Being appointed for 6-year terms by the legislatures of the states they represented was the original design, one that much better fits the federal design of the USA. Six year terms, with only one-third of the membership being replaced at any election, is plenty long to provide long-term continuity in the upper house. Changing to popular election was a huge mistake to fix a small procedural issue with finding replacement senators when a position became vacant. Now states have no voice in the national government, and if anybody thinks that senators are answerable to the common citizen that elects him they are naive. Doesn't anybody read the Federalist Papers anymore? The 17th amendment should be repealed.
Never heard of Subversion before this. Was planning to deploy CVS in the near future. Is there a summary of Subversion somewhere, explaining why I should use it rather than CVS?
Law can be made by me for myself. (Woop dee doo, right? But bear with me.) Laws can be made by myself along with some others (my community) to govern that community. By participating, we imply agreement to live by the laws we pass. If I vehemently disagree with some of the laws, I can withdraw (secede, if you will) from that community, and then it has no jurisdiction over me. A just government would understand this principle and let me be.
This may sound strange to you, since it is so seldom practiced today, but it's a natural consequence of freedom. If you are free, you are ruled by others only to the extent that you let yourself be. If you cannot withdraw yourself (secede) then you are not free, but a slave to the government. Government has only those powers that you give it. At any time, the people may withdraw the powers from the government, or withdraw themselves from jurisdiction of the government. A government that does not allow either/both of these is on its way to being a tyranny. Government rules only by consent of the governed.
Allocating taxes is the same. I can disburse my money as I want. I can join an organization, a requisite of being a member may be some dues or fees. I have the right to decide, in part, how that money gets used.
Again, war is the same. Occasionally, violence is justified, such as in self-defense. If provoked, I can respond with fisticuffs or whatever force is necessary to save myself. As part of a group that feels threatened, we can jointly "declare war" on the aggressor.
For the very large groups, it is impractical to have a vote for every decision. We elect representatives to make them on our behalf. We are distanced somewhat, but supposedly the benefits outweight this drawback. But the powers that government wields are no more than we ourselves had to begin with. They are only magnified by the scale that its collective nature gives it. War involving a country of 250 million is significantly more powerful than one person punching the nose of a mugger, but that should be obvious. A nation only has the right to rule, disburse, fight on a large scale because its citizens have those same rights on the small scale.
I'm not sure if your last comment is taking a dig at the death penalty or what, so I'll reserve comment.
Exactly. A "pizza box" that they could easily replace monitors on would be just the thing. Schools need computers to last a long time, and kids can be tough on them - repeatedly sending them back for LCD repair would get old fast. Though the AIO "almost no cables needed" style has some points in its favor too.
Right. Meaning they might make it easier to prosecute the offender if he kills you. Great...but you're still dead.
I wish I could remember the name of the case that established it is not the police's job to protect you (despite any slogan on the side of their cars) but only to investigate and help prosecute crimes after the fact. But police can't be everywhere all the time, and thankfully so. You are responsible for your own welfare/safety. The fact that gov't has decided we should have the responsibility but not the right boggles me.
Or your could just buy a gun and be your own personal bodyguard. You're always close at hand, unlike police. Being trained in a martial art (and I think gunmanship qualifies) can keep you from getting mugged.
But he has, he's waved a firearm around in a public place.
Your position is utterly perplexing. You say "waving a firearm around" like the mere action is causing horrific injuries and massive casualties.
Hello, nothing happened. If the gun accidentally discharged due to the owner's carelessness, he should be fully responsible for that. (This very risk is why responsible gun owners [which most are] that carry for self-defense [which not many do] usually take it upon themselves to get training.) But to leave him defenseless because of a maybe, a might-have-been, a potentiality - is ridiculous. I might slander or libel someone, and that's a crime too - should I be barred from speaking or writing??? Just like most people never slander or libel someone (to a criminal level anyway) most people never use a gun against another person. Most of the times when they are used against a person are in self-defense. And most defensive gun uses never even result in a bullet being fired - just "waving it around" (and often it doesn't even amount to that) is enough to make a criminal think twice and back off. However, these stories don't make headlines (Sep 2004 if the relevant story has been archived).
Nobody in the US makes it a habit to walk around like Rambo, dozens of guns and live ammo strapped on, casually sticking them under people's noses with the safeties off. The fact that you have that perception just shows how ignorant you, and most people that haven't grown up around guns, are of them in particular and America in general. The media plays on your ignorance, showing the very thing you fear as the only possible outcome. Try a different picture.
