Swaraaj Chauhan Says:

April 16th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Violence cannot be stopped by just banning guns.

A majority of Americans seem to lean on arms owing to a fear psychosis that can be perhaps traced to the memories of being the settlers in an alien land not very long ago in history.

There are those who have, consciously or unconsciously, developed a macho trait to overcome this fear.

Please spare me your value system as I have no desire to trade my liberty for what constitutes freedom in your country. Before you cast aspersions on other cultures perhaps you should engage in a bit of self reflection. And I’m not talking about contemplating your navel, practicing reiki or some other such nonsense. Perhaps our freedoms can’t be understood from your perspective. But we will continue to not drive our policies based on the actions of a few solitary lunatics. You will never understand our reasons for valuing human liberty over the lives of cows. But I assure you it is far more complicated than your absurd and insulting characterization

Not waiting for clinical death, either.

“Macho USA,” “cowboy USA,” etc. — this from someone in one of two nations constantly chest-thumping in its own neighborhood with far more “macho” posturing than the USA has ever engaged in.

I await more tit-for-tat missile and even nuke tests there.

grognard- Well then lets make them stick to gasoline bombs. Limits their potential. Why not legalize nuclear weapons grog? I mean, you can’t stop a mass murderer from getting one anyway….right?

Please. You make that old tired argument while more and more kids are killed. Why would anybody listen to someone like you?

Disgusting

At least 32 people are dead after a gunman unleashed a hail of bullets at Virginia Tech. Don Imus, we hardly knew you. Rightards said we need more guns in order to prevent gun violence. Libtards responded with demands for fewer guns. Half of all centards want a few more guns, the other half want ice cream or something.

What? Why not guns and ice cream?

A majority of Americans seem to lean on arms owing to a fear psychosis that can be perhaps traced to the memories of being the settlers in an alien land not very long ago in history.

There are those who have, consciously or unconsciously, developed a macho trait to overcome this fear.

These traits become more visible whenever the nation responds to a major crisis, such as the present shocking killings in the American campus, or when muscle power is used outside the USA.

There is no easy solution when fear and violence take possession of one’s mind and thought. Banning this, or having more and more strict legislation, alone would not help much.

9/11 has further complicated things for an average American. The past four years have clearly displayed that violent response to violent acts creates more fear.

Now add to all this the growing confusion in the minds of the people when things don’t work out in the ‘desired’ fashion despite having all the muscle power.

And we have the heady cocktail of fear, macho trait and confusion. A deadly combination that can sap the strength of the mightiest person/nation.

Violence (or fear or greed or whatever) is in the mind…and it is from there it has to be healed or removed. Otherwise a person/nation continues to suffer, and makes others suffer.

“The Roots of Violence: Wealth without Work, Pleasure without Conscience, Knowledge without Character, Commerce without Morality, Science without Humanity, Worship without Sacrifice, Politics without Principles.â€? — Mahatma Gandhi

There are ways to kill more people more efficiently than with guns, certainly.

Or doing too much…

What would you suggest to get better representation than we have now?

4-6 or more parties is a good idea for this. And if you’ve lived and traveled all over the USA as I have, you know this country is far from homogeneous.

Actually, this is correct. It would have to be done through a Constitutional convention, ironically, to be legitimate.

Lazare’s liberal book about abolishing the Senate (to do away with the “undemocratic” representation in that body) addressed one issue right, that the Senate could be abolished as the single way to end the equal-votes-for-states suffrage in the Senate. However, the book was wrong in how the Senate was abolished (it was simply by a decision, by whim) and predictably used as the claimed basis for it, the losers’ favorite worthless justification for doing anything, the Preamble. The whim aspect of this is something White Agent needs to pay more attention to (as well as that the amendment process is the way the Constitution is supposed to be changed). (Note that Lazare also wants the Electoral College to be abolished.)

“Lazare offers this doomsday scenario: In 2020, California threatens to secede from the union unless its representation in the Senate is increased to be in proportion with its population. In response, the House of Representatives passes a resolution abolishing the Senate, wins popular approval of this decision by a national referendum, and thereafter runs the country by its own majority rule. Lazare approves of this course. It would be justified, he argues, by the principle that ‘we, the people,’ having proclaimed the Constitution in the first place, can amend or abolish it through our elected representatives in the House, without following the amendment procedure specified in Article V. What the president, the courts, the armed forces, and the press would be doing while all this is going on, Lazare does not explain.

One cannot help but note the similarity of Lazare’s preference for majoritarian absolutism with that of Pat Buchanan. Buchanan would have Congress set aside Supreme Court constitutional decisions, though even he would probably acknowledge the need to amend the Constitution to do this. Not so Lazare, who would have the House alone seize all the government’s powers by coup d’etat.”

“Lazare would encourage the House majority to leapfrog Article V because he believes that it absolutely bars any amendment changing the equal suffrage clause–the right of all states to the same number of senators. But practical politics aside, nothing in the Constitution bars it from being amended first to remove the “equal suffrage” clause and then to adopt a second amendment reconstituting the Senate with some form of unequal suffrage for the states.”

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n4_v28/ai_18172963

“The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy argues that the venerated eighteenth-century charter needs to be overhauled or even scrapped because it blocks the way to any modernization of American government that will give ‘the people’ power to cope with twenty-first-century problems. Lazare sees us as complacent in the face of gridlock because of our blind faith in the Constitution. ”

“Lazare denounces the ‘long and tortuous’ amending process, which ’severely constrained’ efforts to change the Constitution. But what are the facts? Once an amendment is submitted to the states, how long does it take to get the required three-fourths of them to ratify? Leave out the curious twenty-seventh (no pay raise for Congress to take effect until an election intervenes) that took from 1789 to 1992, and consider the Bill of Rights (two years and three months in an age of slow communications) as a single unit. The median time for the remaining sixteen is—can you guess?—one year.”

“Culture drives politics, not the reverse. He cites Newt Gingrich to the effect that America is a ‘deeply conservative country’ and laments that it is true ‘because the Ancient Constitution is a deeply conservative concept.’ On the contrary, we are a peculiar people, loving the new and the young but idealizing the past, which we constantly flee. It’s how we are, not how the Founding Fathers made us. And what the record shows is that when the will is really there, we will change the system while swearing that we are really preserving it, as we have long done.”

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1996/5/1996_5_12.shtml

“It cannot be over-emphasized that the United States Senate is an anti-nationalistic and anti-majoritarian institution. (Well, it is conducive to a majority, but it’s more Calhounian than majoritarian.) The Senate conspicuously clashes with the notion of a uniform American people. If we’re all one people, why do the not even one million Americans in Delaware receive the same representation as the over fifteen million Americans in Florida? Why should one section of the American people wield disproportionate power in the upper legislative house that determines, among other things, which judges are confirmed and which treaties are ratified? Moreover, this arrangement appears immutable since Article V provides that ‘no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.’

Consistent nationalists are outraged by this demographic power gulf and logically call for foundational change in American government, namely the abolition of equal state suffrage in the Senate.”

“States exert a preclusive effect against consolidation and must be gutted: That is the sum and substance of the nationalist temperament.”

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kantor/kantor20.html

“Of course, even worse than equal state representation per se is an obscure provision in the Article V amending clause stipulating that ‘no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.’ What this means, simply, is that all states must give their consent before there can be any deviation from the principle of equal state representation whatsoever–which, considering how much small states would stand to lose in such an eventuality, they presumably never will.”

[Lazare]

http://www.prospect.org/print/V11/21/lazare-d.html

agreed but not for twice the price. Now you got 4 parties who want a cut of the pie and not two