You listed a half dozen devices as if they all needed to be separate devices.. I was saying that the LIST could be accommodated by one device. So... okay.. 2 devices.. But not 8.
How do you think people hunt? Have you ever hunted? Ever watch a cat hunt? You don't think there is fixation going on there? Jesus... I can watch my cat not move a muscle for 20 mins while he's perched outside a gopher hole, just waiting for that dumb bastard to pop his head up.
Believe me, there is all sorts of single focus fixation going on there.
It's great that that works for you, but for many people, me included, not having a smartphone means having to carry a whole bunch of other devices as well. A PDA for calendaring and contact management, a GPS receiver for navigation, a camera, an ebook reader, an MP3 player, a portable game console, a fitness tracker, etc.
Oh bullshit... I have a tablet that has every single function you just named. ONE DEVICE. But, I don't carry it in my pocket. It's not a constant distraction. Normally it's sitting on the passenger seat and, if I need it, I can retrieve it quickly. I carry a flip phone for phone calls.
I'm not saying that works for you.. I'm simply saying that every function you just described can be accommodated without a smart phone and without multiple devices.
Are there that many people out there that are so hooked on their phones that it occupies that much of their daily lives?
Are you kidding me? It's ridiculous.
Took my kid to his gymnastics class (YMCA), and while sitting in the waiting/observation room, with huge glass windows, out of perhaps 40+ parents there was only one other parent actually paying attention to their child. I went over and sat down next to her and had a very nice conversation. Every other parent in the room had their face buried in a goddamn smartphone and was totally ignoring their child.
I'm a bit of a paradoxical Luddite. I own an ISP, but refuse to purchase a smart phone. I have a table for when I must use the internet for some important purpose.. But other than that, I carry a normal flip phone (that I had to special order, because the idiots at the wireless store looked at me like I was insane when I said I didn't want a smart phone).
I don't blame the smart phones themselves. I do acknowledge that they can be super important and beneficial for some people. But for most folks they are a distraction and, I think, impart a seriously negative impact on their lives.
I have family members (who shall remain nameless) who can't drive down the fucking road without checking their phones.
Go read the goddamn Federalist Papers. These were the notes that Madison kept at the time the Constitution was being written. They are a collection of notes and letters he wrote to other founders (Jefferson, Franklin, etc). He explains a lot of the reasoning and logic they were applying WHILE THEY WERE WRITING THE DOCUMENT.
I've already taken the time to post his excerpt on the 2nd, and it is in direct opposition to what you claim.
So keep ignoring the facts, stick your fingers in your ears, and hum...
You are a fucking liar. I mean that quite seriously. You have an agenda and you're willing to lie to further it.. Right or wrong, a couple of years ago a bunch of armed ranchers basically told the government to fuck off. They stood their ground. The debate isn't if they were right or wrong.. But what they did is in absolute opposition to what you claim.
They didn't back down. They didn't cower in fear. You project your own cowardice on the population. Your propaganda is transparent.. Keep repeating "gun nuts"..
Sorry buddy, but I choose not to be a defeatist. You, by your own words, clearly are. Yeah, shit right now sucks.. but it can get a lot fucking worse.. Hopefully we still have the time and the will to reverse this course.. It's going to be damned hard if the majority of our population is as spineless as your sniveling ass.
Why do I suspect you'd have been a collaborator in WW2?
I understand your confusion, but this was also addressed in the Federalist Papers. Words change over time. You have to go back and see what they meant at the time.
Regulated _at the time_ meant well trained. That's what it meant.. People were expected to practice with their guns & keep them in good working order. Back then, the Army, and maybe even local law enforcement, could be several days away from where a problem was. People were expected to handle things themselves.
The security of a free state... Well, according to Madison, this was keeping yourself free. If the government spun out of control, it was expected that the local militias would unite with State or County forces, under the leadership of a state or county official and fight. This occurred several times during the Civil War. There were all sorts of militias running around that were not under the authority of the Federal Government (North or South). I think the closest modern equivalent would be the Partisans of WW2.
