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Ferfal,
You have far more knowledge and understanding of our 2nd amendment than many in this nation do. You are more American than many Americans are! Unfortunately, many Americans know more about the winners of American Idol than they do our Constitution, or our Founders, which is sad. The domestic enemies of this nation did this by design. They took over education, dumbed it down, and pretty much lobotomized generations of Americans. Sadly, they have "radicalized" the 2nd amendment. "its outdated!" or "people don't need guns, thats why we have police" are common reasons why they try to encroach on that freedom. In addition, the term "militia" has been radicalized and turned into a stigma during the Clinton years. The leftist media have turned "militia" into a dirty word; they attached "militia" to nutcases like the Oklahoma city bomber, the Unibomber, those gunmen who robbed a bank or banks in california with automatic weapons and so forth.
Getting rid of the 2nd amendment seems to be one of the hardest Socialist staples for the leftists to obtain at this point. Of all the lines they have crossed with the American people, that would be the most explosive.
A rifle behind every blade of grass, indeed.
JD
Thanks for your emial. Thank God the founding fathers clearly expected this to happen one day, that's why they made it abundantly clear.
Also, its no coincidence that its the 2nd Amendment, right after the most basic right of free speach.
This pair itself contains the most basic rights people have. Express yourself freely and the ability to defend yourself physical against those that want to take away the first right.
Every country grants the right to free speech in some pompous manner, no country has a problem with that. But its of little use if you don’t have the actual physical tool to fight oppression. Therefore, every country magnanimously acknowledges that right, but only USA does it for real supporting it with an amendments that gives the citizens power over the government by having a well armed society.
As you say, “militia” has been bastardized lately. In the old days it was simply a better armed neighborhood watch so to speak.
But you have to stay in the context and the meaning those words had back then. “Well regulated” may now be interpreted as well controlled by the government, but the meaning of the word back then and in that context had nothing to do with that and meant, “well equipped, well armed”. Of course some people and politicians prefer to misinterpret these definitions. “Gay” use to mean happy person. Now it means something else. Same here.
Any person that is against the second amendment is simply against democracy, since it was specifically written to avoid tyranny. Or fight it if there’s no other option.
FerFAL
16 comments:
The nature of warfare has changed to such an extent that well-regulated militias are completely obsolete. It used to be that all that was expected of a fighter was to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with other guys like him and fire at the same time in coordinated volleys. That meant that every man had to be armed and every man had to be drilled regularly, thus "regulated". When it came to police duty, that was mostly handled with edged weapons, not firearms.
Today firearms are used only for personal protection, and even then only for limited personal protection. In today's war it is hidden bombs and traps that the big militaries of the world have trouble with. There is no amount of firearms that can protect someone from a nuclear-armed state with armored troops. So the second amendment has no real meaning. It should either say "ingenious bomb-making being necessary in the defense of the land, the right to tinker shall not be infringed" or "the protection of civil order relying on armed citizens, possession of personal arms shall not be infringed".
My point ultimately is that you can't rely on outdated laws to protect your rights in this day and age. You have to make new laws or just accept being an outlaw.
Hi Mhelie, you have the wrong impression and that's part of the brainwashing by the powers to be.
Truth is, on an open declared war, government vs citizens on American soil, the armed population will win all the time.
Its impossible to defeat millions of armed citizens spread all over the country, on every branch of the government, already located at their homes. That was the purpose of the second Amendment. The government knows it so it steps carefully on this ground, the only choice is being sneaky about restricting liberties little by little. The 2A is as explicit as it gets, so that's a big problem for them.
"Today firearms are used only for personal protection"
So Mausers, Aks, FAL, ARs, Glocks, 1911s, those aren't used for warfare? WWII was fought with Garands and Mauser rifles you know?
"There is no amount of firearms that can protect someone from a nuclear-armed state with armored troops."
SAid the guy that didn't realize that a handful of fanatics with box cutters could change the world as we know it.
You can't "nuke" a terrorist cell any more than you can "nuke" patriots, specially when the patriot lives on the next block and you dont even know it.
"My point ultimately is that you can't rely on outdated laws to protect your rights in this day and age. You have to make new laws or just accept being an outlaw."
