Liberty

Liberty - it's ingrained in every child of America as an ideal not to be reached, but already acquired by the people of America.  The story of our country's independence is almost mythical now, a story of gods on earth fighting for a transcendental ideal. 

But what does liberty actually mean?

Even among the party ostensibly of liberty - the Libertarian Party - the definition sways wildly.  Almost no one agrees that people should be free to do anything they want.  At the very least, people shouldn't be free to commit murder, for instance.  We can pretty much all agree that murder and child rape are too far to take the liberty argument, but many would take it right up to that edge.  (And for those few who would take it that far, they say that we should be able to defend our lives and the lives and welfare of our children, or we didn't deserve them in the first place.)

Case in point - the current spate of Republicans who are earning Libertarian votes for their votes on education.  One of the common themes in the Libertarian Party is the destruction of public education.  They see giving tax money back to the people and letting the people spend it on education as they choose as "Liberty" - that is, you now have the freedom to get your child educated by whatever organization you see fit, and, if you prefer to homeschool, you have that extra funding to pay for educational supplies.  It's a win for everyone with the money to afford it, and a major loss for poor people (who, many of these Libertarians argue, don't deserve it anyway).  The official party line is that the destruction of public education would give poor people who work hard to send their children to school a greater incentive to make sure that child succeeds, and remove from the school children who don't want to be there.

This desire to completely eliminate governmental structures is truly ultimate freedom - but only for the subset of people who can independently afford to pay for the things that government previously provided.  For the rest, it greatly reduces liberty, reducing the ability for people of lower incomes to rise to higher incomes.

Image from the Economic Policy Institute

In the image above, lower numbers correlate with greater income mobility - that is, people in Denmark are far more likely to earn more than their parents than people in Slovenia.

If we want to talk about freedom, then we need to talk about it in terms of freedom to pursue dreams, to rise up out of poverty, to change your life no matter who you are.  In the U.S. - a nation notably more driven by the idea of "free market" than the countries listed below it on the above image - it's actually harder to do that, rather than less hard.

And this makes sense with even a little investigation.  When you have to work yourself to death to provide an education for your children, you're not also able to provide them with secure housing, food, clothing, and other basic necessities, as explained by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

From Boundless.com

To be able to learn, a child needs the immediate physiological things on the list (barring sex, which doesn't start being a driving need until later in life) - food, water, sleep, etc.  He or she also needs those things listed in the safety column, as safety can create such a driving fear that it blocks out the ability to learn (found in the Esteem category).  When you're going to bed every night wondering if you or your family are going to be shot in your sleep, or worrying about the cockroaches crawling over your body, or worrying about your mom's untreated heart condition, you're not going to be able to sleep.  And that will make you less productive at school, if you can even pay attention there while these issues are eating away at your mind.

Instead, true freedom occurs when these two tiers are secure, when you're free to pursue love and belonging, confidence and achievement, and so on.  Then, all people are free to live as they choose, to pursue their dreams, to be amazing, to rise above their circumstances.

Bathroom Buffalo Bill

By now, you've probably already formed an opinion about the bathroom bills being considered across America. Arguments from the left often seem more reasoned to me - that there has never been a single instance of a transgender person attacking anyone in the restroom, that there have been many instances of trans people or people or cis people who are mistaken for trans being attacked, that laws intended to stop voyeurism, molestation, and rape can still be applied to non-trans people who try to abuse the laws - but this post is not to talk about that.  Rather, I'd like to examine the source(s) of where transphobia comes from, given my own past about it.

As a child, I experienced gender dysphoria.  That's the DSM-5 word for when the gender in your mind doesn't match the gender of your genitalia, and it's a fairly common problem for children, moreso than for adults - as many as 6% of boys and 12% of girls may experience it.

Most also outgrow it.

In my own case, my "outgrowing" it took a rather convoluted path.  When I was a very young child (under 10), I used to sneak into my mom's room when my parents were busy entertaining guests or what have you, when I was fairly certain I could get away with it, and put on my mom's clothes.  I preferred to play games with girls, was better friends with girls, and enjoyed playing with stereotypically girls' toys (My Little Pony long before "bronies" were a thing).

My sexuality, however, was always straight.  I was 5 when I had my first sexual encounter with a girl, and I absolutely loved it.  My pursuit of further encounters pretty much dominated my life until... well, let's face it, it still dominates my life.

My mom caught me more than once playing dress up, and punished me for it.  She drilled into my head this passage:

A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this. (Deuteronomy 22:5)

Eventually, I gave it up, partially over shame about that passage and my desire to serve God.  I became convinced that men who dressed up in women's clothing were silly at best (and deserved to be ridiculed), weird, and blasphemous.  As with so many other people, I took to shaming them.  Now, I've fully embraced my masculinity, and any dysphoria I felt during childhood is long gone (although as with many other people I don't fully conform to masculine ideals, I conform to more of them than to feminine ones). 

But, it was largely this one verse that pushed the issue when I was a child.

Now, it'd be easy to write this off, as so many do with the debate over homosexuality, as a person cherry-picking the Bible, picking the things that back up their beliefs and ignoring the things that don't.  In that argument, people note how there are prohibitions about mixing fabrics, about eating shellfish, and so on.  But understand that among many in the Fundamentalist movement, even those things are bad.  I didn't eat shellfish until I was in my 20s.  I believed that getting a tattoo was evil.  I believed that those who committed adultery should be executed.  I believed that women should be silent in church.

As a result, it's not so easy to just write this off as people cherry-picking, because for many people, it's not.  Even among those who do (I still mixed fabrics, for instance), it takes a supreme amount of effort to justify any deviation from the laws of Moses.  Generally speaking, those deviations took the form of, "that was appropriate for the ancient church because the laws were simply protecting the people from mold" or "that was appropriate for the Jews because they were set apart for God and thus were the image of God on Earth to the gentile peoples; they needed to look perfect." 

But these weren't arguments applied after someone already believed the opposite; that is, for those who believed in not blending fabrics, that was an important part of their faith, a defining factor of how they worshiped God.  No amount of argumentation could get them past that.  These arguments were, instead, apologies (from the definition: "a reasoned argument or writing in justification of something, typically a theory or religious doctrine") for deviations from a "literal" interpretation of the Bible that we already believed.  

Such arguments could, of course, be applied to homosexuality and gender identity, but because they aren't already believed, they are fighting against the mountain that is "sincerely held belief" - a shortcut for saying "I believe this and no amount of argument or education will move me from that belief."  Showing people how they make similar apologies for other things might work, but often doesn't, because they can then make an apology for why a certain one is followed and another is not.  Cognitive Dissonance kicks in whenever people are faced with idiosyncrasies within their own beliefs, and prevents them from exploring those idiosyncrasies.  

Is the situation impossible?

Well, not exactly.  One of the things we do in our society is bury non-conformity.  That's not an illness of civilization, but rather our particular culture.  As our culture shifts and embraces non-conformity, more things pop up that will make people uncomfortable.  But the key, always, is exposure - the more people are exposed to such non-conformity, the more open and accepting they are of it, especially as it relates to relationships.  A person who is friends with someone who is gay, for instance, is more likely to internalize the conflicts their friend experiences, and to transition from attacking homosexuals as a group to defending them.  As that transition progresses, they will be faced with new moments of cognitive dissonance between their new beliefs and their old beliefs, and be forced to reevaluate their old ones and modify to fit their new ones.  That's how change occurs. The secret, then,  is to share people's stories - both in public and in private.  When people read someone's story or hear it told first hand, it's often easier for those people to internalize the emotions of the other person. It's easier for them to understand.

I'm working on a new book about the issue at the moment. I won't share more for fear of not writing it (when you tell people about something you're working on, your brain thinks you've finished it).  But, the more stories we can tell, the more we'll slowly force people to confront their beliefs, and change them.

Ideal

I actually heard Hillary supporters sway Bernie supporters away during the Iowa caucuses by saying that Bernie was too much of an idealist. 

What the hell is wrong with idealism?

Idealism is what led our founding fathers to proclaim that people had an inalienable right to self-governance. Idealism is what urged Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Idealism spread the right to vote to women and minorities. Idealism landed a man on the moon. 

