The Kavanaugh Compromise - Granite Grok

The Kavanaugh Compromise

Recent discussions regarding the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court seem to have centered largely around two issues:  guns and abortion.

Judging from my own experience, conservatives tend to be both pro-gun and anti-abortion, while progressives tend to be both anti-gun and pro-abortion:

                   Pro-abortion    Anti-abortion
Pro-gun                            Conservative
Anti-gun           Progressive

So it occurs to me that the current juxtaposition of these two issues might represent an opportunity to make, albeit informally, a historic deal linking the two.  

A while back, I was part of a panel at an independent theater in Concord.  We were there to discuss a film, The Armor of Light, which ‘explores the intersection of Christianity and guns’.  One of the other panelists was a member of Moms Demand Action.  Early in the panel discussion, she said something like: ‘I just don’t understand how people can feel so strongly about owning guns.’

Seeing an opening, I said something like:  ‘Oh, but I think you do understand it, because I’ll bet there’s something else you feel just as strongly about — something that is so important to you, even if everyone but you voted to make it illegal, you’d still do it, or at least claim the right to do it.’

After a bit of judicious questioning, she admitted that I was right.  And it changed the way she started viewing, not so much guns, but rights, and in particular the emotional attachments that people have to particular rights that lie at the core of how they view the world.

She still didn’t care for guns, but she could at least put herself in the same emotional place as the people she’d been fighting against, which made her rethink the political strategies that she’d been pursuing.

She was still committed to reducing gun-related violence, but she was starting to see that any viable solutions would need to have the kind of widespread consensus that would enable a constitutional amendment to be ratified; and that any legislation or regulation lacking that consensus was likely to make things worse, rather than better.

It’s in the spirit of that conversation, and in the context of our current political drama, that I’d like to make a modest proposal — a gentleman’s agreement, you might say — to be observed by all three branches of government, which would fit on a T-shirt:

Tshirt pic

And vice versa.

Some will note, no doubt, that it’s not a completely equal trade.  The ‘right to an abortion’, if one exists, isn’t quite on the same level, constitutionally speaking, as ‘the right to keep and bear arms’.  If it exists, it is implied by the 9th Amendment.  And only if it’s implied by that, does the 14th Amendment require states to respect it.

In contrast, the 2nd and 14th Amendments already say — explicitly, and in no uncertain terms — that the federal and state governments have to keep their laws off your guns.

But none of that really matters for my purposes.  I’m proposing a gentleman’s agreement, because that’s all we really have left to us at this point — our current legal situation having deteriorated to the point where even a constitutional amendment wouldn’t help.

(For example, suppose we amended the Constitution to say something like

Amendment 28:  The right of a woman to terminate her pregnancy shall not be infringed.

(We’d just end up with federal and state bureaus that exist solely to administer the infringements that aren’t supposed to exist.  That is, given the divisive nature of the issue, we’d be fools not to expect what’s happened to the 2nd Amendment to happen to the 28th as well.)

But in any case, I’m not concerned here with the legal or moral arguments for or against a right to abortion.  I’m concerned with the possibility of combining two disputes, neither of which seems amenable to compromise, into a single impasse, which itself does represent a compromise.

(We hear a lot about compromise, but the meaning has changed over the years, at least where government is concerned.  The government version of compromise is:  Each side wants something, and agrees to let the other side have what it wants too, leaving future generations to pay for it all.  I’m talking about the original usage of the word — each side gets something it wants, but only by giving up something it also wants.)

No one with a core belief that a person has a fundamental human right to provide for his own defense is going to care what the Constitution, or any statute, or any judge, says to the contrary. In their eyes, it’s not up for a vote.

Similarly, no one with a core belief that a woman has a fundamental human right to control her own body is going to care what the Constitution, or any statute, or any judge, says to the contrary.  In their eyes, it’s not up for a vote.

But both sides of both issues continue to play a game of winner-take-all, in which a single presidential election, followed by a handful of judicial nominations, could wipe out overnight whatever gains they’ve made.  Which is why we see so much hysteria surrounding the elevation of new oracles to the Supreme Court.

My goal is to move people on both sides of both issues to the point where they can say:  I’m never going to agree with your views, but I can understand their importance to you, and can agree to respect them, if you’ll agree to respect mine.

So, what if conservatives agreed to just be silent — legislatively, bureaucratically, and judicially speaking — on abortion, if progressives agreed to just be silent on guns?  And vice versa?

(I’m not saying anyone would have to stop trying to persuade anyone else.  It’s only coercion that would be taken off the table.

(And if ‘silent’ is too scary a concept, a variation could mandate equivalent restrictions on both guns and abortions.  For example, obtaining an abortion might require taking a class and passing a test; might be available only from providers in your state of residence; might require you to register with some government agency, and pass a background check; might require you to be a certain age, or have the permission of your parents or guardians; and so on.  Because, you know, those kinds of things aren’t really restrictions on a right, as long as they’re reasonable and common sense measures, right?)

How would we keep the truce?  It’s a detail — perhaps it would have to involve some kind of mutually assured destruction. The Supreme Court would have to be stripped of its appellate jurisdiction over both issues.  Maybe hostages would be required. Let’s assume for a moment that it could be made to work.

My question is:  If you are both pro-gun and anti-abortion, or both anti-gun and pro-abortion, and if you believed that such a truce could be observed scrupulously and indefinitely, would you take the deal?

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