Posted 19 December 2012 - 04:02 AM
*sigh*
This is why all my psycho "religiously conservative" relatives think I'm somewhere to the left of Che Guavera and all my liberal friends think I like reading Mein Kampf and Stormfront.
The 2nd amendment to the constitution of the United States exists. That is inarguable. Right, wrong, left, right, Utopia, Dystopia, "the timeline is unimportant", Russell's Teapot and Invisible Pink Unicorns. All irrelevant. IT EXISTS.
The constitution contains a process by which amendments can be used to change it. Fact.
My country has within it numerous groups, associations, individuals, corporations, scholars, nutbags, Nobel scientists, nose picking yahoos, fakirs, shaman, and Sean Penn. Fact.
All of those are actively hostile towards the parts of the constitution that they don't like. Fact.
So. My defense of what should be the indefensible:
The Bill of Rights is a monoblock. The process is "ludicrous" as Silencer put it, but the fact remains that there is an amendment process in place. If enough citizens decide that something should be changed, it can be changed. The mere existence of a Bill of Rights was argued strenuously before the Constitution was ever ratified. Alexander Hamilton argued that amendments guaranteeing rights were not needed because there was nothing in the constitution that allowed the government to restrict those rights. He further stated that a bill of rights would eventually turn the constitution from a document that was 'this is all the government is allowed to do' into one that "government is allowed to do anything except these'. He was absolutely correct. But James Madison and others forced a bill of rights into the document by demanding that these specific rights should always be protected explicitly because eventually somebody would say "the constitution doesn't say we can't do this so we're going to do it". And they were unequivocally correct.
Legislative, judicial, or executive decisions and actions that chip into a particular piece of that monoblock can be used, WILL be used, by others to chip away at the sections they don't like. I have to defend against such actions on the basis, not of what I think should be or should not be, but on the basis that a civil right that I don't like MUST BE protected so that others cannot attack the civil rights that I do like.
The US Constitution is 223 years old. It is not holy writ. It is not perfect. The list of things it is not is nearly endless. But it is law. And it was written and ratified by people who thought that law should be applied to all people. (Yes, many if not most of those people had a horrible moral view of who was human and who was not. And the "judge them by their own standards and time" argument is facetious on its face: there were many contemporary voices who vociferously challenged that definition of "human".)
Those of you outside the US who have stated that our constitution pales in comparison with the constitutions of other industrialized countries and that "we should just change the damn thing" need to be aware that the last serious attempt at amendment was rejected. And it simply stated that women were equal to men. The chances of peacefully passing any amendments in the current environment are effectively zero. This is not new. Despite the millions of people over the years who claim to revere it, 2% of the population left the country before it was even ratified. Another 2% died in a disastrous civil war. 2% of the population would be 6 million people today.
I abhor the crimes committed under its existence; crimes too numerous to list. The direct genocide of millions of people and destruction of entire cultures championed by men who said the way to peace was "the only good Indian is a dead Indian". The millions more dead and destroyed by the concept that owning another human being was right, proper, and moral. But it has outlasted those men. It has withstood the Draft Riots, the Palmer Raids, McCarthyism, Jim Crowe, Race Riots, Watergate, and several presidents "who would be king". I loathe the idea that it might not stand against the fear, obfuscation, uncertainty, and doubt flamed into full fire by 19 people willing to kill for god. For there are multitudes in this country who would be happy to do the same for their god.
I find that as I get older, I get less and less tolerant of stupidity. Of people who simply can not or, worse, will not see facts. Prohibition does not work. It does not work. It. Does. Not. Work. But there are millions of people in this country who fervently believe that it will work for the things they don't like. If we would "just take back our country". If we would just follow the social sciences. If we would just let them tell us what to do, how to live, how to think. The Bill of Rights is the only thing that stands between me and those "right thinking" people. I ethically cannot let those people win. I morally will not let those people win.
The reality is that children die. Steven Erikson's best lines in his millions of words are "That's a succinct summary of humankind, I'd say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words."
Children die because some people think that praying cures pneumonia. Children die because some people think that widely accessible military type rifles are their right. Children die because some people think that health care is wasted on people who can't afford it. Children die because far too many people in this country put a piece of paper before facts. But that piece of paper is often times what has stood between children and the demagogues, the saviors, the planners.
I defend the indefensible because as we grow, as we mature, and, bluntly, as we die off, things can get better.
Things have gotten better. Children die less often now than 50 years ago. Children died less then than 50 years prior to that. The Bill of Rights is, in my evidently not so humble opinion, the best chance our country has to continue that trend. Because it is law. And, for now, that law applies to everyone.
Things can get worse. Machiavelli told us what Princes do. Hobbes told us that Princes are not instituted by god. Locke told us that Princes have only the power that we give them. Rousseau told us that we don't need Princes. The American revolution promised an end to the authority of Princes. France's revolution showed us that that the crowd could be worse than the Princes. Marx and Engels told us we could have a world without Princes. Nero, Torquemada, and Calvin had shown us a little bit of what Princes without limits could do. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot showed us Princes with no limits and technology. They opened wide the the gates of hell.
There is no doubt in my mind that a determined 6 million people, any given 2% of my fellow citizens, would happily kill children to give us back a Prince; so long as he was their prince. And despite what so many people think, guns are not what holds those people from pushing us through the gates in the attempt to impose their prince. It is that monoblock piece of paper. Someday enough people will decide that "enough is enough". Then, with arguments bitter and rancorous, with fights at the dinner table, with uncountable letters to the editor, they will peacefully amend that piece of paper.
Children will still die by violence Children will still die by guns. But they will die in lower numbers. And my country will be a tiny bit better.
That is my defense of the indefensible.
Now I shall go back to the mafia thread and, if still alive, I will do my damnedest to lynch somebody.
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." - Viktor Frankl
Help
Shinrei, on 18 December 2012 - 10:35 PM, said:
