WTF? They bought you a cell phone? Who gets to pay for that? Did they buy it for you and then say, "Here you go, we were worried you weren't wasting enough money."?!
Anybody who does something as stupid as that isn't really your friend and I wouldn't waste any time 'losing' it.
/praying for the day when my fellow liberals understand that all civil rights are important.
A few of them do: Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a public safety hazard don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the constitution they don't like.
The notion of a right to arms bespeaks a very different relationship. It says the individual is not simply a helpless bystander in the difficult and dangerous task of ensuring his or her safety. Instead, the citizen is an active participant, an equal partner with the state in ensuring not only his own safety but that of his community.
This is a serious right for serious people. It takes the individual from servile dependency on the state to the status of participating citizen, capable of making intelligent choices in defense of one's life and ultimately one's freedom. This conception of citizenship recognizes that the ultimate civil right is the right to defend one's own life, that without that right all other rights are meaningless, and that without the means of self-defense the right to self-defense is but an empty promise.
Bad, Bad, Bad Logic
You spin various, contrived scenarios of how someone could get into the house and kill us, then turn around and accuse the homeowner of being "stupid and macho" for wanting to protect their television. So which is it? Are they coming to take what they want, or are they coming to kill us?
Except that you're more likely to have your gun pointed at you than you are to point it at someone else. I'd much rather take a 10% forward firing failure rate to reduce the chances of backfire by 100%.
I'd like to see some hard evidence for this silly statement.
I don't know why this is such a hard statistic for people to understand. It's very clear. You're at home asleep in bed. Your gun is sensibly in a drawer somewhere. Did I mention that you're asleep? If someone knows you and wants to kill you (ex-lover, family member, etc), it's trivial to pick your front door lock, calmly get your gun, and kill you.
That's why I have dogs sparky. And if someone wants to kill me, why would they quietly pick my front door, which is not as trivial as you seem to think with proper locks, sneak around my house and then use a loud device likely to attract the attention of the neighbors?
If you have kids, a smart gun is the only way to have a gun in the house anyway. Don't tell me that you're going to unlock your gun cabinet, unlock your ammunition cabinet, and load your firearm while someone is charging at you with a crowbar.
I'm so glad that you are such an expert that you're are qualified to tell everyone else how best to protect their family. What would us poor souls do without people like you? What experience do you have that tells you that this is the only way to have firearms in the house with kids? If you have kids, there are smart safes that are perfectly adequate to store firearms in, but the best place for a firearm is on your person, that way there is no way any kids will be able to access it.
If you really want to protect yourself and your property, install an alarm system and perimeter cameras. Let whoever it is take whatever it is they want, then nail them with 5 - 10 years in jail because they didn't realize you had a hundred disposable electronic cameras monitoring your perimeter.
And if they aren't interested in property? What if they're interested in one of your kids? Or perhaps your wife? What then? Hope the police arrive in time, if your phone line hasn't already been cut? Do you really think it's acceptable to expect an underpaid public servant who wants nothing more than to be able to go home at the end of his shift to come riding to your rescue when you are unwilling to take any responsibility for defending your own life?
Which sadly translates into extreme-right poltics, kids loving things like "the ownership society," failing or refusing to understand what FDR did, etc.
Failing to understand what FDR did? What are you referring to?
Slowing down the recovery from the Great Depression?
Removing our right to plan our own retirement by saddling us with a vicious ponzi scheme masquerading as a "retirement plan"?
Bullying and threatening the Supreme Court to get his schemes declared constitutional?
Inflicting more than 100 new bureaucracies on the American people?
Using the FCC to silence his opposition?
Arresting and imprisoning people for owning gold?
Or doing everything in his power to get us involved in a war to distract the people from his failed policies?
Communism is an economic model that was developed by an economist(surprisingly). He never killed anyone...
Marx never killed anyone only because he never got the chance. He certainly killed enough people indirectly to make up for it though. This is from "After the Revolution." ...it must still use a measure of force, hence governmental measures; if it itself still remains a class and the economic conditions on which the class struggle and the ecistence of classes have not yet disappeared, they must be forcibly removed or transformed, and the process of their transformation must be forcibly accelerated.
The Communist governments of the past century have readily answered the question of what happens to the people who refuse to be "transformed."
By the way, the Soviet Union was starving, torturing and slaughtering its' citizens while Lenin was in power too. Stalin was not unique, he just achieved a higher level of success than those before and after him.
So long as other classes continue to exist, the capitalist class in particular, the proletariat fights it (for with the coming of the proletariat to power, its enemies will not yet have disappeared, the old organization of society will not yet have disappeared), it must still use a measure of force, hence governmental measures; if it itself still remains a class and the economic conditions on which the class struggle and the existence of classes have not yet disappeared, they must be forcibly removed or transformed, and the process of their transformation must be forcibly accelerated.
And of course the title itself
After the Revolution
What Marx was referring to was the period after the revolution was over. And it wasn't just Stalin that was responsible for the atrocities in the Soviet Union (although he did commit the bulk of them there). The gulag existed both before and after Stalin was in power. Likewise, starvation (planned and unplanned) took many more lives. The Killing Fields in Cambodia, China's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Vietnam, North Korea, Eastern Europe, Africa and Afghanistan, the list goes on and on, adding up to nearly 100 million deaths.
Communism is a great idea, it's just too fragile to be in use in a large community
I can agree with the second half of this statement. Small groups of people who wish to live in a small agrarian type community may be able to make it work, but that is not a guarantee. Read the accounts of some of the first European settlers in America. They nearly starved to death the first year because their organization was remarkably similar to a socialist system. Their settlement largely became successful once they were given their own private land and allowed to setup a marketplace for the goods they produced.
