David McElroy

In the last couple of days, I’ve seen a lot of hand-wringing — from politicians and almost everyone else — concerning what to do about the crisis of gun-related violence in schools. I’m frustrated by the arguments, because they’re arguing the wrong points.

The shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., has renewed calls from some people to ban guns or at least control them more tightly in undefined ways. Those on the other side of the debate have said the way to stop such shootings is to arm teachers and let potential intruders know they’ll be shot. Many reasonable and intelligent people are taking sides along these battle lines, but I think they’re making a very basic error in their thinking.

Both sides assume we have a crisis related to school safety or mass shootings, so each side is trying to solve that predefined “problem.” But what if schools are already safe enough? And what if “mass shootings” aren’t the problem that both sides seem to assume they are?

How safe does the world have to be before you consider it “safe enough”?

For the families and friends of those who died in the shootings Friday, the shootings were definitely a crisis. The lives of survivors will never be the same. They’ve been scarred and changed.

But can’t the same be said of people who go through any traumatic incident? If 26 people (including 20 children) had died in an airplane crash, we wouldn’t hear cries to ban airplanes. Even though we would look at the crash and see whether there were lessons to learn from the specific incident, we would simply mourn the dead and acknowledge that the world can’t be made completely safe.

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Is anyone else on American television as rude as Bill O’Reilly? I don’t watch TV, so I can’t be sure, but I can’t imagine why anybody watches this rude and pompous guy.

In was in a restaurant last night that was turned to Fox News and O’Reilly’s show was on. Both televisions in the place were on the same channel and it was loud, so I didn’t have much choice but to hear it. I heard O’Reilly start interviewing Dave Silverman, the president of American Atheists. The group is suing to stop some activity or other that it considers an illegal government involvement in a religious holiday. Actually, it wasn’t as much an interview as it was a patronizing attack.

The guest tried to be polite and civil from the beginning, but O’Reilly wasn’t interested. He quickly cut off any polite talk and went on the offensive. He asked the man why his group was suing and the man replied that the atheists believe the case is about government involvement in religion.

O’Reilly asked what religion is involved. The atheist looked a bit puzzled before answering that it’s Christianity. O’Reilly cut him off quickly.

“[Christianity] is not a religion,” he said. “That’s a philosophy.”

I couldn’t tell whether O’Reilly was stupid enough to believe what he was saying or if he knew he was being disingenuous. I have to assume he was being intentionally dishonest, because I can’t believe anyone is that stupid. O’Reilly was rude and intellectually dishonest for the rest of the interview parts that I saw. At one point, he referred to the atheist as “You and your merry band of fascists.”

I eventually had to put my earbuds in and turn Laura Veirs on as loud as I could stand the music.

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Note: I don’t edit old articles such as this one, because they were what I believed to be accurate when I wrote them, but I have finally discovered almost four years later that the source of this graphic was actually a Buzzfeed article about what the results would have been if only white people had voted. The article will remain as it is, but please do not use this to make a political point about voting, because that might or might not be accurate. (I suspect if non-taxpayers were excluded from voting, the results would have been what I said here, but the data isn’t there to say so.) If you’d like to know why I don’t think it matters to argue these points, you’re welcome to read this article from July 2016 explaining how my priorities have changed in the past few years.

As long as you’re 18 years old and can fog a mirror, any U.S. citizen can vote. But what if we made one simple rule change? What if you had to have paid income taxes to be eligible to vote?

According to a graphic which has been attributed to CNN, the network looked at exit poll data from the election and told us what would have happened in the recent presidential election. After subtracting voters who pay no income taxes, Barack Obama would have won only 11 states. Instead of 332 electoral votes, he would have had only 97 electoral votes. (Click the map for a bigger copy.) Mitt Romney would have beaten him by a margin of 4.5 to 1 in electoral votes. It would have been a blowout win for the Republicans.

I was surprised to see CNN even point this out, because the suggestion that this is even a legitimate way to look at the data isn’t something that is typically brought up in polite company. The idea that people who don’t pay taxes are “second-class citizens” in some way is enough to get you declared racist and any other pejorative that some folks can think of.

But let’s think about it. Why is it that people who don’t pay taxes — which is about half the population — get to decide who pays taxes and how much money the actual taxpayers have to pay? What right do they have to have anything to say on such matters? If they’re not contributing to the money — and have nothing to lose from demanding higher taxes — why should they be allowed to have a say about what money is raised and how it’s spent?

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