Subject:
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Re: The Blood of Patriots & Tyrants (was Re: Sticking my gun...etc.)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 23 Sep 2003 18:08:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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761 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Marchetti wrote:
> {From Thomas Jefferson to William Smith}
<snip to the part which I believe, is the relavent part to this discussion>
> I say nothing of
> it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we
> should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, &
> always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in
> proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain
> quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to
> the public liberty. We have had 13. states independent 11. years. There has
> been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for
> each state. What country before ever existed a century & a half without a
> rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not
> warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?
> Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon &
> pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of
> liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots &
> tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much
> impressed by the insurrection of Massachusetts: and in the spur of the moment
> they are setting up a kite to keep the hen-yard in order. I hope in God this
> article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted.
<snip>
TJ was a thoughtful and thorougly well versed man.
For 1786.
First, it's a letter, not a law, nor part of the constitution. If this
'preserving democracy by way of guns' is so important, than where's the law?
Where in your constitution? Appealing to Jefferson's letters is akin to
Christians appealing to the letters of Paul the apostle--"Hey, don't be gay
'cause Paul said so in Corinthians." You lambaste the Christians for appealing
to their higher authority, an authority which you yourself don't recognize, why
should anyone recognize your appeal to your personal higher authority? When you
give a cite, I'd like it to be a legitimate bona-fide law, please--one that we
all may recognize as an authority.
Second, we're not talking a few deaths over centuries, we're talking thousands
of thousands per year. Go to the funerals of those 11 thousand families with
this letter penned by Jefferson in 1786 and say to them, "This justifies my gun
ownership today".
I'd say that you and your justifying gun ownership today is the part that's
'founded in ignorance, not wickedness'. You have not shown any rational or
comprehensible causality between your frequent political changeovers and the gun
in your house. I have shown that the power of the vote, and *only* the power of
the vote, is needed.
What is currently facing your country today is "If they [the people] remain
quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the
public liberty" This is what truly threatens your democracy today, and all your
guns ain't gonna fix that.
BTW, Is that Jefferson appealing to God?
I hope in God that sometime in the future thousands of people won't have to die
in violent homicidal gun related deaths in America.
Dave K
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