A Chart to Help Those on the Fence About Punching Nazis

Actually a very good history lesson, thanks @Paladin

Identify a would-be victim. Specifically. Which person was under threat?

But no one did anything to the guy who made the statement you refer to, and yet, as near as can be determined, no violence resulted from him.

Because these aren't German National Socialists waging war all over Europe and perpetrating the Holocaust and this isn't the 1940s.

That should be obvious. In the 1940s, the Nazis were the leaders of one of the most powerful countries in the world with one of the largest militaries in the world and the will to use it. Plus they were hell bent not only on committing genocide but were taking open action on that goal with the might of a modern industrialized country behind them.

Getting worked up about the Nazis in modern America is like Mothers Against Drunk Driving getting upset about a drunk.

Who doesn't have a car......

All things considered, people in the 1940s probably wished they'd started punching Nazis earlier than they did. But of course Dayton objects to learning anything from history.

It is better to learning nothing from history than to learn the wrong thing.

That said people who see some kind of "equivalence" between the pre World War Two Nazis in Germany and a bunch of guys carrying Tiki torches in 2017 America are complete idiots.

One is a horrendous menace.

The other is a bad joke.

I know what your response will be.

"The Nazis in Germany were a joke at one time".

I'll start considering the modern day Nazis a menace when they start drawing a lot more followers at their rallies than the average attendance at a small high school football game.

Exactly how many people do you want Nazis to kill before you'll sign off on some punching?

At the very least it tells us they want to be like the Third Reich. I firmly believe they will fail, even though apologists like you are already bending over backwards to make things easier for them.

Are you sure? One dead, twenty injured? But most importantly, I hear some of them were carrying skittles.

Seriously, that's not even a double standard anymore, that's just clear partisanship.

When there's too many for the police to be unable to arrest the murderers.

Okay, I get what you're saying.

Go fuck yourself, Nazi sympathizer.

You know where I live you cowardly fool.

Bring it on. We'll see who is left standing.

Too easy....

See, I'm having a minor quibble about this. I'm as ardent about the freedom of speech we abhor as any rational free man should be. However, I also agree with the "Clear and Present Danger" doctrine adopted by the Supreme Court in 1919. Chief Justice Fred Vinson's opinion stated that the First Amendment does not require that the government must wait "until the putsch is about to be executed, the plans have been laid and the signal is awaited" before it interrupts seditious plots. Free speech can be limited on those grounds and I have to wonder if genuine, real Nazi's do cross that line. That said, on the other hand:

"I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking. It cannot be so easily discovered if you allow him to remain silent and look wise, but if you let him speak, the secret is out and the world knows that he is a fool. So it is by the exposure of folly that it is defeated; not by the seclusion of folly, and in this free air of free speech men get into that sort of communication with one another which constitutes the basis of all common achievement." - President Woodrow Wilson (1919).

@Ancalagon once again comes down on the side of political violence with that neg rep. What a fuck stick.

We can certainly debate where the line should be drawn with respect to STATE intervention. And I've said that if you believe someone is a threat--not an imminent or specific one, but still a real, credible one--then you alert the authorities. They can take it from there, investigate and intervene as necessary and proper.

What I'm arguing here is whether an INDIVIDUAL is rightfully empowered to use physical force against other individuals in such a scenario. And my answer is "no."

Unless they’re using force against Nazis. Then it’s ok. Because Nazis.

Except, you dumb shit, that is part of the reason they got into power in the first place. The red brigades running around attacking shop owners and using violence as a political tool. The Nazis pretended to be protectors of the people and the result was roaming street battles in the streets of Germany so people were able to excuse Nazi violence with "but they are all doing it".

You are just a stupid fuckstick who doesn't know any history, aren't you? Once you legitimize political violence it is a dark rabbit hole and you don't know where it ends or how many innocent people you are going to get harmed.

I agree with Paladin in principle, but would still support anyone punching a nazi. Sorry.

Which brings up an interesting corollary: why is gun ownership an individual right? Something to do with a well regulated state militia?

I have to agree. On a personal and individual level, I've always had to be the adult in the situation and show restraint even when I probably shouldn't have done so. Why? Because I've carried a gun every day of my adult life. A guy shouting violent language with a nazi banner on his sleeve and a gun on his hip is going to make my eye twitch.

See, I feel the same way about the equally vile, but other end of the political spectrum. Neo-Communists are opposing Neo-Nazi's. I'm opposed to Neo-Nazi's, but that does not mean that Neo-Communists are my ally or that I agree with them in any way. After all, if you take the high end of the estimates, the Nazi's killed a comparatively paltry 24 million people while the Communists perfected mass slaughter to the tune of 95 million people.

You can punch Nazi's if I can punch Communists.

Okay.

Gun ownership is an individual right, because human beings--by their very existence--are entitled to defend themselves and resist tyranny with force. The people may need to form militias to defend themselves from the power of a corrupt government (or a foreign invader), so the government cannot legitimately strip them of their right to be effectively armed. The ability to form a militia depends on the right to keep and bear arms, not the other way around.

Militia only acts (1) in defense of or in service to the legitimate state such as when the government calls it forth to put down an insurrection (e.g., as Washington did during the Whiskey Rebellion) or (2) against a tyrannical government. The militia is not a police force; it is the ability of the people to preserve their free state.

Because the Supreme Court said it is.

The inclusion of the 2nd Amendment in the Bill of Rights had almost nothing to do with preserving the "power of the people to resist a tyrannical government" and everything to do with the fact that the founding fathers were too cheap to pay for a professional army.

you can test it out and see if it's legal. "Whatever your career can stand" as they used to say in the military.

Uh, no. This statement is so wrong, I'm not even sure where to begin in critiquing it.

For starters, the Constitution does give Congress authority to raise an army, so if the Founders really didn't want to pay for one, they shouldn't have given the federal government this power.

Second, the right to keep and bear arms has very old origins, and was long a part of English common law before the drafting of the Constitution.

Third, the anti-Federalists were very mistrustful of a powerful federal government and would not have supported the Constitution without the inclusion of the 2nd (along with the rest of the Bill of Rights).

The Second means exactly what it says. It wasn't some bone thrown to the plebs by the Founders in order to cheap out on paying for an army.

So you actually think Hitler was good, eh?

Absolutely false and it's been shown by myself and @Paladin several times.

The reactions in this thread are very, very telling.

Paladin has made coherent arguments. You have not.

You haven't been paying attention then.