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 ;->
>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.
>Even the most civil society must have an implied threat of force on the
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.
Ken Kittlitz ken@audesi.com AudeSi Technologies Inc. http://www.lucifer.com/~ken http://www.audesi.com