What a lot of our fellow citizens have forgotten is that, at the time the constitution was drafted, the Federal Government was weak.. Quite deliberately. Nobody wanted a super strong national government.. Concentration of power and all that jazz...
The Fed was prohibited from having a standing army (those tend to be used against the populace). It was expected that during a national crisis, we'd raise an army, go kick some ass, and then the army would be disbanded. Our history shows that this was the case right up until the end of World War 1.
We've moved away from that, and I get it.. Wars today are quite technical and sometimes rapid.. Not enough time to train people to drive a tank if you are being invaded.
Long story short... Madison intended the militias to be composed of normal people who practiced and kept their guns in working order. They were expected to be a bulwark against a National Government that had spun out of control. They were also intended to be a first line of defense, should we be invaded as there would certainly be some span of time before the Army could arrive.
I don't agree with everything the man does, but can you please give me an example of his tyranny? What has he done, specifically, that you consider tyranny?
I really do want to know.
What laws has he signed or promoted that have impinged on your basic human rights? I have never called for the overthrow of a government that is inefficient or run by morons. I reserve the right to revolt for when the government goes tyrannical. I.E, when they start sending out the police to round up people for political speech, as one example.
If you can't make a case, and you lose the vote, you don't have the "right" to start shooting at the majority who voted against you.
Sorry but you fail basic civics. I suspect you know this, but our form of government was specifically set up to prevent the tyranny of the majority. You have the absolute moral right to shoot at the majority who attempt to strip you of your basic human rights.
I'll go back to slavery for this, as it serves as a good example. Was it ever immoral for a slave to kill his/her master/owner? I think, or at least hope, that we both agree that the answer to this is "no". That slave had the absolute right to freedom. Killing those who would deny it to him, through force and chains, was never wrong.
Most of the time, maybe all of the time, those revolts were put down and the slaves were killed.... by an evil majority. But the slave who revolted was NEVER in the wrong. Had they been able to organize, maybe the outcome would have been different. There's a reason slaves were FORBIDDEN to learn to read...
As I, and several others, have stated guns are for revolting against a tyrannical government not a government you disagree with. I don't think anyone is calling for the overthrow of a government that is simply inefficient, or run by morons, or even corrupt. But, when they start sending out the goons to lock up people for political speech then maybe we've gotten to a new point.
I don't think we're there yet. But, we are certainly getting close. We can probably still fix this through the normal processes, but if we don't get a handle on it soon, we are going to have some serious issues in the future.
As the Snowden documents make blindingly clear, we have a government that is on track to tyranny. It's maybe not even so much the elected officials, but the non-elected bureaucracy. The assholes that have high level jobs in the government for decades, if not longer.
I think we're all familiar with J. Edgar Hoover and how he kept files and blackmailed EVERYONE, from Presidents to Senators to Judges. You don't think that was an abuse of government power? We had to wait for that fucker to die. Nobody had the balls to oppose him.
Once the guns are gone, we aren't getting them back. I'd rather have them and not need them, than need them and not have them. Besides, they do have the side-effect of being around for personal defense. But that is just a positive side effect.
It tells me you are a cunt. That man gave us PROOF that our own government shits all over our rights and wipes its ass with the Constitution. But you don't like that.. You don't like that he provided proof that you are a blind lemming.
He risked everything to get us this information and you hate him for it.
That's easy.. Congress specifically exempted themselves from insider trading laws. That's one way they make so much money...
Yeah.. Seriously... They can decide they are going to give your company some huge government contract, run out an buy a shitload of your stock, and then announce you got the contract.. Then they can sell the stock and...PARTY TIME.
It was legal for a long time.. then there was a public outcry and they passed a law to make themselves subject to the same rules as everyone else (The STOCK act), and then when nobody was looking, they rolled it back and gave themselves their exemption back.. And yeah, Obama signed it..
