Saturday, February 26, 2022

Not bad, for a Metrocon.

Jonah Goldberg is very nearly the type specimen of the Metrocon, but he's treading dangerously close to grasping an important truth here:
In a modern society, where the state has a monopoly on the use of violence, private violence is largely criminalized save in self-defense. If you grew up in such a society—which I assume most of you did—using violence to achieve private benefits is rightly seen as abnormal. Of course, it’s a constant struggle to keep it that way, because humans by nature have a violent streak that can come out among the poorly socialized. This is why calls to abolish the police are so idiotic. Human nature doesn’t change. Fail to tend the garden of civilization, and nature will reclaim it. Because gardens are not natural, they do not spontaneously emerge. They must be cultivated (a word that shares its root with culture). But given human nature, if crime no longer seems like a problem because it doesn’t touch your life, it’s no wonder that some people will think policing has outlived its usefulness. As G.K. Chesterton teaches us, it’s common for people to arrogantly assume a fence serves no purpose just because they don’t know what purpose it serves.
(Of course, we're in a through-the-looking-glass world where Goldberg is in some respects more wookie-suited than Rand Paul, who has spent the last half-decade showing a newfound ability to toady to authoritarianism provided it's draped in the right bunting.)

When you're not currently needing it, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms can feel a lot like Chesterton's Fence, but from Utah to Ukraine, we get constant reminders about why those dead White guys in Philadelphia put that fence out in the middle of a field all those years ago.

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