HRC supporters think they're being pragmatic, but JFK said it best: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

We need to be reminded that when we come together, we can overcome challenges, that we can succeed in the face of adversity, that we can see a day when our reality matches our ideals. 

Ingredients

Let's talk food.

I really should write more on this topic, but I tend to avoid it.  However, when media tells us something not only wrong but flat-out dangerous, I must act...

This is an actual commercial for milk, trying to lure you away from almond milk.  Boy, did they pick the wrong fight.

Their argument, boiled down, is "if you can't spell it, it's bad for you."  There are a ton of things, however, that we can't spell that are in milk!  Some of them include:

• riboflavin
• pantothenic acid
• pyridoxine
• cobalamin
• ergocalciferol and cholecalciferol, both of which are added to milk by producers
• ß-lactoglobulin
• α-lactalbumin

And so on... Taking the milk industry's argument, we shouldn't be drinking milk either, just based on this information.

But they specifically pick on lecithin...

lecithin...

which is good for you.  Here's a snippet of WebMD's description of it:

Lecithin is a fat that is essential in the cells of the body. It can be found in many foods, including soybeans and egg yolks. Lecithin is taken as a medicine and is also used in the manufacturing of medicines.

Lecithin is used for treating memory disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. It is also used for treating gallbladder disease, liver disease, certain types of depression, high cholesterol, anxiety, and a skin disease called eczema.

This is why we can't have nice things - because we know better, but we allow advertisers to tell us not only misleading but dangerously inaccurate information, confusing huge sections of the population into believing that healthy things are bad and unhealthy things are good.  It's how we came to believe that sugar-heavy fat-free foods were good, and fatty foods like nuts and olive oil were bad.

Review: The Force Awakens

It should come as no surprise that I would watch the new Star Wars movie, or that I would want to get a few thoughts about it out of my system by way of my blog.

It should also come as no surprise that there are SPOILERS here.

So don't read any further unless you've seen the movie or don't mind spoilers...

All in all, The Force Awakens was a decent movie.  If it stood alone from the rest of the Star Wars universe, it would be even a good movie, with great effects, good acting, epic characterization, and a cohesive plot.  Taken within the fabric of the whole universe, though, it is lacking on several fronts.  As someone said, it's the best Star Wars movie in 32 years - not better than the original trilogy, but certainly better than the prequels.

Although, perhaps, only slightly better than Episode 3.

So why do I think it misfired?  To answer that, I need to go into detail about the film...

Problem #1: There is nothing new under the sun...

The movie starts out as A New Hope:
The bad guy, Darth Vader Kylo Ren, who is cloaked all in black and wearing a mask, invades a rebel ship resistance camp.  Plans to the Death Star a map to find Luke Skywalker is uploaded into a droid for safe keeping.  The droid is then set loose on the desert planet of Tatooine Jakku, where he accidentally meets a force-sensitive teenage orphan named Luke Skywalker Rey, who is a hotshot pilot and capable fighter already.  The teenager meets up with Han Solo, Chewbacca, and the Millennium Falcon, and together they fly away on a mission to deliver the droid to Princess Leia and the rebellion resistance.  On the way, the Empire's First Order's gigantic planet-destroyer is put in use, its destructive power witnessed by our heroes, who have to flee. Once they arrive at the base, they find that the planet-destroyer is being turned on their base, because the Empire First Order was secretly tracking them.

It then briefly becomes Empire Strikes Back:
We discover Darth Vader Han Solo is Luke Skywalker's Kylo Ren's father.  Darth Vader Kylo Ren reports in to his master, who we see only in hologram.

And then solidifies into Return of the Jedi:
The heroes form a plan to destroy the Empire's First Order's weapon: land on the planet and take out the shield generator, so hotshot pilot Wedge Antilles Poe Dameron can fly in and take out some critical target that will cause a chain reaction and destroy the entire base.  Luke Skywalker Han Solo confronts Darth Vader Kylo Ren, believing there is still good in him, and trying to turn him back to the good side.  This sets up an epic lightsaber battle between Vader Ren and Luke Rey, and in the end, our hero manages to win, and flies to safety as the planet-destroying weapon is destroyed.

