Exclusively conservative? No, I don’t think so - the Patriot Act was passed with bipartisan support, the wiretapping stuff started under Carter, FDR put the nisei into camps, etc., etc.
Unfortunately, we were talking about gun possession as an individual right in this thread. Perhaps you could produce a few cites that the ACLU is on record as supporting the Second Amendment as an individual right?
Which speaks to another point I have made in the past - conservatives tend to be textualists and strict constructionists, and therefore resist the location of authority in unelected federal judges rather than “the states, or the people” when it comes to creating new “rights” de novo.
Not exclusively conservative. And I admit that after 9/11 liberal legislators acted in a disgustingly craven manner (and many still do). But now, the restrictions on civil liberties embodied in the Patriot Act, etc., are more strongly supported by conservatives than liberals.
Well, your comment wasn’t restricted to the second amendment; it was a general comment about individual vs. group rights. If you confine it to the second amendment, you are correct that, for example, the ACLU interprets the second amendment as granting gun ownership rights only within the context of an organized militia.
This would be fine if conservatives confined themselves to legislating in a way that prevented the courts from giving people rights not explicitly granted by the constitution. But I don’t think that is the best way to interpret the passing of anti-sodomy laws, or the passing of proactive laws banning gay marriage. These laws seem out-and-out restrictions of people’s rights and liberties. I don’t deny that liberals have their authoritarian moments, but there is a powerful wing of the conservative movement which combines a repressive moralistic attitude with authoritarian tendencies, to the detriment of individual liberties.
This is ridiculous. You stated that one of the reasons why conservatives, in your opinion, were more supportive of individual gun rights was…
And now you are trying to claim that what you meant was that conservatives are more supportive of individual gun rights because the left thinks about group gun rights and the right about individual gun rights?
You made a general claim to support the specific assertion about gun rights. And you have been called on that general claim being false.
Actually both the left and the right are dedicated to protecting individual freedoms, the question of which freedoms is the issue. When it comes to gun control the gun lobby, that is - the manufactuers has been able to frame the issue in terms of safety, virility and patriotism and who would not want to align themselves with those characteristics? The inability of the left to convey the idea that they do not oppose gun ownership but rather the private ownership of an arsenal, or the right to own an unregistered Uzi, or a pistol that can shoot 20 rounds a second, or the right of a seller to sell kits that make non-automatic weapons automatic in violation of the law, or the right of an individual to own weapons without gunlocks is the crux of the problem. I think if you asked all liberals whether they really want to outlaw all private ownership of firearms, the no answers would be in the 90% range. What the left wants is reasonable regulation. Many members of the right want the same thing but because of the way the issue has been framed by the gun manufacturers, any regulation is seen to be somehow dangerously unpatriotic or neglectful of the safety of your family.
The old saw about your right “to swing your arms ends at my nose” is applicable here. The left freely permits you to swing your arms with appropriate caution, the right wants you to “watch where I am swinging.” Both sides stand for protecting individual rights.
Conservatives (at least in the classical sense) belive in individualism, devotion to God and Country and a strong work ethic. Conservatism tends to favor individuals rights, so long as the individuals are just like the rest of us. They tend to be practical and rely on “gut instinct” to do what they know is right.
The role of the personal firearm in this view dates back to the farmer and the cowboy working his farm or ranch, protecting what’s his from those who would take it away.
Liberals believe in enlightened government. They believe that it is the role of a benevolent, duly elected government to address injustice and inequality. Liberals tend to view individual rights as something to be protected by the state. They tend to be naive and academic.
There is no role for the personal firearm in this model because the state provides security. Crime is largely a biproduct of societal ills that need to be addressed.
Defining politicians by their party labels is never a good idea. Their actions are what counts.
Though even though democrats started with the gun control laws, there had to be an ideology to reconcile this view with the rest of their platform. Even though politicians don’t provide the best of reasons for holding their views, they do provide some sort of ideology that would make all their views seem consistent. Like Bush saying God wants him to protect stem cells, but apparently not the Sudanese.
Simplistic is definitely one way to describe this.
Not true in any way, at least not in my experience as a ‘lefty’. To whit:
The left wing does not think it’s more important to be safe. The left wing fears the tyranny of the majority, and thus supports minority rights
The left thinks about both group and individual rights, and creates groups to help support individual rights.
The left does not prefer centralized authority, but knows that without strong central authority upholding the rights of minorities the majorities will deny the minority their rights
As to the specific question raised in the OP, which you’ve danced around whilst manaing to damn the left, IMO the left believes the most important right to maintaining a free society is free speech. Without that, you can be as armed as you want, but you won’t know who to attack to defend yourself from tyranny, or even that the tyranny’s coming. The right believes that the most important right to maintain freedom is to be heavily armed and ready to fight for it against tyranny and oppression.
Being of the left of centre persuasion myself, and living in a country where guns are illegal in all but the narrowest of circumstances, I can definitely see how a free press is much more important than being armed in maintaining freedom, and respect the English coppers a hell of a lot more than the testosterone-poisoned US cops day after day. And I really really like the fact that a gun murder is still front-page news here, even in London (a city of 7 million) which had under 100 gun crimes last year. Yet we’re still free as the birds, even the foreigners trying to take the British women and beer like me.
The problem is that most of those things are already illegal, and seven years of “R” controlled government has not changed a thing. Not sure what your definition of an “arsenal” is but I’m not sure that it matters. All new guns are sold with locks.
It all boils down to one word, reasonable. What is truly reasonable vs. constricting? I would guess that answer is split, for the most part, right down party lines.
And do I even need to ask which one you self-describe as?
