The American Constitution

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Hong Kong these days:

[Alan Klein]

Hong Kong these days:

The sign saying they need the 2nd Amendment is prescient.  Of course they don't have guns.  And they know the horror of what's about to happen to them because they're unarmed.  And that's the whole point of the amendment.  To protect us from tyrants and loss of freedom.  It's saddening and hopeful that people on the other side of the world understand this better then so many of our own Americans. 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Ah, that “gun violence”:

Four dead and two injured in California stabbing rampage https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49284329

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Ah, that “gun violence”:

Four dead and two injured in California stabbing rampage https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49284329

USA Gun violence
August 2, 2019: Suffolk, Virginia, 2 killed, 3 injured
August 3, 2019: El Paso, Texas, 22 killed, 24 injured
August 4, 2019: Dayton, Ohio, 10 killed, 26 injured
August 4, 2019: Chicago, Illinois, 0 killed, 7 injured
August 4, 2019: Memphis, Tennesee, 1 killed, 3 injured
August 4, 2019: Chicago, Illinois, 1 killed, 7 injured
August 5, 2019: Brooklyn, New York, 0 killed, 4 injured
August 5, 2019: Suitland, Maryland, 1 killed, 3 injured
August 6, 2019: Detroit, Michigan, 0 killed, 4 injured
August 7, 2019: Saint Louis, Missouri, 2 killed, 2 injured

And that's just the first week ...

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

[...] And that's the whole point of the amendment.  To protect us from tyrants and loss of freedom.

If you need guns to protect you, then you've already lost.

Cheers,
Bart

[Alan Klein]

If you need guns to protect you, then you've already lost.

Cheers,
Bart

I don't think Washington,  Jefferson, Madison and the other American patriots would agree with you. I'd rather trust our constitution than your advice.

[RSL]

If you need guns to protect you, then you've already lost.

Cheers,
Bart

The Netherlands believe surrender is the best defense, right Bart?

[kers]

The Netherlands believe surrender is the best defense, right Bart?

WWII is 70+ years in the past in case you just came out of the bush...
( and your North-South civil war more than 150 years ago)
Lets us say our neighbors in the street are more friendly and fortunately have no guns to express themselves.

[Robert Roaldi]

The Netherlands believe surrender is the best defense, right Bart?

Change the record.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

The Netherlands believe surrender is the best defense, right Bart?

If only you understood how typically American your reaction is ...

'We'  prefer to prevent it from getting that far out of hand, 'you' seem to only want to react with lethal force and make more casualties in anticipation of what might (or might not) come. Need I remind you that more people have died in the USA by gun violence than in all previous wars combined? And that's not even acccounting for the suffering of the survivors with permanent trauma (and their families).

In July 2019 alone, in the USA, 32 people were killed by gun violence, and 178 were injured. It is out-of control madness !!!

Cheers,
Bart

[Alan Klein]

WWII is 70+ years in the past in case you just came out of the bush...
( and your North-South civil war more than 150 years ago)
Lets us say our neighbors in the street are more friendly and fortunately have no guns to express themselves.

What's good for one country may not be good for another.  The United States of America was born in war as we unshackled ourselves from British colonial rule.  Guns were required for personal defense as well as against an armed tyrannical colonial government.  There was huge distrust of central government as there is today.  Our Founders knew about royalty in Europe and elsewhere.  They rejected it wanting nothing to do with it.  They feared its power to remove people's economic and civil freedoms.  So they made America as a Federal Republic where each State is Sovereign having their own governments, constitutions, court systems and leaders.  Each of the 50 states is also charged with defending itself against a tyrannical central government.  America's expansionist experience from East to West also made the gun an integral part of our experience.  "Have Gun Will Travel" is not just the name of a popular TV western series of the 1960's. 

You don't have this situation, so you're accustomed to either royalty or to strong central governments over centuries of their rule.  The fact is also that the US government and systems has survived after 200 plus years without being overthrown or replaced in any way.  That says a lot for the strength of our Constitution which the 2nd Amendment is a part.  We did fight a brutal Civil War that is an expression of the 2nd Amendment regardless of whose side you might have agreed with.  It's easy to say "you're not like us and should be" rather than trying to understand where our cultural differences lie due to major differences we experienced in history.   