Its not a law, its the acknowledgement of a right. Nothing is more prime and basic than the right of free speech and the right to defend yourself, both as an individual and as a population against tyrants.
It the kind of thing you DONT change if you want a free country.
Yes, USA is a free country, if you dont think so go visit Venezuela or Cuba for a while, lie there as they do, and regain the perspective you lost.
FerFAL
FerFAL
Dear Ferfal,
it is very possible for the government to defeat the entire armed population of a country if it can fight people one at a time. Divide and defeat. (It worked for Napoleon, it worked for Saddam Hussein, and it works today.) It won't matter how many guns are involved. Look at how SWAT teams operate, they charge with shields.
The insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan learned at the price of their lives not to get into a gun fight with the military. Their war tactics evolved accordingly.
The most powerful anti-government force in the world today is neither armed citizens nor Islamic terrorists, it is Mexican gangs. They don't get into gunfights with the government (usually). They corrupt and strike back at government officials tasked with fighting them.
A very interesting book on postmodern warfare is Martin van Creveld's The Transformation of War. He concludes that the most fearsome war-fighting organization of the 21st century will resemble the Assassins who terrorized medieval Arabia. He wrote this in the 1990's.
I wrote more on the subject in detail in a longer essay (parts inspired by your blog):
http://globalsovereignty.wordpress.com/global-sovereignty-and-the-future-state/
I'd appreciate a plug :)
Democracy *is* tyranny.
http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=199
People today are as confused about "democracy" as they are about the 2nd Amendment. Democracy is the greatest con game in all human history, replacing the Divine Right of Kings as the main justification for a few parasites feeding on the host of society.
People who think they can actually alter the government to which they are subjugated simply by the act of voting are sadly deluded. At least in an overt dictatorship there are no illusions: you're a subject, serf, or slave. Under democratic forms, you (the slave) can convince yourself that you are OBLIGATED to knuckle under to any imposition, any invasion of your person or property, simply because you consented to abide by the outcome of the "last election."
Try not to speak of democracy. It is the creed of slaves, when two men argue over whose overseer whips them least.
Democracy is slavery? Far from it. Its not perfect but the best system we have. What would you suggest instead? Comunsim? Anarchy?
FerFAL
I didn't know Mexico had a second Amendment. could you please link to it? A wiki page would be enough.
Thanks
I would also be careful not to confuse a Democratic Republic with "Democracy."
Many, even recently educated students, will claim America is a Democracy. Although it looks that way today, our Constitution created a Democratic Republic. It is the Republic that guarantees the rights of the individual over the collective needs/wants of the majority.
mhelie - You're contradicting youself. First you say "the second amendment has no real meaning" because it's out dated and then you list people who have used personally owned firearms to beat government forces. If the Colonist, Iraqi, Afghani, Mexican gangster, or Assassins who terrorized medieval Arabia didn't own weapons, they wouldn't have been able to achieve any of the gains that they made. And the common citizens of Napolean and Saddam did not have personal weapons, one of the reasons they could be divided and conquered. All in all, you're arguments don't make much sense.
Dear Jack,
I understand what you mean. The point I am making is that people are trying to invoke the second amendment to protect gun ownership. Gun ownership is useful for personal defense against criminals, but in a real war it is not relevant anymore. Road-side bombs are relevant.
So if the second amendment is meant to provide a militia, it doesn't legally protect the ownership of firearms. You need to invoke a new law to defend your rights to personal defense, or you need to just accept that you are an outlaw like the Mexican gangs. If you tell the government that you have the right to protect yourself with a gun because the founding fathers intended to have a militia with regular drills, they will just laugh at you and then arrest you. And if you try to fight off your arrest, they will send the SWAT team to your house and rush you with bulletproof shields and armor, so what is the point?
It is like chess. Some pieces are useful in certain situations, other times they are just dead meat to be taken. You have to play each piece carefully.
One additional note, the Iraqi people had one of the highest rates of personal gun ownership in the world under Saddam. But they were not organized to fight and Saddam kept them that way, so he could always fight them one at a time.
This is one of the reasons that all hell broke loose when Saddam was overthrown.
mhelie,
Afghanistan has demonstrated time and again the effectiveness of small arms against heavy, organized armed forces. A heavily armed guerilla movement with patience and popular support is essentially unbeatable unless you are willing to nuke the entire population.
