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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
The second part isn't supposed to be diffrent from America. The point is, that a army of conscripts can also be used against it's own citizenry.
What has conscription to do with good education? The army doesn't teach respect for others. It teaches obedience to power and hierarchical thinking. It's all about forgetting to think for yourself.
That's honestly more the fault of aggressive propaganda campaigns by the government and violent suppression of millions of peoples voices than anything inherent in in the concept of American tradition. Certainly, many of the those socialists and anarchists thought they were following the real American tradition, even if they were ignored.
Of course the real issue was always the middle class, throughout history they were always eager to suppress dissenting voices because they identify strongly with the top brass, even if in reality they're hated.
edited 28th Mar '16 9:43:07 AM by CassidyTheDevil
To say that U.S. culture is monolithic on either extreme is a serious mistake. The melting pot metaphor is apt, but it misses certain truths, such as that some of the things being melted together are fundamentally immiscible and/or antagonistic towards one another, and we have yet to work out a way to reconcile them.
As a very, very incomplete list, we have:
- Frontier-minded folks who want everything and everybody to get out of their business.
- Puritanical religions who want to eschew everything modern and retain ancient social mores.
- Anti-science know-nothings who believe in the divine bliss of ignorance.
- Evangelicals who believe that they must spread their religious faith to all and sundry lest they go straight to Hell.
- Segregationists: people who believe that it's entirely fine for one race to own another race or, barring that, keep them separated.
- Minarchist Libertarians.
- Free-market advocates who ignore the role of government in regulating the market.
- Capitalists who are only too happy to use government to help them get monopoly power.
- Mercantilists.
- Federalists who believe in a strong central government.
- Miseans who reject any government role in regulating currency.
- Social Democrats who think that government can play an active role in keeping society working smoothly.
- Democratic Socialists who believe in the government's ability to control market excesses and redistribute wealth.
- Socialists who believe in government control of industry.
- Fascists who believe in state-enforced racial purity and economic control.
- Anarchists who believe in the fundamental illegitimacy of government.
I'm sure there are many, many more.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"You're taught to be property. In a military context people are pieces of equipment like any other and are treated and deployed as such.
What has conscription to do with good education? The army doesn't teach respect for others. It teaches obedience to power and hierarchical thinking. It's all about forgetting to think for yourself.
I said to shame people who reject civic duty to your fellows in the nation. Civic duty includes education, which should include the populace knowing how to defend themselves. A population without that's not taught how to have a voice, how to participate, how to defend themselves, is a nation of submissives, the kind where people are completely reliant on bureaucrats to stop crime, the kind where they learn to submit in the schools rather than actually learn.
I suppose, military training was a bad way of putting it, what I actually meant for how to use a gun and such.
Susan Collins is a relic of the New England Republicans and Mark Kirk is trying to get another term in ink-blue Illinois so I can see why they would bail there. Dunno about why Moran is thawing, Kansas is blood red and while its State government is busy running it into the ground the last time a Democrat was elected to the Senate from there was 1932.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman"I suppose, military training was a bad way of putting it, what I actually meant for how to use a gun and such."
Fuck no, and give random drooling lumps the training to form right-wing militias? To form left-wing militias? Jesus Christ, do you want to turn the country into even more of a charnel house? When you start handing out guns to the unwashed masses and training them, both at once, you give them an incentive to shut off their brains and their hearts, and turn them into gangs.
edited 28th Mar '16 10:09:54 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Government "for the people, by the people" necessarily means a strong civil society, not one where people rely on bureaucrats. It's all well and good to support a police force, but bureaucrats separated from the people as opposed to directly integrated with civil society will always be abusive.
@Blue Ninja 0: I live in Israel, not the States.
@Le Garcon: Governments are formed from individuals and in the end the cop busting the speeder, the guy telling you to pay your taxes or the soldier going to war are individuals too.
edited 28th Mar '16 10:09:58 AM by desdendelle
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home.![]()
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There's no one more abusive towards the American people than other American people. I would sooner trust a cop miles away with a gun than my neighbor. I feel more comfort in the impersonal nature of institutions. I would seriously worry if people I knew were suddenly arming, and given a more violent avenue for their grudges and frustrations than mere words,
edited 28th Mar '16 10:13:34 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."I'm not advocating force. I'm advocating accountability and direct participation.
A cop is no less or more a person than your neighbor. Being a cop doesn't magically make a better person or a worse person.
"A cop is no less or more a person than your neighbor. Being a cop doesn't magically make a better person or a worse person."
A cop has less of a chance or knowing me, or me them. Violence, organized violence is fundamentally built on bad blood and personal conflict. I don't want to have to worry about the guy I argue with suddenly pulling out his piece and blowing my fucking brains out because he had a short fuse. Police are predictable, and their uniform is an announcement of position and intent, just as much as it is of authority (and, for that matter, the potential for its abuse). If you started arming everyone, who knows what random asshole might put a few rounds in you because he thought you looked at him funny, said something he disagreed with, were the wrong skin color...
edited 28th Mar '16 10:19:18 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."![]()
Arming yourself to enact political change in this day and age is pure and empty bravado. The people that generally do go on such a path are racists, ultraconservatives, or states' rights holdouts who arm for those reasons, rather than "government by or for the people" talking points. If you really think you're going to make the country honest by training a militia to shoot up federal agents, or threatening to do so, you're dreaming and your dream is a nightmare.
edited 28th Mar '16 10:28:05 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."I get not trusting fellow Americans, not the best and brightest, but it's a rather absolutist statement to say democracy inherently means most of the population must not know how to defend themselves, or else it's not democracy by definition.
And again, saying I want to shoot up the government and support rule by hillbillies.
edited 28th Mar '16 10:30:33 AM by CassidyTheDevil
You say "democracy," I say "mob rule," "lynchings," and "gang warfare." I don't need more crowds of angry white people arming to feel safer and that my government is more accountable. All it will do is make the citizenry more savage than they already are. It won't make the government more accountable, it will simply make every idiot on the street feel more empowered and entitled to brutalize people they don't like. Life would nasty, brutish, and short, and I normally hate aping Hobbes.
"And again, saying I want to shoot up the government and support rule by hillbillies."
Arming for the purpose of "making the government accountable" generally carries the implied threat that violence will be carried out if the people don't like the policies, even it is something like a black man becoming president, gays getting the right to marry, blacks not being under Jim Crow, etc. Therefore, such a policy would be a natural attractant for hillbillies, conspiracy theorists, militiamen, etc, who often have xenophobic or homophobic views in addition to their anti-government views.
edited 28th Mar '16 10:37:57 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."That sounds rather Elitist.
As for me, I don't have a view. My normal Police aren't even armed.
Keep Rolling On

Republican opposition to Garland is beginning to fragment.
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.