The Second Ammendment Lobby and Police Safety

[120mm]

What's "dictatorship"? If "dictatorship" is rule by an individual or small clique, then the collective decision making process of a bureaucracy is one bulwark against dictatorship. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were inefficient states not because of bureaucracy because the elite frequently circumvented bureaucracy for political reasons - officials were often tasked with special authorities to remove, modify, or otherwise displace the rule-based functions of bureaucracy, which lead to administrative chaos. Stalin had a personal chancellery with which to communicate, supervise, and otherwise control party subordinates independent of the state apparatus. That's dictatorship.

Now, let's take your definition of freedom as "to do whatever you want" since you haven't provided a definition of your own. I want to drive on the left side of the road because that's what I want to do. It doesn't matter that it puts other people's lives at risk because it's my freedom to do as I please that we're talking about. However, to ensure that I can freely drive on the left side of the road, I need to make sure I have the biggest truck in order to drive over all the imports and green-efficient cars that are obeying the law. The rule of law in this scenario no longer exists. In fact, the person with the biggest truck rules the road and everyone needs to get out of his way. That's not freedom either. That's actually another form of dictatorship.

The same concept applies to all other regulation, from building airports to safety in civil aviation, to the environment. Properly attuned regulations ensure that your actions do not impede on my own freedom. Ironically, this is lost in the growing Tea Party movement. Freedom is not an individual thing; it's a collective thing.

Again, bull####. You build a ridiculous straw man to support the insupportable. What you propose is a form of rule where people only behave because they are directed to do so by a government bureacracy.

"Collective Freedom?"

Commie much? We had a perfectly functional checks and balances before our benign "Master Class" decided that freedom is a "group thing".

[AmericanPride]

What you propose is a form of rule where people only behave because they are directed to do so by a government bureacracy.

What I propose is that anarchy is not freedom. Ergo, the reduction of bureaucracy is not necessarily a proportional increase in 'freedom' (whatever that is) where at the end the elimination of bureaucracy equals absolute freedom. Please do keep up. You can start by providing your own definition of 'freedom'.

Commie much? We had a perfectly functional checks and balances before our benign "Master Class" decided that freedom is a "group thing".

Freedom is a 'group thing'. Your freedom is defined in relation to others.

"The world is more complex" is a justification for bureacrats to collect a check to do nothing of worth, and often to do evil.

Here some of the "northing of worth" that "bureaucrats" do to "collect a check": military service, law enforcement, border security, drug interdiction, food inspection, civil aviation safety enforcement, building codes, postal delivery, scientific research, and teaching. Just because your view of politics is narcassitic and socio-pathic, it doesn't mean the world is evil.

And as the world has become more complex, so has the nature of the American civil service - most federal employees are older, more educated, and work in white collar position related to analysis, knowledge management, and idea generation. Even so, over the last 60 years, the ratio of population to federal employee has widened, and the role of states in local issues has expanded significantly; meaning that the "overcentralized mess" you invented doesn't actually exist. The 2008 crash hit the local and state governments hardest, since they are the "most responsive" to local conditions; in other words, a centralized federal government was best positioned to withstand the crisis and continue to provide services.

Local governance, nested and embedded in a small central federation is worlds more efficient, responsive governmment compared to the overcentralized mess we are building.

Because that worked so well for blacks in the American south for the last 300 years...

[AmericanPride]

Local governance, nested and embedded in a small central federation is worlds more efficient, responsive governmment compared to the overcentralized mess we are building.

This is an ideal-type with little factual evidence to support your claim. First, "efficient" and "responsive" are not necessarily paired types, nor are they essentially conducive to democratic governance and "freedom" (assuming also that democratic governance is the ideal type for optimizing 'freedom'). As cited with both Hitler and Stalin, their conduct was "efficient" in so far their directives bypassed all other stakeholders and state bureaucracies. When Stalin noted that grass was overgrowing in Moscow, the very next day laborers were out cutting all the grass and pulling down the trees. That's pretty damn efficient. But he was also pretty efficient in condemning hundreds of thousands of people to death. We're talking about 'freedom', not money markets, so we can dispense with the economic jargon about 'efficiency'.

Is local governance more responsive than federal government? It depends to whom the government is responding. Local governments tend to politically alienate minority and low income communities depending on the structure of governance of the jurisdiction in question; and local special interest groups (i.e. COLLECTIVE action, there's that dirty word again) tend to have better access and more response than any individual citizen or business. But as noted earlier, that responsiveness is tied to the local conditions of the area, making it more difficult for localized authorities to tackle larger problems (i.e. regional transit, the environment, etc) alone, or simply stop functioning when local conditions fail (i.e. Detroit). And none of that actually makes government more democratic (i.e. maximizing citizen participation, which some would argue is a requirement for political freedom).

So until you actually man up and provide a definition of 'freedom', you don't have an argument to provide.

[Kiwigrunt]

Commie much? We had a perfectly functional checks and balances before our benign "Master Class" decided that freedom is a "group thing".

Provided you were a white, Christian, heterosexual male.

[carl]

Provided you were a white, Christian, heterosexual male.

