A Chart to Help Those on the Fence About Punching Nazis

Wrong.

The founders envisioned a very small standing army. One that in the event of a national emergency (like an invasion) would serve as an officer corps for a larger army fleshed out by volunteers answering the call to arms by grabbing their fowling pieces and reporting for duty.

This goes back to

1) the founding fathers distrust of a professional military (see the amendment on quartering soldiers).
2) the Revolutionary War belief (a flawed one) in the fighting abilities of volunteer forces.
3) Reluctance to spend a lot of money for a professional military of any size. Remember one of the British primary reasons for taxing the colonists was to pay for the stationing of regular troops there.

Yeah, usually the military budget was what was left over after paying everything else.

If only that were still true.

Here is the problem with that. People can make the exact same case against communists, Irish could make that case against British or Protestants, blacks against whites, Jews against Arabs, and dozebs of others. Once you legitimize political violence shit spirals out pretty damn quickly and you end up with Iraq 2007, Northern Ireland 1975, or modern day Afghanistan.

We have the rule of law so let us not tgrow that away so some fuck sticks can feel good about vigilante justice. By all means voice your disagreement loudly and clearly, defend youraelf or others against actual immediate threats, but anyone who takes part in violence for political reasons needs to have all of society and the full power of the state turned against them because that undermines the rule of law and harms everyone.

There are tests for incitement, and the Nazi salute and flag don't remotely meet them.

No, we don't. Nazis were repressed in the early years, through both official and street violence. That fed their victimhood narrative, and they gained more power.

More recently: https://thelongestway.com/2017/04/08/i-dont-like-the-antifa/ Read that. All the way to the end.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/16/media/charlottesville-man-misidentified-plans-lawsuit/index.html

This is what vigilantism get us. What if you were in that guy's shoes.

The irony being that it was the alt right trying to claim he was the car killer guy when in fact his family had sold the car years before. Can we just say vigilantism and political violence is wrong? Like I have repeatedly said the answer to objectionable speech is more free speech not violence. Shout your disagreement for others from the roof tops but when we go down the path of violence for political enda you end up in Beruit 1980.

And another thing: why are you not out there shooting them, if this is truly how you feel? The government isn't doing it, and likely won't. Hell, there are a fair number of police out there who'd probably like to join them. So why won't you? It's clearly a case of legal != moral for you, so why won't you stand up for your beliefs and go shoot the motherfuckers before they take power and kill people? This isn't a tax protest, life and death are on the line here, right? If you actually believe this, you're complicit in their future atrocities because all you did to try to stop them was say "I'm okay with punching them" on a message board.

I don't think this case is about speech. They can have all the free speech they want, at a truly peaceful protest, as far as I am concerned. But when they grab torches (or try to) and weapons and march through the streets with the clear intent of threatening physical violence to other people there, and the police is there but won't help, that's when a violent response is clearly justified.

Seven months into the Trump presidency, and here we are as a nation, debating the merits of Nazism and how much leniency to give them.

Yes, yes you can. You can indeed be charged with violating the civil rights of another citizen. This is actually how the Federal government went after people during the civil rights era when they were let off by jury nullification. Your rights extend to the point that they interfere with the rights of others.

Kiss my mongrel ass, racist.

Perhaps it's my internal biases, but I just don't see these "torches" as a weapon or being all that intimidating. I own tiki torches for their intended purpose and I would be hard pressed to hurt someone with them. The flame can be blown out easily enough and they're so flimsy, I seriously don't think they'd leave a bruise if you were to strike someone with one.

I do have some reservations about this, but I'm loathe to get into a second amendment discussion. That said, I'm glad that Alabama forbids the carrying of arms at organized public protests. I'll leave it at that.

See, I'm ignorant of what the group was actually chanting that night. I'll have to save my determination for whether a rational person could reasonably believe that they were threatening imminent violence until I know what they were saying. Yelling, "white power" or "go Nazi's" is offensive, but it's not threatening.

If the police aren't intervening, good luck trying to prove that you were justified in a court of law.

Are you really this fucking stupid? Not a declared war, but we had a state of hostilities existed between the US and the USSR from 1947 - 1991. Not to mention the active fighting in Korea and Vietnam. Or does that all somehow not count?

They also killed a lot more than 10 million people.

Wow, you are really showing your ignorance of history.

So that shit with antifa isn't bad somehow? Like that guy that was doing the Pepsi thing, he totally deserved to have his head bashed with a bike lock? That guy they beat into unconsciousness deserved it? That woman wearing a parody of the MAGA hat deserved to be pepper sprayed? Again, I'm forced to wonder what the reaction would have been with this car incident had the roles been reversed.

Yeah, somehow I doubt anyone is surprised by your authoritarian leanings.

"Reasonable."

Looks like you're playing it both ways to me.

Yes, we should totally emulate what racist juries in the South did during the Civil Rights era.

But her emails, bruh.

Well, in this case they did end up wounding several and killing one person. So whoever felt threatened was right to feel threatened.

Never thought you'd be one for blind jingoism.

Using that argument, then people who say that BLM is threatening have just as much basis to say so given that BLM shooter who shot at police on the tail end of a lot of BLM protests calling for just that.

What do you mean "they did?" It was one person in a car.

Because it's the mentality of the left wing. Whites are collectively guilty, while other groups are not. That's why one radical muslim wiping out thirty people doesn't represent Islam in general, but one right winger plowing into a crowd represents all the right wingers.

You see it all the time; it's really almost predictable.

Not the night before, when the Nazi's actually marched on the statue with "torches." While I understand mob psychology all to well, it appears in this case that the driver of the car is the only one guilty of actually harming someone.

No. Threat means threat. A group of Nazis announcing that they will hurt you, and one of them then going ahead and killing you, is very different from a group announcing that they are peaceful, and one of them going against that intention and ending up killing you regardless.

And that is, of course, blindingly obvious, and the fact that we have to go through these semantic distractions to decide how we feel about the fucking Third Reich says more about the underlying problem than any of the detailed questions involved.

Translation:

"I can't believe we're even discussing this!"