And who do you think wrote that book? Try to read the "real" communist books, for example "Das Kapital" by Marx. That's a book that talks about communism the way it's meant to be, not what Stalin and his accomplices made of it. Ever read "The Animal Farm" and understood what it was talking about? Guess not, or you wouldn't have posted the article this way.
The book was written by a group of authors, the majority of whom were all former Communists. I've read some Marx, and I found him to be wholly unconvincing, not to mention a raving anti-semite.
So long as other classes continue to exist, the capitalist class in particular, the proletariat fights it (for with the coming of the proletariat to power, its enemies will not yet have disappeared, the old organization of society will not yet have disappeared), it must still use a measure of force, hence governmental measures; if it itself still remains a class and the economic conditions on which the class struggle and the existence of classes have not yet disappeared, they must be forcibly removed or transformed, and the process of their transformation must be forcibly accelerated.
After the Revolution
While Marx never specifies what happens to the people who refuse to be transformed, his cronies in the past century have been all too eager to demonstrate what happens to those poor souls.
Between genocide, the denial of basic freedoms and overall suppression of the majority of the population, the followers of Marx have faithfully followed his ideals. What is the result? A pile of corpses like the world has never seen before.
I'm well aware that Europe has democratic governments. Which is why I stated that you let your governments trample all over you. It's truly sad. But what more can you expect from a group of countries that have foolishly embraced socialism to such a degree?
Actually Stalin is only one chapter in the failure of socialism/communism/fascism (take your pick they're all branches on the same rotten tree). China, Cambodia, Germany and Russia are all great examples of the absolute failure of the Communist ideals. Differences in implementation, but the one thing they all had in common was they agreed with Marx that genocide was an integral part of implementing a communist system.
Try to think more along the lines of Linus Torvalds and his GNU/Linux system. That is what Communism get you.
So you're saying that Microsoft is right, and the GPL is Communist? Seriously, Linux is basically a copy of an OS that was invented in the US over 25 years ago. The BSD OSes have the same roots and are at least equal to if not superior to Linux. Besides, someone volunteering their time to contribute to a project like Linux is nothing like trying to run a nation-state. Because contributing to a GPL project is voluntary. And no GPL project has ever resulted in genocide. Communism gets you stagnation, starvation, gulags and genocide.
artists, musicians, novelists, scientists
And many people from all those categories and many more have fled to the US over the past 200 or so years for the chance at even greater opportunity and freedom than what they had in Europe.
You speak of history? Read the Black Book of Communism sometime and then tell me if you still think Communism is such a hot idea.
make it sound like the Japanese made a preemptive strike on urban suburbia - not the defensive tactic they actual employ.
Whenever I hear this justification, of how the American troops were inocently sitting by when they were attacked, and how the nuke was the only justifiable counter attack.
Let's look at it from the Japanese perspective instead: The Americans, a nation whose culture and political status conflicts with your current one, has just moved most of, if not all of it's Pacific naval fleet within striking distance of your homeland. Now, you could sit by and wait for the attack, or strike early and strike hard. What would you do?
And you make it sound like Japan was simply a peace loving country that had no interest in doing anything other than defending itself. Pick up any decent history of WWII and actually read it and you'll discover how wrong you are. By 1941 the Japanese had occupied French Indochina, a good portion of China and in less than 4 months slaughtered nearly 400,000 civilians in Nanking.
Now, I can understand why the Americans dropped the nuke, their pacific forces had been landed a shattering blow by the attack, and the rest of their military was already stretched a little thin. So, in order to stop a possibly devistating blow against America itself, the nuke was dropped.
The level of ignorance displayed here is astounding. Yes the American military was badly hurt by the attack, but it was not a crippling blow. Not a single American aircraft carrier was in port at the time, and they were the primary target of the Japanese attack. In fact, of the 18 ships damaged or sunk during the attack 8 of them were back in functional condition by February of 1942, including the battleships Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Tennessee; cruisers Honolulu, Helena, and Raleigh and the destroyers Helm and Shaw.
You also imply that the bombs were dropped in order to prevent the defeat of the US in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Again, this is completely inaccurate. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed over three years later. By that time the US most definitely was not spread thin and was in no way in danger of losing the war. However, we were in danger of suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties in the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands. The loss of life inflicted upon the Japanese would have been even higher. Do a seach on Operation Olympic and Operation Ketsu-go for details on the plans of both sides.
The battles leading up to that point give a clear indication that the Japanese would not have given up willingly in the face of an invasion. The clearest indication of this comes from the battles on Iwo Jima and Okinawa as well as the mass suicides of Japanese civilians on Saipan.
The Americans, a nation whose culture and political status conflicts with your current one, has just moved most of, if not all of it's Pacific naval fleet within striking distance of your homeland
This is just laughable. It is 3,850 miles from Honolulu to Tokyo, and it is only 3,000 miles from New York to Hamburg, Germany. So did the Germans start WW II because they were threatened by the Atlantic fleet? After all, they were closer to American naval power than Japan was, by nearly a thousand miles.
I think you also missed my point, which is that the restrictions on legal gun ownership do not affect the crime rate. The differing crime rates are due to other factors.
As for handing out guns to just anyone, try going into a gun shop (if you live in the US) and ask the person behind the counter what it takes to buy a gun. Currently (some states have more stringent restrictions) you have to fill out two separate forms, attest to the fact that you are not a felon or for any other reason not barred from owning a gun, submit to a background check and only then can you actually walk out with a firearm. I recently moved to Texas, which means that my Indiana carry permit is not recognized here. I have to wait six months after establishing a residency before I can even apply for a concealed carry permit. In order to even apply I have to take a class, pass the qualification course and of course submit to yet another background check.
