Taking this line of thought down another path: once one side of a bitterly bipartisan divide elects to resort to violence, the door is then open for the other side to respond in kind.
We have a name for that: civil war.
A quick search tells me that the U.S. population circa 1860 was approximately 31,500,000 people, and that the total casualties of that conflict was just over 1,000,000.
“Scale Up” for a population over ten times that of 1860, factor in much more lethal weaponry available today over 1860, as well as advances in war-fighting tactics…
…yeah, it’s not a pretty picture. For either side. Terms like “Phyrric” come to mind.
I feel like I am not going to dissuade you. That’s too bad, I was going for more of a universally self-evident Kantian categorical imperative, but it appears that is not to be, either.
But I’d add that isolated assassinations generally don’t change policy. That usually requires a full blown coup d’etat (which often involves an assassination). In a liberal democracy, assassinated political leaders are generally revered and in many cases their political platforms carried out posthumously (e.g. JFK).
Why not? Will they react like matter/anti-matter if they come in contact? Will the collision of the two cause some kind of rupture in space/time, ripping our Universe apart at the seams?
Or will the Universe completely ignore the gibbering’s of some semi-evolved simians on an insignificant rock in the middle of nowhere, and keep on spinning?
You really think a society with a tremendous amount of liberty will continue having those liberties if political assassinations become the method to deal with politicians you don’t like?
Man, I’m afraid to even reply to this thread. I hope you’re ready for the knock on your door from the men with sunglasses!
The basis for the government, in modern, Humanist thinking, is that it’s a thing invented by the people and for the people, and only operates with their consent.
Now, granted, none of us chose to grant the government this consent since none of us are 200+ years old, but I think we can run with the argument that we’ve all sort of quietly agreed that we’d make the same choices as our forebearers and that their logic was sound.
We’ve also all quietly agreed that government exists as an organism for us to compromise with all of the other humans around us, and so we can’t expect to get our way all nor most of the time. Sometimes we’ll win, but mostly we’ll get a compromise or simply lose. That’s just reality. Me not getting what I want doesn’t mean that the government is a tyrannical and unjust force of evil.
But so, in order to talk about revolution, assassination, coups, etc. you basically need to demonstrate to and satisfy a reasonable percentile of the population that the government has ceased operating within parameters where you can say that it’s honestly serving at the behest of the population. The President won the office by force and threats, congressional roles are being passed from father to son, etc. All of the mechanisms that allowed the government to serve its role as a way to negotiate on the behalf of its electorate have either been disbanded or made so toothless that it’s just as well to say that it’s not a real thing.
The key point in there, though, is that you have to satisfy a reasonable percentile of the population in this regard. You and your buds in the Minuteman Watch Guard are not a sufficient jury to make this decision.
When the American Revolution was begun, about 1/3rd of the total population were satisfied that the British government had no justifiable basis for governing them. Another 1/3rd couldn’t be bothered, and the last 1/3rd thought that the British government was the legal and justifiable governing body.
Given that I would have to be a traitor to argue against the American Revolution, I basically have to accept that 1/3rd support is sufficient to get the ball rolling. If you don’t have at least that much support then, in my personal opinion, you simply don’t have enough evidence that the government has ceased to be supported by Humanist theory. (Granted, the people who supported the Monarchy may not have been thinking in those terms, so this number might be too low. But I can’t think of any other number that would have a better argument and also not make me wonder if it’s even possible to get that much support. People might vote against something simply because they’re too lazy or they’re more worried about change than they are about the question being asked - i.e., whether the government has mechanisms in place to represent their interests.)
I’ll grant that my memory isn’t perfect, but I believe that “getting voted out” was the fallback.
Granted, I think that Hamilton might have wanted a Monarch for Life, but I don’t think that discussion ever went far enough to get to the point where they’d be debating assassinations. And I suspect that they’d still land on something like, “Voting him out” or “Impeachment”, not assassination, based on the discussions which did happen.
The Supreme Court justices are appointed for life, so that they are immune to political whim.
