[Lobowolf]

luke warm, on Mar 13 2009, 06:14 AM, said:

that's simply a matter of political philosophy, and i understand that other societies don't share the view of the founders

Nor do a good percentage in this society.

[mikeh]

luke warm, on Mar 13 2009, 06:14 AM, said:

jdonn, on Mar 12 2009, 06:38 PM, said:

blackshoe, on Mar 12 2009, 04:04 PM, said:

I said I was gonna stay out of this, and then I ... didn't. Shame on me.

All I'll say at this point is that societies, as such, don't have rights. People have rights. And it is fundamental that if person A has a certain right, person B can't take that right away from person A, and person B cannot get around that by getting together with person C, person D, etc. And I don't care how large you make the group.

Do with that whatever you like. I'm done with this thread. Really.

I could simplify what I think Mike is saying by saying this.

It is nothing more than your opinion that individuals have rights but societies don't. America and Europe view that question very differently, as one example. But almost anywhere, society is given many rights that limit individual freedoms. For example, there are speed limits since society's right to not be put in danger of being crashed into is thought to supercede your right to go as fast as you want. Similar reasoning for why smoking is banned in certain public places (here anyway), and numerous other things.

i think it's self-evident that societies do have rights, but those rights are given by the governed... since, in the founders' view, we (the governed, or the individual) have the God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the role of gov't is to function in a way that limits those rights as little as possible... that's simply a matter of political philosophy, and i understand that other societies don't share the view of the founders

Since the founders believed in a lot of currently unfashionable ideas, we have to hope that the vast majority of US citizens no longer share their peculiar view of god's generosity in handing out fundamental rights.

I don't want to turn this thread into a religious debate, but any attempt to argue that god bestowed rights will quickly run afoul of the problem, in whatever religion we look at, that religion's god seems to be politically incorrect, by current western standards.

I think that our societies in the west generally see women as entitled to equal treatment under the law as that afforded to men. That idea would have been scandalous in the late 1700s... as would have been the 'absurd' notion that 'negros' had the same intrinsic worth and rights as a white man... heck, the founders established a rule that a black person counted only as a fractional human as far as the census was concerned!

If ever we need evidence that individual rights are constructs of society, surely we find it in the changing of views on who has what rights, over time.

[jdonn]

luke warm, on Mar 13 2009, 06:14 AM, said:

jdonn, on Mar 12 2009, 06:38 PM, said:

blackshoe, on Mar 12 2009, 04:04 PM, said:

I said I was gonna stay out of this, and then I ... didn't. Shame on me.

All I'll say at this point is that societies, as such, don't have rights. People have rights. And it is fundamental that if person A has a certain right, person B can't take that right away from person A, and person B cannot get around that by getting together with person C, person D, etc. And I don't care how large you make the group.

Do with that whatever you like. I'm done with this thread. Really.

I could simplify what I think Mike is saying by saying this.

It is nothing more than your opinion that individuals have rights but societies don't. America and Europe view that question very differently, as one example. But almost anywhere, society is given many rights that limit individual freedoms. For example, there are speed limits since society's right to not be put in danger of being crashed into is thought to supercede your right to go as fast as you want. Similar reasoning for why smoking is banned in certain public places (here anyway), and numerous other things.

i think it's self-evident that societies do have rights, but those rights are given by the governed... since, in the founders' view, we (the governed, or the individual) have the God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the role of gov't is to function in a way that limits those rights as little as possible... that's simply a matter of political philosophy, and i understand that other societies don't share the view of the founders

I think you are focused too much on "role" and not enough on "function". Also your "since" wasn't justified.

[Lobowolf]

mikeh, on Mar 13 2009, 11:29 AM, said:

Since the founders believed in a lot of currently unfashionable ideas, we have to hope that the vast majority of US citizens no longer share their peculiar view of god's generosity in handing out fundamental rights.

I don't want to turn this thread into a religious debate, but any attempt to argue that god bestowed rights will quickly run afoul of the problem, in whatever religion we look at, that religion's god seems to be politically incorrect, by current western standards.

