Why the President Lost on Gun Control - The Daily Beast

Megan McArdle has an interesting take on why the campaign to strengthen gun control laws in the aftermath of Sandy Hook failed. She doesn't talk about whether this latest ploy was right or not in terms of individual rights. Her focus is on how Obama and his gang employed a wrong bargaining strategy. In doing so she make some good observations that we could apply in other negotiations, such as buying a car (an example she uses to make her point).

Why the President Lost on Gun Control - The Daily Beast

When facts and narratives collide. (When facts contradict beliefs, challenge the facts.)

The title is meant to catch your eye. I'm not saying that thinking objectively means we should deny facts that challenge our beliefs.

I generally don't start political discussions with people I know disagree with me. I don't enjoy getting into arguments partly because I know there is no true “winner” in these disagreements. As a libertarian in liberal Massachusetts that means I almost never start such discussions because few people share my point of view.

For instance, during the NFL football season my wife and I watch the games at a friend's house where the wife is as avid a fan of the Patriots as my wife. However, I knew that our host, let's call her Jane, is fairly liberal. During the election she had signs along her driveway for Elizabeth Warren. Need I say more? Sometime after the election Jane brought up politics even though she had a good hunch that I didn't agree with her. I said that I was neither a Republican nor a Democrat but a libertarian. Our talk was quite civil for a while until Jane said she didn't understand why the economy wasn't doing better despite the stimulus package. I told her that every one of my customers have said that they are sitting on tons of cash but don't want to hire people. (In my job I often meet with the treasurer or CFO of my accounts.) Why? Because they're afraid of what additional regulations will be coming and the effects of ObamaCare when it starts being implemented. Jane burst out with “Bullshit! I don't accept that!” She stood up, added that she also didn't think the wealthy or businesses were really responsible for job creation, then started to storm out of the room. I said, “It looks like this conversation is over.” (To give her credit Jane did apologize later for her outburst although she didn’t change her mind.)

This incident opened my eyes to an interesting facet, not just of liberalism but probably of all ideologies: the denial of facts that contradict cherished beliefs.

In this case pointing out that businesses were reluctant to hire people challenged the policies and politicians that Jane supports. It also violated the liberal narrative. This narrative says that the wealthy and business owners have infinite resources that can be taxed and regulated without negative consequences. I think there also is the belief that we have the right to tap these resources because the rich and business owners didn't earn their wealth. After all, they didn't build that, as Obama angrily asserted.

I recall seeing a skit on Bill Maher’s show in which a conservative is sitting inside a sound-proof bubble while Maher and another liberal shout “truths” at the conservative. Conservatives feel the same about the filter liberals have installed in their ears. Rather than get into all of this here I highly recommend Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind. Haidt explains how each side (including libertarians) focus on certain aspects of morality while filtering out others so that both sides in a debate talk past one another.

By the way the very next day I was at the airport when I heard a story on TV about the $1 trillion US companies are sitting on rather than using it to expand their business. The reasons given were the exactly same reasons I cited to Jane.

Dave Barry’s Year in Review - Dave Barry - MiamiHerald.com

I thought it would be good to end the year on a light note. Enjoy! Dave Barry’s Year in Review - Dave Barry - MiamiHerald.com

Further thoughts on Newtown

Since yesterday' post I came across two other interesting items. One is an article that appeared in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy:

Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder And Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence by Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser. The authors conclude with:

The burden of proof rests on the proponents of the more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death mantra, especially since they argue public policy ought to be based on that mantra. To bear that burden would at the very least require showing that a large number of nations with more guns have more death and that nations that have imposed stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions in criminal violence (or suicide). But those correlations are not observed when a large number of nations are compared across the world.

And, lest we forget shortly before the Newton massacre another shooting occurred at a mall in Oregon where the shooter took his own life, just as the Newtown shooter did. However, there is an interesting twist that kept the Oregon incident from becoming as awful as the one in Newton: an armed citizen. According to The Examiner:

The shooter … was confronted with an armed citizen, at which time he ran away and shot himself. By the time police arrived on the scene, [the shooter] was already dead.

Interesting that this fact has managed to not surface in the media coverage, isn’t it? The paper above has the following in its last paragraph that touches on this tendency to bury inconvenient facts.

