[ExI] Upon pondering your freedoms

[Samantha Atkins]

On Jul 5, 2008, at 10:31 AM, spike wrote:

>
>
>> ... On Behalf Of BillK
>> Subject: Re: [ExI] Upon pondering your freedoms
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 2:55 PM, spike wrote:
>>>> ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick
> ...
>>>> opening passage "A well regulated  militia, being necessary to the
>>>> security of a free state"? ...
> ...
>>
>> Spike,
>>
>> Damien is poking a stick in the anthill of the gun control
>> argument.  ;)...
>
> Ja, but I am cool with that.  In the past when this discussion was
> attempted, it was hijacked by those who could not keep it civil.   
> Those
> elements are no longer posting here.  I trust Damien's civility, and  
> I trust
> yours and I trust mine.
>
>> ...The militia
>> was "well-regulated" in the sense that its members were
>> subject to various requirements such as training, supplying
>> their own firearms...
>
> Agreed.  The founding fathers' government had not the funds to buy  
> firearms
> for every member of the army.  With the well-regulated militia  
> comment, they
> tacitly assumed it was the responsibility of the draftees to supply  
> them.
> It worked.
>
> ...
>> The argument that continues today is whether a personal right
>> to bear arms is necessary for the maintenance of state
>> militias as a counterbalance to US federal militia. It
>> certainly was at the time it was written, as the state
>> soldiers used their own weapons in the state
>> military service.   But is it necessary nowadays????
>
> BillK, it is more necessary than ever before, for there is more than  
> one
> kind of war.  The old style foreign army invading across the border  
> notion
> is gone now, but we are at war.  Osama Bin Laden declared war on the  
> US in
> 1994.  It took us seven years to notice, but that war has never come  
> to
> peace negotiations.  Al Queda is in that hazy gray area between  
> foreign army
> and criminal conspiracy, but that war continues still.
>

So many wars, Cold War, Police Action, War On Poverty, War on [some]  
Drugs, War [never-ending?] on [some] Terror.  Al Queda is a very small  
organization with quite limited support that we have blown totally out  
of proportion.   It is a convenient excuse for very many things our  
government wants to do at home and abroad most of which rather  
obviously have nothing to do with making us safer from terrorism.   It  
is the new Cold War.

- samantha