"Your views seem to advocate tolerating criminal actions because the criminal can help you"
no. my view advocates a criminal reversing themselves and doing some good with their position. and what incentive does a criminal have for stopping to be criminal? some leniency, redemption, a sense of forgiveness. something all moral codes must have in order to be valid
"Would you let a big criminal run free because he donates a couple million dollars to a law enforcement agency"
no, and it doesn't compare. in your situation, you have a criminal going free by commiting yet another crime: bribery. in my situation, you have leniency towards a criminal by commiting a follow up good deed: helping the authorities catch yet more criminals. understand the difference?
furthermore, i am saying you have no choice on the matter. say a criminal invents or discovers or is among the few people in the world who can do technical feat xyz. he is caught, but other criminals get wind and start using technical feat xyz to commit crimes. do you want to stop the second round of criminals?
or do you want to adhere to your idealism and allow the second round of criminals to go unpunished?
in my world, the second round gets punished harshly, since their special technical knowledge isn't so special anymore, thanks to cooperation of the original criminal. in your world, you sit on the original criminal harshly, and have no way to stop the second round of criminals
not a very superior attitude
criminality in life isn't an aspect of doing one thing wrong, and remaining on ice forever. all mature systems of morality understand that there is an interplay between right and wrong, and someone who does wrong, and later does something right, deserves consideration for that
your attitude meanwhile, is all stick and no carrot. you punish, but you don't reward. no, you need a carrot, and a stick. you need to punish wrong, and you also must provide a path back towards doing the right thing, the carrot
in your harsh sharia law world, you will punish someone and give them no consideration for doing anything later that might help society. in this system, all you do is turn minor criminals into major criminals, because you haven't given them any incentive to ever do anything right ever again in their lives. its a feedback cycle, and it creates a society with more hardened criminals
you speak of incentive for good people to continue being good, and not doing something criminal. yet a genuinely good person needs no such incentive, they already udnerstand right and wrong and the implications. meanwhile, a criminal needs incentive to do good. but your attitude of all punishment no reward just burns those bridges and gives someone who commits minor crimes no reason to ever turn towards doing something good ever again in their life: its all just punishment for them from here on out
redemption and forgiveness figure into every moral code in the world
but apparently, not in yours, making your "morality", or understanding of morality, to be invalid and incomplete
they both play at the game of social mores and laws
i'm not making an argument against you, i am in fact extending it by saying that all churches should have their tax exempt status revoked, regardless. and they should have never been tax exempt in the first place
if you put someting out on a wire, you are sacrificing your privacy, no matter what the law says
frankly, i don't understand the slashdot attitude that expects the government to protect your privacy
its YOUR responsibility to protect your privacy
on other topics, such as users with weak passwords, who complain about convenience, plenty here would be ready to scold the user saying that they need to make the extra effort to ensure their security
why can't you see the parallel?
look: it is possible for all sorts of people to spy on anything you put out on a wire, from well placed hackers, to corporate drones at telecommunications company, to yes, the government
in other words: you put it out on the wire. which means you implicitly gave up your right to privacy right at that moment, no matter what the legal environment, if you understand anything about how the internet works, which, on a forum like slashdot, should be de rigeur
if you have something to say that needs to be private, encrypt, or go walk on a secluded beach somewhere with a pounding surf to interrupt the guys with the telescoping microphones
and if this is too much work for you, if you think it is unfair to impose this extra burden on you to enforce your own privacy, then you really don't understand, philosphically, what the concept of privacy really is
doesn't it strike a lot of you as absurd that you are explicitly asking the GOVERNMENT to protect your privacy for you?