[Robert Roaldi]

What's good for one country may not be good for another.  The United States of America was born in war as we unshackled ourselves from British colonial rule.  Guns were required for personal defense as well as against an armed tyrannical colonial government.  There was huge distrust of central government as there is today.  Our Founders knew about royalty in Europe and elsewhere.  They rejected it wanting nothing to do with it.  They feared its power to remove people's economic and civil freedoms.  So they made America as a Federal Republic where each State is Sovereign having their own governments, constitutions, court systems and leaders.  Each of the 50 states is also charged with defending itself against a tyrannical central government.  America's expansionist experience from East to West also made the gun an integral part of our experience.  "Have Gun Will Travel" is not just the name of a popular TV western series of the 1960's. 

You don't have this situation, so you're accustomed to either royalty or to strong central governments over centuries of their rule.  The fact is also that the US government and systems has survived after 200 plus years without being overthrown or replaced in any way.  That says a lot for the strength of our Constitution which the 2nd Amendment is a part.  We did fight a brutal Civil War that is an expression of the 2nd Amendment regardless of whose side you might have agreed with.  It's easy to say "you're not like us and should be" rather than trying to understand where our cultural differences lie due to major differences we experienced in history.

I tend to be cynical of too much ideology being rammed down my throat. My cynical brain tells me that it's more likely that the "founding fathers" were just rich people who didn't want to pay taxes to the king. Insofar as the British crown was not providing services in exchange for these taxes, they had a point. But what they did, in case you haven't noticed, was to form their own central government with its own institutions, which happened to serve their circumstances better.

[Alan Klein]

I tend to be cynical of too much ideology being rammed down my throat. My cynical brain tells me that it's more likely that the "founding fathers" were just rich people who didn't want to pay taxes to the king. Insofar as the British crown was not providing services in exchange for these taxes, they had a point. But what they did, in case you haven't noticed, was to form their own central government with its own institutions, which happened to serve their circumstances better.

You really don't understand much about our government and what standards our founders used to create it.  They understood there has to be a government for a country to work.  However, over and over, the constitution they wrote and its rules were to diminish central government power.  The bicameral Congress with and upper and lower house both required to make law.  An executive branch that could veto its legislation as a counter balance.  The limited government the constitution created by listing only certain enumerated powers the central government was entitled to do leaving all other power to the States and people.  The creation of a Bill of Rights that resided in the people.  An electoral system and Senate system that equalized sovereign power of each state with the other state despite the population difference in each state.  Yes, you're being too cynical.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

[...]
You don't have this situation, so you're accustomed to either royalty or to strong central governments over centuries of their rule.  The fact is also that the US government and systems has survived after 200 plus years without being overthrown or replaced in any way.  That says a lot for the strength of our Constitution which the 2nd Amendment is a part.

I beg to differ, it says very little.

Apparently, our system of governing state affairs didn't require the population to revolt against its own chosen government since we declared our independence from Spanish rule on July 22, 1581. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_Abjuration)

Cheers,
Bart

[Alan Klein]

I beg to differ, it says very little.

Apparently, our system of governing state affairs didn't require the population to revolt against its own chosen government since we declared our independence from Spanish rule on July 22, 1581. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_Abjuration)

Cheers,
Bart

I'm not familiar with your history or how you'd like to live.  Unlike you however, I won;t tell you your system is screwy, bad, etc. and that you should change it.  I accept your culture and how you developed to do what you do. 

I just find it strange that not being an American and living 3000 miles away on another continent does not stop you from knowing just how we should live and govern ourselves.  You really don;t have all the answers.  You complain about America telling the rest of the world how to live, and I can agree with you there. Yet, you feel you are so wise to tell us how to live.  Maybe a little humility on both sides is called for. 

[RSL]

If only you understood how typically American your reaction is ...

'We'  prefer to prevent it from getting that far out of hand, 'you' seem to only want to react with lethal force and make more casualties in anticipation of what might (or might not) come. Need I remind you that more people have died in the USA by gun violence than in all previous wars combined? And that's not even acccounting for the suffering of the survivors with permanent trauma (and their families).

