Subject:
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Re: Iraq (was Re: Holy crap! (was Re: The partisian trap)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 22 Oct 2003 12:17:09 GMT
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Viewed:
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1079 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Koudys wrote:
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Did you also stop to consider that, in context of the day and age,
that “whole people” didn’t include black people? See, isn’t it fun when
dealing with context as written for the audience of the time. Selective
understanding is what I’d call it.
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Not at all. You would be 100% correct as to the meaning at the time of
ratification. But collectively, the 13th and 14th Amendment gave freed slaves
the status of Freemen. Knowing precisely what that meant, many freed slaves had
to obtain guns almost immediately to protect themselves from the kinds of
personal physical attacks to which former slaves might fall victim. Indeed, to
protect themselves against the kinds of crimes to which persons of color still
fall victim even today, all these years later.
You can’t win this argument because the social set-up wasn’t 100% perfect from
the outset -- everyone knows that fact. Women did not also have the vote at
that time either. So what? Shame has no place in this argument, and you are not
standing on a moral high ground despite what you may think.
Would you take a gun from a person whose front lawn is lit up by a burning
cross? You act like it was so long ago. Sometimes rough justice is All that
is left to an otherwise completely non-violent person. You wait for the police
to come around to protect you and all you shall have left is corpses hanging
from a tree.
I have pointed out before that the only time the police are responsible for any
person in society is when that person is specifically in custody. If it were
otherwise, police departments thoughtout the States would be sued for
negligence. Of course they are not sued for negligence, although it has been
tried.
Bottom line: you are responsible for your own protection. When shove comes to
hit, when hit comes to stab, a gun might serve you well.
I say let all Freepersons protect themselves as is fitting under the civil
rights protected by the U.S. Constitution.
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Why was slavery outlawed. Why did your country go to war over it? There
were laws on the books concerning slavery--it was all lawful and such, and
the freedoms of the owners was pretty good? Why go to war? Why fight for it
at all? Well, because there were people who weren’t enjoying the very
freedoms and liberties that your country cherishes.
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Um, freed slaves desperately wanted and needed the right to bear arms. Such
status: armed, was proof of having been made free. I suspect that you read other
meanings into it, but...
Freemen bear arms.
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During the day when this was written, permanent armies were a no-no. Love
putting things in the context for which they were written. No permanent
armies so if, say, for example, off the top of my head, your president wants
to go to war with someone, he’d have to call up the militia...
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“Art. I, Section 8. The Congress shall have power...To declare war, grant
letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and
water; To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use
shall be for a longer term than two years; To provide and maintain a navy; To
make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; To
provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress
insurrections and repel invasions; 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...”
So he could form an army under the 2 year provision in the Constitution and with
the support of congress. It is likely any such army would largely be comprised
of the many state militia -- which is the whole of the armed citizenry. It’s a
somewhat complicated process and you would be right in surmising that said
provisions have largely been side-stepped more recently. (A good a reason as
any to note that provisions of the U.S. Constitution are only as certain as the
people’s will and ability to enforce them. Ahem, and what form would you
imagine that enforcement would take? Strong words? Pleadings before elected
officials? Yeah, think again...)
To my knowledge the two year provision still stands. It has probably been
reduced to the mere manner in which the monies are obtained for the armed forces
even though I suspect it was intended to cover far more. In fact, I am almost
positive of that fact, but I would need to reread portions of the Federalist or
Madison’s Notes on the Convention. Again, another example of where plain and
original meaning gets muddied by the erosion of time and failure to stipulate
with greater specificity what is meant. That’s why we have to resort to
legislative intent -- not because it’s fun, but because language is often hugely
imprecise.
That would be the crux of most of your arguments, what I am going to call the
“picky-picky” word game. All language falls apart eventually -- it is precisely
that fallibility upon which the critical theory of Deconstruction is based. For
guys like Dave! and I, this was the bread and butter of our former school
days...
de·con·struc·tion, noun
A philosophical movement and theory of literary criticism that questions
traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth, asserts that words
can only refer to other words, and attempts to demonstrate how statements about
any text subvert their own meanings: “In deconstruction, the critic claims there
is no meaning to be found in the actual text, but only in the various, often
mutually irreconcilable, ‘virtual texts’ constructed by readers in their search
for meaning” (Rebecca Goldstein).