we are talking about extremely rare criminals here: smart ones who know something useful that can catch more crooks. you are treating my commentas if i am asking to go soft on all criminals. not at all. your average gangbanger or drug mule or wifekiller does not apply in the situation i am talking about. please, by all means, go all sharia law on them, with my blessing. but perhaps less than 1% of criminals here have something to barter with the justice system: a way to catch more scumbags like themselves. now you can insist on punishing such rare birds completely, or you can go softer on them, and put 10 more scumbags in cells next to him. your choice, you know what i choose
furthermore, you cannot remove the disincentive to do wrong from someone who has unique or extremely rare knowledge that allows them to get away with a crime. simply because their extraordinary knowledge makes their crime untraceable or obfuscated or in some other way blocks the traditional gears of justice. if you are worried about removing the disincentive to do something wrong for this rare intelligent criminal who has discovered something new and different, what disincentive can you place before them? a criminal who has discovered a way to exploit society in untraceable ways? there is no disincentive that exists, by definition of the rare outlying criminals we are talking about here
right now, in this world, are smart criminals sitting in fiji and the cayman islands who have gotten away with murder, literally and figuratively, perhaps without any knowledge or traceability by anyone else. don't you want to punish them? if we are to catch and punish such criminals, we need to turn the few other smart ones who got caught due to bad luck or incomplete execution or change of heart. and we turn them, by rewarding them for cooperation. if you think of a superior way to handle such exotic few criminals, please, tell the world. no one else has thought of a better way to handle such an extraordinary criminal
don't think what i am talking about applies to every run-of-the-mill low life. that's the context in which you criticize my words, and your context is invalid. my comments are prefaces to apply only to the exceptional criminal
we capture someone like frank abagnale, and we go all sharia law on him, as a lot of you propose, and leave him as a bloody stump
then what?
well, there are other frank abagnales out there. how do we detect them and capture them? well, the frank abagnale you just beat to a pulp: he would have made a good tool to do that, ya think?
luckily, in real life, this is exactly what the feds and the banks did. in real life, you capture and use highly intelligent crooks to... drum roll please... capture more highly intelligent crooks. get it?
law enforcement is hard grinding work, it doesn't happen like "death wish" or "dirty harry". i know in some of your justice league of america fantasy lives, delivering justice with a fist and a gun is the way to go. but we'd like to talk about reality, ok?
so to review:
1. we can have justice your way, and beat adware authors to a pulp, or 2. we can have smart justice, and listen carefully to mr. adware author's words, and use those words to catch more adware authors
get it? see the difference? do you want to pursue justice? or do you want to beat people up?
these are mutually exclusive activities, despite your dimwitted fantasy lives
now go crawl back under your rocks mouth breathers. nobody who is actually going to catch and punish cybercriminals in this world is going to think like you do
even the most vile amoral serial killer is useful to keep alive and listen to. simply for matters of brain analysis and psychological study. or, we could put a bullet in his head, scrambling the abnormal brains, and having nothing useful to catch more vile amoral serial killers
dumb violent justice leaves a dumb violent society that knows nothing about the smart and truly vicious criminals in their midst
smart justice is about studying smart criminals, and using them against each other
is that no one has come up with a scheme that is cheaper than simply digging the stuff out of the ground
as soon as someone comes up with a biofuels scheme that is cheaper than digging it out of the ground, game over, simple economic rules take over, and further savings are realized through economies of scale
2 things are affecting this breakthrough point:
1. its getting more and more expensive to dig hydrocarbons out of the ground 2. research is finding more and more shortcuts for turning biomass A into hydrocarbon B
obviously, there is issue #3: monetary fluctuations, supply and demand fluctations, etc., that affect that magical breakthrough point. temporarily in 2008, we reached that breakthrough point, but the oil price bubble popping has moved that point again into the future. but don't worry, we'll see that point again. india and china aren't getting poorer (more demand), and oil sources are just getting deeper and deeper (less supply)
personally, my money is on algae directly making octane, in ponds in the desert near an ocean, or in waterjugs in the ocean itself. that is, if i had some money right now, heh
{tornado on radar} no film crew: "jim, are we near this isobar on the map?" film crew: "GOOD GOD JIM GET US TO THIS ISOBAR STAT! JESUS CHRIST! AAAAH!"
{truck gets flat tire} no film crew: "yup, we have a flat" film crew: "Why God, why. I swear I have never believed in you before, but if you answer this one prayer for me now. Oh sweet Jesus."
