At Wed, 31 Mar 1999 21:36:58 -0500, you wrote:
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>joe dees wrote:
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>> The best definition of a redneck I have ever heard is someone who is belligerently ignorant. While Michael Lorrey is far from ignorant, he continues to revel in the redneckian belligerence which is only to be expected from someone who knowingly and gleefully includes the slogan from Tim McVeigh's post-OkCity truckbombing T-shirt in his sig, and "justifies" this mass homicide-approving stance by referring to a Waco video which is rivalled only by the antiabortion "Silent Scream" in its abject lack of objectivity, while daring anyone who might demonstrate the temerity to disagree with his skewed politics to "take him on" in a travestric mimicry of Suthrn Honor. He is one individual who should be forbidden from buying fertilizer and kerosene, especially as he spouts so much of the former while pouring the latter on every fire he can find.
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>My congratulations, that is quite a poetic flame.
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Thank you; I take a smidgen of conceited pride in my wordsmithery.
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>You know what the definition of a true liberal is? Someone who respects every side of the argument so much that they won't even support their own position. They certainly don't participate in ad hominem attacks. The fact that so many liberals today operate almost completely on ad hominem attacks with no factual substance indicates how far from their origins they have strayed.
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>Since 70% of the US population supports the 2nd amendment, I hardly see how my politics are 'skewed'. Since all of my arguments are based on the law and the Constitution, I hardly see how they are 'skewed' unless the law and the Constitution is skewed.
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Although I am a supporter of the right to keep and bear arms, as well as a multiple gun owner myself (Bambi is delicious!), I will note that majority approval does not grant either infallibility or sainthood on a position. If it had been up to a majority vote, Jim Crow would still be law in many southern states, and Adolph's margin of victory in his election to chancellor was overwhelming. Automatic weapons did not exist when the framers wrote the Constitution, nor did rockets or nukes. May I be so bold as to suggest that, had they, the Constitution itself would have pried them from the fingers of the general populace? If I can have a shotgun to bird hunt, a rifle to deer hunt and a pistol to protect my home, then I'm happy. The only reason anyone could justify having an Uzi, a Mac, an AR or an AK (fully auto), much less a 50-cal., is to protect themselves from the bad guys who have already bought them (and the gun manufacturers make them as easy as possible to buy, or to!
convert, so they can make money at both ends - by midwifing the threat, and by arming the lawabiders against it).
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>I'm surprised you haven't accused me of being a concentration camp commadant, or a pen pal of Hitler or Mussolini, but I'm sure you will in your reply. I will warn you in advance that part of my family is Jewish. The Nazis were able to exterminate the Jews so easily because it was against the law for Jews to own firearms in most european countries. Likewise, the Jim Crow laws worked so well in the South because blacks were not allowed to own firearms in most jurisdictions. Gun control laws have always been the first tool of the opressor when starting down the road to slavery and genocide.
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That road was well traveled before guns ever existed. They are just another tool, which may be equally used to defend against or to perpetrate such atrocities. One can never legislate intent; one can only hope to limit weapons access to exclude the homicidal and the certifiably crazy, for they don't care where your nose is when they swing. One thing is for sure; if the tanks rumble down the street or the mortars start to fall, Zed and his varmint gun are going to be of little use, but we can't furnish every Tom, Dick and Zed with their own tank and mortar (nor would it be wise, or they'd get used to hold up convenience stores).
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>The fact that the prosecution used the quote of Thomas Jefferson as evidence AGAINST McVeigh indicates how much our present government has betrayed the Constitution it is sworn to uphold and defend.
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So you ARE in open revolt against the democratically elected government of the United States of America! My remark about keeping ANFO ingredients away from you was perhaps not misplaced. I lived in OK City for 2 years, and my father is a retired gov't accountant who once worked at Tinker AFB. I have friends there who were relatives and friends of some of the deceased. If you think you can even begin to attempt to try contemplating anything remotely resembling a justification for watering the "tree of liberty" with their blood, then the only difference between you and Tim McVeigh is that you haven't yet rented the truck.
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>"Extremism in defense of Liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of freedom is no virtue." - Senator Barry Goldwater (paraphrasing the Roman Senator Cato)
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>"government should get off of your back, out of your bedroom, and away from your wallet!" - ditto
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He was a marijuana decriminalization, feminist and gay rights supporter who said that the only thing that was important was whether soldiers could shoot straight. I have two gay cousins who should have every right to serve their country if they so choose. They just don't make conservative (actually libertarian) Republicans like him anymore; the ones around now wanna stake out your bedroom to decide if you can be a soldier or teacher, and check your stash drawer trying to confiscate your house and car to sell at auction in order to support their paramilitary jihad on drug-users and their construction of ever more prisons to warehouse them, rather than paying off the debt with legalization and reasonable taxation, whilst kissing the lower cheeks of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell on the abortion, gambling, prostitution, euthanasia and gay rights issues (which to me are personal freedoms at LEAST as important as gun ownership, for they involve SELF-ownership). They wanna make !
everything either mandatory or forbidden, which effectively eliminates choice. Being a fiscal conservative and social liberal, I want the Democrats AND the Republicans outta my pockets AND my pants, but it was Reagan/Bush who intentionally ran this debt up (by increasing military spending while cutting taxes) in an attempt to bankrupt the social programs they hated (it was their budgets the Democratic Congress had to vote on), and Clinton who's done something about it. The answer is not to rebel against a democratic system - it is to encourage the more rational people to get off their bitching and moaning asses and use the system to vote in saner policies and politicians.
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>--
>TANSTAAFL!!!
> Michael Lorrey, President
> Lorrey Systems
>------------------------------------------------------------
>mailto:mike@lorrey.com
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>"A society which trades freedom for some measure of security
>shall wind up with neither." -----Benjamin Franklin
>
>"The tree of Liberty should be watered from time to time
>with the blood of tyrants and patriots."
> -----Thomas Jefferson
>"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security
>of a Free State, the Right of the People to keep and bear
>arms shall not be infringed." -----US Constitution,
> 2nd Amendment
>"You can have my gun when you pry it out of my cold, dead
>hands.." -----Anonymous
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>"Once we got their guns away from them, taking their
>money was REAL easy." -----Unknown North Korean
> Commissar
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Joe E. Dees
Poet, Pagan, Philosopher