"the USA gave up the idea of a militia circa the War of 1812, when militias crumbled before the invading british army. this is when a professional army of citizen soldiers was accepted as a necessity and put into effect permanently. so i'm afraid dwayne is essentially correct, jared."
Correct about what? My comment was in response to the proposition that "keeping a weapon in the house...is more or less useless" on the basis of the U.S. government's obviously superior weaponry and military power (82nd Airborne, tactical nukes, etc.). My point was that that is not the appropriate comparison. The utility of keeping citizens armed should not be measured against the U.S.'s raw military might, but against what it has the political power to actually use to repress the population. The U.S. proabably doesn't even have the political power to use nuclear weapons in Iraq, and I think it's safe to conclude that what it lacks the political power to do to Arabs, it would lack the power to do to Americans. And that obviously its political power to use violence depends on how those who determine political power view those who are rebelling. You said yourself that the Koresh standoff took 51 days "only for PR purposes." I think that's my point. And Koresh was widely viewed as a nutcase who molested children. How much more would it have to be careful when dealing with a mainstream rebellion?
JC said:
"Then it seems it did not occur to De Gaule that the national insurrection he had to face back in 1968 was led by French people... After all, he is the one who ordered to surround Paris with tanks (French tanks)."
But that doesn't really address my comment, which conceded that violence could and would be used. The point was how much violence, and whether it would be so much that an armed citizenry would be useless. My opinion is that it would not be useless and hence I support the Second Amendment.
--Jared
-----Original Message----- From: R [mailto:rhisiart at charter.net] Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2004 3:25 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] The Glock 9mm is your friend, he said...
the USA gave up the idea of a militia circa the War of 1812, when militias crumbled before the invading british army. this is when a professional army of citizen soldiers was accepted as a necessity and put into effect permanently. so i'm afraid dwayne is essentially correct, jared.
as you know, the posse comitatus act, essentially a Reconstruction Era law which prohibited the US professional military from acting on US soil without permission of congress or constitutional authorization, is pretty much null and void today, having been modified in 1981 to allow the military to provide "assistance" to civilian law enforcement as part of the "war" on drugs, etc. the military still wasn't allowed direct participation, except there appears proof that special forces were directly involved in the Branch Davidian incident in Waco. which took 51 days, by the way, only for PR purposes.
a well regulated militia is a fantasy. as usual, we're up against the problem of who does the regulating, a serious issue when you take a good look at who's running the USA today. what's well regulated in mississippi and alabama would not necessarily be regarded as well regulated in california or new york .... or would it?
now that the national guard is mixed with regular army, it doesn't take a leap of imagination to see how chickens could easily come home to roost. however, local police are generally so well militarized and armed, i doubt the professional military is necessary to subdue the ordinarily placid-to- a-fault american population. there are "non violent" weapons both developed and under development that are undreamt of in most of our philosophies. you'd be immobilized before your fingers reached your firearm, or while the nerve impulses were traveling from your brain to your trigger finger.
the second amendment doesn't protect us from a govt like the one we've got.
R
----- Original Message ----- From: "jared" <unended at houston.rr.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2004 12:30 PM Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] The Glock 9mm is your friend, he said...
: Dwayne said:
:
: "I've heard the argument that we need to maintain
: weapons to protect ourselves from government abuses
: (as the Constitution essentially says) and it
: certainly sounds okay in theory. The problem is, in a
: contest between a "well ordered militia" and the 82nd
: Airborne division, the militia is likely to find
: itself reduced, in fairly short order, to a fine, red
: mist of decaying biological material spread over the
: ground. Or, if it's lucky and the US Air Force comes
: a calling to convince the wayward of their error,
: carbonized chunks of matter smoking on the blackened
: earth.
:
: "And all of this is possible without resorting to
: tactical nukes.
:
: "So keeping a weapon in the house just in case
: Washington goes completely off-kilter may help you
: sleep a little better (maybe) but is more or less
: useless."
:
:
: I would disagree. I think this position simplifies too much and
: overlooks the dynamics involved in a U.S. military attack on a real
: militia, which is, after all, a citizen army. The 82nd Airborne is
: composed of young American men and women. Obeying an order to attack
: Iraqis is quite a different matter for them than obeying an order to
: attack Americans. Consider that it took a 51 day standoff for the
: federal government to defeat Koresh's "army" of 80, 25 of which were
: children. Consider the implications for a more mainstream and broad
: citizen army. The U.S. government's power to inflict violence depends