Their appointment is thus not regular. And given that it sometimes requires their deaths to force a new appointment, you could make an argument that it is sometimes violent - it’s just not a requirement (nor an expectation).
Since you explicitly specify “subvert the collective”, no. If an individual believes that we’re living in a dictatorship, but somehow the other 99.99999% of everyone disagrees, then he needs to trust that if he’s being outvoted, he is wrong.
(I assume that you meant “the” not “that”.)
Despite everything that I have said above, about the nature of government, “the collective”, and “democracy”, I could possibly offer one single loophole where you could make a case in court and possibly be found innocent for killing the President.
If the President starts walking down the street, in the United States, shooting at people, then you can shoot him.
If the President breaks into your house in the middle of the night, you wake up, grab your gun, call out a warning for the intruder to leave or you’ll shoot, and the President calls back, “Fuck you! I’m coming up to kill you and your wife!” Then you can shoot him.
Basically, in the few cases where one can lawfully kill any American citizen, you can kill the President. Beyond that, you’re out of luck unless you can convince 1/3rd of the populace that we’re living in a Dictatorship.
I think this is a horrible thread, and I don’t think it should have been allowed. This is below this group - I would have hoped.
I’ll also state this (as a middle of the road guy who voted from Obama and didn’t vote for Trump), this would not have been allowed while Obama was President.
What if you don’t directly assassinate the president–what if you befriend John Hinckley and drop subtle hints that Jodie Foster really doesn’t like the president? Is that morally acceptable?
3 of those date from the W Administration; of those, one is a GQ about the general legality of discussing such, one is a GQ asking if Bill Gates could swing it, and only one is an IMHO direct question as to why no one’s gone after W yet.
The forth discusses/debates Rebellion/Revolution in general.
Not a single one poses the question(s) the OP does during the timeframe of O’s Administration.
So the inference that the mods would have shut such a thing down is unsupported. The closest previous threads in the general realm, under the previous two presidencies, were all allowed to stand.
It may not be a large sample size, nor an exactly matching sample set, but it’s the complete and closest data set to judge by, and nothing it says indicates that a similar thread wouldn’t have gotten clearance in previous times.
While I do think that the mods have become more prudish in the last couple of years, I don’t think that they’ve become more partisan nor less open to basic facts.
Hey, I don’t know why you’re getting all pissy with me; I just agreed with someone else who made the assertion that this kind of thread/discussion wouldn’t have been allowed during the O administration.
While I’m not privy to whatever search terms you used to obtain your results, it was your results that I addressed; 3 from the W administration, one of which did directly ask about assassinating W.
Only one thread from the timeframe of the O administration, debating justification for rebellion/revolution. I didn’t wade through the entirety of a 6+ y/o thread to see if it discussed or otherwise posited Presidential assassination, in general, or against any specific president. My take of the first few posts is that it’s a general debate about rebellion/revolution.
Feel free to look through your own search results your own self, and correct/quote/link to any post that might correct or otherwise clarify and misunderstanding I might have.
If you take exception to the assertion that “theoretical debates” about Presidential assassination were NOT allowed by Mods & Admins to go forward during the tenure of O, then address your point(s) of contention to the person who made it, not me.
Never. As far as I know, Murder is against all laws and moral codes.
And there are actual procedures to remove a president (legally), and it is not all that far fetched to imagine convicting and imprisoning one.
Oddly, if you were advocating a martial overthrow of the US government, with the backing of a majority of the citizens, I could see declaring a civil war, and taking out all of Washington DC (for starters) as having more just cause than a simple assassination.
Again, no. If impeachment is not possible due to politics, then it is up to the electorate to replace the politicians. Launch recall campaigns (serious ones). Put new congresscritters in place.
With the exception of a revolutionary overthrow of the entire government as I stated above, my answer here is an absolute yes.
Misery, definitely. Death? Where is that happening? And again, there are valid methods to remove a sitting President.
Again. No. Absolutely wrong.
And here, such a government cannot be stopped by eliminating just a President. You are talking about the overthrow of the entire government, which can have a just and moral reason.