Disclaimer: Don't actually try this next idea.
Walk into a gun shop and tell the one of the employees that you'd like to buy a gun, but then let on that you're a felon or for some other reason not allowed to own a firearm. Watch how quickly they will decline to sell you anything. Some might even throw you out the door on your ass.
Of course it would be wonderful to discover the cause of crime and a magic quick-fix as well. But in the meantime, I prefer to have the means at hand to provide for my own protection rather than depend on a potentially slow or non-existent police response.
Of course you've neglected to mention Switzerland. Also, Australia and the UK both have higher violent crime than the US, despite having passed some very draconian gun laws and confiscating the majority of legally owned firearms. Yet the UK is awash in cheap illegal firearms. Gun control does not reduce crime.
I don't think you read what I said. I said that it makes the situation less likely to occur because concealed carry laws have been shown to reduce violent crime. To a criminal, the thought that their victim might be armed acts as a strong deterrent (which is also why that violent crimes go down but burglaries at unoccupied homes tend to go up when these laws are passed, it's safer for the criminal you see.)
I don't know the specifics of what happened to you, and I don't consider the contents of my wallet to be worth risking my life for either. But in many situations a firearm in the hands of a civilian who has taken the time to get proper training and practices on a regular basis does make that person safer.
I'll repeat what I said in my first post, since you didn't bother to read it. It does have a tendency to make you safer, because in a situation where your life or the life of a family is in danger it at least gives you a fighting chance. At least it's a better option than getting on your knees and begging for your life.
A gun is not a magic wand that instantly makes you immune to crime, but in well-trained hands it can be an effective tool to keep you and your family safe.
I'm curious. How does having a concealed firearm stop someone from robbing you at gun point and then shooting you in the face?
For several reasons. One, it makes a situation like that less likely to occur in the first place. States that enact shall-issue concealed carry laws commonly see a noticeable drop in violent crime. Criminals are basically cowards (much like bullies) they prefer victims who are unarmed and unwilling to fight back.
Second, it at least gives you a fighting chance. If you're unarmed robbed at gunpoint and then told that you're going to die, what options do you have? Begging for you life?
If you live in America then go to your local public library and look through a couple of issues of American Rifleman. Every library I've been in has a subscription, so it shouldn't be difficult to find. Look at the section entitled "The Armed Citizen", I believe is the title. Every month they run newspaper stories from around the nation of people who successfully used a firearm to defend themselves and/or their family. Perhaps that will answer your question.
It must be because America is so religious. 70% of Americans go to Church once a week, compared to 2.5% of Britains. This almost wholly explains the different attitudes in each country towards self defense, rehabillitation and crime deterrance. It is Old Testament values and paranoia (America) versus modern rationalism (Britain).
All that so called rationalism (and all those cameras and gun control) has produced the second most crime-ridden nations in the world. So much for your Socialist/Fascist utopia.
In hindsight we probably shouldn't have rescued the UK from Hitler in the first place, since it turned out to be a waste of time. You're voluntarily turning your country into a modern day Nazi Germany.
From the article:
We have a huge fear of crime and we have no totalitarian past like almost all the other countries in Europe."
Well that seems about to change. The UK seems hell bent on proving Orwell right, although he was off by a few years.
The democratic US has committed some pretty heinous atrocities in its time. No Gun Ri? My Lai?
You picked some pretty poor examples there. While both were tragedies, neither of those incidents were a result of an official US Government policy. Those soldiers were not acting under orders any higher than their immediate commanders and at No Gun Ri an investigation was unable to determine whether or not the troops were acting under any orders at all. Furthermore, the commander at My Lai was convicted of murder and spent time in prison. At Tiananmen, the soldiers were acting under orders of the government.
As for the massacre of Indians, yes that was a deplorable chapter in American history, and there is no justification for it. But I never claimed democracy was perfect, just a hell of a lot better than the alternatives. Arming Iraq? The sale of arms between countries goes on all the time. France also sold a lot of equipment to Iraq and they also received a lot from Russia as well. China is currently selling missile technology to Iran as well. I don't see how any of this could be called an atrocity.
No, the Chinese are not afraid of protesting--farmers, miners, laid off workers have been doing so for some time.
So now you're saying that the Chinese people aren't happy with their government? I'll repeat my earlier question. If the Chinese people are so happy with their government and the Communist Party in general, why does the government have to work so hard at suppressing dissenting opinions and blocking their citizens from international news sources?
Yes, what the Chinese gov't did at Tiananmen was brutal. I'm not debating that. Given the situation, given the loss of life that would have resulted from political chaos, I found it a nessesary evil.
I'm sure that Hitler considered it a necessary evil to divert all those resources from the war effort to building concentration camps to get rid of all those Jews too. Communists/Fascists/Socialists are all the same, more than happy to argue that the ends justify the means. No matter how gruesome the means may be. Trying to claim that slaughtering 3000 of your own citizens is necessary to prevent "potential" political unrest and the possibility of further loss of life is dishonest at best and disgusting under any circumstances.
The biggest killer in Chinese history is instability. Mao brought instability in a big way, and millions died.
Mao also helped bring Communism, which historically is a much bigger killer. Hitler was second-rate compared to the types of vicious thugs and butchers that are attracted to the Communist philosophy.
For the same reason, I think Tiananmen was an unfortunate neccessity
A peaceful student protest broken up by armored assault, resulting in an estimated 3000 deaths was an unfortunate necessity? I don't care what they were saying, that level of response by the Chicoms was unjustified. And the type of individual that can swallow a justification like that is very sick indeed.
