Rich Men North of Richmond

[Dill]

(09-01-2023, 07:54 PM)HarleyDog Wrote: Vote away democracy? Your going to have to dive deeper into this one. One of the things that irks many people is we think the left is throwing away our freedoms and more concerned about being PC than they are about values. 

Being "PC" is an expression of values, just different from yours. 

Regarding the bolded, what I was referring to was that so many 2A supporters seem to imagine a government taking away "rights" and so patriots have to take up arms against it to set things right. Their guns are then a "deterrent" to illegitimate government. For decades, probably even before the Turner Diaries, a prominent right wing fantasy has been government coming to take guns away, which triggers an uprising to take the country back from "liberals." 

They never seem to imagine a scenario in which 2A folks support an authoritarian government or help vote one into power to protect their "freedoms." In which case the "deterrent" would be adding to the chaos and loss of legitimate government. 

(09-01-2023, 07:54 PM)Quote:Without a government protecting your rights, you won\t have them, though you might have a lot of armed militias Wrote: running around deciding what your rights are for you.
Your an extreme thinker with this. If anything ever happened to threaten the freedoms by hate groups, the police and citizens both would handle it. I seriously trust my neighbors more than I trust my government. Most of us don't mind change. We don't like radical, shove it down our throat change. 

My thinking on this aligns with some 400 years of social contract theory, the basis of modern liberal democracy. We organize into states and governments so that we can have rights and property secure from those who would take them away. That means giving up some "freedoms." But without government it's just the law of jungle. 

Above you are imagining "hate groups" who are not part of the citizenry or police. I am not imagining such sharp and easily identifiable divisions. And "citizens handling it" doesn't sound good to me. Remember I am speaking of a situation in which government has broken down or is beginning to; I think the result would be a rather dangerous anarchy, very much aggravated if infrastructure, food and medical supplies are compromised as well.