For the love of guns

The power of ideas never ceases to amaze me. And the deeper ideas are embedded in our culture, in our most basic unspoken, indeed unidentified assumptions, the more powerful they are. Because they shape the way we see absolutely everything. They supply meaning to the sensory perceptions that makeup our conscious reality.

What else can possibly explain the surreal situation we have in this county with firearms? This image from today's NY Times makes my head spin. What are we as a nation thinking when we allow the public sale of arsenals such as this? (Lest I be accused of hyperbole, I checked my spelling of arsenal against her poster in the background.) And what can she possibly be thinking proudly wearing a shirt displaying a skull and crossbones, a symbol of death, connected to the word "GUNS" in large red letters?

The retorts are as asinine as they are well known. "The skull is obviously a symbol of freedom, and if you can't see that you must not love this country, you're not a patriot! If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Dum dee dum dee dum." Dumb. More like insane - we have completely lost any rational sense of this issue.

But it gets worse.

Reflect for a minute on the subtext on this front page story from today's NY Times. (Pause for reflection...)

The only issue being considered TO BE an issue here is the fact that these guns are moving south across the border. As if it were that they somehow stayed in the good old USA everything would be just hunky dory! Then life would be fine, both the good guys and the bad would be armed to the teeth and the universe would be in balance. Insane.

At least Bob Herbert hasn't lost his perspective on this issue. Terrorists kill 3,000 Americans on 9/11 and we get fired up enough to go start two wars and expend billions of dollars. But we kill 120,000 of our own, ourselves, and we scarcely notice. Insane.

I love this country with every fiber of my being. Daily I gain new perspective on the truly unbelievable blessings I'm afforded simply by having been born in the United States. I won the lottery at conception. But our love affair with guns is the blackest of black, blind spots in our national character. We must do better in this area. Somehow. And I believe we can, because I believe in life. Through some miracle, life has come to exist in this universe, despite all odds. That Truth is indisputeable and unstoppable and all the forces, the cultures, the twisted ideas of death cannot contain the life that is present in our reality. Life prevails. Nations rise and fall, but life goes on.

An even deeper American idea than gun control is that of progress. Our Constitution uses the word pursuit. Though I have absolutely no idea of how to "progress" in this area (Where do we begin to change a national mindset?), I remain hopeful that life will prevail and bring our country to its senses, before we kill ourselves.

Comments to a friend on the proposed Defense Budget

Sorry it’s taken me a bit to get back to you, but thanks for asking my opinion of the SECDEF’s proposed budget. I really do not have any better visibility of the details than what you see in the press. Given that disclaimer, my comments are simply on approach. (I generally agreed with Ralph Peters' analysis of the specific systems affected.)
I’m pretty much a fan of the direction Sec Gates has taken the department. He has been staunchly effective in forcing the services to pay attention to, and engage in, the fights we’re currently in. That is harder than you might imagine because of all the constituents in the congress and the defense industry that are driven by forces that have little to nothing to do with winning wars. Further the services themselves are each enamored with their pet visions of what future wars SHOULD look like are therefore are only interested in buying systems that fit those visions.
Were it not for two factors, I would be a big fan of severely cutting defense spending (like in half):
1. We’re (unfortunately) currently engaged in (at least) two wars. Given that we have committed the nation’s sons and daughters, we must continue to fund these expensive endeavors at sufficient levels to enable success.
2. The nation continues to derive significant unexpected benefits from defense funded R&D. Inefficient perhaps, but a historically highly effective means to drive innovation in areas and technologies that might otherwise get little or no private sector investment.
The secretaries’ budget at $534B is 4% higher than last year, but there are strong winds blowing that we will attempt to fund our current wars out of this budget and not request any supplementals. Doing so will require real discipline within the DoD and will represent a serious reduction in real defense spending (esp. given inflation). So, I like the level and the strong programmatic support item #1 above. Finally, just about ANY defense budget will support item #2 regardless of the outyear capabilities pursued, so I’m a fan of supporting a broad array of capabilities that can be employed in a wide range of types of operations. And I’m fan of continually relooking, revamping our acquisition strategies and programs in order to avoid expensive, overly specific systems (like the Army’s future combat system and the F22) that remove options as we evolve.
History shows how difficult it is to get the next war right, but it also shows that we must be diligent and constantly prepare. Therefore, what matters most is to have an ongoing vigorous national debate, flexible and transparent procurement and budgeting systems and R&D system based on partnerships between public and private sector entities that quickly and routinely moves technology to the private sector. I'm not sure just how the proposed budget would support any of these things, but Sec Gates has consistently shown progress on all these fronts.