People who annoy you need to be your allies! :)

[Morel42]

From http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-...-respect-yours :

In the comments to yesterday's jury nullification piece (yes, I read your comments) Smitty was especially on-point when he said, "The real problem might be toleration, or more accurately, the lack of it. We wish our preferred freedoms to be respected, while applauding governmental crackdowns upon those freedoms we dislike or are indifferent to." Frankly that's been an ongoing hurdle in the effort to preserve and extend liberty. Until pot-smokers and gun owners and low-taxers and sexual minorities recognize that liberty is indivisible and that we're all in this together, we're going to be picked off piecemeal by government officials all too happy to exploit our mutual antagonisms.

After World War II, Pastor Martin Niemöller voiced several variants of the following sentiments in his public speeches:

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I was not a Jew.

When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

Along the same lines, Benjamin Franklin once commented, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

It comes down to the same thing: When liberty is under attack, everybody is at risk. But that's not what the politicians and inspectors and tax collectors and police officers say, of course. No, they're all too happy to tell you that the queers next door are a threat to your way of life, or that the gun nuts are a public danger, or that the tax dodgers are greedy and not doing their fair share, or the store keepers are running amuck without entangling red tape, or that the pot heads are lazy parasites who will corrupt your kids.

But once the politicians and inspectors and tax collectors and police officers are done with the queers, they'll happily shift their sights to the gun nuts, then to the tax dodgers, the store keepers, and then the pot heads, and ...

Where were you planning to hide? Forget about it. Because you're some kind of menace, too, and you'll be fresh out of allies if you don't realize that the freedom of people you don't care very much about is just as important as your own.

The sort of people who make up the political class -- the control freaks of the world -- are experts at divide and conquer. They have all sorts of reasons why you should be glad that somebody else is being hemmed in by laws and threatened with prison. Those people are bad -- until it's you who's so bad. What the control freaks will never tell you is that they'd be entirely unable to impose those draconian laws and threats if you'd ally yourselves with those different folks and their peculiar interests to protect their liberty and your own at the same time.

You don't care about your neighbor's gun collection and he doesn't give a damn about your pot farm? So what? If you help each other out, everybody wins. If you don't, you'll both end up losing something you want, or else hiding it in the shadows and hoping for the best.

Keep that in mind the next time a politician promises to protect you from bogeymen who look an awful lot like the pleasant couple who live down the street. Maybe it's time to knock on their door and talk about an alliance of convenience.

Because you're not going to stay free if the only liberty you care about is your own.


This is the writers blog : http://www.tuccille.com/blog/

ALOT of neat stuff and information.

[angus]

Aren't the communists the ones who made people disappear in the night? I always had a problem with the logic of that quote.

[GunLawyer001]

This assumes that everyone who wants to be "left alone" would leave you alone.

Having lived near drug abusers in the past, I can tell you that people who make themselves happy by tricking their brains into being happy, make really bad citizens, really bad drivers, really bad employees, and truly godawful neighbors. They focus inwards and ignore their basic obligations as people taking up space. If we gave up all drug regulations, expect a serious rise in highway deaths (yes, we already have a problem with drunks and cell phone abusers on the highway - is that a reason to add new problems?)

I have no real problem with recreational drug use in the home, by people who manage to hold down jobs and avoid driving under the influence and are not the primary caregivers of helpless children. I don't know that the DEA is busting in doors of anyone just for smoking a joint. But drive through any crack-infested neighborhood and see if you can spot any problems.

As for "sexual minorities", I believe that we're already at a point where society leaves them alone; the problem is that they don't return the favor. It's insane to demand that the Boy Scouts allow gay men to take young boys out into the woods, when we know for a fact that the small minority of pedophiles actively seek out jobs and positions of trust that give them access to their targets. We don't allow straight men to take Girl Scouts camping, even though most straight men aren't pedophiles. It's also out of line to demand that the planet's human population re-define "marriage" to mean something that it didn't mean for the last 50,000 years. I'm against criminalizing the loving of whoever or whatever loves you back (as long as they're competent adults), but don't make us call your sheep "Mrs. Jones". Draft reciprocal Wills, live together, push the beds together, whatever, but if you want society to leave you alone, stop getting in society's face.

