The path to world peace

[Skipjack]

Well, a government cant keep their entire people under control, if they are all armed and willing to overthrow it. Sure you can start shooting them with tanks and even bombs. The question is however: If you just kill everyone of them, who do you have left to govern?

[Diogenes]

Don't let that stop you.

as long as retribution in the same way is allowed...

I wouldn't have it any other way. I miss the flame wars on usenet. You got your knuckles bloody there. But mostly flaming morons was too easy. I prefer the current more erudite crowd. I actually have to think some. Not so as you would notice though.

I absolutely LOVED a good flame war. One of my fondest memories was the time I checked into the MENSA echo to see what the smart people were talking about. The discussions were about trivial crap. Nothing of any intellectual caliber or import. I posted a message along the lines of "Where are all the smart people?" and unleashed a fire storm of hatred upon myself! (Apparently they were sensitive about being thought of as childish.)

I kicked their asses quantitatively and qualitatively. I responded to over two hundred messages a day for awhile until they figured out this little boy had teeth! I wrote poetry, I composed ASCII pictures, I referenced news articles and cited sources. (That was a lot harder when you actually had to look stuff up in a book!)

One of my favorite slams was to this Athiest fellow demeaning religious people. In one of his comments he stated "I prefer to think of myself as the product of a wide gene pool." I said " You ARE the product of a wide gene pool, insofar as your mother had multiple partners assisting in your conception! "

Another one of my favorites (on the MENSA echo) was when this California Girl mentioned how stupid people in Oklahoma are.

I pointed out in the Dust bowl era, there was a mass migration of People from Oklahoma to California. "The good thing about this was that it raised the IQ level of BOTH states! "


Nowadays, I try not to insult people, but sometimes the need is too hard to resist and I find myself slipping back to my old ways. But I know what you mean.

[Diogenes]

However, a lot of the weapons used by insurgents over the past few decades are just small arms and IEDs, with the occasional RPG etc. thrown into the mix. I wonder if the right to bear arms would facilitate an insurgency against a tyrannical regime?

Maybe that's what they had in mind all along - after all, in the War of Independence the U.S. didn't defeat Britain quickly but through a prolonged insurgency.

And that raises another question - against a tyrannical government willing to cause unlimited bloodshed, would an insurgency work? Insurgency causes us a lot of trouble right now because we want to kill as few people as possible.

No, it's not what they meant to happen. They fully intended a head to head conflict between armies. They foresaw the individual state militias coming to the aid of a state which was being oppressed by the Standing federal army. The Civil war saw that silly idea dispensed with.

[Skipjack]

One of my favorite slams was to this Athiest fellow demeaning religious people. In one of his comments he stated "I prefer to think of myself as the product of a wide gene pool." I said " You ARE the product of a wide gene pool, insofar as your mother had multiple partners assisting in your conception! "

Your conversational skills are truly impressive. I sure would like to hear some more stories about your usenet adventures...

[CaptainBeowulf]

No, it's not what they meant to happen. They fully intended a head to head conflict between armies. They foresaw the individual state militias coming to the aid of a state which was being oppressed by the Standing federal army. The Civil war saw that silly idea dispensed with.

True. So, I guess that the Right to Bear Arms wouldn't work as the U.S. Founding Fathers intended. However, it might work in some other way (like the insurgency thing.)

This has nothing to do with the pros/cons on crime rates - I'm just interested in whether the whole military aspect makes sense anymore.

Oh, and lol @ your MENSA forum story. I think that a lot of people who bother to take IQ tests and then go to a forum for "smart" people are superficial and looking for self-affirmation. The really smart people just can't be bothered with something so silly - they're off doing something more important.

[MSimon]

My take on the MENSA crowd on usenet was about the same. I liked alt.comp.lang.forth and of course the Hunter Thompson board.

From what I understand it is all archived - most of it behind a pay wall.

[MSimon]

However, a lot of the weapons used by insurgents over the past few decades are just small arms and IEDs, with the occasional RPG etc. thrown into the mix. I wonder if the right to bear arms would facilitate an insurgency against a tyrannical regime?

What is the purpose of a pistol? You use it to get a rifle. etc.

[Diogenes]

No, it's not what they meant to happen. They fully intended a head to head conflict between armies. They foresaw the individual state militias coming to the aid of a state which was being oppressed by the Standing federal army. The Civil war saw that silly idea dispensed with.

True. So, I guess that the Right to Bear Arms wouldn't work as the U.S. Founding Fathers intended. However, it might work in some other way (like the insurgency thing.)

This has nothing to do with the pros/cons on crime rates - I'm just interested in whether the whole military aspect makes sense anymore.

I think if it is to work at all nowadays, it would of necessity have to be an insurgency type of conflict. Armies have long since gone past the point where they can be challenged by amateurs, though a lot of people in our army would likely not follow certain orders in attacking the populace. Even in China during Tienanmen square, Chinese officers refused to attack civilians whom they grew up with. The Chinese authorities resolved this problem by moving Army units from across the country, telling them it was a riot and insurrection, and ordering them to attack!

That same tactic may or may not work here. Chine could control the information which the out of town army units were allowed to hear. In this country that is more difficult, but not exactly impossible. The Employees of the News and Entertainment media manage to do it every election year. They don't control it all, but they control enough to give their side a 10% edge.