I think that our societies in the west generally see women as entitled to equal treatment under the law as that afforded to men. That idea would have been scandalous in the late 1700s... as would have been the 'absurd' notion that 'negros' had the same intrinsic worth and rights as a white man... heck, the founders established a rule that a black person counted only as a fractional human as far as the census was concerned!

If ever we need evidence that individual rights are constructs of society, surely we find it in the changing of views on who has what rights, over time.

I agree, strongly.

However, whether or not you believe that "rights" derive from God, are a social construct, or are inherent in the fabric of the universe, there's still a fundamental question of political philosophy that has to be considered. At their most basic level, are"rights" (whatever they are) something that a citizenry gets from its government, or that a government gets from its citizenry? Whatever inconsitencies and moral flaws the founding fathers of the USA had, I think they got that question dead-on right.

[helene_t]

jdonn, on Mar 13 2009, 12:38 AM, said:

It is nothing more than your opinion that individuals have rights but societies don't. America and Europe view that question very differently, as one example.

Not sure if this is true.

European legislation is more restrictive w.r.t. traffic regulation and gun ownership.

U.S. legislation is more restrictive w.r.t. same-sex partnerships and narcotics. And abortion is more controversial.

It might be a funny exercise to construct some kind of overall liberty index for various countries. Just counting the number of activities that are illegal would be meaningless, but one could ask people in different countries how often they refrain from doing something because it is illegal although it would not be immoral in their personal opinion. Or something like that.

Btw, phrasings like "society X thinks that" annoy me. Surely only individuals can have opinions about something. OK, organizations can have official opinions on some issues, and groups of people can have prevalent opinions. But the opinion of a country (or continent) is nonsense imho.

[mikeh]

Lobowolf, on Mar 13 2009, 12:25 PM, said:

mikeh, on Mar 13 2009, 11:29 AM, said:

Since the founders believed in a lot of currently unfashionable ideas, we have to hope that the vast majority of US citizens no longer share their peculiar view of god's generosity in handing out fundamental rights.

I don't want to turn this thread into a religious debate, but any attempt to argue that god bestowed rights will quickly run afoul of the problem, in whatever religion we look at, that religion's god seems to be politically incorrect, by current western standards.

I think that our societies in the west generally see women as entitled to equal treatment under the law as that afforded to men. That idea would have been scandalous in the late 1700s... as would have been the 'absurd' notion that 'negros' had the same intrinsic worth and rights as a white man... heck, the founders established a rule that a black person counted only as a fractional human as far as the census was concerned!

If ever we need evidence that individual rights are constructs of society, surely we find it in the changing of views on who has what rights, over time.

I agree, strongly.

However, whether or not you believe that "rights" derive from God, are a social construct, or are inherent in the fabric of the universe, there's still a fundamental question of political philosophy that has to be considered. At their most basic level, are"rights" (whatever they are) something that a citizenry gets from its government, or that a government gets from its citizenry? Whatever inconsitencies and moral flaws the founding fathers of the USA had, I think they got that question dead-on right.

I think that the topic is more complex, and more subtle than is suggested by your phrasing... I stress that I mean no disrespect when I say that.. my own thoughts are at best semi-formed since this is not an area in which I have any particular training or education.

I do think that it is necessary to perform a thought experiment, in the sense of imagining the power structures that prevailed in early human societies... since we are speaking of pre-historical times, even the best informed ideas of anthropoligists must contain some degree of speculation.

We need to do this, in my view, because we cannot understand our current inter-individual relationships without at least attempting to trace how we, as members of our societies, got here from there.

We can look to other primate cultures for some guidance, I suspect, since we share common ancestry and many of our social interactions seem to be meditated by the hard-wired structure of our brains.

I may well be in error, but my understanding is that primates are hierarchical in social structure and it appears that we are as well.. how else do we explain the popular use of 'alpha male', as one example? Or the adoration that Royalty still seems to engender from some parts of society.

If so, it seems to me that in at least one sense 'we' as individuals either assert or bestow authority upon people we see as below or above us in our instinctive hierarchical view.

