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Re: The Left's Children's Crusade

Posted: Sat May 12, 2018 1:25 pm
by Harry Marks
DWill wrote: It doesn't make sense to me. It is the Constitution itself that provides the means to prevent tyranny. The militias were for national defense. To think that so much about militias was tucked into the Constitution because the framers were concerned that their founding blueprint wouldn't work is frankly a bit ridiculous.
I'm not so sure. They had not yet gone through the degeneration of the French Republic back into tyranny, although maybe a semblance of it in the reign of terror. So they may have had a lot of faith in a Montesquieu-type process of checks and balances and division of powers. But as you know there was a variety of views within the founding group, and Jefferson, if I recall, would not agree to the Federation (rather than the Confederation) without a bill of rights. Doesn't that mean they thought press freedom, freedom of speech, etc. were part of guaranteeing responsible government? In the context of 18th century America I don't think it is far-fetched that armed civilians would be seen as helpful to liberty.

I am not about to accept the idea that we should now have civilian militias with artillery and jet fighters, which is what it would take to restrain the military if it ran amuck today. Let's be real about the times changing.

Re: The Left's Children's Crusade

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 8:24 am
by DWill
Harry Marks wrote:
DWill wrote: It doesn't make sense to me. It is the Constitution itself that provides the means to prevent tyranny. The militias were for national defense. To think that so much about militias was tucked into the Constitution because the framers were concerned that their founding blueprint wouldn't work is frankly a bit ridiculous.
I'm not so sure. They had not yet gone through the degeneration of the French Republic back into tyranny, although maybe a semblance of it in the reign of terror. So they may have had a lot of faith in a Montesquieu-type process of checks and balances and division of powers. But as you know there was a variety of views within the founding group, and Jefferson, if I recall, would not agree to the Federation (rather than the Confederation) without a bill of rights. Doesn't that mean they thought press freedom, freedom of speech, etc. were part of guaranteeing responsible government? In the context of 18th century America I don't think it is far-fetched that armed civilians would be seen as helpful to liberty.

I am not about to accept the idea that we should now have civilian militias with artillery and jet fighters, which is what it would take to restrain the military if it ran amuck today. Let's be real about the times changing.
Jefferson wanted some rights detailed explicitly, although since he wasn't part of the convention his view might not have been decisive. On the narrow matter of what the Second Amendment says and why it was put in, I think it's important not to concede to the NRA that the reason was to legitimize opposing the government that was defined in the Constitution. The internal evidence is against this view, since it is reasonable to assume that the right to bear arms wouldn't be mentioned if militias were not seen as being vital to national defense. I'm not saying that bearing arms wasn't considered to be a right, just that it was at the service of a larger need. The Constitution also defines one of the purposes of militias as being to put down rebellions (such as Shay's Rebellion), not to foment them. Because there was no standing army for quite a while in the U.S., weapons held by citizens would be an important resource.
Militias became irrelevant with the establishment of standing armies, although the extreme right thinks that patriots should continue to form them. Blame Jefferson for some of that, with his "tree of liberty watered by the blood of patriots and tyrants" metaphor. Timothy McVeigh, on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, wore a t-shirt with Jefferson's declaration on the back.

Re: The Left's Children's Crusade

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 4:02 pm
by Harry Marks
DWill wrote:It doesn't make sense to me. It is the Constitution itself that provides the means to prevent tyranny. The militias were for national defense.
Harry Marks wrote: I'm not so sure. In the context of 18th century America I don't think it is far-fetched that armed civilians would be seen as helpful to liberty.
DWill wrote:On the narrow matter of what the Second Amendment says and why it was put in, I think it's important not to concede to the NRA that the reason was to legitimize opposing the government that was defined in the Constitution. The internal evidence is against this view, since it is reasonable to assume that the right to bear arms wouldn't be mentioned if militias were not seen as being vital to national defense. I'm not saying that bearing arms wasn't considered to be a right, just that it was at the service of a larger need. The Constitution also defines one of the purposes of militias as being to put down rebellions (such as Shay's Rebellion), not to foment them. Because there was no standing army for quite a while in the U.S., weapons held by citizens would be an important resource.
Well, I expect you are right about what the Constitution meant. I indicated that Kinda's view "makes sense to me" to mean that I could literally make sense of it, but I should perhaps have chosen wording that would not indicate agreement. I am willing to leave the matter open, even if that gives aid and comfort to the NRA, but as I indicated I don't think it is relevant to today's world anyway. You have given another reason, with the advent of standing armies.

Re: The Left's Children's Crusade

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 9:30 pm
by LanDroid
Article 1, Section 8
Clause 15. The Congress shall have Power To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.
Clause 16. The Congress shall have Power To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.
DWill is correct on militias under the Constitution. The notion that militias were constituted to overthrow a tyrannical US Government is advocated by folks who have memorized the Second Amendment, including the placement of every comma, a pseudo-understanding of the diagramming of that sentence, and a with willful ignorance of most of the Constitution. When taken in context of the whole document, that concept evaporates.

