All That Gun Talk

We just can’t shake a nagging suspicion that we’re being played for suckers every time we address the latest gun control frenzy.

There are plenty of other important issues to consider, after all. The economy is currently lousy, it’s likely to get worse after the upcoming “debt ceiling” debate is inevitably resolved by committing the country to yet another trillion or two of debt, and the taking of six American hostages by the supposedly routed al-Qaida terror group is just the latest reminder that the international situation continues to deteriorate. We also remain cautiously hopeful that all of the recent noise will ultimately amount to little. The most onerous of the proposed gun restrictions will likely face stiff resistance in Congress, including a key few Democratic senators facing re-election campaigns in rural states where many of the voters still bitterly cling to God, guns, and their God-given gun rights, and the numerous measures that President Obama has imposed by imperial edict are mostly such innocuous fluff as directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to “lead a national discussion” about guns.

No one can seriously believe that the nation suffers a dire shortage of discussion about guns, or that the HHS Secretary has any gift to lead it to any fruitful conclusion, but for obvious reasons Obama would prefer that we continue to discuss guns rather than any of those other important issues. He’s touting some dubious poll numbers which indicate that he’s taking only popular stands on guns, he nonetheless gets to pose as a politically courageous crusader against the all-powerful gun nut lobby, most of the media are cheering him on in the most hysterical fashion, he’s got cute kids lined up for the photo op, it’s all going to cost only a trifling few billion dollars, and at a time when the American public is reportedly demanding that he do something he is indisputably doing something. All that other stuff is so much messier for the president, too, and requires doing something that is an actual solution.

Still, attention must be paid to the gun issue or there’s no telling what the government might get away with. Included in the president’s orders and his proposals to Congress are not only serious assaults on the fundamental right to self-defense but also a potentially dangerous erosion of other liberties.

Although Obama’s directives don’t go so far as New York’s recently enacted gun law, which requires all mental health professionals to report any patient that might conceivably become violent, he does make it clear that the federal government would be quite grateful for such information. Given that Obama seems intent on giving the federal government a monopsony on all health care professionals’ services such gratitude could well prove an irresistible inducement. Those who regard psychiatry as an essential medical science should be concerned that such an arrangement will discourage the mentally ill from seeking treatment, and perhaps even rehearse all those clichés from the abortion debate about the government coming between patients and their doctors. Those of us who take a more skeptical view of the whole mental health boondoggle are entitled to worry that all manner of mental health professionals will start reporting even the patients most unlikely to become just to inoculate themselves against liability just in case they are wrong.

There’s something unsettling, too, about Ocala’s directive that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigate “the relationship between video games, media images and violence.” That’s another topic that has already been discussed ad nauseum, but when the government starts to take such an official interest it could easily to lead censorship. The Hollywood lobby seems to have better standing with the president than the gun owner lobby, so we don’t expect any restrictions on the big budget blood-soaked cinema that our supposedly conscience-stricken nation seems to love, but it’s not hard to see how more humble fare could be affected. If that strikes you as paranoid we suggest you consult Nakoula Nakoula, the poverty row producer who was sent to prison on a parole violation after his low-budget video was panned by the administration as “vile and disgusting.”

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, alas, and it looks as if it will be required on several fronts in the coming months and years.

— Bud Norman

Strange Times For Free Speech

Way back during the George W. Bush administration a friend of ours used to write a political column for a local “alternative weekly.” The publication was typical of the genre, with lots of fashionably foul language, gushing praise of the city’s more noisome rock bands, and endless ridicule of organized religion. Our friend’s contribution was mostly the obligatory Bush-bashing, with one particularly memorable screed demanding that the president be boiled in oil.

