Or, you know, it could be that it would be purely speculative since we don’t know what a real tyranny would be or how it would arise here in the US, what events would allow for it or who would be opposed to it. You guys all seem to think that it will only be some McVey type right winger nutters that would be against Obama and simply crushed by the government, who would, of course, be legitimate and the ones following the Constitution, but that’s because this is the narrative you have to have for it to work out as the movie playing in your minds. But it could be a right-wing conservative government that tries to take over.
But this is a merry go round at this point. You guys are so fixated on your narrative and that it could ONLY be what it is in your mind, and you are that way because to try and think beyond that is to acknowledge that there could be valid reasons for citizens to take up arms against the government, that it could actually be people from the left or center taking up arms against a right-wing government, contrary to your narrative, and that if it was more than a few nuts doing this, if it really was a popular enough uprising that millions of people were involved that it would split our society as well, bringing in people from all branches of the government, military, and police.
You also tend to forget that it’s not only crazy right-wing Republicans who have guns in the US. I know as many Democrats who have guns as I do Republicans who have them. And, FTR, I don’t actually own any guns at all.
Well, the twisting thing is new, but if you want to take it that way you certainly can. It’s wrong, and clearly, you do have a narrative going there, but DeNile is not just a river in Egypt. The rolley eyes was a nice touch though.
Only in a strawman or from someone who hasn’t actually read what I wrote. I said if millions of people in the US were taking up arms against the government. Are millions of people taking up arms against the government today? No? Is it just a few nuts? Yes? Well then, that sort of answers your non-question here, doesn’t it?
It’s not the only thing you aren’t following, unfortunately.
No. That’s your narrative. A few small cells of nuts and terrorists. These guys would be the IRA to you. That isn’t what I’m talking about…that’s what YOU are talking about. That’s YOUR narrative. My narrative is something that causes a large percentage of gun owners to take up arms against the government because that is what the 2nd Amendment fighting tyranny was about…the need for the people to be able to throw down a tyrannical government and restore democracy and the Constitution. You are talking about a fraction of a percentage of gun owners in your narrative, I’m talking about a substantial percentage of the population being riled up enough to actually fight against the government.
Ok, let’s go with that. Today, in the US, how many people do you expect would look with favor on a government who tried to deputize Nazi protester assholes? Would you? How about most of this board? How about most Democrats? What about the independents and moderates? Do you think that most Republicans would be in lock step with that? How about the various minorities? Jews be ok with that? Blacks? Hispanics? Asians? What about most white people in the states today? You see them getting behind it?
Now…what would you and the rest do if you saw this happening? Just sit there, thumb in ass and shake your head? Protest perhaps? What happens if the protests are attacked and broken up by these deputized Nazi types? What happens if that same government decides that we don’t need elections anymore? That we can put aside the Constitution in the face of all these damned liberal protests? We need order restored!! Do you think that the majority of people in the US today are going to go along with this? The military going to be in lockstep crushing you and the others protesting? The police going to be in lockstep suppressing you and the others with the help of Nazis? :dubious:
Why no…I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that if Trump started doing stuff like the above paragraph that he’d be resisted by all the people resisting even the stupid shit he’s doing today, right now. Actually, I expect he’d be resisted by folks who are just on the fence as well as those who just don’t get involved that much, but the main resistance would come from the opposite side. As, if we were talking about a left-wing tyrant trying to take power they would be resisted by the opposite side. In the US, you pretty much have 30% Democrat, 30% Republican and the rest sort of in the middle, going back and forth between those two. Almost no scenario you can think of that involves more than a few nuts ‘resisting tyranny’ is going to involve large blocks of those groups in opposition. If a Trump comes to office and tries to do stuff, it will be the Dems and the left who resist the hardest. If a <insert crazy Democrat president here> comes to power it will be the Republicans and the right that will resist the hardest. The center will probably go some here and some there with some on the fence.
No.
