Violent video games are back in the news again. Wasn't that long ago Jack Thompson's anti-game jihad got him disbarred. Our old friend, and known constitutional butt-wiper (someone who repeatedly wipes their ass with the Constitution) Leland Yee also got smacked down by the Supreme Court for his own crusade against video games.
As much noise as politicians and people like Thompson make about video games and what ever perceived societal ills they cause, they, as usual, miss the core issue. Parenting.
Parenting is quite possibly the greatest of all social responsibilities. Simply put if you're going to abdicate this responsibility to politicians like Leland Yee, than well, don't have kids.
Video games aren't a problem for society, and never have been. I say society since they can be problematic if your child lacks discipline or has a short attention span. but again that goes right back to parents. If there is something I've noticed it's that politicians like Leland Yee aren't interested in solving the deep core issues, that would take real, hard, work. Instead politicians like Leland Yee, present their red herrings to the public. Present a feel good measure, make everyone feel warm and fuzzy, do no real work, get re-elected, rinse and repeat. Video games are nothing more than the 21st century comic book.
It has always been the responsibilities of parents to teach their kids and equip them with the things they need to know to function in an ordered society. Yes there are public schools, but their job isn't to teach kids how to behave. In terms of teaching reality and fantasy, it seems like for the most part parents are rather successful in that regard. Millions of people play video games, and the vest majority of these people aren't driven to violence over these games. Sure there are the unadjusted sore losers who are driven into a rage because they die too much in a death match or zombie survival mode, but very rarely even these people don't carry out acts of violence over the game. I myself have been playing games like Doom since 1993. I also own a semi-auto civilian variant of the AK-103 (an update of the venerable AK-47) rifle. According to Leland Yee, I'm a mass murder waiting to happen, not another law abiding citizens who's never been in trouble with the law.
Naturally the responsibility of parenting go beyond video games. But extends to just about every facet of life, including sex. It isn't just Democrats who are trying to ursurpe the responsibility of parenting. Republicans are just as guilty, where as Democrats like Leland Yee want to usher in a People's Republic of China-esque nanny state, Republicans want to usurp this responsibility in the area of personal morals. Case in point, abstinence only "education" and crusty old white men wanting to legislate personal decisions for women.
These politicians can say all they want but at the end of the day it's all meaningless if no one bothers to listen to them. And that's sort of the issue. It's the parent's jobs to raise their kids not politicians. Also parents shouldn't listen to politicians. Leland Yee, nor Todd Atkin give a damn about you or your kids, they want to be re/elected. That's all they care about. A politician is the last person anyone should take parenting tips from. Every time one starts talking about "for the children" a parent should always think, "what is s/he getting at?"
There's a phrase that I believe it was President Harry Truman who coined it, "the buck stops here". And that's how it is with raising your kids. It's all on you, it's a responsibility you can't abdicate to the state.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Social Responsibilities: Self-Defense
With all the talk going around today regarding what to do about guns, it's pretty impossible to not to hear "self-defense" brought up at some point. But like just about any/everything related to guns today, even the concept of self-defense has be politicized.
But for now lets push everything the law makers and talking heads have been saying. It certainly is a right, under both criminal and civil law you have a right to use force, even lethal force in some instances to protect yourselves and others. But more than that, it is a social responsibility.
One might say, "but that's what the police are for." Well the response to that is yes, and no.
"...fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen." - Warren v. District of Columbia (444 A.2d. 1, D.C. Ct. of Ap. 1981)
Even setting this aside, police resources are finite. Individual officers can only be at one place at any given moment, and there certainly aren't enough officers to respond to every crime. In short that means when one officer responds to delinquents vandalizing private property, that's one officer who's not responding to a home invasion.
There's also the whole matter of response time. A crime can happen in a matter of seconds, where are police will arrive in a matter of minutes.
But people aren't entirely powerless. The law at the very least has given people the right to protect themselves. A person making use of that right, and using the tools necessary can actually prevent the crime, reducing the finite amount of time and resources police need to spend on the crime. A crime that could have been prevented frees up an officer to respond to another. More often than not, many of these criminals are armed in some form of another.
You can probably already see where I am going with this, but lets stroll down this road because it's necessary to get a good look at the scenery.
Say you are confronted and over powered, what then? You might think that surely someone will come to help. Well, no one came to help Kitty Genovese.
Here's a summary of the Bystander Effect/Genovese Syndrome:
The bystander effect occurs when the presence of others hinders an individual from intervening in an emergency situation. Social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley popularized the concept following the infamous 1964 Kitty Genovese murder in Kew Gardens, New York. Genovese was stabbed to death outside her apartment three times, while bystanders who reportedly observed the crime did not step in to assist or call the police. Latane and Darley attributed the bystander effect to the diffusion of responsibility (onlookers are more likely to intervene if there are few or no other witnesses) and social influence (individuals in a group monitor the behavior of those around them to determine how to act). In Genovese's case, each onlooker concluded from their neighbors' inaction that their own help was not needed.
In light of this, the sad truth is, for one reason or another, you can't count on someone comming to help you. People who don't take responsibility for protecting themselves or their families, instead relying on the state/police or others to come and help, have effectively abdicated this responsibility. They have abdicated a key social responsibility in living in an ordered society.
