If 10 or 100 million people are going to overthrow a government by force, then they'll need to be coordinated. They'll need someone to develop a strategy (even 10-100 million armed people aren't going to achieve anything if they don't agree what to do - and you'll never get consenses with numbers like that). They'll need a leader.
Such a person would wield enormous power. And power corrupts. A person in such a position would be accountable to virtually nobody. They would have an army of 10-100 million, who are willing to wage an armed struggle against the current regime, or more importantly, against anyone who is *perceived* to be part of that regime. The leader could easily stir up hatred among their followers with patriotic-sounding speeches punctuated with emotive calls-to-arms, and hatred can easily blind people to logic and reasoning.
Want to second-guess the leader? You'll be the first against the wall. Only in rare circumstances do armed struggles restore democracy. Most often the sheer level of propeganda destroys it, along with the economy, national infrastructure and the lives of millions. This is *why* we have elections in the developed world - because they're a lot safer in all respects than what went before. I'm sure the revolutions in Russia and China that installed their respective communist regimes started out with good intentions, but look where it got them.
The key to a stable, democractic government is transparency and accoutability, not the threat of rebellion.
> Is it? Do you think the First Amendment is also > rediculous? Without the right to bear arms, how > are you supposed to protect your other rights, > just whine louder and louder?
Just think about this for a minute. In all seriousness, what good are guns for protecting your rights? What are you going to do - wave your AK47 around madly and open up on that group of federal agents approaching your front door? Do you really think they'll sit down and think "Hmmm, maybe we'd better listen to this guy". Of course not - they'll just send the special forces (or whoever's responsibility it is) around to blow your head off.
> Oh, yeah. I guess a ban on guns is the first > thing such corrupt, totalitarian governments do.
Plenty of democracies have placed restrictions on the ownership of weapons (Australia, Britain, Japan, etc) and none of them show any real signs of becoming totalitarian. If it came down to it, do you really think that a government (totalitarian or otherwise) backed by a professional army could be overthrown by a bunch of uzi-wielding rednecks anyway? If the army is on the other side then it's a different matter of course, but then the issue of gun control is irrelevant.
> Why not just have a constitution with guaranteed > freedoms? Then nobody, even the people through > voting, can stomp on rights.
Yes they can. If the people in power can influence the judiciary, for example, they can have quite an effective say on the way the constitution is *interpreted*. Language is a wonderfully malleable thing in the hands of those who know what they're doing.
> After all, it's all about freedom, not > democracy.
Democracy guarantees freedom. Freedom without democracy is a very dangerous balancing act.
> Wielding the murderous claw of history with the > force of democracy doesn't make it any more > right than if a small dictatorship did it. You > don't get un-evil by having a large mass of > people do the evil.
Democracy doesn't weird a murderous claw to start with. Australia, for example, was *voted* into existence. We didn't go to war with anyone to ensure our independence, as was the case with the US, the USSR and the "People's" Republic of China, and as a result a lot less people were killed (ie. none) and we ended up with a fair, workable democracy. How many people do you think would have voted for the Taliban, or Saddam Insane if they'd had the chance?
> What the majority vote for is by definition what > the average person would consider reasonable.
We simply aren't given enough choices in most democracies for this to be the case. Generally, the population votes for one of two, three or maybe even four major political parties. The issues, by contrast, may number in the dozens. And, at the end of the day, you might simply be voting for the "lesser of n evils", rather than what you think is reasonable.
Also, the word "reasonable" isn't used pervasively. It's only used where a strict black & white statement is unsuitable. After all, there aren't too many legal systems in the world that say just "be reasonable, or you'll get a reasonable sentence".
It seems easier than getting 34 independent US state legislatures to sign off on gutting the US Bill of Rights.
Maybe so. But it seems to me that the authorities in the US have no trouble sidestepping the constitution anyway (at least in regards to matters such as the DMCA and friends), regardless of what freedoms and liberties it is supposed to guarantee you.
If you had, you might have read the following:
"The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
Sounds good... until you take a hard look at it. Who defines "reasonable"?
The courts, surely. "Reasonable" is usually taken to mean what the average person would consider to be reasonable. Yes, this is open to interpretation, but the potential for actual abuse is somewhat limited. Assuming Canada has an independent judiciary, the government would have no real say in defining the term.
The banned guns are the ones which are most likely to be useful for citizens who need to get rid of an oppressive government after democracy has indeed failed.