The divisions between fringe groups and minorities are not all artificial, some of them matter. I'm not going to support an alliance between NFA owners and NAMBLA. I'm not going to pretend that Islam has nothing to do with the destruction of the World Trade Center, or that any suspicion of Muslims is pure prejudice.

[1861]

This assumes that everyone who wants to be "left alone" would leave you alone.

Having lived near drug abusers in the past, I can tell you that people who make themselves happy by tricking their brains into being happy, make really bad citizens, really bad drivers, really bad employees, and truly godawful neighbors. They focus inwards and ignore their basic obligations as people taking up space. If we gave up all drug regulations, expect a serious rise in highway deaths (yes, we already have a problem with drunks and cell phone abusers on the highway - is that a reason to add new problems?)

I have no real problem with recreational drug use in the home, by people who manage to hold down jobs and avoid driving under the influence and are not the primary caregivers of helpless children. I don't know that the DEA is busting in doors of anyone just for smoking a joint. But drive through any crack-infested neighborhood and see if you can spot any problems.

As for "sexual minorities", I believe that we're already at a point where society leaves them alone; the problem is that they don't return the favor. It's insane to demand that the Boy Scouts allow gay men to take young boys out into the woods, when we know for a fact that the small minority of pedophiles actively seek out jobs and positions of trust that give them access to their targets. We don't allow straight men to take Girl Scouts camping, even though most straight men aren't pedophiles. It's also out of line to demand that the planet's human population re-define "marriage" to mean something that it didn't mean for the last 50,000 years. I'm against criminalizing the loving of whoever or whatever loves you back (as long as they're competent adults), but don't make us call your sheep "Mrs. Jones". Draft reciprocal Wills, live together, push the beds together, whatever, but if you want society to leave you alone, stop getting in society's face.

The divisions between fringe groups and minorities are not all artificial, some of them matter. I'm not going to support an alliance between NFA owners and NAMBLA. I'm not going to pretend that Islam has nothing to do with the destruction of the World Trade Center, or that any suspicion of Muslims is pure prejudice.

REP to you , best post I've read in a while.

[Legion_Prime]

REP to you , best post I've read in a while.

Indeed! Both raise important points but the line does indeed need to be drawn somewhere.

[Siobhra]

"This assumes that everyone who wants to be "left alone" would leave you alone.

As for "sexual minorities", I believe that we're already at a point where society leaves them alone; the problem is that they don't return the favor."

Since when do you call it "leaving them alone" when you pass laws saying we must hide? We are not the ones with an interest in taking the sheep out of your bed. Your religion says we can't marry not reality. We do marry the same sex. In this state we have same-sex marriages.

If the state were to pass a law saying Jesus does not exist will he no longer exist? The law can say anything the larger group wants it to say. However it can not change reality. Men do marry men and women do marry women in this state and have done so ever since man has lived here. As for drafting reciprocal Wills it does not work. The courts will go over the will line for line looking for an 'I' that is not dotted or a T that is not crossed to invalidate the Will. Go into a hospital to visit your lover of 50 years or more and you can have all the power of attorney papers you want and you won't get in. We will have to look the papers over. We will get back to you in a year or so.

If you go into the hospital I can get in pretending to be your wife if I get there before her. Even if not married I can get into visit any man by claiming to be his future bride. The truth is we must call it marriage because you won't respect anything else. We would be happy calling it a 'handfasting' or 'bonding' or just about anything else if it got us the rights we should have for our rights. You are just like the Muslims and their woman. You respect minorities if they keep quiet and hide out of sight. When we did stay 'out of society's face' you would arrest us, send us to mental hospitals for electro-shocks, gang up to beet us and all sorts of barbaric other things.

The Muslims will beat a woman if her val slips or her sleeve rides up because she showed skin. And you and your kind will beat a Gay if he or she slips and gives away their Gay. That is the way it was when I was growing up. That is how I had to live. And in those days we did our best to stay out of society's face. You people sent your police into the Gay neighborhoods to raid the Gay bars. You people would put our pictures in the paper knowing it would cost us our jobs. You people would take our children away from us. We wanted to leave you alone but you backed us to the wall.

