@Kreuzfeld:
@Zooey72:
I think it is more of a societal thing. One of the reasons I am proud to be an American is that we TOOK our freedom from England when England was (close to) at its strongest. You look around the world and you see these third world countries bitching and moaning about “its not our fault, we were a colony”! Boo frigg’n hoo. So were we, and instead of being given our freedom (which India was, if you believe Ghandi did it I have a bridge to sell you), we took it. Taking freedom is much different than having it given to you. Look around the world at the old colonies, most of them are run now dictators and are poor. Very few took their freedom, most got it because we pressured England to drop its colonies after the war (which they had to do, or no Marshall plan $).
We have a Constitution that allows us to have weapons. That was not put in there so people could hunt or defend themselves against muggers. It was put in there so that the government does not have a monopoly on force.
You make it sound like the americans took it without help, from a british empire who had nothing else to do. The fact is that the american revolution would probably not have succeded if this was the case. The british war in india got most of the british resouces, and the french (the worlds strongest military power on land at the time), combined with the spansih and the dutch helped a great deal. In fact, there are very few wars of freedom (after 1500) that have won without help from an outside power helping, and usually they need to declare war to do enough. The nations you are belitteling is exactly the nations that would never get aid for their revolutionary and rebellious wars, and exactly the nations that got their freedom with the least help from an outside power. The indians did it by making sure that it would be too costly for the british to stay there.
When it comes to the second amendment, don’t be naive, the government does have monopoly on force, there is no way a rebellion would work, taliban militias is better armed than the american civilian population.
The one way to ensure (IMO) that the government cannot use their army against the civilan population is to have a conscripted army, if every person have served, then every member of the army thinks of himself as a member of the population and massive nonviolent protests will turn the army against the government. It is less violent, and has a greater chance of success. The moment the army is a professional army, thinking of themselves as outside the population, working for a salery, then you are in trouble as a democracy.
EDIT: forgive my harsh tone, it is not meant that way
That’s nuts. I do not own a gun, but if they were to ever try and take them away I would get one and would be willing to die shooting whoever came to my door trying to take it away. The second amendment does not give me the right to do that, it makes it an OBLIGATION. Crunch the numbers. If 1 percent of US citizens (and it is much higher than that) own a gun that makes 3 million gun owners. Granted the military is more organized, but if you think they can take out 3 million gun owners easily you are crazy. Not to mention, the people who would be in charge of taking those guns away are more than likely gun owners themselves. If you want to argue whether we could fight our military ok, but one thing that is not open to argument is the intent the founders had by giving us the second. I do not have the right to own a gun to shoot a deer or defend against a mugger.
I love when people try to compare Vietanm to our Revolution. You remember the mass slayings after we won? The re-education camps? The brutal crack down by the government? Not to mention the great standard of living that Vietnam enjoys to this day! The fight was to minimize government as much as possible. American exceptionalism is just that - EXCEPTIONAL! You will be hard pressed to find examples in history where the winners of the war give power to the people instead of seizing it themselves. George Washington was not King George. He gave up power peacefully.
As far as our ability to beat the British, it also amuses me that Vietnam was unwinnable… but the only reason we won our independence is because the British just weren’t all that much into it. That being said, the french were not going to help us until they saw that we had a good chance of winning. I won’t dispute the French helped, but we did most of the fighting. The fact we won a diplomatic victory getting the French to aid us (and the only reason they helped us was to stick it to the British, there was no altruistic reason behind it). With that logic I guess England didn’t win the battle of Britian - We did!. W/o our aid even Churchill acknowledged England would have fallen. But I defy you to find someone who lived through the blitz and tell them that.
The fact of the matter is that when a war takes place people are going to take sides, and the decision of what side a country should take should always be in was in that countries own best interest. The balance of power in the world shifted quite a bit after we won our independence (in France’s favor).
Plain and simple, diplomacy is a part of war just as much as guns and butter.
