Your deliberate misinterpretation of a single passage about tattoos is telling, especially when combined with your obtuse and prejudicial reading of what I wrote.
I didn't say that religion is immutably valid. I said the lessons of it were. Some of these are the lessons directly from the text that can, with the proper historical framework, impart wisdom. Furthermore, and more in the forefront of what I was referring to, is how incredibly stupid and destructive people can be when they follow religions blindly. Another one, more relevant to this discussion now that you have fully shown your hand by quoting mistranslated passages from a single religious text that you seem obsessed with, is that some apparently intelligent people completely lose the ability to process language and think critically when they encounter the subject of religion either in person or, strangely enough, even in a written comment.
I have observed this before, quite frequently. I write something that is (if read by someone without an axe to grind that is so cumbersome they can't even carry it) a condemnation of the effects of religion. And what I get back is an echo chamber, not of what I have said, but of what the person reading it has going on in their head. Deliberate or reflexive misinterpretation is the only way I can describe it. Its like some anti-religious people are so wrapped up in being anti-religion that at the merest mention of religion they run screaming into conversations and blow their explosive vest of anti-religion talking points without thinking. Whatever it is, it's damn annoying and makes it really hard to have an constructive and responsible conversation about religion with the people who could possibly be in a position to bounce ideas off of.
I also said "in as much as humans are the same as they always have been" which is decidedly different than "humans never change." Implicit in the statement I made is the admission that humans do change. Let me be pedantically specific for you: Societies from earlier times are different in some ways, and exactly the same in many others. Interpersonal relationships are very similar, with some exceptions. The inner world of human experience, self with self, is also very similar. Oh and look! People are still killing each other over religious differences to this day. Also consider you have the same body and brain plan as the first humans. You are genetically similar enough, otherwise you wouldn't be a human! There are an incredible number of human traits that are immutable, hard coded into our genetics, and emergent based on simple processes in the gray and red squishy parts of our bodies. With the qualifying phrase "in as much" I was referring to those things that don't change (or haven't yet changed!) over time.
How about this: Re-read what I wrote with the mindset that much of my inspiration for this mode of thought comes from Richard Dawkins (responsibility for memes and their transmission) and Joseph Campbell (critical analysis of the common archetypes of religious symbolism and application of the same to commonalities of human experience.) Let that sink in for a minute, drop your prejudices, and let me know what you think.
Your "precise definition" is thousands of years out of date. For people who speak modern English we learn to use a dictionary and use terms as they are defined. If you look it up, part of the definition is to kill a large number of something. The 1/10 usage is secondary and also carries the implication of a disciplinary self selection process by drawing lots to see who gets killed. Since we don't have armies that split themselves into 10 man groups for discipline and then draw straws to see who the other 9 have to kill, the original usage of the word is culturally stale to say the least.
You don't say "visit" when you mean "to kick someone's ass" do you? Well why not you archaic fossil? It's an old usage of the word. Or are you just very particular with words that appear to have a similar appearance to SI units?
Finally, the lain root is "decim" meaning 10. Your reference to "mate" in addition to being vague and incomplete, is also incorrect. If the root "mate" was used, which is doubtful with the phoneme "m" already present in "decem", it might describe 10 mothers, as "mater" is the closest Latin root word to "mate."
Diverse peoples from all over the world, some with no contact that can be described historically, share a similar myth of a great deluge. Call it nonsense if you want. I prefer to perceive a grain of truth, like the sand at the center of a pearl, encased in cultural and religious nacre, accumulated over millennia.
Religion, at its foundation, is about the experience of humanity. And, in as much as humans are the same as they always have been, the lessons of religions are immutably valid.
Religions even speak narratives today, fraught with meaning concerning large groups of people. I hope the lessons learned from the growth of religions to their current proportions can find their way into our lexicons of knowledge for future generations, much as religious texts did for early mankind. That said, our chroniclers are no longer the shaman and elders they once were, and their analogous oral histories and manuscripts have been replaced by peer reviewed papers and investigative journalism.
For the well read it is easy to see how the shift from inherited wisdom to procedural knowledge has also resulted in a shift from broad strokes to incredibly detailed minutiae. I long for an updated text, encompassing truth for the ages, designed to be passed to future generations, but developed by a modern mindset and devoid of the pitfalls of some of the current religions. Were I to have the honor I would call it "A handbook for those that walk with humans."
