Who are LaPierre's 'Good Guys'?

After the Newtown school shooting, Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the NRA, said, “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.” He seems to have given a solution to gun violence and school shootings a great deal of thought. His maxim gives the impression of being wise. Unfortunately, it is simplistic and omits one of the most blatant and crucial aspects of human nature, which is, that every guy who fires a loaded gun at someone thinks he's the good guy. Eric Frein, the survivalist who killed the trooper in Pennsylvania, thought he was good and cops were bad. Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, who killed 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris, thought Allah was on their side and cartoonists were evil. Men with guns in Nigeria kill indiscriminately in order to rid the world of "bad" western education (boko haram). Men with guns in Syria kill infidels (which pretty much means whomever they want) in order to establish a "good" and universal caliphate (ISIS). Men with guns in Iraq take revenge on the other men who, with explosives, blew up mosques and markets.

Since the beginning of history, the pattern has been exactly the same. One guy, feeling vulnerable or wanting to feel stronger and more important, gets a weapon. A second guy, who's on bad terms with the first guy, feels threatened and gets a weapon to defend himself. Escalation follows. Eventually, one uses his weapon. Armed conflict is nearly inevitable. Internationally, arms races lead to war. When the smoke has cleared, the winner writes the history.  And (you guessed it) the good guy won.

Gun rights advocates are correct about one thing: "guns don't kill people; people kill people." Gun rights advocates are also correct when they, like Wayne LaPierre, say that we should keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. But that's about where gun rights advocates stop thinking critically, because if they took the next logical step, they'd have to conclude that one of the major examples of mental instability is a man who owns or brandishes a loaded gun.

Proof of male-gun-owner-instability is in the facts. Men are three times as likely as women to own a gun, and nearly seven times as likely as women to use a gun to kill someone. The problem, Mr. LaPierre, is not good guys versus bad guys. The problem is guys with guns.

Since we can't ban guns (it's unconstitutional; it's even too perilous to talk about because men go berserk and become mentally unstable if there's any mention what so ever of restrictions on guns), let's talk about making the ownership and possession of guns by men illegal. It's a sensible solution if there ever was one. After all, there is no doubt (statistically) that men with guns are the problem.

We can't get rid of men, though. In fact. a brief look at history will pretty much convince anyone that men have been killing off me for thousands of year to no effect. If men with guns can't get rid of men with guns, who can?

Let's go outside the envelope. Suppose all the women in the world proclaimed in one voice that they  were fed up with spousal abuse, rape, gun violence, gangs and wars for all time. Suppose they communally decided that one way or another they'd end male brutality for all time. How could they do it? By agreeing to give birth to fewer male babies. If enough women stuck with it, after just two generations, there would be so many more women than men that women could pass and enforce any and all laws prohibiting men from owning or possessing a gun? No wars. No poaching. No drive-bys. No ISIS or Boko Haram. No Newtowns.

Economics for a Sustainable Future

An article by Robert J. Samuelson in the Oregonian (February 15) asked whether debt (government, business and household) helps economic growth and reduces unemployment, or the opposite. He concluded that it stimulates growth in the early stages of the business cycle, and often reverses it in the later stages. As a consequence, we have booms and busts.  He ended the article with a tantalizing idea, ". . .  what the world really needs is another brand of economic growth, one less dependent on debt and more effective in increasing jobs and income . . . "

In the early stage of our own personal financial well-being, we borrow money to get an education. With that in hand, we get a good job. Unemployment in the general economy goes down. We make money and begin paying down our loans. Our credit rating improves. The economy improves. We start thinking about buying a house.

Now we enter the later stage of the boom/bust cycle. We buy the house. We have more debt (student loan, car loan, mortgage) than our income can justify. We cut back on our spending. Other people do the same. The economy slows. Employers lay off workers. We lose our job and file for bankruptcy.

Nations, unlike individuals, can't erase their debts through bankruptcy. Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, argues that nations should borrow more money to keep the economy humming, piling debt on debt forever.

