Random Thoughts About Gun Ownership and Military Action

By Robert Farago

“If America is going to be the world’s policeman, on some scale or another, that has to be backed by a supportive culture among the citizenry,” Dr. Tyler Cowen writes at marginalrevolution.com. “And that culture is not going to be Hans Morgenthau‘s foreign policy realism, or George Kennan’s Letter X, or even Clausewitz’s treatise On War. [ED: links added.] Believe it or not, those are too intellectual for the American public.” Before I fisk Dr. Cowen’s theory linking gun ownership and martial culture, bad elitist! Bad elitist! That said, Dr. Cowen’s got it a mostly right and a lot wrong. First, my bone to pick . . .

If you think America can sustain its foreign policy interventionism, or threat of such, without a fairly martial culture at home, by all means make your case. But I am skeptical. I think it is far more likely that if you brought about gun control, and the cultural preconditions for successful gun control, America’s world role would fundamentally change and America’s would no longer play a global policeman role, for better or worse.

Make my case? Who died and appointed …Read the Rest

Source:: Truth About Guns