Tim Dunlop has written a “standard“, we-need-gun-control response to the horrible shootings in America.
He was insightful enough to raise the age-old conflict between the personal and the collective. It’s important to put aside guns for a moment and focus on the principle of state-sanctioned control of the individual. If we can park the emotion, we may be able to see that this tension is in fact illusionary, thus demonstrating gun control arguments are actually part of the problem.
We all know a champion team beats a team of champions. But it’s also true that this is only achieved by free individuals committed to the team. Though the end story concerns the whole, the narrative must begin with each separate part, bottom up. As the communists found, demand otherwise and everyone loses out.
To the extent most contradict this reality, secular laws are ultimately counter-productive. The individual-collective balance that we crave is of an either-or nature. Have faith in the individual to appreciate the benefits and sense of a champion team and perhaps achieve success; or lack faith, actively legislate and guarantee failure.
Contrary to Tim’s views, extreme individualism is not hostile to the common good. What is unworthy is the inverted, top-down “how” practiced by power-lusting government bureaucrats egged on by misguided left-wing utopians. Unfortunately for some men the ill-directed effort becomes so distressing they feel compelled to “confront the problem” by either opting out of life or brutalising other human beings.
The struggle between the individual and collective is an imagined one, a distraction perpetrated by the moral and intellectual weakness of those too fearful to admit the only path in the quest for a true community runs through each and every individual.
