(05-16-2019, 06:16 PM)rde7 Wrote: Americans don't see tyranny as a loss, Americans see tyranny as a gain.
Nope. Almost everyone sees evil in Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, VD Amin, Satan Hussein, and the Kim dynasty.
Quote:Americans don't view losing their right to free speech, guns, religion, property, privacy, silence, trials, freedom from torture, and life as a loss because they will gain safety.
We are obviously safest when government must respect core freedoms. One has privacy rights unless one uses those for criminal purposes. Having threatened to commit suicide, I SHOULD NOT HAVE A FIREARM unless I can prove that it is for hunting. For defense against crime, a dog is a powerful deterrent against the usual criminal.
Quote:Americans think tyranny only punishes others and freedom never benefits them.
How wrong you are! Just think of the non-black people who supported the struggle for civil rights of Southern blacks. Sure, that was over fifty years ago, but that is in the same league as resisting George III or operating the Underground Railroad. I assure you that our history books for K-12 education have some wholesome models of resistance to even the mildest forms of tyranny.
Quote:Americans scream that they are resisting tyranny, but do you see any protests?
I have participated in anti-Trump rallies --including the first protest rally in which I had been in my life.
Quote:If Americans knew even a little history then they would realize that tyranny does not stop until everyone ends up in the concentration camps.
Or if tyranny is thwarted. People need to start with moderate forms of resistance such as interference in governmental misconduct.
Quote:Americans deserve everything coming to them.
Does "German Jews deserve everything coming to them", if uttered in 1934 you-know-where, make a strong moral argument today?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.