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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.
Did they want western-style atomizing individualist freedom in the first place?
There is freedom in social obligation and in existing in a definite hierarchy. You are free to focus on things in life outside the culture war, freed from an obsession with the political that has seeped into every aspect of western life, even into the formerly sacrosanct household, poisoning the most fundamental human relations (man/woman, parent/child).
Likewise there is a sort of slavery in western "freedom." Slavery to vice born of anomie. Nothing matters, all choices and lifestyles are equal. Many people experience a sort of analysis paralysis and just choose the past of least resistance. Not to mention the nigh-mandatory participation in politics; as they say, you may not be interested in it, but it is interested in you, and it's not going to leave you alone (and some true degenerates engage in it willingly, even spending their free time furiously refreshing a certain CW thread...).
Consider that your definition of "freedom" is one among many.
The freedom to live any life, as long as it's the Taliban's life.
I think you've replaced 'freedom' with 'a good life.' It's probably possible to life a good life as a third world farmer, just as it's possible to live a bad life as a first world shitposter. But it's fair to note that if you want to go be Amish as a first worlder that option is available to you.
I'd rather have a good life than freedom, and I expect just about anyone who is not pathological in some way would want the same. I doubt that third world farmers who are already living good lives are pining for corrosive American-style freedom to be imposed on their families and communities.
Could you explain what this is supposed to mean? Why would someone need to do that? I live a modern house. I'm in a monogamous relationship with my wife and we both occupy traditional gender roles. We spend most of our time raising our three kids, doing chores, playing music, and doing active stuff outside. We attend weekly religion services. Etc etc. I guess this was some gotcha along the lines of "if you like the Taliban so much why don't you go live like them by giving up the trappings of modernity and living with the Amish," but I can live a traditional life without doing that.
If the argument is that modernity sucks, it's possible to live in the west and reject modernity.
I dunno, but gp was arguing that Afghans are more free, and I was pointing out that a similar lifestyle is available to anyone willing to try it in the west.
Indeed you can, and indeed you don't need to go amish to do it; amish are just an extreme example. This rather undermines the line:
Doesn't it?
Not at all. It takes quite a bit of effort from my wife and I to keep harmful influences out of our home, and it's only going to get harder as our kids get older.
so your complaining that you don't have the freedom to force your children to live the same lifestyle that you do? and that this differs from authoritarian societies because there society would make sure that your children obey your desires?
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