"Your defense against aggression might have a remote possibility of harming a third party. Therefore you shall forever be relegated to victimhood." Silly Brits.
I dont understand Americans obbsession with the freedom to use items designed urely to injure and kill in anyway they please without restriction.
I don't understand the British obsession with bending over and taking it up the rear.
It is precisely because there are people who will use (potentially lethal) force against me and my family, whose lives I value very much, that we fiercely protect the freedom to use similar force in defense. If my right to life means anything at all, my right to defend it (with force if necessary - maybe you get by with biting witticisms?) is a natural consequence.
If your life isn't worth protecting, fine, don't buy a gun. If your neighbors' aren't worth it, disband your police. If your countrymens' aren't worth it either, disband your military. If you can claim a collective right to protect your collective lives, then how can you deny an individual right to protect your individual life? In a country of one, you'd be your own military. No one cedes that right just because there are other people around.
Government (people as a collective) has no right to do what individual people have no right to do. Invalidating self-defense invalidates national defense. Just because you want to be peaceful doesn't mean everyone else does, and occasionally you may have to use violence to defend the peace. Sounds paradoxical, but true.
Germany elected Hitler - it wasn't totalitarian to begin with. But otherwise, right. They take away the guns while the gov't is trusted. (Sounds like a good idea - fewer weapons means less violence, right?) Then when the gov't changes (or maybe it was the plan all along) the populace is defenseless.
Learn from history. Never, never, never give up your guns. Things may be OK now, but situations can change quickly, and it's too late to undo the mistake of disarming.
Even if the threat of tyrannical gov't is removed, criminal elements alone are reason enough to protect yourself. You wouldn't put a sign in your yard that said, "This home has no effective resistance to a powerful criminal, but police can be summoned in 5-15 minutes" would you? Maybe you live that way, but you're relatively safe because it's unadvertised, and criminals have to risk the odds. But in a country where law-abiding folks are disarmed, the whole country has that sign in their front yard. It's foolish.
in Britain we don't have a history of being quite so paranoid about the government as our US cousins
That's because the British gov't long ago chased out all the people it didn't like, or made it uncomfortable enough that they left on their own. Many of them resettled on the west side of the Atlantic. Only the docile gov't-friendly ones remained.
To put it another way, if you're on a public beach reading a book, would you feel as if your privacy was being invaded because others might look at that book and know what you're reading? In order that your privacy be maintained, does the beach really have to be empty? Conversely, if the beach is crowded is your privacy more compromised somehow than if it were empty, because more people can see what you like to read?
Of course not...read a book in public, the public will know what you're reading. If you don't want people to know what you're doing, don't do it in public.
No, the "public" doesn't know what I'm reading or that I'm reading. A few random people that crossed my path might, and will quickly forget the details. Any investigation of the fact would require extensive correlation of disparate facts.
With cameras, the events are recorded, and the future use of those recordings is unknown. This is a vast difference from the former situation.
The old "if you've got nothing to hide, why worry?" canard is foolish. Rather, "if I've done nothing wrong, gov't should not have me under surveillance". Gov't should have to justify it's actions to me, not the other way around. Gov't is the servant of the people, not the other way around.
in total agreement with your mistrust of out current administration
Just a small note, but what does the current administration have to do with giving gov't vast powers? You might like/approve/trust the current administration...but it will change. When one you don't like comes in, gov't still has the power you gave it. This is why you should never give gov't a power you wouldn't trust in the hands of a mob of lying bullies. Powers shouldn't be granted on the basis of the good they could do when used well, but of the evil they could do when abused.
Stalin disarmed the peasants. Hitler disarmed the Jews. Pol Pot disarmed his citizens. It always starts with taking away the method of resistance. Guns may not have stopped these tyrants from rising to power, but when the gestapo came knocking, a few would have paid for it.
anybody waving a legally-held handgun at a mugger would find themselves locked up pretty quickly
Um, why? Is a mugger more in the right than someone trying to keep from being mugged? One guy has done nothing wrong (legal gun owner) and is trying to defend himself. The other guy is in the commission of a crime that assaults another. This should be clear-cut in favor of the gun-owning victim. I don't understand the British sense of priorities in this case...
Exactly. The costs will be hidden. And then taxes will be raised slowly, incrementally, so it's not too painful at any one time. With no market pressure as incentive to stay efficient, as businesses in a competitive environment have, this program will become bloated and expensive. Virtually every government program eventually does. And residents will be stuck paying for it.