I had no interest in guns before I reached the point where I felt that I had to do something. If I had to live like that any longer I might as well be dead. I got my first gun to protect myself from the police. Your police. The ones your friends send out to harass Gays into moving out of the area.

[Eugene V. Debs]

This assumes that everyone who wants to be "left alone" would leave you alone.

Having lived near drug abusers in the past, I can tell you that people who make themselves happy by tricking their brains into being happy, make really bad citizens, really bad drivers, really bad employees, and truly godawful neighbors. They focus inwards and ignore their basic obligations as people taking up space. If we gave up all drug regulations, expect a serious rise in highway deaths (yes, we already have a problem with drunks and cell phone abusers on the highway - is that a reason to add new problems?)

I have no real problem with recreational drug use in the home, by people who manage to hold down jobs and avoid driving under the influence and are not the primary caregivers of helpless children. I don't know that the DEA is busting in doors of anyone just for smoking a joint. But drive through any crack-infested neighborhood and see if you can spot any problems.

Problem is our current drug policy is not working and yet we just keep doing more of the same. I really think we need to start down the road of decriminalization if not all-out legalization, but that's hardly the only thing we need to do to "fix" (read: ameliorate) the drug problem. The War on Drugs has drained our national resources, led to the highest incarceration rate in the world, and, arguably increased consumption of certain drugs. In any event, an unjust law is an unjust law and should be repealed. I do not believe the government has any legitimate end beyond stopping people from violating another's rights.

Sadly, however, our society has become so atomized that the state has become surrogate to the community structures (churches, extended families, etc.) that used to self-regulate drug abuse and other negative behavior. However, the current gun laws are definitely NOT helping. That bein said, the good old days weren't always good and we should avoid the trap of believing in a mythical "golden age"-- there has always been drug abuse and crime-- it's just that back in the day, prior to Prohibition, we didn't feel the need to lock so many people up for that shit, nor turn our police forces into military units fighting a war of morality. Really, how different is the DEA from Saudi Arabia's "Committee to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice"?

As for "sexual minorities", I believe that we're already at a point where society leaves them alone; the problem is that they don't return the favor. It's insane to demand that the Boy Scouts allow gay men to take young boys out into the woods, when we know for a fact that the small minority of pedophiles actively seek out jobs and positions of trust that give them access to their targets. We don't allow straight men to take Girl Scouts camping, even though most straight men aren't pedophiles. It's also out of line to demand that the planet's human population re-define "marriage" to mean something that it didn't mean for the last 50,000 years. I'm against criminalizing the loving of whoever or whatever loves you back (as long as they're competent adults), but don't make us call your sheep "Mrs. Jones". Draft reciprocal Wills, live together, push the beds together, whatever, but if you want society to leave you alone, stop getting in society's face.

First off, in most states it is still legal for an employer to discriminate against someone due to sexual orientation (as I'm sure you know) and it does happen, so let's not pretend that anti-gay discrimination is ancient history.

Second, the battle over gay marriage is not about demanding society "redefine" marriage, it's simply about the state granting the same civil rights and privileges to gay unions as to straight unions. If the state didn't give these legal rights and privileges to married couples, then there would not be an issue. I don't expect the Catholic church to recognize gay marriages, nor do I expect my next-door neighbor to, fuck, one of my housemates is a relatively conservative Christian and I could care less what he thinks about it, but I fully expect the government will recognize these unions with respect to taxes, inheritance, etc.-- otherwise it's state-imposed discrimination against gay people.

[unloved]

"This assumes that everyone who wants to be "left alone" would leave you alone.

As for "sexual minorities", I believe that we're already at a point where society leaves them alone; the problem is that they don't return the favor."

Since when do you call it "leaving them alone" when you pass laws saying we must hide? We are not the ones with an interest in taking the sheep out of your bed. Your religion says we can't marry not reality. We do marry the same sex. In this state we have same-sex marriages.