Over a decade ago, Professor Brandon Centerwall of the University of Washington undertook an extensive, statistically sophisticated study comparing areas in the United States and Canada to determine whether Canada’s more restrictive policies had better contained criminal violence. When he published his results it was with the admonition:

If you are surprised by [our] finding[s], so [are we]. [We] did not begin this research with any intent to “exonerate” handguns, but there it is—a negative finding, to be sure, but a negative finding is nevertheless a positive contribution. It directs us where not to aim public health resources.

Why do I bring this up in light of the Newtown tragedy? Am I committing the same error as those who immediately use the victims as fodder for a political cause? To be fair both sides of the gun control debate think they’re defending the best interests of everyone. I believe the “solution” proposed would not prevent other tragedies. We’re treating a symptom as opposed to trying to figure out the root cause and coming up with a solution (if there is one) that treats the source. To me banning guns is like removing mercury from a thermometer in hopes that it will make the fever go away. Banning guns will only make tragedies like Newtown more likely, as the evidence in the Kates-Mauser paper shows. And that in itself is a tragedy.

The Way Forward by John Podhoretz, Commentary Magazine

Of all of the post-election post-mortems that I've read this one makes a lot of sense. « The Way Forward Commentary Magazine Especially this point.

Obama and his team let it be known in the spring of 2011 that they intended to raise and spend an unprecedented $1 billion—$250 million more than in 2008—without having to drop so much as a nickel on anything but the general election against the Republicans. This is probably the key to understanding why the Republican field in 2011 came down to the distressingly uncharismatic array of B-listers like Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman, and a couple of ludicrous outliers who thought they had nothing to lose by running. A Republican senator explained it to me at the time: “That’s one billion dollars aimed like a laser-guided munition at the reputation of a single person.”

ROBERT JAMES BIDINOTTO: Understanding Mass Murder

This week's massacre at Newtown has set off the to be expected firestorm over gun control. I highly recommend this post, Understanding Mass Murder. Robert, a good college friend, spent a lot of time studying criminals as well as talking with the survivors of the crimes committed. He talks about the sense of power shooters like this. (I won't mention the name so as not to contribute to whatever legacy or infamy he was hoping for.)

You have to understand this to grasp that, for the mass killer, murder is an empowering event. He is playing God with other human lives, and gets a tremendous "rush" of power and control by treating other humans like playthings.

I think this is especially true when these massacres occur at an elementary school where the perpetrator know that the kids won’t be able to over-power him (and the teachers are unarmed).

I find it interesting how quickly gun control advocates capitalize on tragedies like this to clamor for more controls on guns. I hear precious little talk about what other factors (cultural, social, psychological, etc.) that lead up to this. Excuse me if I get a bit sarcastic but that would take too much time and thought … and rational argument with people who might not agree. Instead we’re urged to rush into taking action even if ultimately that action might not prevent another tragedy like Newtown. And that is the deeper tragedy that most people don’t see.

What's Wrong With Self-Help Books? - The Daily Beast

Megan McArdle has some interesting observations in What's Wrong With Self-Help Books? - The Daily Beast. If I can fairly summarize her thesis this attitude towards self-help books stems from intellectuals’ elitism: they are so intelligent and above it all that they don’t need to heed the pedestrian advice offered in these books. She could be right.

I also think there is a strain of anti-individualism and determinism behind this sentiment too. If I could put this attitude in words it would be: How dare you think that you can help yourself in this crazy, complicated world? It’s too complicated for you to grasp and you’re fighting a futile battle against over-powering forces. You need the advice of your superior intellectual elite and the solace of the collective. It takes a village to raise a child, doesn’t it? I believe we can affect the wisdom of the decisions we make and the path we chart by reading the advice of some authors then making our own well-informed choices. My goal isn’t to defend that position here. It would take a book (or books) to do that.

Do some (or many) self-help books over simplify? Sure! Are some based on anecdotal as opposed to scientific studies? Yep. Are some just plain wrong? Of course. I’m not saying you blindly accept anyone who manages to get published. There are good self-help and bad self-help books, just as there are good or bad books in philosophy, history, politics, economics, and so on. And we naturally tend to pick authors who share our basic beliefs. A Christian will tend to read books written by a Christian self-help author and avoid an atheist’s screed. And vice versa.

I’d love to be able to spell out criteria for choosing the wheat out of the chaff but I’d say if it can be done it’s a job for someone far smarter than me. Maybe it’s a job for one of our intellectual elite! Just kidding. My goal is here is to simply note this bias against self-help books and offer an observation on the reason behind it.