Government as Detective

“We must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.” Obama at the Arizona memorial 1/12/11



This is a telling statement. No experienced medical person tries to understand madness. Indeed, it is an affliction that can be defined by its isolation; one cannot be empathetic, one cannot understand. So what can this mean? We certainly are not declaring war on madness.

How about violence? This country is at arms all over the globe; we cannot be so naive.

So what can this mean? Does it mean that with the right environment, the correct controls, the appropriate laws, that violence can be eliminated or profoundly lessened? And how does self defense or defense against tyranny come in to all this?

Who is it that is examining these "facts"? And do we have confidence in their analytic ability?

One translation that fits is a jaundiced view of free will, a view that sees individuals as part of a historical strip tease where history is gradually revealed to some predestined endpoint. This view does not just deny free will, it denies evil. Individual deviation is a bump in the road that causes an accident. (Pelosi actually called the Arizona shooting an "accident".) And the state, with its clear view of the future, is merely nosing around the accident scene, looking for clues.

Thus the state is an appropriate preemptive agent to be used in anticipation of individual deviation.

For a banal speaker, that is a profound idea.