Just read the TVtropes definition of Marty Stu. Hadn't run across that one before, and it makes total sense with regard to Lazarus Long.
I read a lot of Heinlein growing up, as a preteen and into my late teens. Returning to Heinlein's books as I have aged has been a disappointment (with the exception of Starship Trooper). I felt his female characters were plastic, two dimensional, predictable, and rather empty. You just showed me how blind I was to the plastic, two dimensional, and predictable nature of his male characters.
FUCK!
Well, at least he's got equal opportunity going for him now. Thought he was a bit of a closet misogynist due to how he handled some female characters. Just turns out I was incapable of detecting trite and stale male characterizations.
I figure at some point in the future I will be able to have a mega sized TV shipped to me free of charge if I promise to watch a certain number of commercials annually. Maybe that screen will be inside the autonomous car I get...
With sufficiently advanced automation and networking, interconnected automated roadways and the vehicles that travel them would have an entirely deterministic pathway calculated before the journey commences. Then all that is needed is to generate video that corresponds with the acceleration and deceleration forces. Like one of those rides at large amusement parks that use gravity to simulate acceleration while showing you video that corresponds to that perception of movement.
You will know the shit has hit the fan when people start getting sick in the car. The video wont match the forces, indicating the deterministic path laid out and programmed has been interrupted drastically.
You are incredibly uninformed. So much so that responding seems like so much pissing in the wind. But here goes, my bladder is full and I have a moment to waste. The following examples are not by any stretch of the imagination a complete list, nor are they they worst examples. Merely some that are at the top of my head at the moment. Nor are they intended to single out Democrats. All of our elected officials are guilty of atrocious actions against not only Americans but also people of other countries. These examples are provided so you can see how similar Democrats and Republicans are, because they are, and no amount of pretending or comparison can change that, in spite of what you would like to convince other of.
Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, all democrats, all worked in secret to create the Vietnam war. There was a concerted action over decades to produce this war and the Democrats played their part. They conspired in secret, and acted with secret intentions, to throw American troops into a war for reasons they were not willing to disclose to the public. See the Pentagon Papers for info. The result is they got their desire and every dead American soldier in that war is attributable to them, as well as others.
You could also toss in FDR's actions at Yalta as one of the greatest travesties and traitorous acts in history, creating incredibly protracted problems with the Soviet Union, their bloc countries, etc. Words do not suffice to describe the destruction, death, and turmoil he created through unnecessary appeasement of the Soviets.
I think you have a problem seeing, one, the facts as they are, and two, realizing that just because someone is not prosecuted doesn't mean that nothing bad happened.
I mean really, Obama's IRS actions are equivalent to some of the actions that got Nixon in trouble, only worse in that the administration circled the wagons and no one is held accountable for targeting the American people's freedom. Come on dude. You're letting your Democrat cheerleader brain override your ability to think critically about how abuse of power that goes unchecked can be used by the next administration, and that every time it is misused and goes unchecked, the American people care just a little bit less about their freedoms and the government feels a lot more emboldened to fuck with us.
I really cant tell if you are a paid shill or just so misguided that you are indistinguishable from one. Minimizing actions like the IRS's actions under Obama is just fucking shameful.
Maybe I can help. Chant this mantra morning noon and night: "There are only two political parties in the US. The elected and the electorate."
Once you get that straight you will be better able to see the threats to the people of America. Stop siding with the aristocracy. You seem pretty intelligent, the American people need you on their side.
Read the Pentagon Papers. The Vietnam War was started through concerted action by multiple US presidents, namely Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. All of them were involved in creating the war in their own ways during their presidencies.
Nixon wasn't doing it for political gain in the US. He was continuing a policy of intentional war-creation designed by previous presidents and our department of defense. The reason was simple: really loud sabre rattling right next door to China, designed to keep China in check militarily.
Looking at the previous presidents thought the lens of truth, with their stated policy of starting a war in Vietnam, is eye opening. Makes you realize that some of the things our current government is doing (fabricating a narrative out of whole cloth about Benghazi, starting shit in Lybia, leaving ISIS completely alone during their formative phases so they become a serious problem) are from the same playbook of lying to the American people in order to justify starting a war.
