Musings after walking the dog

I spent the last 3 days getting an update on sovereign risk issues.  The bottom line is there is no good path in the Middle East.  As his legacy, The Ayatollah wants the bomb to preserve Iran as an Islamic Republic forever.  Meanwhile, after someone killed a bunch of people in Iran, Iran called in Hezbollah and told them that if they wanted $ from Iran, they'd better conduct a War on the West wherever they can.  There are also Shia Sunni issues wherever you look and Hezbollah needs an Islamic base along the Syrian coast to keep their supplies coming, which is where Assad will make his last stand.  Where Syria goes is unknown, but I believe it likely that eventually the US will have to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities and I cannot imagine the chaos that will result from that.  While the sanctions are delaying and disrupting the Iranian effort, as Moore's Law tells us, you don't slow down the pace of technology, so unless there is a change in will on the part of the Iranians, some kind of action will have to be taken.

Thomas Friedman's column today was a thoughtful piece.  He and other paid columnists consistently take my ideas and package them better than I do.

Thomas Friedman Today

As for the background checks on gun purchases, I am upset and gave a middle finger to the Congress when I got in my taxi in D.C.; but I do understand the political dynamics.  It is exactly what happened with Prohibition.  In that case, 25% to 30% of the population wanted to ban alcohol and voted on that issue alone until they got what they wanted.  And only when a majority of Americans decided to vote against prohibition as a single issue did the Congress finally have the critical mass to overturn Prohibition.  This is what it will take in the states where the majority support background checks and can overwhelm the single issue NRA voters. But as long as the majority decides its vote on other issues, the NRA will be a swing factor that cannot be ignored by politicians in those states.

I have only read a bit on the Bomber Brothers, but I can imagine the following line developing in certain conservative circles.  We can't have a background checks on guns because that opens the possibility for a national gun registry that will allow the gov't to some day potentially take everyone's guns.  But we need a national immigrant registry so we know who to check for radicalization periodically.  Remember the Bomber Brothers were brought as children to the US as asylum refugees and were here legally.

Of course the real debate we should be having is the following.  Where do we draw the line on society's protection of the individual from harm?  While we can try to protect everyone from bad things, we cannot be 100% successful.  What things provide the most protection to the most people?  What things are we prepared to try and stop but know there will be failures?

We know driver's licenses help protect everyone from bad driver's but this is not 100% successful because accident's happen.  We know taking guns off of streets reduces gun deaths, but does not eliminate them.  We try to protect people from anarchists, but we are not always successful.

Friedman says that we have forgotten what we are debating and what we are trying to accomplish and the debate is more about the issues of combat rather than the goals and means of accomplishing those goals over time.