Guns & the Bill of Rights

[Steve]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, Carolina <silmariel at t...> wrote:
> Kathryn Cawte:
> > And as for ownership of weapons being the only way to safeguard your
> > freedom...
> 
> ... Steve is making me think that I, a citizen of the EEC, am not
> free because I don't own a gun for self-defense (and I don't 
> have the right to have one, I must say). 

bboy_mn:

I think I may have stirred up the cauldron enough, but since you post
is short and very direct, I will makes a couple of hopefully not  too
inflamitory comments.

You say you are free (I'm not doubting that), and as long as your
government remain benevolent, you are OK. But if the tide turns
against you, what measure of assurrance do you have (Bill of Rights),
what resources are at your disposal to bring a straying government
under control?

Let's look at the case of Delores Umbridge and Cornelius Fudge. The
first decree was simple, the government gets to appoint a teacher. And
the logic is that they need to have this interference in the system to
save the system itself. 

Then in the interest of law and order, Umbridge gains the right to
monitor and sack teachers. Now she has gained power to oppress and
threaten the rest of the staff, but seemingly for the greater good. To
assure that her power will go unchallenged, she is not above torturing
students. But that is not enough power for her, she has to be the High
Inquisitor. A role which she got by bullying and intimidating a
supposedly free press into spreading propaganda and lies to discredit
anyone who stood in her way. 

Later, it's not just the corruption of the free press, but the actual
banning of the press. Then the next step is to ban the free flow of
ideas and open dialog by any means. Then she bans groups, teams, and
clubs. All for the greater good, of course, all with best interests of
the wizard world at heart, and not only that, since no one read deeper
into what was happening and prevented it, Fudge and Umbridge did so
with the support of the people. 

All the while that she tries to get things under her control for the
good of and with the support of the government and the people, oddly,
things get worse. Which gives her the perfect excuse to become more
oppressive. Then, you lose the right to privacy, your mail is being
searched, then you are subjected to the unwarrented search and seizure
of your property. Due process of law is by passed. 

When that only makes things worse again, Umbridge has no choice but to
insure her absolute authority by creating her own personal SS/Gestapo,
an elite army that operates outside the bounds of standard law and
order. And then... and then... and then... the system with the full
support of the government and the people cascades into a dictatorship,
with the oppression of all rights and of the people. And let's not
forget how Fudge tried to totally corrupt the judicial system in order
to get Harry expelled not only from Hogwarts, but from the wizard world.

This corruption of government always come with the support of the
people. People who most willingly trade away their freedoms for
security. But, sadly, the more freedom the trade away, the less secure
they become, until the have finally destroy the very thing they
thought they were preserving.

This is not just the stuff of story books and fairytales. This is
happening right now today in our modern enlightened world. 

Our assumed enemies are not our greatest enemies, we are our own
greatest enemy, we as complacent univolved citizen are the greatest
threat to freedom. This type of corruption is insidious, it creeps in
and takes over otherwise stable and funcitional governments, and
usually does so with the support of the people. That is, until the
people realize that they have destroy the very thing they took for
granted.

Let me point out an example from recent history, that so very clearly
supports the right to keep and bear arms. In the Serbia/Croatia
conflict, in it's infinite wizdom, the USA bullied the rest of the
world into enforcing a ban on the sale of arms to Croatia, which in
turn allowed the heavily armed Serbian to slaughter countless Croatian
men, women, and children while the world stood by and watched. 

The Croatian's begged the world, not to give them, but to sell them
arms so they could defend themselves. They were more than willing to
fight their own battles, but the world, primarily at the insistence of
the US, wouldn't do it because they thought to would only inflame the
war. 

So Croatians were helpless, they had little choice but to watch their
friends and family being murdered while the world sat by sipping tea
and debating how, when, and if they should help. True there were a few
small bands of militia that were able to form and resist the Serbs.
But, with the rest of the world actively suppressing them, they were
hardly enough to be effective. 

People can say the reasons to keep and bear arm don't apply to our
modern world, but modern history continually proves them wrong.


> On the other hand, they can't kill me legally to later find I was 
> innocent, that after all, the 'jury' just choose wrong. That should 
> make my slavery happier.
> 
> edited...
> 
> silmariel


I assume this is a reference to the death penalty, and you will get no
argument from me there. By the way, the state I live in doesn't have
the death penalty. 

I view the death penalty as another means by which the government can
become corrupt. It's very easy, to charge and convict your opponents
of captial crime (re: Fudge's corrupt court), and very neatly let the
system dispose of them. This happens all the time in our modern world.

Just out of curiousity, how many violations of your own charter of
rights did Umbridge commit? Quite a few I imagine. 

Sorry, once again I rambled on far longer than I intended too.

Steve/bboy_mn