Makes you wonder what the end game is for the Middle East according to the Pentagon. We have had quite a few sequential presidents who have been instigating overtly and covertly for serious military action over there. Is it Iran, or maybe the Soviets they are sabre rattling at? Maybe both and China to boot?
Your guess is as good as mine. Just realize that the Pentagon Papers, the Media, PA FBI office burglary, and Watergate weren't just incidents that revealed the corruption, duplicity, and illegal propensities in the highest levels of our government. They were an object lesson for politicians and spooks alike. They won't make the same mistakes with accidental disclosure in the future. And, they get to use these experiences as a guide to craft policies that make it easier for them to not only keep their nefarious deeds under cover but also to decriminalize and channel these actions and policies.
They got caught with their pants down, it won't happen again. Except is did with Snowden, and Assange, and a few others. The lack of concern by the American people is excruciating to see. It's the same government playbook, running the same plays, just with more sophisticated blinds, double track backs, and fake outs designed to engineer plausible deniability. Turns out, most of America doesn't care if their every move is watches. Turns out they don't care if our country starts a war in the Middle East, not really, not where and when it counts. They sure won't turn on the politicians they support if they find out those politicians are dead set on starting wars, intruding on our privacy, and milking us dry through taxation designed to fill government and corporate coffers alike.
Enough of that. Try to sleep well at night, knowing that your elected officials are more than willing to kill an arbitrarily large number of Americans, and an even larger number of non-Americans in order to accomplish secret goals they won't admit to. And they are willing to nudge and push and shove the American people towards these premeditated mass murders over a period of decades, across administrations, and through generations if necessary. And they are willing to kill to make sure it doesn't get out.
And as a tax payer, you're footing the bill for every bit of it.
A foriori principle applies. If the greater is allowed, so also the lesser.
Try a different argument next time. People with a lot less brains than you have figured out the futility of this path. Though I think that once the laws against citizen gun ownership start, it won't matter which argument is used. It won't matter if it makes any sense or not. The reasoning is irrelevant to tyrants. Only compliance, obedience, fear, and subjugation matter to tyrants. And the only thing standing in their way is 300 million guns in the hands of American citizens.
If the tandem actions of MADD and our state legislatures are any kind of model, we need the NRA to push back. Otherwise it would not be illegal to shoot your shotgun; however, anything larger than a grain of rice leaving the barrel would result in immediate incarceration.
I propose we don't take anything away. If someone is on an enhanced watch list, and they apply to get a weapon, it should trigger some red flags with law enforcement. Then law enforcement can see about getting a warrant or warrants for this person's home, car, phone, computer, workplace, etc. all before they have received the gun.
A friend of mine once said to a woman with a late phone bill, after long indoctrination by a certain cell phone company, "Mam, I don't see what your son's leukemia has to do with not making your phone payments on time."
He quit the next day. The ones that stay after saying that kind of shit, they're the ones that can say anything to a customer without laughing, crying, or their heart stirring from a micropulse of empathy moving through their system. They're just robots at that point. Anesthetized to the inhumanity, grabbing a check and shuffling off home; they don't give a damn, they can't or they would go bonkers. Fucking inhuman bastards that run the sociopathic corps, whose conscience extends as far as the next quarterly statement, and then only towards their stockholders. They dehumanize everything.
It's worth noting that civil liberty groups like the ACLU are largely socially progressive. And they are generally the ones who say, "Get a goddamned warrant." They're also the ones who hold that the same rules are supposed to apply to everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status.
The ACLU is socially progressive, constitutionally conservative (in some cases). I wish more progressives could toe this line. They keep talking about the constitution as a "living document" and trying to undermine the rights guaranteed within, and then act all surprised when shit like this case comes up, or the Patriot Act, or the DMCA, and so on, and so forth.
Our leaders will be more than happy to take whatever rights you are willing to surrender, and are doubly happy to take those that you are willing to give up to spite a fellow American, as that keeps the focus off of them.
Thank you for the book recommendation. I am a voracious reader and have been ignoring my military history itch for too long.
"Popularly supported" means with the support of the majority specifically. Make sure you read my comments in light of that sentiment, otherwise you will miss the premise completely.