But as the number of poeple in a given society grew beyond the point when we could 'know' our standing vis a vis everyone else.. when we could no longer actually know everyone else, then matters became more complex, and less directly personal.

Classes would develop.. we'd recognize where we stood in terms of the stratification of society... and from my limited knowledge of history, it does appear that all 'states' ended up with a stratified society.. arguably that still exists today, altho in theory some cultures claim to have moved beyond that.

Once we have stratification, we have different 'rights' according to which strata we inhabit... slaves have the least.... including, and this is difficult for some american partisans to accept, in the USA when it was founded. Women traditonally were not much better off than slaves... indeed, women have been legally defined as property for extended periods of human history, across many cultures.

It seems to me that there is at least an argument that such cultures have a distribution of rights that was not 'bestowed' by the people on the rulers or 'granted' by the rulers to the people, but that sort of evolved as a result of growing complexity impacting instinctive views of hierarchical relationships, which in turn arise, in the smallest societies, from genetically mediated social interaction.

Our debate about whether rights come from the people or the government reminds me of the debate about free will. There is compelling evidence that the 'I' that we like to think is the decision maker for our body is actually a passenger, and a mechanism for telling us, after the fact, why we did something. Nerve impulses triggering a limb action are known to be sent BEFORE we 'decide' to perform the action. Experiments with people who by accident or surgery have had the two sides of their brains disconnected shows that one side will make up a reason for an action performed after the other side was told to do something.

Thus, it seems to me, we may rationalizing an issue as if its outcome were a matter of choice by rational individuals when in fact it is as it were an emergent property of complex factors not subject to rationality at all.

[Gerben42]

Quote

European legislation is more restrictive w.r.t. traffic regulation and gun ownership.

Not sure if Europe is more restrictive w.r.t. traffic regulation... Penalties are high in the US for this compared to most European countries.

[Lobowolf]

mikeh, on Mar 13 2009, 01:02 PM, said:

I think that the topic is more complex, and more subtle than is suggested by your phrasing... I stress that I mean no disrespect when I say that.. my own thoughts are at best semi-formed since this is not an area in which I have any particular training or education.

I do think that it is necessary to perform a thought experiment, in the sense of imagining the power structures that prevailed in early human societies... since we are speaking of pre-historical times, even the best informed ideas of anthropoligists must contain some degree of speculation.

We need to do this, in my view, because we cannot understand our current inter-individual relationships without at least attempting to trace how we, as members of our societies, got here from there.

We can look to other primate cultures for some guidance, I suspect, since we share common ancestry and many of our social interactions seem to be meditated by the hard-wired structure of our brains.

I may well be in error, but my understanding is that primates are hierarchical in social structure and it appears that we are as well.. how else do we explain the popular use of 'alpha male', as one example? Or the adoration that Royalty still seems to engender from some parts of society.

If so, it seems to me that in at least one sense 'we' as individuals either assert or bestow authority upon people we see as below or above us in our instinctive hierarchical view.

But as the number of poeple in a given society grew beyond the point when we could 'know' our standing vis a vis everyone else.. when we could no longer actually know everyone else, then matters became more complex, and less directly personal.

Classes would develop.. we'd recognize where we stood in terms of the stratification of society... and from my limited knowledge of history, it does appear that all 'states' ended up with a stratified society.. arguably that still exists today, altho in theory some cultures claim to have moved beyond that.

Once we have stratification, we have different 'rights' according to which strata we inhabit... slaves have the least.... including, and this is difficult for some american partisans to accept, in the USA when it was founded. Women traditonally were not much better off than slaves... indeed, women have been legally defined as property for extended periods of human history, across many cultures.

It seems to me that there is at least an argument that such cultures have a distribution of rights that was not 'bestowed' by the people on the rulers or 'granted' by the rulers to the people, but that sort of evolved as a result of growing complexity impacting instinctive views of hierarchical relationships, which in turn arise, in the smallest societies, from genetically mediated social interaction.

