The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

[Ts RedVeX]

If you are a subject to a monarch who is an idiot then you are unlucky but at least there is chance that the following monarch is going to be better. Whereas in democracy, a system where 2 winos tell the Oxford proffessor how to bring his kids up just because there is more of them, you, regardless of how many history books you have read, will have to always comply with stupid laws created by people chosen by those 2 winos. When a country is ran by a monkey then at leas the monkey sometimes goes left and sometimes right. When you put a communist (the missing link between monkeys and humans in Darvin's evolution theory) in charge, he always goes left - so he always makes the bad choice.

If you do not believe that a monarch can protect you from a terrorist or a psycho with a gun, then how come you think a republican or democratic leader can? Especially when it is the 2 winos who spend their dole money on booze who vote for that leader. Obviously, nobody is going rob them at gun point, will they?

And in mythical past, when a monarch went to battle, peasants would not have to worry about being blown up by a terrorist because it was simply not their business as long as the battle was not taking place on his field. Nowadays people are being deceived into thinking that police is there to protect you and then you see a vide where 5 armed policemen are running away from a crook with a knife hecause of human rights, democracy and all that kind of bollocks... Sure. Bring about more rights. Maybe you will eventually be able to print all of them out and hide from bullets and shrapnel under all that paper!

[Stavros]

And in mythical past, when a monarch went to battle, peasants would not have to worry about being blown up by a terrorist because it was simply not their business as long as the battle was not taking place on his field. Nowadays people are being deceived into thinking that police is there to protect you and then you see a vide where 5 armed policemen are running away from a crook with a knife hecause of human rights, democracy and all that kind of bollocks... Sure. Bring about more rights. Maybe you will eventually be able to print all of them out and hide from bullets and shrapnel under all that paper!

In the real, as opposed to the 'mythical past', the peasants had to fight and die for their monarch, not having the right to ask why. Just as in the last year or so there have been more videos of innocent men being shot dead by racist policemen than policemen running away from robbers with knives. I don't know why you struggle so much with the concept of the 'social contract' that emerged in Hobbes, was taken further in Locke, and given practical, political expression in the Constitution of the USA. Your attempt to dismiss democracy as the work of two 'winos' is so silly one wonders if you even believe it yourself.

[Ts RedVeX]

Oh really? What would a peasant armed with with a scythe, or even a combine-harvester be to an armed ISIS soldier but cannon fodder? You would call their encounter a fight, I would call it slaughter. My dismissal of democracy is not silly. In theory, it is exactly how I described it: 2 winos' votes, who cannot see beyond what they gonna drink this coming afternoon, against the vote of an intelligent hard-working man, who is actually capable of seeing the bigger picture. I think I already mentioned that only maybe 10% of human population is even capable of abstract thinking. The will just blindly believing what they are told by the talking boxes they have at their homes without giving much thought to what they hear.

[Stavros]

Oh really? What would a peasant armed with with a scythe, or even a combine-harvester be to an armed ISIS soldier but cannon fodder? You would call their encounter a fight, I would call it slaughter. My dismissal of democracy is not silly. In theory, it is exactly how I described it: 2 winos' votes, who cannot see beyond what they gonna drink this coming afternoon, against the vote of an intelligent hard-working man, who is actually capable of seeing the bigger picture. I think I already mentioned that only maybe 10% of human population is even capable of abstract thinking. The will just blindly believing what they are told by the talking boxes they have at their homes without giving much thought to what they hear.

Once again I struggle to make sense of your arguments, as I think you do too. If you take an interest in the history then the peasants with scythes or pikes would belong to the local 'Baron' who would round them up as his contribution to the King's cause be it Ireland, 'France', Spain or the Scots -but that assumes loyalty to the King which has not always been found. As for the peasants, like the man said 'if they die, they die'.

So when you write: And in mythical past, when a monarch went to battle, peasants would not have to worry about being blown up by a terrorist because it was simply not their business as long as the battle was not taking place on his field. I wonder if you know what you are talking about, at least in the context of British history. When the Monarch was unable to command the authority of his subjects -to be specific, King Henry VI- the political agreement to support him broke down, and civil war ensued, so the 'monarch' was in effect at war with 'his' own people except they no longer recognised him as such with one side declaring emphatically the opposite of what you claim when you write If you are a subject to a monarch who is an idiot then you are unlucky but at least there is chance that the following monarch is going to be better.