A limited group of individuals. The idea was to extend things to to other individuals which we have done pretty well.

[Kiwigrunt]

A limited group of individuals. The idea was to extend things to to other individuals which we have done pretty well.

Who is this 'we' that is responsible for the extending of those liberties beyond the master race and gender? Might it be the people that 120mm so aptly describes as the commie benign master class who decided that freedom is a group thing?

[carl]

Who is this 'we' that is responsible for the extending of those liberties beyond the master race and gender? Might it be the people that 120mm so aptly describes as the commie benign master class who decided that freedom is a group thing?

That is a very interesting comment. I figured it was self evident that by "we" I was referring to us, the Americans. But you came up with something different. It is almost as of you believe something was conferred upon us by a discrete class of betters. Is that what you are trying to convey?

Your last 5 word phrase is interesting also. Somehow you came up with something along the lines of-since freedom is group thing, it is therefore right to extend it to more individuals. I think that interesting because I believe that all individuals deserve not to be deprived of their natural rights because their status as individuals, they are therefore they have so to speak. It has nothing at all to do with a group, it has everything to do with the individual. But somehow you came up with a group. Do you mean that no differentiation should be made amongst individuals because of superficialities that are subordinate to their status as individual humans and therefore restrictions upon natural rights based upon those superficialities should be done away with? I can go with that. But I note that that derives from the individual what he is due because he is.

[Kiwigrunt]

That is a very interesting comment. I figured it was self evident that by "we" I was referring to us, the Americans. But you came up with something different. It is almost as of you believe something was conferred upon us by a discrete class of betters. Is that what you are trying to convey?

Your last 5 word phrase is interesting also. Somehow you came up with something along the lines of-since freedom is group thing, it is therefore right to extend it to more individuals. I think that interesting because I believe that all individuals deserve not to be deprived of their natural rights because their status as individuals, they are therefore they have so to speak. It has nothing at all to do with a group, it has everything to do with the individual. But somehow you came up with a group. Do you mean that no differentiation should be made amongst individuals because of superficialities that are subordinate to their status as individual humans and therefore restrictions upon natural rights based upon those superficialities should be done away with? I can go with that. But I note that that derives from the individual what he is due because he is.

What I am trying to convey is that the kind of people largely responsible for extending liberties and rights to those previously oppressed or otherwise disadvantaged, are often those that receive labels like 'commie or 'benign master class who decided that freedom is a group thing'. I extracted these words from the post I quoted; I did not come up with them. Hence the sarcasm icon.

Freedom should apply to all individuals, and can only be measured against that of all other individuals in the community / group. So yes, pretty much as per your second to last line. So, even though I did not come up with the group thing, I think it has as much to do with the group as it has with the (all) individuals that make up the group. It has always been that way, except that the group has not always been all-inclusive (come to think of it, probably never will be). Seeing the rights purely as individual - and having nothing to do with any group - is not helpful to those people who are denied the rights by the group.

[Dayuhan]

Protection of the rights of minorities, whether or not you describe those minorities in hyphenated terms, has to be a priority in any system based on majority rule. First thing a majority does when it gets power is to step on some convenient minority.

Living in a country with no political parties worthy of the name, I have to say that parties, scummy as they are, have a place. They aren't pretty, what what happens when you have none is even less pretty.

Going back to the original post, I'd only underscore that IMO the problem isn't the guns, or even for the most part the gun owners. The pronblem is the fear, and the extent to which that fear is growing to an irrational and paranoid level in a small subset of the populace. Scared people do crazy stupid stuff, especially when they are heavily armed. To the extent that the second amendment lobby encourages and supports exaggerated fear of government, it might be held to be a threat.

So another question... are their parties out there deliberately encouraging and supporting exaggerated fear of government? If so, is the second amendment lobby one of them?

[carl]

What I am trying to convey is that the kind of people largely responsible for extending liberties and rights to those previously oppressed or otherwise disadvantaged, are often those that receive labels like 'commie or 'benign master class who decided that freedom is a group thing'. I extracted these words from the post I quoted; I did not come up with them. Hence the sarcasm icon.

So you do indeed mean that a special class conferred upon the rest of us rights or liberties. I disagree. I think us Americans did for ourselves over the course of many many years through the efforts of many many people, most of whom are unknown.

I don't like the idea of believing that there is a special class like that at all. It too easily leads to tyranny.

Freedom should apply to all individuals, and can only be measured against that of all other individuals in the community / group. So yes, pretty much as per your second to last line. So, even though I did not come up with the group thing, I think it has as much to do with the group as it has with the (all) individuals that make up the group. It has always been that way, except that the group has not always been all-inclusive (come to think of it, probably never will be). Seeing the rights purely as individual - and having nothing to do with any group - is not helpful to those people who are denied the rights by the group.

I think you are confusing rights, natural rights, those given to the individual because of his existence as an individual by God with measuring the degree to which those rights are able to be exercised within a system created by men. Those are two different things.

The rights themselves have nothing at all to do with a group. Measuring them does, as measuring has to be done by relating one thing to another.