Discussing his essay, "Guns" King wrote:
What I asked for in that piece — what I almost begged for — was that we Americans find some middle ground on the subject of heavy-duty firearms. Just a small median strip of rationality between the honking freeway lanes jammed with those on the political right and the political left. According to polls, the majority of Americans would really like a place like that, where a rational discussion could be held without raised voices.About the reception to Guns, King shares that the response has been strong but "in many ways depressing."
There have been more than 1,300 capsule reviews on the Amazon website. A thousand have been favorable (834 five-star reviews, 205 four-star reviews). More than 200 have been unfavorable (160 one-star reviews, 49 two-star reviews). In the middle, the place I really wanted to reach, less than 90. If you need a statistical example of how polarized the country is, there it is.It is interesting, King points out, that those who liked the essay were also verified as having bought the book. Many who marked it with one star were not noted as having bought the item! Like writing a book report on a book you made up.
Throughout the article King calls for middle ground. I'm a conservative on most social issues -- and I would be glad for middle ground and honest discussion in our nation. If we stopped hating each other, we might be able to talk.
I looked all over for a quote from Augustine that might grant something approaching a perspective, unfortunately I got lost in the paper maze.
ReplyDeleteAll can offer then are these lines from the philosopher Russell Kirk that hopefully go some way toward establishing that middle ground:
Kirk: "Burke agrees with Plato that in the statesman, prudence is chief among virtues. Any public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity. Liberals and radicals, the conservative says, are imprudent: for they dash at their objectives without giving much heed to the risk of new abuses worse than the evils they hope to sweep away. As John Randolph of Roanoke put it, Providence moves slowly, but the devil always hurries. Human society being complex, remedies cannot be simple if they are to be efficacious. The conservative declares that he acts only after sufficient reflection, having weighed the consequences. Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery."
ChrisC
Herein lies the rub with King's dubious appeal to a middle ground: The guy is a uber-Democrat.
ReplyDeleteThat's fine. There are many fine, reasonable people in the world who are Democrats. But King isn't just any Democrat. He consistently ranks in the party's top 10 contributors on an annual basis.
Why should any Republican or independent take him seriously when he's plainly and publicly such an unabashed partisan?
To me, he has as much credibility preaching about the middle ground as does the NRA.
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DeleteWhat's your source for making that claim about King's top-ten status, Brian? I've been unable to find one.
DeleteWhether or not Brian is right about King's donations, one thing that cannot be denied is that when it comes to real life politics, King has shown himself to be incapable of embracing any sort of middle ground.
DeleteName one Republican or even Conservative that King has had even semi-kind words for. I doubt I'll get a response to this.
Now, I don't really care; King can do what he wants in a free country and I'm free to disagree. But what's funny is that in every book of his I've read, there has been at least a token effort to have characters of all political stripes represented fairly; several of King's heroes have been more right-wing than King himself and several villains (or at least nasty people) have been left-wing, and vice-versa.