No, thanks, Philly. I'll stick with free market options. It's not government's job to close down valid business opportunities and put people out of work.
Sounds just like my grandma, including the trips to Mayo, but excluding the experimental therapies. I hope that when I go, it's all at once, not little by little.
Yup. My dad told me of a neighbor that had the same thing happen when he was growing up. The neighbor died virtually instantly. The woman in your story was lucky.
I'm one that agrees. Mostly we rent videos (cinema is too expensive) and any of the movies that look interesting are PG-13 these days. I'd enjoy them a lot more if they cut the 60-90 seconds of gratuitous whatever and left it at PG. We have a "no R" policy at our house, but man has there been some ratings creep recently! Some of those PG-13 flicks would have been given an R only 10 years ago!
OOo, at least on the Mac, doesn't yet pass my "wife test". I'm getting my wife to switch from her crusty old PC to our new Mac, and the change in interface is already enough. I don't need an app that works vastly differently than everything else. I need one that integrates well.
My solution, given AppleWorks well-known limitations, is to try to install old versions of Office to run in Classic. While still not native, it's closer than an X11 app is. So far the biggest problem is getting my new floppyless Mac to communicate to my very old System 7.1 Mac. It takes a bit of updating by sneakernet on the 7.1 side to get it to even see my network.
Well, Shatner did "play" Kirk's brother Sam. According to the novels (I know, non-canon, but a heck of a lot better stories than the dreck Paramount has been producing the last 10 years) there is a strong resemblance among the male half of the Kirk family.
I took this to heart when I started my current job. They had the standard clause about owning my production, etc. I asked three times, to make it abundantly clear, if I owned whatever I did on my own time. Those with authority to make the call said they had no interest in my extracurricular projects. I got it in writing, and stapled it to the agreement I had to sign.
I once signed an NDA to beta test software, as well. I have no access to the code, but I did ask if the NDA would prohibit me from contributing to open source projects of similar nature. They were cool about it, and said they had no problem.
So the moral above is true. Read carefully, and don't be afraid to ask questions. If you don't like the answers, look elsewhere and don't sign!
That looks like it. Thanks! The ones I knew of hadn't seen any recent development, so they didn't work with newer versions of Moz/FF. This one's in beta for FF 0.9 though...that's a hopeful sign.
We just don't like confusing "I think this would be neato if it was true" with "I think this is true".
And this comes down to being able to discern what is true from what is not. You just have a different opinion on that issue.;) Truth shall set you free.
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Being appointed for 6-year terms by the legislatures of the states they represented was the original design, one that much better fits the federal design of the USA. Six year terms, with only one-third of the membership being replaced at any election, is plenty long to provide long-term continuity in the upper house. Changing to popular election was a huge mistake to fix a small procedural issue with finding replacement senators when a position became vacant. Now states have no voice in the national government, and if anybody thinks that senators are answerable to the common citizen that elects him they are naive. Doesn't anybody read the Federalist Papers anymore? The 17th amendment should be repealed.
Never heard of Subversion before this. Was planning to deploy CVS in the near future. Is there a summary of Subversion somewhere, explaining why I should use it rather than CVS?
Law can be made by me for myself. (Woop dee doo, right? But bear with me.) Laws can be made by myself along with some others (my community) to govern that community. By participating, we imply agreement to live by the laws we pass. If I vehemently disagree with some of the laws, I can withdraw (secede, if you will) from that community, and then it has no jurisdiction over me. A just government would understand this principle and let me be.
This may sound strange to you, since it is so seldom practiced today, but it's a natural consequence of freedom. If you are free, you are ruled by others only to the extent that you let yourself be. If you cannot withdraw yourself (secede) then you are not free, but a slave to the government. Government has only those powers that you give it. At any time, the people may withdraw the powers from the government, or withdraw themselves from jurisdiction of the government. A government that does not allow either/both of these is on its way to being a tyranny. Government rules only by consent of the governed.
Allocating taxes is the same. I can disburse my money as I want. I can join an organization, a requisite of being a member may be some dues or fees. I have the right to decide, in part, how that money gets used.
Again, war is the same. Occasionally, violence is justified, such as in self-defense. If provoked, I can respond with fisticuffs or whatever force is necessary to save myself. As part of a group that feels threatened, we can jointly "declare war" on the aggressor.
For the very large groups, it is impractical to have a vote for every decision. We elect representatives to make them on our behalf. We are distanced somewhat, but supposedly the benefits outweight this drawback. But the powers that government wields are no more than we ourselves had to begin with. They are only magnified by the scale that its collective nature gives it. War involving a country of 250 million is significantly more powerful than one person punching the nose of a mugger, but that should be obvious. A nation only has the right to rule, disburse, fight on a large scale because its citizens have those same rights on the small scale.
I'm not sure if your last comment is taking a dig at the death penalty or what, so I'll reserve comment.
Exactly. A "pizza box" that they could easily replace monitors on would be just the thing. Schools need computers to last a long time, and kids can be tough on them - repeatedly sending them back for LCD repair would get old fast. Though the AIO "almost no cables needed" style has some points in its favor too.
What? That little tea party thing over in Boston? Nothing compared to the clamp-down on freedoms that George III was imposing.
Right. Meaning they might make it easier to prosecute the offender if he kills you. Great...but you're still dead.
I wish I could remember the name of the case that established it is not the police's job to protect you (despite any slogan on the side of their cars) but only to investigate and help prosecute crimes after the fact. But police can't be everywhere all the time, and thankfully so. You are responsible for your own welfare/safety. The fact that gov't has decided we should have the responsibility but not the right boggles me.
Mind-boggling. If it legal to have a gun, but illegal to use it in the ways and at the times it might actually be of benefit, what's the point?
Fascinating how public perception can be twisted against someone just trying to defend himself and his property, though.
The US declared independence. The British were the ones who initiated hostilities. Did England declare war?
Or your could just buy a gun and be your own personal bodyguard. You're always close at hand, unlike police. Being trained in a martial art (and I think gunmanship qualifies) can keep you from getting mugged.
Oh wait, you're talking UK... Sorry.
Your position is utterly perplexing. You say "waving a firearm around" like the mere action is causing horrific injuries and massive casualties.
Hello, nothing happened. If the gun accidentally discharged due to the owner's carelessness, he should be fully responsible for that. (This very risk is why responsible gun owners [which most are] that carry for self-defense [which not many do] usually take it upon themselves to get training.) But to leave him defenseless because of a maybe, a might-have-been, a potentiality - is ridiculous. I might slander or libel someone, and that's a crime too - should I be barred from speaking or writing??? Just like most people never slander or libel someone (to a criminal level anyway) most people never use a gun against another person. Most of the times when they are used against a person are in self-defense. And most defensive gun uses never even result in a bullet being fired - just "waving it around" (and often it doesn't even amount to that) is enough to make a criminal think twice and back off. However, these stories don't make headlines (Sep 2004 if the relevant story has been archived).
Nobody in the US makes it a habit to walk around like Rambo, dozens of guns and live ammo strapped on, casually sticking them under people's noses with the safeties off. The fact that you have that perception just shows how ignorant you, and most people that haven't grown up around guns, are of them in particular and America in general. The media plays on your ignorance, showing the very thing you fear as the only possible outcome. Try a different picture.
"Your defense against aggression might have a remote possibility of harming a third party. Therefore you shall forever be relegated to victimhood." Silly Brits.
I don't understand the British obsession with bending over and taking it up the rear.
It is precisely because there are people who will use (potentially lethal) force against me and my family, whose lives I value very much, that we fiercely protect the freedom to use similar force in defense. If my right to life means anything at all, my right to defend it (with force if necessary - maybe you get by with biting witticisms?) is a natural consequence.
If your life isn't worth protecting, fine, don't buy a gun. If your neighbors' aren't worth it, disband your police. If your countrymens' aren't worth it either, disband your military. If you can claim a collective right to protect your collective lives, then how can you deny an individual right to protect your individual life? In a country of one, you'd be your own military. No one cedes that right just because there are other people around.
Government (people as a collective) has no right to do what individual people have no right to do. Invalidating self-defense invalidates national defense. Just because you want to be peaceful doesn't mean everyone else does, and occasionally you may have to use violence to defend the peace. Sounds paradoxical, but true.
Germany elected Hitler - it wasn't totalitarian to begin with. But otherwise, right. They take away the guns while the gov't is trusted. (Sounds like a good idea - fewer weapons means less violence, right?) Then when the gov't changes (or maybe it was the plan all along) the populace is defenseless.
Learn from history. Never, never, never give up your guns. Things may be OK now, but situations can change quickly, and it's too late to undo the mistake of disarming.
Even if the threat of tyrannical gov't is removed, criminal elements alone are reason enough to protect yourself. You wouldn't put a sign in your yard that said, "This home has no effective resistance to a powerful criminal, but police can be summoned in 5-15 minutes" would you? Maybe you live that way, but you're relatively safe because it's unadvertised, and criminals have to risk the odds. But in a country where law-abiding folks are disarmed, the whole country has that sign in their front yard. It's foolish.
