Is violating the freedom of many worth it if it saves“even one life”?
And it’s true: If you approve zero drugs, it’s 100 percent guaranteed you will approve no harmful drugs. You’ll also approve no helpful drugs. As we learn more and more about the human genome, it’s become more clear that what is a lifesaver for many might be a death sentence for a few. Most people can eat peanuts; a relative few of us cannot. The Nestor approach would be to ban peanuts for everyone to prevent anyone from being harmed.
That argument works better for peanuts than it does for new medicines. After all, peanuts rarely save anyone’s life. Drugs, on the other hand, have the potential to work miracles for some patients. Nestor’s tale has gained wide currency as an allegory about the shortcomings of the FDA and the drug industry. But I keep thinking about it in the context of the gun debate in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., massacre.
For instance, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that James Holmes, the man charged in the shooting rampage at the Aurora, Colo., premiere of The Dark Night Rises, was at least somewhat inspired by the Batman movies. The evil freak dyed his hair orange and called himself “the Joker.”
But hundreds of millions of people saw one of the Batman movies. Let’s imagine those movies are 100 percent to blame for the Aurora shooting. Even under that ridiculous assumption, that would mean that something like 99.9999999 percent of consumers of those products were unharmed or unaffected.
Blowback
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Face palm.
bgibbs1000 on January 23, 2013 at 10:12 PM
No. If we’re gonna do this “if it saves one life” dance then we should ban everything from driving to eating.
jawkneemusic on January 23, 2013 at 10:15 PM
How many lives does abortion take?
bgibbs1000 on January 23, 2013 at 10:16 PM
Liberals just don’t want The People to have guns. It makes the state less powerful. Yes, I’d be willing to ban guns, if we also banned free speech, violence in movies, video games, TV shows, books, music, poetry, paintings…etc. Retroactively too. Do an Equilibrium deal where we have a special police force that confiscates all material ever made depicting violence.
Dongemaharu on January 23, 2013 at 10:17 PM
Nope.
gophergirl on January 23, 2013 at 10:22 PM
NO! Life itself is a risk – just ask any aborted infant … oh, wait …
OldEnglish on January 23, 2013 at 10:22 PM
How about turning the argument around on the libs and say if having a gun in your home, your attacked and it saves just one life, is it worth it?
There is no point in taking up their argument and trying point out how it’s ridiculous. Best to turn it around on them. It stops the argument in its tracks because there’s nowhere to go.
katy on January 23, 2013 at 10:44 PM
No
Schadenfreude on January 23, 2013 at 11:02 PM
No.
Next question.
Good Lt on January 23, 2013 at 11:03 PM
For crying out loud. Buckley should come back and strike the name from the masthead.
INC on January 23, 2013 at 11:05 PM
Err..I read the article…I’m not seeing anything here…
Apparently I’m missing something here….
BigWyo on January 23, 2013 at 11:24 PM
No. Because of your comment I went over and looked at the entire thing. I misread Jonah’s first few sentences above and it set me off. You’re right.
INC on January 23, 2013 at 11:31 PM
I think Goldberg was writing this in a part as a simple response to Biden’s recent idiotic statement that if we can save one life with Draconian gun grabbing efforts, we should do it.
He, I think, effectively pointed out how stupid that position is.
Good Lt on January 23, 2013 at 11:50 PM
I love that Jonah Goldberg is trying a reduction ad absurdem on the “if it saves even one life” platitude. But I don’t think you could make the argument absurd enough to get progressives to reject it, as long as it takes them to their desired conclusion.
Good effort, though.
There Goes The Neighborhood on January 24, 2013 at 3:45 AM
No one ever mentions the thousands of people who have already sacrificed their lives to protect those very freedoms being discussed.
dddave on January 24, 2013 at 5:54 AM
If true, it is proof positive that liberals are irrational and dangerously insane.
fossten on January 24, 2013 at 6:13 AM
I’ve often found the most basic separation of the political ideologies comes down to your understanding (or misunderstanding) of human nature.
Liberals seem to believe that if you simply remove all means of harming others, or ensure that people cannot make certain choices, that they can control human behavior. Much like taxes, they make assumptions about human behavior from within a vacuum without considering all the outside factors.
Conservatives, on the other hand, understand the complex relationship of people and their environment. They understand that no specific human behavior, no matter how awful, can ever be stomped out. Abortion, for instance, will still happen (even on a small level) even if it was made 100% illegal with stiff penalties.
So when it comes to “saving a life” we see the same pattern. Remove the danger and we save all the lives. Nevermind that the very act itself would mean we would all be forbidden from leaving our homes ever. I’m sure a precious few would still find ways to die from falling down stairs, drowning in a bucket or hitting their head in the shower.
Of course Liberals don’t apply this same logic anywhere else with regards to children. We know alcohol has resulted in a Sandy Hook multiple times over with regards to drunk driving, not to mention the amount of families ruined because of alcoholism. Bad drivers, bad parents and the like result in ruined or killed children.
This is another excuse to seize rights in the name of security. Our free and open society can’t guard against people who are willing to die to kill others. We can mitigate the problem as best we can but we will never be totally safe.
Absolute safety is a myth. You’re never totally safe anywhere. At least the 2nd Amendment gives us all a fighting chance.
Flashwing on January 24, 2013 at 7:22 AM
It may “save” one life at the cost of thousands more. A disarmed citizenry will find itself under attack, at the cost of many lives, when the citizenry can no longer defend itself.
It is a false dichotomy to say “saves one life” because it doesn’t consider how many lives are saved. Each and every day because good people are armed.
Should we change it to “it if saves the life of one tyrant, it is worth it?” — because that’s what the Right, as recognized, not granted, by the Second Amendment is fundamentally about.
It never is about guns, the size of their magazines, how you carry them or purchase them. It is ALWAYS about control.
Politicians don’t fear guns. They fear free citizens with guns.
—-
Repeated:
A government that fears an armed citizenry is a government that is no longer “of the people, by the people, for the people” and should perish from this earth. Preferably by the ballot box, but in extremis, by the ammo box. (Four boxes of Freedom: soap, ballot, jury, ammo.)
And one of my new favorites:
”Never forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn’t let him do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians.” – Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith, Hope (2001
ProfShadow on January 24, 2013 at 7:31 AM
And here you will find stories where a citizen with a gun “saved just one life” or perhaps more:
http://www.nraila.org/gun-laws/armed-citizen.aspx
ProfShadow on January 24, 2013 at 7:33 AM
“The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.”
–Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler
BierManVA on January 24, 2013 at 3:27 PM