The second part is fallacy; you obviously cannot remove the ability to point a gun (or knife) at someone and make demands, and any attempt to do so necessarily tramples other's rights. In reality there are two effective choices - the person being mugged can defend them-self and/or the government can attempt to find and punish the person after the fact. The second one does not do a bit of good for the current victim, of course.
Everything is a tradeoff, saying 'tramples other's rights' is misleading because it doesn't indicate which rights. Some rights are more valued than others to people (I'd gladly trade my right to kill myself for my right to free speech, if such a tradeoff existed).
When I say you cannot remove the ability of people to do it, I mean only that - you cannot remove the ability. And that is what all the gun-grabbing hoopla is about - physically removing the ability to do so by restricting access to guns. That, I contend, is impossible and absolutely infringes on individual rights.
The threat of retaliation, either by the victim immediately or after-the-fact by the government, is of course effective at prevention. The former is more effective, as evidenced by crime rates in areas where the government does not infringe on the right to self-defense.
Everything is a tradeoff, saying 'tramples other's rights' is misleading because it doesn't indicate which rights. Some rights are more valued than others to people (I'd gladly trade my right to kill myself for my right to free speech, if such a tradeoff existed).
It does not matter which rights - the government may not pick and choose which individual rights to value over others, it's their duty to protect them all equally - and for all people equally.
Of course it is your right to determine which rights you value the most, but it is not a power of the government. And it's a power of neither you or the government to determine which rights I value most.
Moreover, this is the moment when you can show whether you are really free.
Free men do not mind dying when their time comes.
When I say "freedom", I talk about choice. Options. Influence over one's light cone. All of which are drastically diminished whenever you're locked in a cell, or threatened by a madman with a gun.
I might be taken out. I might take my enemy out (shooting a person is not as trivial task as it seems). Or I might just cause enough trouble for the bad guys so their total cost goes up, hopefully beyond break even point.
It is no different attitude than the one US tries to project upon the world.
I only acknowledge that nobody will fight for me if I don't fight for myself.
Examples of peaceful countries like sweden or switzerland can be given, but what did they do to stop hitler? Poland started to crack the enigma code and later turing with his friends in secrecy completed it in England.
What we need is people that can be trusted to be in power. The voting system in America is just plain wrong. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g
If you have zero physical security, that means that anyone can come up and just knock you down and take your things, your woman, whatever... Not my idea of "freedom".
I think that it follows that you do need some security in order to live a free life. Does that justify secret government spying programs? Probably not!
People here seem to have awfully black and white thoughts about some aspects of life.
> yet we are losing our liberties at an alarming speed.
Except for minorities (at least for some things, like, say, being able to vote in Alabama), gays, people who consume marijuana in Washington and Colorado, and various others who have gained rights recently. It's not black and white.
These are orthogonal issues. There are strong reasons to believe that the modern stability that we enjoy is maintained by networks of mutual self-interest, soft social norms and overall cultural sophistication. The idea that we are being protected by the state is just a fairy-tale and there is no scientific evidence of this whatsoever.
Saying that something is not "black and white" sounds clever, but can be used as a way to disguise unscientific, mushy ideas.
Uh, most things involving people are kind of mushy, because you can't experiment on them like you would with rats. And they tend to behave oddly at times. Also, there are a tremendous number of things that bear on their behavior - isolating them is not easy.
> modern stability that we enjoy is maintained
Could it be that the modern stability also exists because most of us feel relatively safe in our persons?
It's not as if the only thing preventing most of us from running amok is the presence of police, but some kind of security force does act as a backstop for those individuals who do not care about your self-interest, social norms, or whatever.
Once again: not trying to justify the NSA stuff, but I think the idea that no security at all is needed for one to live in freedom is handwavy bullshit.
You mean, stability is mantained by structures like the state?
But that happens now. All the examples that are being given on why we need security are examples of things that are happening now WITH security.
"I think that it follows that you do need some security in order to live a free life. Does that justify secret government spying programs? Probably not!"
My problem is that this security is just a false sense of security. With all of the restrictions and all of the money poured into the DHS and other counter-intelligence, we still get things like Boston. I wish people would realize that bad things happen, and giving your rights away isn't going to stop them from happening.
"Except for minorities (at least for some things, like, say, being able to vote in Alabama), gays, people who consume marijuana in Washington and Colorado, and various others who have gained rights recently. It's not black and white."
They haven't gained anything. Nothing is stopping the feds from swooping down and arresting these individuals. They are still breaking a federal law. Also, in reference to the gay marriage thing, I feel it is kind of low to say they are gaining rights as there was no real legal reason (that I could think of) to prevent them from being able to marry.
Obviously. It's impossible to eliminate bad things completely. They would happen more without anyone providing security.
> They haven't gained anything
Ok, fine, whatever, the world is moving only in one direction, with no nuance, no complexities, and in a very simple, easy to understand way. Nothing has gotten better for anyone.
To me, this argument is based on how one views human nature. Personally, I don't believe that the majority of people want to commit serious crimes but are only held back by the fact that if they did, they would be punished. Because of that belief, I don't believe that eliminating security would cause an increase of bad behavior.
"Ok, fine, whatever, the world is moving only in one direction, with no nuance, no complexities, and in a very simple, easy to understand way. Nothing has gotten better for anyone."
I probably should have phrased my response better but at the time was stuck in a better way to do so. Surely there are places that have improved in people's lives but it isn't like those same improvements couldn't or wouldn't have been made without a state providing security.
What is your definition of serious? Sure, most people don't want to kill others, but what about non-violent crimes. What about fraud? Not paying taxes? Although you might argue that taxes are usurping our freedom somehow, I like having infrastructure.
"What about fraud? Not paying taxes?"
Maybe I'm just naive but I don't think the average person walks around conspiring to commit fraud but is discouraged by the fact they could go to jail if caught.
As for the taxes issue, in this scenario, taxes would most likely decrease since there would be no big security machine (DoD, DHS, NSA, FBI, CIA) to feed, or at least budgets would be slashed. On top of that, there could be systems put into place that automate the taxes and make the current way of doing taxes a thing of the past. The lower taxes and the automated system could make it easy to pay taxes as well as harder to avoid paying taxes.
You don't need "majority", you need just a handful of really really bad ones.
The modern state we have is here not to build Heaven on Earth, but to avoid Hell. Eliminating all crime is impossible, but without state intervention you end up with Somalia, Afghanistan or post-Katrina New Orleans.
What you're describing is total freedom in a causal society - the only constraint on what people do is what they _can_ do. It may not be your definition of freedom, but from an unbiased observer, it is arguably the most free a society can be.
You (and a lot of other people, I think) are conflating freedom (being able to do whatever you can) with rights (a guarantee that certain conditions will exist in a governed society). Granting rights necessarily diminishes the total freedom of a society.
Hodor. Own woman. Hodor. Hodor. Hodor.
Perhaps (well, hopefully) I'm reading into your comment too much though.
the position you state was formed by Greek and Roman civilizations. Majority of people in these civilizations were slaves. And security was a precondition for the freedom of few at the top of these ancient societies.
The American revolution was a break in that order of things. It resulted in granting of unheard of freedoms while dismantling a lot of Imperial Britain security. And now we're sliding back to imperial level of security and freedom.
The American Revolution carried forward slavery.