So in fact, monarchy and its failures led to 'slaughter' -as you rightly put it- for example, on one day in the civil war, the 29th of March 1461, soldiers loyal to the Yorkist 'King' Edward IV clashed with soldiers loyal to Lancaster with estimated deaths in one day of 27,000, or 1% of the population of England at that time.

One could extend this to the Civil War in the USA with the key point being that when there is a consensus on government, and the state provides security for its citizens through the rule of law and the legitimate monopoly of force, peace is the basic character of daily life. But if enough people question that legitimacy, and are prepared to back it up with a challenge to the rule of law through armed conflict, the breakdown of the state and civil war follows.

In the context of this thread, you have to explain how the USA can justify the ownership of battle-field/military grade weapons to civilians who for the most part live in peace with the security of law and order, the police, the National Guard and indeed, the armed forces of the USA to protect them. Even in the cases of Black Americans shot dead by law enforcement, the counter-argument, that Black Americas should go armed to defend themselves from law enforcement is weak, even if they also challenge the legitimacy of White America to police them, much as some White Americans deny the right of the 'Feds' to impose taxes and laws on them they do not like. It is not the legitimacy of the USA that is at stake here, but the legitimate arguments of the Bundy Clan and all those Americans who claim the right to 'bear arms' as if there was a war on- because there is no war and the USA has not been invaded.

As for your dismissal of democracy, it exposes a bizarre perception of the UK in which you live. Look around you, all those 'ordinary' people who have jobs and families cannot be described as 'winos' and are obviously not Oxford Professors (of which there are not that many and most of them are Tories); they cannot all be dismissed as ignorant, communists, dupes, morons or whatever juvenile word you have in your locker when you are stuck for words.
Democracy took us into the EU and appears to be taking us out of it, I supported one and opposed the latter, thereby winning one and losing another, that is democracy and we can challenge the contradictions -the fishing community in Grimsby that voted to Leave the EU that now say they want to remain in the Single Market being an outstanding example. How would a powerful, policy-making Monarch be better than what we have now?

We fought wars to support Monarchs and fought wars against them. Ask an American: was George Washington, an officer in the King's Army a Traitor or a Hero when he rebelled against his King? So far you have failed to justify Monarchy as opposed to Democracy, but I don't doubt you will have another stab at this carcass of an argument.

[Aticus100]

I feel the need to point out a flaw in RedVex’s monkey analogy.
If, as is reasonable, we assume that decision to turn right is just as likely to be correct as the decision to turn left, then the money who randomly turns either left or right will be no more or less likely to be correct than the monkey who always turns left.

Just thought we should at least get that point straight. It’s the details that matter you know.

[Ts RedVeX]

Going left, or "left" is wrong. We don't assume that it is right. Hence, where a monkey has 50% chance to make a good decision of going right, or "right", then a communist has 0% chance of making a good decision as they always go "left", or left. I would also like to note that I do not mean "right" it the sense of what today's politicians declaring to be "right" represent, as there are no conservative politicians in the mainstream politics at all. There are only "far-left" and "further-left" ones. Politics and state are bad in general. They are the necessary evil that people have to agree to to avoid anarchy. Hence there should be as few officials and a single leader, court, army and police, and pretty much nothing else constituting to State (that has to live of its subjects hard work - there is no going around that).

The main reason, Stavros, why we do not understand eachother is that you are talking about history, about which you probably do know much more than I do, at least in terms or the UK's history, while I am talking about ideology. The main difference between an ideology and how it is being implemented is that there are no compromises regarding to an ideology's paradigm, whereas in politics and implementing an ideology, compromise is allowed. What I am mainly on about is that you seem to be a dedicated socialist, where I am totally not. I see no point in arguing historical facts with you because we view events differently because we have different beliefs. E.g. you see the NSZZ Solidarnosc movement as something good, and I see it as something bad. (Even though the workers also believed, and most of them still believe, it was good for them)There is no way I can convince you that the whole movement was a planned transfer of power from the socialists in power at the time in Poland, into the hands of their younger agents out of Which the leader - Lech Walesa happened to have been a worker.

On gun ban, as communists or socialists like to call them "rights", or as I, as well as this thread's author, like to call it "restrictions", the idea of telling people they cannot bear them at will is simply against the paradigm of individual freedom. I don't care how many more or less people get killed by guns. All I care about is that I will be able to defend myself, my property and family in case of an emergency. THe fact that guns are much more dangerous than knives makes people handle them with even more care than they do when handling knives, thus THere cannot be an increase in gun deaths caused by lack of regulation in the long run. Of course, that excludes the period where all the idiots shoot themselves which, by the way, is a good thing in the long run, as there will be less idiots in the society.

Imagine that you have a car that is 100% safe and can reach 500 miles per hour. Because you cannot get hurt if you crash that car, you are more likely to drive it recklessly and kill others than you would if you were driving a normal car without seatbelts or airbags. This is because in the 100%safe car you have no responsibility for your acting silly in the form of capital punishment executed immediately upon crashing at 500mph. That proves why death penalty is so important and why "human rights" should be scrapped as well, but that is another issue.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Ts RedVeX;1803602

[I]there are no conservative politicians in the mainstream politics at all. There are only "far-left" and "further-left" ones. Politics and state are bad in general. They are the necessary evil that people have to agree to to avoid anarchy. Hence there should be as few officials and a single leader, court, army and police, and pretty much nothing else constituting to State (that has to live of its subjects hard work - there is no going around that) [/I]
--I accept that you take a radical view of politics that dismisses politicians who claim to be 'Conservative' as not being conservative at all, but that it is because they can only be 'conservative' if they meet your definition of it, but few people do. But Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were conservatives, whatever you may say.

It is also confusing because your promotion of Monarchy as a form of rule, and your belief in the rights of individual sit in contradiction with each other. Monarchy as a form of rule existed for over a thousand years in Europe and failed to create or allow the kind of world you believe in where individuals make their own fate without any intervention from the Monarch and 'the Kingdom', because that is not what monarchies do. Monarchies collapsed between 1776 and Hitler because they became obstacles to economic and social progress released by the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, and strangled political expression among the people who resented the powers and privileges of monarchs and their hangers-on who produced nothing but spent everything.

For someone who believes markets know best, it is hard, if not impossible to reconcile monarchy with a free society. The closest you get to it may be the creation in England of 'market towns' which the monarch relieved from taxation -but if Stratford-upon-Avon, given market status by Henry VIII, why not the whole country? After all, it was the prosperity of Stratford that enabled the parents of a cheeky lad called William to go to a fine school where he was taught by graduates of Oxford who introduced him to Greek and Roman classics, and Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, without which we might not have those splendid history plays.

A signal weakness in Monarchy which also runs counter to your arguments and beliefs, is that the taxation you deplore was often the only means whereby the King could wage war. Even by the late 18th century when the powers of the English king were more limited than they had been before, the King's government in 1798 introduced the first form of income tax that we know today, in order to raise funds for the war against France. It was a temporary measure that was abolished in 1802 but revived soon after because Napoleon would not go away but the tax was abolished again after Waterloo, even though the government needed it to pay off the debts it had acquired to fight the French, Parliament voted against it.
You see the problem? War needs taxes- war creates debt-debt needs taxes. In peace time, Peel as Prime Minister re-introduced income tax in 1842, but he did so as a free marketeer and devotee of Adam Smith. Income tax was a replacement for the protected import and export duties on products that Peel believed undermined a free market, and it is claimed by liberating the market from the constraints of protection, the economy grew. But the income tax Peel expected to last for 3 years had to be extended because of the growing importance of the railways which were in trouble and needed state funding, and crucially, the war in the Crimea which had to be paid for.

So you see, Monarchs and Conservatives alike wish to preserve state power, rather than free markets, which in reality do not exist. And whether it is monarchs or governments, taxes are raised to wage war, or to offset obstacles to trade in the market, or to support failing businesses where in the 1840s you might say 'the railways were too big to fail'. But in your world, I daresay the railways should have been left to go bust until another entrepreneur came along to revive them.

The main reason, Stavros, why we do not understand eachother is that you are talking about history, about which you probably do know much more than I do, at least in terms or the UK's history, while I am talking about ideology. The main difference between an ideology and how it is being implemented is that there are no compromises regarding to an ideology's paradigm, whereas in politics and implementing an ideology, compromise is allowed. What I am mainly on about is that you seem to be a dedicated socialist, where I am totally not. I see no point in arguing historical facts with you because we view events differently because we have different beliefs. E.g. you see the NSZZ Solidarnosc movement as something good, and I see it as something bad. (Even though the workers also believed, and most of them still believe, it was good for them)There is no way I can convince you that the whole movement was a planned transfer of power from the socialists in power at the time in Poland, into the hands of their younger agents out of Which the leader - Lech Walesa happened to have been a worker.
--Again, because you believe anyone who supports the NHS is a socialist, I must therefore be a socialist, regardless of what I have to say about it. It is too complex to explain in a few words, because history and ideology are not only not exact, they thrive because of the arguments within and between them. If there were no disagreements in the interpretation of history, we would have only one narrative, just as if there were no disagreements within an ideology, those 'systems of thought' or 'dogmas' would never have experienced the convulsions they have.
You are trying to reduce the state, society and the individual to a matter of choice or compulsion, opting for an end to what you see as compulsion in favour of the freedom of the individual within or without a state. What you cannot do to my satisfaction is measure the space between the individual and the state in order to justify one and not the other. The NHS offers an example of how the State can provide a service that runs against the argument that state-run services fail because they inhibit innovation. The advances in medicine and medical training that we have experienced since 1945 have all been part of a socially funded service. Some innovations may have happened in a health care business run for profit, but the evidence that the alternative works is clear from the NHS in the UK and its equivalent services in Europe. Single and brilliant individuals have emerged from the NHS, none of them would have succeeded without their colleagues, and without the funding from the public that made their careers and innovations possible.

You deride the Solidarity movement in Poland, not because of the role it played in ending the rule of Communist Parties in Poland, Russia and Eastern Europe, but because the outcome has not been the one you wanted. But that does not in fact detract from the achievement; you can disagree with it, but you cannot re-write history just to suit your ideas and expect others to agree yours is the only valid interpretation. That is not history, it is ideology. In the end, you have preferred the comfort blanket of an ideology of individualism rather than the more complex realities of history.

On gun ban, as communists or socialists like to call them "rights", or as I, as well as this thread's author, like to call it "restrictions", the idea of telling people they cannot bear them at will is simply against the paradigm of individual freedom. I don't care how many more or less people get killed by guns. All I care about is that I will be able to defend myself, my property and family in case of an emergency. THe fact that guns are much more dangerous than knives makes people handle them with even more care than they do when handling knives, thus THere cannot be an increase in gun deaths caused by lack of regulation in the long run. Of course, that excludes the period where all the idiots shoot themselves which, by the way, is a good thing in the long run, as there will be less idiots in the society.
--Although this is the key issue in this thread, I have already argued that US citizens are already protected and cannot justify owning guns of the kind that they do. Even you have not in fact told us if you want a 'gun', or an arsenal of battlefield weapons 'in case of an emergency'. Most Americans call 911 in an emergency. The deeper issues we have discussed before so there is little else to say. Americans have decided they must have guns, it is up to them to decide if and when they can limit the kind of guns they can legally purchase, and in the meantime innocent civilians will be killed again and again.

But I have to say, when you claim I don't care how many more or less people get killed by guns you let yourself down. Perhaps if you did care, you might change your mind on gun ownership, because one day, it might be you on the wrong end of a gun, and you will want other people who do care to help you, indeed, to save you.

[slave2u]

Politics and state are bad in general. They are the necessary evil that people have to agree to to avoid anarchy.
......
Imagine that you have a car that is 100% safe and can reach 500 miles per hour. Because you cannot get hurt if you crash that car, you are more likely to drive it recklessly and kill others than you would if you were driving a normal car without seatbelts or airbags. This is because in the 100%safe car you have no responsibility for your acting silly in the form of capital punishment executed immediately upon crashing at 500mph. That proves why death penalty is so important and why "human rights" should be scrapped as well, but that is another issue.

i have been trying not to get involved in this debate but....
you ague that politics and state are bad in general, but are a necessary evil as they prevent anarchy.
i'd argue that the state is crucial to any form of civilisation above a communal level (and even then there would be leaders and rules - so politics and state).
even absolute monarchs had to deal with politics and would have had a bureaucracy (state) supporting them.

then you follow through with your 100% safe car example (ignoring that 100% safe means there can be no accidents of any type thus rendering the example redundant), but assume a 99% safe car and the 1% unsafe comes from reckless driving.
then that is where the state comes into play - yes you may walk away from a 500mph crash, but you won't escape the laws that govern reckless driving.

[Aticus100]

Going left, or "left" is wrong. We don't assume that it is right. Hence, where a monkey has 50% chance to make a good decision of going right, or "right", then a communist has 0% chance of making a good decision as they always go "left", or left. .

No RedVex, a monkey going left means the monkey is going left. Going right means it's going right.

Every single thing in the world does not need to be viewed for your bizarre prism of communist hatred.

You're unhinged.

[Ts RedVeX]

you know what? ban guns. The general will have an easier job when time comes