The topic of gun control per se is off track from the "Liberty 101" topic of the original post.
The notion of "that is not the America our founding fathers envisioned" is more to the point. It could not be more wrong. It is shameful and embarrasing that an elected official in this country actually thinks (sic) that way. That mentality, more than anything, is the greatest single cause for the decay of this great nation.
The enemy of liberty is centralized, consolidated, government power. The founders, being students of human nature and of history, knew this to be true and did everything they could to prevent the consolidation of power. The enemy of liberty is the tyranny of the majority.
Liberalism does everything it can to centralize power.
In other words, liberalism is everything the founders tried to prevent.
And why?
Because liberal psychology is playing with about half of the full deck of the psychological threat detectors, the social safety mechanisms, that evolution embedded in the human brain.
Liberalism is blind in one eye--yet it insists on the superiority of its vision and its supreme right to rule. It cannot see half the things a governing philosophy must see, and claims that those who see both halves are thereby unqualified to govern.
"Our One-Eyed Friends," by R. R. Reno, in the June 1, 2012 issue of "First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life."
Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism. —, John Stewart Mill, On Liberty, The Library of Liberal Arts edition, p.7.
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It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” – Mark Twain
I heard snippets of her talking about the days when she packed but I guess she'll just shrug it off if it ever makes the real papers.
The mainstream media takes a lot of flack from the tinfoil crowd but, you know what? -- the important bits are true. From Menendez getting a pass as a sex tourist to them not calling Feinstein out as a hypocritical toad, they're carrying all the water the boys and girls need.
Put simply, we cannot allow the rights of a few to override the safety of all. That is not the America that our founding fathers envisioned. And that is not the America I want my children and grandchildren to live in.
I don't care whether you sleep with a revolver or wet the bed if you think of one, this is an amazing statement and quite a peek into Feinstein's mind. Maybe she's related to the Georgetown law prof, the one advocating we chunk the parts of the constitution the hip people don't care for?
The quotes selected for the original post express some of the fundamental ideas upon which this country was founded. They are "Liberty 101" kinds of ideas, which, for some strange reason, almost never seem to make it into the history or civics classes of K-12 public schools.
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It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” – Mark Twain
"I'm Sheriff David Clarke and I want to talk to you about something personal: your safety. It's no longer a spectator sport; I need you in the game. But are you ready? With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option. You can beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back. But are you prepared? Consider taking a certified safety course in handling a firearm so you can defend yourself until we get there. You have a duty to protect yourself and your family."
Along with the expected statistical pooh-pah of crime risk in Sherrif's Clarke's area, the mayor weighed in:
"Apparently, Sheriff David Clarke is auditioning for the next Dirty Harry movie," Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's office said in a statement.
That remark drew this retort from Clarke: "Several years ago, a tire-iron-wielding suspect beat Mayor Tom Barrett to within inches of his life. I would think that he would be a lot more sensitive to people being able to defend themselves in such instances. A firearm and a plan of defense would have come in handy for him that day."
Feinstein left that loophole for the vulnerable, soccerguy, since they're the only ones at risk.
-- Edited by catahoula on Monday 28th of January 2013 06:41:05 PM
Isn't it great that our founding fathers developed a 3 headed monster and one of the heads is again devided into the Senate which has a 6 year election cycle, and a House that has 2 year cycle.
It is delusional and dangerous, this game we are playing. One day the masses will wake up and realize that this unchecked assault in privacy, civil rights and our Constituion is a problem. Unfortunately, the spending more than we make is a bigger problem.
It is like when the peanut allergy kid bans an entire classroom or school from eating PB&J. This happens. It is also an illusion that it will protect that kid. But what about the rights of the kids who aren't allergic?
America was established as a Republic, not a Democracy, and in a republic the natural and inborn rights of the people, as embodied in the U.S. Constitution, are not subject to the mood swings of the masses. Each individual has certain rights, including the right to firearms and self-defense, REGARDLESS of what the so-called mainstream believes. That is to say, even if 99.9% of all people decided tomorrow that the right to free speech should be abolished, this would still be unconstitutional. The .1% who retain the right to free speech are not required to adhere to such law.
Elite oligarchies are notorious for using the masses as a shield for their criminal behavior. Whenever an atrocity is committed, the elite claim it was for the “greater good”. That it was done in the name of “national security”. That the “majority” is in agreement with their methods. They do this in order to artificially inflate the size of the obstacle in our path and make us feel as though we stand against “the whole world”. They do this to make us imagine that we are too small to make a difference.
This tactic is also designed to redirect our energies away from the oligarchs and towards a nameless faceless mob of people who may or may not be aware that they are being used as cannon fodder.
The average anti-gun socialist is acting not out of reason as they pretend, but out of fear. They want us to relinquish our rights so that they can retain the illusion of safety.
This is a completely different viewpoint as espoused by SDF recently at a press conference:
Put simply, we cannot allow the rights of a few to override the safety of all. That is not the America that our founding fathers envisioned. And that is not the America I want my children and grandchildren to live in.
-- Edited by Intrepid1 on Friday 25th of January 2013 09:51:42 AM