I read all of it. Your lead-off statement to our debate was the standard reference to the tree of Liberty needing to be watered by blood. Your emphasis in your comments was the readiness one must have to fight physically on an armed struggle against tyranny. “No group of people anywhere can ever hope to hold on to their liberty for long unless they were willing to die for it. Where did you get the idea that your liberty would come without a price?”
Following upon your primary emphasis on the necessity to prepare for what may be inevitable armed conflict, your statement that you view war as a last resort seems more like boilerplate, rather than a sincere desire.
Perhaps if your emphasis hadn’t been so much on getting me to admit and accept the necessity of “paying the price” and other references to physically attacking what you view as tyranny, I would believe you.
As it stands, I think that you disingenuously included those lines as throwaways, more to be used (as you have done) to prop up your insincere denials. If you were truly interested in working *through* the American system to achieve your goals, that would have been your emphasis from the get-go. Instead, you leapfrog right over using the electoral process or the judicial process, and hearken to revolution and the use of force.
Apparently what I have been debating isn’t so much a straw man of my imagination, as a person who finds the notion of fighting his fellow citizens somewhat romanticized and probably necessary. I start off from the position that the American system *as constructed* has given us ways to deal with tyrants. Resort to guns isn’t necessary, or the Constitution would speak of using them to achieve *political* ends. (The Second Amendment makes no reference to using firearms to settle *internal* political disputes, does it? The conclusion that the purpose of the Amendment is to defend all the others is actually an interpretation of the Constitution unsupported by its own language.)
So spare me your lectures and your lectures and snide comments about my powers of comprehension (an ad hominem line of attack that you have lazily resorted to since your first comment to me.) My questions still remains unanswered.
Do you believe that Constitutional remedies are sufficient for protecting the rights of a politically oppressed group? Or is the Constitution a flawed document, which requires the potential resort to extra-Constitutional violence as the final arbiter?
The Constitution, while an excellent attempt at establishing the system of government that preserves both the collective good and individual freedoms, is not perfect.
Part of the problem, of course, is that the Constitution is a plan written on a piece of paper, it’s the people who actually have to execute the plan, and the people are doing a terrible job of it. The abuse of the commerce clause for the last 100 years alone would have our current federal government unrecognizable to the framers. And part of the reason the 2nd Amendment exist is because they wanted to leave a failsafe in the hands of the people if all else fails.
And please don’t try to pyschoanalyze me and tell me what I “really think”, once again you’re debating the straw man in your head rather than what I’ve made clear. Violence is always an option of the last resort, but it remains a viable option nonetheless.