What
happened when old-fashioned ideas about sex were replaced in the 1960s by the
bright new ideas of the left that were introduced into the schools as "sex
education" that was supposed to reduce teenage pregnancy and sexually
transmitted diseases?
Both
teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases had been going down for
years. But that trend suddenly reversed in the 1960s and hit new highs.
Proto:
I
certainly don't side with the Left on the issues of sexual liberation and am
not going to suggest that 'sex education', contraception and all the rest have
been good for society.
But
I will argue with Sowell. First of all the data really only goes back to the
early 60's. Apart from the Kinsey study, which I agree was a joke, there wasn't
a lot of data.
That
said, I'll grant the rates have all gone up. But was it the 1960's?
The
'pill' was invented in the 1950's and though it became popular in the 1960's it
wasn't a result of the 'hippie' generation and their ideas about free love. Its
highest demand was to be found in the middle class. What it did for the
hippies, was to allow them to engage in sexual behaviour with less consequence.
I
know Margaret Sanger is hated by the right and certainly was an unsavoury
person but a big part of the push for the pill was rooted in older movements. Birth
Control politics was nothing new and there's a dark nexus in the early 20th
century where birth control politics and anti-immigration coincide. The
traditional Right/Left divisions break down.
Many
like Sowell will oversimplify and argue the Progressives were all Leftist in
their sentiments...equivalent to contemporary Leftists. And yet, there were
many who supported Eugenics who believed in doing so they were standing for
Christian civilization and conservative values. He (and he's by no means alone),
often reads modern Leftism back into the past which can be quite misleading.
How
can these traditionalist conservatives stand for something like Eugenics? The
answer is pretty simple, and that is racism. Progressivism sometimes overlapped
with anti-immigration policies which today most would consider to be a pretty
conservative political stance. People have forgotten how affected the country
was in the early 1900's by the waves of immigrants that had come to this
country. And after World War II many have selectively forgotten that much of
the mindset of the Western Establishment was imperialist and most certainly
racist.
With
industrialization, American factories needed workers. In England and much of
Europe what was left of the feudal order was broken up forcing thousands into
the cities desperate for work in a new cash economy. In the United States the old
WASP-ish folk who were farming the countryside were not going to be easily
enticed off their farms to go work in a polluted city doing factory work.
The
Titans of Industry or Robber Barons depending on your economic and political
theory needed immigrants. But they came in such numbers the country was shaken,
the Klan rose again...this time in the North as well and people started talking
about Eugenics. The Rockefellers played no small role in the early days of this
movement. While they're viewed as 'Liberals' it's only that simple in Thomas
Sowell's world. You're not going to find too many big oil people who are going
to be 'liberal' in their outlook.
Sowell
likes to attack the Left for overcomplicating arguments. He views it as a
tactic. I have to say for many years I would have agreed with Sowell. I hated
people who didn't see the world in simple black and white terms. Back then I
listened to Rush Limbaugh and allowed him to get me all worked up when Bill
Clinton won the presidency in 1992. I thought the country was coming to end
etc... The present anti-Obama frenzy is nothing new though many seem to have
forgotten the dire predictions and doomsday warnings in the early 1990's.
Then
(praise God) I was converted to Christianity and as per Romans 12 my mind was
renewed. I began to apply the Bible to all of my life and rethink everything I
had ever been taught or to put it differently, I began to re-think how I had
been taught to think.
I
realized much of what I had been taught was half-truth and often just blatant
lies. The world grew more complex. Far from being terrifying, it was humbling.
As an unregenerate young man I had been filled with pride, anger and would have
easily been recruited to put on a uniform, pick up a gun, go hurt people in
other lands and would have believed it was right to do so.
The
world was a pretty simple place. Becoming a Christian I had a much better
understanding of good and evil. But unlike Sowell I realized in the real world
the bad guys don't wear black cowboy hats and the good guys don't wear white ones.
It's more complicated. Sometimes the bad guy is a nice guy who smiles, shakes
your hand and buys you dinner. He might have a nice family and live in a nice
neighbourhood. He might carry a Bible. The real world is far more confusing and
dangerous.
I
can see why people want to fall back to the simple world of Sowell, Palin,
Bachmann, Reagan and others. It's easy to convince yourself that you're good
and that you're standing against evil.
The
Biblical position is quite different and destroys both pride and man's
projects. It won't baptize pride and ambition. The dreams of wealth and power
are dissolved. Sowell's heroes become pretty evil people. And those he calls
evil...I'll grant him this point...they're pretty evil too.