Also, the scenario I described where the majority of the US population supports armed rebellion is incredibly unlikely. Our government officials have spent untold billions of dollars on focus groups, psychological testing, mock speeches, and sound byte research and have fully mastered the art of dividing the American people and setting them at each other's throats. If there ever is an attack on the American people by our own government you can bet it will first be against one group of citizens who has been ostracized, demonized, and marginalized so well that the rest of the people support it. Popular support will be FOR attacking our own people, not against.
Outlawing guns in the US means that LAW ABIDING CITIZENS have "little to no access to guns." If you think that this will prevent criminal elements and progressive radical terrorists from getting their hands on them you're a fucking moron.
Criminals can ship illegal aliens from Mexico, across the US border and almost to Canada, have them arrive alive, unmolested by immigration personnel, and ready to work in less than 3 days. You don't think that guns will be able to make the same journey, or one similar? You're a fucking moron if you think that you can outlaw guns in the US without major changes in this country,
If you really want to address gun control in the US there is one job to do first. Completely close the southern border. This will require legalization of all drugs in the US, with domestic production and easy, low cost, stigma free access to these drugs. The side effect will be no more illegal immigration. Since our government has expressed little interest in either of these things, our guns are safe.
The corollary of this is simple: Once the democrats start voting for closing the border, I will start to seriously worry about the second amendment.
Just for fun, realize that comparing America and Denmark is incredibly stupid and doesn't result in any usable results. It has already been established conclusively that the presence of firearms does not always result in an increase in violent crime. In some places it lowers crime and violence. So that being removed from the equation, we have to find other ways to be like Denmark or Germany if we want to have less crime, right?
Both Denmark and Germany are rather monolithic culturally and racially, or at least were before the recent immigration in Germany. If we follow your comparison to its logical end, the only solution available to make the US like Germany and Denmark is to remove all of the non-white, non-American people from the country. How very German of you to suggest it! Personally I think its a fucked up idea, but you go ahead with that.
Slashdot Mirror
I do this all the time by speeding up to around 80 mph. If I go slower than that I become bored and easily distracted.
Your deliberate misinterpretation of a single passage about tattoos is telling, especially when combined with your obtuse and prejudicial reading of what I wrote.
I didn't say that religion is immutably valid. I said the lessons of it were. Some of these are the lessons directly from the text that can, with the proper historical framework, impart wisdom. Furthermore, and more in the forefront of what I was referring to, is how incredibly stupid and destructive people can be when they follow religions blindly. Another one, more relevant to this discussion now that you have fully shown your hand by quoting mistranslated passages from a single religious text that you seem obsessed with, is that some apparently intelligent people completely lose the ability to process language and think critically when they encounter the subject of religion either in person or, strangely enough, even in a written comment.
I have observed this before, quite frequently. I write something that is (if read by someone without an axe to grind that is so cumbersome they can't even carry it) a condemnation of the effects of religion. And what I get back is an echo chamber, not of what I have said, but of what the person reading it has going on in their head. Deliberate or reflexive misinterpretation is the only way I can describe it. Its like some anti-religious people are so wrapped up in being anti-religion that at the merest mention of religion they run screaming into conversations and blow their explosive vest of anti-religion talking points without thinking. Whatever it is, it's damn annoying and makes it really hard to have an constructive and responsible conversation about religion with the people who could possibly be in a position to bounce ideas off of.
I also said "in as much as humans are the same as they always have been" which is decidedly different than "humans never change." Implicit in the statement I made is the admission that humans do change. Let me be pedantically specific for you: Societies from earlier times are different in some ways, and exactly the same in many others. Interpersonal relationships are very similar, with some exceptions. The inner world of human experience, self with self, is also very similar. Oh and look! People are still killing each other over religious differences to this day. Also consider you have the same body and brain plan as the first humans. You are genetically similar enough, otherwise you wouldn't be a human! There are an incredible number of human traits that are immutable, hard coded into our genetics, and emergent based on simple processes in the gray and red squishy parts of our bodies. With the qualifying phrase "in as much" I was referring to those things that don't change (or haven't yet changed!) over time.
How about this: Re-read what I wrote with the mindset that much of my inspiration for this mode of thought comes from Richard Dawkins (responsibility for memes and their transmission) and Joseph Campbell (critical analysis of the common archetypes of religious symbolism and application of the same to commonalities of human experience.) Let that sink in for a minute, drop your prejudices, and let me know what you think.
