“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.” So said Star Trek and Twilight Zone writer Harlan Ellison. So set the controls for the heart of the sun, informed Australians, as we boldly go into the universe of readers’ comments. Engage at warp speed ...
In his inimitable style, The Mocker got stuck into the givers of sanctimonious lecturers on gun control to an America still mourning its worst ever shooting, as exemplified by the ubiquitous princeling of Pyrmont, The Project’s Waleed Aly. W (not Waleed) was impressed:
“Spot on The Mocker! The reality is that besides guns, modern terrorists (and nutbags) use bombs, trucks, knives and planes to slaughter people. They also talk about poisoning water supplies and starting fires. The problem cannot be fixed by stopping access to guns for non terrorists, unless murder by the other methods I have listed doesn’t count as much as a bullet death — which is a very irrational way to think.”
Rolf weighed in on damned lies and statistics:
“Lazy stats on gun deaths. The frequently spruiked 30,000 gun deaths in America include 20,000 suicides. 10,000 over 260,000,000 starts to give a clearer picture. Study their gun laws. They don’t need more laws, its an enforcement issue. Gunman broke heaps of laws before he fired a single shot. Fully automatic firearms have been illegal except through extreme vetting including by the FBI for over 30 years.”
As Las Vegas mourns, the cycle begins - this will happen again. #TheProjectTV | Written by Waleed Aly & Tom Whitty (@twhittyer) pic.twitter.com/5xEuok97SZ
— The Project (@theprojecttv) October 3, 2017
Chris caught the whiff of hypocrisy:
“When Donald Trump won the US election earlier this year Waleed Aly stated live from Washington that he would never go back to the USA. Now he’s lecturing them on something he knows nothing about? I seriously do not understand why this flake gets given so much media oxygen.”
Matthew drew parallels:
“The same excuses Waleed uses to defend Islam can be used to defend US gun ownership: completely hypocritical.”
Rod said cry me a river:
“Chicago gun crime and murder is on the scale of a Las Vegas every month, and the Democrat Mayor just accepts it as a perpetual irritant. Where’s the Democrat outrage about that? What steps did Obama (from Chicago) take while in office? Spare me the lefty tears.”
Cedric said killers gonna kill:
“Considering the mindset of the perpetrator, if no guns were available, would he not have chosen another method of killing innocent people? Australia has gun laws, but how many people in Australia have died as a direct result of gun shots since the laws were introduced?
Did prohibition end the consumption of alcohol in the US of A?”
Ian said we’ve lost control:
“No one is talking about prohibition of guns, just better controls. The number of Australians that died as a result of guns here is far lower than America in great part due to the controls we have in place. Unless this guy made some sort of bomb he would not have killed anywhere near the number he has if they had the sort of controls we do.
“Having said that it is pointless for us to point fingers at their laws and gun controls, it is their country and theirs to fix if they wish.”
Nigel was nonplussed:
“Who is this Mocker and what have you done with the journalist you have replaced? Surely this is the time for a self-righteous rant not for sense and logic!”
If The Mocker had a monopoly on sense and logic, AJ went for reason:
“I guess a key aspect of this ‘discussion’ is that Americans have gun laws embedded in their constitution. Trump went to the election promising to honour that amendment. At the end of the day the problem was not created by Trump nor was it in his ability to stop this from happening.”
John was bemused:
“Strange. I’d have thought Waleed Aly would have commented that occasional mass shootings were just an irritant and an unfortunate part of modern life. After all, your chances of getting shot are less than the chance of a refrigerator falling on you, right?”
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Greg Sheridan went deep, pondering what produces this kind of evil in the hearts of men, made all the more shocking against the background of the dull quotidian grind of Stephen Paddock’s life. This awakened the more philosophically-inclined readers. Said Duncan:
“Extremely thought provoking, thanks Greg. I’d be interested to hear in a future column your take on the American gun culture. I re-read Glen Beck’s book Control last night. The crux of his argument is: if we begin to give up our right to bear arms, we begin to give up our freedom.”
Same as it ever was, said Andy:
“Just read about the massacres and slavery that took place in the Old Testament. Man has always been partly evil. Even carnivorous animals have freedom to commit massacres, but they don’t.”
Phil offered a concise treatise on rights:
“ ‘Here is a hard truth: virtue lies most often not in our instincts, which are variable and dangerously unreliable, but in the rules and norms we have learned, and our attachment to them even when they are costly to us.’ Excellent point, Greg.
“I have another take on essentially the same point: If we were to have a conversation starting from the premise ‘I have rights’, we would have a very different conversation than if we were to start from the proposition ‘we have equal rights’.”
Greg immersed himself in the inferno:
“Your words: ‘Human nature never changes’ are spot on. I posted a mention of Dante yesterday and was mocked by a fellow commenter for being ‘heavy, man!’ But I’ve experienced nothing more profound and actual than Dante’s journey through the human condition, through its psyche. “Yes we see the horrors of man’s evils and weaknesses but we also rise above all that to our better angels in Paradiso. You’re right that in today’s world it is so much easier to be distracted, to be in the moment always with so many ‘things’ around us that we don’t consider sufficiently the deeper questions.
“Our schools also teach much less of this, less Shakespeare, Milton, Blake and other thinking writers. It’s sad really as our young miss out on so much.”
Liberty was bard done by:
“@Greg Shakespeare has been taken off the reading list in the US in some places because it is considered ‘whitesplaining’ Fact. This has been done in the name of the multiculturalism that Greg has long supported. Fact.”