It is horribly irresponsible to provide a ready means to overthrow the government by force. Sure, they might become evil and corrupt, but how can you be sure that some less reputable people don't use that power to install their own even more evil and corrupt totalitarian government? If you need to reform the political system, it should be done democratically, though referendums, not through the use of weapons. It might be slow, it might be painful, but the alternative potentially is utter chaos.
The key ingredient missing from Australian politics is a meaningful level of debate. Otherwise, the political system in itself tends to work quite well, all things considered.
More and more, people seem to be focusing on those issues beloved so much by the media, such as law and order, border protection and the nebulous political hotcake known as "The Bush" (which basically boils down to the higher cost of living in rural areas). As much as I hate to say it, no one has much time for trivial issues such as civil liberties when there are so many other things to be outraged over.
It doesn't help things that, these days, political parties like to present themselves as being totally committed to a given point of view. The effect of this is generally to silence the lower ranks, and of course to neutralise any dissent within the Government to official policies. A similar effect usually happens within the ranks of the Opposition, but currently it *is* split on several key issues, though it's disheartening to see the Government leap on this and shouting out words to the effect that the Opposition is in disarray.
Perhaps we also need some way to mitigate the power of the media corporations. Cynics (or realists?) would argue that these are the entities that really control Australia, and that the Parliament is more or less just a formality. Unfortunately, with the Govnerment pushing to abolish the cross-media-ownership laws (which prevent someone owning both a newspaper and a TV station in the same city, *I think*) the largest media corporations could yet become even more powerful.
Talk-back radio hosts are also quite powerful in Australia, and much to my continuing displeasure, they're mostly conservative. People like John Laws and Alan Jones, despite the "cash-for-comment" scandal recently in which both were found to have been receiving money in exchange for favourable comments towards particular organisations, still seem to be doing the thinking for a disconcertingly large proportion of the population.
I don't think any of this is going to change any time soon. I only hope there are at least *some* sane people at the top. Hopefully they can keep things on track until we work out a way to engage the public interest in issues which affect the democracy we seem to take for granted.
I'm having a look at Gentoo myself. I still use redhat a fair bit (the main reason I don't switch completely is because I don't have the motivation, not because I think redhat is a terribly good distro).
All in all, I think the danger level here is negligible. If redhat pulled a fast one on us, there are bound to be plenty of people (myself included) who'd be sufficiently annoyed to just leave them in the dust. And they must surely know this.
The archaic practice of looking after one's customers (as opposed to repeatedly beating them in the head until they give you more money) might be making a come back.
Slashdot Mirror
If you'll entertain my ranting for a moment:
If 10 or 100 million people are going to overthrow a government by force, then they'll need to be coordinated. They'll need someone to develop a strategy (even 10-100 million armed people aren't going to achieve anything if they don't agree what to do - and you'll never get consenses with numbers like that). They'll need a leader.
Such a person would wield enormous power. And power corrupts. A person in such a position would be accountable to virtually nobody. They would have an army of 10-100 million, who are willing to wage an armed struggle against the current regime, or more importantly, against anyone who is *perceived* to be part of that regime. The leader could easily stir up hatred among their followers with patriotic-sounding speeches punctuated with emotive calls-to-arms, and hatred can easily blind people to logic and reasoning.
Want to second-guess the leader? You'll be the first against the wall. Only in rare circumstances do armed struggles restore democracy. Most often the sheer level of propeganda destroys it, along with the economy, national infrastructure and the lives of millions. This is *why* we have elections in the developed world - because they're a lot safer in all respects than what went before. I'm sure the revolutions in Russia and China that installed their respective communist regimes started out with good intentions, but look where it got them.
The key to a stable, democractic government is transparency and accoutability, not the threat of rebellion.
> Is it? Do you think the First Amendment is also
> rediculous? Without the right to bear arms, how
> are you supposed to protect your other rights,
> just whine louder and louder?
Just think about this for a minute. In all seriousness, what good are guns for protecting your rights? What are you going to do - wave your AK47 around madly and open up on that group of federal agents approaching your front door? Do you really think they'll sit down and think "Hmmm, maybe we'd better listen to this guy". Of course not - they'll just send the special forces (or whoever's responsibility it is) around to blow your head off.
Come on people. You don't need guns to run a democracy.
> Oh, yeah. I guess a ban on guns is the first
> thing such corrupt, totalitarian governments do.
Plenty of democracies have placed restrictions on the ownership of weapons (Australia, Britain, Japan, etc) and none of them show any real signs of becoming totalitarian. If it came down to it, do you really think that a government (totalitarian or otherwise) backed by a professional army could be overthrown by a bunch of uzi-wielding rednecks anyway? If the army is on the other side then it's a different matter of course, but then the issue of gun control is irrelevant.
