Ken Kittlitz wrote:
> At 12:48 PM 7/9/98 -0400, Michael Lorrey wrote:
> >Ken Kittlitz wrote:
> >I didn't say it was. It just takes a lot of work to fix once it happens. I
> would
> >also say that Canada, up until the last 10 years has been much more
> culturally
> >homogenous than the US.
>
> Probably, but Canada is far less homogeneous than, ay, many European
> countries that have similar low crime rates. While we don't have the
> anywhere near the number of blacks and hispanics that the U.S. does, we
> were largely populated by the same waves of immigrants from Europe that
> came to the U.S., and per capita I think we have a larger Asian population.
> And, unlike the U.S., Canada has two official languages, stemming from the
> English and French founders of the country.
>
> >Refusing to prepare for either is the biggest mistake you can make,
> because you
> >can never estimate anything with much precision. A number of wize old
> people have
> >said on various occasions, when asked how they lived so long, and were so
> >successful, "If you prepare for the worst, and prepare for the best,
> anything that
> >happens you will be prepared to handle with ease."
>
> What's the worst that can happen? I'm not sure, but an asteroid hitting the
> Earth and wiping out all human life would be pretty bad. If I expected
> that to happen, I'd probably use the resources I possess to enjoy myself in
> whatever time remained. Of course doing so would probably indicate poor
> risk assessment on my part, because AFAIK there's no evidence that an
> asteroid is due. Given infinite resources, you can prepare for any
> eventuality; given finite ones, you have to pick and choose. If you've
> found a way to gain infinite resources, please drop my a note explaining
> how ;->
Given the available resources of the individual, maximizing survival of the individual would obviously require utilization of available resources for all cost effective measures within a given risk range. Of course, the more resources available to the individual, the wider the individuals risk range that he or she is capable of responding to. Spending a couple hundred dollars on a gun, ammo, training, and equipment to keep the gun secure is much more likely to give a high rate of return on investment than a life insurance policy premium, just as an air bag is a similarly cheap investment with high returns for the individual.
> >Some societies get along fine without a built in, implied micro-MAD policy in
> >their culture/government, but only in the short term. Such societies
> always tend
> >to either self-destabilize due to a lack of internal checks and balances,
> or are
> >interfered with by an outside party. You can praise the fine, pro-gun-control
> >societies in Europe all you want, and they may be quaint places to visit,
> but they
> >always seem to need rescuing every few decades when their quaint ideas
> delaminate
> >from reality. I think that the only thing that has kept Europe from
> degrading into
> >a continent wide version of yugoslavia is the implied threat that US forces
> >represent.
>
> That's an interesting conjecture; do you have any evidence to back it up?
> As a counter-example, I would cite England, which does not seem to be
> self-destabalizing. In terms of outside interference, it's unclear to me
> what, if any, correlation there is between a country's micro-MAD policy and
> its ability to resist such interference. To take an example cloer to home,
> Quebec has been threatening to leave Canada for a long while now -- it's
> almost a national sport -- but thus far there have been virtually no
> threats of violence. And belive me, it's not the prospect of U.S.
> intervention that's keeping the discussion (more or less) civil.
Actually, from what freinds of mine in Montreal have told me, there is significant amount of anti-English hostility in the french speaking population, and I and people I know who do business with companies in Quebec have found that some people at these companies will not talk to you in English anymore, even though you have dealt with them in English previously. I find this behavior in marked contrast to all non-Quebecois Canadians I know, who tend to be polite almost to a fault. I predict that within 10 years we will see an active Quebec Liberation Front....unless the rest of Canada just tells them to go for it. Considering that Quebec is a major economic drag on the rest of Canada, its easy to understand why most sane Quebecois are reluctant to actually follow through with secession.
> >Even the most civil society must have an implied threat of force on the
Sorry if I boggle from what I see as an act of stubbornly purposeful blindness..
> part of
> >the individual members of that society to hold it together, and to protect
> it from
> >threats from higher authorities or from outside forces. If you beleive
> that all
> >power originates in the individual, then the individual must be prepared and
> >willing to take responsibility for the management of that power, no matter
> how
> >much he or she has delegated it. They must also personally take
> responsibility for
> >defending the power which they have not delegated to their governments.
> Anything
> >less is head-in-the-sand abdication of the individual as the source of power.
>
> I agree with this, but don't understand how individual gun ownership
> logically follows from it.
If all sovereign power comes from the individual, and sovereign powers (i.e. nations) are recognised as having the right of self defense against agression, then the individual has a right of self defense against agression.
Since it is widely recognised that trying to uninvent technology through
legislation is a fruitless exercise, trying to ban guns only takes guns away from
law abiding individuals.
Therefore since agressors, criminals, are going to have guns whether or not they
are made illegal or not, disarming law abiding individuals is violating an
individuals right of self defense.
Since it is also recognised that gun-control only removes guns from the hands of civilians, not from the hands of the government, then the civilian population has no means of fighting on an equal footing against a government which has become malevolent due to the lack of oversight by the civilian population. In any state which recognises that power is delegated from the individual to the state, failing to keep the means of self defense in the hands of the individual is abdicating the individuals ability to affect enforcement of its contract of delegation with the state. If the individual cannot affect enforcement of its contract of delegation with the state, the individual serves at the whim of the state, not vice versa, and is therefore a slave.
Mike Lorrey