What I want to say, however, is how un-American this thinking is.
America has a mythology, as all civilizations worth the name do. The American mythology has considered the question of "What should an American do if his loved ones are murdered by violent people?" many, many times. We have a vast literature on the subject, both in the form of novels and television shows, and especially in the form of the Western movie.
What never happens in any of these stories is that the American is chastened by being subjected to violence, becomes a pacifist, and yields up all means of self-defense while crawling to Authority to beg for protection.
You know what happens? Of course you do.
Who are these people? Not any one of us.
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"Who are these people? Not any one of us."
Nevertheless, they live amongst us. The weak thinkers of that cohort conceive of peace among us, the strong think of power over us.
They, too, ought to consider what our mythology has to say about that sort of thing.
"I'm going to attack you until you relinquish the means of defending yourself" is an irrational argument.
Indeed; it is an argument that depends for its success on the irrational part of the soul, the part that is subject to fear. It might work on a person whose reason is too weak to master their fear and decide upon rational resistance in defense of autonomy. It sometimes does work, I suppose, for that reason.
Yet if that is a discussion of how the virtue of courage works, this talk of mythology is part of the 'proper upbringing' portion of the Ethics. Americans were raised on these stories; if you don't like the Westerns for being too old, try John Wick. The American upbringing has a clear and bright answer to exactly this kind of problem.
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