Guns are good; ditto booze and smokes
From The Left
by Joseph Waldman
30 January 2002
The Wesleyan Council on Student Affairs (WCSA) recently passed a long awaited resolution condemning University investments in alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. The motion was initially railroaded into the spotlight by the sanctimonious angels at ProgressOWU, who seem to be even more clueless than I had thought possible. Our beloved banana congress sent the resolution to the trustees, who are mostly wealthy, white, and powerful beyond their deserved station—like many ProgressOWU members. It should not be surprising that they’re kissing up, nor that their copies of the resolution will probably end up as bathroom tissue, as they well should.
College students do not generally have a reputation for knowing much of anything. It is base hypocrisy to peddle a prohibitionist argument while indulging in what it opposes. Those of you who know what I’m talking about really know what I’m talking about.
I’m no better than they are, but at least I’m honest. If this were your typical “liberal column,” you might expect some inane statistics on death rates from the use of alcohol, tobacco and firearms handed down with mock sobriety, but I’m not your typical liberal columnist.
Think of me instead as a “liberal(itarian).” The older and grouchier I get, the more I think that’s what I am. I do not advocate the regular use of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, but as the joke goes, why did they have to give all the good stuff to one federal agency?
I do not approve of people telling me what I can or cannot do. I suspect most of you agree. This is not a matter of “trying to save people’s lives.” The Resolution Nazis simply want to feel smug and superior through an egregious restriction of individual choice.
Being a liberal means being pro-choice—and not just in the reproductive realm, either. True liberals allow people to make mistakes and then, hopefully, find the right path to take. That is why, despite more than a century of Republican snafus, no Democrat has ever sought to bring down the splinter-faction, bastard-child of the Whigs . For one thing, it’s too much fun to watch them flounder. Republicans deserve the freedom to be wrong just as much as I do to be right.
You have a right to kill yourself in any way you see fit, and a government that can restrict your means to do so has crossed a dangerous bridge. The Catholics and the Southern Baptists do not run my life, nor my government, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let them—or ProgressOWU—tell me when and where I can or cannot die.
Moreover, the “Big Bad Three” are as American as apple pie and Andrew Jackson. In the case of guns, they are even constitutionally sanctioned. I’m not too keen on ol’ Numero Dos, myself, but it’s there, in black and white, and there’s no getting around it. Some Americans, however, have a hard time accepting that the Constitution, while immensely flexible, doesn’t provide an easy answer to all the little gripes and causes celebres in the world.
On Sept. 11 the once incomprehensible idea of another war on our soil was dashed away in less than two hours. An event like that gives us an even greater incentive to defend our freedoms. Drinking, smoking, and swearing are among the great American vices that define us as a people. If yet another attack transpires, it will give a new, sanctified meaning to the calcified, conservative, but for once correct notion of gun rights. When the invaders come, they can pry the militia rifle from my cold, dead, liberal hands.