Krugman's model works so long as the world's economic machine keeps expanding: more people, more houses, more gadgets, etc. But his model falls apart once we realize that the world is over-populated and that 'stuff' has become a problem.

In our present economic model, most jobs, in one way or another, involve stuff - making stuff (clothes, apartments, airplanes, bombs), using stuff, transporting stuff, marketing stuff, fixing stuff, keeping track of stuff, storing stuff, disposing of stuff, etc. In effect, or economy pays people to do work that damages the planet and makes it less livable for our children.

An economic system based primarily on making stuff has limits.  First, it relies on using up limited resources, and therefore is limited. Second, we already own more things than most kings and czars throughout history dreamed of. We have excesses in garages, attics and storage lockers. If the economy slows it's because our demand for stuff diminishes.

Samuelson hinted at an economic system less dependent on debt and more capable at creating jobs.
You and I know it must also be better at preserving the natural world.

The shift to a service-based economy is a big step in the right direction. Another large step would be a tax on fossil fuels - a carbon tax. Not only would this make the production and use of things more expensive (therefore reducing the desire to borrow money to buy them), but also it would generate revenues from those who consume huge quantities of natural resources. That money could be used to create the 'job' of living small, that is, for the hard work of self-restraint.

A carbon tax in conjunction with other taxes produces the economy Samuelson asked for, one that depends less on debt, and that also employs more people. As a bonus, it saves the natural world for our kids.

Life is Sacred

I believe life is sacred. Probably most people do. But do we mean the same thing by those words?

'Sacred' is fairly straightforward. It has a religious definition - "entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things" - and a secular definition - "regarded with reverence." For me, the distinction is immaterial, because when life is sacred, I want to protect and preserve it.

'Life' is another matter. If I define 'sacred life' narrowly, as dictators do, then I protect myself and those around me (my family, my tribe, my regime), and I neglect (and might even kill) those who are outside my circle. Since the outsiders are not sacred, they are not worthy of protection.

Alternately, if I define life broadly, as many environmentalists do, then all life is sacred. In which case, I might risk my life to defend ecosystems against corporate plunder, and to protect endangered species from poachers.

Which definition of 'sacred life' serves humanity best at this time? Is it better to act selfishly and take care of myself and my family, and to discount my contributions to typhoons, floods and droughts? Or is it better to give up some of my luxuries and thereby reduce the rate of sea rise and slow the extinction of species?

Soldiers provide a good example of the consequences of each choice. When soldiers live according to a narrow definition of 'sacred life,' dividing the world into friend and foe, there is war. When they put down their weapons and expand their definition of 'sacred life' to include their former enemies, there is peace.

We can choose the kind of world we want. If we hold onto narrow definitions of sacred life, if we think that only humans are sacred, or that only some humans are sacred, then wars and environmental destruction will continue. However, if we expand our definition of sacred life to include others as well as nature, then we have the foundation for a peaceful, healthy future.

Assuming that most people would like to live on a peaceful, healthy planet, I must ask, Are we able to act consistent with an expanded belief that all life is sacred?

Bee deaths give us a chance to find out. For a decade now, commercial bee hives have been decimated by 'colony collapse disorder.' Since bees pollinate 30% of our food and many flowers, they're essential to us and nature. The suspected causes include monocultures, malnutrition, the Varroa mite, fungicides, pesticides (neonicotinoids) and the practices of commercial bee-keepers.

The consensus of peer-reviewed literature, and a 2014-study by researchers at Harvard University, point to neonicotinoids as the main culprit in CCD. Last year, Portland lost 42% of its hives, almost certainly due to household pesticides.

That pesticides kill bees should surprise no one. After all, they're designed to kill. Bees, though, are not pests. We need them. Life needs them. For my part, I can foreswear pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. But I am one small yard in a vast city, and Portland is a small city in a large country. If we really believe that life is sacred, can we act on that belief? Or are habit and lifestyle so deeply ingrained in us that saving the bees is unlikely, and probably impossible?

