Author Topic: What We Talk About When We Talk About Guns  (Read 1236 times)

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Online Pandora

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Guns
« on: January 15, 2013, 12:05:08 PM »
Rather, What We Should, MUST, Talk About When We Talk About Guns.

And some interesting history as well .....

"The Oresteia of Aeschylus is the Greek’s great epic about the founding of the state. The trilogy of plays tells how a blood feud in the house of Agamemnon comes to an end when the gods decree that justice shall now be delivered not through individual vengeance but by governmental process. As Charles Hill writes in Grand Strategies, “This makes the death penalty the foundation stone of civilization, for only when a victim’s kin are convinced that the state will exact justice in response to murder will they entrust that power to the state.”

When a state decides to abolish the death penalty, they are reneging on that original agreement. The progressive argument is, essentially, that the contract was made in former times when people were not so civilized as they are now. Years of life under the rule of law have made us better than we were, and we have moved beyond the savage need to punish murder with murder. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, as Ben Kingsley said when he was pretending to be Gandhi.

The conservative argument — the argument, in this case, for preserving capital punishment — is, no, mankind is ever and always what it was. New technologies may have given us greater powers of imprisonment and reform that make execution necessary in fewer cases, but there is still murder in the world and the wronged heart still demands full recompense. The state must hold to at least the minimum of its Oresteian agreement or lose the right to govern.

But Aeschylus notwithstanding, the delivery of justice after an attack is not the only foundational contract a state makes with its people. In allowing the government to maintain a standing army and police force, we are also agreeing to transfer to the state the duty and immense power of defending us from being attacked in the first place. This is not only a matter of practicality, it’s the only method anyone’s come up with to prevent the Hobbesian war of all against all.

As the founders knew, however, the power we grant the state to defend us can easily be turned against us. “The means of defence against foreign danger,” Madison wrote, “have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.” Going back even farther, this was why the supporters of republican government stuck the long knives into Julius Caesar. In “crossing the Rubicon,” he violated the law by bringing the Roman army into Italy. This effectively turned the means of protecting the republic into the tool for establishing imperial rule.

In the Second Amendment, the founding fathers sought to protect us against any Rubicon-crossing by granting Americans the right to bear their own arms and form home militias. We own guns, in other words, to defend ourselves from the possibility of government tyranny. It is part of our foundational contract with the American state. This is why, whenever some anti-gun idiot on television cries out, “Why would a hunter need an automatic rifle?” the correct answer is… well, unprintable. The hunter has a 30-06 in his gun cabinet for hunting. The M-16 he hides in the cellar is for the next American Revolution.

As with the death penalty, the argument of the progressives is that times and people have changed. Our democratic institutions and traditions are now engraved upon our hearts, they say, and no longer require the elaborate constitutional safeguards the founders provided for us. Civilized by the years, our leaders no longer pose the threat of tyranny, and guns only serve to give the anarchic power of death to individual lunatics and rednecks when it should be reserved to the state.

The conservative argument is, to put it succinctly: “Not so much.” Once again, we aggravating creatures of the right can’t help pointing out that human nature has changed neither a jot nor a tittle since we hightailed it out of Eden. Those who in ancient days sought to rule us in the name of our own good are still among us, and the only thing that keeps them on their side of the Rubicon is, in the words of that great patriot Neo from The Matrix: “Guns. Lots of guns.”

History supports the right in this. Four hundred years of Roman republicanism was not enough to keep the Caesars at bay, and there’s no cause to believe it’ll be any different here. If freedom is what we’re after, the conservative argument to preserve the second amendment clearly holds good.

There is, however, some question about whether freedom is, in fact, what the progressives are after.

Which is only one more reason to hang onto your weapons!"

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." - Mark Twain

"Let us assume for the moment everything you say about me is true. That just makes your problem bigger, doesn't it?"

Offline AlanS

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Re: What We Talk About When We Talk About Guns
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2013, 02:59:03 PM »
 ::clapping::
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem."

Thomas Jefferson

Offline Libertas

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Re: What We Talk About When We Talk About Guns
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2013, 08:36:37 PM »
Where did that come from Pan? Seems very VDH like!  The classic education being the key tell.  But it is spot on and 100% in keeping with Founding principles!

 ::thumbsup::   ::cool::   ::USA::
We are now where The Founders were when they faced despotism.

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Re: What We Talk About When We Talk About Guns
« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2013, 09:21:26 PM »
Where did that come from Pan? Seems very VDH like!  The classic education being the key tell.  But it is spot on and 100% in keeping with Founding principles!

 ::thumbsup::   ::cool::   ::USA::

Rats!!  Forgot the link!  Sorry.

http://pjmedia.com/andrewklavan/2013/01/14/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-guns/
"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." - Mark Twain

"Let us assume for the moment everything you say about me is true. That just makes your problem bigger, doesn't it?"

Offline Libertas

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Re: What We Talk About When We Talk About Guns
« Reply #4 on: January 16, 2013, 11:28:00 AM »
The words were awesome even when anonymous.   ::thumbsup::
We are now where The Founders were when they faced despotism.

