Why liberals should love the Second Amendment

[RugersGR8]

Can't believe this was in the Daily Kos.


http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/7/4/881431/-Why-liberals-should-love-the-Second-Amendment

Why liberals should love the Second Amendment
by Kaili Joy Gray aka Angry Mouse
Sun Jul 04, 2010 at 10:00:03 AM PDT

 

[rawhide]

Excellent article. Thanks for posting

 

[natgas]

Very well written article; should be posted everywhere!

 

[radarmonkey]

It's a good article and thanks for posting, but I can't explain why it makes me uneasy.

 

[Dr. Tad Hussein Winslow]

Absolutely; been saying it for years; many of them do... only the stupid ones and their leaders don't.

I'm a social liberal myself (up to the point of gay couples adopting children, where I draw the line), and I 'love' the 2nd amendment.

 

[brettlt]

I have always wondered why liberals fight for all freedoms except the freedom to own firearms. This is really the most important, because it is the one that actually holds the government responsible to not become a tyrant, lest they are overthrown.

 

[rawhide]

I read a good article a couple of years ago by an ACLU attorney bashing the ACLU for its hypocrisy on the 2nd Amendment. If I can find I'll post.

 

[Talacker]

Now if we can only have them recognize the same value of the 10th amendment...

 

[henschman]

The gist of that article is something that has been written about for many years... the fact that the "mainstream" political ideologies of liberalism and conservatism are highly inconsistent in their principles concerning liberty. Members of both ideologies fancy themselves "pro-liberty," but "liberty" means very different things to them. Both groups like to carve liberty up into the parts they like and the parts they don't, in very arbitrary ways.

One of the main ways they carve up liberty is by making a distinction between so-called "economic liberty" and "social liberty"... whether they know that's what they are doing or not. Liberals are great champions of the right of individuals to engage in mutually consensual activity together... as long as land, property, or labor is not involved! Its all good when people are agreeing to stick body parts into various orifices, or form a marriage contract, or form an organization to promote social change... those are relationships the government has no business interfering with. But when it comes to consenting adults agreeing to trade things they own, such as their labor or their property, suddenly things change. When it comes to this kind of relationship between people, liberals support strict regulation and prior restraints by government.

Conservatives claim to stand for liberty, saying "a man has the right to do whatever he wants with his property." They believe people have a right to consensually allocate certain things as they see fit, such as their labor, land, and tangible assets. The relationships that are formed between consenting adults to allocate such things is a sacred entity called the free market, which must be left alone by the government if we are to be free. But when it comes to people freely contracting to spend their life together, or freely consenting to do certain things to each other's body, or people exercising control over that most basic item of property we all own -- that being our own bodies -- by putting certain substances in it, we have to get the government involved to make sure nobody does anything that would be bad for their health or morals, or that would offend the delicate sensibilities of moral folks in the country.

I don't know why liberals and conservatives draw such distinctions between these types of liberty, just like I have no idea why they feel the way they do about gun rights. Its all just arbitrary BS that the different groups latch onto in order to get certain voting blocs on board with their odd coalitions, I suppose.

It makes much more sense to me to believe in liberty as a whole. I believe that everybody has the right to do as they please to the maximum extent that they can do so equally, and that the only legitimate reason for a government to exist would be to protect this liberty.

Commit to a principled and consistent stance on liberty, and let your views on all the lesser issues follow.

 

[Glocktogo]

The gist of that article is something that has been written about for many years... the fact that the "mainstream" political ideologies of liberalism and conservatism are highly inconsistent in their principles concerning liberty. Members of both ideologies fancy themselves "pro-liberty," but "liberty" means very different things to them. Both groups like to carve liberty up into the parts they like and the parts they don't, in very arbitrary ways.

One of the main ways they carve up liberty is by making a distinction between so-called "economic liberty" and "social liberty"... whether they know that's what they are doing or not. Liberals are great champions of the right of individuals to engage in mutually consensual activity together... as long as land, property, or labor is not involved! Its all good when people are agreeing to stick body parts into various orifices, or form a marriage contract, or form an organization to promote social change... those are relationships the government has no business interfering with. But when it comes to consenting adults agreeing to trade things they own, such as their labor or their property, suddenly things change. When it comes to this kind of relationship between people, liberals support strict regulation and prior restraints by government.

Conservatives claim to stand for liberty, saying "a man has the right to do whatever he wants with his property." They believe people have a right to consensually allocate certain things as they see fit, such as their labor, land, and tangible assets. The relationships that are formed between consenting adults to allocate such things is a sacred entity called the free market, which must be left alone by the government if we are to be free. But when it comes to people freely contracting to spend their life together, or freely consenting to do certain things to each other's body, or people exercising control over that most basic item of property we all own -- that being our own bodies -- by putting certain substances in it, we have to get the government involved to make sure nobody does anything that would be bad for their health or morals, or that would offend the delicate sensibilities of moral folks in the country.

I don't know why liberals and conservatives draw such distinctions between these types of liberty, just like I have no idea why they feel the way they do about gun rights. Its all just arbitrary BS that the different groups latch onto in order to get certain voting blocs on board with their odd coalitions, I suppose.

It makes much more sense to me to believe in liberty as a whole. I believe that everybody has the right to do as they please to the maximum extent that they can do so equally, and that the only legitimate reason for a government to exist would be to protect this liberty.

Commit to a principled and consistent stance on liberty, and let your views on all the lesser issues follow.

Because it's not about liberty, it's about control. It's just how conservatives and liberals carve up the control pie. If they all wanted to control people on the same issues, there wouldn't be enough to go around! So they each pander to a group of people who believe that the other guy should be tightly controlled, but not them!

I'm a social liberal and fiscal conservative, which pretty much means leave me and mine the hell alone and I'll do the same for you. I guess that pretty much makes me the political antichrist in the eyes of the two party system.

I doubt we'll ever see a realistic party that extolls the virtues of individual liberty. Too chaotic for the power seekers to feel comfortable with that.