Quote of the day—alcibiades_mystery

It will be a multigenerational fight, but we will prevail.

We need to make the gunners irrelevant. Long view, long fight. Challenge everything in the long view. Harass them mercilessly in the short term. We need an ACT UP, sitting in at the gun manufacturers, shaming their spokespeople in public. And absolute frontal attack on all of gun culture beginning now and not ending until their paltry and pathetic arguments have been obliterated.

alcibiades_mystery
December 16, 2012
Comment to Obama is not going to take your guns away. We are.
[I also take a long view on this. Someday I hope this will be used as evidence in his trial.—Joe]

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19 thoughts on “Quote of the day—alcibiades_mystery

  1. It’s from DU. Leftist projection and unrestrained fantasy, fueled by massive ignorance, is the norm.

    • It certainly won’t end well for them if they try at my place, or that of any of my friends and associates.
      In fact, I strongly suspect it will end badly for them no matter where they try.
      Advance notice would be nice so I could make some popcorn to snack on as I watch the festivities.

  2. I first time I heard this kind of talk was back in Junior high school when we were studying W.W. II.

    (It’s baaaaaack)

  3. I can’t see a point to do what alcibiades_mystery describes.

    Did everyone catch this story? http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/01/26/3895027/big-pine-key-homeowner-has-gun.html

    Now this is fantastic! We need to encourage everyone in Florida to put a gun range with a tiny backstop in their yard! We need gunnies who will shoot outside their homes from dawn until midnight every single day of the week! Unsafe? Noisy? Well, maybe — but that’s the point.

    This is the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle method of changing minds — and it could work!

    • Lame troll is lame. We got your point long, long ago — you’re a bigot.

  4. What makes you think that a broad application of conspiracy to infringe the rights of others won’t come back to bite you?  I think our fundamental problem are those that think the Constitution means whatever they want it to mean without any consideration of the actual text. They aren’t interested in a modest exercise of power.

    They’ll just call your advocating for an explicit Constitutional right (which they’ll argue doesn’t exist) as a conspiracy to violate their rights (their right to have a world free of violence, their right to have people unarmed or their right to not have their feelings hurt just because they don’t know what a shoulder thing that goes up is called) because of Constitutional penumbras and emanations (which they’ll argue are the most important rights). They live for criminalizing thoughtcrime and a government powerful enough to enforce it. As tempting as it might be, I’d rather see them flail, be broadly marginalized and be shunned as totalitarians because the overwhelming mass of people oppose them. That will be more difficult than trying to create an institutional bulwark against them but I think is better in the long run.  

    Will they hesitate to use this post as evidence that you are conspiring to infringe their right to engage in political speech?

    • Incitement to riot is not considered political speech. Harassment of people entering an abortion clinic is not considered free speech. Advocating and conspiring to harass people exercising any other specific enumerated right should also be considered unprotected “free speech”.

      But these people are frequently incapable of following the logic train above even when you give them a free ticket and help them get on the train. And many others simply don’t care what the law is and will do whatever they think they can get away with.

      My goal is to let them know that they may not be able to get away with as much as they think they can. And that someday they may pay a price for their crimes.

      • “Incitement to riot is not considered political speech.”

        Unless you’re Al Sharpton.

      • alcibiades_mystery mentioned harass, sit ins, shaming in public. Are there not already some legal remedies like harassment, trespass, stalking, disturbing the peace, etc? I like that the Brandenburg test for incitement (intent, imminence, and likelihood) means that I can say that some people deserve to be hung from a lamppost. I want speech, like my other rights, to be as expansive as possible.

        You want to “let them know that they may not be able to get away with as much as they think they can” so you want to do something. Understandable, but it seems a little utopianist. Sure, we can’t trust them not to pervert the law or the Constitution but THIS law is the one that they won’t try to manipulate to their own ends.

        I ask again : What makes you think that a broad application of conspiracy to infringe the rights of others won’t come back to bite you?

        Conspiracy to infringe the rights of others isn’t something I oppose entirely; but I have serious concerns as to how it could be abused.

        We’re better off in the long run by convincing people that ours is the right side than trying to stop people or cow people from disagreeing. If someone says “the people really means the states, militia really means something other than the body politic, and arms really means nothing” then I think the ideal response is everyone else pointing and laughing.

      • Advocating and conspiring to harass people exercising any other specific enumerated right should also be considered unprotected “free speech”

        Imagine an abolitionist in 1850 who opposed slavery and the fugitive slave act. Pre-Osawatomie John Brown (ie before he started murdering people) spoke out against the property rights of slaveowners, he published an abolitionist newspaper, and his League of Gileadites was formed to resist slave catchers with force. How do you introduce a legislative end of slavery without conspiring to infringe the property rights of slaveowners?

        • Good question.

          I know this isn’t a comprehensive or satisfactory answer but the Second Amendment is more universal and definitive protection of the right to keep and bear arms than was whatever right existed and was constitutionally protected to regard another human as property.

          But, as I expect you and/or others will point out, possession of slaves was, essentially, a natural right for all of human history.

          • Slave ownership may have been considered a right by some, but that doesn’t make it a right. In a way you’re talking pure democracy there, where majority or tradition trumps all else including the most basic of human rights.

            Since there can be no “right to violate rights” there can be no “natural right” to slavery.

            I guess it comes down to whether or not you believe in an objective reality or truth that exists seperate from our thoughts or our culture. It’s pretty hard to convince someone through argument, one way or the other, and so it usually comes to a series that goes like this; bribery of some form (you’ll be better off if you go along with me) followed by intimidation, threats and then blows in the end.

          • I’m going to play devils advocate here.

            Many or perhaps most of the slave holders did not consider their slaves to be fully human. They were not much more than higher functioning apes. If you can own cows, sheep, and monkeys, why not an advanced monkey?

            Where, why, and how do you draw the line?

        • Well, for starters, they AMENDED THE CONSTITUTION to prohibit slavery. Otherwise, the federal governwent had no authority to prevent the individual states from authorizing slavery. (The Missouri Compromise was a _political_ compromise, not a law.)

          And, slavery only had any Constitutional protections until 1808 (Article I, Section 9 enumerated the power of individual states “such persons” – including slaves – as they wished. . . but more importantly, Article V governing amendments specifically prohibited even amending the Constitution to affect that protection until 1808.) Nor was this much of an enumerated “right” to own slaves. After 1808, Congress (or the states) were free to propose amendments to outlaw slavery. Likewise, each state was free to outlaw slavery within their own borders at ANY time, including prior to 1808.

          This is a VERY different situation compared to dealing with an enumerated right to keep and bear arms.

          • For a dissenting view on this, you REALLY should read “The Unconstitutionality of Slavery” by Lysander Spooner. That’s from 1845 — before the 13th Amendment. He makes a very compelling argument.
            (Then for something even more mind-bending, read his “An essay on the Trial by Jury”.)

  5. Any time you hear a judge or other lawyer type use the phrase “balancing” — when discussing, say, the “state’s interest in xyz” vs. the Nth amendment — you’re hearing someone who is either utterly clueless, or utterly contemptuous, of the Constitution.

    Unfortunately, most judges, and in particular most members of the US Supreme Court, fit this description.

    There IS no balancing in any of the words of the Constitution, and in particular in any of the words of the Bill of Rights. “Shall not be infringed” does not mean “may be infringed if I can think of some reason why the mythical interests of the ‘state’ should trump this right”.

    It would be a good thing if any judge who utters those words were immediately impeached on the grounds of perjury, and removed from office, and sent to jail for a few years.

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