Guns and 2008, Part II: The 2008 Election, America's Right Brain and wei ji

By John Longenecker

What are we really electing in 2008?

I write for the non-gun owners in America. Often, I say is that what it is about guns isn’t even about guns. It is the thesis upon which I base my book, Safe Streets. It is about how we manage our Burdens, beginning with the very first one, Personal Safety, as opposed to assuming that someone else will do it for us (which cannot be done). This presents America with another example germane to the 2008 election for all offices.

In Part I of Guns And 2008, I spoke of how the Candidates have an opportunity to unify Americans by recognizing how we respect one another on various levels when we carry these burdens - from home ownership to parenting to business ownership - and how fighting Crime by recognizing Citizen Authority can be that common ground on an even broader scale. The key, of course, is to understand how 80 Million gun owners and many more non-gun owners understand the concept, and not to try to get constituents to appreciate how officials understand it. Which brings us to part II, wei ji.

Wei ji is the pinyin Chinese symbol – really two symbols – meaning danger and opportunity. Don’t think for a second that the wrong choice in November isn’t Danger! And don’t think for a minute it isn’t an opportunity to change it. Be sure to get out the vote and get out and Vote, because, as I like to say, it doesn’t take guts to change America, but it takes guts to keep it. Keeping our burdens and not transferring them to officials is integral to keeping America, and it takes guts to know this.

With many, many more Americans looking to media coverage of Crime since the D.C. v. Heller decision as to how all this relates to them, one has to understand the lay questions. Those questions of people outside the so-called gun culture begin with, "What does this do for me?" "I follow the logic, so what: What does this do for me?"

It is the Right Brain getting involved in processing information in one’s self-interest. One side of the brain can follow the logic of a subject, but it is the other side of the brain which processes the value versus fears and works to sort it out. This right brain gatekeeping function could be put a dozen different ways: "What has this got to do with me? I don’t even want to own a gun." It’s a safeguard function to screen ideas as much for protection as for spotting opportunities for self-interest.

"I’m not into Guns."

"I could never shoot somebody... I just wouldn’t!"

You get the idea. It’s not entirely emotional, it’s more: it’s reactive to the sum total of experiences, good and bad, how they were interpreted, correctly or incorrectly, and gives the opportunity to overcome old misgivings and relate value to the person. And to emphasize, it still isn’t even about Guns. It’s about Burdens, nearly all our personal burdens. And it’s not about killing, it’s about staying alive.

How do we summon the forces to resist the lifting of our burdens to insist on keeping our burdens, and what does it have to do with November? Simply by supporting facts with answering that one question of the Right Brain. And by seeing both danger and opportunity in the election.

It's different this year.

First, we need to clarify (factually and logically) that GunOwners are not working exclusively for their guns - we work for freedom of all rights. Gun owners have found a way to address all rights in this country rather economically with one endeavor, and it is the concept that the Second Amendment protects all the other rights because it is the lethal force which backs citizen authority in oversight of officials. In this country, the citizen has the monopoly on force, from oversight of police and the Military to Citizen's Arrest, and everything in between. It’s not that we want to shoot – it is that with Independence and under our own authority, there is little need for so many policies such as National ID Card and gun control. They are made to look ridiculous because they cannot do as good a job - legally and morally, even tactically – as the armed citizen can. They are boondoggles, because their policy is not where crime is fought.

In this way that many anti-crime polices are not even needed, more Liberty for all becomes liberty for all, and liberty for all keeps it liberty for all, and that’s worth everything to everyone. Once this concept is grasped as a dynamic of each of us protecting ourselves and often each other and whole communities, it begins to contact and touch that gatekeeping part of the brain in answer to the chief question of how this subject relates to you, someone who doesn’t like guns. .. Especially in the absence of first responders.

It’s not about guns. It’s about your depending on yourself and not falling for silly policies which try to take your place, and it’s time this is pointed out before a major election. [I’ll bet you, as a non-gun owner, can think of three policies that freeze you out of the process of problem-solving, only to hold you to a stupid mandate of one sort or another.]

Now there’s another question, some of those past experiences mentioned: what if one doesn’t want to depend on himself? This issue is going to be in that right brain when you and your brain enter the voting booth in November. Forget about charisma, forget about being articulate, you can forget about bitterness – some people are going to be casting their vote for, as Yogi Berra put it, "Include me out!" The vote for the wrong candidate is going to amount to one referendum: take care of me.

But that has historically been a promise which has never been kept. Not ever. Think of one. Just one. It’s a great political carrot, but an illusion that never materializes. It has become the wei portion of the dual Chinese symbol, Danger. In plain English, Dependency. Mandated Dependency.

We believe that every election is yet another turning point, yes. Will we elect more Dependency in America, or will we elect Independence? Our own Independence is that scary freedom of movement based on your carrying your own burdens such that no one else can even ask for the job of carrying them for you. This applies to specific individual burdens that no one can assume for you. No matter what they say politically, it's a matter of Dignity, and nothing puts the dignity in personal dignity like the self in self-rule.

Your Independence and the success and personal preference for it makes the very overture ludicrous. Independence – depending on yourself more than you can ever depend on any policy conceived by the mind of activists – comes with the price that you do for yourself, hard or not, consequences or not, but it means that you’re free. You are independent of the executives we hire.

Officials may assume authority we did not grant, and they may back it with official force, but it does not change the truth that we are Independent of them. We may rely on them (hire them) to print money, deliver the mail, fire suppression and rescue, inspect food, specific policing and law enforcement actions we deem essential, and other things, but when it comes to those things only we can assume, then the proper call might be to keep your hands off my burdens.

This is what is at stake in 2008, the vote in the polling booth, "Take care of me."

It’s a Helluva Danger – wei – but it’s also one whale of an opportunity, ji.

Does this answer that one question?

John Longenecker is author of Safe Streets In The Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns.