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And I really am serious when I ask "Freedom from what?" and "Freedom to what?" Those are entitlements, freedoms, that can be dealt with properly. To simply say "Freedom" is to use the word so loosely as so blur meaning and impede rational discussion.
I didn't say I wasn't a hyprocrite <IMG alt="image" SRC="http://www.thesite.org/ubb/biggrin.gif">
Oops, I've just admitted that I may have been wrong somewhere - buggers up your little theory then.
You may also note that I often state an opinion. I do not say that I am right, just that it is MY opinion.
According to some of you that is something I should/do not have - being a 'subject'.
That's why the South lost... They were attempting to fight over their percieved "Cultural Difference", when they were really fighting partially over universal truths that transend all boundaries. My support of the South's argument for "States Rights" has nothing to do with Slavery. Slavery was the Moral issue Lincoln used to justify the complete subjugation of the south through military conquest. Lincoln himself would be considered a racist by any standard. The North primarily wanted to keep control and expand the power and control of the Federal government, freeing the Slaves was a by product... an afterthought, if you will.
If Lincoln could have kept the union without Freeing the slaves, he would have done that even sooner.
Doubro, if you can quote me a passage in which I have claimed that I speak for all British people, you can have that point. You'll have to earn it, though.
You keep on saying that there are universal truths yadda yadda yadda. In your opinion. You have already conceded that
So how does the fact that your opinions may be shared by a few other people make them certain universal truths? Hmm?
You have your opinion - fine. Don't be so arrogant as to assume that it is universally true, 'cause a few hundred years ago you'd have been asserting that Kings were chosen by God and that the Sun went around the Earth.
While I may search the extremes for counterexamples to other people's assertions, I'm not as guilty as some of the use of rhetorical devices.
I speak, of course, of those who attempt to ridicule their opponents' arguments by appealing to words of loose definition and emotive content, by the use of phrases that imply some kind of mental deficiency on the part of their interlocutors. Phrases like "self-evident", "obvious", "liberty", "freedom" &c. Oh, and the ultimate giveaway of having no reasoned argument upon which to rest, "God-given".
Those of you guilty of these (and you know who you are) are FAR more guilty of the use of "extremist rhetoric" than I.
:: whistles ::
I don't have to quote it... you're entire argument, which you've repeated over and over, is based on your assumption that you "Democratic" legal process can make laws which overrule the INDIVIDUAL rights of the people in your counrty who would oppose such gun restrictions.
Every time I asserted that your laws were wrong, you shot back that it was a "Cultural Difference" and that the majority of English don't like or want access to guns, therefore, the laws which restrict access universally are supposedly justified...yet, a majority is not unanimity, and therefore, you are imposing your view on those who do not agree, based on the theory that "might makes right". More English people might think the way you do, than don't, but you are still forcing your beliefs on those, (now ex) English-gun owners.
<You keep on saying that there are universal truths yadda yadda yadda. In your opinion. You have already conceded that>
I my opinon, I am an American. Or so it says on my Birth certificate. You think I'm really a Russian spy?... (I know... I'm stealing a page from your useless rhetoric book)
quote:
concensus doesn't equate with morality.
<So how does the fact that your opinions may be shared by a few other people make them certain universal truths? Hmm?>
It doesn't make them universal truths, I don't care how many people agree...or don't. Universal truth is independant of anyones opinons. It just "is".
<You have your opinion - fine. Don't be so arrogant as to assume that it is universally true, 'cause a few hundred years ago you'd have been asserting that Kings were chosen by God and that the Sun went around the Earth.>
Only if I was English...
so, as neither of us can argue to speak for our nations, we must let the laws speak for the nations. british law says 'no guns' and american law says 'guns'. therefore, gun ownership is not a 'universal' or 'self evident' truth, because otherwise the UK would have the same laws. truth is subjective - always has been, always will be. therefore, so-called universal truths are a matter of, in part, opinion. so, even 'all men are created equal' is a subjective truth - people have only recently (in the history of the world) come to accept it as true - had you said that in Roman times, you would have been laughed at. therefore, as much as you believe it to be true, it is only universally true when eevryone believes it. and, as i do not believe that the right to own a gun should be perpetuated, gun ownership is not a universal truth.
come to think of it, name me a universal truth that supports your argument. or name one at all. remarkably difficult.
and that, my american gun-toter, is why your arguments are based on rhetoric <IMG alt="image" SRC="http://www.thesite.org/ubb/smile.gif">
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum
So the purest form of your argument - that the majority do not have the right to force their will on the minority - would be anarchy. It is the majority will which creates the law process, it is the will of the majority which maintains your Bill Of Rights. For example, if by some freak outcome the US electorate returned sufficient Senators and Congressmen who wished to abolish your 1st Amendment - right to free speach - what could you do about it?
Use your guns? Wouldn't this be a case of the minority dictating to the majority - and isn't that more of a threat to democracy?
But is that a universal truth? Arent national boundaries subjective? They CAN be changed.
Anyone on your continent can refer to themselves as American - the very term has been hijacked to describe citizens of the United States of America by those very people. Therefore it is subjective.
Wrong again.
You seem to missunderstand a key element of our representative government. While it is true that laws are made by the majority rule, they are quite rightly tempered by restrictions that limit the majority from making laws that would in effect circumscribe basic human rights.
So I am not opposed, as you claim, to majority rule in ALL cases, but rather believe that majority rule is very dangerous as it will always create governments which tend appropriate as much power as is possible through crass populism, neccessarily restricting individual autonomy, and therefore MUST have limits so that it can not interfere with fundamental freedoms of all people.
<It is the majority will which creates the law process, it is the will of the majority which maintains your Bill Of Rights. For example, if by some freak outcome the US electorate returned sufficient Senators and Congressmen who wished to abolish your 1st Amendment - right to free speach - what could you do about it?>
It would then become a matter of certainty that the 2nd Amendment's true relavence to the rest of the Bill of Rights would gain focus.
The whole point, in fact of the Second Amendment is to protect us from such Freak occurances, no matter how unlikely they seem. It is NOT true however that the majority "maintains" our Bill Of Rights, because it is a document predicated on the assumption that the "Rights" agknowledged therein are apriori, or existed before anyone thought enough to make them up. They just are. The rights in existence are therefore independant of the documents which merely descibe them, the Bill of Rights is simply a marker in time. When did we Americans first realize our rights , so to speak.
If the People (with a capital P) ever decided by majority to deny these rights to the minority, then there would either be a bloodbath, or a lowly and quiet submission, it depends on how successful the Government is in it's attempt to misinform and misrepresent it's role and responsibility to the People. It would inevitably be determined by it's success in disarming those who would be likely to lead resistence movements.
<Use your guns? Wouldn't this be a case of the minority dictating to the majority - and isn't that more of a threat to democracy?>
A moral person would only use weapons to defend their own rightful position. If by "dictating" you mean demanding by force that I am LEFT ALONE to determine at LEAST the most basic personal questions of life... Whether I can defend myself and family, where (What part of the country)I live, what I do for a living, who I marry, how many children I have...etc... then you'd be dead wrong again.
I'm not telling anyone ELSE what to do, SO NO...!!! IT WOULD NOT BE "DICTATING" ANYTHING TO ANYONE, EXCEPT IN REGARDS TO MY OWN INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM.
<I my opinon, I am an American. Or so it says on my Birth certificate. You think I'm really a Russian spy?... (I know... I'm stealing a page from your useless rhetoric book)
But is that a universal truth? Arent national boundaries subjective? They CAN be changed.>
I NEVER said being an "American" is a Universal Truth, only an Objective reality.
It is a truth that, at the moment, I am an American, no matter where the boundaries are. If your country was destroyed, you would still be a product of the English speaking culture... As long as we live, we will be a product of our western tradition.
I Agree that I am not timeless, but as Long as I exist, I will truly be American.
My example of Universal truth was one in which I declared Slavery to be wrong. That is a universal truth. And It can not change...EVER.
<Anyone on your continent can refer to themselves as American - the very term has been hijacked to describe citizens of the United States of America by those very people. Therefore it is subjective.>
It is implied that I am refering to the United States of America, as I am typing in the majority language here which is American Standard English. Language transmits culture.
If I was a South American, I would more than likely refer to myself as a Guatamellan or Brazillian first, rather than a SudAmerican.
[This message has been edited by Doubro (edited 14-08-2001).]
[This message has been edited by Doubro (edited 14-08-2001).]
[This message has been edited by Doubro (edited 14-08-2001).]
So what are the 'basic human rights' you refer to? At the point of birth, in which ever country, to whatever culture, what are these 'basic human rights'?
In your opinion.
Some of the basic rights I refer to are encapsulated quite nicely in our BOR. The Right to Free Speech, the Right to worship, the Right to defend ones person, home and family, The Right to Trial by Jury, Right to be secure in ones home, and person. There are others like..the Right to keep most of what one earns and therefore benefit from your own labor...
And none of these rights preclude others I have not thought to mention.
[This message has been edited by Doubro (edited 15-08-2001).]
[This message has been edited by Doubro (edited 15-08-2001).]
Just an interesting little article I thought might be relavant to the discussion on freedom to protect ones self.
my last post was not an attempt to convert you - thats not what i'm here to do (perhaps you are, but hey...). rather, i was simply showing that your arguments are indeed based on shapeless, unfounded rhetoric.
and another thing, using the bill of rights as a basis for supporting your argument is slightly dodgy ground (as with any legal text, including british ones). for a start, your rights are altered over time - the right to consume alcohol, for example, has been subject to intense scrutiny in the last century. now, before you leap down my throat, i'm not saying that prohibition wasnt a big mistake (thats why you got the right back again). but, my point is, people's definition of rights changes over time. and, if i may be blunt, although i do think the bill of rights is a superb document, setting down many of the rights of every human being, it also contains a number of rather pointless rights, which are not really worthy of being included in the same class as 'right to free speech'. such as the second amendment to your consitution, your favourite one. i dont really see 'the right to bear arms' as an absolute right. at the time the bill of rights was drafted, perhaps it was (i dont live in the 18th century, so dont know. some people, on the other hand....).
you mention about the 'regression of rights' which has introduced gun control. i, personally, see it more as an 'evolution of rights', and that the UK has develoepd further in this way than the US. but after all, that's just my opinion. i'm not trying to turn you in to a socialist hat-eater or whatever you called me. and another thing, before you accuse me of speaking for my country as a whole, quote me as saying that i did. otherwise you're talking shit.
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum
Suppose some bunch of nutters release a nasty bug in the States. I don't know, Ebola Mayinga, perhaps. In a country with travel networks like the USA this would spread like wildfire. Sensible thing to do? Ban all movement over at least state if not county lines. Ground the airlines. Shut down all shopping malls and cinemas. You get the idea? People don't move (except to hospital) and the virus spreads far less than it would have done. Lives get saved by the thousand.
Of course, these measures breach the rights to free assembly and free movement. So, if the President gives these orders, he can get taken to court and his order will be overturned, with all the nasty consequences that entails.
On the other hand, if he didn't give the order, he'd have the blood (and lungs and guts) of thousands or millions on his hands. Guess what? Yes, he gets sued for not protecting the lives of American citizens.
Anyone else see the controdiction here?
Now, of course, he could sign an Emergency Order suspending the Constitution... But that wouldn't change the fact that these are INALIENABLE, GOD-GIVEN RIGHTS, would it? One right or the other has got to give. What'll it be, Mr. President?
Guess that's why he gets to be called MR President <IMG alt="image" SRC="http://www.thesite.org/ubb/biggrin.gif"> No-one said it was easy.
As for Doubro's rights, I hop you noted that I did emphasise that these would be YOUR opinion. However I agree with every one of them. Including the right to protect your property.
Where I disagree is the interpretation of this. It's a little excessive to kill/shoot someone to protect a material possession, like a video.
But then this MY opinion based on the culture I in which I was raised. if I lived in Iraq, China, Saudi Arabia, I would expect different rights. I would expect to have a hand removed for theft (for example), here that is barbaric. And I think that this is the point that others have tried to get across.
There are no rights. Nature (or if you believe, God) hasn't bestowed ANY rights on us. What we have is a series of statements agreed by society. These change. Society changes - prohibition being a very good example.
Out of interest - the BOR - is it exactly the same as when it was first written?
The first ten amendments to our constitution REMAIN as written... there are MANY who attempt to subvert and pervert the meaning for their own nefarious agenda...
I'm curious. On what document or belief system is your concept of a universal set of moral/ethical beliefs based? And why is that set of beleifs more valid than those based on Buddhism or Hinduism or the worship of Bali?
(1) Answer the question: which right's going to give? Forget how this hypothetical plague was launched and deal with it. Freedom of movement or freedom to life? Tic. Toc. Tic. Toc...
(2) The Bill of Rights says the same words, but their meanings have changed. Words mean what we want them to mean. You have no real way of knowing exactly what sentiments were meant to be embodied by those drops of ink.
(3) Truth is not an objectively perceived absolute. Can't you understand that even when you do an 'objective' experiment in the science lab you are perceiving it subjectively, through the filters of your senses and brain? There is only the truth as you see it. A court of law wouldn't send someone down for perjury if s/he had thought themselves to be saying the honest truth for precisely this reason.
Most belief systems hold a few of the same tenants... the ones here are about the right to life...the right to protect ones life. If the Hindu's hold that one must sacrifice one's self so as not to injure an attacker, then I make a pragmatic judgement that their belief system is inherently flawed and doesn't take into consideration the moral imperitive of self defence.
[This message has been edited by Doubro (edited 21-08-2001).]
[This message has been edited by Doubro (edited 21-08-2001).]
to go back to your own 'hypothetical', say you're walking down the street and decide my right to live has expired.
(1) firstly, you yourself assert that rights never change (i'm rather sceptical of this, but i'l play along). therefore I will always have my right to live. as an upstanding law abiding citizen <IMG alt="image" SRC="http://www.thesite.org/ubb/tongue.gif"> you cannot take that from me. otherwise you would be a gun-crazed killer. oh, wait a minute......
(2) we both have to respect one another's rights. depending on where we are, that means i may have to respect your right to bear arms, even if i dont like it. but, if its back here in the land of meaningless rhetoric, you dont get to carry a gun.
(3) you say we 'rule a land of ... rhetoric' glad you agree i'm not a subject, but a citizen, at last.
nobody forces their rule on to others in the UK, just like they dont in the US. so dont tell me that my view is forced upon an unwilling minority. they choose to accept our laws, or they fuck off elsewhere (eg the states, just like your gun-toting ancestors).
evolution of rights - we dont have 15 year olds shooting up their school chums. you do. i rest my case.
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum
It's not hard at all. In fact Ghandi tried applying his "Satyagraha" philosopy in South Africa first, and failed miserably.
Look how the Indians and the Pakistanians treat each other today. His success was limited... and ultimately untenable as a permanent solution. But Idealism springs eternal I guess...