1984 & BIG BROTHER

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071127/D8T68B4O1.html

 

[amicus]

Article 1

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people, peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Article 2

A well regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

JBJ, please do not view this as a threadjack, but to draw attention to the continuing assault on constitutional guarantees, I included the second article.

I think it was the left wing nitwit, Chris Mathews, commenting on an interview with the Republican Presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, concerning gun rights when Huckabee stated that part of the reason for the right to bear arms was for the people to have means to defend themselves against government.

Mathews giggled and called the concept stupid, ludicrous, insane, "Why would the people ever want to resist their own government?"

Then the usual left harangue about how guns cause murders and that all guns should be confiscated so that only police had guns, thereby solving the entire problem.

I only wish we had the right and I had the funds to arm myself on equal terms with state of the art weapons of any and all kinds.

Amicus...

 

[Lone_Quixote]

. . . I think it was the left wing nitwit, Chris Mathews, . . .

If you mean Chris Matthews, only an extreme right wing nitwit would call Tweety a “left wing nitwit.”

 

[JamesSD]

You know, the true genius of 1984 is that us Left Wingers view Big Brother as George W. Bush incarnate, a rightist who whittles away at constitutional freedoms with the Patriot Act, consolidating executive power, etc.

Right Wingers, meanwhile, see Big Brother as being Communist, devouring all industry into the public sector and demanding total control of individual freedoms.

The important message for us all to remember, regardless of political leanings, is that freedom must continually be fought for.

 

[sr71plt]

Article 2

A well regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

I've never understood how dumb you'd have to be to not understand that the bearing of the arms set forth in this clause is for those serving in an organized militia. Join the National Guard and you can have a gun while on duty. Beyond that, it seems that so many simply can't read. The clause was written for that time, not this--but even then it seems duh enough to comprehend.

 

[Boxlicker101]

You know, the true genius of 1984 is that us Left Wingers view Big Brother as George W. Bush incarnate, a rightist who whittles away at constitutional freedoms with the Patriot Act, consolidating executive power, etc.

Right Wingers, meanwhile, see Big Brother as being Communist, devouring all industry into the public sector and demanding total control of individual freedoms.

The important message for us all to remember, regardless of political leanings, is that freedom must continually be fought for.

Amen to that. ALL extremists want to take away some rights from at least part of the population, mainly those who disagree with them. Lefties want to effectively repeal the second amendment and stifle dissent (if it's non-PC). They want to eliminate the free exercise of religion in public and outlaw capital punishment on constitutional grounds. Righties want to ram their religion down everybody's throats, and make its dogma into law. (Anti-gay and anti-sodomy and anti-abortion laws, for instance.)

 

[Boxlicker101]

I've never understood how dumb you'd have to be to not understand that the bearing of the arms set forth in this clause is for those serving in an organized militia. Join the National Guard and you can have a gun while on duty. Beyond that, it seems that so many simply can't read. The clause was written for that time, not this--but even then it seems duh enough to comprehend.

A militia is not the army, and it is not the National Guard. It is a group that is formed to battle a menace. The Minutemen of 1775 were a militia. A sheriff's posse was a militia. During the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, Korean store owners formed q militia, arming themselves with rifles and shotguns and pistols to keep the racist mobs at bay and protect their property.

At the time the Constitution was written, the nation was plagued by roving gangs of criminals, intent on robbery and rape, and the people in rural towns had to be able to defend themselves. The need is less strong now, but such gangs still exist, or are formed instantaneously. If you think there are no criminal bands in the US, you are living in a dream world.

 

[sr71plt]

A militia is not the army, and it is not the National Guard. It is a group that is formed to battle a menace. The Minutemen of 1775 were a militia. A sheriff's posse was a militia. During the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, Korean store owners formed q militia, arming themselves with rifles and shotguns and pistols to keep the racist mobs at bay and protect their property.

At the time the Constitution was written, the nation was plagued by roving gangs of criminals, intent on robbery and rape, and the people in rural towns had to be able to defend themselves. The need is less strong now, but such gangs still exist, or are formed instantaneously. If you think there are no criminal bands in the US, you are living in a dream world.

Nope. Times have changed. The concept the framers were talking about at the time is equal to a home guard--today's National Guard. You have to read the voluminous discussions the framers were having in correspondence back and forth at the time to understand what they were talking about. And then you have to have a smidgen of common sense to translate it to the modern equivalences. But I guess asking for NRA types to use common sense is a waste of breath. I say let's go the whole hog and issue rifles to deer and ducks.

 

[emap]

Oh let's not issue rifles to deer and duck, you have to watch where you are going with just people having guns.

sr yes the actual wording of the amendment is refering to a militia, you know what though, people still need to protect themselves from other things that the government won't care about. Think gangs, home invader type of burglars, alot of those don't kill you they just make sure you don't see them, enough of them however do kill you to warrant letting people have a rifle or pistol in the house.

Not to mention the animals in the wild, not snakes and spiders, I am talking bears, mountain lions, deer oddly enough, sometimes they will attack because you are between them and their child or between them and escape, wolves so on so forth. Oh and of course can't forget rabbits, they can be mean nasty beasts.

No one needs an automatic weapon, but a weapon that can be used for self defence should be the right of everyone to go and buy, assuming they are legally allowed to of course. Though I so think a course in proper weapon usage should be a requirement.

The amendment I am pretty sure was worded vaguely because they felt the same way I do, was even worse then than it is now. I would not be surprised if they felt that leaving it open for people to carry weapons meant that the government had one more safeguard from becoming exactly what they left England for in the first place.

 

[amicus]

emap, et all, you have the right idea, just extend a little more and encompass the whole...

We exist as individuals, you are one, so am I. I value my life, my property, my possessions, my wife, my children. I wish to protect them under any threatening circumstances.

From the earliest of human times we realized the need and the necessity of being capable of defending and protecting that which we love and cherish.

If the King pounds on my door and wants my fourteen year old daughter as his consort, whether she agrees or not, I do not, then I want the means to blow his balls off should he insist.

I give no man or government the right to infringe upon my innate and inalienable rights to live as an individual.

I do not wish to resort to the use of force to protect those rights, but I will, if necessary and I do wish to have the best means to resist, against burglars or thieves or Uncle Sam, should he insist I put a yellow star of david on my front door.

It comes right back to the individual versus the collective, as it always does. Many of your view the group as the arbiter of rights, I maintain that the individual is the source of all rights and all values.

And I for one, will defend my rights and will mutually cooperate with what ever mutually agreed compatriots I can discover.

Amicus, armed and dangerous...

 

[Byron In Exile]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071127/D8T68B4O1.html

Good for Amazon! Not only in refusing to turn over the names of customers, but in going the extra distance in getting the court records unsealed afterwards, so people would know what federal prosecutors had attempted to do.

And aren't we fortunate George Orwell lived? Otherwise, we'd be casting around for a term to describe this sort of thing and finding nothing adequate. Thanks mainly to 1984, the word "Orwellian" describes a concept that it's vital to incorporate in thinking about how to maintain a limited representative government in a technological age.

It's interesting to contemplate a day in the future when certain books may be as illicit as drugs are now. Imagine having to drive to the seedy part of town to do a book deal in a back alley.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The militia is every adult male in America. Do the research and see for yourself.

Before the Civil War most counties held elections for local militia officers. They were paid a stipend to keep the books and answer the phone....and handle local emergencies until state and federal aid was available.

Like Indian attacks. When a community was attacked by Indians the local militia officers got the locals organized and communicated with the state capital. The governor might activate the militia companies in other counties to serve for 30-90 days. And if the situation was serious, the governor might appeal to the President for the army. Activated militia was called active militia. They got paid. Thats the fundamental diferences. If you got a check you were active; if you didnt you were just militia.

The militia we think of as the National Guard was formed after the Civil War. The members had periodic drills and training, and wore regulation uniforms and accoutrements. America has generally relied on the National Guard as first responders when the conflict requires more muscle than the regulars have.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

AMICUS

No thread ever stays on track. I personally prefer threads that meander.

