Joe Doakes of Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
Question: Can you conceive of any set of circumstances under which you would take up arms against your own government? <\/p>\n
Your answer determines your stance on the Second Amendment. <\/p>\n
If you answer \u201cYes,\u201d then logically you should insist on being able to possess weapons at least as good as the police and military will be using to suppress your rebellion, including ugly rifles and standard-capacity magazines, else your resistance is doomed before it begins and you might as well change your answer to \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because if you answer \u201cNo\u201d – if you would never rebel against your own government but instead are willing to put up with any intrusion, any oppression, confiscation of property and beatings and rape rooms and even death squads – then you have no need of the Second Amendment. Nor of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth . . . you\u2019re a willing slave to whomever holds power at the moment, no different from the lowest peon in any Third World Country.<\/p>\n
May 29th is Patrick Henry\u2019s birthday. How many Americans today would echo his most famous line? Or even recall what it was?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The relationship between people and government is one of the big gulfs between liberals and conservatives. <\/p>\n
Conservatives believe government is, like the people that run it, imperfect and not fundamentally good. It, like they, need to be kept on a short leash. The Second Amendment is the choker chain in that philosophy. <\/p>\n
Liberals believe people are fundamentally good. Government, they believe, is people. QED, government is good; attacking government is bad, since its not only people, it’s the Will of The People. In their world, that Will can never get so corrupted that a judge can’t fix it. <\/p>\n
And conservatives believe that if it never becomes so corrupted that a judge can’t fix it, you can thank the Second Amendment, along with the First and Tenth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes of Como Park emails: Question: Can you conceive of any set of circumstances under which you would take up arms against your own government? Your answer determines your stance on the Second Amendment. If you answer \u201cYes,\u201d then logically you should insist on being able to possess weapons at least as good as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-liberty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36521"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36522,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36521\/revisions\/36522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}