Abortion and Women's Health

19 March 2014

Editor

LO Review

Shelby Bennett states some facts in her column (LO Review, 3/13/14) that make it seem as though abortion were bad for women. Allow me to clarify the statistics. She wrote, "25% of women who have had abortions eventually seek out psychiatric care." If her statement is true, then the percentage of women seeking psychiatric care after having an abortion is below the average for the general population. That percentage is 26%-27%. Since those seeking psychiatric care are 63% women and 37% men, the number of women in the general  population who seek psychiatric care is 31% of all women. In other words, if a woman has an abortion, she is much less likely to seek psychiatric care than if she did not have an abortion. Add to that statistic the 12% of new mothers who seek psychiatric care for perinatal depression, and there is no question that abortion is much less harrowing than giving birth.

Shelby Bennett also states that "each abortion increases (the woman's) risk of breast cancer 300%." Where she got those numbers is suspect. No studies I have found link spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) or induced abortion ('abortion') to breast cancer. In fact, generally the studies conclude that breast cancer risk is not affected by abortion one way or the other. While there is a reduced risk of breast cancer in young women (under 30) who have carried a fetus full-term, that full-term pregnancy might be the woman's first pregnancy or her fifth pregnancy, the first four having been ended by abortion.

And last, the risk of dying from an abortion is one-tenth that associated with childbirth.

So, with regard to a woman's mental and physical well-being, she is much better off having an abortion than carrying a fetus full-term.

Choice for Life

What Exactly is a Choice for Life?

I'm staunchly pro-life. I'm also steadfast in my support of a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy for absolutely any reason whatsoever. The two positions may seem contradictory. And yet, to me they're not at odds, but work hand-in-hand for a better world. Let me explain.

Anti-abortion groups employ the maxim "choose life" to dissuade women from having abortions. They explain their position with the phrase "life begins at conception." To their way of thinking, the choice to carry a fetus full-term is a choice for life.

This sounds logical, and yet both phrases - "choose life" and "life begins at conception" - are disturbingly vague. Take the phrase "life begins at conception." In order for there to be conception, there must first be sperm and egg, which means, there had to have been two beings, male and female. It is quite obvious, therefore, that life comes before conception. So, the phrase "life begins at conception" is misleading and factually untrue.

What the anti-abortion groups really mean to say is that "an individual human's life begins at conception." This would be a more accurate statement of their beliefs.

The second phrase, "choose life," would also be more accurate if the word human were added: "choose human life." That is what a woman does when she chooses to have a baby, she chooses to add another human to the world. By doing so, she ensures the survival of her genes as well as our species. It's a noble choice. Women have been making this choice for thousands of years. Humankind has been very successful. We've populated the planet. We're everywhere.

And because we're everywhere, we crowd out other species. Buildings and roads cover habitats that other species need. Technologies provide hunters, fishermen, poachers and loggers with the equipment to kill other species in far greater numbers than can assure the species' survival. Burning fossil fuels warms the atmosphere and oceans, which causes sea levels to rise, which in turn will force coastal residents to move inland where they'll cover more land with houses, malls and roads.

It is a painful and unnerving question, but it must be asked: is the choice to give birth really a choice for life? Or is it a choice for human life at the expense of life itself? Since every newborn will in one way or another contribute to climate change and species extinctions for approximately 75 years, the greatest harm a person can cause to the living system is to bring another human into the world.

Which is not to say we should stop having babies. That would be ridiculous. If women stopped giving birth, humankind would eventually cease to exist, which is hardly in our interest.

What is in our interest is to preserve both ourselves and the living system. If we were to limit our offspring to no more than two per couple, if women waited until their late 20s to start having babies, and if women allowed more time between pregnancies, then the rate of human population growth would slow, and eventually reverse. More species would survive and more habitats would remain intact. The air and oceans would be cleaner and the cities less crowded.

Thus, the choice to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is a choice for life.