As for the Chinese not willing to critisize their gov't, go ride in a taxi--you'll hear more four-letter words about the gov't than you'd ever want to hear. They're not afraid to speak up against their gov't, but they honestly don't give a damn about human rights the way we westerners expect them to
There's a big difference between uttering a few curse words towards the government and an active campaigning for political change. And if the Chinese are so happy, why does the Communist Party have to resort to such draconian measures in order to remain in power? If the Chinese people were truly happy and approved of the work the Part was doing, then there wouldn't be any problem with opposition parties and free elections. But Communism doesn't work that way, does it? It's either their way or the strong possibility of ether a lengthy prison term or a bullet in the head.
Not a perfect society, that's an understatement! According to Black Book of Communism the Chicoms have racked up a death toll of 65 million people in the short time they've been in power.
but because I honestly think they're doing the best that they can do
They certainly did the best they could to top Hitler's accomplishments, and they succeeded too. You have to hand it to them, when they set out to accomplish something, they do it in a big way.
Yes, human rights are a problem, but China is improving. I've lived in Beijing, and never heard one person complaining about human rights. They complain about corruption, wealth disparity, pollution, taxes, getting into a good school, stuff that people all over the world worry about. And most important, they think the Communist Party is doing a pretty good job, all things considered
Did it ever occur to you that a lot of people don't complain simply because they're afraid too? The Chinese gov is not afraid to imprison/execute dissidents and anyone else who complains too loudly. That has a tendency to stifle any criticism don't you think? Or perhaps you're too young to remember Tiananmen Square?
I'm not questioning your choice of where to live, I was questioning your assertion that Europe is more free than the US.
As far as traveling and seeing the world goes, I was talking about Europe and you mention ONE COUNTRY you have been to in Europe.
Correction: I mentioned ONE COUNTRY where I lived for two years, there's a big difference between playing tourist hopping through Europa for a couple of weeks and living there. But that's beside the point, I was not trying to impress you with the number of countries I've visited/lived in. I mentioned that merely to prevent someone from thinking I was sitting here in the US claiming that it's the greatest place to live without ever having traveled outside of the US borders.
As far as Japan goes, it's not just damn expensive, it's unbelievably expensive, and crowded. Thailand was much more enjoyable, the people were much friendlier.
Well, I think it's irresponsible NOT to put up cameras to allow criminals to be more easily identified and caught.
The problem comes down to where do you draw the line? You think it's irresponsible to follow the UK's lead and place cameras everywhere in public. What about the next person who that thinks it's irresponsible to give criminals legal representation? Or that there should be safeguards against unreasonable search and seizure? What about the FBI's carnivore? Wouldn't it be irresponsible to not hang one of those boxes off every isp so that we can catch all those child pornographers and terrorists out there? Where does it end? Nearly any draconian act can be justified in the name of "reducing crime."
It has to be a balancing act between reasonable methods of crime control and the citizens rights. To me, hanging that many cameras in public areas in order to catch a few more criminals, does not justify the gross violation of the rest of the citizenry.
One more thing, all those cameras don't seem to be working. According to the International Crime Victims Survey, Australia and the UK suffer the most violent crimes. There's an article about it
Now if I wanted to play games with numbers I could probably cook something up that would show (falsely) crime had been increasing along with the number of cameras that go up in public places. But I don't play those kind of games, we have enough nutcases doing that here already.
By "first step" you mean there is a second step that is comming. This assumes that there is some dark force (a bunch of people) that want to push a 1984-esque society. In countries with
functioning democracy, this won't happen. If such a society comes, the cameras that are actually
used for spying and controlling people follow right after. As long as there is a non-hostile
government, cameras are a good thing.
Are you familiar with the method of boiling a frog? If you throw a frog in a pot of hot water it will leap right out. But if you put a frog in a pot of room temperature water and slowly increase the heat, he will happily swim around until his death.
A 1984-type society would need a camera network similar to the one in Britain simply to remain in power and keep people in line. So in order to bring about a 1984 scenario, the cameras would already need to be in place. Ideally, put there with the approval of the citizenry for the "crisis" of the moment.
These things most often occur incrementally. After all, Hitler didn't simply take over Germany one day and then start butchering Jews the next. The Holocaust began in small incremental steps. There may be no dark force or organized plan to bring about a 1984 situation, but things like these cameras make it easier for it to come about. And if the citizenry has already become accustomed and comfortable with these small restrictions of freedom, they are less likely to protest or resist large-scale restrictions further on down the line.
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."
-George Washington
You do realize that most of Europe is more free than the USA
It took me a couple of minutes to convince myself you simply weren't trolling and actually believed this garbage. I spent two years living in Germany and traveled extensively while I was there and I know no such thing. Between my time in Germany and more than three years living in the Marianas islands and traveling throughout Australia, Korea, Japan, and Thailand I can safely say that you are full of sh*t. Apart from Switzerland there is no place on I would rather live than the USA. And the only advantage Switzerland has over the US is their firearms laws (or lack thereof).
I also suspect that if p2p does become successful, it will be part of society as a whole becoming less selfish, or the fact that individuality becomes less important to us. Alternatively, all content could be copied to the peering server that a user connects to, thereby allowing for the user to become unaware of the part they have played in the transfer of material at no/little cost to themselves.
I think technical solutions are more likely than a population of 6 billion people deciding individuality is over-rated. Maybe I'm wrong....
That's funny, that's the second time in as many days that I've seen the statement that individuality is overrated. So you're suggesting that in order to make ourselves free we need to become mindless drones? WTF? Why not just try to convince us that War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strength.
Slashdot Mirror
only if its cloud generated. use on prem encryption solutions.
That woosh you heard was the joke clearing your head by a good 20,000 ft.
Apparently you can stop the signal.