{tornado turns towards truck} no film crew: "yeah, it's turning towards us" film crew: "I know what you're thinking. 'Did he say EF5 or EF3?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a tornado, the most powerful windstorm in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"
which is why i fight gun ownership, as the curtailment on our freedom that it is
i am motivated by the same principles as you. the difference between you and me is that gun ownership in your mind is joined at the hip with freedom. this is an absurdity
not all limits to your freedom are imposed by the state. drug addiction is a form of slavery. fear in urban communities by gun toting thugs is a form of slavery
the gun is a tool of slavery much more than it is a tool of freedom
that in your mind, gun ownership is so tightly wound up with the notion of freedom, is outright wrong, and sad
read your history friend. random assholes with guns in the countryside is not a protection from fascism. random assholes with guns in the countryside is the soil in which embryonic fascist movements grow
fascism is all about force. depending upon a gun, registering in your mind a gun as a solution to a problem before you is the same root mental impulse as fascism
a gun on everyone's side is not the foundation of republic the respects your rights. a gun on everyone's side is simply gang and mafia warfare. of course, in the times of our founding fathers, almost everyone had a gun, because there were hostile native americans and french roaming around, and you lived in the middle of a wilderness
but conteomporary civic life is not like that those times. a gun in contemporary civic life is unnecessary at best, and an enemy of your freedoms at worst
arm the police, task them to protect us from crime. that they are going to be used to repress your freedoms in a fascist state is just as much reality as a bunch of mountain men are going to come down and protect us from the rise of hitler. if we are going to become a fascist state, gun ownership is not going to protect us from that, and more likely, in the more enthusiastic gun ownership circles, is where you will find the crucible of that fascism
i actually favor a county-by-county approach. in new york state, guns should be illegal in manhattan, but should be legal in herkimer county in the adirondacks
of course, it would be impossible to enforce, so it doesn't matter
either rural folks have to suffer for the sake of urban folks, or urban folks have to suffer for the sake of rural folks. there are a lot more urban folks, and more and more every day. therefore, rural folks need to suffer for the sake of urban folks. currently, the opposite is true, and there are hundreds of deaths every year due to that injustice
i'll grant you all of your pluses, and a few more conjectures if you like. now listen to my one big fat negative, and understand that your pluses are outweighed by an order of magnitude:
it weakens faith in democracy. if my vote doesn't matter, because i'm a democrat in texas or a republican in new york, why vote? why consider my government to be a representative of my will?
a democracy is strong because it manufactures legitimacy. if the people believe the government acts in their interests, then there is social stability, and therefore happiness and prosperity.
to the extent that people dislike what their government does, if they believe that there is some "medicine" in the system which warps their will, meaning their will has not been adequately and fully expressed, they ar eunhappy, there is social instability, we all suffer for that
all of your "pluses" of the ec are aristocratic instincts of your own. you don't trust the popular will. which means you yourself have anti-democratic impulses. which means you are part of the problem
other strong-arm governments depend upon force to impose the will of an aristocracy, a "special" class, onto the will of the majority. this of course creates injustice and unhappiness
you need to reexamine your instincts. you are flawed, because you don't trust the will of the people. the will of the people is infallible, because there is no way you can morally or intellectually stand apart from the people and judge them, because there is no morally or intellectually valid point of view that stands apart from the people
1. IF absentee ballots were counted THEN gw bush would win the popular vote in 2000
verdict: maybe. maybe not. we'll never know. but its not a record of fact. maybe if i eat unicorns i'll fart rainbows. who knows? who cares? its all conjecture
2. IF the ec college were abolished THEN al gore would be president in 2000 and the usa would never have invaded iraq
verdict: about as certain as me farting after eating refried beans. pretty fucking solid fact
along with better health care, that i'd rather live in europe
i live in new york city. low gun ownership, low crime. strong police. my crime rate is probably lower than where you live. what crime we do have is bought in from states with weak gun control laws. the solution: fix those broken states and their bad laws
you are so pigheaded, blind, and propagandized on the issue of guns you are perfectly happy with mountains of needless urban deaths. for what? so you can go hunting on the weekend?
but i'm not a coward. i'm an american. i'm not going to run off to europe. i will stay here and fight for what is right, and fight to curtail gun rights, and defeat the pigheaded and blind like you, defeat you and your ignorance
its all demographics. as the usa skews more urban, gun rights will be curtailed
your days are numbered. your approach to "justice" is a historical anachronism
enjoy your lock on the law while it last. it won't last
gun ownership is not a way to protect you from crime. gun ownership is a way to put a hole in your foot. strong police: that's the path to low crime
so you go with what the ec decides, and you wind up convincing people that they are helpless cogs in a machine, their vote doesn't matter, its card tricks and fuzzy math, democracy is a joke
or you go with the tiniest perturbation in popular will, thereby convincing people they better damn well vote in the next election since every little vote counts so much, thereby reinstilling faith in democracy
people give me flak for this, i do it alot. but i don't understand what their problem is, there's no such thing as self-plagiarism. if the remark is applicable to the subject matter, which it is, what's the problem?
