Why did the USA fight for freedom against the British, Hitler, and Saddam if America just ended up as a police state? All those American soldiers died in vain.
We've already asked you to please comment substantively, and there's nothing here besides inflammatory allegory. So we have to ask again: please don't post if you have nothing to say.
Not those of us who've been buying guns, but primarily rifles, of military utility in ever greater numbers, starting in the George W. Bush administration....
And let me quote Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The GULAG Archipelago on the general question of "whistling" vs. resisting:
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?
Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?
After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked.
The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
"Not those of us who've been buying guns, but primarily rifles, of military utility in ever greater numbers, starting in the George W. Bush administration"
Actually, gun ownership surged during the early Clinton administration in response to his party's push for gun bans and the "Brady Bill".
I can well believe that, but as I remember the big surge started after 9/11, when we were told the only thing we could personally do was to shop (support the already crashing economy), i.e. that we were are our own.
Quibble: our best numbers come from NICS checks, and they only started in 1998 based on 1993's Brady Bill. E.g. they capture sales of used guns, which the ATF otherwise doesn't have visibility into like they do with new stuff through Pittman Robertson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittman%E2%80%93Robertson_Fede...). And even that data is getting iffier as more and more people get concealed carry licenses, which generally allow you to skip the NICS check.
But, yeah, pretty much every effort, mooted or actual, at gun control prompts us ornery gun owners to resist, generally by buying some of what's under fire, so to speak.
Were you going to vote for the guy who later endorsed the corporate-owned neoconservative warhawk? Because, given that, it seems like his principles weren't worth very much.
Such a bad and tired argument. He was doing it to try and stop Trump from getting elected. As a hardcore Sanders supporter, I am behind that decision 100%.
I fail to see how stopping Trump from winning is a palatable outcome if the alternate option is Clinton winning. She is diametrically opposed to just about every progressive position, I don't see how any progressive could support her in good conscience.
Unless of course it's more important that the team you identify with wins than what the principles that team stands for are.
If you truly consider yourself a progressive, take a minute to really think rationally about the situation. Put aside your emotions for Sanders. I know it's hard, and it took me a long time to come to grips with the situation before I could do that. I was very close to voting for Trump because of how terrible I thought Clinton was.
But, if you really think rationally about it, supporting Clinton is clearly the best option.
Under Clinton you still get many progressive policy pushes - paid leave, higher minimum wage, protecting abortion, stopping Republican voter suppression, and most importantly, SUPREME COURT NOMINATIONS! The supreme court nominations alone should be enough to convince you, and the rest is just icing on the cake. Not the mention, Trump supporters feel like they can be openly racist (which was my fear if Trump won, and sure enough, it has become a reality).
So yes, Clinton is a great option when compared to Trump.
> The supreme court nominations alone should be enough to convince you
They did. I do not want Hillary Clinton appointing judges to the supreme court any more than I want Trump doing it. Again, Hillary is not a progressive, so I see no reason to believe that her justice picks would be.
You haven't really made a convincing argument in her favor, you've essentially said "yes, she would have been an awful authoritarian who would continue and amplify the bad policies we already had, but at least she paid lip service to some inconsequential social wedge issues that serve as uniforms for my team!"
edit: It's especially disappointing that Hillary didn't lose by an even wider margin. Perhaps if the Democrats got bitten hard enough by their failed strategy we could have a chance at some real reform in four years. Instead people like you rewarded their avarice and deceit, so we can expect things to continue like this.
When she was a Senator, she did absolutely nothing on any of those fronts (or immigration)... even when Democrats controlled the White House and Congress, including a filibuster-proof Senate majority.
His only other alternative would have been to run on the Green ticket, and that probably wouldn't have worked out well for a number of reasons. As things shook out, he somehow ended up the de facto leader of a Democratic party that he hasn't even officially joined yet. If things had come out the other way, he would have pull for having brought his followers around and the chairmanship of a Senate committee. If he had been a failed Green party candidate, he would have been out of politics by now.
As it was, his answers to specific questions about what he endorsed about Clinton were so carefully phrased that he sounded like Clinton talking about emails.
But we were told that we couldn't vote for him because he was unelectable. We had to vote for the candidate who had been hated for decades, and who coincidentally directly or indirectly employed at least half of the Democratic party apparatus.
No matter, though. I'm sure that President Trump will be a wise and careful steward of his new surveillance network.
There was a time when Americans believed in freedom.
The US is dying from a million cuts. Part of the reason the USA is a nanny police state now is that whenever there is a problem, the kneejerk reaction in the US is to call for a new law.
Nanny state laws are not the best solution, however. Nanny state laws lead to more laws, higher fines, and tougher sentences. Thirty years ago, DWI laws were enacted that led to DWI checkpoints and lower DWI levels. Seatbelt laws led to backseat seatbelt laws, childseat laws, and pet seatbelt laws. Car liability insurance laws led to health insurance laws and gun liability laws. Smoking laws that banned smoking in buildings led to laws against smoking in parks and then bans against smoking in entire cities. Sex offender registration laws led to sex offender restriction laws and violent offender registration laws.
Nanny state laws don't make us safer, either. Nanny state laws lead people to be careless since they don't need to have personal responsibility anymore. People don't need to be careful crossing the street now because drunk-driving has been outlawed and driving while using a cellphone is illegal. People don't investigate companies or carry out due diligence because businesses must have business licenses now.
The main point of nanny state laws is not safety. The main purposes of more laws are control and revenue generation for the state.
Another reason laws are enacted is because corporations give donations to lawmakers to stifle competition or increase sales.
Many laws are contradictory, too. Some laws say watering lawns is required, while other laws say watering lawns is illegal.
Many nanny state laws that aim to solve a problem can be fixed by using existing laws. If assault is already illegal, why do we need a new law that outlaws hitting umpires?
Nanny state laws are not even necessary. If everything was legal would you steal, murder, and use crack cocaine? Aren't there other ways to solve problems besides calling the police? Couldn't people educate or talk to people who bother them? Couldn't people be sued for annoying behavior? Couldn't people just move away? Even if assault was legal, wouldn't attackers risk being killed or injured, too? Do people have consciences? Having no laws doesn't mean actions have no consequences.
If there is no victim, there is no crime.
We don't need thousands of laws when we only need 10.
Freedom is not just a one way street. You can only have freedom for yourself if you allow others to have it.
Should swimming pools be banned because they are dangerous? Hammers? Bottles? Rocks? Energy drinks? Pillows?
Control freaks might get angry when a neighbor owns three indoor cats, but what did the neighbor take from them? Why should this be illegal? Is outlawing cats something a free country should do? Doesn't banning everything sound like the opposite of freedom?
Instead of getting mad at people who like freedom, why don't people realize that freedom is a two way street?
If you allow others to paint their house purple then you can, too.
If you allow others to own a gun then you can, too.
