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I'm trying to give up ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
esrblog again: though he still manages the occasional interesting piece (like this one about GPS wire protocols, and some of his commentary on the Tom-Tom patent lawsuit), he's increasingly going off the deep end politically, and spending time in his headspace is getting increasingly unpleasant. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wormwood_pearl has extracted a promise from me to stop commenting there, and I've removed the feed from my LJ friends, but the blog (and the comments) still exert a train-wreck fascination, and I find myself back there more often than I'd like.
Anyway, in this thread, Eric makes the rather surprising claim
The mighty Wikipedia agrees with me on the military interventionism, but claims that neocons are in general less keen on free trade and abolition of the welfare state than other conservatives. However, the neutrality of that article is (unsurprisingly) disputed.
What does the term mean to all of you?
esrblog again: though he still manages the occasional interesting piece (like this one about GPS wire protocols, and some of his commentary on the Tom-Tom patent lawsuit), he's increasingly going off the deep end politically, and spending time in his headspace is getting increasingly unpleasant. wormwood_pearl has extracted a promise from me to stop commenting there, and I've removed the feed from my LJ friends, but the blog (and the comments) still exert a train-wreck fascination, and I find myself back there more often than I'd like.Anyway, in this thread, Eric makes the rather surprising claim
Can’t say you’re wrong [that he's a neoconservative], because as near as I can tell the term “neoconservative” is meaningless now. It used to mean something, referring to a pretty specific group of Jewish former leftists (Irving Kristol and John Podhoretz among them I think), but the left and the media morphed it into a content-free term of abuse. I wasn’t one of them.This surprises me, because to me "neoconservative" has a relatively specific meaning. My usage of the term may not be the standard one, of course: I'd describe myself as a liberal rather than a leftist, and I'm not an American. But to me, "neocon" either means specifically the group of right-wing American thinkers that grew out of the Project for the New American Century (Wolfowitz, etc) and their followers, or, more generally, someone who supports an avowedly interventionist and militarist US foreign policy in support of US interests. This tends to go along with, say, unquestioning support for Israel, an avowed belief in global free trade, an opposition to social welfare programmes, and denial of anthropogenic climate change, but those aren't essential: one could be a neocon and not a climate change denier, or vice versa. In general one can be a hate figure for the Left and not be a neocon, and many (most?) conservatives wouldn't be neocons under this definition.
The mighty Wikipedia agrees with me on the military interventionism, but claims that neocons are in general less keen on free trade and abolition of the welfare state than other conservatives. However, the neutrality of that article is (unsurprisingly) disputed.
What does the term mean to all of you?
While I'm a huge fan of the US Bill of Rights, I've never understood the point of the Second Amendment. Or rather, if civilian firearms are such an unanswerable, final guarantor of civil liberties, how do you explain the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretapping, and all the rest? Put more bluntly, where the hell is the rebellion? Your country needs you now, guys. I'm starting to think that guns are actually a political opiate - or worse, they're like Mark Renton's electric heater, which he leaves turned off so he can kid himself that he could use it if things got really bad, even though he knows in his heart of hearts that it won't make a blind bit of difference.
Let's think about that a bit more. Suppose the US government went into full-on tyranny mode, and an armed resistance became apparent. I can think of three scenarios:
There have in fact been several widespread armed uprisings against US Government Rule: the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791, for instance. They're all notable for having failed. Yes, the American War of Independence could be advanced as a counterexample, but (as I understand things) you couldn't have done it without substantial military support from France and Spain.
In an odd way, this should actually be an advantage for British civil liberties activists over their American counterparts. Since we have no guns for dealing with the worst-case scenario, we have to make damn sure that things don't get that bad in the first place. I just hope we're not already too late...
Edit: a warm welcome to those over frombronxelf_ag001's LJ. Despite the provocative title (and the "flamebait" tag), I'm not really up for a shouting match; instead, I'd really appreciate it if you could help me to come to a greater understanding here. Specifically:
Let's think about that a bit more. Suppose the US government went into full-on tyranny mode, and an armed resistance became apparent. I can think of three scenarios:
- The Ruby Ridge scenario: You take up arms against your government. They respond with the full range of weapons at their disposal, up to and including air strikes and tanks. You die, having achieved nothing.
- The Gettysburg scenario: You persuade a substantial proportion of the nation and its armed forces to secede and take up arms against your government. The regime still commands substantial support, however. The resulting war takes years, costs hundreds of thousands of lives, and lays waste to substantial portions of the country. You probably lose anyway.
- The Baghdad scenario: Having observed the fate of your neighbour from Scenario 1, you take up arms against your government covertly. The resulting insurgency takes years, costs thousands of lives, and results in the civil liberties situation getting substantially worse for the duration - nothing like a terrorist threat for building a police state. In the event that you win, your movement is almost certainly co-opted by the inevitable power-hungry nutjobs, and the Revolutionary Government swiftly becomes even worse than its predecessor.
There have in fact been several widespread armed uprisings against US Government Rule: the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791, for instance. They're all notable for having failed. Yes, the American War of Independence could be advanced as a counterexample, but (as I understand things) you couldn't have done it without substantial military support from France and Spain.
In an odd way, this should actually be an advantage for British civil liberties activists over their American counterparts. Since we have no guns for dealing with the worst-case scenario, we have to make damn sure that things don't get that bad in the first place. I just hope we're not already too late...
Edit: a warm welcome to those over from
bronxelf_ag001's LJ. Despite the provocative title (and the "flamebait" tag), I'm not really up for a shouting match; instead, I'd really appreciate it if you could help me to come to a greater understanding here. Specifically:- Are there any other rationales for the Second Amendment that make more sense?
- Can the "backstop against tyranny" argument be resurrected?
- Is it widely believed among Second Amendment advocates?
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