Great news: the theologians at Liberty University are about to answer the great question of our time:
what kind of gun would Jesus carry?
The problem up to now has been that theoretical findings, in the ‘queen of sciences’ as in any research, always need empirical, experimental confirmation; now these scholars will be able to go out on the range and do real lab work. Â I was going to stock up on a variety of pieces, just to be on the safe side, for the looming bad times, but it won’t be long before we can pack certified Christian heat.
As a side benefit, we may also see that wussy “turn the other cheek” stuff replaced by a moral principle real Americans can stand behind, first articulated by Roger Miller in the magisterial Blake Edwards opus Waterhole #3 as the ‘code of the west‘:
do unto others before they can do unto you.Â
Author: Michael O'Hare
Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, Michael O'Hare was raised in New York City and trained at Harvard as an architect and structural engineer. Diverted from an honest career designing buildings by the offer of a job in which he could think about anything he wanted to and spend his time with very smart and curious young people, he fell among economists and such like, and continues to benefit from their generosity with on-the-job social science training.
He has followed the process and principles of design into "nonphysical environments" such as production processes in organizations, regulation, and information management and published a variety of research in environmental policy, government policy towards the arts, and management, with special interests in energy, facility siting, information and perceptions in public choice and work environments, and policy design. His current research is focused on transportation biofuels and their effects on global land use, food security, and international trade; regulatory policy in the face of scientific uncertainty; and, after a three-decade hiatus, on NIMBY conflicts afflicting high speed rail right-of-way and nuclear waste disposal sites. He is also a regular writer on pedagogy, especially teaching in professional education, and co-edited the "Curriculum and Case Notes" section of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.
Between faculty appointments at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, he was director of policy analysis at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. He has had visiting appointments at Università Bocconi in Milan and the National University of Singapore and teaches regularly in the Goldman School's executive (mid-career) programs.
At GSPP, O'Hare has taught a studio course in Program and Policy Design, Arts and Cultural Policy, Public Management, the pedagogy course for graduate student instructors, Quantitative Methods, Environmental Policy, and the introduction to public policy for its undergraduate minor, which he supervises. Generally, he considers himself the school's resident expert in any subject in which there is no such thing as real expertise (a recent project concerned the governance and design of California county fairs), but is secure in the distinction of being the only faculty member with a metal lathe in his basement and a 4×5 Ebony view camera. At the moment, he would rather be making something with his hands than writing this blurb.
View all posts by Michael O'Hare
"He had a pistol with him on stage while giving a convocation to the Liberty student body in December 2015, and during that speech he urged students to get their own permits so they would be able to stop Islamist terrorists before they strike: “Let’s teach them a lesson if they ever show up here,” he said at the time."
There's so much going on there. You have an ignorant, irrational fear. Then you have the need to posture and parade to others the notion that you are in control. And yet the posturing itself is based in fear and ignorance.
In Mosul, under 6,000 ISIS fighters have held off a besieging force of up to 100,000 Iraqi army soldiers, Peshmerga and Shia militia, aided by American, British and other special forces, for three months. They have skilfully used suicide car bombs, snipers and a network of tunnels that allow them to strike from the rear in areas the besiegers think they have liberated. Some fight wearing suicide jackets, so they can still kill when captured. These men are as crazy as the the last SS soldiers holding out in central Berlin in the last week of WWII in Europe (curiously many were French and Belgian fascists). But they are, indubitably, as recklessly brave and skilled. Falwell thinks that a few days at the range with a handgun makes callow youths capable of taking them on. The level of self-delusion, or perhaps deception, is extraordinary.
“Let’s teach them a lesson if they ever show up here,”
Well, that might be an Islamic terrorist, or more likely, a Dylan Roof or some generic school shooter expecting a defense-free zone in which to carry out their carnage. Mr. Rector may call that ignorant irrational fear but it does happen from time to time at places like Liberty University.
When 6000 ISIS fighters from Mosul take over Lynchburg VA, Mr. Wimberley's point will no longer be undermined by its own hyperbole.