wasted on progressives, and conservatives know it.

2—”Framers” is a nice, easy euphemism progressives use to indicate the founders, which takes us one step further from that dangerous sort of veneration that might tend toward valuing their wisdom above today’s more enlightened notions. They just framed our government, you see. They intended us to flesh it out more and make it more suitable, because they truly believed that we would stumble onto greater enlightenment than was to be had in their day. That’s why they created the Constitution as a living document. Get it?

3—Lewis, C.S. Surprised by Joy, Ch. 13