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To: hosepipe

It is a falsehood that the 2d amendment was designed to make revolution legal. That was the last thing on the Founders minds. They believed there was no reason for revolution from a representative government.

The second amendment was necessary to protect settlements from Indian attacks on the frontier and to provide a source of firepower when militias had to be called into service by the states or federal governments. It explicitly says why it exists but what is not said, "every able bodied man is part of the militia," made for confusion.

Illinois puts that phrase in its constitution and thereby clarifies the intent. Not that the state nowdays has much respect for the second.

This idea that the 2d is designed to allow the common people to revolt could not be further from the truth. That truth is that the Founders feared and despised democracy and too much involvement by the mob. They believed allowing election to the House by popular vote (but still a tiny minority of the population) was all the democracy we needed.


86 posted on 11/09/2005 9:50:52 AM PST by justshutupandtakeit (Public Enemy #1, the RATmedia.)
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To: justshutupandtakeit
[ It is a falsehood that the 2d amendment was designed to make revolution legal. That was the last thing on the Founders minds. They believed there was no reason for revolution from a representative government. ]

WRONG... You are probably wrong about other things as well..
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"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln

"Every generation needs a new revolution."- Thomas Jefferson..

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government"-- Thomas Jefferson, 1 Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."-- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."-- Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story of the John Marshall Court

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." -- George Washington, in a speech of January 7, 1790

Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defence? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defence be the *real* object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?-- Patrick Henry, speech of June 9 1788

You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.-- Rush Limbaugh, in a moment of unaccustomed profundity 17 Aug 1993

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.-- John F. Kennedy

91 posted on 11/09/2005 11:19:21 AM PST by hosepipe (CAUTION: This propaganda is laced with hyperbole..)
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To: justshutupandtakeit
This idea that the 2d is designed to allow the common people to revolt could not be further from the truth.

And that is nuttier than anything I've ever heard Ron Paul say.

95 posted on 11/09/2005 11:45:27 AM PST by jmc813 (Compassionate Conservatism is Gay)
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