(11-30-2018, 10:49 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(11-30-2018, 03:18 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: No I am not dogmatic, to the extent that I am willing to compromise with rural people and settle for what I can get regarding gun laws. The right-wing is dogmatic and ruthless on this issue, and on EVERY issue. They insist that urban people MUST have the permissive gun laws that suit rural culture, and are total slaves to the NRA. The Left is mostly not as dogmatic and uncompromising, although some of the Bernie vs. Hillary people have become more so. That's just the political landscape of our time.
So, no, none of what you say is true. Same advice applies to you, I'm afraid. Yes, I am very liberal and set in a lot of my views, but like Obama said, I don't have to demand perfection, I can settle for better. The Parkland students recommend what I recommend, so I am not more dogmatic or fanatical than they when it comes to AR-15s. To insist that weapons of war be taken off our streets does not make me fanatical or dogmatic, even if I don't agree with your constitutional reasoning.
All people on the internet tend to be stubborn in their views; I am not more so than others. So insulting people who have different views is not necessarily warranted, Bob.
Eric, are you familiar with the old American adage/ golden rule of "to each their own". I assume that you're not or you don't place enough value on it to recognize it or protect it. Eric, you have to be careful because a serious run in with someone like me would not be favorable to someone like you. As I've mentioned before, I will watch as you're being beaten to death and not lift a finger or squeeze a trigger despite having a weapon with the capability and the skill to use it effectively for the purpose of your defense as well as my own. Do idiot blues deserve to live? Do idiot blues deserve risking lives to save? I don't think so. However, I'm sure that there are many blue who would disagree with me and my view of blues like yourself. Healthcare cost won the House and you're still stuck on gun control.
Just a reminder:
Greetings from KZ-Lager Buchenwald! Jedem das Seine -- German for "to each his own", and in Nazi doublespeak, unspeakable horror to anyone deemed a pariah for his ethical values, disability, or 'race'. Nazi antisemitism was nearly-pure racism.
If someone does something inexplicably and inexcusably horrible to others, then that person does not want me as a witness. The sort of social order that does such things usually does not have legitimate authorities to which I might turn, but if revolution is not a viable solution I might have to bide my time until the system implodes or another political order overthrows the one in charge and exacts an accounting. Criminality deserves no loyalty, and anyone who tries to use patriotism as a cover for a horrible crime transforms national loyalty into something sick.
Had I witnessed such a horror as Saddam Hussein's forces gassing the Kurds I would have been ready to testify to such a crime to anyone who overthrew the regime, including Iran or the Soviet Union (then the Soviet Union was an aggressive political order intent on spreading its dominion into places where such was unwelcome), Israel (with an even more reviled image in the Arab and Islamic world than the Soviet Union), or NATO. I would as gladly have offered my testimony to the KGB even if I despised Soviet Communism or to the (Israeli) Mossad if I despised Zionism. If anything I would be delighted to send some murderer to face the fate of Jeckeln in Soviet Latvia or Eichmann in Israel. A conscript who was told that if he didn't murder people that he and his family would be murdered if he did not comply? If he should implicate his superiors just to save himself from the gallows or a firing squad with some tearful testimony, then he should get that opportunity to save himself.
It would be grim pleasure to know that people who had done horrible things to people would end up dying because a rope stops their falls at seven feet or so in a macabre ceremony, but that that is a small price to pay by a perpetrator for killing dozens of people who had no chance.
Human life is precious unless it becomes a danger (putting others at risk of death and crippling injury) to others, which explains why civilized societies have courts of law to determine objective justice and prisons and even gallows to express what is objective justice. Human life is precious in general or your life will be miserable in the end.
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.