Will the Second Amendment survive?

[Radar]

I've also said that society is nothing but a group of individuals. Society has no more rights or powers than a single individual. If one person has no legitimate authority to tell another that they may not own a gun, neither do a thousand people, a million people, or a billion people.

If society decides what our rights are or bestows our rights upon us, where does society get this power or the rights? Society is made up of individuals. Clearly power comes from these individuals. And if individuals have power on their own before a society is created, it means individual people are born with these powers and they were bestowed upon us by nature.

[LJ]

radar is dead on.....as usual. hear him.

you give away your rights at your peril. i agree with limiting one's rights in order to get along in an equitable transactional relationship with the rest of society. but when you allow a government or a religion to dictate your rights.....you're already dead.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Oh, I'll answer, gentlemen, and in my own good time, thank you. There is none here capable of putting me on the defensive; I've read enough of you to know that.

I hide nothing from myself, UT. In that you are remarkably mistaken. Should you think you have reason to believe me wrong, try proving it. I can wait, too.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Oh, I'll answer, gentlemen, and in my own good time, thank you. There is none here capable of putting me on the defensive; I've read enough of you to know that.

I hide nothing from myself, UT. In that you are remarkably mistaken. Should you think you have reason to believe me wrong, try proving it. I can wait, too.

My goodness, dude, I don't even have to leave this message to see you hiding things from yourself. You express a beautiful madness right here.

You say "There is none here capable of putting me on the defensive." This is "conclusion first, argument second", and is not critical thinking.

You have positioned your argument as correct, even while noting (in other posts) that you've only skimmed the other statements and are preparing your retort. In your mind, there is no chance that PH has made a valid point. Now the game for you is merely to express your side well, with flowery language, and feel safe and secure that you have somehow "won".

True consideration of the others' points is not necessary, and in all your time here we have never seen you do it.


Now I can't "prove" to you that you are hiding things from yourself. All I can say is that I've seen a lot of people argue a lot of different things, using a lot of different techniques. Your approach is all insecure pseudo-intellectualism. You seem like a smart guy, but you don't write for communication, you write to make people think you're a smart guy. You construct the utterly passive "In that you are remarkably mistaken", avoiding the active and direct "You're wrong." It annoys your readers and waters down your points.

Now, I don't mean to drive you off -- really not my intent -- but if you aren't writing to communicate, and you believe that nobody here can offer you any fresh insight,... why are you here? You're not listening to anyone, and you're not speaking in a way that makes people listen to you. Do you not notice that this is a social website and that communication between us is the whole point of being here?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I suppose I should add that I only skimmed pierce's nice long posts, so there's only a skimmer of a response. A more thorough reply awaits a more thorough reading.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I am here in part because I can offer you fresh insight. And why would there be refusal to accept it? Contemplate that.

And where would I get the idea I can offer fresh insight, you may ask? Well, just why wouldn't I?

There is a difference between "evading" and "taking my time. There are those who would loudly insist I'm doing the one, when I'm doing the other -- shame on you.

Are not those opposing my ideological points on ideological grounds speaking in service of a worthless ideology? Let's see: arms -- collective, without individual. What?! Foreign policy -- leave fascists and fascism/communism alone. To what end?! Offered an ideology of liberty, they cling the more to chains, as if there were virtue in shackles.

I mean, come on, people.

And why is your idea of madness, UT, so very strange? I'll put to you the question of what on Earth you're so sure I'm "hiding from myself." You post to allege I'm hiding... something. Something very unspecified.

[Undertoad]

Well, that's my filter: I require conversation, not lectures. Two-way honest communication, where two different collections of insights and perceptions are in play.

Because it seems obvious to me that there is more wisdom in the crowd than in any one person, even more wisdom in two smart people than in any one smart person. And the Internet is living, breathing proof of that concept.


And the more I think that I am communicating with someone who isn't a critical thinker, the less likely I am to accept their "insights" as up for heavy consideration.

And the less someone writes for communication, the less I am interested in what they have to say. Because not writing for communication is contempt for the reader.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Because it seems obvious to me that there is more wisdom in the crowd than in any one person, even more wisdom in two smart people than in any one smart person. And the Internet is living, breathing proof of that concept.

And then you take a hard look at how people have behaved when in bunches, sometimes. The record is not one to give complete confidence. Even the smart, at best, make avoidable mistakes, and there's the further difficulty that smart does not necessarily mean good.

But rather than sing a paean to autocracy, I say this is a dilemma. Heinlein summed it up well in an interlude in Time Enough For Love that went something like this: Democracy is based on the assumption that many men are wiser than one man. How's that again? Dictatorship is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than many men. Um, what?

Are you really going to fully trust either way? Not me, mister.

[Undertoad]

Addendum. Since you have basically indicated that you are here to lecture, and that all of us are beneath your consideration, I wonder if there is anyone left who will take your opinion seriously.

Is there anyone reading this who'd like to speak up on UG's behalf?

[lookout123]

i've often thought that UG was really just TW's sock puppet that he uses as a ridicule magnet for far right wackiness.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Tw wouldn't agree with that one, and for once he'd be right.

Make yourself worthy of consideration then. It's not impossible, just use all three digits of your IQ at once -- too many here just don't seem to do that, and it seems to have its root in regrettable unexamined assumptions. All I want is smart. I don't always get all I want.

[classicman]

I gotta call you on this one UG. Just simply answer the simple questions put forth by Pierce? What you have done is a classic, albiet unsuccessful, attempt at a diversion. You have now been gently guided back to the issue at hand. Post #166 is still waiting for your eloquent reply.

[piercehawkeye45]

To further my point on my second last paragraph, I will put an example scenario in the Philosophy Forum.

