Guns As A " God-given Right"

[4588686]

Nothing is a god given right

[Winchester]

Nothing is a god given right

[4588686]

 

Nothing is a god given right

 

 

 

That movie is overrated.  

 

Yeahhh

[PhuturePriest]

That movie is overrated.  

 

Yeahhh

 

I don't even know what movie that's from.

 

Yeahhh

[Winchester]

That movie is overrated.  

 

Yeahhh

You disgust me.

[4588686]

You disgust me.

 

 

Just like Vietnam.  

[Winchester]

Just like Vietnam.  

Whatever Hanoi Jane.

[Socrates]

Not at all. I don't deny we are animals...with all kinds of destructive drives, from sex to violence to entertainment. I just don't seek to baptize every fact of human society, but I don't have to wish them away either. Self-defense is one of the absurd realities of being human...though many have sought to actually live a better vision and not just imagine it (Gandhi, etc.)...which IMO is one of the great stories of human history. Christianity has retained its "better vision" worldview with regards to sex...with regards to violence, not so much, it has accommodated to much of the realities of human society.

 

I don't see anything absurd about the ability to use force if necessary to protect oneself and love one's from being murdered or raped, etc. by an attacker, but then there's not much of your worldview that makes sense to me.

 

Of course, its best if such defense were never necessary - but its a fallen world, and defense is certainly better than the alternative of simply allowing evil men to rape and kill as they please.

 

Again, there's nothing noble or pacifistic about empowering the state to forcibly disarm its citizens - advocating state "gun control" is advocating aggression and violence by the state.

[4588686]

Whatever Hanoi Jane.

 

 

Sure, now break out the sweet talk.  

[4588686]

 

 

Again, there's nothing noble or pacifistic about empowering the state to forcibly disarm its citizens - advocating state "gun control" is advocating aggression and violence by the state.

 

This would be more compelling if you didn't regularly promote nationalism/American exceptionalism.  

[Socrates]

I suggest you read "The Technological Society" by Jacques Ellul. Your vision of America and society in general rests on too many 18th century ideals (understandable, given that is the fount of American government). 

 

I hold to the quaint, and no doubt entirely outdated, idea that ideas should be judged right or wrong on their own merits, not by what century they were popular in.

 

As the previous century gave us such beautiful ideologies as Nazism and Communism, with all their attendant horrors, I reject the notion that newer is necessarily always better.

 

Ellul explores technique as the defining mark of modern civilization, something that of necessity must control and shape everything. Technique of necessity must standardize and optimize and control, because that is the only way to create the best yield (in the same way a factory cannot be a bunch of independent machines...they must all be controlled and optimized to work together to achieve defined results). There are all kinds of techniques...mechanical, political, economic, etc. The rise of police intelligence, for example, is a necessary consequence of technique...in order to maintain order, police have to know everything, and in return they give people the illusion of safety and benevolence. This is playing out on higher stakes with things like the NSA, etc. The globalization of society isn't a coincidence, it's a necessary development of technique...the old world of isolated nation-states doesn't work in a world where everything has to work together most efficiently. And Ellul points out that political ideology is just window dressing, that technique operates the same whether a society is capitalist or communist (the book was written in the 50s). Anyway, I'm greatly summarizing a thorough analysis that Ellul makes.

 

 

 

I'm sure that's a fascinating book, but I guess I'm failing to see how whatever you said proves that we should oppose the right to bear arms.

[Socrates]

 

Complicating this discussion is also the tricky fact that I don't really believe in God, so of course, the idea of "God-given rights" creates a whole other mess that probably is too broad for this discussion. 

 

 

Nothing is a god given right

 

If there is no God, there are no rights in any transcendent sense, so the whole discussion becomes meaningless.  

It all boils down to "might makes right" or the strength of the strong.

 

The State giveth, the State taketh away.

[Era Might]

I'm sure that's a fascinating book, but I guess I'm failing to see how whatever you said proves that we should oppose the right to bear arms.

 

Because "the right to bear arms" is a platitude from the 18th century, however much you cherish it. And when the conditions of society change, so too do our platitudes, even if we retain them in name. The state has accrued more and more power over the last 250 years because it's a necessary development of modernity. Ellul examines all the ways in which technique, of its nature, demands a single way of doing things, and once it grows, the only power that can possibly control it is the state, whether it is economic technique, political, military, police...even purely scientific technique has only reached where it has because states have funded them and put them to the use of the state (development of the atomic bomb, space race, etc). You can read the book or not, but the problem I see with your thinking is that you have no wider context of anything...you are stuck in a narrow-minded political view of society, which has its uses, but there's a big world out there that will never be critically understood by platitudes like "the right to bear arms."

Edited May 6, 2014 by Era Might

[4588686]

If there is no God, there are no rights in any transcendent sense, so the whole discussion becomes meaningless.  

It all boils down to "might makes right" or the strength of the strong.

 

The State giveth, the State taketh away.

 

 

There are not rights in a transcendent sense.  That's correct.  Pretending that there's a god doesn't change that fact.  And no god has swooped down to hand any rights to anybody.  Every right that currently exists has been hard won by struggling against coercive power structures, public and private.  

[Socrates]

Because "the right to bear arms" is a platitude from the 18th century, however much you cherish it. And when the conditions of society change, so too do our platitudes, even if we retain them in name. The state has accrued more and more power over the last 250 years because it's a necessary development of modernity.

 

My apologies for breaking (or, rather, confirming) Godwin's law, but was the Nazi state a necessary development of modernity in '30s Germany?

Or Stalinism in Russia?

 

I may be completely misreading things, but it seems the subtext of your argument is that we must never oppose any expansion of state power because its inevitable.

 

Defeatist nihilism.