No. It’s hard for me to see how you could so misread what I wrote. Let me try one last time. If Trump did those things, almost certainly most of his core support would SUPPORT HIM. I mean, come on…what’s happening right now, today? Are the Democrats just allowing Trump to do anything he wants without any sort of protest? And this is just Trump doing stupid silly shit, not him actually trying to take control. If he was seriously trying to take control, you tell me…who would resist him? Do you think nobody would? Or that the military would just automatically take his side? All 1.4 million of them? All of the top to bottom leadership? And that the police would do the same? Again :dubious:
So, you did understand. Interesting.
And you base this on…? Also, you seem to automatically put the ‘loyalist nationalists’ automatically into Trumps camp, which is…odd. I would put the ‘loyalist nationalists’ into the Anti-Trump camp if he were to deputize Nazi protesters and make a grab for power. At a minimum they would be split.
Oh well…at least you did seem to get it in the previous paragraph, though it’s puzzling that you don’t get that this is what I was saying all along.
Well, this is where I think you go completely off the rails. First off, you expect our military to be 35% racist and xenophobes to the point where they are willing to set aside the Constitution on the word of a Trump? That just boggles the mind. Were you even in the military? If so, did you actually look around at who else was in there? What did they look like? A bunch of rich white people who were obviously racist and xenophobic?
At any rate, your narrative here is just so ridiculous I don’t know where to start. Even if 35% of the officers were racist/xenophobes and just hiding it, and even if that 35% were willing to toss out the Constitution and democracy because Trump, that still leaves a large percentage who are going to be against all of this. It won’t be 1% who aren’t going to go along, it’s going to be a hell of a lot more. I’d guess that at a minimum you’d have 25% of the military violently opposed. And we are only talking about the regular military here…there are the guard units and reserves and such, plus ex-military.
It’s not bothering people because they haven’t actually acted on any of that stuff, even if we assume that the Republican party is in lock step, which doesn’t seem to be the case considering Trump’s current fight with the party.
The thing you have to understand is that all of this we are talking about, it wouldn’t necessarily be the people in your narrative who would be those fighting the government, and that the people who you think would be on the governments side (yourself and the other liberals) wouldn’t necessarily be there either. You are fixated on a the narrative of a couple of right wing gun nuts being those fighthing ‘tyranny’ and liberals, but the reality might be very different. It could be Trump and the Trumpsters who control the government and everyone else fighting them.
Let me ask you something at this point…if Trump et al DID try and take control of the government, would this be a legitimate reason for people to fight against that? If so, then this is what I’ve been trying to say the whole time. If not, could you explain?
Until you actually bother to read what I’m writing with an eye towards understanding the implications and not looking for gotchas I don’t think we will get any further.
Of course. Ask the Chinese who were legitimate after Tiananmen Square. The winners always get to decide who is or isn’t legitimate. Conversely, if the revolution works, they get to decide who was legitimate all the time. Again, ask the Chinese CCP who is the legitimate government of the mainland.
I’m not asking the Chinese-I’m asking you. If the U.S. Government successfully puts down a revolution you personally approve of and/or actively participate in, is it then legitimate in your eyes?
Depends, doesn’t it? Why were the people rebelling? Why did the government put them down? I can think of scenarios where the government would be legitimate in my eyes, and ones where they wouldn’t be, to me personally. The devil is in the detail. If I personally approved of the revolution and the government put it down and I actively participated then I probably wouldn’t think it was legitimate, but I’d need more detail. Maybe I’d change my mind or maybe the manner it was handled would give the government some legitimacy.
It’s funny that you assume I’d necessarily be against the government, though if it was a Trump-esque coup I’d certainly be against that and wouldn’t think it was legitimate regardless.
I’ve been following this thread and I continue to find myself thinking about this from more of a historical perspective. A couple issues seem relevant.
First, our current interpretation of “militia” may be much narrower than it has traditionally been. The “militia” have played an important role in the American Revolution, but have also responded to raids during the Civil War (Quantrill was frequently pursued by local militia), bandit gangs, cattle rustlers, smugglers, civil insurrection, and other situations that were definitely not any sort of rebellion against a legal government (perhaps excepting civil insurrection). The idea that the only legitimate purpose for a militia would be for resisting tyrannical government is certainly too limiting. Are militia the best way to deal with these problems in the current age? Probably not. But they played a critical role for at least 100 years after this country was founded.
