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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   34276 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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For example, I often hear and read comments from citizens of other western and Anglo nations which imply that their "rights" are fundamentally the same as those enjoyed in America

The one that always pops to mind for me as a refutation of this claim is the ease to which civilians can arm themselves in much of the United States. I know that people in other ostensibly free nations will disagree, but I regard this as an absolutely core freedom, integral to whether an individual is currently free and whether they're likely to remain so in the future. If you're required to justify why you need a firearm, no, your place of residence is not as free as mine.

You haven't provided an argument as to why civilians need easy access to guns for a society to be free. You are just asserting that this is the case.

If they have access to guns, then they could form militias and wage an insurgency against the government if they wanted. That capacity reduces government power, increases the power of the population. The more power you have, the more free you are.

Imagine if nobody in Afghanistan or Iraq had any guns - I think we would have won those wars and imposed our will upon those countries!

Nit sure I'd characterize what Afghans have under Taliban rule as more freedom.

The Afghanis appear to disagree, as evidenced by the fact that the Taliban once more rule their country.

Or freedom isn't what they want.

@ActuallyATleilaxuGhola answered this objection pretty thoroughly just above, so I won't belabor the point beyond noting that what we offered the Afghanis does not seem to me to be worth a term as unqualified and valence-loaded as "freedom".

Then don't offer them anything. leave them alone. If vengeance for 9/11 was needed, raid and bomb, then pack up and go home. Would that not be better for everyone involved? The Afghanis, as a people, pretty clearly didn't ask for us to offer them anything at all. Why hate them for declining a cultural makeover they never requested?

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