WTF? They bought you a cell phone? Who gets to pay for that? Did they buy it for you and then say, "Here you go, we were worried you weren't wasting enough money."?!
Anybody who does something as stupid as that isn't really your friend and I wouldn't waste any time 'losing' it.
/praying for the day when my fellow liberals understand that all civil rights are important.
c le_detail.asp/
A few of them do:
Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a public safety hazard don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the constitution they don't like.
--Alan Dershowitz
http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.17057/arti
A Liberal Democrat's Lament
By Robert Cottrol
The notion of a right to arms bespeaks a very different relationship. It says the individual is not simply a helpless bystander in the difficult and dangerous task of ensuring his or her safety. Instead, the citizen is an active participant, an equal partner with the state in ensuring not only his own safety but that of his community.
This is a serious right for serious people. It takes the individual from servile dependency on the state to the status of participating citizen, capable of making intelligent choices in defense of one's life and ultimately one's freedom. This conception of citizenship recognizes that the ultimate civil right is the right to defend one's own life, that without that right all other rights are meaningless, and that without the means of self-defense the right to self-defense is but an empty promise.
Bad, Bad, Bad Logic
You spin various, contrived scenarios of how someone could get into the house and kill us, then turn around and accuse the homeowner of being "stupid and macho" for wanting to protect their television. So which is it? Are they coming to take what they want, or are they coming to kill us?
Except that you're more likely to have your gun pointed at you than you are to point it at someone else. I'd much rather take a 10% forward firing failure rate to reduce the chances of backfire by 100%.
I'd like to see some hard evidence for this silly statement.
I don't know why this is such a hard statistic for people to understand. It's very clear. You're at home asleep in bed. Your gun is sensibly in a drawer somewhere. Did I mention that you're asleep? If someone knows you and wants to kill you (ex-lover, family member, etc), it's trivial to pick your front door lock, calmly get your gun, and kill you.
That's why I have dogs sparky. And if someone wants to kill me, why would they quietly pick my front door, which is not as trivial as you seem to think with proper locks, sneak around my house and then use a loud device likely to attract the attention of the neighbors?
If you have kids, a smart gun is the only way to have a gun in the house anyway. Don't tell me that you're going to unlock your gun cabinet, unlock your ammunition cabinet, and load your firearm while someone is charging at you with a crowbar.
I'm so glad that you are such an expert that you're are qualified to tell everyone else how best to protect their family. What would us poor souls do without people like you? What experience do you have that tells you that this is the only way to have firearms in the house with kids? If you have kids, there are smart safes that are perfectly adequate to store firearms in, but the best place for a firearm is on your person, that way there is no way any kids will be able to access it.
If you really want to protect yourself and your property, install an alarm system and perimeter cameras. Let whoever it is take whatever it is they want, then nail them with 5 - 10 years in jail because they didn't realize you had a hundred disposable electronic cameras monitoring your perimeter.
And if they aren't interested in property? What if they're interested in one of your kids? Or perhaps your wife? What then? Hope the police arrive in time, if your phone line hasn't already been cut? Do you really think it's acceptable to expect an underpaid public servant who wants nothing more than to be able to go home at the end of his shift to come riding to your rescue when you are unwilling to take any responsibility for defending your own life?
Which sadly translates into extreme-right poltics, kids loving things like "the ownership society," failing or refusing to understand what FDR did, etc.
Failing to understand what FDR did? What are you referring to?
Slowing down the recovery from the Great Depression?
Removing our right to plan our own retirement by saddling us with a vicious ponzi scheme masquerading as a "retirement plan"?
Bullying and threatening the Supreme Court to get his schemes declared constitutional?
Inflicting more than 100 new bureaucracies on the American people?
Using the FCC to silence his opposition?
Arresting and imprisoning people for owning gold?
Or doing everything in his power to get us involved in a war to distract the people from his failed policies?
Communism is an economic model that was developed by an economist(surprisingly). He never killed anyone...
...it must still use a measure of force, hence governmental measures; if it itself still remains a class and the economic conditions on which the class struggle and the ecistence of classes have not yet disappeared, they must be forcibly removed or transformed, and the process of their transformation must be forcibly accelerated.
Marx never killed anyone only because he never got the chance. He certainly killed enough people indirectly to make up for it though. This is from "After the Revolution."
The Communist governments of the past century have readily answered the question of what happens to the people who refuse to be "transformed."
By the way, the Soviet Union was starving, torturing and slaughtering its' citizens while Lenin was in power too. Stalin was not unique, he just achieved a higher level of success than those before and after him.
Read the quote again.
So long as other classes continue to exist, the capitalist class in particular, the proletariat fights it (for with the coming of the proletariat to power, its enemies will not yet have disappeared, the old organization of society will not yet have disappeared), it must still use a measure of force, hence governmental measures; if it itself still remains a class and the economic conditions on which the class struggle and the existence of classes have not yet disappeared, they must be forcibly removed or transformed, and the process of their transformation must be forcibly accelerated.
And of course the title itself
After the Revolution
What Marx was referring to was the period after the revolution was over. And it wasn't just Stalin that was responsible for the atrocities in the Soviet Union (although he did commit the bulk of them there). The gulag existed both before and after Stalin was in power. Likewise, starvation (planned and unplanned) took many more lives. The Killing Fields in Cambodia, China's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Vietnam, North Korea, Eastern Europe, Africa and Afghanistan, the list goes on and on, adding up to nearly 100 million deaths.
Communism is a great idea, it's just too fragile to be in use in a large community
I can agree with the second half of this statement. Small groups of people who wish to live in a small agrarian type community may be able to make it work, but that is not a guarantee. Read the accounts of some of the first European settlers in America. They nearly starved to death the first year because their organization was remarkably similar to a socialist system. Their settlement largely became successful once they were given their own private land and allowed to setup a marketplace for the goods they produced.
