By: Jim Taylor

Nuclear weapons, part II


It seems I need to offer some explanation about last week’s column. Quite a few readers thought I seriously advocated making nuclear weapons more widely available.

        Indeed, one high school student in Sheldon High School – wherever that is – asked for permission to quote my column for her paper on “The nuclear weapon makes the United States lead to social advantages.”

        I’m guessing that her English classes don’t include satire.

        And from other responses, it seems quite a few of you have never heard of, let alone read, Jonathan Swift’s essay, A Modest Proposal, published in 1729.

        Swift wrote it about the desperate plight of the Irish people, impoverished by English landlords, English trade policies, and English marketing. They were so poor, Swift suggested, that the only way they could drag themselves out of their abyss of poverty would be to sell their infants to the prosperous English upper classes. For food.

        A one-year-old child, Swift proposed, had not yet suffered enough from poverty and malnutrition to become stringy and inedible. Such a child could be as tasty on the dinner table as a young suckling pig.

        Swift wasn’t really advocating cannibalism. Rather, he expected that the very concept of cannibalism would be so repugnant that readers might actually do something about the fate of Irish peasants.



Reverse logic

  Similarly, I wasn’t recommending handing out nuclear weapons like candy at a Santa Claus parade. I was hoping that people would find my argument so ridiculous, so unrealistic, that they might also question conventional wisdom about gun use and gun ownership.

Especially the NRA’s version of conventional wisdom.

        It seems to me that if it makes sense to allow people to own guns for self protection, then it should make equal sense to allow more powerful weapons – with nuclear weapons as the extreme example.

        The reverse argument is equally simple—if it’s stupid to allow nuclear weapons into the hands of any fool, then it’s just as stupid to allow guns into the hands of any fool.



Constitutional foresight

Fortunately for my damaged ego, a few people did catch the point.

        For example, PadreDave on AOL wrote, “Amen, brother, Amen! I’ve held this quite logical approach to the matter of ‘arms control’ for some time. I’m glad to see someone else has finally seen the light! I imagine the NRA will offer you a huge grant to help propagate this idiocy, I mean, ideology across the globe.

        “Why must the cowards in power arbitrarily draw the line at hand guns and assault rifles? It is enshrined in the US Constitution that I have the inalienable right to ‘keep and bear ARMS!’ The founding fathers wisely did not use the word ‘guns’ and even went so far as to set no defining limit on ‘arms’ knowing full well the dramatic advances in destructive power and efficiency that we would one day have at our disposal.

        “Thanks so much for a most encouraging column. I’ll pray for the wildfire spread and adoption of your policy across the world, hastening the glorious day of Armageddon! Hellalujah!”

        I’d like to think that his last word was intentionally misspelled.

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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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