Author Archives: Tin Man

“A Platform of Political Discussion”

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Arizona Republican Congressman Trent Franks says, regarding whether 30-round ammo clips should be banned after the Tucson shootings:

At this point, I have criticized others for making a political nexus or a platform of political discussion out of this tragedy, and so I am going to avoid doing that myself.

Do you realize that this is not about politics? Do you realize that after a shooting incident in which the killer was stopped only after he paused to reload, it is not a “political discussion” to want to ban those types of ammo clips? Do you realize that the only way to ban these clips is through the political process?

Do you realize that not everyone is trying to take political advantage of this situation? Do you realize that this is something we actually care about? Do you realize that many of us are scared that ordinary citizens are able to buy ammo clips that let them fire 30 rounds without needing to reload? Do you realize that if these clips had been banned, then Jared Loughner would have fired many fewer bullets and that some of the human beings that were killed might not have been killed?

I swear, it’s exasperating.

Tucson

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Some thoughts on the Tucson shootings:

My original impulse on Saturday was to blame the shootings on a right-wing lunatic influenced by all the violent political rhetoric we’ve heard in the last few years. To ascribe such blame is not, despite what David Brooks might think, “political opportunism.” It’s a natural human reaction based on deductive reasoning: a Democratic congresswoman gets shot in the head — a congresswoman whose office windows were smashed in 2010, a congresswoman who held a constituent event in 2009 to which one of the constituents brought a gun — and it takes place in a political environment in which Sharron Angle talks about resorting to “Second Amendment remedies” and the need to “take Harry Reid out,” in which a certain Alaskan celebrity says, “Don’t retreat… reload!” and puts out a map with targets on certain congressional districts, in which a new Republican congressman’s chief of staff says, “If ballots don’t work, bullets will,” and in which a guy flies an airplane into an IRS building. What else are we supposed to think but that this was done by a right-wing lunatic?

And yet — we were wrong. Loughner isn’t a right-winger but a truly mentally ill human being. While my instinct is to feel hatred for him, I also find myself wondering abut the nature of mental illness. How much is someone’s mental illness a part of one’s self? Do we blame Jared Loughner for these crimes, or do we blame Jared Loughner’s mental illness? Centuries ago, mental illness was seen as a form of possession by some evil or alien entity. If we could somehow remove the illness from his brain, would Loughner take the stand, or would his mental illness take the stand? It’s probably beside the point, because no matter what, Loughner belongs in confinement. Whether that confinement is conceived as punishment or as a way to prevent him from causing anyone else harm is a secondary question.

But the fact that Loughner is mentally ill does not excuse political exhortations to violence. Such exhortations are, in and of themselves, despicable and unacceptable. We don’t live in the nineteenth century, when Preston Brooks attacked Charles Sumner and some members of Congress carried guns. This is 2011. We long ago learned to settle our political debates without violence. We, as human beings, are supposed to know better today. Or so I had thought.

And as long as I live, I will never understand our nation’s gun culture. I can sort of understand why some people want to carry around pistols for personal protection from robbery or rape, regardless of whether I think it’s a good idea. But can’t we all agree that nobody should be able to buy a 30-round clip at a Sportsman’s Warehouse? When it comes to guns, our country is insane.

Sometimes I just find myself throwing my hands up in the air.

Defending the Tea-Partiers

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As much as I think the tea-partiers are a joke, I do want to defend them a little bit.

Okay, not quite defend them. But I do want to quibble with one criticism about them: that they are apparently hypocritical in defending certain parts of the Constitution while opposing other parts of it. The argument goes like this: if the tea-partiers claim to revere the Constitution, why do some of them want to get rid of parts of it like the Sixteenth Amendment (allowing an income tax) or the Seventeenth Amendment (instituting direct election of U.S. Senators)? And how can they revere a document that legitimized slavery through the three-fifths clause?

As an example, the New York Times yesterday said in an editorial that the Republicans’ desire to read the Constitution aloud on the House floor “is a presumptuous and self-righteous act, suggesting that they alone understand the true meaning of a text that the founders wisely left open to generations of reinterpretation. Certainly the Republican leadership is not trying to suggest that African-Americans still be counted as three-fifths of a person.”

As another example, Talking Points Memo, a site I read almost every day, is making fun of the Republicans for reading an “amended, slavery-free” version of the Constitution today. The argument again is: look at their hypocrisy! If they love the Constitution so much, why don’t they read the whole thing?

Here’s where I part ways with the Times and TPM.

The thing is, it’s possible to revere the Constitution without thinking that it’s a perfect document. Why? Because it is not really about revering the Constitution; it is about revering constitutional process.

Nobody is saying that the original Constitution was flawless. What they are saying is: look, the Constitution itself includes a mechanism for changing it: Article V, which shows you how to amend it.

Much of legal argument in this country is not about substantive issues, but about procedural ones. In fact, “respecting the process” is itself a substantive value. Look at all the back-and-forth in the Prop 8 case about standing: it’s a procedural issue, but procedural issues are important in our society, because we are not an anarchy or even a pure democracy; we are a constitutional democracy. We respect rules and laws. There’s nothing wrong with changing things, as long as you do it in the right way. You can even change the right way to change things, as long as you do it the right way.

So what the tea-partiers are saying — or at least what they could say — is this: it’s perfectly fine to change the Constitution, as long as you do it the way you’re supposed to. Of course the three-fifths clause was unconscionable — and look, we got rid of it in a way prescribed by the Constitution itself: the Thirteenth Amendment! And nobody is saying to just flat-out ignore the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments; they’re saying, let’s repeal them, in the way the Constitution allows, just as the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) was repealed by the Twenty-second Amendment. (I happen to think the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments are great ideas and that it would be harmful and/or stupid to repeal them.)

What I do think is silly and a bit insulting is for the Republicans and tea-partiers to say that they’re the only ones who respect the Constitution. The Constitution contains lots of vague clauses that can be interpreted in many different ways. There are entire semester-long courses taught about the different ways to interpret the Constitution.

I still think the tea-partiers are a joke, and I don’t know how many of them think about the Constitution this way. But the Times and TPM are being a bit silly here.