The police carry guns to protect themselves, not me and not you.

Gutfeld is usually right on such topics. He can imbue the most serious subjects with a touch of humor. However, he got me thinking of a guy who shoots from the hip and is getting creamed in the libpress for it. Rand Paul wasn't taking any guff from the female interviewers on two separate occasions making them ask their questions without editorializing them. Hooray!! Later, he sorta apologized for not controlling his temper. Hell, Rand, go get 'em. Don't let the ladies intimidate because they are female. It's just a pretext so that if you became the nominee, you'll be a gentler, calmer Rand when you're up against Hillary. Go sic them. We wish we could.

Robert A. Heinlein

I think we all have to restrict the amount of money that the police, and government in general, takes from us. The more money they have, the more they want to control us. Same with Russia- the more resources they have, the more they want to take over the world.

The purpose of police and government is supposedly to protect your rights. I agree that police typically just clean up the bodies AFTER the fact. I have to admit I feel safer when they are NOT around to take my freedom and money for the stupid laws out there. Maybe the real hidden purpose of the police is to keep citizens' revolutions from happening. Certainly the purpose of the NSA currently is to protect the government FROM the people

I forgot who said it, but it's true, "An armed society is a polite society"

Has anyone ever seen a graph of taxes-from, and benefits-to?

Think that would explain why the mooching majority votes up the parasitic politician.

I'm going looking for this data...

Remember: When seconds count, the police are just minutes away.

So why won't people guard their income as they guard their persons, and the means for their defense?

I think this gets into one of those human nature discussions. Benjamin Franklin noted that aggregation of power attracts those who seek it - and not with the intent to uphold rights. I don't think it really matters where you try to set up a society, those elements will creep back in. The best you can do is vigilantly teach correct principles and discipline those who step out of line.

We are never going to get rid of corruption, blarman. It is inherent in our species. It is probably the 'other face' of production and innovation (advancement for its own sake vs advancement via value)...and I would not want to get rid of those values.

If we were to start 'all over' again - say on another planet - we would be able to get rid of all of the current scaffolding of cronyism that interpenetrates our society. Anything we do within our society is going to retain that scaffolding. But we can, I feel, make changes that make it more difficult for people who 'have' power to use it to limit freedom.

Jan

Perhaps. Perhaps it just delays the corruption that much longer. Or perhaps the founders were right when they said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." (Thomas Jefferson) I think they recognized that unless one has "skin-in-the-game", one isn't invested enough in the outcome to do what is necessary. Seeing all the entitlement/welfare mindsets in society around me, I have to admire the prescience and need for a continual struggle.

If more explicit protections are incorporated into the Constitution, we can at least make future encroaches an 'uphill battle'.

Jan, realistic as well as optimistic

"put more protection in the Constitution"

I appreciate the optimism, but I do have to wonder: what prevents the same old problems from creeping up again?

The only answer I can come up with is that with freedom comes the price of understanding it. Intellectual laziness is the bane of a republic.

Bullseye!

It could indeed. I do not like the term 'sheeple' and avoid using it, but it does seem to me that social compliance is stronger in most populations that it is in the Gulch. What this means to me is that if 'rugged individualism and personal freedom' ever become 'fashionable', it will turn the whole country. Temporarily.

But that is all we need. If we can get a window of opportunity that allows us to learn from our mistakes, wholesale remove tens of thousands of bad laws, and put more protection in the Constitution to keep the bad stuff from happening again...Then, when the country swings back to liberalism (which it will), we will have mitigated the potential for harm.

Jan

Jan, I may be wrong, but I don't think it's the people in Detroit and other liberal enclaves who are refusing to feel guilty about owning guns. I think it's mostly people on flyover country, who are saying you have taken away most of my freedoms, but you are not getting my guns!
These people and this attitude could be our salvation.

Yes, stand up and say no!

This article is good news. Thanks for posting it. Perhaps some ideas do eventually get through to the voters...but look what had to happen to Detroit in order for this to work.

Jan