Subject:
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Re: Swift was Right! (He just named the wrong people...)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 16 Jun 2003 10:29:59 GMT
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Viewed:
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1324 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Mike Petrucelli wrote:
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Just because they make a new law doesn’t mean it is constitutional.
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Ok, that is a good point. However, the constitution has been added
ammendments in the past, including at least one that revoked another. As
such, the constitution is also subject to circumvention - I certainly
wouldn’t trust it blindly!
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The constitution was meant to be a document describing the specific powers
and limits of the government. How does that involve “trusting it blindly”?
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Partly, that it may require periodical updates, which can contradict the
previous text; as such, what today is off-limits for the government can become
one of its tasks tomorrow, in a perfectly legal fashion. It’s not eternal or
unchangeable as a guide text, therefore the trust that can be put on it is
better not be total: if today it pleases you but tomorrow it does not, what will
you hang on to then for government?
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No, it is a matter of public record, read the paper sometime. The police
virtually never prevent a crime they simply investigate and arrest the
perpatrator after the fact.
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(FTR, I read at least 5 papers from different places every day - please
understand that I cannot read the “local” section of all :-)
You are of course correct in your claim: the police can only act when faced
with a crime already commited (or being attempted, in some lucky cases).
What you are leaving out of the equation is that some crimes are
irreversible (ie, murder) and others are conveniently preventive (illegal
gun ownership, DUI, etc). The latter isn’t in itself anything wrong, but
provide means to avoid the irreversible kind. It’s not perfect as a system,
but works better than anything else I’m aware of...
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Well actually most of the crimes that actually are prevented in the US are
done so by armed citizens.
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Of course - I’m sure you don’t require police officers to be foreigners! ;-)
But more seriously now: you can only take what happens (?) in the US at face
value. The US, despite their great importance in the world, are still not
representative of it as a whole! Much in the same way you can claim that which
you did and I won’t contradict you, I can also claim that in most of the other
countries the majority of crimes are prevented by complicated laws (the
fantastic factor laziness put to work...), and police when everything else fails
- and yet, the violent crime rate tends to be lower. Even if a law is not
respected, that won’t mean a terrible crime will have been done automatically,
only that you have legal ground to stop the criminal in the process of comitting
another crime. Perhaps we have had enough experience without guns to know how to
live without them? And, might I add, fairly well?
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So imposing gun control on law abiding citizens,
would be like hacking off ones left arm to save ones right little finger.
(Criminals are going to have guns regardless.) It is already easier for
people to purchase guns on the Black Market than it is to purchase them
legally.
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I know it is easier to buy them. I’m not so sure it’s easy to keep them: suppose
I get stopped in Road Control, and am caught with an ilegal weapon. I won’t have
killed anyone, and will still be sentenced to jailtime. Sure, gun control is not
perfect: it will not, on its own, prevent many crimes. It will be a tool to help
their prevention.
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snip
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They have a right to live where ever they want, but I belive it is their
responsiblity to provide for their well being, not the government’s.
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Unless of course those 300 people, by the mere fact of living there, grant
the country some thousands of square miles worth of seazone, that benefits
the entire national fishing fleet :-) No community lives isolated, so it’s
probably better to take care of each other...
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Well if that is the case, shouldn’t they be making enough money to cover it
anyway?
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Hardly: the costs of living in a tiny island such as that one are enormous. 300
people, if you discount the farmers, count for only two or three fishing boats -
the seazone is used by many more from the mainland and other islands.
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A few dozen cases a year out of over 280 million isn’t exactly a
“population” I am ignoring. It is as I said cases of abuse or the odd
nut-ball who imposes it on himself.
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“A few dozen cases”. Is that how the statisticians refer to that
“non-population”, or your description of what’s happening? I’m sure you
won’t be surprised to know that across the pond we get a different
picture...
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You get ‘pictures’ of lots of people starving in the US?
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Not exactly - not starving at least. I get pictures of people living in
incredible misery, unvoluntarily. More than I would expect to see in a rich
nation such as yours is.
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It means that the idea that poor people are starving is completly untrue in
the US. In the US being poor means you can’t afford a DVD player to go with
your TV.
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I did not say anyone was starving -
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Isn’t that what we were talking about?
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No. Read backwards a few posts, before all the snipping; I was talking about
poverty, which is not only starvation, nor only “not buying the DVD”. I should
probably have used the word “misery” instead, for the sake of clarity?
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I implied that you can save money by
eating junk food, and let yourself gain weight and cholesterol over time,
shortening your lifespan. Will I get lucky by crossing the data between
average income and risk of death by heart disease? Hmmm...
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snip
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Well one can always hope they will spontaneously reinstate the constitution
as our basis of government and stop trying run everyone’s life for them.
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Huh-hum.
You do realize that such thing would make the USA a “constitutiocracy”, that
would differ fronm a theocracy only in the nature of the sacred text...
Having said that, I’d like to point out that the US constitution hasn’t got
any fundamental defect in my POV, but you seem to take it as a sacred text
which it was not intended to be by those who wrote it!
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Huh? Believeing the Government should stop trying to run people’s lives and
operate within the power limits of the constitution is believing in a “sacred
text”?
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You view it that way, I view it differently: the government does not run my
life: they do what I can’t do, or can’t do alone. Their task is to organize and
coordinate efforts to make a better living for all, and I have absolutely no
issue in working for such greater goal.
I’d like to hear you ellaborate on how they run your life. I can’t personally
see how that would be (1), but I admit right now that I may be wrong!...
Pedro
(1) - a matter of perception, perhaps?
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