Two weeks ago, I’d prepared commentary about the value of generosity in foreign affairs but awoke to the horrible reports from Las Vegas. I went ahead with it while I caught my breath and planned commentary about guns. But generosity is very relevant and I want to return to it. Gun rights definitions which don't account for the thousands of people killed with guns every year are simply selfish. The it’s-my-gun-so-you-have-no-right-to-regulate-it attitude is selfishness, not liberty.
Stephen Paddock shouldn’t have been able to climb to the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay
Resort with automatic weapons just because he claimed the right. Automatic weapons don’t prevent government tyranny as gun advocates sometimes claim; they’re weapons of war and provoke tyranny. We all have a right to safety and security but nuts with powerful weapons deprive us of that birthright. In a battle between self-defined freedom seekers and the military, everyone loses, permanently.
Generosity and its absence underlie most of our political struggles and the gridlock in our national affairs. Selfish definitions of liberty which refuse to take account of the damage to others are out of keeping with our national history and traditions. Like misbegotten gun claims, arguments for an unregulated market, which ignore the hundreds of thousands of people injured by selfish business and corporate practices, are hypocritical cover for outrageous behavior. Selfishness is not a definition of freedom.
Generosity is relevant in yet another way. Our polarized politics and lack of respect for each other reflect declining generosity, when me, me, me is all that matters but opponents don’t. When people throw bricks through windows, and shoot bullets through skulls over politics, there’s no safety except in hiding. How many congressmen and women will have to be shot before Congress comes to its senses? Unwillingness to work with a president of the other party, lest he accomplish anything, is about disrespect, where only one’s own purposes count. If it was appropriate to prevent a vote on President Obama’s nominee, though a majority of the Senate would have supported Garland, is there any reason to respect any decision for which Gorsuch is essential? If it was all about them, then it’s equally appropriate that it’s all about us. That’s not democracy. That’s war.
President Trump says we all come together after tragedies like Vegas. We know that has been nonsense, that pleas for help after Sandy were scorned by representatives of other parts of the country, and Trump treats the efforts of Puerto Ricans as less worthy than those elsewhere. People in the continental US would have been equally helpless except that relief agencies and the Red Cross were able to organize supplies where they could be delivered, and the destructiveness of the hurricane in Puerto Rico went far beyond what happened elsewhere. But no, this was an opportunity to disparage people who aren’t part of the Trump coalition. Shame.
Even the right not to be shot in the back by officials with badges has somehow become a political issue, as if there are two sides to that question. By comparison, I'm all for the immigrants and their generous patriotism. I’ve had it with selfish imposters like Trump, Cruz, and McConnell. This country may be great again but only when we are rid of the people whose political ideal is to tear us apart.
Steve Gottlieb is Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School. A widely recognized constitutional scholar, he has served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and was a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran. His latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics.
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