Margaret sensibly suggested:
“When the American Bill of Rights was written, the ‘right to bear arms’ was a musket gun, bow and arrow or knife. I am quite sure they had no idea how advanced guns would become. Surely a sensible discussion can be had about limiting the sale of many of these weapons. However it is going to take a very strong person to start this discussion.”
Linda got religion:
“Religion has served in the past as a regulator of human behaviour, laying down the rules for living harmoniously etc. but of course it has also been responsible for wars, for abuse and for dreadful torture and killing in the effort to assert one religion over another in some kind of assertion of power or hunger for it. What seems a more recent phenomenon in the US is the belief by some fervent adherents to religion, often puzzlingly, evangelical Christians, to have a divine right to carry arms and use them, and I have met some of those.
“Only recently I noted that the number of customers clustered around the gun counter of a Walmart store was bigger than in most other parts of the store, though most seemed not to be buying, just looking in some kind of fascination!
“What started in the US, exactly as it was in the countries from which came its immigrants, was that landholders and those working on it had to arm themselves to defend that land, in the absence of any organised militia. Now it seems that citizens feel that they are under attack from a multitude of others, also armed with ever more serious guns, and are reluctant to tackle that no matter the horrors perpetrated with them. It will be a very difficult addiction to break.”
Catherine moralised her way to Comment of the Week:
“Morality is fast becoming an out-dated ‘religious’ concept, replaced by ‘ethics’ (highly subjective and malleable, according to one’s own views). Immutable rights and wrongs are not taught, and there is no longer the expectation that behaviour is guided by these principles. Hence the justifications and excuses now offered for morally wrong acts, including criminal ones.
“This occurs in the context of the modern cult-of-self (and self-image), where actions are guided by what makes a person feel good and appear to be good — hence ‘virtue signalling’ as a recognisable modern phenomenon. Perception is everything.
“Right and wrong are increasingly a matter of collective opinion, reflected by the approval or condemnation of the social media audience. So the greater wrong is — for example, ‘cultural appropriation’ as opposed to theft or deceit, according to the social media response. And young people no doubt subconsciously and consciously calibrate their actions according to this feedback
“Paddock seems not unlike the depraved narcissist Lubitz who methodically planned and conducted the Germanwings suicide-mass-murder crash in 2015. Just plain evil, perhaps without obvious motive. More importantly, the vast numbers of ideologically-endorsed killings across the globe since September 2001 and the collective failure to identify, expose and confront that evil is something that will bewilder future generations. Or perhaps not, assuming they too submit. “Though not agreeing with much of what he said and wrote, I think that is where Hitchens showed real intellectual honesty and extraordinary moral courage in calling out that particular evil despite the politically correct tide against him, not to mention the enormous personal risk.”
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As educational standards slide amid calls to abolish gender references from classrooms while students from rump Soviet states make ours look like dotards-in-training, some readers yearned to go back to basics. Said Jennifer:
“How about just sticking to the 3Rs. When students in Kazakhstan outperform us (recent international examination) we should be worried.”
Helen wondered:
“What will all the ‘feminists’ who rallied in their thousands in Washington do now with their special pink vagina hats and what will poor Van Badham ... have to talk about (day in day out) if they can’t attack men on the basis of their vaginas?”
Sean saw the gathering clouds:
“If this continues then in historical terms we could call this a dark age ... science and reason thrown out in favour of feelings and ideology.”
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Nick Cater struck a chord with a piece of well-argued irreverency verging on blasphemy, when he suggested recycling is a load of rubbish. Said Christine:
“Nick’s columns are always informative and entertaining, I just love his sense of the absurd.
I have always wondered about the wisdom of kerbside recycling. It seems to take up an enormous amount of energy and manpower, and now it turns out to be just a ‘civic act of spiritual atonement’.”
Peter doubted:
“I have been a recycling enthusiast for years. I do take the tops off plastic bottles and never mix unrecyclable material with the other. I have tried to find little holes in your argument about the futility of recycling. I cannot.”
Linda shopped around for hypocrisy on the high streets:
“Supermarkets make grand gestures of banning plastic bags for us to take home our groceries in, but hang on to excessive plastic packaging for items previously sold loose, for their own convenience. That makes it hard to take the notion of saving the planet from plastic too seriously.”
Nick saw the light:
“Wow, what an eye opener this article has been. Thank you Nick Cater.”
Murray smelt a rat:
“The rot must be setting in already. Last week I saw the recyclables going into the same compactor truck as the general rubbish. And this is in an area as green as any, the Inner West Council, Sydney.”
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In the drone wars, the Wedgies were winning. MA was all about the serenity:
“I am on the beach every morning photographing the sunrise. The serenity is amazing, right up until the moment someone with a drone turns up. I can understand birds wanting to attack them.”
Ted1 had seen strange and terrible things:
“I have seen a pair of eagles attacking a medium sized kangaroo in tandem. The roo was travelling at speed along a road in front of us, and the eagles were coming at head height from behind and swooping up as they reached the roo.”
David too:
“Wedgies are amazing intelligent birds. One very hot day in the bush, I saw a pair of eagles sitting on a small shady tree harassing a kangaroo that was resting underneath. They were picking twigs off the tree and dropping them onto the kangaroo. When the kangaroo got sick of the harassment and moved out of the shade, the eagles took turns attacked it by clinging onto its head with their claws and beating it about the head with their wings. The kangaroo eventually succumbed.”
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Each Friday the cream of your views on the news rises and we honour the voices that made the debate great. To boost your chances of being featured, please be pertinent, pithy and preferably make a point. Solid arguments, original ideas, sparkling prose, rapier wit and rhetorical flourishes may count in your favour. Civility is essential. Comments may be edited for length.
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