Your "precise definition" is thousands of years out of date. For people who speak modern English we learn to use a dictionary and use terms as they are defined. If you look it up, part of the definition is to kill a large number of something. The 1/10 usage is secondary and also carries the implication of a disciplinary self selection process by drawing lots to see who gets killed. Since we don't have armies that split themselves into 10 man groups for discipline and then draw straws to see who the other 9 have to kill, the original usage of the word is culturally stale to say the least.
You don't say "visit" when you mean "to kick someone's ass" do you? Well why not you archaic fossil? It's an old usage of the word. Or are you just very particular with words that appear to have a similar appearance to SI units?
Finally, the lain root is "decim" meaning 10. Your reference to "mate" in addition to being vague and incomplete, is also incorrect. If the root "mate" was used, which is doubtful with the phoneme "m" already present in "decem", it might describe 10 mothers, as "mater" is the closest Latin root word to "mate."
Diverse peoples from all over the world, some with no contact that can be described historically, share a similar myth of a great deluge. Call it nonsense if you want. I prefer to perceive a grain of truth, like the sand at the center of a pearl, encased in cultural and religious nacre, accumulated over millennia.
Ahhh shades of Flatland. You tickled me fiercely with that one. Well done!
Religion, at its foundation, is about the experience of humanity. And, in as much as humans are the same as they always have been, the lessons of religions are immutably valid.
Religions even speak narratives today, fraught with meaning concerning large groups of people. I hope the lessons learned from the growth of religions to their current proportions can find their way into our lexicons of knowledge for future generations, much as religious texts did for early mankind. That said, our chroniclers are no longer the shaman and elders they once were, and their analogous oral histories and manuscripts have been replaced by peer reviewed papers and investigative journalism.
For the well read it is easy to see how the shift from inherited wisdom to procedural knowledge has also resulted in a shift from broad strokes to incredibly detailed minutiae. I long for an updated text, encompassing truth for the ages, designed to be passed to future generations, but developed by a modern mindset and devoid of the pitfalls of some of the current religions. Were I to have the honor I would call it "A handbook for those that walk with humans."
See chaos theory, laminar flow, "sensitivity to initial conditions."
Chances are you are 100%, irrefutably and completely correct.
Because advertising!
Just read the TVtropes definition of Marty Stu. Hadn't run across that one before, and it makes total sense with regard to Lazarus Long.
I read a lot of Heinlein growing up, as a preteen and into my late teens. Returning to Heinlein's books as I have aged has been a disappointment (with the exception of Starship Trooper). I felt his female characters were plastic, two dimensional, predictable, and rather empty. You just showed me how blind I was to the plastic, two dimensional, and predictable nature of his male characters.
FUCK!
Well, at least he's got equal opportunity going for him now. Thought he was a bit of a closet misogynist due to how he handled some female characters. Just turns out I was incapable of detecting trite and stale male characterizations.
I figure at some point in the future I will be able to have a mega sized TV shipped to me free of charge if I promise to watch a certain number of commercials annually. Maybe that screen will be inside the autonomous car I get...
With sufficiently advanced automation and networking, interconnected automated roadways and the vehicles that travel them would have an entirely deterministic pathway calculated before the journey commences. Then all that is needed is to generate video that corresponds with the acceleration and deceleration forces. Like one of those rides at large amusement parks that use gravity to simulate acceleration while showing you video that corresponds to that perception of movement.
You will know the shit has hit the fan when people start getting sick in the car. The video wont match the forces, indicating the deterministic path laid out and programmed has been interrupted drastically.
You are incredibly uninformed. So much so that responding seems like so much pissing in the wind. But here goes, my bladder is full and I have a moment to waste. The following examples are not by any stretch of the imagination a complete list, nor are they they worst examples. Merely some that are at the top of my head at the moment. Nor are they intended to single out Democrats. All of our elected officials are guilty of atrocious actions against not only Americans but also people of other countries. These examples are provided so you can see how similar Democrats and Republicans are, because they are, and no amount of pretending or comparison can change that, in spite of what you would like to convince other of.
Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, all democrats, all worked in secret to create the Vietnam war. There was a concerted action over decades to produce this war and the Democrats played their part. They conspired in secret, and acted with secret intentions, to throw American troops into a war for reasons they were not willing to disclose to the public. See the Pentagon Papers for info. The result is they got their desire and every dead American soldier in that war is attributable to them, as well as others.
