<Christine:
Not only are you NOT a Libertarian -- you are not an historian! To wit:
"the actual intent of the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was to ensure
that each state within the United States would have a trained, official, "well-regulated"
fighting force in place in order to prevent the federal government from becoming overly
powerful."
Christine, the federal government did not exist at that time! (And perhaps it should not
exist now. . . it could be replaced by a confederacy).>
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Terrence, the federal government DID exist at that time. America was "born" in 1776. The Bill of Rights was written in 1780, and ratified in 1791. Because the revolutionaries had just fought for their freedom from Britain, and believed firmly in the rights of states under a loose federation, they wanted to protect the independence of the states from overwhelming federal power, and one way to do that was by ensuring the strength of state militias. What kind of historian does this make you?
I am having increasing difficulty maintaining my own good-natured civility in the wake of off-the-cuff, no-research assumptions that my opinions are not based on any study of the subject at hand. While some of the subjects we are talking about have had so much written about them that two people could make entirely different arguments using excellent source material (an example would be the discussion of the Celts with Freddy, or the Inquisition), there seems to be a lot of just plain bashing going on around here.
Could we please all regain the civility that this thread has had occasionally in the past? I think it's fine to disagree on history and its interpretations, but politely so. Hopefully, at the end of a debate there might even be more understanding of the way people have arrived at their opinions, based on the material they present. This is a valid learings process, something I believe is positive.
And who are you to decide whether I am a libertarian, Terry? Isn't that a little presumptuous or something? |
