Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.)
How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
51–60 of 111 posts
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#52Reading 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…
Let's talk in practical terms for a second, though. Do you truly believe that gun ownership in the US could result in a bunch of citizens overthrowing the US government should it become tyrannical? I just don't see it happening. The US military is far too well-trained and -armed, and of course a hypothetical tyrannical US government would turn the military against its citizens if there was an armed uprising. And they would win so laughably easily.
Now sure, there's the possibility that factions in the military would turn against this tyrannical government and save the day, but you don't need the 2nd Amendment for that to work out.
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
Yes, I understand that. Please don't fling URLs around as a substitute for discussion.
The court dismissing the idea that there is a 3rd Amendment issue could exactly be what the parent was talking about, if he does indeed believe it was a 3rd Amendment issue.
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
And by extension, the issue of Civil Forfeiture.
Yes, how could I have neglected to cite that sucker!
Eh it's a fair omission. The war on drugs has only fueled the civil forfeiture issue, as it's a commonly pointed to reason by officers why they think someone carrying an excess of cash is up to no good: "We suspect this money is connected to a drug operation".
I don't know if there's a term for it, but if anyone knows or can coin something on the spot to describe the phenomenon where the Drug War and other aspects of American criminal law has invariably irritated smaller undressed wounds within the criminal justice system and caused them to open up as larger festering problems that probably wouldn't have seen as much widespread public attention otherwise-outside of specialized legal communities and advocacy circles.
Examples of what I mean are, as mentioned Drug War -> Civil Forfeiture, PATRIOT Act -> Due Process for War Detainees, Snowden -> Due process for surveillance investigations, etc.
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Let's talk in practical terms for a second, though. Do you truly believe that gun ownership in the US could result in a bunch of citizens overthrowing the US government should it become tyrannical? I just don't see it happening. The US military is far too well-trained and -armed, and of course a hypothetical tyrannical US government would turn the military against its citizens if there was an armed uprising. And they…
In my opinion, it is not about overthrowing the government, it is about a right to self-defense. Not just from the government, but also from your average criminal.
It's true that a citizen or even a group of citizens is no match for the military. But the difference is between citizens being able to try defending themselves, and being completely defenseless.
It is the difference between soldiers being ordered to fire their own citizens, and the citizens being defenseless. It is the difference between individuals who swore to defend their countrymen having to reconcile killing them in battle. It is the difference between a confidence that you can do something and a feeling that you can be easily intimidated.
China, Russia, Iraq, Germany, in all of these places the general population was disarmed as one of the first steps towards totalitarianism. It is not a coincidence.
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
There is only one truth, there are many possible propagandas.
If the truth cannot be known, then we don’t have democracy, we have government by highest advertising budget.
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#57Reading 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…
>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.
Only in places/eras where having weapons mattered.
It's not like anybody's gonna take on the feds with their guns.
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Let's talk in practical terms for a second, though. Do you truly believe that gun ownership in the US could result in a bunch of citizens overthrowing the US government should it become tyrannical? I just don't see it happening. The US military is far too well-trained and -armed, and of course a hypothetical tyrannical US government would turn the military against its citizens if there was an armed uprising. And they…
Afghanistan. 16 years, still haven't won.
And us citizens have more weapons than the taliban; longer harder to protect borders than Afghanistan; and a population that would be sympathetic to the cause. I wouldn’t be so sure the us military would win.
According to current military doctrine[0], counterinsurgency requires a minimum of 1 counterinsurgent per 50 people in the population. If you assume ALL us military personnel can serve in combat simultaneously (ie: no troops required for supply lines, paperwork, management, etc), and you included all police forces in the US, you would only get to 1 per 100.
So you say they would "win so laughably easily".. but according to the military itself, it does not have enough troops to handle an insurgency in the US.
0. As written in the Army and Marine Corps field manual (and this doctrine was based on research of past (us and non-us) conflicts)
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#59"...And he worries that this process of reinvention may have stalled, with Americans now fetishizing the Bill of Rights, having lost sight of their own ability to remake the legal and political world..."
And I'm beginning to seriously doubt my time commitment to this article.
The actual history of the Constitution and Bill of Rights is quite interesting and involved. It covers everything from classical literature and history to The Enlightenment and the Thirty Years' War. Just talking about how some folks revere the docs so much now and didn't in the past is breathtakingly shallow. As an example of how short-sighted this is, note that the BoR wasn't supposed to say anything that needed saying. Some questioned the need for them at all. The government wasn't constructed to get that overpowering and intrusive into all of our lives. It's made not to do that. Why should we start making lists of things it can't do? It obviously can't do anything we didn't tell it to do.
The founders in the U.S. dispassionately threw together a huge chunk of natural science, philosophy, and history, made a ton of compromises, and did the best they could. You don't have to worship or deify the folks or the documents they made. Just understand what was done and why. That's much more useful than going on at length about how unhealthy some segments of the population are being.
This article is a political polemic, not a history lesson (unless you consider it a lesson on how things get more and less popular over time, which says absolutely nothing about the BoR) I love political essays that show how public thought changes over time. These kinds of essays tend to be difficult to discuss in large diverse online groups -- and many times, sadly, their purpose is to create false, simplistic narratives that can take the place of understanding. Best consumed in small doses and with lots of context.
Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
#60Earlier 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'…
> 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…
In Europe, democratic countries regularly amend their constitution because parts of it have become archaic, obsolete or insane. We have yet to descend into chaos or tyranny.