then you need to put a sign on every door in your house saying "gun in here" or "gun not in here" to guide criminals, for being the inadequately enthusiastic gun owner you profess to be
have i successfully dismantled your bullshit propaganda about the a sign on my window yet?
think of an urban environment as a large house. on the street corners, are police. they are the guns that i need to keep me safe from crime. the gun is in safe, responsible, vigilant (and awake) hands. that it is in his hands, and not in my apartment, is the same as your gun being in your bedroom, but not your kitchen
i'm glad you can spin scenarios where this is not true. and? supposition is not fact
the official record is al gore won the popular vote. please, show us contingencies and if-then conditions where this is not true. it doesn't mean anything
meanwhile, we also have the factual record of the abyssmal gw bush administration. can you tell me with a straight face al gore would have invaded iraq?
we need to remove the electoral college, to prevent another a gw bush: gw bush was not the democratic will of the american people, according to factual record (not your suppositions). yet he took the white house, and we paid dearly for this idiotic anachronistic tweak on our popular will called the ec
rural voters don't deserve to have more rights than urban voters, which is exactly what you are asking for, no matter how you frame it, and it is still wrong. any, ANY disproportionate influence leads to injustice and abuse of power
for example: guns. i grew up rural, and i live urban now. i shot shotguns in the swamp behind the house with my granddaddy, a mile from our nearest neighbor, at gamebird and targets. i understand the need for your own form of protection when the police are half an hour away
now, living in an urban environment, i see the other side of guns. guns are not only tools of virtue. they are frequently tools of mayhem. guns are not always in the hands of those who intend good, nor is there some magic wand which can tell who should or should not have a gun. such that in an urban environment, it makes sense to let the police be armed, and everyone else to have suppressed gun ownership. it simply cuts down on needless death
and, as a side issue: no, arming only the police is not a formula for fascism. in fact, it is those who appeal to visceral force, who appeal to the gun, who are more likely fodder for embryonic fascist movements, not the police. really, read your history. random guys in the country is not a protection from fascism, it is the soil in which fascism grows
back to the larger point: gon control is the approach to guns as it exists in europe. europe is mostly urban (and yet still grapples with the disproportionate power their rural farmers still wield, to the detriment of free trade agreements). meanwhile, the usa has been mostly rural throughout its history, but is shifting to majority urban in recent years. therefore, it is natural that attitudes towards guns will shift from a rural attitude to an urban attitude, and we will experience a watershed moment in the coming decades against gun ownership
and it is simply a rural versus urban dynamic. currently, there are people dying in urban centers for the sake of a rural legal approach to gun ownership. in the future, there will be people dying in rural areas for the sake of an urban approach to gun ownership. its the majority deciding the legal approach. and either rural, or urban folk, suffer for the benefit of the other. for those of you want to keep your guns, urban blood is on your hands. for those of you who wish to curtail guns, rural blood will be on your hands. simple as that really
personally it would be ideal if you could own a gun in the country, but not in the city. but this is nearly impossible to enforce
again, let me get this absolutely clear to you: for the sake of the current (flawed) interpretation of the second amendment, there are needless deaths every day in urban settings. right now, for the disproportionate influence of rural people, urban people die
the second amendment referred to posses in the countryside against native americans and british and french colonial forces. its completely taken out of historical context in reference to modern gun ownership needs, really. i don't know why the second amendment is so depended upon as a some sort of supporter of the rural right to have guns. are you the minutemen? the second amendment does not support the current context in which gun ownership is used
i look forward to the day when a few rural folks die for having their gun rights curtailed, rather then the status quo we have today, in which a lot of urban folks die for the sake of irresponsible gun ownership
gun rights is a hardcore rural versus urban dynamic, with lots of needless death in the balance
Slashdot Mirror
"Your views seem to advocate tolerating criminal actions because the criminal can help you"
no. my view advocates a criminal reversing themselves and doing some good with their position. and what incentive does a criminal have for stopping to be criminal? some leniency, redemption, a sense of forgiveness. something all moral codes must have in order to be valid
"Would you let a big criminal run free because he donates a couple million dollars to a law enforcement agency"
no, and it doesn't compare. in your situation, you have a criminal going free by commiting yet another crime: bribery. in my situation, you have leniency towards a criminal by commiting a follow up good deed: helping the authorities catch yet more criminals. understand the difference?