Our debate about whether rights come from the people or the government reminds me of the debate about free will. There is compelling evidence that the 'I' that we like to think is the decision maker for our body is actually a passenger, and a mechanism for telling us, after the fact, why we did something. Nerve impulses triggering a limb action are known to be sent BEFORE we 'decide' to perform the action. Experiments with people who by accident or surgery have had the two sides of their brains disconnected shows that one side will make up a reason for an action performed after the other side was told to do something.

Thus, it seems to me, we may rationalizing an issue as if its outcome were a matter of choice by rational individuals when in fact it is as it were an emergent property of complex factors not subject to rationality at all.

Quote

I think that the topic is more complex, and more subtle than is suggested by your phrasing... I stress that I mean no disrespect when I say that.. my own thoughts are at best semi-formed since this is not an area in which I have any particular training or education.

Agreed; I was just emphasizing the starting point (or "a" starting point) of the discussion.

Quote

Our debate about whether rights come from the people or the government reminds me of the debate about free will. There is compelling evidence that the 'I' that we like to think is the decision maker for our body is actually a passenger, and a mechanism for telling us, after the fact, why we did something. Nerve impulses triggering a limb action are known to be sent BEFORE we 'decide' to perform the action.

Also agreed, but to the extent that we may have options and exist outside the box, it's beneficial to act as though we do.

[hanp]

Gerben42, on Mar 13 2009, 01:02 PM, said:

Quote

European legislation is more restrictive w.r.t. traffic regulation and gun ownership.

Not sure if Europe is more restrictive w.r.t. traffic regulation... Penalties are high in the US for this compared to most European countries.

True, but the point Helene was making is of course correct.

[mike777]

It may be a good idea to ban all guns in private homes given we all know there will be another kid with another gun killing other kids at school.


My concern is just passing more laws and again not really enforcing them. Will we really build enough jails to shelter, feed and provide proper health care for all those who keep guns at home illegally.

I would hate to just pass another law just to feel good about ourselves.

btw some posters have discussed slavery. It seems we have our hands full just trying to enforce the laws on our books and build enough prisons.

"Although outlawed in nearly all countries, forms of slavery still exist in some parts of the world. [3][4] According to a broad definition of slavery used by Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves (FTS), an advocacy group linked with Anti-Slavery International, there were 27 million people (although some put the number as high as 200 million) who worked in virtual slavery in 2007, spread all over the world.[78] According to FTS, these slaves represent the largest number of people that has ever been in slavery at any point in world history and the smallest percentage of the total human population that has ever been enslaved at once."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery

If there are 27M to 200Million slaves now in the world perhaps we could try and work on that problem first and not just pass some more laws.

[luke warm]

mikeh, on Mar 13 2009, 11:29 AM, said:

luke warm, on Mar 13 2009, 06:14 AM, said:

i think it's self-evident that societies do have rights, but those rights are given by the governed... since, in the founders' view, we (the governed, or the individual) have the God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the role of gov't is to function in a way that limits those rights as little as possible... that's simply a matter of political philosophy, and i understand that other societies don't share the view of the founders

Since the founders believed in a lot of currently unfashionable ideas, we have to hope that the vast majority of US citizens no longer share their peculiar view of god's generosity in handing out fundamental rights.

yeah, it would probably be better if your own view held sway - that the rights of the governed were given by the government, or society

Quote

I don't want to turn this thread into a religious debate, but any attempt to argue that god bestowed rights will quickly run afoul of the problem, in whatever religion we look at, that religion's god seems to be politically incorrect, by current western standards.

that doesn't logically follow... if the founders state that certain rights are inherent because they're God-given, it doesn't mean that the same founders can't make errors as to who should partake of those rights... i think they were correct that governments should not infringe upon certain liberties, as they were correct in thinking that governments *do* (or eventually will) so infringe... as i said before, it's political philosophy... they feared what others may covet, a strong central gov't

mikeh, on Mar 13 2009, 01:02 PM, said:

Our debate about whether rights come from the people or the government reminds me of the debate about free will. There is compelling evidence that the 'I' that we like to think is the decision maker for our body is actually a passenger, and a mechanism for telling us, after the fact, why we did something. Nerve impulses triggering a limb action are known to be sent BEFORE we 'decide' to perform the action. Experiments with people who by accident or surgery have had the two sides of their brains disconnected shows that one side will make up a reason for an action performed after the other side was told to do something.

free will isn't defined as the action you take, rather it's about voluntary choice, being able to choose one’s own actions, and thus having the freedom to make choices that are not determined by prior causes... the very act of blinking my left eye right now proves i have free will... i can choose not to blink... i don't doubt that nerve impulses, or even chemical reactions, are involved when i blink, but free will isn't about the physical signs of an act - it is about the choice to perform the act

what "compelling evidence" do you speak of, btw?