And who do you think wrote that book? Try to read the "real" communist books, for example "Das Kapital" by Marx. That's a book that talks about communism the way it's meant to be, not what Stalin and his accomplices made of it. Ever read "The Animal Farm" and understood what it was talking about? Guess not, or you wouldn't have posted the article this way.
The book was written by a group of authors, the majority of whom were all former Communists. I've read some Marx, and I found him to be wholly unconvincing, not to mention a raving anti-semite.
So long as other classes continue to exist, the capitalist class in particular, the proletariat fights it (for with the coming of the proletariat to power, its enemies will not yet have disappeared, the old organization of society will not yet have disappeared), it must still use a measure of force, hence governmental measures; if it itself still remains a class and the economic conditions on which the class struggle and the existence of classes have not yet disappeared, they must be forcibly removed or transformed, and the process of their transformation must be forcibly accelerated.
After the Revolution
While Marx never specifies what happens to the people who refuse to be transformed, his cronies in the past century have been all too eager to demonstrate what happens to those poor souls.
Between genocide, the denial of basic freedoms and overall suppression of the majority of the population, the followers of Marx have faithfully followed his ideals. What is the result? A pile of corpses like the world has never seen before.
Actually Stalin is only one chapter in the failure of socialism/communism/fascism (take your pick they're all branches on the same rotten tree). China, Cambodia, Germany and Russia are all great examples of the absolute failure of the Communist ideals. Differences in implementation, but the one thing they all had in common was they agreed with Marx that genocide was an integral part of implementing a communist system.
Try to think more along the lines of Linus Torvalds and his GNU/Linux system. That is what Communism get you.
So you're saying that Microsoft is right, and the GPL is Communist? Seriously, Linux is basically a copy of an OS that was invented in the US over 25 years ago. The BSD OSes have the same roots and are at least equal to if not superior to Linux. Besides, someone volunteering their time to contribute to a project like Linux is nothing like trying to run a nation-state. Because contributing to a GPL project is voluntary. And no GPL project has ever resulted in genocide. Communism gets you stagnation, starvation, gulags and genocide.
artists, musicians, novelists, scientists
And many people from all those categories and many more have fled to the US over the past 200 or so years for the chance at even greater opportunity and freedom than what they had in Europe.
You speak of history? Read the Black Book of Communism sometime and then tell me if you still think Communism is such a hot idea.
make it sound like the Japanese made a preemptive strike on urban suburbia - not the defensive tactic they actual employ.
Whenever I hear this justification, of how the American troops were inocently sitting by when they were attacked, and how the nuke was the only justifiable counter attack.
Let's look at it from the Japanese perspective instead: The Americans, a nation whose culture and political status conflicts with your current one, has just moved most of, if not all of it's Pacific naval fleet within striking distance of your homeland. Now, you could sit by and wait for the attack, or strike early and strike hard. What would you do?
And you make it sound like Japan was simply a peace loving country that had no interest in doing anything other than defending itself. Pick up any decent history of WWII and actually read it and you'll discover how wrong you are. By 1941 the Japanese had occupied French Indochina, a good portion of China and in less than 4 months slaughtered nearly 400,000 civilians in Nanking.
Now, I can understand why the Americans dropped the nuke, their pacific forces had been landed a shattering blow by the attack, and the rest of their military was already stretched a little thin. So, in order to stop a possibly devistating blow against America itself, the nuke was dropped.
The level of ignorance displayed here is astounding. Yes the American military was badly hurt by the attack, but it was not a crippling blow. Not a single American aircraft carrier was in port at the time, and they were the primary target of the Japanese attack. In fact, of the 18 ships damaged or sunk during the attack 8 of them were back in functional condition by February of 1942, including the battleships Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Tennessee; cruisers Honolulu, Helena, and Raleigh and the destroyers Helm and Shaw.
You also imply that the bombs were dropped in order to prevent the defeat of the US in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Again, this is completely inaccurate. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed over three years later. By that time the US most definitely was not spread thin and was in no way in danger of losing the war. However, we were in danger of suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties in the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands. The loss of life inflicted upon the Japanese would have been even higher. Do a seach on Operation Olympic and Operation Ketsu-go for details on the plans of both sides.
The battles leading up to that point give a clear indication that the Japanese would not have given up willingly in the face of an invasion. The clearest indication of this comes from the battles on Iwo Jima and Okinawa as well as the mass suicides of Japanese civilians on Saipan.
The Americans, a nation whose culture and political status conflicts with your current one, has just moved most of, if not all of it's Pacific naval fleet within striking distance of your homeland
This is just laughable. It is 3,850 miles from Honolulu to Tokyo, and it is only 3,000 miles from New York to Hamburg, Germany. So did the Germans start WW II because they were threatened by the Atlantic fleet? After all, they were closer to American naval power than Japan was, by nearly a thousand miles.
As for handing out guns to just anyone, try going into a gun shop (if you live in the US) and ask the person behind the counter what it takes to buy a gun. Currently (some states have more stringent restrictions) you have to fill out two separate forms, attest to the fact that you are not a felon or for any other reason not barred from owning a gun, submit to a background check and only then can you actually walk out with a firearm. I recently moved to Texas, which means that my Indiana carry permit is not recognized here. I have to wait six months after establishing a residency before I can even apply for a concealed carry permit. In order to even apply I have to take a class, pass the qualification course and of course submit to yet another background check.
Disclaimer: Don't actually try this next idea.
Walk into a gun shop and tell the one of the employees that you'd like to buy a gun, but then let on that you're a felon or for some other reason not allowed to own a firearm. Watch how quickly they will decline to sell you anything. Some might even throw you out the door on your ass.