So my biggest problem with the movie is that it's not a new movie - it's the same bloody movie they've done before.  The only thing new about it is that the dark-clad masked bad guy strikes down his relative, instead of being saved... but the story is clearly set up to let Ren turn back to the side of good, perhaps as he strikes down his master in a later movie.


Problem #2: It's too predictable
Part of its predictability has to do with the fact that it's the same movie as before, but every time they do a tiny bit of foreshadowing, it's obvious what's going to happen: the monsters Han is smuggling will get out, Leia and Han will make up, Ren will kill Han, the rebels will destroy the Death Star or whatever everyone wants to call these things now, and everyone else will survive, and R2-D2 will conveniently come back online at the end to give Rey the location of Luke so she can receive her training.  There was not one single moment during the movie that I was surprised by anything relevant to the plot, except for the moment when Rey and Finn are running towards a fancy ship and it's destroyed, so they turn and run for the Falcon.

As a result, nothing is ever tense.  The scene that's supposed to make us question who can live and who can die - the scene where Han is killed - doesn't actually serve to do that, because the foreshadowing of the scene made it clear he would.


Problem #3: The little idiosyncrasies
There are little things wrong with the movie.  For instance, in the beginning, we see an old guy who looks vaguely like the War Doctor, who we're told is someone we know and trust who might know the location of Luke.  Problem is, he's entirely new to the universe - no one has a clue who he is.  If you do some research online, you'll discover that his name is Lor San Tekka, and he runs some kind of Church of the Force or some such nonsense, and that's why he might know that location.  But, without digging into his story, you won't know any of that, and so he's just a random old dude whose death is entirely meaningless and who we have a hard time believing would have any such information.  We're left scratching our heads about who he was in the other movies, only to draw blanks.

In the same scene, we see something that is impossible in the original 6 movies: Kylo Ren stops a blaster bolt in mid-air.  Darth was able to absorb or deflect a bolt with his hand, but never did he stop the bolt in mid-air.  If such a thing is even possible in the universe (I guess it is now, but it wasn't before), then Ren should be capable of doing such a thing in even more crazy scenarios.  He could stop the bolts coming out of the x-wings that were attacking his troopers, for instance.  Instead of pushing Rey's blaster away, he could stop the bolt in mid-air with her, too.  Heck, he could stop the bolt, knock her out (we saw him knock her out with the Force), place her in front of the bolt, and let it go, so that her own shot kills her.  Yet, when he actually fights either Finn or Rey, he doesn't rely on The Force at all, and we're given no explanation or insight why, despite the fact that he's clearly capable of it.

We're also told Poe Dameron is a hotshot pilot, but what kind of hotshot pilot jumps into a tie fighter not looking to see if it's still tied down.  Any decent pilot is going to make sure he can actually take off before gunning it.

And we're told that Finn is a stormtrooper, but for some reason, he's the only stormtrooper who can hit anything.  Just like in A New Hope, where we're told that "only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise" and then see them missing every single shot they ever make, we should expect him to do the same, only to see him be this godlike badass who hits everything and can even fight a trained Dark Lord with a lightsaber...

And then there's Rey, who lacks even the training Finn has.  Her fighting prowess is great, certainly, but she uses a staff on Jakku, not a sword, let alone a lightsaber.  Ren, on the other hand, was trained by Luke himself.  And yet, Rey defeats him...

And the entire time she's beating him down, there's no moment where it seems like maybe she's giving in to the dark side.  When we saw Luke and Vader fighting in both Empire and Return, there was always the risk that Luke would give in to his hatred (an early script for Return actually had him turning to the dark side), but we see no such fear or temptation between Rey and Ren.  Ren mentions once that he can train her, and that's the extent of it.



Problem #4: The science.
Star Wars is not a science fiction - it is, rather, a fantasy set in space.  When Star Wars has tried to explain its science, such as in the midi-chlorian debacle, it has always fowled up marvelously.  It is at its best when it simply shows futuristic-looking things without explanation.

That's why the new Death Star-like thing is even more ridiculous than the last.  It's the size of a planet, and in fact appears to be built into a planet, carving out the entire thing like hollowing out a pumpkin.  It has the ability to siphon energy off of a star, taking solar power to a whole new level, but it does so by sucking in all the matter of the star.