It was fucking sneaky.. They didn't debate the bill.. The announcement was one sentence long (literally), and they didn't even fucking vote on it. They used "unanimous consent".
STOCK = Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge
Yep.. This is the government we have.. The rules don't apply to them.. Just to you fucking peons.
(By all means, keep your Saturday Night Specials, shotguns, and 22 and 30-06 rifles. "We" don't have a problem with people having those, with proper background checks.)
And whoever is perpetrating the myth the the Minutemen at Lexington and Concord had Gatling Guns? Knock that shit off. And the rest of you that believe it – because it fits your narrative – shame on you. They had muzzle loading flintlocks. That's it. The Gatling gun wasn't invented until the 1861, in time for the Civil war. If you don't know the difference between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War then it's back to eighth grade history for you.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the 2nd Amendment is about personal defense.
IT IS NOT
The Second Amendment was specifically written so that the people had the means and the ability to revolt and overthrow the government if it turned tyrannical.
This is not opinion. This is written fact. Given this, do you think the framers did not intend for us to keep up with the same advances that the government has access to?
We had just been through a long and bloody war that involved overthrowing an oppressive government.. The last thing the framers wanted was another oppressive government.
If you take a look at the Bill of Rights, almost every single item in it tells the government what it CANNOT do, with the exception of Amendment 6 which says to the people "If the government tries you, you get all of these rights" and Amendment 9 which says "We listed some of your rights, but not all of them, and you still retain those we didn't write down"
Everything else (1-5,7-10) tells the government it is specifically forbidden from doing things.. Congress shall make no law.....Shall not be infringed....No soldier shall....No warrants shall issue....No person shall be held to answer.....No fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined....Excessive bail shall not be required.....
#9 is one of my favorites and it's one that most people seem to have forgotten about...
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
In lay terms... Certain rights that the people possess have been listed here.. But they have other rights that we didn't write down...Because we didn't write them down doesn't mean they don't exist.. In fact...
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The only powers that the federal government has are the ones we DID write down. If we didn't write them down, then the power belongs to the state or the people, NOT the Federal Government. This one is so ignored.... To get around this one, the Supreme Court has twisted every meaning of the other parts of the Constitution.
Regardless of how you may interpret the 2nd Amendment, the guy that helped to write it wrote down his thoughts.. It is his interpretation that matters, and this is what he had to say on the subject:
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct th
Well, I'll give you this; you are one of the rare and reasonable ones.
And you are absolutely correct. New technology does bring new problems but unfortunately a large portion of those who dwell on the left side of center act like all technology is bad or.. maybe more correctly, they act like it makes our life worse in the long run.
Right now, in my state, there is this anti-plastic campaign.. Total disregard for the quality of life that plastics give us (sterile food, sterile medicine, etc). We don't have a plastic problem, we have a plastic disposal problem. But that's not how they see it.. They've got entire lists of things they want banned.... Back to paper straws in some cities.. Fuck the trees I guess...
We have to deal with the issue we create, but on the whole our life has improved dramatically since the industrial revolution. Anyone who says otherwise is delusional.. I'm quite happy that my life expectancy isn't 45.
A person can have a home that is 100% solar. They CAN use their own electricity to generate those coins.. They don't have to back feed into the grid... Sometimes they don't even have the option to dump excess into the grid.. So take your holier-than-thou and cram it.
You people hate everything that makes our society what it is.. Life wasn't better before technology. It was WAY FUCKING WORSE. You dropped dead at 45.. Every cut or scrape was a potential death sentence. And every animal in nature is 1 of 2 things.. It's food or you are it's food.
Only assholes would put up barriers to electricity.. Only assholes would put up barriers to food. Only assholes would put up barriers to housing.
College is not a necessity, fuck face. If you don't have food you die. If you don't have college... what? Nothing.. You can still have a very good paying job in the trades.. Fuck, you can end up as the CEO of Microsoft... We've already established that there are a shitload of people with degrees working min wage jobs because we've hit saturation, and you want to make it worse?