Your statement is as misguided as Shodan’s. The left does not think the State is the font of all rights, or even of security; they think the State exists to, among other things, protect individual’s rights and to guarantee security. But the State does not grant those rights, only protect them. And what do we pay our taxes for, if not for the State to provide collective protection of the people and security?
Liberals argue that the Second Amendment refers only to state-organized militias, and does not refer to an individual right of gun ownership. Conservatives argue (as I have been doing) that “the people” means “the people”, not “the government”, in other places in the Constitution. Ergo, this is an indication that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” refers to the right of individuals, not to a group like a militia.
Another way of looking at it is the argument that the state has the right to overrule the right of individuals to keep and bear arms, because the safety of the group is more important than the freedom of the individual. We see some of this in the arguments for affirmative action, where blacks are presumed to be entitled to special treatment, not as a result of any violation of their individual rights, but by virtue of their group membership. Again, group rights trump individual rights.
Another reason is what I mentioned earlier - the preference for centralized authority. Only the state is presumed to be entitled to arms, because they need it to enforce their will on individuals. (See PatriotX’ posts for a fuller explanation.)
Not in the case of the Second Amendment. One of the arguments made is that gun ownership raises the opportunity cost of oppression by the government. (Again, see what PatriotX is saying.) But the left wing does argue, nearly constantly, that the safety of the group should outweigh the rights of individuals. That’s the basis for all the arguments about the thousands of children being accidentally shot and all the studies about the correlation of gun ownership and being shot and so forth.
And as mentioned, when group rights conflict with individual rights, the left usually goes for the group.
Again, not in the case of the Second Amendment. The NRA is a right-wing organization; the ACLU is a left-wing organization. The NRA supports the individual’s right to keep and bear arms; the ACLU opposes it.
Actually, what the left does is phrase whatever they want in terms of being a “right”, and then tries to get the Supreme Court to bypass the legislative process and impose it by fiat. That’s why they are so obsessed with Roe v. Wade - it relocated the responsibility for deciding the brand-new right to an abortion away from “the states, or the people” where the Constitution assigns it, and put it squarely in the hands of the Supreme Court.
By preference, the left usually tries to get the federal government to act instead of the messy and often inconclusive process of convincing people or their legislators. You even see it in the push to prevent parents from deciding where and how their children should be educated - because the left would prefer that government is the default authority, not parents. Hence the resistance to vouchers, home schooling, and so on.
Actually, anti-sodomy laws have been on the books since the founding of the Republic. And it seems more that the proactive laws against gay marriage you mention are made in an attempt to prevent what I described earlier, where unelected judges impose their will on the rest of us regardless of what the will of the people is.
But again, in a textual/strict constructionist view, those kinds of laws are entirely legitimate (whether you agree with their purpose or not). “The states, or the people” are the ones who are supposed to be deciding if there is a brand new right of gay marriage - not the Supreme Court. That’s the purpose of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. The Ninth makes it clear that the Bill of Rights is not an exhaustive list of all the rights that can possibly be recognized, and the Tenth makes it clear who has the duty and the responsibility for recognizing those rights. And it ain’t nine old farts in black robes.
72 posts and I don’t think anyone has given the correct answer yet, though I’ll admit to skimming a few posts. Let me try to explain.
Liberalism is a practical, reuslts-oriented philosophy. We liberals desire policies that actually produce good outcomes in the real, physical world. We care less than certain other groups do for purely abstract principles and theoretical arguments.
In the real world, private ownership of guns does not increase individual freedoms. It decreases them, by causing increases in crime. America is the industrialized nation with the most privately owned guns per capita, and also has the highest rates of murder and violent crime per capita. (Higher than many third-world nations, in fact.) If guns prevented crime, then America would instead have the lowest crime rates in the industrialized world.
Consequently, to combat crime, we support gun control. We do so because we desire to keep people safe in practice, not because it fits or fails to fit any theory.
In which case it would make perfect sense, wouldn’t it, for someone who lives 200 yards into New Jersey to have a completely different set of rights and obligations than his neighbor, who lives 200 yards into New York. That’s what the Constitution says!
There are parts of the Constitution best regarded with benign neglect, as one might listen tolerant bemusement as Granpa rails on about the gold standard.
I’ll read a few of them, but before I go any further I would like to note that Michael Bellesiles has been thoroughly discredited. Cite. A compilation of cites that include his “work” is not likely to inspire me with confidence, but I will nevertheless endeavor to see if your cite has any relevance to my assertion that the Founding Fathers did not intend the 2nd Amendment to convey an individual right.
Well, that’s a pretty bad typo. My assertion is that the Founding Fathers did intend the 2nd Amendment to convey an individual right. Of course, you know what I meant, but a correction was in order simply for consistency.
He was a member of the symposium before he was discredited, but please feel free to ignore that article. There are some other very well-respected scholars in evidence there. And like I said, the sixth article clearly establishes my point (if that’s all you seek to do).
Let’s also recall that the question is not something like, on balance, the Founding Fathers seemed to have intended an individual right. It is whether there is any serious countervailing evidence.
I don’t deny that such legislation at the local level is entirely legitimate from a constitutional standpoint. I merely argue that (a) such legislation embodies a restriction of rights that is incompatible with placing a great value on individual rights and liberties, and (b) such legislation is more strongly backed by conservatives than liberals.
I am not trying to get into a constitutional debate with you. I merely wish to challenge your assertion that conservatives have more respect for individual liberties than do liberals. To me, rather the opposite seems to be the case. So conservatives’ respect for individual rights is not a very good explanation for why conservatives tend to support gun ownership rights.