First of all, that's bad enough.  If you want to destroy a planet, sucking in its sun is a great way to do so.  Without the gravity of the sun (which is now entirely inside the destroyer), the planet orbiting it would shoot out into deep space at whatever direction it was traveling when the gravity went away.  Since the new destroyer has come into the system, and has sucked in the solar gravity, the planet will now be gravitationally bound to it, and will have a massive course change.  If they wanted to, the First Order could simply move their destroyer near to the planet and let the two collide, or use the gravity of the destroyer to fling it into another planet or a moon.

But when you suck in the matter of a star, you're not sucking in its energy.  You'll get a bit of energy, thanks to the fact that a lot of the star is super-heated plasma that will continue to be ridiculously hot, but it won't be engaging in fusion.  The matter itself isn't destroyed, it's instead compressed inside your planet.

That's actually a key component of the film - the thing that the resistance has to destroy is the compression coil, which is keeping the matter of the star compressed inside the destroyer.

But hydrogen, under intense pressure and heat, as it would be inside the destroyer, would fuse - that is, it would go back to being a star inside the destroyer, now under much more intense pressure and heat than it had before.

but it would not cease to exist

They say they have to suck in a star each time they want to make a shot, but the star they sucked in already isn't dead, the hydrogen is converting slowly to helium.  Our own star will last for another 4 billion years.  Even under intense pressure and heat, it should last for a few million.  The shortest-lived stars still live for tens of thousands of years.  If they could somehow compress and hold onto a star like that, they would have the power to destroy planets for thousands of years.

Not to mention the gravitational issues...

Our sun has a mass of about 2×10³⁰ kg, and a volume of 1.41×10¹⁸ km³, leading to a density of 1410 kg/m³.  If it was compressed down into the volume of our Earth, its density would be 1300000 times higher, or roughly 1,800,000,000 kg/m³.  That's still 8 zeroes away from Neutron Star, but the gravitational forces would be extreme nonetheless.  The gravity on its surface will increase by about a thousand-fold.

That's going to put tremendous gravitational forces on the destroyer.  Nothing on the surface could survive, no matter if they are our intrepid heroes.  And, under that kind of gravity, we can't even imagine technology that can survive, meaning the entire planet-destroyer-thingy would collapse.  We can't even land a probe on Venus without it instantly dying.


All of that said, it's still an enjoyable film.  Finn and Rey are believable heroes, and the film plays just the right balance between fan-service and advancing the story.  There are several moments during the film where even I cheered and laughed.  It could be better, and if Disney is to survive ownership of the franchise, it must be better.  Fortunately, this film is really just set up to the Disney expanded universe of films, books, shows, etc., and as the setup for that universe, it did a remarkable job.  Disney didn't forget that the point of the Empire is to mimic Nazi Germany, and it really nailed that point home, which is really critical at a time when so many politicians seem to be trying to lead America to becoming the ideological successor of Hitler. 

Echoes

How is it that Trump is in the lead of the latest Republican poll, with a total equal to the sum of his next *6* competitors?  41% of Republican voters back him, which says something decidedly disturbing about today's Republican party. 

Any time someone says he "says what's on his mind," it's really a way of saying that the prejudices the person experiences are things he or she wishes were accepted by society, that he or she wouldn't be ostracized for saying them.  And, since so many people back Trump, it's clear that a considerable portion of society wouldn't ostracize the person for saying them, either.  It's an echo chamber around Trump, creating a closed society of Trump supporters whose shared beliefs can bounce around within the group and become reinforced and amplified.

There has been a sudden spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes since Trump said he would block Muslims from entering the country entirely, which is a reflection of this echo chamber.  When demagoguery is echoed and amplified, it leads to people being emboldened to take action against other people, partly under the belief that they will get away with it since everyone else feels the same way, and partly because the anger and hate that are bouncing around that echo chamber also amplify until that anger reaches the tipping point. 

