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How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

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Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#41

Post by danjayh »

Meekro wrote: post #6

Reading the Soviet Bill of Rights is pretty instructive because it'll show you how much such a thing is worth on its own. Here is just a subset of the rights guaranteed by the USSR Constitution: speech; press; religion (both to profess and refuse to profess); assembly (including a specific right to demonstrate); participation in lawmaking; inviolability of the person (from warrantless arrest) and of the home (from un…

This is what scares me about the current attitude (nationally) towards gun control. The right to bear arms is a basic civil right, unambiguously encoded in the Bill of Rights alongside speech, assembly, religion, due process, etc. Throughout history, taking away weapons has always been an early step down the slippery slope to totalitarianism and stripping the populous of their other rights. Just because it's unlikely to happen here -- that we think it can't happen here -- doesn't mean it will not. That's what everyone in all of history has thought, but in fact by the time anyone realizes what's happening, it's usually too late.

"All political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party." -- Mao Zedong

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#42

Post by kelnos »

arwhatever wrote: post #30
skookumchuck wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like all of the amendments. I'm not an NRA member, but the idea of repealing the 2nd Amendment, or worse, interpreting it out of existence has bothered me in ways I couldn't quite put my finger on. I finally realized what it was. If we decide one of the rights is "archaic", "obsolete", "insane", or any of the epithets routinely leveled at it, we set a terrible precedent. How long will it be before the rest fall w…

Scott Greenfield covered your exact point pretty well over at his "Simple Justice" law blog https://blog.simplejustice.us/2015/10/06/ten-favs-from-the-b...

Kinda a straw man, though. If you're of the crowd that thinks the government should legislate the 2nd away, then sure, you should take Greenfield's words to heart and have a good think.

But nowhere does he suggest that a constitutional amendment to repeal the 2nd would be a bad thing; he doesn't even touch on the amendment process at all.

(Also I don't get where he's saying that conservatives love the 1st and second, liberals love the 4th, 5th, and 6th, and they both hate what the other loves. I have a dim view of the 2nd but I'm pretty happy with the other 9. It's kinda ridiculous to suggest that liberal are against the 1st.)

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#43

Post by tlrobinson »

protomyth wrote: post #35
exabrial wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On their defense, people mean well, but 'the road to hell did paved with good intentions' as they say. 1st Amendment is being attacked by liberals, with pronoun laws, hate speech regulations, equal opportunity laws, forced cake baking, many other things. The 2nd is also being attacked from a variety of ways by liberals, which as said before, is well intentioned, but ultimately destructive. Thank goodness the 3rd isn'…

Thank goodness the 3rd isn't an issue! There is an old Dr Dobbs article that mentions that the 3rd might be the key to keeping the government from installing mandatory software on our computers. A stretch, but don’t forget the intent of that amendment.

There's also an argument that cryptography should be protected by the 2nd amendment (not to mention the 1st and 5th).

For a long time the US government classified cryptography as "munitions" subject to export regulations (though not all "munitions" are "arms") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#44

Post by ben_w »

skookumchuck wrote: post #19
toomanybeersies wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't be worth having the bill of rights if they weren't. That's their entire point.

It's an interesting argument. I sure get distressed when otherwise intelligent and educated Americans sincerely tell me: "Sure I believe in free speech, but you can't let that guy say those things!" They'll throw it all away for some insignificant gain.

I hear that.

Counterpoint: propaganda is a thing, how do you get the benefits of robust (and I don’t mean loud or rude) debate to find the best policies without the risks of propaganda?

How do I know I have not fallen for propaganda myself when I argue for or against some policy?

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#45

Post by kelnos »

arca_vorago wrote: post #25

I ctrl+f'd "natural rights" and came up with nothing, which is how I knew from the start this wasn't a very good article on the subject. Look, here is the thing that people have forgotten, or were never taught (due to a failing civics education system): People have natural rights, independent of any government, and governments are formed among the people in order to protect those rights. The government does not grant…

> People have natural rights, independent of any government, and governments are formed among the people in order to protect those rights.

Not really. We've come up with that fiction because we believe -- and we're probably right -- that it gives us the best chance at living together peacefully and without interfering too much with each people's lives.

