Hey, I'm just pointing out that you don't get benefits without costs, that you dance with the devil at your peril, and that he is unexcelled at making you think you're the one leading. [More]And everybody is up on what those costs are.
Right?
Today's Gun Rights Examiner column discusses the price of "victory."
Also get the latest from my fellow GREs.
Tell a friend?
10 comments:
I don't like it one bit either. To destroy the socialists hold on govt., we'll have to be just as nasty as they are. If we come out on top on the other side, we'll also have to hope we develop a set of morals again. Not a very rosy looking dish anyway you look into it. I ain't making no bets on how it comes out.
Comment deleted. I don't allow anonymous posters to come here and hurl insults.
If you want to try again, and limit it to the points you were trying to make, we can discuss that.
But you don't come here and call people names--anonymously. If you want to do that, I insist you identify yourself.
Otherwise, get lost. I don't do this for you.
Got it?
A law -- attached to a totally unrelated one -- to make the government honor unconstitutional permits that the government requires, on land that belongs to the people who are required to get the unconstitutional permits.
And one reporter describes Obama as "torn between his respect for the Constitution and his abhorrence of guns." Then he understands and respects NEITHER.
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, the answers don't really matter.
A president who really did abide by the Constitution even though he personally abhorred guns would be an enormous improvement over every president we've had in living memory. However, such a person could never even get the nomination, let alone elected.
My deleted comment made two points: One, that the goal of the commerce clause, historically understood, is to produce the English tariffs upon the colonies and the North's tariffs upon the South's cotton. Two, that evading the moral limits of Just War theory is Evil, for any reason whatsoever. Sounds rather dull and academic when it's phrased that way, doesn't it? I didn't phrase it that way, and my comment was deleted for being insulting, which it most certainly was. Suppose libertarians wrote a denouncement of Statism as Evil, in the same outraged, scornful, disgusted tone as denouncements of chattel slavery in the 1850's. Would the censors allow you to see it?
I don't censor ideas, just anonymous name calling. You're free to be passionate and angry in presenting ideas.
Your points are well taken and merit discussion. But you left one out, a rather contemptuous dismissal of Restorationists.
Perhaps I have misread you, but my take on that is you advocate anarchy. We also entertain such theories here and the one thing I have never seen offered by those promulgating it is how that works when you have an organized, covetous and barbaric enemy who does not abide by any civilized rules and who views you as something to be destroyed.
I'm happy to listen to a superior plan than the imperfect one the Founders came up with. So far, all I've ever seen offered are platitudes with no real meat to how one would actually protect himself. We're all willing to learn, but I think doing it here in comments would be a waste of energy--no one is likely to read this now that the post is a few days old except for you and I.
The reason I lean toward the restoration model is because it takes us to a point of limited government and more freedom from which experiments in what works privately can begin to replace systems and structures currently regarded as the province of the state.
The immediate flaw in my approach is it's never been done before--government tends to grow and corrupt. I have no illusions--if progress were made toward more freedom and fewer restrictions, it would then require attentive and educated people to apply the lessons of history. That's a tall order, perhaps insurmountable.
Thing is, I see no example in history where the absence of an ordered societal structure--with all its attendant protections in place-- has ever resulted in anything other than easily overwhelmed victims. I admit just because it hasn't been done before does not mean it can't be done. I've just never seen anyone proposing it come up with something that has the necessary level of detail and credibility to convince me it's not suicide. Perhaps you have knowledge you can teach us, but we're not likely to care to hear you if you barge into the room and introduce yourself the way you did.
As for "just war," I hear ya. One of the reasons we are not in a civil war now, when those of the Founding era would have already started shooting, is because we are culturally indoctrinated against it. I know no one who is eager for violence. We don't want to destroy our ideological opponents, we just want them to leave us alone.
They will not. And as the pressure increases, more and more will find they are reaching personal lines--to defy here, to disobey there--it's not unrealistic to anticipate an evolution into forceful resistance as more are caught in the net and as more repression is added into the mix to deal with it.
That said, I want no trouble. I will do what I can to avoid it--to a point. But, if backed into a corner, if I have no choice but to die or admit myself a willing and pleading slave, don't expect rules from me.
Don't attack me and mine and go in peace. Threaten, harm or kill someone I love and God help you. I will observe no rules.
I guess that's what you call "evil." And I guess I'd consider allowing someone to murder me and mine a greater evil.
It's why I'd really prefer peace. I don't want to ever have to face how violent I can be--I've seen glimpses of it, and just the faint hint scares me. I don't know that I'd be able to live with myself afterward.