I wonder if all of this isn't a result of social media.  I know that in my own Facebook and Twitter feeds, I see mostly those people who agree with my points of view.  As a result, Bernie Sanders groups, progressive groups, groups espousing a progressive interpretation of scripture, and so on, are echo chambers for me, making me believe falsely that more people agree with my ideals than actually do.  While Social Media could perhaps enable people to interact more with others who disagree with them, because of the vitriol spewed from people online who wouldn't act the same way face-to-face, we tend to push people of differing viewpoints aside.

Case in point: a man who goes to my very liberal church, who espouses mostly liberal beliefs, and who at one time was on my friends list.  He went to the Veterans' Day Parade in Tulsa, and protested Muslims marching in the parade by flipping them off.  When I found out, I looked for him on my friends list to remove him - but, it turns out, he had already removed me, perhaps because I had posted so angrily about the people who were protesting.

I feel like it's right to push him and others who agree out of my life, because I don't need that kind of hate, but in so doing, I do wonder if I'm not propagating the problem.  Being friends with someone offers unique opportunities to change minds, to show that good people disagree with their viewpoints, that it's not just their political "enemies." 

That said, I'm not sure I'm strong enough to be that guy...

Swords

I find it terribly interesting that the Christian Right is associated so strongly with the NRA, especially in light of Christ's own teachings regarding weaponry.

Jesus said He was bringing strife rather than peace (Matthew 10:34), but this is in the context of how people would be so adamant for Him that they would forsake everything else, much like someone who has found a new passion for music or art or anything else might forget their friends and family and focus on it.

That said, He was not bringing the kind of strife that the Jews of the New Testament thought - that is, He was not bringing about a new Earthly kingdom, leading the Jews to a glorious revolution over the Roman Empire.  They expected a Messiah that would lead them to war.  There was a moment when He could've taken up that banner, where He could've fought back - His arrest.

While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, arrived. With him was a large crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests and the elders of the people.

Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: “The one I kiss is the man; arrest him.”

Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed him.

Jesus replied, “Do what you came for, friend.”

Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. (Matthew 26:47-51)

An uprising is exactly what Jesus' disciples still thought he was there to lead, and this kind of violent confrontation is exactly the sort that could have escalated quickly.

Instead, though, Jesus defused the situation,

“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”

In that hour Jesus said to the crowd, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not arrest me. But this has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples deserted him and fled. (Matthew 26:52-56)

All who draw the sword will die by the sword; or, you may have heard it as "all who live by the sword will die by the sword."  The literal weapon is unimportant - the weapon is merely a symbol for a person's willingness to maim and possibly kill an opponent, armed or unarmed. 

There may be some who say, "but it's okay to defend yourself!"  Well, to a certain extent, yes.  But note what Jesus says about self defense:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." (Matthew 5:38-42)

Or, as quoted in Luke:

“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.  If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you." (Luke 6:27-31)

The command of Jesus is to not fight back, but to rather give people whatever they want.

Now, certainly, this does not mean to acquiesce to rape or murder - there are certain violations that I'm sure Christ wouldn't say you should suffer, because of how personal they are and how long-lasting their damage is.  That said, we aren't supposed to fight back in most situations. 

My mother used to say that this passage only means you should turn your cheek once, that if the person hits you again, you have leave to beat the snot out of them.  However, it's clear from Jesus' language that that is not the case, that the point of this is not to say "give in a little bit, but not too much" but rather "don't fight back."

That's because we're supposed to do to others as we would have them do to us.  If we beat them or shoot them, even when they're threatening us, we are not doing to them as we would have them do, but instead doing to them what we assume they would do to us.

But that may not be the intent.  Most people who draw a gun don't intend to kill, but rather to scare.  The gun is supposed to be a motivator to acquiesce to what the person wants.  When we fight back, when we draw a gun, etc., we are escalating the violence, rather than defusing it. 


That said, it's a different story if the situation is already deadly.  A person who threatens you with a gun might not be willing to take your life.  A person who fires a gun in your direction or the direction of another person certainly is.  At that point, it's necessary to take the other person's life to save your own.  One problem with guns is that they make us react at the wrong times, shooting at people who are no threat.  They give us a false sense of security that our actual training in stressful shooting situations may not be sufficient to see us through.

Words can save our lives... but when we have a weapon, we tend to reach for it first, rather than trying to defuse with words.  That's what Jesus means when He says those who draw the sword die by the sword.