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=16174

[piercehawkeye45]

Most of the examples you have given me are just proving that our disagreements have to do with wording. When it comes down to it, privilege and rights are just words that you can use to turn the argument your way. To me, there really isn't a difference between the two besides a label.

I'll try to organize my argument again.

As I mentioned before, most of disagreements are just arguing semantics coming from my bottom up approach and your top down approach.

Lets take the right/privilege to life in the United States. As most of us know, some states allow the practice of capital punishment. With this, would life be considered a right or privilege since the government has the ability to take a life from a person.

Your perspective: We have the right to life and the state is just violating that right in a certain case. The person still has a right to life but the state is violating that right. The person dies against his will.
My perspective: Our society agreed that in certain cases, we allow the state to take away our right of life. From that person's perspective, assuming he still wants to live, he has the right to life so he will defend himself but from the state's perspective he doesn't so they will kill him. The person dies against his will.

The outcome is the same in both of our perspectives, it is just that you go from bottom down and I go from top down and mine allows for perspective. The only thing I don't get from your perspective is what does the state think? Does the state think that he has a right to life and they are knowning violating it or something else?

Another example.

Your Perspective:We all have the right to bear arms but the people have decided that it will let the government violate our right.
My Perspective:We as a society decided that we do not have the right to own guns.

Once again, we have the same conclusion but you go top down and I go bottom up. My question from the last example applies here as well.

So I will try to sum it up:
Your Perspective: We will have rights that can never be taken away from us, but only violated when the people decide that they can be violated.
My Perspective We as people give ourselves rights and decide which ones we should have and to the extreme. I am generalizing here because society doesn't necessarily reflect the individual.


So the question is really do we create our own rights or are we born with them?

So that gets into my previous question, what would we be like without rights? If we have rights, then there must be some way we can imagine someone without rights.
Me: Rights are an abstract concept so we physically wouldn't be any different, just our laws would be different and we would feel the need to justify our actions with "because I can ethically".
You: ???


Now to the right versus privilege.

Your Perspective: A right is something that cannot be taken away from me and a privilege is something that can.
My Perspective: They are just labels created by humans. If society agrees that we can not take something away from me, it becomes a right. If we agree that something can be taken away from me it is a privilege.

Then the question comes up, who decides the difference between a right and privilege?
Your Perspective: ???
My Perspective: People decide.

Honestly, I do not understand how we decide what the difference between rights and privileges are? How do we know that the ability to bear arms isn't an unalienable right but a privilege? How do we know that the ability to marry isn't a privilege but an unalienable right? Who decides what is what?


Hopefully that answers your question.

[Radar]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

Most of the examples you have given me are just proving that our disagreements have to do with wording. When it comes down to it, privilege and rights are just words that you can use to turn the argument your way. To me, there really isn't a difference between the two besides a label.

I'll try to organize my argument again.

As I mentioned before, most of disagreements are just arguing semantics coming from my bottom up approach and your top down approach.

Lets take the right/privilege to life in the United States. As most of us know, some states allow the practice of capital punishment. With this, would life be considered a right or privilege since the government has the ability to take a life from a person.

Your perspective: We have the right to life and the state is just violating that right in a certain case. The person still has a right to life but the state is violating that right. The person dies against his will.
My perspective: Our society agreed that in certain cases, we allow the state to take away our right of life. From that person's perspective, assuming he still wants to live, he has the right to life so he will defend himself but from the state's perspective he doesn't so they will kill him. The person dies against his will.

The outcome is the same in both of our perspectives, it is just that you go from bottom down and I go from top down and mine allows for perspective. The only thing I don't get from your perspective is what does the state think? Does the state think that he has a right to life and they are knowning violating it or something else?

Another example.

Your Perspective:We all have the right to bear arms but the people have decided that it will let the government violate our right.
My Perspective:We as a society decided that we do not have the right to own guns.

Once again, we have the same conclusion but you go top down and I go bottom up. My question from the last example applies here as well.

So I will try to sum it up:
Your Perspective: We will have rights that can never be taken away from us, but only violated when the people decide that they can be violated.
My Perspective We as people give ourselves rights and decide which ones we should have and to the extreme. I am generalizing here because society doesn't necessarily reflect the individual.


So the question is really do we create our own rights or are we born with them?

So that gets into my previous question, what would we be like without rights? If we have rights, then there must be some way we can imagine someone without rights.
Me: Rights are an abstract concept so we physically wouldn't be any different, just our laws would be different and we would feel the need to justify our actions with "because I can ethically".
You: ???


Now to the right versus privilege.

Your Perspective: A right is something that cannot be taken away from me and a privilege is something that can.
My Perspective: They are just labels created by humans. If society agrees that we can not take something away from me, it becomes a right. If we agree that something can be taken away from me it is a privilege.

Then the question comes up, who decides the difference between a right and privilege?
Your Perspective: ???
My Perspective: People decide.

Honestly, I do not understand how we decide what the difference between rights and privileges are? How do we know that the ability to bear arms isn't an unalienable right but a privilege? How do we know that the ability to marry isn't a privilege but an unalienable right? Who decides what is what?


Hopefully that answers your question.

My perspective is never that people allow the government to violate our rights. I say the people are coerced and threatened into allowing the government to violate our rights because they fear if they stand up for their rights, they will be the nail that sticks out the most and they'll get hammered.

People aren't ALLOWING the government to violate their rights, they are merely scared they'll be outgunned. Most people pay income taxes not because they feel a sense of duty or because they think they are the right thing to do. They pay taxes out of force and coercion. If they knew men with guns would not show up when they refused to have their income stolen from them, they would cease to pay them and exercise their right to keep what they earn.

If someone is raped, it doesn't mean they ALLOWED themselves to be used for sex.