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akuma587 on 17 October 2008
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Kasz216 said:
akuma587 said:
Kasz216 said:

I don't think you understood how miltias worked back then...

People joined miltias when times were bad.  Not when they were good.  Just how, if the government went wrong or something else went wrong... people would need to join a miltia after it actually went bad.

If things are already bad... you can't get a gun.

Therefore peopel have the right to bear arms so they can join a miltia when needed.

Also miltias back then weren't under the control of the state government.  They were just groups of people with guns that worked with the government.

Your looking at it from what state miltias are now.  Which isn't what they were then.

Hence people have the right to bear arms so that should they ever need to form a milita they can.

 

Agreed, but the militia thing isn't even the real point. 

He claims to understand the original meaning of the Constitution but then goes off and interprets other parts of the Constitution in ways that the Founding Fathers would have been completely unaware of at the time.  A rifle back then was moderately effective at best.  A person with a machine gun now could slaughter hundreds of people if there were no police or people with other weapons to intervene.

And how far can you stretch arms?  Missles are arms.  Nuclear weapons are arms.  How is that any different?  Hell, handguns barely even existed back then.

People who claim they aren't interpreting the Constitution often turn right back around and interpret in a way clearly out of the contemplation of the Founding Fathers.

 

Until you make an ammendment preventing these things.  Yeah.  You probably should be able to stretch it that far.

Not that anyone could really afford a nuclear weapon.  But still... things should be changed by the correct means.

This is my entire point at not looking at the Constitution as a shackle, but rather a guideline on how to approach new problems in a reasonable way.

And I am not claiming that we shouldn't shackle ourself to the Constitution sometimes either, because sometimes that is in the best interest of the people.  Protecting human rights is something the Founding Fathers really left no wiggle room on, and we should adhere to that.

Here is the Seventh Amendment for instance:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

There can be a reasonable debate about whether or not the Founding Fathers intended to say "citizens" or "people" in general when they said people.  But many people who "claim" to interpret the Constitution "literally" interpreted it in a non-literal way, by claiming that we should deprive enemy combatants (some of whom were/are U.S. citizens) of due process of law.  If you look at the words in the Constitution, it says that "No person" can be deprived of these things.  Yet the Bush Adminstration and many people who claim to interpret the Constitution strictly completely circumvented what the Constitution says.

Interpretation of the Constitution is a good or an evil in different circumstances depending on which side of the argument you are on, which is why people who claim to adhere strictly to the Constitution are often full of crap, because they only do so when it fits their own agenda.  I don't think we should adhere strictly to the words in the Constitution at all times, but I do agree that there are some things which the Founding Fathers did not leave open to reasonable debate.  Human rights is one of them.

Thomas Jefferson would be ashamed of those people who claim to abide by the Constitution but contort it at the same time, and the Republican Party to survive really needs to move back to a more Jeffersonian viewpoint.  Fuck Reagan, go with Jefferson.

 



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson