How far is too far for Paladin?

I doubt it.

I'm not going to attack @Paladin on the grounds of being a selfish prick. This is America, after all, and that's his right.

But on the 2nd Amendment thing, he and rest of Rightforge need to think more strategically. Their intransigence on moderate regulations is only going to piss off the nation more, making it, in the long term, more likely that extreme measures like confiscations will occur.

87% of Republicans want universal background checks. 75% of Republicans support red flag laws. As many Republicans support an assault weapons ban as oppose it.

In other words, 2nd Amendment fundamentalism is hanging on by a thread, as is Republican control of the White House. And the longer you hold out, the more the Left is gonna make you pay for it, the next time they do get power.

Herein lies the problem. The left doesn't want 'reasonable gun control' despite what they say. They want guns confiscated. Lawfare is the way they are working towards this. Scream, complain, beat your fists, politicize every tragedy, until the right acquiesces just to make the noise stop and the goal posts move two inches towards confiscation.

Then the left starts right in again, until the goalposts shift another two inches. Then another.

There is no endgame here for the left until confiscation happens. And because criminals will NEVER obey gun laws no matter how many of them there are (and how many is that? 20,000 plus and counting?), there will always be another 'crisis' to start the left's bleating yet again.

If there was any point where the left would stop, I think most gun-rights folks would be okay with them. But we know there's no stopping point. In the mind of the left 'reasonable gun control' = no guns in the hands of citizens. And folks, that dog isn't going to hunt. Not on my watch, and not on the watch of several million of my closest, gun-toting, law-abiding friends.

The 2nd Amendment isn't about sport, hunting, collecting, or hobbies. It's about keep tyrannical governments in check, and if necessary, having the means to fight back against them. For those who scream 'derpa derpa MILITARY, derpa derpa DRONES', I invite you to look at the North Vietnamese irregular, or the Taliban who, after 14 years of infintite-war, we still haven't defeated. In fact, when fighting an oppressive government, you don't even have to win- you just have to wear them down by not losing.

So you leftists can shut the fuck up about gun control. We've got MORE than enough laws on the books as it is, most of them unconstitutional. If these governments you want to sell your soul to would ENFORCE THOSE LAWS AND DO THEIR FUCKING JOBS, we'd have far fewer issues.

Right. So when does this begin?

Liberate the camps, hero.

Until you do, your memes are hollow, your slogans are hollow, your rants are hollow, your macho bluster is hollow, everything that makes you what you are, everything you thought you were, everything you hoped to be, everything you ever loved about yourself, is all a bunch of hot air and nothing.
A dream that you had that you're waking up from.

You stupid fucking drunk.

What a waste of time your existence has been on all of us

*Hock, spit*

If it were just this statement next to your name, we’d have a very truthful post.

What, do I have a fucking crystal ball? Grow up.

Okay. Anything substantial for your rebuttal, or just the standard personal shots?

Fraud.
You should be ashamed to wake up.

From an historical standpoint, it would have been futile (and probably counter-productive) to resist, since interning the Japanese had pretty widespread support, championed as it was by a very popular and unprecedentedly powerful President. Incidentally, doesn't interning Japanese-American citizens without due process make FDR the most egregious racist despot in American history? I think so.

But you're right that it was one of most appalling violations of the Constitution ever committed by the state, and should have been resisted strongly.

Been keeping any tyrannical governments in check recently?

"Unconstitutional" is a handy way of framing a good idea you simply don't like because it will take your toys away.

And yes, I'm all in favour of a completely gun free society, because it works and we seem to be somewhat lacking in internment camps or endless encroachments on LGBTQ rights.

Yet something remarkably similar is happening right now and you weasel out of acknowledging it.

FTFY

Thanks for the honest answer. That's more than most are capable of.

So lemme ask you another thing, then: if it's futile to resist (and no, I won't make a Borg joke here) because certain policies are popular, should we just go aster unpopular things? Like the current crisis, for example?

That was more diplomatic than mine....

I don't see you marching off to the border, oh Light of Moral Leadership.

I never played the card like Marso.
And I didn't fall for it like you did.
Nice try at a smoke grenade distraction for your fallen hero, Li'l Billy.

So as usual, snark about the failings of others while conveniently overlooking your own lack of initiative. Got it.

...he said, while slapping on his pack, picking up his gun, and going to help Marso liberate the camps.

What? No?
Oh, okay then.

I'm not sure what "the current crisis" is.

Popularity is an inadequate standard for legitimacy, even in a democratic sense (I'll explain below), and sometimes things are necessary which are unpopular. Of course, rights (and especially enumerated Constitutional rights) aren't subject to restriction by popularity at all, unless there's sufficient popularity for a Constitutional amendment for the restriction, and that's a pretty high bar to clear.

When some measure passes, say, 54-46, popularity only tells you how many were in favor or opposed to the measure. It gives you no measure of how strongly in favor or opposed the people were. And I think this might be important. If, say, the 54 just thought it was a pretty good-sounding idea and were willing to give it a try to see how it works, and the 46 were mortally opposed and swore to fight to the death to oppose the implementation of the law, that might not ultimately be a healthy law for a society to have. Simple majoritarianism is, IMHO, a poor basis for passing laws, as it can lead to situations where a very large majority is very opposed to it, and this might be more harmful than whatever problem the law is trying to solve. It's liable to breed reaction that will push things back hard.

