Monday, April 07, 2008

Unlimited Government

We decided as part of the Civil War that there was a hard limit on the freedom of the individual: we cannot sell ourselves into slavery. Similarly, there is a hard limit on the sovereign public, that no matter how great the majority it cannot dictate certain things to the minority.

Among the things the majority cannot dictate are its religion, its opinion, and whether or not a person may own and carry a gun.

And yet the government schools try, to varying degree of effort and success, to do all three.


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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was with you until you started talking about weapons. People should not have the right to bear arms. There is absolutely no reason why someone should ever need to use one.

Hunting is irrelevant, you can buy food at the supermarket. Personal defense? Why? If nobody else has a weapon, why do you need one?

No, guns only cause problems.

Loren Heal said...

The right to own and use a weapon in self defense equalizes the power of people. A frail grandmother in her wheelchair can defend herself against a thug in his prime, or even against a gang of them, whereas without a gun she is prey.

But the biggest thug is government, and without an armed populace none of our other freedoms are safe from tyranny's grasp.

knighterrant said...

Indentured servitude, voluntary slavery, thrived after the Civil War in forms like sharecropping. The "company town" structure in the United States in the late 19th century required workers to live in company-owned housing and buy from company-owned stores where these captive workers were forced to pay inflated prices. This kept the workers chronically indebted to the company and unable to leave.

What the Civil War ended was involuntary servitude where human beings were bought, sold, and treated like chattel. The Civil War curtailed the freedom to treat other human beings like animals.

Proper limits prevent the powerful from imposing their will upon others. Be it a majority fiat to require religious observances in public schools or thugs preying upon the weak.

By the way, a thug with a gun still beats granny with a gun. When everyone has guns the only people empowered are psychopaths who are not governed by a conscious.

Loren Heal said...

Thanks for commenting on this, Knight and uaemoc. I appreciate your different perspectives, and in particular hadn't thought about debt slavery.

And to your BTW about grannies and thugs: yes, willingness to shoot is the key.

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