Reply #77: I'm a white South African who grew up under Apartheid [View All]

[FarrenH]

and I have to say bitterly opposed it. We did have very decent education here. If you're wondering why I post on DU my keen interest in American politics began when Apartheid collapsed and a whole flood of American peace-corps types, hippies, students on break, political and business advisors and others of similar hues flooded my bohemian, (previously illegally) multicultural suburb because it offered a bohemian vibe and lots of cheap lodging in the heart of Johannesburg. It was there I befriended a huge number of Americans including one who radically adjusted my understanding of America. I used to think Reagan was a "nice seeming guy" until I met Mike, a Pol Sci post grad doing a thesis on the Rise of Afrikaans Banking in Apartheid SA. A black, American, Taoist, Aikido practitioner with a brain the size of a planet who speaks fluent Afrikaans (along with two or three European languages) makes quite an impression. I mean, politics was my buzz before that but more local stuff. And Mike is the kind of guy who could and did impart a very rich, detailed and nuanced account of American society and recent history from a left-liberal academic viewpoint, very articulately.

DU isn't the only board I post on and American politics isn't the only politics I'm intrerested in but given Reagan's secret cooperation with the Apartheid state, support from more extreme elements of the US right wing and meddling that persists to this day (just a month or three back Hillary was over here trying to convince a polite but unconvinced SA govt to allow US bases on our soil), I've come to realise what happens there affects us here in significant ways. That, and the fact that there are half a dozen Americans I count as close friends and still keep in touch with on the 'net although they've left for the US and other places.

My feeling is yes, you have to respect your own constitution but realise that while remarkable for its time and a template for the constitutions of many newer democracies such as our own, its also anachronistic and some aspects were more suited to another time. Were your government not so bitterly divided along partisan lines I'd say a little constitutional adjustment might be in order, but thats another debate. I hate to sound smug but ours is better, precisely because it was drafted with the assistance of European, American and Canadian legal scholars and updates some of the concepts embodied in your own as well as adding a few (like constitutional protection for reproductive choices for women and constitutional protection of sexual preference, making discrimination against homosexuals impossible, at least constitutionally).

What I will say is that I've noticed that the reverence with which many Americans appear to regard their constitution, while a useful garantor that future generations will continue to protect and respect it, sometimes seems to translate into a sense that it is somehow the embodiment of good sense, rather than simply a still largely sensible social contract. And I think thats a subconscious element in the thinking of many Americans around gun rights that isn't really rational. IOW, behind all the impassioned arguments that carrying deadly weeapons is somehow an essential ingredient of a nation that wants to preserve life and liberty in perpetuity is this additional reverence that is not really a rational argument but bolsters the feeling of rightness of the rational arguments being made.

Whereas what I've tried to argue here is that no, the question of whether the right to legally bear firearms is sensible or not at any point in a society's evolution is really entirely contingent on circumstance. And at some point in a society's hopeful progression towards a more and more egalitarian utopia it becomes a net negative. Its good to be aware of that and what its parameters are so that when that point is reached, the dialog around the issue isn't seen as closed and isn't still at the level of talking about it like Pentacostals talking about one of the ten commandments.