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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (18036)	5/3/2000 2:21:00 PM
From: Zoltan!	Respond to of 769667

policast.com

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (18036)	5/3/2000 2:53:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

I will confess to you that I have become a single-issue voter. If a Federal ban on abortion is enacted, I expect no rebellion or upheaval. Our national inertia is not to be underestimated. And I do believe that even if abortion is banned at the federal level, that is ultimately reversible. My model for both assertions is the Volstead Act which banned alcohol at the Federal level. The country sort of bent over and took it. The country did the same thing as income taxation was introduced - first as a temporary emergency program, but then as something neither temporary nor for emergencies. Hmph. At least the Volstead Act was repealed, much to the dismay of rich bootleggers. My single hot button issue is gun rights. We have an article in the Bill of Rights guaranteeing the citizen's right to keep and bear (in more modern language, own and carry, buy, sell or bequeath) firearms. But that right is being infringed with abandon - and with distressingly little resistance from voters or their reps. The folks who need them the most - residents of our major metropolitan areas - can't even own the things. I expect our Constitutional crisis to occur when one day the Second Amendment comes before the Supreme Court, which day is being delayed imo until gun-control forces have stacked the bench in their favor. (The gun lobby is simply not strong enough to execute the reverse tactic.) But even then, I expect an illiberal ruling, one that shafts the citizen in favor of uniformed gunmen. And I don't expect the revolution we would seem to deserve then - only chest-pounding and shirt-rending by organizations who have been effectively prtrayed as radical, to wit the National Rifle Organization. (Consider my home state ... BOTH my Senators routinely exhort the voters to obstruct the NRA as if that were a GOOD thing, something like a moral duty. O tempora.) And "common-sense gun control" laws, read a ban on civil firearm ownership and use, is the one thing I don't think we would ever be able to reverse. Guns are deadly dangerous; it is that very quality that makes them useful. The Framers wrote the Amendment in order to distribute the means of rule into the hands of the citizenry. You want radical? OK! Imo - That means that in the spirit of the Amendment there should be no impediment to my owning a wing of B-52s (with ALL the trimmins, including the bombs with white paint on'em), so long as I can afford the overhead. Ironically, I wonder if the ultimate aim of "common-sense gun control" measures is to concentrate all ability to Do Something About It into the official government organs. I should have the right, and the MEANS, to ruin the day of a SWAT team that is intent upon making a forced entry into my house, if I have any reason to doubt the validity of their presence. The very notion of armed and armored SWAT teams in civilian police forces should give us all pause. Hostage rescue teams have their place, but for goodness'sake make them part of the National Guard, requiring at least a governor's say-so for deployment! I think that in our Republic almost everything is negotiable. But I am watching the systematic dismemberment of a civic principle so central to a free Republic that the Framers gave only freedom of speech a higher billing! And I have never, ever, seen the Gov't give back a gun right once it has been usurped. So my single guiding principle at the voting booth is, Who will slow or at least not activelt participate in this campaign of libel and suppression against the armed citizen? OK, end rant.