> Why not just have a constitution with guaranteed
> freedoms? Then nobody, even the people through
> voting, can stomp on rights.
Yes they can. If the people in power can influence the judiciary, for example, they can have quite an effective say on the way the constitution is *interpreted*. Language is a wonderfully malleable thing in the hands of those who know what they're doing.
> After all, it's all about freedom, not
> democracy.
Democracy guarantees freedom. Freedom without democracy is a very dangerous balancing act.
> Wielding the murderous claw of history with the
> force of democracy doesn't make it any more
> right than if a small dictatorship did it. You
> don't get un-evil by having a large mass of
> people do the evil.
Democracy doesn't weird a murderous claw to start with. Australia, for example, was *voted* into existence. We didn't go to war with anyone to ensure our independence, as was the case with the US, the USSR and the "People's" Republic of China, and as a result a lot less people were killed (ie. none) and we ended up with a fair, workable democracy. How many people do you think would have voted for the Taliban, or Saddam Insane if they'd had the chance?
> What the majority vote for is by definition what
> the average person would consider reasonable.
We simply aren't given enough choices in most democracies for this to be the case. Generally, the population votes for one of two, three or maybe even four major political parties. The issues, by contrast, may number in the dozens. And, at the end of the day, you might simply be voting for the "lesser of n evils", rather than what you think is reasonable.
Also, the word "reasonable" isn't used pervasively. It's only used where a strict black & white statement is unsuitable. After all, there aren't too many legal systems in the world that say just "be reasonable, or you'll get a reasonable sentence".
Maybe so. But it seems to me that the authorities in the US have no trouble sidestepping the constitution anyway (at least in regards to matters such as the DMCA and friends), regardless of what freedoms and liberties it is supposed to guarantee you.
The courts, surely. "Reasonable" is usually taken to mean what the average person would consider to be reasonable. Yes, this is open to interpretation, but the potential for actual abuse is somewhat limited. Assuming Canada has an independent judiciary, the government would have no real say in defining the term.
It is horribly irresponsible to provide a ready means to overthrow the government by force. Sure, they might become evil and corrupt, but how can you be sure that some less reputable people don't use that power to install their own even more evil and corrupt totalitarian government? If you need to reform the political system, it should be done democratically, though referendums, not through the use of weapons. It might be slow, it might be painful, but the alternative potentially is utter chaos.
The key ingredient missing from Australian politics is a meaningful level of debate. Otherwise, the political system in itself tends to work quite well, all things considered.
More and more, people seem to be focusing on those issues beloved so much by the media, such as law and order, border protection and the nebulous political hotcake known as "The Bush" (which basically boils down to the higher cost of living in rural areas). As much as I hate to say it, no one has much time for trivial issues such as civil liberties when there are so many other things to be outraged over.
It doesn't help things that, these days, political parties like to present themselves as being totally committed to a given point of view. The effect of this is generally to silence the lower ranks, and of course to neutralise any dissent within the Government to official policies. A similar effect usually happens within the ranks of the Opposition, but currently it *is* split on several key issues, though it's disheartening to see the Government leap on this and shouting out words to the effect that the Opposition is in disarray.
Perhaps we also need some way to mitigate the power of the media corporations. Cynics (or realists?) would argue that these are the entities that really control Australia, and that the Parliament is more or less just a formality. Unfortunately, with the Govnerment pushing to abolish the cross-media-ownership laws (which prevent someone owning both a newspaper and a TV station in the same city, *I think*) the largest media corporations could yet become even more powerful.
Talk-back radio hosts are also quite powerful in Australia, and much to my continuing displeasure, they're mostly conservative. People like John Laws and Alan Jones, despite the "cash-for-comment" scandal recently in which both were found to have been receiving money in exchange for favourable comments towards particular organisations, still seem to be doing the thinking for a disconcertingly large proportion of the population.
I don't think any of this is going to change any time soon. I only hope there are at least *some* sane people at the top. Hopefully they can keep things on track until we work out a way to engage the public interest in issues which affect the democracy we seem to take for granted.
I'm having a look at Gentoo myself. I still use redhat a fair bit (the main reason I don't switch completely is because I don't have the motivation, not because I think redhat is a terribly good distro).
All in all, I think the danger level here is negligible. If redhat pulled a fast one on us, there are bound to be plenty of people (myself included) who'd be sufficiently annoyed to just leave them in the dust. And they must surely know this.
The archaic practice of looking after one's customers (as opposed to repeatedly beating them in the head until they give you more money) might be making a come back.