The fact is there is evil in the world. That just isn't going to go away, no amount of "positive thinking" will change that. Refusing to acknowledge that is akin to burying your head in the sand. We all need to take a serious approach to this responsibility, take realistic steps to protect ourselves. Criminals will take any and all means to complete their crimes, therefore each and every one of us needs to take an and all means to protect ourselves. The impact of abdicating this responsibility is that you place others in danger that in some cases may not need to be placed in that danger. Those that come to help you because of this abdication, and those who have no one to help them because police officers have come to help you because of your abdication. If you have a family, your spouse and children are put at risk by this abdication as well. Encouraging, or out right forcing, others to abdicate this responsibility as well though legislation is just as socially irresponsible, if not more so.
Now it might not seem that someone abdicating this responsibility is not a big deal, but we can think of responsibilities like this as like social matter. In chemistry you learn that you cannot destroy matter, only change it's phase. Well these responsibilities are sort of the same way, just because you abdicate it, doesn't make it go away. What it does is it transfers that responsibility to keep yourself and your family protected to some other party. Be it the State, or a good Samaritan who assumes that responsibility by stepping in your behalf. So what this does is for the State it adds yet another burden on it's finite resources, and for the Samaritan it adds the responsibility of protecting you one top of their responsibility to protect themselves. Not only is abdicating this responsibility socially irresponsible, but it is also unfair to the rest of society.
Now I'm not saying everyone should be strapped, but everyone should take what ever measures available to be able to protect themselves and their families. Be it martial arts, or firearms training.
In the end we all have responsibilities if we're going to live in an ordered society. One of those is a responsibility to protect ourselves.
But for now lets push everything the law makers and talking heads have been saying. It certainly is a right, under both criminal and civil law you have a right to use force, even lethal force in some instances to protect yourselves and others. But more than that, it is a social responsibility.
One might say, "but that's what the police are for." Well the response to that is yes, and no.
"...fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen." - Warren v. District of Columbia (444 A.2d. 1, D.C. Ct. of Ap. 1981)
Even setting this aside, police resources are finite. Individual officers can only be at one place at any given moment, and there certainly aren't enough officers to respond to every crime. In short that means when one officer responds to delinquents vandalizing private property, that's one officer who's not responding to a home invasion.
There's also the whole matter of response time. A crime can happen in a matter of seconds, where are police will arrive in a matter of minutes.
But people aren't entirely powerless. The law at the very least has given people the right to protect themselves. A person making use of that right, and using the tools necessary can actually prevent the crime, reducing the finite amount of time and resources police need to spend on the crime. A crime that could have been prevented frees up an officer to respond to another. More often than not, many of these criminals are armed in some form of another.
You can probably already see where I am going with this, but lets stroll down this road because it's necessary to get a good look at the scenery.
Say you are confronted and over powered, what then? You might think that surely someone will come to help. Well, no one came to help Kitty Genovese.
Here's a summary of the Bystander Effect/Genovese Syndrome:
The bystander effect occurs when the presence of others hinders an individual from intervening in an emergency situation. Social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley popularized the concept following the infamous 1964 Kitty Genovese murder in Kew Gardens, New York. Genovese was stabbed to death outside her apartment three times, while bystanders who reportedly observed the crime did not step in to assist or call the police. Latane and Darley attributed the bystander effect to the diffusion of responsibility (onlookers are more likely to intervene if there are few or no other witnesses) and social influence (individuals in a group monitor the behavior of those around them to determine how to act). In Genovese's case, each onlooker concluded from their neighbors' inaction that their own help was not needed.
In light of this, the sad truth is, for one reason or another, you can't count on someone comming to help you. People who don't take responsibility for protecting themselves or their families, instead relying on the state/police or others to come and help, have effectively abdicated this responsibility. They have abdicated a key social responsibility in living in an ordered society.
The fact is there is evil in the world. That just isn't going to go away, no amount of "positive thinking" will change that. Refusing to acknowledge that is akin to burying your head in the sand. We all need to take a serious approach to this responsibility, take realistic steps to protect ourselves. Criminals will take any and all means to complete their crimes, therefore each and every one of us needs to take an and all means to protect ourselves. The impact of abdicating this responsibility is that you place others in danger that in some cases may not need to be placed in that danger. Those that come to help you because of this abdication, and those who have no one to help them because police officers have come to help you because of your abdication. If you have a family, your spouse and children are put at risk by this abdication as well. Encouraging, or out right forcing, others to abdicate this responsibility as well though legislation is just as socially irresponsible, if not more so.
Now it might not seem that someone abdicating this responsibility is not a big deal, but we can think of responsibilities like this as like social matter. In chemistry you learn that you cannot destroy matter, only change it's phase. Well these responsibilities are sort of the same way, just because you abdicate it, doesn't make it go away. What it does is it transfers that responsibility to keep yourself and your family protected to some other party. Be it the State, or a good Samaritan who assumes that responsibility by stepping in your behalf. So what this does is for the State it adds yet another burden on it's finite resources, and for the Samaritan it adds the responsibility of protecting you one top of their responsibility to protect themselves. Not only is abdicating this responsibility socially irresponsible, but it is also unfair to the rest of society.
Now I'm not saying everyone should be strapped, but everyone should take what ever measures available to be able to protect themselves and their families. Be it martial arts, or firearms training.
In the end we all have responsibilities if we're going to live in an ordered society. One of those is a responsibility to protect ourselves.
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