Of course it would be wonderful to discover the cause of crime and a magic quick-fix as well. But in the meantime, I prefer to have the means at hand to provide for my own protection rather than depend on a potentially slow or non-existent police response.
Of course you've neglected to mention Switzerland. Also, Australia and the UK both have higher violent crime than the US, despite having passed some very draconian gun laws and confiscating the majority of legally owned firearms. Yet the UK is awash in cheap illegal firearms. Gun control does not reduce crime.
I don't think you read what I said. I said that it makes the situation less likely to occur because concealed carry laws have been shown to reduce violent crime. To a criminal, the thought that their victim might be armed acts as a strong deterrent (which is also why that violent crimes go down but burglaries at unoccupied homes tend to go up when these laws are passed, it's safer for the criminal you see.)
I don't know the specifics of what happened to you, and I don't consider the contents of my wallet to be worth risking my life for either. But in many situations a firearm in the hands of a civilian who has taken the time to get proper training and practices on a regular basis does make that person safer.
I'll repeat what I said in my first post, since you didn't bother to read it. It does have a tendency to make you safer, because in a situation where your life or the life of a family is in danger it at least gives you a fighting chance. At least it's a better option than getting on your knees and begging for your life.
A gun is not a magic wand that instantly makes you immune to crime, but in well-trained hands it can be an effective tool to keep you and your family safe.
I'm curious. How does having a concealed firearm stop someone from robbing you at gun point and then shooting you in the face?
For several reasons. One, it makes a situation like that less likely to occur in the first place. States that enact shall-issue concealed carry laws commonly see a noticeable drop in violent crime. Criminals are basically cowards (much like bullies) they prefer victims who are unarmed and unwilling to fight back.
Second, it at least gives you a fighting chance. If you're unarmed robbed at gunpoint and then told that you're going to die, what options do you have? Begging for you life?
If you live in America then go to your local public library and look through a couple of issues of American Rifleman. Every library I've been in has a subscription, so it shouldn't be difficult to find. Look at the section entitled "The Armed Citizen", I believe is the title. Every month they run newspaper stories from around the nation of people who successfully used a firearm to defend themselves and/or their family. Perhaps that will answer your question.
It must be because America is so religious. 70% of Americans go to Church once a week, compared to 2.5% of Britains. This almost wholly explains the different attitudes in each country towards self defense, rehabillitation and crime deterrance. It is Old Testament values and paranoia (America) versus modern rationalism (Britain).
All that so called rationalism (and all those cameras and gun control) has produced the second most crime-ridden nations in the world. So much for your Socialist/Fascist utopia.
In hindsight we probably shouldn't have rescued the UK from Hitler in the first place, since it turned out to be a waste of time. You're voluntarily turning your country into a modern day Nazi Germany.
From the article:
We have a huge fear of crime and we have no totalitarian past like almost all the other countries in Europe."
Well that seems about to change. The UK seems hell bent on proving Orwell right, although he was off by a few years.
It may just be a sea story, I heard the same basic story a few years back, but I was told it was on the Independence.
The democratic US has committed some pretty heinous atrocities in its time. No Gun Ri? My Lai?
You picked some pretty poor examples there. While both were tragedies, neither of those incidents were a result of an official US Government policy. Those soldiers were not acting under orders any higher than their immediate commanders and at No Gun Ri an investigation was unable to determine whether or not the troops were acting under any orders at all. Furthermore, the commander at My Lai was convicted of murder and spent time in prison. At Tiananmen, the soldiers were acting under orders of the government.
As for the massacre of Indians, yes that was a deplorable chapter in American history, and there is no justification for it. But I never claimed democracy was perfect, just a hell of a lot better than the alternatives. Arming Iraq? The sale of arms between countries goes on all the time. France also sold a lot of equipment to Iraq and they also received a lot from Russia as well. China is currently selling missile technology to Iran as well. I don't see how any of this could be called an atrocity.
No, the Chinese are not afraid of protesting--farmers, miners, laid off workers have been doing so for some time.
So now you're saying that the Chinese people aren't happy with their government? I'll repeat my earlier question. If the Chinese people are so happy with their government and the Communist Party in general, why does the government have to work so hard at suppressing dissenting opinions and blocking their citizens from international news sources?
Yes, what the Chinese gov't did at Tiananmen was brutal. I'm not debating that. Given the situation, given the loss of life that would have resulted from political chaos, I found it a nessesary evil.
I'm sure that Hitler considered it a necessary evil to divert all those resources from the war effort to building concentration camps to get rid of all those Jews too. Communists/Fascists/Socialists are all the same, more than happy to argue that the ends justify the means. No matter how gruesome the means may be. Trying to claim that slaughtering 3000 of your own citizens is necessary to prevent "potential" political unrest and the possibility of further loss of life is dishonest at best and disgusting under any circumstances.
Actually that's pretty damn funny. I'm sure it would have saved a lot of people a few minutes of their day if Katz had simply posted something like
Substitute standard whiny liberal claptrap here
Sure would have saved me from reading more garbage.
The biggest killer in Chinese history is instability. Mao brought instability in a big way, and millions died.
Mao also helped bring Communism, which historically is a much bigger killer. Hitler was second-rate compared to the types of vicious thugs and butchers that are attracted to the Communist philosophy.
For the same reason, I think Tiananmen was an unfortunate neccessity
A peaceful student protest broken up by armored assault, resulting in an estimated 3000 deaths was an unfortunate necessity? I don't care what they were saying, that level of response by the Chicoms was unjustified. And the type of individual that can swallow a justification like that is very sick indeed.