I've been saying this for 20 years.. The liberals (left) will never be satisfied. They want EVERYTHING for free. Or rather, they want everything and for someone else to pay for it.
If you want college, fine! Wonderful! I salute your desire to better your station. But, you can fucking pay for it yourself... Or, you can find someone who is happy to pay for it, consensually. An employer, a patron, a scholarship.. Even the military.. 4 lousy years in the USAF and they'll pay for your entire college education.
Yeah.. There are LOTS of places that will voluntarily pay for your schooling. Even more places will pay a portion of your schooling. Even Walmart...
Take your "I demand this because I exist" and go fuck yourself with it.
Assuming you are correct, you still aren't telling the whole story.
What happened to enrollment numbers when Congress introduced the student loan program?
The very next year college enrollment increased by 350,000 bodies. Within a decade enrollment had doubled, and an additional 4 MILLION students were in attendance.
You don't think that played a role in the tuition increases? I'd say it played a significant role. I have no doubt the reduction of funds played a large role, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts the massive increase in attendance coupled with the fact that a lot of people were going to school on borrowed funds helped too.
From 1965 to 1975, the population of the United States did not double.. But college attendance did. What happened?
"Free Money" happened. Yeah, it's a loan, it's not free, but your average 18 year old doesn't have the maturity to see it as anything besides Free Money.. Payback doesn't start for 4 years.. That's an eternity for a teenager.
Today college attendance is up 500% over the 1965 levels.. Once again, population increase does not account for this.
Here's a simple thought experiment...
Assume that tomorrow, the Government declares electricity to be a right.. i.e. It'll be "free" for you and me.. Congress further declares that taxes won't be raised to pay for it.. They'll..I dunno, shift funds around.. Pull it from the DoD, whatever.. It doesn't matter.. The utility companies will be paid and taxes don't go up...Furthermore, just to speed things along, let's assume this happens on Aug 1 in the USA.
What happens to our electrical grid on Aug 2? Yeah, it'll collapse. On Aug 2, every air conditioner in the country is gonna be on full blast and nobody is gonna give a shit about closing their doors and windows... Electricity will no longer have any value whatsoever. Nobody has to pay for it so nobody is going to assign it a value.
My point is that when people don't pay for stuff, they don't assign it a value.
How could we immediately bring the electrical use back to sustainable levels? Reintroduce paying for your electricity.. Presto, people conserve it... Use what they can afford... Close their fucking doors.. Ya know, like we tell our kids to do when they leave them open... Why do kids do that? Simple.. They aren't paying for the fucking electricity. It means nothing to them. I can guarantee you that no 10 year old (who isn't a genius) thinks about electricity and what it costs, short of overhearing their parents bitching about it.
So, college tuition begins rising dramatically. In the last 20 years, tuition has increased by 300%. Don't tell me that is because Congress cut funding..At least, that's not the only reason, and I don't believe it to be the prime reason. I'll grant you it's a non-insignificant reason. Primarily it's going up because demand shot up and nobody has to pay for it "today". Since they don't have to pay for it now, less thought is assigned to the cost. It can all be paid back "later". The supply and demand changed and payments are deferred. Take a look at credit card debt in this country and you can see what effect deferred debt has on the public..
Slashdot Mirror
He's a cunt and he lied by omission.
He doesn't take a paycheck.. He is taxed at the capital gains rate, because that's how he gets his money.
Wanna jack up the capital gains tax rate? Good luck getting people to do short term investments in anything...
Oh for fuck's sake....
Now teenagers need a living wage.... The left has gone full-blown delusional...
I suppose 13 year old girls who babysit on the weekends need a living wage along with full medical, dental, & vision too, right?
You are an asshole.
What the actual fuck?
A man is a man. A boy is a boy. A woman is a woman. A girl is a girl.
I dare you to walk up to a black man and call him boy.. We'll see if he buys you retarded logic.
