Running commentary as I read:
I love how
Anyone who pretends that the Second Amendment is clear is being intellectually dishonest. If it was meant to guarantee individual ownership what is the militia doing in there? Yet if it is supposed
to be about militias why is it among the amendments devoted to individual rights? If one of my students wrote something so muddy they would have to do a mandatory rewrite.
That bit of idiocy is right on the first page. He willfully ignores the historical meaning of "militia"(a thoroughly elementary bit of the 2A debate), and you're paying him to teach your kids. Seems to be a history or writing teacher, too. Blech.
I'd love to listen in on a discussion about when the Second Amendment became irrelevant, and why. I doubt very much any one of the fools would argue that the First Amendment is irrelevant, or the fifth.
Same guy later:
I would disagree with any characterization of many of the Founders as libertarian. Certainly the subset who drafted the Constitution were cautious centralizers. They were after all trying to replace the looser and more libertarian Articles of Confederation, which had given too much power to the rabble.
Doesn't seem to realize that farthest loony-lefties of the eighteenth century would be fairly in line with today's "centrists", and certainly doesn't see that "the rabble" these days IS THE GOVERNMENT.
That frogfactory personage seems just not to want to bother with borders, laws, or nations at all. Who needs any of that when the welfare states of Europe will pay you to breathe?
I'd bet she's a thoroughly miserable, terribly snarky person to be around.
What's with the aside about saying "unthinking patriotism" instead of "blind patriotism"? Seriously? What about unthinking people? Won't they be insulted?
In this moment of time on the world stage, Europe is enjoying a particularly progressive renaissance relative to the United States
Dude, Europe is ON FIRE! Can't he smell the smoke? Progressivism is burying Europe in its own excrement.
The "defend to the death" saying, regarding freedom of speech, has got to be one of my least-liked clichés. It also often comes from those who would, for instance, prefer me not to practice religion within a hundred yards of them.
I'd love to scrap the Second Amendment all together...I'd like to live in a country that doesn't have such a violent law.
Wow.
Where do these people get the idea that some sizable chunk of the American population wants to make the country into a Christian theocracy? Why is Palin the associated politician?
This guy's post started out pretty good, then:
That said, I still disagree that handgun bans constitute an unreasonable infringement on the right to bear arms, EVEN IF we accept Scalia's argument that it is an individual right.
This makes no sense at all.
So a lot of the insistence on the right to arm bears, to me, has the cast of little boys playing war to the faint marital sounds of "Yankee Doodle" in the background
"Faint marital sounds" made me giggle like the pervert I am.
I'm very surprised that a bunch of(assumably) teachers failed to catch it.
I like how t_r_b responds to green_mountain_boy's perfectly good argument with what I'd call an ad-hominem about his state's suicide rate. In the same post, he says "guns don't create crime. They don't prevent it either. They just make it more deadly", which seems not to mesh with England's general stabbiness.
"The gun at my side means I cannot be forced, only persuaded."
Yeah. By more people with more guns. And then we live in Might Makes Right Land.
It's a very silly line of argument.
It's not silly at all. The idea is that an argument is based on persuasion until force is used. If "it" comes down to guns, someone will end up dead or badly hurt. The intended victim may have been forced into violent conflict, but he/she hasn't been forced to comply with his attacker's wishes. The statement is poorly worded, but not silly. The responder, post_functional(who seems to be a tool), suggests that the statement refers to debates over pizza toppings, or perhaps elections. I'd say that's, to use a favorite phrase of The Left, "intellectually dishonest".
In closing: what a bunch of buttholes. These people make me want to buy a houseful of schoolbooks(the history ones written 50+ years ago, please) with which to educate my children, and a truckload of ammo.