Second, while I understand that the OP is speaking of “tyranny” by the state or Federal government, tyranny is also understood to be any “cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control.” There’s nothing inherent to the term that would apply only to a legally-constituted government. On the other hand, I don’t picture the militia responding because my HOA wants to check that I didn’t paint my living room an approved color.
Yes, at the time there was no such thing as a state police, and only sketchy versions of local ones for that matter. The role of the envisioned militia, in the absence of the standing army that was soon established anyway, included the modern roles of the National Guard and the State Police.
The rub is who gets to define tyranny. Yes, it can be tyranny if it’s done by the local bully and his thugs who have more guns than you - the sort of thing the bully and thugs would claim is resisting the tyranny of those who want them to be the law-abiding citizens they claim to be.
What about the previously given scenario of local or state police shooting people down when it is unjustified(in your personal opinion)-would you react violently in such a situation if you saw this and/or approve of others doing the same thing?
I think this falls under the “history is written by the victors” rule. Sometimes, people use their guns to fight the government and they end up like the Branch Davidians or the Weavers, or (going back a bit further) John Brown. Other times they end up like George Washington. AFAICT, the difference in “legitimacy” is determined by whether they won or lost their fight.
I could quibble about how much of the country was really supportive of the Revolution, but to your broader point, yes, popular support makes a revolution significantly more likely to succeed.
That’s a valid question and doesn’t have an easy answer.
We’ve had situations in the US where paid strikebreakers were nominally deputized and they engaged in violent, frequently fatal, confrontations with strikers and their supporters. In a case like that, if the strikers were engaged in non-violent and legal labor actions, I probably would consider action to protect innocent people as justified, even if it involved deadly force against the strikebreakers.
As I implied, “tyranny” is a hard thing to define. There’s a huge difference between “whatever I say about import duties is the way it’s going to be” and shooting innocent people down in the streets, but many would label both as “tyranny.”
Along with the ability to levy taxes, negotiate with other countries for assistance, both financial and in manpower, provide a legal framework in which to operate (it is hard to hold a soldier to account for breaking the law, when by the laws of the land, you are all law breakers.), organize logistics supply lines, and so on.
The country was supportive of the Revolution, if by country, you mean the governing body incorporated by the legal articles of the articles of confederation. The continental congress was supportive of the revolution, and that was the country.
That there were some people that were not fans of revolution is no more relevant than that there are some people in california that want to secede. They don’t make the laws, and those that made the laws were behind the revolution.
The second amendment was never about fighting tyranny; it was about forming legal militias for the public defense. This “fighting tyranny” bullshit is just an attempt to toss another handful of sand on the scale to balance out the reasons why the general public shouldn’t be allowed to own guns.
And your “narrative” is really vague and amorphous, because you’d be hard-pressed to actually come up with any plausible scenario where the nation would rise as one. Feel free to do so - it would be refreshing to see somebody actually define the “tyranny” they’re supposedly guarding against.
There’s a HUGE excluded middle between “would look with favor”/“would be in lock step” and “starting a shooting war with the cops and the military”.
And I’m dead certain that the vast, vast majority of democrats, independents, moderates, republicans, jews, blacks, hispanics, asians, white people, shriners, trekkies, and bronies would all be extremely reluctant to start a shooting war with the cops and military.
If people who protest are shot and this action has clear government support, the vast, vast majority of people will try to keep their heads down. Those who have guns will keep them close to hand, but they won’t take to streets with them - that invites death and retaliation against family. If the blackshirts start kicking in doors the occupants will fight back on their doorsteps, but not before.
You and the ones protesting are literally engaged in shooting battles with the deputized squads, the police and the army. They will most certainly shoot back at you.
What sort of scenario are you imagining? The mass murder of babies? The Hunger Games? Blowing up Alderaan? What?
Crazy Democrat President will have already confiscated your guns - or rather the act of instituting gun control is an action that gun owners and only gun owners will consider tyranny. There will be exactly zero popular support when they start shooting cops and mailmen and other federal employees that approach their houses.
