Agree or disagree: Your government has a higher duty to protect your......

[Vesayen]

The government has a higher duty to protect your rights, freedom and liberty, or your life?

[SlowwHand]

Invalid poll.

[SlowwHand]

But to answer your question, in the case of where I live, rights, freedom and liberty.

[snoopy369]

The government is made of the people, it is not a separate entity; so the answer is, no.

The people may, always, choose to protect any of the above one over the other; I would prefer life over freedom and liberty to some extent, but not 100%. Certainly one has little freedom or liberty if one has no life; but i'm not willing to give up all of either to protect threats to my life.

The interesting question is: If you're being kidnapped at gunpoint, will you immediately try to run away (to preserve your liberty) at the likely cost of your life?

If the answer is yes, you are a very, very rare person, especially if you ACTUALLY will do so. (Not 'wait for the right time', but just try to run at the first moment.) Most people would answer no; at that point you're choosing life over liberty, and it's just a matter of scale.

[Vesayen]

In most circumstances, in the States anyway those who are kidnapped, do not survive.

Which means if you want to live, you should likley try to escape as soon as you have a chance anyway.

[Jon Miller]

Without life you can't have any of the rest of it.

JM

[Spec]

Protect my life.

Not because he cares, but because that way I keep paying taxes...

Spec.

[SlowwHand]

Without the other, what good is life? Waiting for the afterlife? Yippee.

[Spec]

FOR THE LAST TIME! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE AFTER LIFE!



Spec.

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Without life you can't have any of the rest of it.

JM

However having life does not by any means guarantee freedom, liberty and your rights. Power seekers in many governments are prone to try to trade away liberty for security, yet few are willing to ever make the exchange the other way.

Does this not mean if we value liberty, we should always favor liberty over life, since there will always be strong advocates of the opposing view?

[SlowwHand]

Does this not mean if we value liberty, we should always favor liberty over life, since there will always be strong advocates of the opposing view?

There will always be advocates of not ****tingandfalling back into it, does that make you want to?

[Vesayen]

No, then again, is ****tingandfalling something desirable?

Most of us are from first world democracies and can reasonably expect our governments to do a fairly good job at keeping us alive.

Can we expect them to want to preserve our liberty?

We can take them keeping us alive for granted and instead demand they focus on something they often leave wanting.

This is an aspect of my own philosophy about government and worthy causes in general.

If you have to choose between two worthy causes and you can reasonably expect others to support one cause, or support one cause while undermining the other, you should support the other, to try to achieve both, assuming it is possible to achieve both.

For example, I like commercial goods. I also like having a clean planet capable of supporting future generations of humans. It is possible to have commercial goods and a clean planet. Many people, especially those who have a real say, believe consumer goods are more important.

Since I want both consumer good and a clean planet, I shold advocate for a clean planet exclusivley, since I can reasonably expect that others will still be strongly advocating exclusivley for commercial goods.

[SlowwHand]

People clamor to have less military. They criticize the use of the military. Of course these same people are also against legal gun ownership.
This isn't Switzerland or some other non-participant.
So you try to take away the ability of the government to protect against domestic aggression.
At the same time, many people want to outlaw gun ownership. Not even in France would they ban gun ownership. It wouldn't have been much of a resitance without guns.

So the people that whime about the numner and use of military and gun ownership and on and on and on, ultimately just want to cease to exist at all.

Will you buy that?

[Vesayen]

I do not buy that point of view, even the slightest.

I have never complained about the size of the American military. I see living in a country with unquestionable military might as a positive, for me anyway, I can't comment on how other countries feel about America being the unquestionable global hegemony(well WAS anyway), but it helps me sleep at night. As long as we can afford it without unreasonably high taxes or unreasonable amounts of waste, the bigger, the better, when it comes to our military might.

As for gun control....

My question about gun control is not "Should we let private citizens have assault rifle?" Of course they should, the constitution says we have a right to bear arms. My question on gun control is not "should private citizens have tanks?" Damn right they should, the constitution says we have the right to bear arms and our leading founding fathers expressed it is our civic duty to rebel against an oppressive government-how can we do that without some serious hardware? Not only could the founding fathers foresee we would have better weapons today, I am sure they would support us having them-what, were Kentucky long rifles not deadly, if you shot someone with a musket, did they laugh it off? The only difference between today and the last 18th century is how deadly weapons are, they all pass the threshold of "deadly", which means they are effectively all the same to me.

My gun control question is "Is restricting private ownership of nuclear weapons, a violation of the our constitutional right to have arms?"

After many years I grudgingly admitted that restricting private ownership of nuclear weapons IS a violation of the constitution, but we should probably do it anyway.


Protecting our rights and protecting our lives are not, mutually exclusive. What is necessary to really protect our lives, rarely really requires is to surrender our liberty at all, at least in any meaningful way. Measures short of attacking our liberty are usually sufficient to protect our lives and physical well being from other people.

Really, a strong military and necessary civil laws to prevent us from killing each other suffices to keep us alive. When measures are taken which infringe on our liberty, it has usually crossed over the line from effective to ineffective anyway.

Compare the relative "effective safety" gained from these sets of actions.

Laws(and enforcing those laws) against homicide v. wire tapping phones of American citizens
Laws(and enforcing those laws) against assault and battery v. surveillance of peace groups by intelligence services
A strong military which makes traditional military conflict with the U.S. impossible within our borders v. the government keeping dibs on our library records

There is a point of diminishing returns where certain actions cease to make us any safer in a meaningful way. Those same actions are also the ones most likely to infringe on our liberty.

I do not feel the LEAST bit less safe since 9/11. I felt like I was the last sane man in a crazy world ala the twilight zone in 2001 and 2002.

The odds of being killed by a terrorist myself, or someone I know is infinitesimal. Not going to happen and if it did happen I would be upset but I would realize the odds are against it and I was better off with my liberty.

While the right to vote has not been revoked and our liberty has not been infringed in enormously meaningful ways, it has been infringed upon. Who can say where further infringements might lead to? It is a slippery slope.

Therefore, it is better to always support liberty over security since security is a given for us but liberty, is not.

[DinoDoc]

I'd say that Iraq is a case study in what most people would prefer. Security is the bedrock upon which the other concerns rest.