Ferfal is right. The second amendment is the the only amendment that guarantees itself, and is the defender of the rest of The Constitution. It took me a long time to realize this, being raised in a gun-phobic family in a gun-phobic state.
Cheers,
prat
Everyone keeps talking about Saddam and Iraq. Do you know any Iraqis or are you just drawing conclusions from the BS you read from laptop bombardiers and the MSM?
I know two Iraqis well. Life under Saddam was largely good (one was Shiite, the other Sunni, married to each other) and as long as one stayed out of politics, you were left alone. Iraq before the sanctions had the largest Christian population in the Mideast and a large Jewish population. It had the highest average standard of living in the Arab world. It worked at least as well as most European nation-states. The country had freedom of religion unknown in any other Mideast country.
The reason a well-armed Iraqi populace did not organize and revolt is the same reason a well-armed U.S. populace does not (so far). Most people were largely satisfied and did not see armed revolt as a path to a better life.
Etienne de la Boetie showed, 500 years ago, that all political systems (even dictatorships) ONLY survive as long as the people living there consent. Stalin and Mao, the greatest mass murderers in human history, ruled with the consent of the Russian and Chinese populace, and there's a book written about how Germans saw themselves under Hitler: its title is "They Thought They Were Free."
Think about that the next time you hear that sappy, asinine Lee Greenwald song played on the 4th of July.
Ferfal,
Here's one time I have to disagree with you. America "was" a Constitutional Republic. It was not fonded as a democracy.
Democracy is 3 wolves and a sheep sitting down to decide what to have for supper. In other words, mob-rules.
No politician in American history ever uttered the term "Democracy" until Woodrow Wilson, and he was a racist scum-bag.
David, thanks for making me chuckle due to your comment of that asinine jingle. The bossiness so commonly found in Americans starkly shows through in that song; not asking "please" to God for his favor.
I've had some long conversations with an Iraqi acquantance a few years ago, mostly about his experiences in the war with Iran. He emmigrated to Australia soon after that war.
The last time he was in Iraq was in the mid '90s. He said it had become a very foreign country to him since almost all of the people he talked had become militantly religious, due to embargo induced squalor and daily ariel bombing of the country. It is no wonder why the most recent war there has dragged on for so long.
Hi K,
It's positively embarrassing to see how arrogant are my countrymen, so deep is their immersion in the mythology of "American Exceptionalism." Trying to explain the unreality of this is like explaining the concept of "being wet" to a fish.
My Iraqi friends are physicians who were very successful in the system there until shortly after the Iran/Iraq war. They wisely keep silent when those around them spout the neo-conservative (Trotskyist) line about U.S. military might bringing civilization to the heathen and backward peoples of the world, improving other people's lives one Hellfire Missile at a time.
Benevolence exported from the USA under the wings of aptly-named Predator and Reaper drone aircraft, on their way (with presents!) to another wedding or birthday party near you.
The story of my friends' escape from their home country, passage to the U.S., and the lengths to which they went to resurrect their lives here is worthy of an epic movie directed by Peter Jackson.
Iraqis and afghanis do in fact get in gun fights with US soldiers all the time. They kill US soldiers that way fairly frequently. One of my former NCOs lost 3 men to one sniper, along with 6 other casualties from the same sniper. These all occurred on different days, in the same location, but they still never caught the sniper.
As for the individual who claims democracy was never uttered by an American politician before Woodrow Wilson. I suggest you stop reading whatever you're reading and start reading well thought out material. You might start with the Federalist papers, in which James Madison uses the word democracy dozens of times. That was considerably before Wilson was even born. Not that he was expounding democracy, but he was certainly talking about it, as did Jefferson, Jackson, and probably all of the others as well.
Honestly mate, when someone starts telling you that an ancient (2000 years plus, even back then) topic that was in fact in vogue for a hundred years previous to the revolution (more actually, look at Machievelli) wasn't mentioned by the founding fathers, you should consider whatever source you got that from to be an absolute idiot, and never read another word they write, because they have clearly demonstrated their willingness to talk out of their ass about subject that they know nothing about.
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