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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   11528 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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Regardless of my views on the underlying merits of what ICE are doing, good.

There is a widespread view, historically on the left and increasingly on the anti-establishment right as well, that participating in a political protest should be a mitigating factor for ordinary violent and property crimes committed by protestors, when it is actually an aggravating factor. (The situation is different if the only crimes committed by the protesters are public order crimes). Political violence (including deliberate property destruction) is more dangerous than random criminal violence, and ideally the punishments should be harsh enough to push the frequency down to zero.

Political Violence is a semi-protected Constitutionally protected 2nd Amendment Right in the US which obviously disagrees with a lot of things related to having a functional society.

But I do think a bunch of rebels writing these words “ A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” has a meaning that is broader than everyone has guns so the British can’t come back. It’s also an idea that political violence is one of the checks and balances in the US system that checks the power in Washington DC.

How this applies to modern level technology I have no idea. But I do think actual political violence is within the Spirit of the constructs of the US Constitution.

The Counter I think is the Civil War meant something in a common law sense and has the power of an actual written Amendment that ended the day of America being a bunch of rebels. I have no idea what this means in a practical sense and most likely nothing but the US would seem to be the only government ever formed that built in rebellion as a right. In which case armed rebellion as a form of protest is culturally within the American culture.

Uh... No, no it is not. The second amendment guarantees citizens the right to maintain the capabilities to come at the king, it does not free them from consequences if they miss.

This is an empty statement. Whether you're hanged as a traitor or celebrated as a founder is defined by whether you win or not. This is true regardless of whether the Constitution says so or not, so if this is what the Constitution is saying here, it's basically a rooster crowing to claim credit for the sunrise.

The idea that rebellion is somehow a constitutional right is absurd. George Washington himself put down rebellions in the early days of the United States. The best way that I can understand this is that all rebellions are legal if they succeed, and the function of 2A is to make that possible, but in order for your rebellion to be legitimate it needs to actually have the manpower, organization, and support necessary to succeed against the manpower, organization, and support that the government is able to muster.

Democracy is a substitute for political violence. The second amendment protects the right for people to take up political violence if democracy fails. It only works if a plurality of people take up arms, swapping guns for votes. Small groups willing to take up arms against the government is not constitutionally protected - if they couldn't win an election with that number of people they don't have a right to a rebellion.

But I do think a bunch of rebels writing these words “ A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” has a meaning that is broader than everyone has guns so the British can’t come back

More importantly, it's a statement that the Monopoly on Violence is not held by The State, but by The People, and the State is merely the instrument by which we make the enactment of the monopoly regular and orderly.

This is a charge and responsibility at which the State can fail.

The people who wrote the Constitution had crushed Shay's Rebellion already and knew how to deal with the Whiskey Rebellion (and the violent crushing of these rebellions was broadly popular). As of 1789, the primary reason why the well-regulated militia was necessary to the security of a free state was because it could be used to do the crushing - avoiding the need for a (politically dangerous) standing army.

The structure set up by the militia clauses in the Constitution was designed to maximise the centrally controlled military power of the Federal Government within the limits of "no standing army" and the practical impossibility of drilling and training a geographically dispersed militia from Washington DC.

The people who wrote the Constitution had crushed Shay's Rebellion already

Not only that, but Shay's Rebellion was an immediate proximate cause of the transition from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution.

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