You could also toss in FDR's actions at Yalta as one of the greatest travesties and traitorous acts in history, creating incredibly protracted problems with the Soviet Union, their bloc countries, etc. Words do not suffice to describe the destruction, death, and turmoil he created through unnecessary appeasement of the Soviets.
I think you have a problem seeing, one, the facts as they are, and two, realizing that just because someone is not prosecuted doesn't mean that nothing bad happened.
I mean really, Obama's IRS actions are equivalent to some of the actions that got Nixon in trouble, only worse in that the administration circled the wagons and no one is held accountable for targeting the American people's freedom. Come on dude. You're letting your Democrat cheerleader brain override your ability to think critically about how abuse of power that goes unchecked can be used by the next administration, and that every time it is misused and goes unchecked, the American people care just a little bit less about their freedoms and the government feels a lot more emboldened to fuck with us.
I really cant tell if you are a paid shill or just so misguided that you are indistinguishable from one. Minimizing actions like the IRS's actions under Obama is just fucking shameful.
Maybe I can help. Chant this mantra morning noon and night: "There are only two political parties in the US. The elected and the electorate."
Once you get that straight you will be better able to see the threats to the people of America. Stop siding with the aristocracy. You seem pretty intelligent, the American people need you on their side.
Read the Pentagon Papers. The Vietnam War was started through concerted action by multiple US presidents, namely Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. All of them were involved in creating the war in their own ways during their presidencies.
Nixon wasn't doing it for political gain in the US. He was continuing a policy of intentional war-creation designed by previous presidents and our department of defense. The reason was simple: really loud sabre rattling right next door to China, designed to keep China in check militarily.
Looking at the previous presidents thought the lens of truth, with their stated policy of starting a war in Vietnam, is eye opening. Makes you realize that some of the things our current government is doing (fabricating a narrative out of whole cloth about Benghazi, starting shit in Lybia, leaving ISIS completely alone during their formative phases so they become a serious problem) are from the same playbook of lying to the American people in order to justify starting a war.
Makes you wonder what the end game is for the Middle East according to the Pentagon. We have had quite a few sequential presidents who have been instigating overtly and covertly for serious military action over there. Is it Iran, or maybe the Soviets they are sabre rattling at? Maybe both and China to boot?
Your guess is as good as mine. Just realize that the Pentagon Papers, the Media, PA FBI office burglary, and Watergate weren't just incidents that revealed the corruption, duplicity, and illegal propensities in the highest levels of our government. They were an object lesson for politicians and spooks alike. They won't make the same mistakes with accidental disclosure in the future. And, they get to use these experiences as a guide to craft policies that make it easier for them to not only keep their nefarious deeds under cover but also to decriminalize and channel these actions and policies.
They got caught with their pants down, it won't happen again. Except is did with Snowden, and Assange, and a few others. The lack of concern by the American people is excruciating to see. It's the same government playbook, running the same plays, just with more sophisticated blinds, double track backs, and fake outs designed to engineer plausible deniability. Turns out, most of America doesn't care if their every move is watches. Turns out they don't care if our country starts a war in the Middle East, not really, not where and when it counts. They sure won't turn on the politicians they support if they find out those politicians are dead set on starting wars, intruding on our privacy, and milking us dry through taxation designed to fill government and corporate coffers alike.
Enough of that. Try to sleep well at night, knowing that your elected officials are more than willing to kill an arbitrarily large number of Americans, and an even larger number of non-Americans in order to accomplish secret goals they won't admit to. And they are willing to nudge and push and shove the American people towards these premeditated mass murders over a period of decades, across administrations, and through generations if necessary. And they are willing to kill to make sure it doesn't get out.
And as a tax payer, you're footing the bill for every bit of it.
Completely relevant to your comment:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljPFZrRD3J8
A foriori principle applies. If the greater is allowed, so also the lesser.
Try a different argument next time. People with a lot less brains than you have figured out the futility of this path. Though I think that once the laws against citizen gun ownership start, it won't matter which argument is used. It won't matter if it makes any sense or not. The reasoning is irrelevant to tyrants. Only compliance, obedience, fear, and subjugation matter to tyrants. And the only thing standing in their way is 300 million guns in the hands of American citizens.