furthermore, i am saying you have no choice on the matter. say a criminal invents or discovers or is among the few people in the world who can do technical feat xyz. he is caught, but other criminals get wind and start using technical feat xyz to commit crimes. do you want to stop the second round of criminals?
or do you want to adhere to your idealism and allow the second round of criminals to go unpunished?
in my world, the second round gets punished harshly, since their special technical knowledge isn't so special anymore, thanks to cooperation of the original criminal. in your world, you sit on the original criminal harshly, and have no way to stop the second round of criminals
not a very superior attitude
criminality in life isn't an aspect of doing one thing wrong, and remaining on ice forever. all mature systems of morality understand that there is an interplay between right and wrong, and someone who does wrong, and later does something right, deserves consideration for that
your attitude meanwhile, is all stick and no carrot. you punish, but you don't reward. no, you need a carrot, and a stick. you need to punish wrong, and you also must provide a path back towards doing the right thing, the carrot
in your harsh sharia law world, you will punish someone and give them no consideration for doing anything later that might help society. in this system, all you do is turn minor criminals into major criminals, because you haven't given them any incentive to ever do anything right ever again in their lives. its a feedback cycle, and it creates a society with more hardened criminals
you speak of incentive for good people to continue being good, and not doing something criminal. yet a genuinely good person needs no such incentive, they already udnerstand right and wrong and the implications. meanwhile, a criminal needs incentive to do good. but your attitude of all punishment no reward just burns those bridges and gives someone who commits minor crimes no reason to ever turn towards doing something good ever again in their life: its all just punishment for them from here on out
redemption and forgiveness figure into every moral code in the world
but apparently, not in yours, making your "morality", or understanding of morality, to be invalid and incomplete
its also hard to remove religion from politics
they both play at the game of social mores and laws
i'm not making an argument against you, i am in fact extending it by saying that all churches should have their tax exempt status revoked, regardless. and they should have never been tax exempt in the first place
if you put someting out on a wire, you are sacrificing your privacy, no matter what the law says
frankly, i don't understand the slashdot attitude that expects the government to protect your privacy
its YOUR responsibility to protect your privacy
on other topics, such as users with weak passwords, who complain about convenience, plenty here would be ready to scold the user saying that they need to make the extra effort to ensure their security
why can't you see the parallel?
look: it is possible for all sorts of people to spy on anything you put out on a wire, from well placed hackers, to corporate drones at telecommunications company, to yes, the government
in other words: you put it out on the wire. which means you implicitly gave up your right to privacy right at that moment, no matter what the legal environment, if you understand anything about how the internet works, which, on a forum like slashdot, should be de rigeur
if you have something to say that needs to be private, encrypt, or go walk on a secluded beach somewhere with a pounding surf to interrupt the guys with the telescoping microphones
and if this is too much work for you, if you think it is unfair to impose this extra burden on you to enforce your own privacy, then you really don't understand, philosphically, what the concept of privacy really is
doesn't it strike a lot of you as absurd that you are explicitly asking the GOVERNMENT to protect your privacy for you?
we are talking about extremely rare criminals here: smart ones who know something useful that can catch more crooks. you are treating my commentas if i am asking to go soft on all criminals. not at all. your average gangbanger or drug mule or wifekiller does not apply in the situation i am talking about. please, by all means, go all sharia law on them, with my blessing. but perhaps less than 1% of criminals here have something to barter with the justice system: a way to catch more scumbags like themselves. now you can insist on punishing such rare birds completely, or you can go softer on them, and put 10 more scumbags in cells next to him. your choice, you know what i choose
furthermore, you cannot remove the disincentive to do wrong from someone who has unique or extremely rare knowledge that allows them to get away with a crime. simply because their extraordinary knowledge makes their crime untraceable or obfuscated or in some other way blocks the traditional gears of justice. if you are worried about removing the disincentive to do something wrong for this rare intelligent criminal who has discovered something new and different, what disincentive can you place before them? a criminal who has discovered a way to exploit society in untraceable ways? there is no disincentive that exists, by definition of the rare outlying criminals we are talking about here
right now, in this world, are smart criminals sitting in fiji and the cayman islands who have gotten away with murder, literally and figuratively, perhaps without any knowledge or traceability by anyone else. don't you want to punish them? if we are to catch and punish such criminals, we need to turn the few other smart ones who got caught due to bad luck or incomplete execution or change of heart. and we turn them, by rewarding them for cooperation. if you think of a superior way to handle such exotic few criminals, please, tell the world. no one else has thought of a better way to handle such an extraordinary criminal
don't think what i am talking about applies to every run-of-the-mill low life. that's the context in which you criticize my words, and your context is invalid. my comments are prefaces to apply only to the exceptional criminal
so let's educate some of you:
we capture someone like frank abagnale, and we go all sharia law on him, as a lot of you propose, and leave him as a bloody stump
then what?
