Defending the indefensible

[Freddy]

Overnight, an unspeakable crime was committed in the United States.
Considering the magnitude of this tragedy, you would think you wouldn't go in and defend the indefensible here. A maniac with a Gun shot many children.
No one would be stupid enough to defend Gun ownership, surely.
No one would be that depraved.
And yet, as we see in less salubrious surrounds, there are those who are seemingly so r.e.t.a.r.d.e.d that indeed, they would defend Gun Ownership, and instead descend into Straw-Man arguments and spin, in order to defend a maniacs right to have unfitted access to the lethal implements necessary to to carry out such unspeakable evil.
Unbelievable, aint it ?

[geopol]

Part of the madnes of America?

[pim]

unfettered?

[Freddy]

Dec 17, 2012 16:59:58 GMT 11 pim said:

unfettered?

You say "Unfettered", my spell check says "Unfitted". Or, as Greg Gericko, in his excellent published study on Political Blogs points out, spelling and grammar are irrelevant in these types of forums. It's the Ideas that matter. (I put it too you that as more devices, such as smart phones gain prevalence, then typos will become more common. Just try Samsungs "Swipe" facility)
Anyway, all you being pedestrian (and a pedant) proves, is that you were once an English Teacher. We all get that. It also shows that you have nothing to add to what is , I admit, a hugely rhetorical OP.
And I was being Rhetorical for a reason.
It really is unbelievable, that in the light of such an unspeakable act of evil, that there are those who are stupid enough to argue against what should be intuitive. Even despite the fact that if the US had have had the type of Gun Laws, the rest of the Civilized world has, then we can almost say for certain then such tragedies could have peen prevented.
But, noo, as we see elsewhere, there are those who are r.e.tarded enough to think that we shouldn't restrict lethal killing tools to the General Public.
That people still should have unlimited access to weapons of war, and damn the consequences. A few dozen 6 year olds is really a collateral that must be accepted, as some sort of price of "liberty".
Its not not sad, It's sick. People who defend the indefensible, especially actions like last Friday Nights, should be hounded off the boards, not engaged with, they do not deserve our respect.

If you want to play the pedant, go over to NTB1, where you can argue with the Yin and Yan of idiocy to your hearts content. You can even laugh at Matt for good measure.

[pim]

Freddy take a chill pill. You're not just wrong with "unfitted", you completely distort the meaning of what you're trying to say. Spell checks are notoriously unreliable I can put up whole slabs of language in which nearly every word is a spelling mistake and which spell check will fail to pick up. In any case Freddy what you wrote was not so much a spelling mistake as a grammar mistake. Not a big deal if it's a minor matter but "unfitted" is ... well ... unfit for inclusion in that passage. The word you want is indeed "unfettered". Trust me, it really is. It should read: ... in order to defend a maniacs right to have unfettered access .... We can ignore the lack of an apostrophe before the "s" on "maniacs" because it's a typo of little moment. But "unfitted" when it should be "unfettered"? Sorry mate but that matters. I wasn't being sarcastic. I was actually asking a question.

Now take a deep breath, calm down, and join me on NTB1 where Matt has put up a superb video of Michael Moore mobilising a group of gays to do a "freedom ride" on a "Sodomobile" and in which he actually faces off the "God Hates Fag" crowd and and they back off.

Matt is frothing at the mouth over it. I expect Skippy to become hysterical at any moment. Join me!

[pim]

When you've calmed down Freddy perhaps you might consider this response to what I think is the nub of what you're upset about:

Dec 17, 2012 18:55:45 GMT 11 Freddy said:

People who defend the indefensible, especially actions like last Friday Nights, should be hounded off the boards, not engaged with, they do not deserve our respect.

No, they should be ignored or made to look stupid. It's like this mate, what Skippy and Matt are doing is just regurgitating what they read on the websites of the "Guns 'n' God" crowd in the US. I got a bit of perspective on this tonight when I was listening to ABC News Radio on my car radio. Would you believe I heard Alexander Downer express views that I felt were actually sensible. He described the complexity of the issue - not to justify the gun crowd but to reveal the scale of the political problem in grappling with it, he spoke approvingly of Obama's stance on the issue of guns and more or less identified the guns issue as possibly the defining issue of Obama's second term in the way that Obamacare defined his first term. What Downer said was that this is a test of Obama's leadership and of his claim to be an agent for positive change. What's more Downer said that in his view Obama has to go for it. He has to spend political capital on the issue of guns, and if he goes down to defeat on it then so be it.

First time ever I've liked something said by Downer! Then I thought of the gun reforms enacted by Howard in his first term and the leadership he showed. "Leadership" because he was taking on his own constituency and he knew he'd take a political hit. Guts is guts, whether it's Howard or anyone.

Then I thought: what if you placed Downer and Howard in an American context and gave them American accents? What with their expressed views on guns and their support for a medical insurance scheme not unlike Obamacare, they'd be tarred and feathered as "communist subversives". Their stance on these issues places them to the left of a lot of Democrats! That, my friend is how extreme right the Republicans have become, and that's how extreme people like Skippy and Matt are. They've wedged themselves on the fringes and are irrelevant.

In the US, the progressive moderate forces have to write the Republicans off as a lost cause. They will never agree to any sort of gun law reform so save your breath. What US progressives have to do is wage a political campaign within the Democratic Party. There is no shortage of Democrats who are strongly in favour of gun laws but the problem is the Democrats who are in the pockets of the gun lobby. Maybe when you look at the campaign the Tea Party waged in the Republican Party to root out moderate Republicans and replace them with fruitcake candidates, maybe - just maybe - there are lessons in it for progressive reform within the Democratic Party.

The Republican base has shrunk. Up until Nixon it had been the party of Lincoln. Johnson's equal rights legislation turned the Republicans from the heirs of Lincoln - the party that freed the slaves - to the white backlash party. That political model has served the Republicans well for the past 45 years. The problem for them is that being the party of "God, Guns and White Backlash" has meant an ever-shrinking voter base fo them. They've beome the party of angry white men in a society which is on track to becoming non-white majority. The groups that the Republicans have pissed off are everyone but the angry white men. Why should gays vote Republican with their views on gay marriage and on homosexuality? Why should Hispanics vote Republican with their views on immigration and racial profiling? Why should blacks vote Republican when these same Republicans show they resent black progress? Why should women vote Republican with their views on abortion? And so on.

What that means is that a historic opportunity has opened up within the US for what Obama called in 2008 "Change we can believe in". It'll be rugged. Nobody expects the gun lobby to accept it meekly. There's no shortage of white supremacist fruitcakes out there who are armed to the teeth and who have formed themselves into militias. It may even take a generation or two as the political landscape in the US is littered with the "Guns, God & White Backlash" crowd gnawing on their entrails. But as Obama was fond of saying in 2008: "Now is the time!" and "Yes we can!" Just as well he's an accomplished orator because he'll need all his oratory. Gun laws should be the centrepiece of his Inauguration Address on Jan 20.

[Earl Grey]

Yes, unfettered is the correct word.

That reminds me...
Anyone for Fetta?



I suppose if you don't have Fetta cheese, you are unfetta'd ?

[Freddy]

This is something that should be above politics, above religious beliefs.
That it needs a so-called "conservative" leader, before people like Skippy even contemplate the lunacy of the US's Gun Laws says a lot about their mindsets.
I'm pretty certain that Americas "founding fathers" (Franklin,Jefferson,Washington et al ), when framing the amendment regarding the right to bare arms never considered that it would mean allowing people to arm themselves to the teeth.
It was an amendment written at the time that the US was a frontier society where Civic resources were scarce. They certainly never considered that 200 odd years after it was written that there would be fully automatic assault rifles.
As you have inferred in past posts, Pim, "The Founding Fathers" considered themselves as British, and if my Pommy relatives are anything to go by, allowing people to arm themselves to the teeth, to buggery of the consequences, goes against all British sensibilities

[pim]

Dec 18, 2012 13:58:45 GMT 11 Freddy said:

It was an amendment written at the time that the US was a frontier society where Civic resources were scarce. They certainly never considered that 200 odd years after it was written that there would be fully automatic assault rifles.

Well I'm sure that if you went through the Australian Constitution you'll find lots of provisions that could never have foreseen how things would be 100 years down the track.