[mikeh]

luke warm, on Mar 13 2009, 03:03 PM, said:

yeah, it would probably be better if your own view held sway - that the rights of the governed were given by the government, or society

Do you read the posts to which you respond, or do you only get so far and then decide you know what the poster meant? The proposition that 'rights' are a societal construct does not mean that they are 'given' by the government. Nor that 'society' is anything more than a term that we use to describe the complex interactions between a group of individuals living in an arrangement that allows us to differentiate them, as a group, from other groups, by reference to a variety of factors, including language, customs, laws, rites, and so on.. bearing in mind that in a sufficiently large society, there is room for individual deviations or heterodoxies (i've never actually used that word before ).

Government, of any and all forms, is a societal construct as well.. perhaps you don't understand the concepts?

Read my post before this one if you want to understand my tentative view on the 'origin' of rights.

[luke warm]

mikeh, on Mar 13 2009, 03:12 PM, said:

Government, of any and all forms, is a societal construct as well.. perhaps you don't understand the concepts?

Read my post before this one if you want to understand my tentative view on the 'origin' of rights.

i don't think i'm the only, and i'm far from the first, to think there's little or no dichotomy between the two... i know there are more opinions than those found here, but this shows that there is a complexity that's sometimes overlooked... maybe i don't understand the concepts, but it's equally as likely that you don't... in any case, the differences that exist between society and the state (governments), to whatever degree, are things that people have spent a lot of time discussing and writing about

[hrothgar]

mike777, on Mar 12 2009, 09:42 PM, said:

PassedOut, on Mar 12 2009, 01:22 PM, said:

mikeh, on Mar 12 2009, 12:35 PM, said:

We know that the war on drugs has enabled criminals to prosper without (it appears) doing much to reduce illicit drug use. We know that prohibition in the US didn't end alcohol consumption.

Yes, I agree with libertarians and (some) conservatives that the war on drugs is a counterproductive failure. Legalizing drugs won't solve all drug problems, of course, but it will eliminate the most serious ones.

BTW I thought some countries did this and did not like the results. In any event perhaps some one can find some research on this subject on actual real world results. Again this may be a good thing to let the Europeans and Canada lead on and we can learn from.

Glenn Greenwald is giving a speech at the Cato Institute on this topic on April 3rd.

http://www.salon.com...03/14/portugal/

Here's an introduction to the article

Quote

In 2001, Portugal became the only EU-member state to decriminalize drugs, a distinction which continues through to the present.  Last year, working with the Cato Institute, I went to that country in order to research the effects of the decriminalization law (which applies to all substances, including cocaine and heroin) and to interview both Portuguese and EU drug policy officials and analysts (the central EU drug policy monitoring agency is, by coincidence, based in Lisbon).  Evaluating the policy strictly from an empirical perspective, decriminalization has been an unquestionable success, leading to improvements in virtually relevant category and enabling Portugal to manage drug-related problems (and drug usage rates) far better than Western nations that continue to treat adult drug consumption as a criminal offense.

I'm not a big fan of the folks down at CATO (I think of them as intellectually dishonest). However, I do tend to like Greenwald's stuff. Interesting dilemma...

[hrothgar]

luke warm, on Mar 13 2009, 11:33 PM, said:

mikeh, on Mar 13 2009, 03:12 PM, said:

Government, of any and all forms, is a societal construct as well.. perhaps you don't understand the concepts?