well, there are other frank abagnales out there. how do we detect them and capture them? well, the frank abagnale you just beat to a pulp: he would have made a good tool to do that, ya think?
luckily, in real life, this is exactly what the feds and the banks did. in real life, you capture and use highly intelligent crooks to... drum roll please... capture more highly intelligent crooks. get it?
law enforcement is hard grinding work, it doesn't happen like "death wish" or "dirty harry". i know in some of your justice league of america fantasy lives, delivering justice with a fist and a gun is the way to go. but we'd like to talk about reality, ok?
so to review:
1. we can have justice your way, and beat adware authors to a pulp, or
2. we can have smart justice, and listen carefully to mr. adware author's words, and use those words to catch more adware authors
get it? see the difference? do you want to pursue justice? or do you want to beat people up?
these are mutually exclusive activities, despite your dimwitted fantasy lives
now go crawl back under your rocks mouth breathers. nobody who is actually going to catch and punish cybercriminals in this world is going to think like you do
even the most vile amoral serial killer is useful to keep alive and listen to. simply for matters of brain analysis and psychological study. or, we could put a bullet in his head, scrambling the abnormal brains, and having nothing useful to catch more vile amoral serial killers
dumb violent justice leaves a dumb violent society that knows nothing about the smart and truly vicious criminals in their midst
smart justice is about studying smart criminals, and using them against each other
is that no one has come up with a scheme that is cheaper than simply digging the stuff out of the ground
as soon as someone comes up with a biofuels scheme that is cheaper than digging it out of the ground, game over, simple economic rules take over, and further savings are realized through economies of scale
2 things are affecting this breakthrough point:
1. its getting more and more expensive to dig hydrocarbons out of the ground
2. research is finding more and more shortcuts for turning biomass A into hydrocarbon B
obviously, there is issue #3: monetary fluctuations, supply and demand fluctations, etc., that affect that magical breakthrough point. temporarily in 2008, we reached that breakthrough point, but the oil price bubble popping has moved that point again into the future. but don't worry, we'll see that point again. india and china aren't getting poorer (more demand), and oil sources are just getting deeper and deeper (less supply)
personally, my money is on algae directly making octane, in ponds in the desert near an ocean, or in waterjugs in the ocean itself. that is, if i had some money right now, heh
there's also a lot of dumb people who don't believe in a religion
you for instance
your observations are spot on... in a rural land, where the law is too far away to matter
in an urban environment, there's something called POLICE
{tornado on radar}
no film crew:
"jim, are we near this isobar on the map?"
film crew:
"GOOD GOD JIM GET US TO THIS ISOBAR STAT! JESUS CHRIST! AAAAH!"
{truck gets flat tire}
no film crew:
"yup, we have a flat"
film crew:
"Why God, why. I swear I have never believed in you before, but if you answer this one prayer for me now. Oh sweet Jesus."
{tornado turns towards truck}
no film crew:
"yeah, it's turning towards us"
film crew:
"I know what you're thinking. 'Did he say EF5 or EF3?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a tornado, the most powerful windstorm in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"
which is why i fight gun ownership, as the curtailment on our freedom that it is
i am motivated by the same principles as you. the difference between you and me is that gun ownership in your mind is joined at the hip with freedom. this is an absurdity
not all limits to your freedom are imposed by the state. drug addiction is a form of slavery. fear in urban communities by gun toting thugs is a form of slavery
the gun is a tool of slavery much more than it is a tool of freedom
that in your mind, gun ownership is so tightly wound up with the notion of freedom, is outright wrong, and sad
read your history friend. random assholes with guns in the countryside is not a protection from fascism. random assholes with guns in the countryside is the soil in which embryonic fascist movements grow
fascism is all about force. depending upon a gun, registering in your mind a gun as a solution to a problem before you is the same root mental impulse as fascism
a gun on everyone's side is not the foundation of republic the respects your rights. a gun on everyone's side is simply gang and mafia warfare. of course, in the times of our founding fathers, almost everyone had a gun, because there were hostile native americans and french roaming around, and you lived in the middle of a wilderness
but conteomporary civic life is not like that those times. a gun in contemporary civic life is unnecessary at best, and an enemy of your freedoms at worst
arm the police, task them to protect us from crime. that they are going to be used to repress your freedoms in a fascist state is just as much reality as a bunch of mountain men are going to come down and protect us from the rise of hitler. if we are going to become a fascist state, gun ownership is not going to protect us from that, and more likely, in the more enthusiastic gun ownership circles, is where you will find the crucible of that fascism
i actually favor a county-by-county approach. in new york state, guns should be illegal in manhattan, but should be legal in herkimer county in the adirondacks
of course, it would be impossible to enforce, so it doesn't matter
either rural folks have to suffer for the sake of urban folks, or urban folks have to suffer for the sake of rural folks. there are a lot more urban folks, and more and more every day. therefore, rural folks need to suffer for the sake of urban folks. currently, the opposite is true, and there are hundreds of deaths every year due to that injustice
flattered that someone puts all the effort in though
i'll grant you all of your pluses, and a few more conjectures if you like. now listen to my one big fat negative, and understand that your pluses are outweighed by an order of magnitude:
it weakens faith in democracy. if my vote doesn't matter, because i'm a democrat in texas or a republican in new york, why vote? why consider my government to be a representative of my will?
a democracy is strong because it manufactures legitimacy. if the people believe the government acts in their interests, then there is social stability, and therefore happiness and prosperity.
to the extent that people dislike what their government does, if they believe that there is some "medicine" in the system which warps their will, meaning their will has not been adequately and fully expressed, they ar eunhappy, there is social instability, we all suffer for that
all of your "pluses" of the ec are aristocratic instincts of your own. you don't trust the popular will. which means you yourself have anti-democratic impulses. which means you are part of the problem
other strong-arm governments depend upon force to impose the will of an aristocracy, a "special" class, onto the will of the majority. this of course creates injustice and unhappiness
you need to reexamine your instincts. you are flawed, because you don't trust the will of the people. the will of the people is infallible, because there is no way you can morally or intellectually stand apart from the people and judge them, because there is no morally or intellectually valid point of view that stands apart from the people
1. IF absentee ballots were counted THEN gw bush would win the popular vote in 2000
verdict: maybe. maybe not. we'll never know. but its not a record of fact. maybe if i eat unicorns i'll fart rainbows. who knows? who cares? its all conjecture
2. IF the ec college were abolished THEN al gore would be president in 2000 and the usa would never have invaded iraq
verdict: about as certain as me farting after eating refried beans. pretty fucking solid fact
along with better health care, that i'd rather live in europe
i live in new york city. low gun ownership, low crime. strong police. my crime rate is probably lower than where you live. what crime we do have is bought in from states with weak gun control laws. the solution: fix those broken states and their bad laws
you are so pigheaded, blind, and propagandized on the issue of guns you are perfectly happy with mountains of needless urban deaths. for what? so you can go hunting on the weekend?
but i'm not a coward. i'm an american. i'm not going to run off to europe. i will stay here and fight for what is right, and fight to curtail gun rights, and defeat the pigheaded and blind like you, defeat you and your ignorance
its all demographics. as the usa skews more urban, gun rights will be curtailed
your days are numbered. your approach to "justice" is a historical anachronism
enjoy your lock on the law while it last. it won't last
gun ownership is not a way to protect you from crime. gun ownership is a way to put a hole in your foot. strong police: that's the path to low crime
so you go with what the ec decides, and you wind up convincing people that they are helpless cogs in a machine, their vote doesn't matter, its card tricks and fuzzy math, democracy is a joke
or you go with the tiniest perturbation in popular will, thereby convincing people they better damn well vote in the next election since every little vote counts so much, thereby reinstilling faith in democracy
editted and worked over though:
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1021887&cid=25678743
people give me flak for this, i do it alot. but i don't understand what their problem is, there's no such thing as self-plagiarism. if the remark is applicable to the subject matter, which it is, what's the problem?