Okay. I wasn't clear.. I'll give you that..
You listed a half dozen devices as if they all needed to be separate devices.. I was saying that the LIST could be accommodated by one device. So... okay.. 2 devices.. But not 8.
You have some pretty serious issues, dude...
Technology was the very first arrowhead. Do you mean modern technology?
How do you think people hunt? Have you ever hunted? Ever watch a cat hunt? You don't think there is fixation going on there? Jesus... I can watch my cat not move a muscle for 20 mins while he's perched outside a gopher hole, just waiting for that dumb bastard to pop his head up.
Believe me, there is all sorts of single focus fixation going on there.
Prey has to be wary. Hunters do not.
I hear ya brother... None of those high-level guys in the Kremlin was living the good life.. It was peasant food and Trabants all around.
It's great that that works for you, but for many people, me included, not having a smartphone means having to carry a whole bunch of other devices as well. A PDA for calendaring and contact management, a GPS receiver for navigation, a camera, an ebook reader, an MP3 player, a portable game console, a fitness tracker, etc.
Oh bullshit... I have a tablet that has every single function you just named. ONE DEVICE. But, I don't carry it in my pocket. It's not a constant distraction. Normally it's sitting on the passenger seat and, if I need it, I can retrieve it quickly. I carry a flip phone for phone calls.
I'm not saying that works for you.. I'm simply saying that every function you just described can be accommodated without a smart phone and without multiple devices.
Are there that many people out there that are so hooked on their phones that it occupies that much of their daily lives?
Are you kidding me? It's ridiculous.
Took my kid to his gymnastics class (YMCA), and while sitting in the waiting/observation room, with huge glass windows, out of perhaps 40+ parents there was only one other parent actually paying attention to their child. I went over and sat down next to her and had a very nice conversation. Every other parent in the room had their face buried in a goddamn smartphone and was totally ignoring their child.
I'm a bit of a paradoxical Luddite. I own an ISP, but refuse to purchase a smart phone. I have a table for when I must use the internet for some important purpose.. But other than that, I carry a normal flip phone (that I had to special order, because the idiots at the wireless store looked at me like I was insane when I said I didn't want a smart phone).
I don't blame the smart phones themselves. I do acknowledge that they can be super important and beneficial for some people. But for most folks they are a distraction and, I think, impart a seriously negative impact on their lives.
I have family members (who shall remain nameless) who can't drive down the fucking road without checking their phones.
Go read the goddamn Federalist Papers. These were the notes that Madison kept at the time the Constitution was being written. They are a collection of notes and letters he wrote to other founders (Jefferson, Franklin, etc). He explains a lot of the reasoning and logic they were applying WHILE THEY WERE WRITING THE DOCUMENT.
I've already taken the time to post his excerpt on the 2nd, and it is in direct opposition to what you claim.
So keep ignoring the facts, stick your fingers in your ears, and hum...
You are a fucking liar. I mean that quite seriously. You have an agenda and you're willing to lie to further it.. Right or wrong, a couple of years ago a bunch of armed ranchers basically told the government to fuck off. They stood their ground. The debate isn't if they were right or wrong.. But what they did is in absolute opposition to what you claim.
They didn't back down. They didn't cower in fear. You project your own cowardice on the population. Your propaganda is transparent.. Keep repeating "gun nuts"..
You are a massive pussy.
Sorry buddy, but I choose not to be a defeatist. You, by your own words, clearly are. Yeah, shit right now sucks.. but it can get a lot fucking worse.. Hopefully we still have the time and the will to reverse this course.. It's going to be damned hard if the majority of our population is as spineless as your sniveling ass.
Why do I suspect you'd have been a collaborator in WW2?
Fantastic example. Thank you.
I understand your confusion, but this was also addressed in the Federalist Papers. Words change over time. You have to go back and see what they meant at the time.