I know there are some people on LIT with serious control issues, but I aint one of them.

It's all grist for the mill.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

BYRON you must be a youngster.

During the first half of the 20th Century writers and publishers had a tough time with government censors and prosecutors.

 

[amicus]

'Grist for the Mill', I wrote a poem under that title about 40 years ago, in college, with the same meaning...thanx...


Amicus...

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071127/NEWS01/711270344/1056/COL02

What folks dont get is: Censorship makes the forbidden fruit more appealing. It's also a clear message that the material hurts, which invites more of it.

 

[amicus]

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071127/NEWS01/711270344/1056/COL02

What folks dont get is: Censorship makes the forbidden fruit more appealing. It's also a clear message that the material hurts, which invites more of it.

~~~

Followed the link...it never seems to end, does it?

ami

 

[Byron In Exile]

BYRON you must be a youngster.

During the first half of the 20th Century writers and publishers had a tough time with government censors and prosecutors.

No, I'm not talking about censorship, but about surveillance.

There's not only no need, there's no desire on the part of government to control your book purchases if they can be monitored. Better than to attempt to repress any "unhealthy" tendency on the part of citizen, which repression they will find a way to circumvent anyway, is to allow it to occur and record every instance of it.

Book deals would not be occurring in back alleys because the books were not freely available, but in order to avoid the transaction being officially recorded.

 

[thebullet]

Amen to that. ALL extremists want to take away some rights from at least part of the population, mainly those who disagree with them. Lefties want to effectively repeal the second amendment and stifle dissent (if it's non-PC). They want to eliminate the free exercise of religion in public and outlaw capital punishment on constitutional grounds. Righties want to ram their religion down everybody's throats, and make its dogma into law. (Anti-gay and anti-sodomy and anti-abortion laws, for instance.)

What most people fail to understand is: there are practically no leftists in America. There are certainly only a handful in American politics.

Any 'fair and balanced' analysis of the US political spectrum would agree that almost all the presidential candidates are to some degree right wingers. The exception is Dennis Kucinich, who is a moderate left winger.

The neocons and the fundamentalist Christians have pulled the Republican Party so far to the right that they truly are nearing fascism.

If we had a time machine and carried Hillary Clinton back to 1960, her politics would be pretty close to Richard Nixon's. Obama would be between JFK and Nixon perhaps, but still on the Conservative side of the spectrum (JFK was pretty close to the middle, slightly left).

And yet the neo-cons quite honestly believe that Clinton is practically a communist.

From someone who has been studying the American poltical spectrum since the mid-60's it's more than bizarre.

Ask any person from another first world country. They think America is populated by right wing nuts.

And don't let someone like Amicus tell you that those countries are all a bunch of communists or socialists. They are almost all capitalist democracies just like America. I saw a review of the best countries to live in the world that came out last week (based upon standard of living, life expectancy, and a view other factors). The United States was 12th. So their politics doesn't appear to be doing their populations any harm.

We don't have a corner on the market of anything related to personal happiness anymore except: we can own guns, if one considers that happiness (Happiness is a warm gun, after all).

In the final analysis, the only people in America who are taking away individual rights are the people currently in power.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

BYRON

In 1984 nothing was censored officially, but everything was monitored, and people vanished. Everyone knew the deal. And the end result was censorship.

Our local paper is howling for free birth control for girls so momma & daddy wont know about it when the insurance bill arrives. Parents monitor such things.

 

[Byron In Exile]

BYRON

In 1984 nothing was censored officially, but everything was monitored, and people vanished. Everyone knew the deal. And the end result was censorship.

Well, I'm not trying to rain on your agenda. But to compare "censorship" of the earlier part of this century with what is described in 1984, and what I am describing based on a society in which everyone is under constant surveillance, is to miss how Orwell's 1984 relates to the article you cited, I think.

Governments are paranoid by nature, because their purpose is to maintain stability of a society, and constantly find ways to increase their control over those governed. The crude attempts at censorship you mention are as nothing compared to the potential for control afforded a government in the "information age."