the popular vote is all that should matter
everything you said is 100% correct, in a bogus system. which renders your points pointless
i don't know why you think its important to lecture me on the facts of the status quo, when the whole issue here is the status quo is wrong
i get it. i get everything you said. i got it before you said it
do you get it that the way things work is wrong? or at least that that is the fucking subject matter?
http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2000/prespop.htm
educate yourself, then open your ignorant hole
no? what's wrong with you?
then you need to put a sign on every door in your house saying "gun in here" or "gun not in here" to guide criminals, for being the inadequately enthusiastic gun owner you profess to be
have i successfully dismantled your bullshit propaganda about the a sign on my window yet?
think of an urban environment as a large house. on the street corners, are police. they are the guns that i need to keep me safe from crime. the gun is in safe, responsible, vigilant (and awake) hands. that it is in his hands, and not in my apartment, is the same as your gun being in your bedroom, but not your kitchen
see how that works?
but it is an excellent point, and i thank you for it
yet another reason to get rid of the ec: its as outdated anachronism
i'm glad you can spin scenarios where this is not true. and? supposition is not fact
the official record is al gore won the popular vote. please, show us contingencies and if-then conditions where this is not true. it doesn't mean anything
meanwhile, we also have the factual record of the abyssmal gw bush administration. can you tell me with a straight face al gore would have invaded iraq?
we need to remove the electoral college, to prevent another a gw bush: gw bush was not the democratic will of the american people, according to factual record (not your suppositions). yet he took the white house, and we paid dearly for this idiotic anachronistic tweak on our popular will called the ec
we're talking about the presidential vote, the electoral college. hello?
we're not talking about execution by vote. this isn't a science fiction convention
can you keep your emotional propaganda in your pants please?
rural voters don't deserve to have more rights than urban voters, which is exactly what you are asking for, no matter how you frame it, and it is still wrong. any, ANY disproportionate influence leads to injustice and abuse of power
for example: guns. i grew up rural, and i live urban now. i shot shotguns in the swamp behind the house with my granddaddy, a mile from our nearest neighbor, at gamebird and targets. i understand the need for your own form of protection when the police are half an hour away
now, living in an urban environment, i see the other side of guns. guns are not only tools of virtue. they are frequently tools of mayhem. guns are not always in the hands of those who intend good, nor is there some magic wand which can tell who should or should not have a gun. such that in an urban environment, it makes sense to let the police be armed, and everyone else to have suppressed gun ownership. it simply cuts down on needless death
and, as a side issue: no, arming only the police is not a formula for fascism. in fact, it is those who appeal to visceral force, who appeal to the gun, who are more likely fodder for embryonic fascist movements, not the police. really, read your history. random guys in the country is not a protection from fascism, it is the soil in which fascism grows
back to the larger point: gon control is the approach to guns as it exists in europe. europe is mostly urban (and yet still grapples with the disproportionate power their rural farmers still wield, to the detriment of free trade agreements). meanwhile, the usa has been mostly rural throughout its history, but is shifting to majority urban in recent years. therefore, it is natural that attitudes towards guns will shift from a rural attitude to an urban attitude, and we will experience a watershed moment in the coming decades against gun ownership
and it is simply a rural versus urban dynamic. currently, there are people dying in urban centers for the sake of a rural legal approach to gun ownership. in the future, there will be people dying in rural areas for the sake of an urban approach to gun ownership. its the majority deciding the legal approach. and either rural, or urban folk, suffer for the benefit of the other. for those of you want to keep your guns, urban blood is on your hands. for those of you who wish to curtail guns, rural blood will be on your hands. simple as that really
personally it would be ideal if you could own a gun in the country, but not in the city. but this is nearly impossible to enforce
again, let me get this absolutely clear to you: for the sake of the current (flawed) interpretation of the second amendment, there are needless deaths every day in urban settings. right now, for the disproportionate influence of rural people, urban people die
the second amendment referred to posses in the countryside against native americans and british and french colonial forces. its completely taken out of historical context in reference to modern gun ownership needs, really. i don't know why the second amendment is so depended upon as a some sort of supporter of the rural right to have guns. are you the minutemen? the second amendment does not support the current context in which gun ownership is used
i look forward to the day when a few rural folks die for having their gun rights curtailed, rather then the status quo we have today, in which a lot of urban folks die for the sake of irresponsible gun ownership
gun rights is a hardcore rural versus urban dynamic, with lots of needless death in the balance