For that matter you could take the English Bill of Rights which defines the relationship of Parliament and the Monarchy. It made good sense back in the late 1600s to prohibit any Catholic from inheriting the throne, or for anyone in line of the Royal Succession from marrying a Catholic. Yet it seems weird today and even discriminatory. But still the law.

These are legalistic arguments, Freddy, and will I'm sure be put again to the US Supreme Court. Obama's got another 4 years and there will be an opportunity to make a suitable appointment or two ...

As you have inferred in past posts, Pim, "The Founding Fathers" considered themselves as British, and if my Pommy relatives are anything to go by, allowing people to arm themselves to the teeth, to buggery of the consequences, goes against all British sensibilities

That's drawing a long bow, Freddy! British "sensibilities" grow, evolve, change over the eons ... There was a time when any good English yeoman worthy of the name was pretty good with a longbow. Handy for skewering French soldiers on the battlefield.

My point is that it doesn't just go against "British" sensibilities (let's not go down the path of ethnic profiling ...). There would be no shortage of Americans whose sensibilities are offended too. If Obama is gonig to mobilise support for gun laws, he's not going to get far by invoking "British" sensibilities!!

[Freddy]

Dec 18, 2012 15:13:08 GMT 11 pim said:

Dec 18, 2012 13:58:45 GMT 11 Freddy said:

My point is that it doesn't just go against "British" sensibilities (let's not go down the path of ethnic profiling ...). There would be no shortage of Americans whose sensibilities are offended too. If Obama is gonig to mobilise support for gun laws, he's not going to get far by invoking "British" sensibilities!!

IMO perhaps the biggest difference between the British (and in this context, I include us) and the States is in the way they see the Government and its place in the Community.
In the US, they appear to be far more "libertarian". That is they believe in small Government with minimal interference in the running of our communities and personal lives. The British tend to see the Governments place as being the Saftey-net.
The best illustration of this we saw in this past year.
Obama had all sorts of grief, just trying to implement a national health service.
The British? Well they made their NHS a centre piece of the Olympic Opening ceremony.
How does this relate to the tragedy that happened last Friday ?
Well, as we saw with Dunblane in Scotland, or at Port Aurthur here,was that the people, as a community, demanded that the Government step in and make measures to ensure we can at least try and prevent any further massacres. Through legislation. By making laws restricting the type of Gun you can buy, how you can handle them, and where you can store them. It's really not that surprising that, despite having more guns per-capita, the Canadians have far less gun related crime.
The US, on the other hand, have far too much of a libertarian to regulation. So even in the shadows of tragedy, such as this, they tie themselves in knots just to achieve what to us, is inherently self-evident.

[spindrift]

"the right to bare arms"..and a hairy chest..!!

Obama will construct a well meaning attempt to stop the US people from buying assault weapons but he will fail.

Simply because the weapons market and business is too great....The USA is the bastion of free enterprise, and making and selling of bullets in huge volumes will sacrifice jobs and curb weapons manufacturer's free enterprise, and for them to lose profits...can't have that...

[Freddy]

Well capitalism is dying, so I guess one hope maybe that the Weapons industry dies a slow and painful death along with it.

[pim]

Never! The weapons industry is eternal. The demise of the arms industry and its associated arms trade is only likely in Utopia.

Ever wondered why Thomas More invented the name "Utopia" as the name of the fictitious place that he invented for his book on the Ideal Commonwealth? Poor Tommy More came to a dismal end btw because he refused to swear the oath recognising Henry VIIIs divorce of Catherine of Aragon and his marriage to Anne Boleyn. So he had his head chopped off. But before that he managed to write a book about a place where there was no suffering, no hunger, peace everywhere, justice for all and certainly no arms industry. Being an educated and scholarly gentleman of the 1500s he was very fluent in Latin and Greek so he invented a Greek name for his fictional paradise: "Utopia" because the word means "not a place". If I lived in Utopia I guess its capital city would have to be called Erehwon. Read it backwards ...

[Freddy]

Dec 19, 2012 13:16:03 GMT 11 pim said:

If I lived in Utopia I guess its capital city would have to be called Erehwon. Read it backwards ...

Ahh, so that is who John Lennon was referring to ?

[pim]

Isn't he a bit like you and me?