Regulated _at the time_ meant well trained. That's what it meant.. People were expected to practice with their guns & keep them in good working order. Back then, the Army, and maybe even local law enforcement, could be several days away from where a problem was. People were expected to handle things themselves.
The security of a free state... Well, according to Madison, this was keeping yourself free. If the government spun out of control, it was expected that the local militias would unite with State or County forces, under the leadership of a state or county official and fight. This occurred several times during the Civil War. There were all sorts of militias running around that were not under the authority of the Federal Government (North or South). I think the closest modern equivalent would be the Partisans of WW2.
What a lot of our fellow citizens have forgotten is that, at the time the constitution was drafted, the Federal Government was weak.. Quite deliberately. Nobody wanted a super strong national government.. Concentration of power and all that jazz...
The Fed was prohibited from having a standing army (those tend to be used against the populace). It was expected that during a national crisis, we'd raise an army, go kick some ass, and then the army would be disbanded. Our history shows that this was the case right up until the end of World War 1.
We've moved away from that, and I get it.. Wars today are quite technical and sometimes rapid.. Not enough time to train people to drive a tank if you are being invaded.
Long story short... Madison intended the militias to be composed of normal people who practiced and kept their guns in working order. They were expected to be a bulwark against a National Government that had spun out of control. They were also intended to be a first line of defense, should we be invaded as there would certainly be some span of time before the Army could arrive.
I don't agree with everything the man does, but can you please give me an example of his tyranny? What has he done, specifically, that you consider tyranny?
I really do want to know.
What laws has he signed or promoted that have impinged on your basic human rights? I have never called for the overthrow of a government that is inefficient or run by morons. I reserve the right to revolt for when the government goes tyrannical. I.E, when they start sending out the police to round up people for political speech, as one example.
If you can't make a case, and you lose the vote, you don't have the "right" to start shooting at the majority who voted against you.
Sorry but you fail basic civics. I suspect you know this, but our form of government was specifically set up to prevent the tyranny of the majority. You have the absolute moral right to shoot at the majority who attempt to strip you of your basic human rights.
I'll go back to slavery for this, as it serves as a good example. Was it ever immoral for a slave to kill his/her master/owner? I think, or at least hope, that we both agree that the answer to this is "no". That slave had the absolute right to freedom. Killing those who would deny it to him, through force and chains, was never wrong.
Most of the time, maybe all of the time, those revolts were put down and the slaves were killed.... by an evil majority. But the slave who revolted was NEVER in the wrong. Had they been able to organize, maybe the outcome would have been different. There's a reason slaves were FORBIDDEN to learn to read...
As I, and several others, have stated guns are for revolting against a tyrannical government not a government you disagree with. I don't think anyone is calling for the overthrow of a government that is simply inefficient, or run by morons, or even corrupt. But, when they start sending out the goons to lock up people for political speech then maybe we've gotten to a new point.
I don't think we're there yet. But, we are certainly getting close. We can probably still fix this through the normal processes, but if we don't get a handle on it soon, we are going to have some serious issues in the future.
As the Snowden documents make blindingly clear, we have a government that is on track to tyranny. It's maybe not even so much the elected officials, but the non-elected bureaucracy. The assholes that have high level jobs in the government for decades, if not longer.
I think we're all familiar with J. Edgar Hoover and how he kept files and blackmailed EVERYONE, from Presidents to Senators to Judges. You don't think that was an abuse of government power? We had to wait for that fucker to die. Nobody had the balls to oppose him.
Once the guns are gone, we aren't getting them back. I'd rather have them and not need them, than need them and not have them. Besides, they do have the side-effect of being around for personal defense. But that is just a positive side effect.
It tells me you are a cunt. That man gave us PROOF that our own government shits all over our rights and wipes its ass with the Constitution. But you don't like that.. You don't like that he provided proof that you are a blind lemming.
He risked everything to get us this information and you hate him for it.
FUCK YOU
That's easy.. Congress specifically exempted themselves from insider trading laws. That's one way they make so much money...