In July 2019 alone, in the USA, 32 people were killed by gun violence, and 178 were injured. It is out-of control madness !!!

And, of course, I'm sure you don't understand how typically Dutch your reaction is, Bart. If you're going to toss off numbers, you need to bring in the background against which the numbers play to have the numbers mean anything at all. Yes, that's an unfortunate number of murders, but it's a puny number compared with the murders that take place routinely in leftist-governed cities like Chicago or Detroit. It's also a puny number compared with the people we lost in WW II pulling Western Europe's nuts out of the fire. We did it twice. You're probably right: for you guys, surrender is the best defense. Beats arming yourselves and fighting. That might lead to gun deaths. But in the end, we always seem to be the people who pay the price for your surrender. And yes, that's a typical American sentiment.

The murders are a problem, but they're not a gun problem.They're a people problem.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

The murders are a problem, but they're not a gun problem.They're a people problem.

No guns, no gun violence.

Cheers,
Bart

[RSL]

Absolutely right, Bart. No guns, no gun violence. No knives, no knife violence. No cars, no car violence. Etc., etc., etc. If we do away with tools completely then you'd get down to trying to control fighting or choking or other bare-handed murder. What's your point? Guns and knives and cars are here. They aren't going away. If you take away the guns of honest people, only criminals will have guns, because there's no way to round up and destroy all the guns in the world. Even suggesting such a thing indicates a disconnect from reality.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I’ve come across this on Facebook. So beautifully written, it restores my faith in the next generation and reenforces what I’ve been saying all along: younger Americans simply do not have a freaking clue what socialism is.

If you are fearful that the new generation of voters don’t get it, read this article written by Alyssa Ahlgren. I think her analysis of why they think the way they do is exactly correct. 

“I’m sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of Democratic candidates calling for policies to “fix” the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around. I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook’s, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we’ve become completely blind to it. Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose. These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don’t give them a second thought. We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty. One. Times. Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful.

Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, “An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity.”

Never saw American prosperity. Let that sink in. When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I’ve ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Now, I’m not attributing Miss Ocasio-Cortez’s words to outright dishonesty. I do think she whole-heartedly believes the words she said to be true. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided. My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let’s just say I didn’t have the popular opinion, but I digress.

Let me lay down some universal truths really quick. The United States of America has lifted more people out of abject poverty, spread more freedom and democracy, and has created more innovation in technology and medicine than any other nation in human history. Not only that but our citizenry continually breaks world records with charitable donations, the rags to riches story is not only possible in America but not uncommon, we have the strongest purchasing power on earth, and we encompass 25% of the world’s GDP. The list goes on. However, these universal truths don’t matter. We are told that income inequality is an existential crisis (even though this is not an indicator of prosperity, some of the poorest countries in the world have low-income inequality), we are told that we are oppressed by capitalism (even though it’s brought about more freedom and wealth to the most people than any other system in world history), we are told that the only way we will acquire the benefits of true prosperity is through socialism and centralization of federal power (even though history has proven time and again this only brings tyranny and suffering).

Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country. People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they’ve never seen prosperity, and as a result, elect politicians dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism. Why? The answer is this, my generation has ONLY seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn’t live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, or see the rise and fall of socialism and communism. We don’t know what it’s like not to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don’t have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it’s spreading like a plague.

With the current political climate giving rise to the misguided idea of a socialist utopia, will we see the light? Or will we have to lose it all to realize that what we have now is true prosperity? Destroying the free market will undo what millions of people have died to achieve.

My generation is becoming the largest voting bloc in the country. We have an opportunity to continue to propel us forward with the gifts capitalism and democracy has given us. The other option is that we can fall into the trap of entitlement and relapse into restrictive socialist destitution. The choice doesn’t seem too hard, does it?”

Alyssa Ahlgren

EDIT: For those with INRARTS mentality, I added emphasis in bold.

[jeremyrh]

I’ve come across this on Facebook. So beautifully written, it restores my faith in the next generation and reenforces what I’ve been saying all along: younger Americans simply do not have a freaking clue what socialism is.

INRATS but I am reliably informed that socialism means watching HBO ?