If I were re-writing the Constitution, laws in the House would have to be passed by larger (2/3rds) majorities to ensure more widespread legitimacy. It would force compromise and cooperation, something the simple majority system works against.

Having a noble purpose is an advantage, not a problem. And the purpose being relentless service to a system which has raised the living standards of literally billions of people around the world is definitely noble.

I wouldn't entirely disagree, capitalism has been a factor in a great deal of the progress we have made, but the idea that accumulation of goods is inherently noble is one I'd question and capitalism does have to be regulated.

Allow the pendulum to swing too far and you always find that the progress made is counterbalanced by damage elsewhere because a profit making company has no interest in maintaining equality. If wages go up due to workers' rights simply outsource to a country where no such rights are respected and it will always be NGOs and governments who have to bring that into check.

Capitalism has brought us new technology, higher standards of living (in some parts of the world) and innovation, but it has also brought us mass environmental problems, corporate corruption and vast amounts of social inequality. That has to be balanced out somehow because there's nothing inherent to a free market which will do so.

The children dying in your concentration camps.

Whatever else happens, don't let anyone pretend you didn't know. There are children dying in US concentration camps. Whatever else your politics or even your character are, they will always be connected to this fact about you: What you are doing right now will be what you did when children were dying in your concentration camps.

To the first paragraph I do not disagree. Regulation is necessary just as having referees in sports are necessary. No argument.

To the second paragraph I disagree strongly. You seem to be implying (correct me if I'm wrong) that capitalism is a zero sum game. That for some people to make money then somewhere someone must lose money (or something else). This has never been true. More people can and do come out ahead frequently in a capitalistic system.

But I don't condemn you if that is what you believe. Millions of people and entire nations believe economics works that way.

To the last paragraph I must also disagree. There is nothing de facto damaging to the environment about capitalism. I don't know if you know anything about American Indian history in America prior to the widespread arrival of the white man, but they routinely engaged in highly destructive environmental practices. Setting massive, wide ranging fires, driving entire herds of bison and horses off the sides of cliffs, one can go on and on.

Some in fact would say that you can't have "environmentalism" in any modern sense without "capitalism". Because in a very real way what you call "environmentalism" is what you get when you have people pulling in a 100,000 a year and no big causes to get involved in otherwise.

And I'm afraid my response to you is this.

You've never moved out of a very small geographical area and you have a definite tendency to be somewhat blinkered to the world outside of that and the experiences of people on the other side. Capitalism by definition requires that money flows from place to place and if that is unregulated it does indeed tend to lead to concentrations of money in ever decreasing circles. The reasons for that are simple, if the accumulation of wealth is the only priority then those who have it are in a better position to accumulate more, hence widening the gap between rich and poor.

I'm not going to belabour the point but millions of people worldwide have lived for decades if not centuries to support the lifestyles you and I enjoy and it isn't capitalism which has slowly started to improve that situation, it has been governments being pressured by NGOs and public opinion into regulating away some of the potential profits for investors by insisting on basic living standards for their employees.

The stereotype of people in sweatshops living on the factory floor and being paid in the rice they eat sat on said factory floor is one which has no small basis in truth time and again around the world and the goods produced in those shops are by and large there to service consumer markets in developed countries. That isn't a kindness, it isn't raising peoples' quality of life, it's merely outsourcing the consequences and we're on a slow road towards change and the rise of competing major economic powers will be interesting in that regard.

As for environmentalism sure, we have been exploiting the planet for millennia but not on the scale we are now and the industrial revolution accelerated that shift exponentially.

To the first paragraph:
I've not lived outside a relatively small area (Arkansas and Texas) but I have read the works of people who have indeed lived all around the world and have a vast array of experiences.

I've never said that "accumulation of wealth is the only priority". I think if you were honest you would find that is the "only priority" for relatively few wealthy people.

To the second paragraph. I would have to see some proof on this claim on your part. I think more people have had increased living standards thanks to the efforts of people like Henry Ford who said he wanted his employees to be able to buy one of the cars they made. And that attitude hasn't changed. While Walmart gets frequently maligned, it did introduced a highly lucrative program of stock ownership by its employees. Now they didn't do this out of the goodness of their hearts but the benefits to employees are still real.

To the final paragraph, yes the capitalist system has indeed allowed the exploitation of the Earth as never before. But it has also enabled the opposite to occur as never before. Weyerhaeuser is one of the greatest tree harvesting companies in the world, but they pride themselves (and have for decades) on planting more trees than they cut.

To your first question I really don't know how to respond to be honest. The fact you are well read but oblivious to so much in the wider world is hard to really address in the space of a forum post. Not everyone lives in the worlds' largest economic power, in fact most don't. What you experience as the norm is very much the exception on a global scale and it's hard to know how to "prove" that to you short of coming over there and taking you on a tour of the big wide world where people don't enjoy the benefits which you and I take so much for granted we tend not to notice them.

As to the second, yes, sort of.

We're a long way from a point where our positive activities are balancing out the negatives and the scale on which we operate means the impact of those activities are global. It's true we won't destroy the planet (probably) but our place on it is far from guaranteed and there's only so flexible we can be to changing conditions. More needs to be done sooner and I'm not talking about incremental increases.