Like many pundits, Michael McFaul took a quick break this past week from his usual area of “expertise.” Instead of pontificating 24/7 about the need to funnel massive amounts of uncontrolled arms into Ukraine, he adroitly pivoted to pontificating about the need to more stringently control arms in the US. McFaul, a former Ambassador to Russia who is currently working with the Ukraine government to formulate war-related policy recommendations, issued the following command:
Michael McFaul
@McFaul
To all the manufacturers of AR15s, please stop. Just do the right thing. And the rest of us might consider stopping to focus on a legislative solution, and instead focus on a non-violent civic resistance campaign against these AR15 makers directly.
May 26th 2022
Few figures on the punditry scene are more adept at getting themselves into comical face-plant scenarios than McFaul — or more useful at highlighting unexamined contradictions of the yammering liberal commentariat. In this instance, McFaul demonstrates why he and likeminded commentators are so steadfastly determined to compartmentalize their positions on foreign policy versus domestic policy. Because it would apparently never even occur to McFaul that there might be some tension between his passionate calls to aggressively curtail gun circulation in the US, and his similarly passionate calls to circulate a giant number of guns in Ukraine.
McFaul and company demand both policies with roughly equal ardor, voicing them in the standard register that has come to define almost all left-liberal advocacy: “this thing must be done right now or everyone will die.” Meanwhile, they evince not even a hint of awareness that the positions could represent contradictory impulses. On the one hand, they want to ensure that the American populace is prevented from obtaining certain high-powered rifles. On the other hand, they want to ensure that the Ukrainian populace is enabled to obtain these same high-powered rifles. Both positions somehow manage to co-exist seamlessly alongside one another, like two of those inflatable tube things floating merrily downstream — never even coming close to clashing.
Is it possible that any contradictions between these stances could be resolved with some sort of reasoning or argumentation? Sure, it’s possible. A liberal who holds both positions could theoretically argue something along the lines of: “In the case of Ukraine, my purported belief in the sacrosanct necessity of gun control is superseded by my belief that unlimited, unregulated, uncontrollable proliferation of guns in Eastern Europe is necessary to Defend Democracy.” Or whatever — something to that effect. And then followup counter-arguments could be raised, such as: “Shouldn’t the mass proliferation of uncontrolled guns in Ukraine, which is occurring as a result of the policy you favor, call into question how vehemently you really value the principle of gun control? Because if the policy you favor in Ukraine is totally inimical to your stated belief in the absolute paramount necessity of gun control, shouldn’t that at least raise the bar for whether the Ukraine policy is justified?” And so on.
The point being, tensions between these two counterposing positions would at least require some argumentation to resolve. But what makes today’s McFaul-style advocacy so notable is the complete and total obliviousness to any such tension even existing in the first place. As they issue their emotionally-heated policy demands, most Democrats appear to have no concept whatsoever that there might be some discordance between their desire to increase regulation on gun ownership at home, while simultaneously obliterating any regulation on gun ownership abroad. Members of the media, the activist class, and the wider punditocracy lack even the basic cognizance that would be needed to broach the subject. So, as usual, the McFaul-style advocates just barrel zealously forward, demanding these two policy prescriptions with equal, unmitigated gusto — without anyone ever pausing to ask for clarification.
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