If the state were to pass a law saying Jesus does not exist will he no longer exist? The law can say anything the larger group wants it to say. However it can not change reality. Men do marry men and women do marry women in this state and have done so ever since man has lived here. As for drafting reciprocal Wills it does not work. The courts will go over the will line for line looking for an 'I' that is not dotted or a T that is not crossed to invalidate the Will. Go into a hospital to visit your lover of 50 years or more and you can have all the power of attorney papers you want and you won't get in. We will have to look the papers over. We will get back to you in a year or so.

If you go into the hospital I can get in pretending to be your wife if I get there before her. Even if not married I can get into visit any man by claiming to be his future bride. The truth is we must call it marriage because you won't respect anything else. We would be happy calling it a 'handfasting' or 'bonding' or just about anything else if it got us the rights we should have for our rights. You are just like the Muslims and their woman. You respect minorities if they keep quiet and hide out of sight. When we did stay 'out of society's face' you would arrest us, send us to mental hospitals for electro-shocks, gang up to beet us and all sorts of barbaric other things.

The Muslims will beat a woman if her val slips or her sleeve rides up because she showed skin. And you and your kind will beat a Gay if he or she slips and gives away their Gay. That is the way it was when I was growing up. That is how I had to live. And in those days we did our best to stay out of society's face. You people sent your police into the Gay neighborhoods to raid the Gay bars. You people would put our pictures in the paper knowing it would cost us our jobs. You people would take our children away from us. We wanted to leave you alone but you backed us to the wall.

I had no interest in guns before I reached the point where I felt that I had to do something. If I had to live like that any longer I might as well be dead. I got my first gun to protect myself from the police. Your police. The ones your friends send out to harass Gays into moving out of the area.

I would like to apologize on behalf of straight people(although I know many won't agree) for any mistreatment you've ever suffered.

[Eugene V. Debs]

Aren't the communists the ones who made people disappear in the night? I always had a problem with the logic of that quote.

Point is that when the state starts rounding up members of an opposition political party (no matter how objectionable that organization may be) and sending them to concentration camps, it's time to start worrying. They will normally start with the most radical opposition groups, but that doesn't, by any means, guarantee that's where they'll end.

[GunLawyer001]

......
The Muslims will beat a woman if her val slips or her sleeve rides up because she showed skin. And you and your kind will beat a Gay if he or she slips and gives away their Gay. That is the way it was when I was growing up. That is how I had to live. And in those days we did our best to stay out of society's face. You people sent your police into the Gay neighborhoods to raid the Gay bars. You people would put our pictures in the paper knowing it would cost us our jobs. You people would take our children away from us. We wanted to leave you alone but you backed us to the wall.

I had no interest in guns before I reached the point where I felt that I had to do something. If I had to live like that any longer I might as well be dead. I got my first gun to protect myself from the police. Your police. The ones your friends send out to harass Gays into moving out of the area.

Sheev, you know better than to lump all straights into one big vindictive Klan. I know you do. If the police were "my" police, we'd be having some serious retraining going on.

There's a huge difference between the current demands that everybody actively approve and rejoice in the alternative lifestyles, and the old demand to be accorded basic human rights. We can decline to redefine "marriage," without sending the cops out to beat and intimidate anyone with a lisp or a flair for fashion. Same as we can refuse to set aside 11% of all executive jobs for blacks regardless of qualification, without re-instituting Jim Crow and slavery. The choice is not between fawning over a group or oppressing them, there's a middle ground of not pulling evil crap against them.

As a gun owner, I'm at risk of illegal discrimination every day, from unlawful searches to awkwardness in the courthouse.
I demand that the government abstains from oppressing me. But I'm not going to demand that everybody accept MY spin on firearms ownership, that the government pass new laws requiring private landowners to let me carry in their churches or gyms or homes, or that some percentage of jobs be set aside for gun owners, or that Medicare redefines "medical appliance" to include shotguns, or that nobody says anything negative about guns or gun owners because that's "hate speech". Just leave me alone, that's plenty, you don't need to alter your society and language to suit my desires.