Where does right-wing paranoia come from?

So we get to correct for education and geography now? If we do that then blacks make as much as whites. (Blacks tend to not get married before they have kids and tend to live in the south with lower incomes.)

So you agree that we shouldn’t discriminate except for blacks and native Americans? Why those two? And for how long?

Huh? You are really projecting here. I said nothing resembling this at all.

Let me get this straight.

You don’t think the Jews should have angered the Nazis.

Because they might have been…

more cruel.

Than the holocaust.

You’re fucking with me, right?

There were tens of thousands of unarmed people in the ghetto. They basically all died. There were hundreds who did arm themselves and fight. Most of them died, but some of them escaped and lived. Those are the plain facts and they disprove your silly notion that guns would have been useless against the Nazis.

Any other wacky theories you have about not angering the Nazis are just that.

Isn’t the reason you don’t hear about left-wing paranoia nearly as much as you do right-wing paranoia obvious? It because of something that was left out of the OP: the all-powerful liberal media!

It actually isn’t a mystery at all. It’s written into the Second Amendment itself. It was put in place so that *government *troops would be properly equipped. There is no reason to believe that it was put in place so that individuals could overthrow the government or fight crime.

No reason at all, except we have the early drafts of the Amendment that clearly show it wasn’t about making sure the government troops were properly equipped, and we have the writings and thoughts of the folks who drafted it, who clearly felt it was important to have a protected right for person firearms ownership and who felt that an armed populace was a check on the government AND important for self defense…

Other than that stuff, no…there is no reason at all to think these things. :stuck_out_tongue:

It should also be noted using privately-owned firearms against a government can be effective, even if the privately-owned arms are insufficient to defeat the government.

Example: the Turkish War of Independence. Initial fighting for the nationalist cause was done by militias. Early success of the militia demonstrated the popularity and resolve of the nationalist movement, and led to defection to the nationalists by the Sultan’s troops, and Soviet financial and military aid that resulted in a proper army that won independence.

Various studies elaborate on the above and related differences.

It is interesting (and supports some of the above trends) that conservatives are more likely than liberals to claim such studies are faulty.

Wow. Would it be rude to ask you to post your thoughts directly to our long-running BBQ Pit thread?

Apart from the occasional hate-crime, no one in America is being persecuted any more. (Well, just maybe you could make a case WRT pot smokers, etc.) Some still suffer discrimination and some suffer exploitation and some suffer marginalization, those are all bad, but those are not persecution. And the standard I’m setting is not “meaningless,” because I can point to many instances of actual persecution in America within living memory – there were still lynchings going on in the South well into the 1950s.

The Russians lost 20 million people fighting the Nazis. It’s unlikely that some pockets of armed Jews would have made a difference.
And not to Goodwinize this debate, but the rise of the Nazi party has a lot of similarities to right wing extremism and paranoia. The German majority felt angry and persecuted and they were suffering economic hardship as a direct result of Germany’s loss in WW I. They felt threatened by minority groups living on the fringes of society (Jews, gypsies and other minorities instead of immigrants, welfare cases and Liberals).

Tyrany doesn’t happen because some small group from the outside takes over. It happens because the majority willingly allows it to happen out of fear.

Yes it can be, against a foreign aggressor or part of a populist uprising. It can’t be as effective as resistance by a marginalized minority. They will simply be branded as criminals and terrorists by the state and general population, further isolated and oastracized and eventually overwhelmed.

What would have happened if Japanese Americans resisted internment during WWII?

This. Once again: the “insurrectionary theory” of the Second Amendment is bullshit. The “militia” is meant to be an arm of the state, not a countervailing force against it. The Constitution expressly does not tolerate insurrection or rebellion. (Definitively decided in the case of Grant v. Lee, opinion rendered at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, 1865.) The militia is supposed to be there to put down insurrections, and is at the command of the President.
Article 1, Section 8:
The Congress shall have power To . . .

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
Article One, Section 9, clause 2:
The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.
Article 2, Clause 1:
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States . . .
Had the Second Amendment been intended to overturn those clear clauses, it would have said so expressly.

Then you are very definitely reading from the wrong book.

[QUOTE=msmith537]
The Russians lost 20 million people fighting the Nazis. It’s unlikely that some pockets of armed Jews would have made a difference.
[/QUOTE]

Hitler et al started rounding up and eliminating Jews before the invasion of France, let alone Barbarossa. You are comparing apples to alligators. Would it have made a difference in the end? It’s hard to say. Maybe yes, maybe no…but assuming the Jews were armed and aware of their danger and decided to resist the wouldn’t have been fighting the German war machine of '43-'45, they would have been fighting a civil type war with a German army that hadn’t even started to reach it’s peak, and maybe never would have been able to attack even France if they were fighting a series of rebellions and civil wars in Poland and even in the heart land.

An axiom of statutory interpretation is that if something was taken out of an early draft, that means the drafters actively decided against saying it and thus cannot be relied on.

Sure. They could have started picking out Polish gentiles at random and shooting them in public squares, just for tolerating the presence of Jews in their country for so many centuries. You think the Nazis wouldn’t have done that or thought that way? It’s exactly how they responded when Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated by partisans.

Anybody who claims that white male Christians are persecuted in America lives in some kind of bubble where they only interact with other white male Christians. Honestly, the whole concept is laughable to anyone who’s not one of the paranoids the OP’s talking about.

Or, it was changed in committee for reasons ranging from syntax to simply other people wanting to assert themselves by putting their own stamp on such a document. I’ve been involved in enough committees to have seen this first hand in action. Do you have any evidence that their intent was as you say? Because I can point to the Federalist papers, as well as the writings of Madison, the prime source for the Amendment to demonstrate pretty clearly that it’s not as you are attempting to portray it.

True, but it can be maintained by a smaller group than what’s needed to bring it into existence, through the monopolization of force. So, when the majority realizes that their system is evil and broken, it can be a difficult struggle to change it.

Would you agree with this statement: An armed citizenry can be, but isn’t necessarily, a weapon against tyranny, depending on the circumstances.

Probably some massacres of Japanese-Americans.

And by Communists (see the Red Front). But, mainly, because they still felt humiliated by Germany’s defeat in WWI. Weimar hyperinflation was long over and done with by the time Hitler came to power, Germany already had emerged from the Depression and was the first industrialized nation to do so, but Hitler won the hearts and zeal of the German people by appealing to their injured national pride, which made it that much easier to believe they still were surrounded by enemies. That’s the kind of thing we really need to watch out for.

– Interview with Gustave Gilbert, 1947; sourced at Wikiquote.

You want to pit me? Go ahead.

Well, anything can be anything, depending on the circumstances.

The inherent problem with that notion, however, is that once those armed citizenry overthrow the tyrant, there is the distinct possiblitity of becoming armed tyrants themselves. You essentially end up with mob rule where might makes right and succession is decided by who can organize the most and biggest guns. Case in point the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.