But my goal would be to have an afterward to find out.
I'm not asking you to rebut or fisk the points I've made here. I will say that if you have a superior plan we should be working at, and it includes all the protections we now enjoy without the coercion, why not start your own site where you can spell it out and entertain questions and challenges? I know I'd link to it and send traffic your way.
my take on that is you advocate anarchy
I use the word "libertarianism", because too many people think an anarchist is a rioter throwing a bomb.
the one thing I have never seen offered by those promulgating it is how that works when you have an organized, covetous and barbaric enemy who does not abide by any civilized rules and who views you as something to be destroyed.
Who is this enemy, and why haven't they already conquered and destroyed Canada? Canada has a similar culture, ethnic melting pot, religious tolerance, level of wealth, scantily-clad women, and all those other freedoms which are claimed to drive The Enemy berserk. Yet, they don't seem to be troubled by terrorist bombings. This is evidence that the USA could, for starters, reduce its 'defense' spending to the level of dollars per acre that Canada spends.
But suppose another USSR threatens another cold war. In the total absence of gun control, don't you think the Knob Creek crowd would keep and bear some weapons systems which would be relevant to deterring an enemy's high command? Imagine Vietnam or Afghanistan suffering a colonial invader...except the Vietnamese have a first-world manufacturing economy and air superiority at home...and a thousand small teams of pissed-off family men, reporting to no one, are roving around the invader's territory looking for the best ways to decapitate it so they can go home.
Consider if the short-term determiner of liberty in any environment is the Darwinian military contest between 1 man and a group of 8 to 20 men. When that contest was between a Kentucky long rifle and a British square there was a lot of freedom; now there is less. However, computers are a force multiplier, they keep getting cheaper, and youtube shows they benefit the victims more than the oppressor. I think future freedom comes from Samuel Colt making men more equal.
Consider if the long-term determiner of liberty in any environment is a culture of appreciation of freedom. What military logistics problem did the German Jews have that blocked all possible outcomes other than their destruction by the Nazis? They could have afforded to purchase pistols and rifles in quantity like Americans are doing this year. I think the Jews gave their submission after having been beat on the psychological level, but if they chose defiance they couldn't have been beaten by force. The approval of a majority is not militarily necessary to achieve peace. The three percent already have enough weapons to retain peace, but they're seizing defeat from the jaws of victory by submitting to the false moral authority of the Wiemar Republic, er, the Restoration. JPFO may have key psychological insights on this topic.
The reason I lean toward the restoration model is because it takes us to a point of limited government and more freedom from which experiments in what works privately can begin to replace systems and structures currently regarded as the province of the state.
How can there be a 'restoration' of the constitution when the constitution was never removed in the first place? What data let you argue that rewinding the clock to 177x will produce the opposite result of what happened last time? If today's growing desire for freedom is the result of the nurturing and growth of a self-defense culture, then give the credit to that cultural nurturing, DESPITE the INTERFERENCE of the constitution.
(continued)
I see no example in history where the absence of an ordered societal structure--with all its attendant protections in place-- has ever resulted in anything other than easily overwhelmed victims.
Iceland was a real-world example which privately produced more peace than the US has had, for longer than the US has existed:
http://libertariannation.org/a/f13l1.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/long1.html
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html
Its downfall was that the total number of private peacemakers was capped by law, and then somebody bought them all up. The lesson I take away is that next time there should be no privileged legal groundrules, whatsoever. Anything that gets in a position to efficiently tax or regulate is the enemy. Coercive power over peaceful people is itself the enemy, regardless of good intentions.
if you have a superior plan we should be working at, and it includes all the protections we now enjoy without the coercion, why not start your own site where you can spell it out and entertain questions and challenges? I know I'd link to it and send traffic your way.
Those sites and that world already exists. I'm here trying to "save" people who used to have a Buck Turgidson worldview, but are now recognizing the deep cracks all the way through it. In the spirit of science, why not ask an open-ended anarchism vs. "organized, covetous and barbaric enemy" question on WOG, and see if you get substantive answers you haven't heard before? I think there's a whole world of policy analysis you haven't yet been exposed to. Here's a taste:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/non-vote-arch.html
Don't presume I have not been exposed to that policy analysis.
Iceland and Canada are members of NATO. An attack on them will produce a military response involving the US by treaty.
My original question stands, completely unanswered.
Comments closed on this post. I moved the discussion to here so that more people would see it and have the opportunity to engage. Please enter further comments there.
Post a Comment