-- Excerpted from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,
Third Edition Copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Etc, Etc, Etc.
That said, we go on...
Note the fact that a distinction is made between the use of the words “armies,”
“navy,” and “militia.” Note the hierarchy respecting the use of the militia is
immediately passed off to the states -- that’s because a militia is an armed
group of able-bodied Freepersons within a state. State rights are still hotly
contested, but the way individuals figure into the debate seems to be less and
less an issue as people ignore the meaning of their citizenship and the express
duties and freedoms of a Freeperson.
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So if you’re willing to scrap your entire permanantly armed services
divisions, then I would have no problem conceeding this point.
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Well, I just want to go by the rule book. I don’t want to get into the middle
of the game only to discover that someone has been keeping track of the fines
and penalties and wants to collect for landing on “free parking” -- that’s not
an official rule, it’s an optional rule in the game of Monopoly. Likewise,
and vastly more important in real life, I want to know the rules ahead of time
as much as is possible.
I have no problem conceding anything in the rule book -- the U.S. Constitution
-- indeed, such would be my peference, and I woudl hope the preference of my
fellow citizens. Alas...
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When a 4 year old shoots people, that, at least to me, shows neither
discipline nor proper training, nor any reasonable sense of regulation
thereof.
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Fine, but does that show a flaw in a law or poor parental supervision? I am not
a breeder -- I don’t want to take the time, make the effort, or further
overpopulate the earth. You want the citizenry as a whole to bear the
responsibility of poor child-rearing on the part of others? That’s just crazy.
People have the right to rear their children in any way they see fit. It’s the
case that some elementary school kid was killed in my area by another child in
the last two days -- they had found a sawed-off shotgun and were playing with
it, when boom, the kid gets shot and dies. Tragic. They have arrested the
presumed owner of the gun for negligently hiding the gun in the backyard. Isn’t
that as it should be? Do you imagine I keep my guns in the backyard or anywhere
where children have access to them?
I’m just feeding your madness here, I think the point is irrelevant in
actuality. Although it is a good bid for pathos.
And I could have more far more to say here. But it’s not worth it because you
do not wish to acknowledge the historical meaning of the 2nd Amendment as usual;
or at least, only in part. I mean, I don’t claim to specifically be an expert
and I am not sitting here next to an easily accessible set of historical
references -- it takes me time and effort to look up all these tedious
references even if I’m just digging back through what has gone before in this
very forum. You want to play the “picky-picky” word game you were playing with
Schuler over the word “belief” and I don’t have the time or inclination to do a
mountain of work researching the right to bear arms so that you can play the
“picky-picky” game with all of my citations. It’s been done, if you really
cared you could go buy the necessary references and inform yourself.
If I had nothing else, I have the de facto right to go buy a gun right now at
Wal-Mart. How do you suppose that right came to exist? Because the clear
meaning of the 2nd Amendment was not well understood, or because it has been
absolutely and firmly understood since the ratification of the Constitition, and
from even sometime before that?
I am not trying to convince you of anything on the broader gun issue. I am just
trying to convince you about the ordinary and de facto meaning of the 2nd
Amendment. Yes, the language could have been more precise. Still, the right is
respected in exactly the manner you must acknowledge it is respected -- with the
ability to run out and buy a gun within the next few hours should I wish to do
so.
I am even willing to concede the whole 2nd Amendment argument because I don’t
think it amounts to much really, even though so much has been said and written
in support of much of the above. If the 2nd Amendment can or has been
interpretted to not cover an individual’s right to bear arms, then it must
surely be an unenumerated right under the 9th Amendment. How do I know this?
Because I can go out and buy a gun right now. Blah, Blah, Blah...
And here we come again, to agree to disagree on the broader issue -- having
accomplished almost nothing.
-- Hop-Frog
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