If the tandem actions of MADD and our state legislatures are any kind of model, we need the NRA to push back. Otherwise it would not be illegal to shoot your shotgun; however, anything larger than a grain of rice leaving the barrel would result in immediate incarceration.
I propose we don't take anything away. If someone is on an enhanced watch list, and they apply to get a weapon, it should trigger some red flags with law enforcement. Then law enforcement can see about getting a warrant or warrants for this person's home, car, phone, computer, workplace, etc. all before they have received the gun.
A friend of mine once said to a woman with a late phone bill, after long indoctrination by a certain cell phone company, "Mam, I don't see what your son's leukemia has to do with not making your phone payments on time."
He quit the next day. The ones that stay after saying that kind of shit, they're the ones that can say anything to a customer without laughing, crying, or their heart stirring from a micropulse of empathy moving through their system. They're just robots at that point. Anesthetized to the inhumanity, grabbing a check and shuffling off home; they don't give a damn, they can't or they would go bonkers. Fucking inhuman bastards that run the sociopathic corps, whose conscience extends as far as the next quarterly statement, and then only towards their stockholders. They dehumanize everything.
It appears to be opportunistic drama-kinging* to me.
* Gender rotation to be PC
PC speech would be gender neutral, you disgusting misandrist pig.
How secure that would be in practice depends almost entirely on the modem configuration.
/quote
Yep, as long as you define "configured" as "Is it plugged in?"
It's worth noting that civil liberty groups like the ACLU are largely socially progressive. And they are generally the ones who say, "Get a goddamned warrant." They're also the ones who hold that the same rules are supposed to apply to everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status.
The ACLU is socially progressive, constitutionally conservative (in some cases). I wish more progressives could toe this line. They keep talking about the constitution as a "living document" and trying to undermine the rights guaranteed within, and then act all surprised when shit like this case comes up, or the Patriot Act, or the DMCA, and so on, and so forth.
Our leaders will be more than happy to take whatever rights you are willing to surrender, and are doubly happy to take those that you are willing to give up to spite a fellow American, as that keeps the focus off of them.
Thank you for the book recommendation. I am a voracious reader and have been ignoring my military history itch for too long.
"Popularly supported" means with the support of the majority specifically. Make sure you read my comments in light of that sentiment, otherwise you will miss the premise completely.
Also, the scenario I described where the majority of the US population supports armed rebellion is incredibly unlikely. Our government officials have spent untold billions of dollars on focus groups, psychological testing, mock speeches, and sound byte research and have fully mastered the art of dividing the American people and setting them at each other's throats. If there ever is an attack on the American people by our own government you can bet it will first be against one group of citizens who has been ostracized, demonized, and marginalized so well that the rest of the people support it. Popular support will be FOR attacking our own people, not against.
I don't know what you mean by "people like you."
Outlawing guns in the US means that LAW ABIDING CITIZENS have "little to no access to guns." If you think that this will prevent criminal elements and progressive radical terrorists from getting their hands on them you're a fucking moron.
Criminals can ship illegal aliens from Mexico, across the US border and almost to Canada, have them arrive alive, unmolested by immigration personnel, and ready to work in less than 3 days. You don't think that guns will be able to make the same journey, or one similar? You're a fucking moron if you think that you can outlaw guns in the US without major changes in this country,
If you really want to address gun control in the US there is one job to do first. Completely close the southern border. This will require legalization of all drugs in the US, with domestic production and easy, low cost, stigma free access to these drugs. The side effect will be no more illegal immigration. Since our government has expressed little interest in either of these things, our guns are safe.
The corollary of this is simple: Once the democrats start voting for closing the border, I will start to seriously worry about the second amendment.
You just said the entire Middle East is pathetic and uncivilized. Are you a racist?
Just for fun, realize that comparing America and Denmark is incredibly stupid and doesn't result in any usable results. It has already been established conclusively that the presence of firearms does not always result in an increase in violent crime. In some places it lowers crime and violence. So that being removed from the equation, we have to find other ways to be like Denmark or Germany if we want to have less crime, right?
Both Denmark and Germany are rather monolithic culturally and racially, or at least were before the recent immigration in Germany. If we follow your comparison to its logical end, the only solution available to make the US like Germany and Denmark is to remove all of the non-white, non-American people from the country. How very German of you to suggest it! Personally I think its a fucked up idea, but you go ahead with that.