One day around this time we were chatting with the same fellow at a party, doing our best to steer the conversation away from politics, when a local musician with a haircut borrowed from The Bay City Rollers walked up to congratulate our friend for being so very brave as to publish such dangerous dissent. Both men were visibly offended by the laugh we snorted, forcing us to explain that we had assumed the compliment would wasn’t intended seriously. Did either of them really believe that such little-read rants would result in a midnight raid by jack-booted storm troopers hauling the author off to prison as punishment for giving offense to the administration? Did they truly worry that the American public and the press would tolerate such an outrageous violation of the First Amendment?

They were both earnest in insisting that they expected nothing less of the evil Chimpy McBushitler, and held their chins up in the familiar pose of liberal nobleness as they vowed to persist nonetheless, but of course nothing unpleasant ever happened to either of them as a consequence of their political opinions. The magazine soon went out of business, but as a result of an oversupply of juvenile leftism and not because of any governmental suppression. So far as we know none of Bush’s many antagonists ever got that midnight knock on the door, and instead they tended to be rewarded with Academy Awards, Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, academic tenure, and the self-serving congratulations of the like-minded for being so very brave and independent-thinking.

The incident was brought to mind by reading The New York Times’ recent story about Nakoula Bassely Nakoula, who is now infamous as the creator of the little-seen movie that was blamed by the Obama administration for the death of an ambassador and three other Americans during the Sept. 11 assault on our embassy in Libya. Nakoula actually was hauled off to prison after running afoul of running the administration’s sensitivities, with the deed being done by an army of heavily-armed officers late at night in order to complete every detail of the most paranoid fantasies of the Bush era. Judging by the recent election results it seems that the American public finds this outrageous violation of the First Amendment quite tolerable, and judging by the Times’ treatment of the story the press is even more sanguine.

Headlined “From Man Who Insulted Muhammad, No Regret,” the story offers no sympathy for Nakoula’s plight, and instead seems to argue that anyone who criticizes Islam in a way that offends Muslims deserves whatever punishment he gets. Although the Times does grudgingly acknowledge that subsequent testimony from numerous witnesses has proved that Nakoula’s movie was not the motive for the deadly attack in Libya, a fact that even the administration has at long last been compelled to concede, they contend that he “fueled deadly protests across the Islamic world” and “inspired international outrage.”

The story correctly notes that Nakoula has been imprisoned for various violations of the conditions of his parole after a conviction on bank fraud, and convincingly establishes that Nakoula has numerous other glaring character faults, but it does little to allay the unavoidable suspicion that it is more than mere coincidence that he is behind bars after he made a movie that the president found objectionable. The father of a Navy SEAL who died heroically in Libya has told interviewers that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton assured him that “we’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did that video,” and the Times’ reporters are apparently unconcerned that is exactly what happened.

Such insouciance about a filmmaker being imprisoned for purely political reasons for exercising his First Amendment rights is especially odd coming from The New York Times, a publication that was for many years at the forefront of the fight for free speech. As recently as the controversies over of “Piss Christ,” the “Sensations” show and its dung-covered portrait of Mary, the play “Via Christi” with its homosexual Jesus, and other art world efforts to offend Christians it has been especially robust in defending the rights of artists, but it would seem that some religious groups are more deserving of freedom from offense than others. Criticizing Islam requires real bravery, as Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and the late Theo Van Gogh all demonstrate, but The Times is clearly more impressed by the false bravado of the Bush-bashing Christ-mocking sorts of dissidents.

The fact that Nakoula is a less than stellar character ordinarily wouldn’t concern The Times, either. The pornographer Larry Flynt, ephebophile poet Alan Ginsburg, and convicted cop-killer Mumia Abul Jamal have all been hailed as free speech heroes by the newspaper, and nothing in The Times’ extensive indictment suggests Nakoula is any less unsavory.

Nor should Nakoula’s confession to the parole violations matter, for a powerful government official intent on jailing an inconvenient writer or filmmaker will always be able to find some plausible pretext for doing so. We’re certain that Bush could have come up with something on our friend the political columnist, and we suspect that The Times would have mustered far more outrage if he had.

— Bud Norman