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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Since the election, I’ve heard a lot of talk from otherwise-reasonable people about how much the Democrats and Republicans hate each other and how they stand for entirely different things. I keep wanting to check and see whether these folks are really paying attention. Isn’t it obvious that Democrats and Republicans are really just two different wings of the Bipartisan Party?

Almost everybody talks wistfully these days about how great it would be if the two parties could just work together in a “bipartisan way.” Those naive folks don’t seem to understand the truth that George Carlin spoke when he said, “Bipartisan usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.”

When the two parties come to some big budget deal which lets them borrow billions and billions more dollars without cutting any spending, it’s hailed as bipartisan. The alleged combatants stand together smiling about the great deal they’ve come to, but it never seems to be a great deal for anyone except those who like bigger government and more spending.

I can’t remember the last time that actual spending was cut overall in the federal budget. Do you? When politicians talk about cuts, they generally just means cuts to the rate of growth of spending. In the real world, we don’t call those cuts. Instead, we look at it as an already-way-too-big government getting even bigger while politicians lie to us. Again.

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