sheer potentiality

From a recent argument I made about guns:

The main issue here isn’t guns: it’s a philosophical dispute between people who trust individuals and people who trust institutions. I won’t belabor this point—it’s difficult to point out these holistic connections on a forum where we’re supposed to “keep on topic” and where some pedant will quibble with each concrete example you give without even addressing the point—but it bears explication. Some people want some benevolent overseeing institution (usually government) to provide completely for their health, physical safety, economic well-being, and so forth—other people want to take these things into their own hands. Some people believe that human individuals are incapable of responsibly making life and death decisions, just as some people believe that human individuals are incapable of choosing their own food, saving for their own retirement, choosing (and providing for) their own medical care, raising their children, and so forth. More specifically, these people believe that some sort of institution can take care of us, protecting us from ourselves, and providing for us, better than we can do so for ourselves.

And then there are those of us who take the contrary view: that an adult human being ought not be parented by the government.

Now, it’s true that some people *do* need to be parented by the government. I’m not sure what to do about them. As a culture, it’s more important for us to raise our children so that they become the type of adults who don’t need to be parented anymore. But those of us who believe we can live as adults instead of perpetual wards of the state—we really don’t appreciate the rest of you trying to be Mommy and Daddy for us. Treating those of us who can live as adults as if we were children oppresses us. We’re not necessarily anarchists—we’ll chip in to lock up those loonies who plant homemade land mines on the sidewalk, or to stop the coal plant next door from belching sulphur into the air, or even to build roads and sewer systems that help us all in the long run. But we’re responsible folks, and we think we can wield the power of life and death just as safely and responsibly as the battalion of uniformed men with guns you want to hire—if not more so.