That's because the British gov't long ago chased out all the people it didn't like, or made it uncomfortable enough that they left on their own. Many of them resettled on the west side of the Atlantic. Only the docile gov't-friendly ones remained.
Tongue in cheek. Mostly.
No, the "public" doesn't know what I'm reading or that I'm reading. A few random people that crossed my path might, and will quickly forget the details. Any investigation of the fact would require extensive correlation of disparate facts.
With cameras, the events are recorded, and the future use of those recordings is unknown. This is a vast difference from the former situation.
The old "if you've got nothing to hide, why worry?" canard is foolish. Rather, "if I've done nothing wrong, gov't should not have me under surveillance". Gov't should have to justify it's actions to me, not the other way around. Gov't is the servant of the people, not the other way around.
Just a small note, but what does the current administration have to do with giving gov't vast powers? You might like/approve/trust the current administration...but it will change. When one you don't like comes in, gov't still has the power you gave it. This is why you should never give gov't a power you wouldn't trust in the hands of a mob of lying bullies. Powers shouldn't be granted on the basis of the good they could do when used well, but of the evil they could do when abused.
Stalin disarmed the peasants. Hitler disarmed the Jews. Pol Pot disarmed his citizens. It always starts with taking away the method of resistance. Guns may not have stopped these tyrants from rising to power, but when the gestapo came knocking, a few would have paid for it.
Um, why? Is a mugger more in the right than someone trying to keep from being mugged? One guy has done nothing wrong (legal gun owner) and is trying to defend himself. The other guy is in the commission of a crime that assaults another. This should be clear-cut in favor of the gun-owning victim. I don't understand the British sense of priorities in this case...
Exactly. The costs will be hidden. And then taxes will be raised slowly, incrementally, so it's not too painful at any one time. With no market pressure as incentive to stay efficient, as businesses in a competitive environment have, this program will become bloated and expensive. Virtually every government program eventually does. And residents will be stuck paying for it.
No, thanks, Philly. I'll stick with free market options. It's not government's job to close down valid business opportunities and put people out of work.
Sounds just like my grandma, including the trips to Mayo, but excluding the experimental therapies. I hope that when I go, it's all at once, not little by little.
Yup. My dad told me of a neighbor that had the same thing happen when he was growing up. The neighbor died virtually instantly. The woman in your story was lucky.
I'm one that agrees. Mostly we rent videos (cinema is too expensive) and any of the movies that look interesting are PG-13 these days. I'd enjoy them a lot more if they cut the 60-90 seconds of gratuitous whatever and left it at PG. We have a "no R" policy at our house, but man has there been some ratings creep recently! Some of those PG-13 flicks would have been given an R only 10 years ago!
OOo, at least on the Mac, doesn't yet pass my "wife test". I'm getting my wife to switch from her crusty old PC to our new Mac, and the change in interface is already enough. I don't need an app that works vastly differently than everything else. I need one that integrates well.
My solution, given AppleWorks well-known limitations, is to try to install old versions of Office to run in Classic. While still not native, it's closer than an X11 app is. So far the biggest problem is getting my new floppyless Mac to communicate to my very old System 7.1 Mac. It takes a bit of updating by sneakernet on the 7.1 side to get it to even see my network.
Well, Shatner did "play" Kirk's brother Sam. According to the novels (I know, non-canon, but a heck of a lot better stories than the dreck Paramount has been producing the last 10 years) there is a strong resemblance among the male half of the Kirk family.
I took this to heart when I started my current job. They had the standard clause about owning my production, etc. I asked three times, to make it abundantly clear, if I owned whatever I did on my own time. Those with authority to make the call said they had no interest in my extracurricular projects. I got it in writing, and stapled it to the agreement I had to sign.
I once signed an NDA to beta test software, as well. I have no access to the code, but I did ask if the NDA would prohibit me from contributing to open source projects of similar nature. They were cool about it, and said they had no problem.
So the moral above is true. Read carefully, and don't be afraid to ask questions. If you don't like the answers, look elsewhere and don't sign!
That looks like it. Thanks! The ones I knew of hadn't seen any recent development, so they didn't work with newer versions of Moz/FF. This one's in beta for FF 0.9 though...that's a hopeful sign.
And this comes down to being able to discern what is true from what is not. You just have a different opinion on that issue. ;) Truth shall set you free.