Animavore wrote:Brian Peacock wrote:America can't deal with the gun issue because America lives in fear of the gun. It's a truly vicious circle. Every time one of these horrible events makes it to the evening news guns sales go up the next day. You could have a Las Vegas massacre every day of the week and people would still think that guns are the only solution to guns.
You can couple that with an aggressive constitutionolatry. Many Americans talk about their rights being enshrined in the constitution as if it were written in stone. Trying to change it is met with staunch resistance. I'm sure there's a history to why this Is, but it's odd to me as a person from a country with a liquid constitution which can have any article changed by popular referendum.
Well, the respect for individual rights comes from the manner in which the US came into existence, through revolution against an oppressive, tyrannical, unelected hereditary monarch. As a nation, we announced our separation from that dictator by stating that we were not unequal to our rules, that all men are created equal with unalienable rights, among which are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. As a nation we stated that it was to secure those unalienable rights that governments are instituted among men.
That was a revolutionary concept. The state is not primary. The state does not exist except as created by people, for the purpose of protecting and securing the rights of the people. The government/state derives its just power from the consent of the governed. I.e. you ain't the boss of us, we are the boss of us, and we institute a government among us.
As a nation, we stated that while we should not shrug off a long-established government - "when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security."
As a nation, we set forth example after example of that long train of abuses and indignities, and said no more. We fought the revolution, and won. And, out of that victory came the US constitution which established a Constitutionally Limited Federated Republic, which dispersed power widely, in reaction to the centralized power from which we broke.
The power was first dispersed between federal power and state power, with the federal government being very limited in scope. All state and federal government then separated power of the government and state into separate branches, three - the executive branch, the legislative branch and the judicial branch, thus dividing the cops from the lawmakers from the judges, to put it simply. And, we placed the civil authority firmly above the military authority. With the government, hopefully, firmly restrained, we added protections for the individual, such that an individual may think what he wants, be friends with and associate with whomever he wants, say whatever he wants, publish whatever he wants, and be secure in his persons, houses ,papers and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures, and have the right to trials by jury, indictment by grand jury for most federal crimes, the presumption of innocence, double jeopardy protection, the right not to testify against oneself, the right not have the government commandeer private property, except if fairly compensated and done for an important public purpose, etc.
We have traditionally been steeped in the value of individual rights.
That being said, times are changing. It's not so anymore. The youth have accepted the notion that socialism is better than capitalism, and free speech should be limited to protect people's feelings, and that authorities are to be run to for the protection of feelings. The notion of individual rights, and the values of the Enlightenment out of which our country was born, have been effectively defamed.
Don't worry, it won't be too long, and we'll be fluidly changing these things too.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar
