The Giant Loophole In Gun Advocates' Arguments The Left Is Too Self-Absorbed To Notice

I don't care much for American politics. I concluded a long time ago that American politics are two different brands of irrelevance and unreality, and most Americans are way too stupid and greedy to be able to look at their country objectively. I think most arguments in American politics are far divorced from the realities of the issues.

State sponsored birth control, for example, is treated as a cost/benefit or moral/freedom issue, when in reality, state-sponsored birth control is cheap, available and not an infringement on the freedom of taxpayers or recipients, but doesn't get used, because the inability of Americans to conceive a middle ground between, or alternatives to, "Uncle Suga" and "rely on charity or die in the street".

This false duality, driven by the deleterious impact American market values have on family and personal values - the American inclination to look at life as a fundamentally individual and economic affair - leads people to make irresponsible decisions irrespective of whether birth control is available or not. Thus, both sides of the political discourse have agreed to wage the debate on terms that have nothing to do with the issues at hand.

Anyway, gun rights. Gun advocates continue to insist that gun ownership is a Constitutionally guaranteed right. Most have never even heard of the Federalist Papers and have no idea how Alexander Hamilton's book clearly defines the bona fide truth of the issue (and also why American gun rights advocates who also support the military flatly don't understand this country or what it was founded on).

But that is not really here or there. The point is, though, that the argument that gun rights are Constitutionally guaranteed is flawed, but the Left is too lost in its own banality to grasp why.

Constitutional rights are by definition guaranteed and non-negotiable. This means, for example, that although the government can take your tax money, your house, your right to drive a car, or prevent you from doing things perceived contrary to national interest, the government cannot revoke, for example, your freedom of speech, your freedom of belief, your freedom of association or your freedom of non-incrimination. Even people who have committed the most serious crimes in our society continue to enjoy those freedoms (although they may be deprived of personal liberty due to being incarcerated).

That a murderer retains his freedom of speech or a mobster his freedom of non-incrimination may seem perverse, but the guaranteed nature of rights serves a very important role in our society. Were rights not guaranteed, but rather something that one can be deprived of "by due process of law", such as life, liberty and personal property (i.e., taxation, imprisonment and execution), constitutional rights would have no meaning; anyone could be made subject at any time to petty laws arbitrarily revoking those rights.

By extension, if the personal right to own whatever weapons one wishes was in fact Constitutionally guaranteed, then criminals would also have a right to be armed - since Constitutional rights are irrevocable. This flies in the face of the gun lobby argument that the goal should be to keep criminals away from guns, rather than remove guns as a force in American society. They are, in effect, contravening their own claim that gun rights are in fact Constitutionally guaranteed (they aren't).

This truth is simple and obvious once understood. But it is completely missed by adherents of both parties...because American politics ceased to be relevant a long, long time ago.

I believe that is so partly because of our obsolete winner-take-all political system, partly because of the depredations of the military and corporations, and partly because Americans are too greedy and dumb to understand the concept of a social contract - or how excessively limiting the power and mandate of government is self-defeating and is in fact the surest path to tyranny.

The proper role of government is to be the Great Equalizer, champion of the weak against the strong and the many against the few. The guaranteed nature of rights establishes a hedge on the government's mandate - to protect the few and the strong against the tyranny of the majority. When the government fails to fulfill this mandate, the result is social chaos and inevitably civil war and Communist insurgency. Most societies that fall into despotism, wind up there precisely because of a lack of strong authority to establish uniform terms for free interaction between individuals in society - and not the other way around. And, if you doubt this, go look at Iraq.

This truth also reveals something else about Americans - why I so easily see myself apart from my countrymen. Americans talk about freedom, but they do not understand it. Most Americans think that freedom means the freedom to get rich and ignore the problems of the world at large. My notion of freedom, on the other hand, is freedom of self-actualization - to live life on my own terms. Unlike most Americans, I am more than willing to forfeit my "right to get rich" if I believe that in return I am guaranteed the relatively low standard of living that is a necessary condition of my enjoyment of life.

http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Eudaimonic

A Bold New Approach To Eugenics: Sterilize Literally Everyone

The main argument against eugenics has traditionally been that whoever holds the sterilization gun will abuse it. It's a very good argument. An even better argument against eugenics is that the very fact of unnatural selection will have the long-term effect of narrowing the human gene pool and breeding out qualities that are often antisocial or undesirable yet are vital to human survival (e.g., aggression, risk-taking and mad creativity).

The main argument in favor of eugenics has traditionally been that allowing unchecked reproduction in a civilized society in which the unfit are not permitted to die nor the irresponsible to starve will inevitably leave the future to the most irresponsible and unfit, who reproduce nonstop and pass the consequences onto society. An even better argument in favor of eugenics is that the availability of birth control greatly exacerbates this problem by making reproductive outcomes even more favorable to the irresponsible.

But there is a way to satisfy both the pro- and anti- eugenics arguments.
Sterilize literally everyone.

By this modus operandi, everyone would be surgically sterilized by default, probably by partial vasectomy or placing an obstruction in the testes or fallopian tubes. The sterilization would take place at the same time as immunization and be designed to be easily reversible.

As it is now, sex resulting in childbirth is the default; abortion and contraception are "choices". In a civilized society, it should properly be the inverse, childbirth the choice, and sterility the default.

"Sterilizing Literally Everyone" would take the future from the most irresponsible and place it firmly in the hands of the most responsible - without treading on anyone's right to have children if they so please.

Some would say that making such procedures mandatory is a violation of human rights, or human decency. I would reply that fluoridation and immunization are already mandatory under the law, and if they weren't, society would be much worse off than it is. Most hospitals do not even ask parents before circumcising newborns, even though after 5000 years the jury is still out on whether the procedure's pluses outweigh its minuses. (Women generally opinion in favor of their first love). Reversible sterilization, I would argue, is less invasive and less degrading than the introduction of foreign substances to our bodily fluids without our consent.

I would also like to point out here that the premise of "Sterilizing Literally Everyone" runs counter to the arguments made by abortion advocates. Abortion advocates - those who are not merely of the opinion that abortion should be legal, but actively work to promulgate the procedure - argue that the main cause of birth out of wedlock and early/single/unwanted childbirth is lack of access to abortion or contraception. They are wrong, and they don't want to understand how wrong they are.

In reality - as anyone who spends time observing socially marginal people knows - the overwhelming majority of irresponsible people having kids have easy access to birth control and don't have an ethical problem with abortion. The reason for most unwanted birth is that these people are irresponsible and not in control of their lives because they are degraded people with low self-mastery. This is also why they do not invest in their own futures, and why they vote against their own interests.

This is also why the importance in improving healthcare, fighting crime, building mass transit, and planting forests is not merely to increase employment or improve living conditions, but to improve psych levels in society and give the people a sense of self-mastery - prevent the "grinding down" process of psych degeneration that makes people wear floppy clothes, do drugs and watch too much TV.

"Sterilizing Literally Everyone" is the best approach to eugenics because it will create unnatural selection in favor of the single most unambiguously positive quality: self-mastery, people who are given to the making of choices.

Opinions welcomed.