But it really is a fiction. I personally believe in what you call a person's natural rights, but that's all it is, just a belief. It takes all of us to band together and form structures to enforce and protect those rights for people to be able to enjoy them.

> The second amendment is about defense against a tyrannic government. You could take it away and I would still have a right to bear arms independent of the (theoretically) absent second amendment.

I mean, sure, if you define "right" in that way, then you can say you have the "right" to literally anything. If the 2nd Amendment were repealed, that imagined "natural right" won't help you much when the government comes and takes your guns away, or jails or kills you for having them when you try to fight back.

There is no absolute moral truth here. It's only what we've collectively decided on, and we still have a long way to go before everyone in the world is treated equally and with dignity. We look at the world 500 years ago and think of how uncivilized everything was, and how poorly people treated each other. In another 500 years they'll be saying the same about us, assuming we don't destroy ourselves before then.

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#46

Post by wahern »

danjayh wrote: post #41
Meekro wrote: post #6

Reading the Soviet Bill of Rights is pretty instructive because it'll show you how much such a thing is worth on its own. Here is just a subset of the rights guaranteed by the USSR Constitution: speech; press; religion (both to profess and refuse to profess); assembly (including a specific right to demonstrate); participation in lawmaking; inviolability of the person (from warrantless arrest) and of the home (from un…

This is what scares me about the current attitude (nationally) towards gun control. The right to bear arms is a basic civil right, unambiguously encoded in the Bill of Rights alongside speech, assembly, religion, due process, etc. Throughout history, taking away weapons has always been an early step down the slippery slope to totalitarianism and stripping the populous of their other rights. Just because it's unlikely…

So you've never seen the movie Tombstone? You think there's no legitimate history of measured gun control in this country, and that any departure from the current trend is a slippery slope to a dictatorial state?

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#47

Post by skookumchuck »

ben_w wrote: post #44
skookumchuck wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting argument. I sure get distressed when otherwise intelligent and educated Americans sincerely tell me: "Sure I believe in free speech, but you can't let that guy say those things!" They'll throw it all away for some insignificant gain.

I hear that. Counterpoint: propaganda is a thing, how do you get the benefits of robust (and I don’t mean loud or rude) debate to find the best policies without the risks of propaganda? How do I know I have not fallen for propaganda myself when I argue for or against some policy?

You don't know. You accept that when you accept free speech.

Besides, propaganda vs truth is like porn vs art. It's impossible to define, and there's no human I'd trust to make such decisions (not even myself).

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#48

Post by kelnos »

skookumchuck wrote: post #19
toomanybeersies wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't be worth having the bill of rights if they weren't. That's their entire point.

It's an interesting argument. I sure get distressed when otherwise intelligent and educated Americans sincerely tell me: "Sure I believe in free speech, but you can't let that guy say those things!" They'll throw it all away for some insignificant gain.

How prevalent is that, really? I have literally never heard anyone say that, ever. I've certainly heard people express anger or disgust at some things people have said, but I have not heard anyone ever suggest that it should be illegal to say those things.

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#49

Post by tlrobinson »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #31
IIAOPSW wrote: post #4

This article is critical of the "cult" of the bill of rights. But look at China the other day and how their constitution was changed on a whim. Look at Russia which has Putin despite of a fairly modern and standard constitution. Constitutions and laws are mere pieces of paper until the society within which they live endow them with sacred status. Without the "cult" and the moral indignation at violations surely civil…

> If the BoR didn't have the same nearly religious status one of those attacks would have succeeded by now. I don't think this follows at all from the article. After all, one of the main points is that there WASN'T a cult until the 1940s...yet those rights were able to stand for 160 years without a religious status supporting them. Your argument that the Bill of Rights had a religious status for all 200+ years of its…

Perhaps the religious status evolved in response to increasing attacks on the BoR?

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#50

Post by kelnos »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #39
mindslight wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mitchell vs City of Henderson. They've all been pwnt in one way or another.

The Mitchells lost their case—at least on the third amendment claims.

Isn't that exactly the point the parent was trying to make?

(Having said that, it's arguable that the police were not asking to be "quartered", and in any case, the 3rd concerns soldiers, not police.)

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