Governments and Nations are two very different things
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Originally Posted by
motorfirebox
Um... now, let me preface this by saying that I'm very much in favor of gun rights. But to say that an armed populace is not a threat to a nation doesn't really make sense. Of course it's a threat to a nation--that's the whole point, as you outlined yourself in the paragraphs following. An armed populace is an explicit threat that if the government of the nation fails to execute its duties properly, it will be removed.
The problem, such as it is, is that the entirety of the armed populace isn't in agreement about what proper execution of government duties consists of. In a less beneficial sense, a subsection of the armed populace can be just as much of a threat--as in, actual threat, not enforcer of the national will--to the nation as, say, nineteen guys and two airplanes can. It's as unwise to turn a blind eye to that sort of threat as it is to turn a blind eye towards union violence.
What concerns me on a personal level is who the most vociferous gun-holders are. If they had their druthers, people like me would be as unwelcome as if those nineteen guys had gotten theirs.
But you are right, we often confuse the two. An armed populace is no risk to a nation, but is indeed a tremendous risk to governments who lose their focus on what is truly important. Most of the most drawn out messes we have gotten ourselves into (Vietnam and now Afghanistan to name but two) are where we come to mistake the preservation of a government for the preservation of the Nation.
Often the government we are working with is the problem and must either evolve or be replaced by legal or illegal means by the populace of that land (the land and the people and the heritage being the greatest components of a "nation," with government being perhaps the least imporant component of any equation that adds up to equaling "nation.")
Trees are to Forest as Government is to Nation. Sometimes you have to burn some trees to make the forest healthy again.
Live Stream Of Global Revolution
Link to live stream of pending Wall Street Demonstration tomorrow.
http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution
A dataset of one - a US state bank
Bank of North Dakota (Wiki and webpage) founded in 1919. I supported this concept for Michigan back in the 1970s, as well as a state-owned and -run insurance company similar to Saskatchewan Government Insurance (Wiki). The ideas ran pretty well in Northern Michigan, but foundered in downstate party politics.
And, for motorfirebox (from a very vociferous gun-owner and 2nd Amendment person :)), I give thee from Mother Jones, How the Nation’s Only State-Owned Bank Became the Envy of Wall Street (Josh Harkinson, 27 Mar 2009).
Regards
Mike
Sustainable Economics with apologies to Tolstoy
Slapout, Mike, Dayuhan, Fuchs, Motorfirebox, Bill, et. al
"All happy (societies) resemble one another, each unhappy (society) is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy
One might argue that a sustainable economy is a key component of a society. Rule of Law, Safe & Secure Environment, Stable Governance, and Social Well-Being are other components worth considering when comparatively examining healthy (happy) and unhealthy (unhappy) societies.
Guiding Principles for Stabilization and Reconstruction - USIP
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"A sustainable economy is one in which people can pursue opportunities for livelihoods within a predictable system of economic governance bound by law. Such an end state is characterized by market-based macroeconomic stability, control over the illicit economy and economic-based threats to peace, development of a market economy, and employment generation. Economic governance refers to the collection of policies, laws, regulations, institutions, practices, and individuals that shape the context in which a (society's) economic activity takes place."
Fiscal Management and Monetary Stability can be seen as subsets of Macroeconomic Stability - something of concern to all who partake of the global financial system - context is everything as they say...:wry:
Fighting for its life, The euro zone is in intensive care, The Economist: Sep 17th 2011
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WHAT’S the French for “this sucker could go down”? Echoes of 2008, when the global financial system wobbled and George Bush gave his pithy view of the American economy, now resound on the other side of the Atlantic. Credit-default-swap spreads for European banks, a measure of how costly it is to buy insurance against their default, are at record highs (see chart 1).
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The pressure on European banks will keep increasing unless something else is done. Rumours that China will ride to the rescue of struggling countries are fanciful. Again, the real last resort is the ECB, which could relieve the pressures on the system by being prepared to buy without limit the bonds of solvent euro-zone countries. But the ECB is itself riven by disagreement.
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The German government moved swiftly to fill the hole left by Mr Stark. Jörg Asmussen, chief secretary at the finance ministry, will move to the ECB, assuming the formalities go without a hitch. Both Mr Asmussen and Jens Weidmann, Mr Weber’s successor at the Bundesbank, appear more flexible personalities than their predecessors. But persuading them, and the German public, to sign up to what amounts to a policy of massive quantitative easing (creating money to buy bonds) will be extremely difficult. In 2008 free-market Americans swallowed their misgivings to rescue Wall Street. Inflation-phobic Germans now face a similar choice.
Lehman Brothers and the crisis, A year on, Two books make a case for looking back before forging ahead, The Economist, Sep 10th 2009
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Mrs Reinhart and Mr Rogoff do not expect a quick recovery this time. Nor do they expect their proposed reforms—which include creating a new global financial regulator and beefing up the IMF, where Mr Rogoff was once chief economist—to prevent future crises, though they could make them less frequent. As they say, “The persistent and recurrent nature of the ‘this-time-is-different’ syndrome is itself suggestive that we are not dealing with a challenge that can be overcome in a straightforward way.”
The problem lies in the human tendency to be optimistic and forget the lessons of the past. There will be other banking crises, so the world must learn what it can from this one. Lehman Brothers is dead; long live Lehman Brothers.
Controllers and benign dictators: Our current state of affairs
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Originally Posted by
Bob's World
I'm all about leading, controlling is another story.
Controllers lay down rules and direct others where to be, how to act, what to think, etc. They aren't followed so much as they direct and herd others to where they want them to be.
Rather than "controllers" you mean to say "dictators," don't you. And quasi-dictators, kind of like some of the people currently in national office.
On this same front, it is impossible to control government if you have no idea about what government in a constitutional republic (as America was originally formed) is supposed to be.
Our nation's lawful (de jure) government is vacant. It has been vacant since 1861. We haven't had a lawfully seated government since that time extending forward until today. Our government remains vacant today largely because people have forgotten (been dumbed down) who they are and what lawful government actually is.
What is needed in this country is a quiet revolution of education on the history of how we got to the place we're in today. It's unfortunate that while some people may listen and learn, the vast majority are likely to let this knowledge slip quietly over their heads and continue to rouse the rabble.
A few of those original founders had some brilliant insights that we seem to have forgotten. It's long over due time we began paying more attention to them:
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I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.
- Thomas Jefferson
and
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If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.
- Samuel Adams
Our current state of affairs
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Originally Posted by
Levi
Educate me. What happened in 1861 that made the Government (like, all three branches?) unlawful?
The U.S. Congress adjourned sine die which means the following: Adjournment sine die (from the Latin "without day") means "without assigning a day for a further meeting or hearing."
President Lincoln then proceeded to unLAWFULLY adjourned a portion of Congress (that portion that hadn't seceded from the Union) in order to attempt to bring the other portion back into the Union by force, which turned into the Civil War. The trouble is, Lincoln had no lawful authorization to do what he did in his attempt to preserve the Union. The Union of States had been lawfully dissolved, its Congress lawfully adjourned sine die in April of 1861. And Lincoln was acting outside of the law.
If you want to learn more, you're going to have to get off your butt and do some due diligence research of your own about this in order to get the whole story.
I can give you a link to an overview explanation of what happened, but it leaves out a lot of the historical evidence for making the points that it makes. Yet, even so, it presents a compelling picture of what actually occurred.
http://www.ci.corvallis.or.us/counci...B35gEw7WKM.doc