Oh, and lol @ your MENSA forum story. I think that a lot of people who bother to take IQ tests and then go to a forum for "smart" people are superficial and looking for self-affirmation. The really smart people just can't be bothered with something so silly - they're off doing something more important.

Being more ignorant in those days (around 1991 I think) it never occurred to me that people who had qualified for Mensa would be so superficial. I fully expected to see discussions on topics such as Physics, Philosophy, Science, etc. I was very disappointed to discover it was just a bunch of crap being discussed. I assumed it was just a bunch of non members posting trivia because the smart people had better things to do.
As it turned out, the people who took offense at me asking "Where are all the smart people? " did indeed claim to be MENSA members.

Nowadays I know better. Virtually everyone is to some degree, superficial. I'm pretty sure we can't help ourselves in many cases, because it's encoded into our genes. Objectivity is HARD!

[Diogenes]

My take on the MENSA crowd on usenet was about the same. I liked alt.comp.lang.forth and of course the Hunter Thompson board.

From what I understand it is all archived - most of it behind a pay wall.

That is very interesting. I used to have my own copy of my own message traffic. A lot of BBS's were using "Blue Wave" mail/message program, so all you had to do was not delete the compressed packets and you could always pull them up later. Unfortunately, I had a very powerful magnet from a hard drive clipped to my desk, and one day after having left my daughter in my office for awhile, I discovered that magnet attached to the top of the hard drive which had my stuff on it.

That was a shame, because some of the stuff I had written I (and others) considered to be quite good. Two of the poems I had written I can almost put back together from memory, but not quite. It would certainly be interesting if the data is available somewhere.

[MSimon]

Dang "Blue Wave". I'd almost forgotten.

[Diogenes]

One of my favorite slams was to this Athiest fellow demeaning religious people. In one of his comments he stated "I prefer to think of myself as the product of a wide gene pool." I said " You ARE the product of a wide gene pool, insofar as your mother had multiple partners assisting in your conception! "

Your conversational skills are truly impressive. I sure would like to hear some more stories about your usenet adventures...

Thank you. I remember all sorts of discussions on all sorts of topics, but not as many details as I would like. I used to have it all archived, but castles burn and hard drives fail.

I remember one discussion which I was having with a Police captain regarding gun control. He was absolutely against the idea of the general public carrying guns, and felt that guns needed to be strictly regulated.

I pointed out that the cities that did the most regulating, had the most gun crimes. He said that was because people were bringing them in from other states, and that when all of the states have strict gun control laws, the problem will go away.

I told him "You remind me of all those Communist apologists who are always saying that the reason communism doesn't work is because freedom exists on the other side of the border! and when the entire world is communist, THEN it will work! " ( or words to that effect.)

Needless to say, he didn't like the comparison, and he used pretty strong language in his response. That's how you can tell when you score a zinger! Like the old saying goes, If you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one you hit is the one yelping!

[CaptainBeowulf]

Not always entirely true: Canada, for instance, has pretty strict gun control laws and has lower gun crime. Furthermore, where there is gun crime (like around Toronto) a lot of it is with guns smuggled in from Michigan and other nearby states.

I think it has to work one of two ways: either strict gun control everywhere, or anyone can have a gun. Somewhere in the middle (where many states currently are) doesn't work.

Also, it's worth noting that in places like the UK, where they succeeded in getting rid of most guns, knife crime goes up. In that sense, guns are more equitable: a 90lb woman with a gun is on the same footing as a 180lb man (providing she knows how to cover a target properly and doesn't get close enough that he can grab it from her). With knives, she's not.

[CaptainBeowulf]

Here, for example, is an article by someone who briefly looked at gun crime vs. knife crime (he accurately says that developing reliable statistics on these things is very difficult). Not someone I read normally, just found his post by google:

http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=1323

[pbelter]

But the only way to ensure long lasting world peace is World Government. A totalitarian one. No more wars to fight, maybe except its own citizens, but with current invigilation technology that may not be even necessary. A little intimidation might suffice.

Now, is world peace a good thing? Not necessarily. Polish leaders didn't think so in 1939 and they could have been more accommodating, like i.e. Neville Chamberlain. Had they chosen another way, much of Europe and probably most of Asia would be already united under the National Socialists.

Regarding gun control:
When Chechenia first declared their independence, the Russians were too busy with the fallout of the Soviet Union so at first they did not react at all. Djokhar Dudayev, the first Chechen president, know it was only a matter of time before they invaded so he had a law passed that every able male must carry a gun at all times, to prepare for the inevitable. Police fined violators.
I remember that the left wing European media were astonished that this did not result in a killing spree in the streets and even more astonished that the crime rate fell virtually to 0. They have sent a reporter to find an interview whatever was left of organized crime there. I don't remember the details but the general response was something along those lines:

" When we ambush a guy in a dark alley and ask him for a wallet, we can't be really sure what he is reaching for..."

[Skipjack]

In a globalized economy individual countries and their governments become more and more susceptible to economic pressures. This pressure can come from the inside (citizens want to be wealthy). Other countries can also put on economic pressure via unfavorable trade agreements. Plus countries with terror regimes will most likely not attract many contracts with foreign companies. In the end they will give in. See China and Taiwan. Sure this is a slow process and China has not turned into a nice happy country over night, but one can see a change happening.
In contrast, look at North Korea. This country is almost completely isolated both economically and politically. As a result, the country is poor and unstable. I think the problems there will resolve all by themselves very soon.