> at least magic mushrooms, marijuana, lsd et al ton't promote violence
> towards one's fellow man. For the record, I despise violence of all
Oh? Have you ever looked up the origins of the word Assassin? Some
bunch of pot smoking folks in the Middle Eastern regions that it took one
of the Khans (Ghengis or Kubla, I forget,) to dislodge. And not all
violence is violent... drugs, if one looks back at the China experience,
reduce the society by creating people more willing to lie, cheat, and
steal, and murder in the process by intent or accident, in order to feed
their addictions. So, I would say they DO promote violence in the larger
scale, even if not in the immediate interval.
> There is much that I love and respect about American culture. But, this
> fascination with firearms that promotes so much violence in your nation
> I do not begin to understand. Have you never considered why it is that,
> almost alone among nations, the United States is the place where school
> children take firearms to school and massacre their schoolmates? Not as
> an isolated incident, but with almost monotonous regularity.
Hardly regularly. A few times every couple of years, I suspect. But
how the press likes to show us the unusual! About a hundred and thirty
people die every day from auto accidents, and little is said about it. A
kid is shot at school, and we have a hue and cry! More lives have been
saved by seat belt laws than gun legislation. And in that town that
passed a law requiring gun ownership, crime fell Way Low! I mean, would
you try to burglarize a house or rob someone if you thought they were
armed??? But there was precious little reported on that, because it isn't
the kind of scary news that makes reporter's reputations.
(That's where the web has it over the press -- anyone can say
anything. But the web can be biased and inaccurate too.)
> > security). Completely repellent: the incredibly ignorant notion that
> > those who believe in every human's inalienable right to self-defense are
> > all violent, hateful knuckle-dragging war-mongers just itching for a
> > chance to wreak death and destruction on society at large.
I do not own firearms. However, my father taught me how to use
firearms explicitly for the purpose of defending home and hearth in event
of invasion or national turmoil. And he made sure he had the kind of
weapons that do not need to be registered, as that was how the invading
soviets disarmed his nation, and part of how they identified who should be
shipped out to Siberia so as to impede the formation of a national
resistance.
> I don't assume this at all. I have met some extremely urbane, charming
> and intelligent killers. In fact, in the service of my country, I once
> was one myself.
I have never had the need. Tends to wreak some people's psyche, while
others seem to live with it fairly well. I've known people on both sides
of that median. I am just glad I have never had the experience.
> There is rather a difference between a community struggling against
> colonialism and the oppression that derives from it and having every
> man, woman, child and psychopath wandering around enjoying their
> democratic right to carry lethal weapons in the greatest democracy of
> them all.
A well armed population, one having non-registered weapons, is the
best insurance against armed invasion and against a runaway dictatorship.
Casualties may occur suddenly if that deterrence does not work, or
gradually as unfortunate side effects of having those arms. Having heard
of the former from my relatives who were in the underground in WW II, I
rather think the latter is preferable, though it may seem less "romantic"
and "adventuresome" to those who have not lived through it.
> Of course not. It'll be the result of a leftist, communist, atheist,
> drug-taking hippy conspiracy including the US government, the United
> Nations, the Catholic and Anglican Churches, the Democratic Party,
> Blacks, Asians and women, won't it? <grin>
Hmmm... it would take a political genius to pull that one off!
Oy! Now Vait a Minutski Here Now! Didn't that guy say he "didn't
inhale"??? And vat about da kamakazi pilot who tried to fly an aircraft
into his house? And the dead bodies that keep turning up... Is something
going on that we don't know? And Yes! Yes! The Church _IS_ at the bottom
of it! They set up the Y2K problem in the first place! It was that guy,
YES, THAT GUY back there in year zero, who started it all!!! This is a
plot! It is one big huge multi-millennia plot! And they keep telling
every week that they are going to dump us into vats of boiling lava when
they dig our bones up at the end of the earth!!!
(Or some such thing. I don't believe any of it; but that's besides
the point. Reality never stopped people from reading tea leaves or the
stars. Or the raving lunacies of people long dead. Chance happens...
Sometimes it corresponds with prediction, and that is what we remember.
But that is another story best told in another forum.)
Are we all done with world violence? Or shall I bring in the gang
violins?
-J- (C) 1997, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------- http://www.mall-net.com/javilk
--- Laugh at yourself, Our Creator loves company -- and You! ---------------
--- After all, we wouldn't want our Creator to cancel the show, would we? --
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another Javilk (tm) brand post, <a href="http://www.mall-net.com/javilk/">
now available through mall-net.com at: http://www.mall-net.com/javilk </A>
Anti-spam FAQ: <A href="http://www.mall-net.com/spamfaq.html">Stop SPAM</a>
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done
directly from our website for all our lists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
