If that is what he’s proposing, that’s what he should have written. Phrasing the tweet the way he did is the stupidity part, since it can be interpreted to mean something else. I suppose that brings up the notion, is committing a gaff stupidity? When it’s something written down, it probably is, since you could have looked at it a second time before posting it. That makes it different from something that just slipped out of your mouth without thinking through the different interpretations.
Is this the verbiage of a tyrant too?
A strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means.
So what you are saying, is that Eric Swalwell was under some sort of extreme duress with the fate of the nation at stake while he was typing out that foolish and ill considered tweet? Lovely.
Swalwell was not under extreme duress, but neither was Thomas Jefferson when he wrote that in 1810 to justify the Louisiana Purchase. They were both merely laying out their political philosophy: expediency sometimes takes precedence over principle.
And yet if he had said “A new Congress is putting your right to fair elections over any corporate rights” then most of us would be cheering.
People are always in favor of vigorously defending Constitutional rights, except when they aren’t.
Maybe if you’re trying to argue that a statement isn’t tyrannical, you shouldn’t quote a slaveholder who advocated hanging and property confiscations to control popular opposition to a war of territorial aggression waged in support of a ruthless European imperialist.
(Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 29 June 1812)
(The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, Bicentennial Edition - Donald R Hickey - Google Books)
Yet despite all that, Jefferson still wasn’t a tyrant. Because tyrant does not mean “guy you don’t like”.
Your argument seems to claim that a statement is not tyrannical because Jefferson made a similar one. I do not have to prove Jefferson a tyrant (he was not) to demolish your argument, I merely have to prove that he has uttered tyrannical statements. Since you appear to agree he has, we are done.
When the Constitution was written the upper limit of destructive potential of a weapon one person could carry, was different than it is now. There are already restrictions on the right to bear arms. I don’t think it’s legal to carry around RPGs or suitcase nukes? The question is simply where do we set that restriction. It is somewhere between “1776-era musket” and “suitcase nuke” and different societies, all of which may by any reasonable standard be called liberal democracies with a heavy focus on civil rights, set that bar differently. I would like the U.S. to be more like Australia and less like Thunderdome in this respect, but that’s just me. The 2nd amendment must be considered, but its wording must in the view of most people be ambiguous, or we would allow ownership of all arms however powerful (or, to put it in the words of a College Republican my college roommate once overheard, we wouldn’t “squish on the Bazooka Factor”). I would choose to view the Bazooka Factor as a reductio ad absurdem rather than a necessary consequence of ideological purity, but one’s mileage may vary.
This isn’t about whether you can have reasonable common sense gun control.
It’s about this statement:
A new Congress is putting your right to be safe over any other rights.
No, my argument is that similar arguments have been put forth by others who were not tyrants. Not just Jefferson. The notion that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” has been restated many times in our history.
Exactly. And I’m changing the name of this fucking thread because I’m tired of the circular argument about how I worded it a year and a half ago. It was a single thread for Democrats and liberals saying and doing stupid shit because there was no other place for it because the GOP had a near-monopoly on dumb shit.
I expect the reactions will be exactly the same.
This thread is funny. I think I just read a bunch of posts back someone saying that liberals only make mistakes when they occasionally act conservative, or think conservatives are people too and try to reach out to them.
“Sigh. Sometimes, I waiver in my zealotry. I am sorry for my weakness. I shall return to my single minded mission of rooting out all dissent and return to utterly demonizing the other. Our only failure is considering the other side to be human like us.”
The “spirit” of the constitution might be to set the bar at whatever level of armed-ness a population needs to fend off an encroaching government. To me “suitcase nuke” is pretty reasonable especially considering inner city and liberal malcontents are routinely found with them in their possession… Those blue areas on political maps are that color due to the leaking radiation.
[edit]
Rereading the above, I think I may have conflated the US government with the inner city poor and hipsters. Sorry about that.
Maybe if you’re arguing that Jefferson was a tyrant, you’re not really helping the whole ‘Constitution is non-tyrannical therefore those who appear to contradict it are tyrants’ vibe.
Ok, understood.
Whoops.
She reacted pretty well, all things considered.
I’m a 2nd Amendment maximalist. You’ll take my home-brew bio-weapon from my cold, dead hands.
No really, my lab safety procedures are terrible.
More seriously, it was one congress-man making one dumbish tweet. I wouldn’t read too much into it.
“I’ll have my team reach out” Hah. Let’s hope something real comes out of this.
Molehill incoming!
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1383574218300887
The bottom line:
we report the overall meta-relative risk (meta-RR) of NHL in GBH-exposed individuals was increased by 41%
GBH is glyphosate. NHL is a type of lymphoma. This is about humans who actually got ill, not rats forced to drink glyphosate martinis.
Standard caveats apply. Correlation is not causation. Unexpected findings must be shown to be reproducible.
But at the very least, scientists are officially divided about the safety of glyphosate.