OPINION
The New Hampshire
M
y thoughts in the early morning hours of Nov. 7 brought me back to a passage in a book I read some time ago. The passage from Walter Krauffman’s translation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra reads: “Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man. ‘What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?’ thus asks the last man, and blinks. The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea; the last man lives longest. ‘We have invented happiness,’ say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one’s neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth... One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harrowing. One no longer
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And then we blinked...
becomes poor or rich: both require too much exertion. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too much exertion. No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse. ‘Formerly, all the world was mad,’ say the most refined, and they blink... One has one’s little pleasure for the day and one’s little pleasure for the night: but one has a regard for health. ‘We have invented happiness,’ say the last men, and they blink.” In this passage, Nietzsche develops the last man, a thinly veiled and brutal critique of bourgeois society. Here, he cites the absence of creativity, a tendency toward materialism, and the exhibition of herd behavior to demonstrate the weakness of man in this stage of human history. Perhaps the most disturbing quality of the last man is his ability to convince himself that he has found happiness in these qualities. Are the results of last Tuesday’s election indicative of the fact that modern America has now come to epitomize the last man’s reign?
From the Right Nick Mignanelli “Who do we love?!” the campaign staffers asked. “Maggie for Gov!” the poll standers shouted back. That was the scene in Exeter a little after 7 a.m. last Tuesday. In the weeks before Election Day, I couldn’t help but notice the manifestation of “Obama Cares” stickers adhered to the bumpers of Honda Civics and Volvos around the state. This is the state of contemporary American political discourse: Who cares about me? Who loves me? Who will take care of me? Could it be that the denigration of the family and the breakdown of the community have given rise to an age in which citizens now look to the government for these commodities of human emotion? Could anything be more masochistic than looking to politicians and
You don’t need handguns
’m reasonable. You can keep your shotguns and rifles, but not automatic rifles of course. Anyone who believes they need a Kalashnikov lives on a completely different planet from me. But isn’t it great that we live in a country where you can have one? We have so much more to learn from Somalia. Rifles and shotguns have traditional uses. People have hunted for as long as humans have existed. I’ve dabbled in it myself and can say without shame that I’ve reverse-drowned many a fish. I’m not interested in stopping hunters, nor in getting sidetracked by complicated animal rights issues, as much as I love distractions. What I am interested in is telling you that you don’t need handguns. The Constitution is a little vague. It doesn’t say what types of arms you get to bear, which allowed us to enforce the now expired assault weapons ban. But more importantly, if the Constitution told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it? I didn’t think so. We could bend the rule without breaking it. We could pick a type of weapon to ban. Handguns don’t serve a recreational purpose. Anyone could understand that target practice might be fun. But you can do that with shotguns and rifles, and that’s all that handguns are good for, that and shooting people. People are injured or killed by a firearm over 100,000 times per year in the United States, according to Center for Disease Control and Prevention data, and every time it happens that is a big “F U” from the second amendment. But if people are going around shooting each other, don’t we need guns to defend ourselves? Not really; people are killed by their own guns more than by those of others. Over 18,000 people were acciden-
Friday, November 16, 2012
From the Left Miles Brady tally shot in 2009, and in 2007 over 600 died of accidental shootings, according to CDC data. However, what is really striking is how rarely guns are used successfully in self defense as opposed to murder. There were an average of 213 fatal justified shootings per year between 2005 and 2010, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In a pure, but probably fairly accurate, extrapolation of the data on my part, you can assume that 15 percent of self-defense shootings are fatal and thus there were only around 1,400 injurious self-defense shootings. For transparency, I get 15 percent from CDC statistics which show that of around 86,000 non-suicidal shootings, there are over 12,000 gunshot fatalities. Excluding suicide, there are around 54 gun murders for every one selfdefense fatality, according to CDC and FBI data. About one in 225,000 (approximate – USA population divided by 1,400) Americans will fire a gun in self-defense each year, though about 1 in 2 has one (47 percent according to a Gallup poll from 2011). Many gun owners are convinced that there is a strong possibility that they’ll need their gun for self defense, but that would be like winning the lottery. Gun-lovers love to think they are responsible. No matter how responsible they are, or think they are, there is a strong possibility that kids will find their guns. My
grandfather (to be honest, I question his responsibility) left his gun in the trunk of his car. My cousins and I touched it as kids, and may have picked it up. I don’t know if it was loaded. Around five kids are injured or killed by handguns each day in the United States, according to the The Survivors Club. The children of parents you’d probably consider responsible, in one recent case of a police officer, find guns and hurt or kill themselves. This column has become dark and depressing. It is depressing because we live in the world’s most gun obsessed wealthy country. Our culture is too accepting of devices that have no use other than killing people. Having a rifle or shotgun for hunting is understandable, but handguns don’t serve this purpose. Just because they are occasionally used in self defense doesn’t make up for all the lives lost. The Constitution was designed to do what’s best for us (at least us white men). What was best for us over 220 years ago is not what’s best for us now (not just white men). We need to continue to adapt, for the betterment of the people. Another amendment clarifying the second amendment would be good but, as the (unfortunately) expired assault weapons ban shows, we don’t even need to change the constitution to improve things. We could ban handguns outright. We could also prevent purchases from gun owners, instead of dealers, as this allows convicts and the mentally ill to bypass background checks. But unless you are in law enforcement or the military, you don’t need handguns.
bureaucrats for the sort of support that only family members and neighbors can provide? And what are the values of this new age of paternal government? One might say we are now living in the midst of an envy epidemic. Rigid class structure and permanent class struggle are not features of American life, but the rhetoric of economic division, too, has now entered into the realm of American political discourse. The stillborn Occupy Wall Street movement gave us the absurd 99 percent -1 percent dichotomy, while politicians like Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren have attributed the accomplishments of every successful man and woman in this country to the government. The president: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Senator Warren: “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own – nobody! ... You
moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless – keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” Crippling taxation and regulation are a small price to pay for utilizing one’s innate abilities and sharing one’s creativity with others via a market system. The wealth created by some, said the politician, ought to be rendered to the state for the material comfort of others. In this way, human happiness will finally be achieved. The herd agreed and then we blinked.
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Nick Mignanelli is a senior political science major and a former intern at the Heritage Foundation.
Thumbs Up Thumbs Down Thumbs up to the end of the semester approaching and a nice, long break from classes. Thumbs down to the end of the semester approaching and all the exams and papers that come with it. Thumbs up to the Thanksgiving dinner at the dining halls. Thumbs down to any professors not canceling class the Wednesday before Thanksgiving break. Thumbs up to Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s bicycle kick goal from 30 yards away. Thumbs down to having to do laundry less than a week before going home. Thumbs up to one week before Black Friday shopping deals. Thumbs down to the inevitable tramplings that happens during Black Friday.
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Miles Brady is a junior English major. He is a running enthusiast, a sports fan and very liberal on most issues. He also likes to think that he is very rational.
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