As for the Chinese not willing to critisize their gov't, go ride in a taxi--you'll hear more four-letter words about the gov't than you'd ever want to hear. They're not afraid to speak up against their gov't, but they honestly don't give a damn about human rights the way we westerners expect them to
There's a big difference between uttering a few curse words towards the government and an active campaigning for political change. And if the Chinese are so happy, why does the Communist Party have to resort to such draconian measures in order to remain in power? If the Chinese people were truly happy and approved of the work the Part was doing, then there wouldn't be any problem with opposition parties and free elections. But Communism doesn't work that way, does it? It's either their way or the strong possibility of ether a lengthy prison term or a bullet in the head.
not because they're a perfect utopian society,
Not a perfect society, that's an understatement! According to Black Book of Communism the Chicoms have racked up a death toll of 65 million people in the short time they've been in power.
but because I honestly think they're doing the best that they can do
They certainly did the best they could to top Hitler's accomplishments, and they succeeded too. You have to hand it to them, when they set out to accomplish something, they do it in a big way.
Yes, human rights are a problem, but China is improving. I've lived in Beijing, and never heard one person complaining about human rights. They complain about corruption, wealth disparity, pollution, taxes, getting into a good school, stuff that people all over the world worry about. And most important, they think the Communist Party is doing a pretty good job, all things considered
Did it ever occur to you that a lot of people don't complain simply because they're afraid too? The Chinese gov is not afraid to imprison/execute dissidents and anyone else who complains too loudly. That has a tendency to stifle any criticism don't you think? Or perhaps you're too young to remember Tiananmen Square?
I'm not questioning your choice of where to live, I was questioning your assertion that Europe is more free than the US.
As far as traveling and seeing the world goes, I was talking about Europe and you mention ONE COUNTRY you have been to in Europe.
Correction: I mentioned ONE COUNTRY where I lived for two years, there's a big difference between playing tourist hopping through Europa for a couple of weeks and living there. But that's beside the point, I was not trying to impress you with the number of countries I've visited/lived in. I mentioned that merely to prevent someone from thinking I was sitting here in the US claiming that it's the greatest place to live without ever having traveled outside of the US borders.
As far as Japan goes, it's not just damn expensive, it's unbelievably expensive, and crowded. Thailand was much more enjoyable, the people were much friendlier.
Well, I think it's irresponsible NOT to put up cameras to allow criminals to be more easily identified and caught.
The problem comes down to where do you draw the line? You think it's irresponsible to follow the UK's lead and place cameras everywhere in public. What about the next person who that thinks it's irresponsible to give criminals legal representation? Or that there should be safeguards against unreasonable search and seizure? What about the FBI's carnivore? Wouldn't it be irresponsible to not hang one of those boxes off every isp so that we can catch all those child pornographers and terrorists out there? Where does it end? Nearly any draconian act can be justified in the name of "reducing crime."
It has to be a balancing act between reasonable methods of crime control and the citizens rights. To me, hanging that many cameras in public areas in order to catch a few more criminals, does not justify the gross violation of the rest of the citizenry.
One more thing, all those cameras don't seem to be working. According to the International Crime Victims Survey, Australia and the UK suffer the most violent crimes. There's an article about it
here
and here
Now if I wanted to play games with numbers I could probably cook something up that would show (falsely) crime had been increasing along with the number of cameras that go up in public places. But I don't play those kind of games, we have enough nutcases doing that here already.
By "first step" you mean there is a second step that is comming. This assumes that there is some dark force (a bunch of people) that want to push a 1984-esque society. In countries with functioning democracy, this won't happen. If such a society comes, the cameras that are actually used for spying and controlling people follow right after. As long as there is a non-hostile government, cameras are a good thing.
Are you familiar with the method of boiling a frog? If you throw a frog in a pot of hot water it will leap right out. But if you put a frog in a pot of room temperature water and slowly increase the heat, he will happily swim around until his death.
A 1984-type society would need a camera network similar to the one in Britain simply to remain in power and keep people in line. So in order to bring about a 1984 scenario, the cameras would already need to be in place. Ideally, put there with the approval of the citizenry for the "crisis" of the moment.
These things most often occur incrementally. After all, Hitler didn't simply take over Germany one day and then start butchering Jews the next. The Holocaust began in small incremental steps. There may be no dark force or organized plan to bring about a 1984 situation, but things like these cameras make it easier for it to come about. And if the citizenry has already become accustomed and comfortable with these small restrictions of freedom, they are less likely to protest or resist large-scale restrictions further on down the line.
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." -George Washington
You do realize that most of Europe is more free than the USA
It took me a couple of minutes to convince myself you simply weren't trolling and actually believed this garbage. I spent two years living in Germany and traveled extensively while I was there and I know no such thing. Between my time in Germany and more than three years living in the Marianas islands and traveling throughout Australia, Korea, Japan, and Thailand I can safely say that you are full of sh*t. Apart from Switzerland there is no place on I would rather live than the USA. And the only advantage Switzerland has over the US is their firearms laws (or lack thereof).
I also suspect that if p2p does become successful, it will be part of society as a whole becoming less selfish, or the fact that individuality becomes less important to us. Alternatively, all content could be copied to the peering server that a user connects to, thereby allowing for the user to become unaware of the part they have played in the transfer of material at no/little cost to themselves.
I think technical solutions are more likely than a population of 6 billion people deciding individuality is over-rated. Maybe I'm wrong....
That's funny, that's the second time in as many days that I've seen the statement that individuality is overrated. So you're suggesting that in order to make ourselves free we need to become mindless drones? WTF? Why not just try to convince us that War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strength.
Michael, did you start out as a flaming asshole, or was it something that happened after you started working for slashdot?