Silicon Wolverine said:
because they were too chicken to shoot the cops that were violating the constitution.
Rich responded:
Strong Words.
Two questions:
1) Is this what you advocate, as opposed to court action?
2) Is this the action you claim you'd take, if placed in her position.
No waffling now. Your statement is Black and White. Answer in the same fashion. Yes or No to each.
Rich also said: Just in case you don't know, this is the way it works (and should) in hurricane areas:
A "Mandatory" evac simply means that you relinquish all expectation of rescue if you refuse to evacuate. Quite simple, really. You CHOOSE to handle your affairs, rather than ceding them to .gov.
So, then. what on earth would it matter what LEGAL possessions you choose to keep during your time of personal independence? And, what on earth would it matter to the Cops what a little old lady who HAD survived still possesses?????
[Professional Philosopher mode ON]
If I might, let me advance the question as a decision point:
i.e., "If one starts with the assumption that one possesses inalienable rights, there must, logically, be
some point at which the actions of the government, or of government agents, become so extreme that it becomes morally (though obviously not legally) acceptable to start shooting cops / Nat’l Guard / ATF / etc., etc. If there is
no such point at which your actions are morally justified, then the 'rights' that you imagine yourself to have
utterly do not exist."
The problem is this: If you aren’t willing to start shooting when armed agents of the government show up on your own private property, in the middle of a life-threatening situation, with guns drawn and pointed, demanding that you, a law-abiding citizen, surrender your lawfully-acquired, lawfully-possessed, means of self-defense, which (from an omniscient viewpoint) they have no intention of ever returning, and no right to confiscate (even from a legal viewpoint, based on subsequent court challenges)...
...Then I would advance the proposition
that you have already made the decision that you will never, at any time, resist any government’s assertion that you possess no rights whatsoever that the government does not choose to grant you at any given time.
It is instructive to note that the British soldiers at Lexington and Concorde were: (A) following completely legitimate and lawful government orders to; (B) locate and seize
not ordinary hand weapons (rifles and muskets) but
cannon and other devices "of no other use but to wage war against large numbers of troops". The Americans colonials who resisted had
no legal or lawful authority to do so whatsoever, and were, by contemporary definition, "domestic terrorists". Which is proper headline in history: "The shot heard ‘round the world" or “Domestic terrorists ambush and attempt to murder National Guardsmen”?
To point out the difficulty of the question, while I am
in no way whatsoever suggesting that the police / national guard in New Orleans were acting in the manner of Nazi’s, it is also instructive to note that, historically, the Jews in Germany faced the exact same decision point: Confiscation of their firearms by lawful process, by lawful agents of the government. It is typically considered that the Jews surrendered their weapons peacefully because they felt that it was a much more prudent course to follow legal recourse through the courts and complaints to the government, than it was to begin an armed insurrection. The fact that this ultimately did not turn out particularly well for them, highlights the difficulty of the decision point.
In the span of the 20th Century, approximately 200 million people made the wrong decision at this particular decision point: 200 million is the number of unarmed civilians murdered by their own governments during the 20th century. Again, I must emphasize that I am
not comparing those governments to the state or federal governments of the United States – but it sobering to note that it is a quite-rational assumption to assume that very few of the 200 million dead people believed that
their own governments were planning on murdering them or letting them be killed at the time they surrendered their means of self-defense, else why would they have complied? If one knew ahead of time that someone fully intended to kill you, it would only be logical to at least fight back: One does not become more dead by resisting.
One ought, perhaps, to consider carefully the bit of folk-wisdom spoken by "V" in the film "V for Vendetta", that,
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." It is hardly different from Jefferson’s truculent observation that,
"the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants."
Neither are particularly "prudent" pieces of advice regarding the superior nature of court action versus physical action, but both contain a germ of wisdom that is fast-becoming forgotten: A government, (or the persons thereof,) that sincerely and realistically believes that they may pay with their lives for exceeding the rightful authority of their positions, very rarely attempts to usurp such authority. A government, (or the persons thereof,) that is positive that it will never suffer such opposition has, ultimately, very little incentive to remain within the limits of its rightful authority.
[Professional Philosopher mode OFF]
Dex
