At 05:44 PM 7/10/98 -0400, Michael Lorrey wrote:
>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.
Certainly there is a great deal of hostility amongst some Quebecois towards English-speaking Canada, though as yet there have been few acts of violence. Actually that's not quite true, in 1970 there *was* a Quebec Liberation Front -- the FLQ -- that performed some kidnappings and at least one murder. Since then, the violence has been mostly verbal/written.
Regarding your prediction about a new QLF, it might make an interesting claim on the Foresight Exchange (http://www.ideosphere.com). Care to draft one?
>> I agree with this, but don't understand how individual gun ownership
>> logically follows from it.
>
>Sorry if I boggle from what I see as an act of stubbornly purposeful
blindness..
No apology needed. If I seem to be purposely blind, it's because I've found that the most self-evident, "natural" truths are precisely those that should be questioned from time to time.
>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.
Agreed.
>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.
Agreed, but where have I argued for gun control? My argument has been that it may not alwasy make sense for individuals to own guns.
>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
"Lack of oversight" is generally a good thing; I think you meant "lack of foresight" ;->
I question how well a civilian population armed with assault rifles etc. could really resist government forces, given likely disparities in weaponry, training, technology etc. How many times has an armed citizenry successfully resisted its government going totalitarian? In the American Revolution, I assume that most of the militias were at least initially armed with private weapons (is this true?), but keep in mind that the army they were fighting had an ocean between it and its major source of reinforcements and supplies, and that another country (France) offered assistance to the rebels.
Ken Kittlitz ken@audesi.com AudeSi Technologies Inc. http://www.lucifer.com/~ken http://www.audesi.com