Read my post before this one if you want to understand my tentative view on the 'origin' of rights.

i don't think i'm the only, and i'm far from the first, to think there's little or no dichotomy between the two... i know there are more opinions than those found here, but this shows that there is a complexity that's sometimes overlooked... maybe i don't understand the concepts, but it's equally as likely that you don't... in any case, the differences that exist between society and the state (governments), to whatever degree, are things that people have spent a lot of time discussing and writing about

For what its worth, the "Wiki Answers" that you are linking to seems to have been plagiarized from the following:

http://www.wendymcelroy.com/e107_plugins/c....php?content.90

This, in turn is a reprint of an article from "The Freeman", which is the party organ for the "Foundation for Economic Education".

(By the time you hit the second paragraph it was pretty clear that this was written by some species of genus: Randroid. I was curious regarding the providence of the piece)

[hotShot]

hrothgar, on Mar 14 2009, 12:59 PM, said:

Quote

In 2001, Portugal became the only EU-member state to decriminalize drugs,  .....

I'm not a big fan of the folks down at CATO (I think of them as intellectually dishonest). However, I do tend to like Greenwald's stuff. Interesting dilemma...

According to this source from 2002 Portugal was not the only EU-member state to decriminalize drugs, the same is true for Spain, Italy and Luxembourg.

[kenberg]

Before I could really be at ease with government restricting my right to own a firearm for protection I would have to be confident that government could do a good job of protecting me. In some localities I think this is true, in sme localities I think it is not true.

I am lucky enough to live where it is highly unlike that a gun will be needed for my self-defense and I do not own one. Other people live in other circumstances. Some women live in fear of an ex-spouse, an ex-boyfriend, a stalker. Cabbies often find themselves in dangerous settings. One can easily find numerous examples. I am not all that ready to tell other people what they should do in their own defense.

A while back there was a thread on the topic of guns and I told a story from my childhood that I will retell. This was in St. Paul, in the 1940s, in a generally safe working class neighborhood. A woman, with her two girls, had left her abusive husband and was living in the upstairs of our house. Very small quarters, but adequate and her circumstances were bad. A warm summer night, no air conditioning, only a screendoor between us and the outside. The husband arrives drunk, banging on the door, demanding to be let in to see his wife. My father is not at home. My mother is there, with my father's 12 guage pointed at the door, explaining to the husband that he should go now. He went. Knowing my mother, I would say he made the right choice.

I don't find these legal and moral all that clear, but I would go easy on telling people that they cannot have a gun until you think a little about the circumstances of their lives. Where I grew up was safe and secure, usually. People live in far worse, day by day.

I would like life to be such that everyone can say, as I do ow, that no gun is needed. That is not yet the case.

[luke warm]

hrothgar, on Mar 14 2009, 07:24 AM, said:

luke warm, on Mar 13 2009, 11:33 PM, said:

mikeh, on Mar 13 2009, 03:12 PM, said:

Government, of any and all forms, is a societal construct as well.. perhaps you don't understand the concepts?

Read my post before this one if you want to understand my tentative view on the 'origin' of rights.

i don't think i'm the only, and i'm far from the first, to think there's little or no dichotomy between the two... i know there are more opinions than those found here, but this shows that there is a complexity that's sometimes overlooked... maybe i don't understand the concepts, but it's equally as likely that you don't... in any case, the differences that exist between society and the state (governments), to whatever degree, are things that people have spent a lot of time discussing and writing about

For what its worth, the "Wiki Answers" that you are linking to seems to have been plagiarized from the following:

http://www.wendymcelroy.com/e107_plugins/c....php?content.90

This, in turn is a reprint of an article from "The Freeman", which is the party organ for the "Foundation for Economic Education".

(By the time you hit the second paragraph it was pretty clear that this was written by some species of genus: Randroid. I was curious regarding the providence of the piece)

it's next to impossible to check every source we read for plagiarism, unless we just want to... that was only the one i linked to, there are obviously many more...

here's one
to be fair, it's hard to beat thomas paine's article

in any case, it is a complex issue

[hrothgar]

luke warm, on Mar 14 2009, 04:27 PM, said:

hrothgar, on Mar 14 2009, 07:24 AM, said:

luke warm, on Mar 13 2009, 11:33 PM, said:

mikeh, on Mar 13 2009, 03:12 PM, said:

Government, of any and all forms, is a societal construct as well.. perhaps you don't understand the concepts?

Read my post before this one if you want to understand my tentative view on the 'origin' of rights.

i don't think i'm the only, and i'm far from the first, to think there's little or no dichotomy between the two... i know there are more opinions than those found here, but this shows that there is a complexity that's sometimes overlooked... maybe i don't understand the concepts, but it's equally as likely that you don't... in any case, the differences that exist between society and the state (governments), to whatever degree, are things that people have spent a lot of time discussing and writing about

For what its worth, the "Wiki Answers" that you are linking to seems to have been plagiarized from the following:

http://www.wendymcelroy.com/e107_plugins/c....php?content.90

This, in turn is a reprint of an article from "The Freeman", which is the party organ for the "Foundation for Economic Education".

(By the time you hit the second paragraph it was pretty clear that this was written by some species of genus: Randroid. I was curious regarding the providence of the piece)

it's next to impossible to check every source we read for plagiarism, unless we just want to... that was only the one i linked to, there are obviously many more...

In my mind, the core issue is not plagiarism, but rather the political philosophy the underlies the analysis; however, you've opened a much more interesting question:

Should we be able to expect that folks who post information have more than a passing familiarity with the content there of?

I had never seen the article that you posted. I decided to do a rudimentary search looking for background information. It took about a minute to find the McElroy article. Another two to track down The Freeman and the Foundation for Economic Education.

My big issue with most of your posts is that you don't appear to have given any real thought to these issues. Rather, you are echoing random right wing rants. It gets really old after a while. Worse yet, I strongly believe that the ignorant populist exceptionalist echo chamber that runs muck on the right is outright dangerous. This is (part of the reason) why I tend to be very "in your face" when I see this spew over into areas like the Water Cooler.

I do feel that your postings on religion are somewhat different. Here, I actually believe that you've made a real effort to try to understand some of the issues involved. I still think that your conclusions are profoundly weird. But at least I get the feeling that you have some kind of background in the topics being discussed...

[hrothgar]

kenberg, on Mar 14 2009, 03:59 PM, said:

Before I could really be at ease with government restricting my right to own a firearm for protection I would have to be confident that government could do a good job of protecting me. In some localities I think this is true, in sme localities I think it is not true.

I am lucky enough to live where it is highly unlike that a gun will be needed for my self-defense and I do not own one. Other people live in other circumstances. Some women live in fear of an ex-spouse, an ex-boyfriend, a stalker. Cabbies often find themselves in dangerous settings. One can easily find numerous examples. I am not all that ready to tell other people what they should do in their own defense.

A while back there was a thread on the topic of guns and I told a story from my childhood that I will retell. This was in St. Paul, in the 1940s, in a generally safe working class neighborhood. A woman, with her two girls, had left her abusive husband and was living in the upstairs of our house. Very small quarters, but adequate and her circumstances were bad. A warm summer night, no air conditioning, only a screendoor between us and the outside. The husband arrives drunk, banging on the door, demanding to be let in to see his wife. My father is not at home. My mother is there, with my father's 12 guage pointed at the door, explaining to the husband that he should go now. He went. Knowing my mother, I would say he made the right choice.

I don't find these legal and moral all that clear, but I would go easy on telling people that they cannot have a gun until you think a little about the circumstances of their lives. Where I grew up was safe and secure, usually. People live in far worse, day by day.

I would like life to be such that everyone can say, as I do ow, that no gun is needed. That is not yet the case.

I've always felt that some kind of compromise should be possible on gun ownership:

I don't have any problem with people keeping shotguns and bolt action hunting rifles at home. This should address the requirements of hunters, as well as folks who want a gun for home protection.

I don't have any issue with folks being able to fire any gun they damn well please hand guns, semi automatic rifles, even fully automatic rifles - so long as they do at a firing range and STORE THE WEAPONS at a firing range.

I don't think that people need to be able to carry easily concealed hand guns on their person. Nor do they need semi automatic / fully automatic rifles at home.