Our local paper is howling for free birth control for girls so momma & daddy wont know about it when the insurance bill arrives. Parents monitor such things.

Okay.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Article 1

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people, peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Article 2

A well regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

JBJ, please do not view this as a threadjack, but to draw attention to the continuing assault on constitutional guarantees, I included the second article.

Um, actually those are Amendments, not Articles.

I think it was the left wing nitwit, Chris Mathews, commenting on an interview with the Republican Presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, concerning gun rights when Huckabee stated that part of the reason for the right to bear arms was for the people to have means to defend themselves against government.

Mathews giggled and called the concept stupid, ludicrous, insane, "Why would the people ever want to resist their own government?"

Then the usual left harangue about how guns cause murders and that all guns should be confiscated so that only police had guns, thereby solving the entire problem.

An argument successfully made by the National Socialist German Workers Party in 1935. Hooray for government!

I only wish we had the right and I had the funds to arm myself on equal terms with state of the art weapons of any and all kinds.

That's really not necessary. The guns privately held in the US now are quite sufficient.

 

[emap]

Ahem, nobody gets a rabbit being a mean nasty beast reference?

Anyway, I gotta point this one out, censorship actually has gotten better in recent times than it was. Go and read Bram Stoker's Dracula, it actually to a large degree was a stroke story. Of course can't say that when he wrote it, can't have sex, so instead, he talks about a woman being drained of blood, wearing little at the time and various other things that are decidedly sexual in reference.

1001 Nights, I can't remember the actual name of it but the one about a woman who tells stories for 1001 nights, much of it was sexual in nature, it was banned from a large portion of Europe. It was not graphic, well mostly not, pretty tame by today's standards actually, but when it was written it was burned in large portions of Europe. I think it was burned, I do know it was banned and mostly disapeared besides a few libraries and other places, I beleive one copy was found in a monastery.

Watch old movies and TV shows, I Love Lucy, most of the seasons they sleep in seperate beds, not until the last few do they have one big bed. As I recall it caused something of an uproar when they were shown getting into said big bed at the end of the episode. Movies are the same way, the older the movie the less kissing, old enough and any kissing a finger is seen between their lips or to teh cheek. Kissing someone not your wife was a big no no, even if the characters are married.

OK semi related off topic thing, whatever happened to being able to differentiate a character played by an actor or actress with the actor or actress?

 

[Boxlicker101]

Ahem, nobody gets a rabbit being a mean nasty beast reference?

Anyway, I gotta point this one out, censorship actually has gotten better in recent times than it was. Go and read Bram Stoker's Dracula, it actually to a large degree was a stroke story. Of course can't say that when he wrote it, can't have sex, so instead, he talks about a woman being drained of blood, wearing little at the time and various other things that are decidedly sexual in reference.

1001 Nights, I can't remember the actual name of it but the one about a woman who tells stories for 1001 nights, much of it was sexual in nature, it was banned from a large portion of Europe. It was not graphic, well mostly not, pretty tame by today's standards actually, but when it was written it was burned in large portions of Europe. I think it was burned, I do know it was banned and mostly disapeared besides a few libraries and other places, I beleive one copy was found in a monastery.

Watch old movies and TV shows, I Love Lucy, most of the seasons they sleep in seperate beds, not until the last few do they have one big bed. As I recall it caused something of an uproar when they were shown getting into said big bed at the end of the episode. Movies are the same way, the older the movie the less kissing, old enough and any kissing a finger is seen between their lips or to teh cheek. Kissing someone not your wife was a big no no, even if the characters are married.

OK semi related off topic thing, whatever happened to being able to differentiate a character played by an actor or actress with the actor or actress?

I supposed the rabbit reference was a jab at Jimmy Carter.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Old Movie". Did you ever see the beach scene in "From Here to Eternity" from the early fifties? Non-spousal kissing was common enough in movies from that era, and even before, but it was usualky part of a relationship. In "The African Queen" the two stars shared a tiny cabin on the boat of the title. She got preggers.