Yeah.. Seriously... They can decide they are going to give your company some huge government contract, run out an buy a shitload of your stock, and then announce you got the contract.. Then they can sell the stock and...PARTY TIME.
It was legal for a long time.. then there was a public outcry and they passed a law to make themselves subject to the same rules as everyone else (The STOCK act), and then when nobody was looking, they rolled it back and gave themselves their exemption back.. And yeah, Obama signed it..
It was fucking sneaky.. They didn't debate the bill.. The announcement was one sentence long (literally), and they didn't even fucking vote on it. They used "unanimous consent".
STOCK = Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge
Yep.. This is the government we have.. The rules don't apply to them.. Just to you fucking peons.
(By all means, keep your Saturday Night Specials, shotguns, and 22 and 30-06 rifles. "We" don't have a problem with people having those, with proper background checks.)
And whoever is perpetrating the myth the the Minutemen at Lexington and Concord had Gatling Guns? Knock that shit off. And the rest of you that believe it – because it fits your narrative – shame on you. They had muzzle loading flintlocks. That's it. The Gatling gun wasn't invented until the 1861, in time for the Civil war. If you don't know the difference between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War then it's back to eighth grade history for you.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the 2nd Amendment is about personal defense.
IT IS NOT
The Second Amendment was specifically written so that the people had the means and the ability to revolt and overthrow the government if it turned tyrannical.
This is not opinion. This is written fact. Given this, do you think the framers did not intend for us to keep up with the same advances that the government has access to?
We had just been through a long and bloody war that involved overthrowing an oppressive government.. The last thing the framers wanted was another oppressive government.
If you take a look at the Bill of Rights, almost every single item in it tells the government what it CANNOT do, with the exception of Amendment 6 which says to the people "If the government tries you, you get all of these rights" and Amendment 9 which says "We listed some of your rights, but not all of them, and you still retain those we didn't write down"
Everything else (1-5,7-10) tells the government it is specifically forbidden from doing things.. Congress shall make no law.....Shall not be infringed....No soldier shall....No warrants shall issue....No person shall be held to answer.....No fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined....Excessive bail shall not be required.....
#9 is one of my favorites and it's one that most people seem to have forgotten about...
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
In lay terms... Certain rights that the people possess have been listed here.. But they have other rights that we didn't write down...Because we didn't write them down doesn't mean they don't exist.. In fact...
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The only powers that the federal government has are the ones we DID write down. If we didn't write them down, then the power belongs to the state or the people, NOT the Federal Government. This one is so ignored.... To get around this one, the Supreme Court has twisted every meaning of the other parts of the Constitution.
Regardless of how you may interpret the 2nd Amendment, the guy that helped to write it wrote down his thoughts.. It is his interpretation that matters, and this is what he had to say on the subject:
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct th
Well, I'll give you this; you are one of the rare and reasonable ones.
And you are absolutely correct. New technology does bring new problems but unfortunately a large portion of those who dwell on the left side of center act like all technology is bad or.. maybe more correctly, they act like it makes our life worse in the long run.
Right now, in my state, there is this anti-plastic campaign.. Total disregard for the quality of life that plastics give us (sterile food, sterile medicine, etc). We don't have a plastic problem, we have a plastic disposal problem. But that's not how they see it.. They've got entire lists of things they want banned.... Back to paper straws in some cities.. Fuck the trees I guess...
We have to deal with the issue we create, but on the whole our life has improved dramatically since the industrial revolution. Anyone who says otherwise is delusional.. I'm quite happy that my life expectancy isn't 45.
No... just.. no
You tree huggers.. For fuck's sake....
A person can have a home that is 100% solar. They CAN use their own electricity to generate those coins.. They don't have to back feed into the grid... Sometimes they don't even have the option to dump excess into the grid.. So take your holier-than-thou and cram it.
You people hate everything that makes our society what it is.. Life wasn't better before technology. It was WAY FUCKING WORSE. You dropped dead at 45.. Every cut or scrape was a potential death sentence. And every animal in nature is 1 of 2 things.. It's food or you are it's food.