Only after all the guns are taken (and the craziest gun-clutchers killed during the taking thereof) would the other oppressions happen, at which point they’re outside the scope of this discussion.
By “resist him” you mean “the unprovoked shooting of cops and bombing of federal buildings”, right? Yeah, the cops and military are going to be totally on board with that. Oh, no wait, they actually won’t be. At all.
You really haven’t been following the political inclinations of American nationalists, have you?
You keep talking about “tossing out the Constitution and democracy”. I’m pretty confident that any american tyrant would do their tyranting within the broad bounds of the constitution. And what they don’t like, they’ll change through legal channels (after loading up the supreme court which allows them to redefine “legal”).
I get that the delusional crazypants gun-owner fantasy is that Hitler flies into the washington on a rocket and burns the place down before somehow seizing control and generating endless waves of nazi footsoldiers for the gunowners to go all B.J. Blazkowicz on. But that ain’t my “narrative”. I restrain myself to tiptoeing around within the bounds of plausibility. And within those bounds the tyrannical government uses its own workings to cement control. The protesters and disgruntled are painted as criminals as traitors before the law is sicced on them, and the law doesn’t bat an eye.
Trump and the Trumpsters who control the government amount to, what, a hundred, two hundred people? Mostly old, unarmed, untrained people? If they somehow managed to offend everyone simultaneously to a level that involves starting a shooting war (I’m picturing “they become zombies”), then the typical gun owner would not be getting involved, and the proliferation of privately owned guns across the country would never get the chance to fight any tyranny at all.
I’m pretty sure all it would take for Trump et all to take control of the government would be for about twenty selected people to die/disappear/retire/be bribed/be cowed. Forget starting a shooting war with the cops; I don’t know that anyone would even notice.
The idea that guns can be used to fight tyranny in modern america is based on nothing but undefined unclear amorphous fantasy scenarios which nobody can even define*, much less posit a way they would come to pass. It’s bullshit. And will remain that way until you can come up with a “narrative” that leads to your imagined outcomes has some tenuous relation to reality.
Okay, there’s one ‘tyrannical’ scenario that can be clearly defined:“If anybody tries to take my guns I’ma gonna shoot’em in the face!”
Oh, and by the way, your repeated insinuations that I’m an idiot don’t encourage me to believe that your arguments are super-clever and beyond my understanding. They actually convince me that you don’t have a leg to stand on, and you know it.
No, it’s not, not really. As with much of what you’ve asserted in this thread, this is YOUR perception. As I said in my first post in this thread, the whole fighting tyranny thingy is only one of the things the 2nd was about, and not the central one. But that is what the OP wanted to discuss.
I’ve fleshed it out a hell of a lot more than anyone else has, including you, so no…I decline. Gods know what you expect on such a speculative subject, but I think I’ve done my part while you’ve merely handwaved.
Yeah, no shit. What did you expect? People to take up arms with the intent to kill over just the drop of a hat?
Well, that’s certainly an interesting opinion. American’s being so shy and retiring and all, I can see what formed it for you.
Huh? This literally has nothing to do with what you are quoting. Please, speak to what I’m actually writing, not the movie playing in your head. I’m asking you there if the military and police are going to go along with shooting at protesters, and you are talking about me getting into some gun battle.
Those are, again, your fantasies, not mine. Are you saying you’d have nothing to protest if Trump tried to take control of the government? I was pretty clear in my own speculation about possible scenarios, but why don’t you expand on whatever is running in your own head with murdering babies, the hunger games or blowing up Alderan.
Well, that’s, again, your fantasy movie. But, ok, I’ll play along. Let’s say that a Democrat president did decide, by fiat to confiscate the guns (I will point out, again, that I don’t actually own a gun, so this is in general). How are they going to do it? It’s going to be directly against the Constitution to do so, and people will resist. So, how will there be ‘zero popular support when they start shooting cops and mailmen and other federal employees that approach their houses’, especially since they are going to be using force to do it? Or is this a magical fantasy where they can just wish the guns away? Or people will just turn them in? The devil here is in the details, as always. But I think there will be a lot more popular support to resist such a blatant violation of the Constitution, and that such resistance is going to extend beyond just the gun nuts you imagine would be the only ones resisting.
