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Jewish World Review Jan. 23, 2013/ 12 Shevat, 5773 Good sense and gun control By Jonah Goldberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In the early 1980s, transit officials in Then it was discovered that a single driver was to blame. Every day on his drive to work, this commuter would plant himself in the left lane and set his cruise control to 55 mph, the posted speed limit, forcing those behind him to merge right, and you can imagine the effects. To his credit, this driver came forward in a letter to the editor of the He achieved immortality by being transformed into a Dickensian-sounding verb: "Nestoring," defined as an absolute adherence to the rules, regardless of the larger consequences. Fittingly, Nestor was a regulator at the Of course, that made him a hero to activists like 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 For instance, it doesn't take a genius to realize that But hundreds of millions of people saw one of the Batman movies. Let's imagine those movies are 100 percent to blame for the The same problem exists on the mental health side of the equation. We all know people who fit the description of one of these shooters before they actually killed anyone. Loners, socially awkward, etc. How many of those people turn into mass murderers? Not many. How do you propose weeding out the potential mass killers without horribly mistreating the innocent? President Obama has said that anything is worth it "if even one life can be saved." Citing First, common sense tells us that's ridiculously impossible. Moreover, a Nestorite standard would not only do terrible violence to the First, Second and Fifth Amendments, it would indisputably hold the freedom, health and happiness of the many hostage to the potentially bad actions of the few.
© 2006 TMS |
Mitch Albom | |||||||||||||