Take off the rose colored glasses.
Environmental crime.... Go fuck off.
Just to be pendantic.. But it need not have been generated with carbon. It _could_ have been generated with Solar or Hydro...
Just sayin'..
Only assholes would put up barriers to electricity.. Only assholes would put up barriers to food. Only assholes would put up barriers to housing.
College is not a necessity, fuck face. If you don't have food you die. If you don't have college... what? Nothing.. You can still have a very good paying job in the trades.. Fuck, you can end up as the CEO of Microsoft... We've already established that there are a shitload of people with degrees working min wage jobs because we've hit saturation, and you want to make it worse?
I've been saying this for 20 years.. The liberals (left) will never be satisfied. They want EVERYTHING for free. Or rather, they want everything and for someone else to pay for it.
If you want college, fine! Wonderful! I salute your desire to better your station. But, you can fucking pay for it yourself... Or, you can find someone who is happy to pay for it, consensually. An employer, a patron, a scholarship.. Even the military.. 4 lousy years in the USAF and they'll pay for your entire college education.
Yeah.. There are LOTS of places that will voluntarily pay for your schooling. Even more places will pay a portion of your schooling. Even Walmart...
Take your "I demand this because I exist" and go fuck yourself with it.
Assuming you are correct, you still aren't telling the whole story.
What happened to enrollment numbers when Congress introduced the student loan program?
The very next year college enrollment increased by 350,000 bodies. Within a decade enrollment had doubled, and an additional 4 MILLION students were in attendance.
You don't think that played a role in the tuition increases? I'd say it played a significant role. I have no doubt the reduction of funds played a large role, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts the massive increase in attendance coupled with the fact that a lot of people were going to school on borrowed funds helped too.
From 1965 to 1975, the population of the United States did not double.. But college attendance did. What happened?
"Free Money" happened. Yeah, it's a loan, it's not free, but your average 18 year old doesn't have the maturity to see it as anything besides Free Money.. Payback doesn't start for 4 years.. That's an eternity for a teenager.
Today college attendance is up 500% over the 1965 levels.. Once again, population increase does not account for this.
Here's a simple thought experiment...
Assume that tomorrow, the Government declares electricity to be a right.. i.e. It'll be "free" for you and me.. Congress further declares that taxes won't be raised to pay for it.. They'll..I dunno, shift funds around.. Pull it from the DoD, whatever.. It doesn't matter.. The utility companies will be paid and taxes don't go up...Furthermore, just to speed things along, let's assume this happens on Aug 1 in the USA.
What happens to our electrical grid on Aug 2? Yeah, it'll collapse. On Aug 2, every air conditioner in the country is gonna be on full blast and nobody is gonna give a shit about closing their doors and windows... Electricity will no longer have any value whatsoever. Nobody has to pay for it so nobody is going to assign it a value.
My point is that when people don't pay for stuff, they don't assign it a value.
How could we immediately bring the electrical use back to sustainable levels? Reintroduce paying for your electricity.. Presto, people conserve it... Use what they can afford... Close their fucking doors.. Ya know, like we tell our kids to do when they leave them open... Why do kids do that? Simple.. They aren't paying for the fucking electricity. It means nothing to them. I can guarantee you that no 10 year old (who isn't a genius) thinks about electricity and what it costs, short of overhearing their parents bitching about it.
So, college tuition begins rising dramatically. In the last 20 years, tuition has increased by 300%. Don't tell me that is because Congress cut funding..At least, that's not the only reason, and I don't believe it to be the prime reason. I'll grant you it's a non-insignificant reason. Primarily it's going up because demand shot up and nobody has to pay for it "today". Since they don't have to pay for it now, less thought is assigned to the cost. It can all be paid back "later". The supply and demand changed and payments are deferred. Take a look at credit card debt in this country and you can see what effect deferred debt has on the public..