Offline ChrstnHsbndFthr

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Re: What We Talk About When We Talk About Guns
« Reply #5 on: January 18, 2013, 10:31:13 AM »
If you have listened to President Obama and Vice President Biden talk about guns in the past month, you have heard them express a decided commitment to use the powers of the federal government to maintain safety in the United States. You also have heard congressional voices from politicians in both parties condemning violence and promising to do something about it. This sounds very caring and inside the wheelhouse of what we hire and pay the federal government to do.

But it is clearly unconstitutional.

When the Founders created the American republic, they did so by inducing constitutional conventions in each of the original 13 states to ratify the new Constitution. The idea they presented, and the thesis accepted by those ratifying conventions, was that the states are sovereign; they derive their powers from the people who live there. The purpose of the Constitution was to create a federal government of limited powers -- powers that had been delegated to it by the states. The opening line of the Constitution contains a serious typographical error: "We the People" should read "We the States." As President Ronald Reagan reminded us in his first inaugural address, the states created the federal government and not the other way around.

Notwithstanding the Constitution's typo, the states delegated only 16 unique, discrete powers to the new federal government, and all of those powers concern nationhood. The Constitution authorizes the feds to regulate in areas of national defense, foreign affairs, keeping interstate commerce regular, establishing a post office, protecting patents and artistic creations, and keeping the nation free. The areas of health, safety, welfare and morality were not delegated to the feds and were retained by the States.

How do we know that? We know it from the language in the Constitution itself and from the records of the debates in the state ratifying conventions. The small-government types, who warned at these conventions that the Constitution was creating a behemoth central government not unlike the one in Great Britain from which they had all just seceded, were assured that the unique separation of powers between the states and the new limited federal government would guarantee that power could not become concentrated in the central government.

It was articulated even by the big-government types in the late 18th century -- such as George Washington and Alexander Hamilton -- as well as by the small-government types -- such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison -- that the new government was limited to the powers delegated to it by the states and the states retained the governmental powers that they did not delegate away. At Jefferson's insistence, the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to keep the new government from interfering with natural rights such as speech, worship, self-defense, privacy and property rights, and the 10th Amendment was included to assure that the Constitution itself would proclaim affirmatively that the powers not delegated to the feds were retained by the states or the people.

The Supreme Court has ruled consistently and countless times that the "police power," that is, the power to regulate for health, safety, welfare and morality, continues to be reposed in the states, and that there is no federal police power. All of this is consistent with the philosophical principle of "subsidiarity," famously articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas argued that the problems that are closest to the people needing government intervention should be addressed by the government closest to those people. Its corollary is that all governmental intervention should be the minimum needed.

Now, back to Obama and Biden and their colleagues in the government. If the feds have no legitimate role in maintaining safety, why are they getting involved in the current debate over guns? We know that they don't trust individuals to address their own needs, from food to health to safety, and they think -- the Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding -- that they know better than we do how to care for ourselves. Obama and Biden and many of their colleagues in government are the same folks who gave us Obamacare, with its mandates, invasions of privacy, increased costs and federal regulation of health care. They call themselves progressives, as they believe that the federal government possesses unlimited powers and can do whatever those who run it want it to do, except that which is expressly prohibited.

This brings us back to guns. The Constitution expressly prohibits all governments from infringing upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms. This permits us to defend ourselves when the police can't or won't, and it permits a residue of firepower in the hands of the people with which to stop any tyrant who might try to infringe upon our natural rights, and it will give second thoughts to anyone thinking about tyranny.

The country is ablaze with passionate debate about guns, and the government is determined to do something about it. Debate over public policy is good for freedom. But the progressives want to use the debate to justify the coercive power of the government to infringe upon the rights of law-abiding folks because of what some crazies among us have done. We must not permit this to happen.

The whole purpose of the Constitution is to insulate personal freedom from the lust for power of those in government and from the passions of the people who sent them there.

---

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is "Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom."
“My mission today is to go forth and tell people about why I follow Christ and also what the Bible teaches, and part of that teaching is that women and men are meant to be together.

“However, I would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me. We are all created by the Almighty and like Him, I love all of humanity. We would all be better off if we loved God and loved each other.”
Phil Robertson an elder in the church of Christ

Offline ChrstnHsbndFthr

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Re: What We Talk About When We Talk About Guns
« Reply #6 on: January 18, 2013, 10:31:49 AM »
“My mission today is to go forth and tell people about why I follow Christ and also what the Bible teaches, and part of that teaching is that women and men are meant to be together.

“However, I would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me. We are all created by the Almighty and like Him, I love all of humanity. We would all be better off if we loved God and loved each other.”
Phil Robertson an elder in the church of Christ

Online IronDioPriest

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Re: What We Talk About When We Talk About Guns
« Reply #7 on: January 18, 2013, 10:52:22 AM »
That is an excellent graphic CHF.
"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means."

- Thomas Jefferson

Offline Libertas

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Re: What We Talk About When We Talk About Guns
« Reply #8 on: January 18, 2013, 11:22:15 AM »
Should put abortions on it though, talk about missing the number one killer in America!  Nobody else comes close!
We are now where The Founders were when they faced despotism.