a few random snips to keep yahoo from truncating,
again..
--- "Marvin Long, Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, Dean Forster wrote:
>
>
> And I don't think I'm being particularly cynical. I
> think that we tend to
> understimate the genuine trepidation with which many
> states entered the
> federal union in the first place. It's not that the
> representatives
> negotiating the Bill of Rights were focused on
> states rather than people,
> it's that those negotiators were focused on the
> interests of *their*
> states' people. The way they did this structurally
> (IMO) was to focus on
> preserving the rights of state governments in
> particular where the 2nd
> amendment is concerned.
The structure of the government- the checks and
balances- are described elsewhere, and I honestly
believe that the framers could have relaxed a bit in
their fed vs state argument to craft a document that
says it's "Of the people, by the people, and for the
people." It even mentions people in the 2nd
prominently.
After all, if gun ownership
> were a sacred
> personal right all on its own, then it could have
> been placed in the 1st
> amendment.
By that token, it could be taken that you mean the
amendments are placed in order of importance? I would
rather be guaranteed free speech over the means to
defend myself with force. I usually talk a bit to
people before I start shooting. ;)
>
> > People see what they're looking for. Really, what
> > would a person who has no idea of the significance
> of
> > the Bill of Rights think when they read the 2nd?
>
> I think they would wonder, what's a militia?
please see below
What's
> the social structure
> that supports such a means of national self defense?
> Does the word
> "state" refer to the federal state or the individual
> states? Does "the
> people's right" mean that individuals have in
> uninfringible right to arms
> as such, or does it mean that arms must be available
> to the community in
> general in case of attack, but the distribution of
> them may be controlled
> by the states?
>
oy glavin, always with the questions. I don't think
the framers were concentrating that hard on legalistic
subterfuge.
> > Well, I certainly never was comparing us to anyone
> > else. Let me reiterate that taking responsibility
> for
> > one's own safety is pretty much where personal
> > responsibility starts.
>
> I would say, "taking responsibility for one's own
> *conduct* and safety."
>
> > People might as well do it,
> > the police are not charged with protecting
> individual
> > citizens.
>
> Of course they are!
But they aren't- several court cases have judged that
the police are only responsible for the citizenry at
large. If they fail in their duty to protect one
person, they are not liable. Anything else would have
all of the PD's in the country bankrupt in a week, of
course. But it makes you think- who's going to be
responsible for your safety if not yourself? And how
will you do it?
> > If violence is fundamental to human nature, what
> > better way to ensure justice than to level the
> playing
> > field?
>
> The field is levelled not by giving everybody a gun,
> which returns us to a
> more heavily-armed "state of nature"
> so to speak,
> but by establishing rule
> of law, democracy, an accountable police, and all
> those other institutions
> that make personal violence undesirable and
> unnecessary.
>
> One of the issues America has is such a deep
> suspicion of government as
> such that we don't trust ourselves to self-govern
> justly, and we feel we
> must keep the option of violence in reserve at all
> times. We view our
> institutions so much as tyrants-in-waiting that we
> often forget to use
> them as the means towards consensus which they ought
> to be (witness our
> ridiculously low political participation per
> capita), which has the effect
> of abandoning our institutions to the use of those
> who are powerful and
> willing to use those institutions to their own
> narrow ends. We make a
> self-fulfilling prophecy that way.
>
> This reminds me of that scene in SW:ESB where Yoda
> sends Luke into the
> evil cave, and the only evil he finds is what he
> takes with him.
>
Hey, i'm not saying you're wrong here. My take on
improving the human condition is to start with the
human before you start on the machinations we've
constructed to organize humanity. Wanna hear what I
think is next after personal responsibility? =)
> > Every able bodied citizen is part of the militia
> in the US.
>
> ?? This is news to me.
The organized and the unorganized militia, it's stated
plainly in several documents of the time. It actually
specifies that the unorganized militia is made up of
adult males, age 18-40 or something around that. I
can find it later when i'm not at work.
>
> > I fail to see the correlation,
>
> Took me a moment to remember the point I was trying
> to make. I guess it's
> this: every society must decide what violence's
> place is. This is not to
> say that we desire violence, but we take for granted
> that sometimes people
> will need to be coerced to behave a certain "proper"
> way. We believe it's
> appropriate to use violence against people who use
> drugs in even the
> safest of ways, but not to shoot our politicians,
> say. On the other hand,
> we have a nearly libertarian believe in the rights
> of privacy and personal
> choice, and we believe that we must be vigilant and
> prepared to use force
> to topple the government if it should become
> tyrranous.
>
> I guess my point is that, as a society, we are very
> confused about what
> constitutes freedom and about what place violence
> should have in the order
> of things, and that confusion adds to our social and
> legislative problems,
> including the issue of gun regulation.
>
Imperfect individuals are going to form imperfect
societies. If you build a skyscraper too tall with
steel that is too low in its hardness, it's going to
collapse sooner or later. The framers knew people
were imperfect and built a government that could flex
and expand as times dictated. And they understood
intimately that the human spirit cannot tolerate
captivity- they obviously made it their first priority
to guarantee freedom for all. With greater freedoms
come greater responsibilities, and the whole becomes
greater. Think back on your own career path, your
life. It is obvious to me that taking away freedoms
and responsibilities from the individual is a step in
the wrong direction, and we have to accept the price
paid or face extinction.
Look at the poor Chinese, they must be about ready to
burst. I was watching CNN the other day and a
reporter asked some official over there whatever
happened to the guy who stood in front of the line of
tanks in Tiennamen <sp?> square. He replied "I don't
think he was executed". What a mindset! Later they
were interviewing the reporters that were present.
This woman was describing bullets flying past her and
demonstrators dropping to the ground with blood
pumping out of them. She said an old man turned to
her and said "tell America what you see here". The
guy turned and ran towards the tanks.
Dean Forster
rambling yak-o-matic
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