Let me pose a different view here. Let’s say a Crazy Republican President decides to close down the presses and heavily restrict free speech. He doesn’t like the fact that the press makes fun of him and tells a narrative different than his own. Do you suppose that only those in the press or in the information business are going to consider that tyranny? Would only those people resist? Would there be zero popular support if that resistance expanded to shooting cops, mailmen and federal employees if those people used force to enforce the new restrictions on free speech? Feel free to go into detail.
Why no, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t even say that. Again, that’s the movie in your own head. Hopefully we have cleared that up now, though I’m not sanguine about it considering you continue to try and do this.
Feel free to demonstrate that American nationalists are or would be on board with what you are suggesting. Use any cites or just expand your logic on this. Just for instance, I consider myself to be an American nationalist and I despise Trump even as he is today, which doesn’t even go into what I’d feel towards him if he tried to do some of the things that I’ve suggested.
How could they? Take your own suggestion. That Crazy Democratic President would not be acting withing even the broadest bounds of the Constitution. Or my example of tossing out the 1st Amendment. Simply, they couldn’t make the broad changes we are discussing and stay anywhere within the bounds of the Constitution. Eventually they will HAVE to cross that line. There is no other way to do this, because if they stay within those bounds the most we get (or the worst, I suppose) is…Trump. And yeah, that’s certainly bad enough. But it’s not rebellion bad, at least not at this point.
Naw, you don’t get it. Clearly.
No, I’m not implying you are an idiot (nor do I think you are)…I’m saying flat out that you repeatedly use strawmen and what seems to me to be a strategic misunderstanding of what I’m saying seems calculated to me. Granted, I’m not always the clearest writer, and I’m trying to take that into account, but your repeated failures seem a bit too pat to me, lets say. So, perhaps the feeling here is mutual…possibly we should just back away and put each other on our mental list of posters that simply can’t be engaged with in an honest debate. I have to admit, I never thought of you that way in the past, even when we were (as usual) on opposite sides, but I’m rethinking that at this point.
Though, for all I know, I’ll get some PMs saying that my points have been completely opaque and others couldn’t follow them either. It happens.
Tyranny is a personal concept. A common definition is unlikely. Examples of perceived acts of tyranny in the US are:
The power of the military industrial complex
Mandatory Social Security
Mandatory inoculation
Suppression of religious beliefs, LDS, Oneida, KKK
Suppression of Union strikers by the US military
Confiscation of property for the Interstate Highway system
Confiscation of property for TVA and other water projects
Codified segregation
Codified integration
Military draft for undeclared wars (the government owns you)
Taxing labor (IRS)
Indian termination laws and policies
Most of the above have involved armed some conflict between US citizens and the US Government. Armed citizens have never prevailed.Liberalism attempts to accommodate a majority of the needs of all parties. Tyranny picks the way of an absolute truth and imposes it
on the entire population.
Here’s my Liberal scenario of how Tyranny will succeed in the US:
A US Tyrant will be elected to office by promoting:
Nationalism
Allegiance to National Symbols - flag, anthem
His unique ability to solve all problems facing the US
The population will be destabilized by:
Undermining confidence in traditional institutions ie media, political establishment, science
Giving a false sense of security by proliferating military style firearms within the populace
Promotion of internal strife
Power will be centralized by:
Alliance with Christian religious organizations
Alliance with the economic infrastructure
Massive propaganda
Control of the education system
Single party control of the 3 branches of government
Under a Tyrant:
33.3% of the population will be delighted
33.3% of the population won’t care
33.3% of the population will resist through legal means
< .1% will attempt armed conflict with the government
Modern Tyranny will be handled through the control of information and the economy not armed confrontation. Militias and an armed citizenry have not been factors since the Mexican American war. The second amendment, as written, is an anachronism.
Another “Tyranny is a Liberal Thing” post. Any chance of there being a “Conservative Tyranny”, Crane?
edited to add: Where did you get stats for point #4?