Re: The Left's Children's Crusade

Posted: Thu May 17, 2018 10:24 pm
by KindaSkolarly
Interesting comments. Yes Alinsky was a genius, but then so was Ted Bundy. Both were good at what they did, good to the point of genius. But Bundy killed fewer than Alinsky, and Alinsky's destruction will continue for who knows how much longer?

Below is an interesting video, less than a minute long. It shows an actual shooting, so be advised. The video's from a closed-circuit camera:

https://mikesheedy.com/wp-content/uploa ... Robber.mp4

Note the woman, who fortunately was armed, put the bad guy down. Outlaw all guns today and punks like the one in the video will still be using them tomorrow. It's GOOD to have firearms in the hands of good people.

Leftists love to grouch about guns. And I don't know why, but they always want to disarm themselves. That's suicidal insanity, which is hard to argue with. Go ahead and disarm yourselves, Leftists. Turn in your guns. Move to Chicago, where guns are tightly controlled. Or to London. You'll be safe in those liberal havens, right?

And speaking of London, here's a disturbing article. British schools are removing analog clocks from classrooms:

Schools are removing analogue clocks from exam halls as teenagers 'cannot tell the time'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2 ... rs-unable/

It's shameful how kids are manipulated nowadays. George Soros and George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey sponsor marches not to make classrooms safe, but to outlaw guns, and the kids don't understand how they're being used. Hell, they don't even understand how to tell time. And meanwhile, Soros, Clooney and Winfrey go about their business with armed bodyguards protecting them. The hypocrisy of the Left reeks.

Re: The Left's Children's Crusade

Posted: Fri May 18, 2018 2:45 pm
by DWill
You can hype the level of threat in today's U.S if you want to, but the facts don't back up what the NRA wants us to believe: that we're all in mortal danger when we leave the house --and while we're in it,too, come to think of it. I prefer not to end up like the guy who shot his wife twice, thinking she was the burglar they both had "heard" a half hour earlier.

Re: The Left's Children's Crusade

Posted: Tue May 22, 2018 11:49 pm
by KindaSkolarly
Hmm.

I placed an entry in the wrong thread last night. The one that was here was supposed to be in the Swamp Draining thread, so I've moved it over there. I have to use a proxy to get in here now, and what with timeouts and proxy URLs, things get confusing. My apologies.

Re: The Left's Children's Crusade

Posted: Wed May 23, 2018 11:12 am
by Interbane
Harry Marks wrote:I'm not worried about being talked down to. Have at it. What worries me is the need to see invisible strings determining my views. I think things through for myself, and arrive at my own conclusions. I'm not going to argue that no one on the left takes their views from a herd mentality (or the right either) but it strikes me as spectacular when someone simply cannot fathom the idea that the other side is thinking.
This is the best snip from this thread. How do you justify dismissing the entire side of the spectrum you're opposed to because you think they can't come to rational conclusions? As if there aren't people a lot smarter than any of us with polar opposite views from our own. We need to expose ourselves to the intelligent members of the opposite party, rather than engaging with the fringe lunatics from the opposite side.

Re: The Left's Children's Crusade

Posted: Wed May 23, 2018 3:19 pm
by LevV
Interbane wrote:This is the best snip from this thread. How do you justify dismissing the entire side of the spectrum you're opposed to because you think they can't come to rational conclusions? As if there aren't people a lot smarter than any of us with polar opposite views from our own. We need to expose ourselves to the intelligent members of the opposite party, rather than engaging with the fringe lunatics from the opposite side.

Over on the book discussion site, you will find an interesting observation by Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens on this subject:
"Contradictions are an inseparable part of every human culture. In fact, they are culture’s engines, responsible for the creativity and dynamism of our species. Just as when two clashing musical notes played together force a piece of music forward, so discord in our thoughts, ideas and values compel us to think, re-evaluate and criticise. Consistency is the playground of dull minds."

Re: The Left's Children's Crusade

Posted: Thu May 24, 2018 8:42 am
by Harry Marks
KindaSkolarly wrote:Interesting comments. Yes Alinsky was a genius, but then so was Ted Bundy. Both were good at what they did, good to the point of genius. But Bundy killed fewer than Alinsky, and Alinsky's destruction will continue for who knows how much longer?
So I went looking on Wikipedia to see if I could figure out how Alinsky killed people. I found that he organized a fart-in and a piss-in, but neither actually had to happen. His points were made.

I found that he was unwilling to join parties or ideologies or movements, because he insisted on retaining his own independence to think for himself, saying
"If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics,"

I found out that Newt Gingrich paid him the ultimate compliments, by copying his tactics and by accusing his enemies, such as Billary, of doing so.

Sounds just like Ted Bundy to me, especially the part about not wanting to be humorless and intellectually constipated.