Sowell:
One
of the oldest and most dogmatic of the crusades of the left has been
disarmament, both of individuals and of nations. Again, the focus of the left
has been on the externals – the weapons in this case.
If
weapons were the problem, then gun control laws at home and international
disarmament agreements abroad might be the answer. But if evil people who care
no more for laws or treaties than they do for other people's lives are the
problem, then disarmament means making decent, law-abiding people more
vulnerable to evil people.
Since
belief in disarmament has been a major feature of the left since the 18th
century, in countries around the world, you might think that by now there would
be lots of evidence to substantiate their beliefs.
But
evidence on whether gun control laws actually reduce crime rates in general, or
murder rates in particular, is seldom mentioned by gun control advocates. It is
just assumed in passing that of course tighter gun control laws will reduce
murders.
But
the hard facts do not back up that assumption. That is why it is the critics of
gun control who rely heavily on empirical evidence, as in books like More Guns, Less Crime by John Lott and Guns and Violence by Joyce Lee Malcolm.
National
disarmament has an even worse record. Both Britain and America neglected their
military forces between the two World Wars, while Germany and Japan armed to
the teeth. Many British and American soldiers paid with their lives for their
countries' initially inadequate military equipment in World War II.
But
what are mere facts compared to the heady vision of the left?
Proto:
Sowell
likes to speak of hard facts and many Reformed who praise Sowell find this type
of argument a little embarrassing. Hard facts are often not as concrete as
people would wish. Facts are meant to be objective, in fact they have to be in
order to be facts. But, people interpret and assimilate all data based on
philosophical assumptions. Different epistemologies are going to deal with data
in a different way.
As
Christians we have a different epistemology than a naturalist or materialist.
But when it comes to something like guns and society we should be able to say
something. We should be able to put together some data and make some
observations.
Sowell
makes the classic argument that if you take away guns from law abiding people
then the criminals who refuse to abide the law will have them and terrorize the
law abiding public who does not.
To
Sowell arguments for gun control represent a naive view of the world. The world
is full of bad guys and we have to fight gun violence with gun violence.
But
the facts don't support his conclusions on several levels.
One,
it's a 'fact' that in societies like Britain since the vast majority of the
public is disarmed, they have only a fraction of the gun violence. Are a few
people killed every year by gun toting criminals? Yes. Do they have violent
crime? Certainly.
But
in general the number of 'gun related' crimes is far lower. It's ten times
lower in Canada and forty times lower in Britain.
Sowell
doesn't want to admit it, but if guns are removed from society there's a lot
less gun violence. I guess that's hard to grasp for some people but it should
be obvious.
Now
I'm not saying that taking away guns is right or wrong, I'm simply stating the
case and pointing out that Sowell's logic is faulty. That doesn't mean that his
position is wrong, but his argument is wrong. His use of facts and argument are
misleading.
I
realize there are cultural and legal issues regarding gun possession in this
country. That's not the point.
I
also realize that culturally this society would have a much harder time in ever
clearing all the guns from the streets. If guns were banned and confiscated
there would still be millions of firearms floating around the criminal underground
for many decades.
Sowell
is just plain wrong and like most of his crew their commentary is filled with a
mix of facts, misinterpretations, complete errors and in some cases delusion.
Not everything he or his colleagues say is wrong but generally even if they get
something right, it's applied in a flawed manner.
As
far as national disarmament, this is a more complicated topic. Sorry, but
Sowell's simplistic naiveté is showing through once again. For many
conservative hawks anything less than continual expansion is akin to
disarmament. There are economics involved as well as an overall cost to society
by maintaining large scale standing technological armies. Eisenhower warned of
the 'Complex' even after he helped erect it.
As
far as the interwar period, Sowell (I hope) would recognize there were a lot of
different things happening in British and American societies that make this issue a little more complex than a simple call for disarmament in the name of Leftist principles. A second Great
War was unthinkable. The League of Nations had been established. There was a
worldwide depression. There were mixed feelings about what had happened at
Versailles.
To
suggest that it was simply 'the Left' that wanted to disarm is more than a
little misleading. In fact it was many on the Right who stood for Isolationism.
In fact paleo-conservatives will tell you that they are the true conservatives
and that our modern hawkish warmongering conservatives aren't actually
conservative at all but part of the Progressive tradition, a re-cast of
Manifest Destiny on a geo-political scale.
Sowell
is banking on an audience that is ignorant. And then if he's rightly challenged
for being simplistic he counter-attacks by suggesting that you're employing an
elitist intellectual trick and obfuscating, muddying the waters in order to
mute his point.
His
points are impotent and juvenile. His high school debate club arguments only
succeed because they tickle the ears of his audience.
