Quo Vadis GOP?

[The Minsky Moment]

The "freedom" being discussed is really insurance.  You can have freedom, but if populace has no means of defending it, then it is more brittle than the freedom that has armed population behind it.  I don't know if I personally buy it myself, but it's an argument that deserves a nuanced discussion.

That's the freedom to avoid becoming the USSR c. 1970 by becoming Somalia c. 1995 or Lebanon c. 1982.

[Sophie Scholl]

Kirk was an ideologue promoting reactionary principals, but real fascists are scary people, not pathetic people.

Honestly, I think they're both. Often scary and often pathetic. Sometimes at the same exact time.

[Grey Fox]

Tonight we drink, because a fascist has been killed!

   I get the impression that you wouldn't know a real fascist if you ever saw one. "Fascist" as a trendy word for "I don't like him" is still moronic.

Kirk was an ideologue promoting reactionary principals, but real fascists are scary people, not pathetic people.

Why put an extraordinary, almost mythical, threshold to being a fascist?

[crazy canuck]

Kirk was an ideologue promoting reactionary principals, but real fascists are scary people, not pathetic people.

Honestly, I think they're both. Often scary and often pathetic. Sometimes at the same exact time.

Yeah, the Nazis were pathetic and scary

[HVC]

Tonight we drink, because a fascist has been killed!

   I get the impression that you wouldn't know a real fascist if you ever saw one. "Fascist" as a trendy word for "I don't like him" is still moronic.

Kirk was an ideologue promoting reactionary principals, but real fascists are scary people, not pathetic people.

The tide that raises the scary fascists are the pathetic fascists.

[Valmy]

At least he got to die as he lived, embracing gun violence for a better cause. Or in his own words

"I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights"

Say what you will, but that's much more intellectual honesty than we usually get from the "every year 2 million murders get prevented by armed homeowners" crowd.  And trading mortality risk for freedom is not exactly a controversial take in other contexts.

Agreed that it's more honest, but it wholly ignores all the other countries with the guns and attached violence with the same freedoms.

The "freedom" being discussed is really insurance.  You can have freedom, but if populace has no means of defending it, then it is more brittle than the freedom that has armed population behind it.  I don't know if I personally buy it myself, but it's an argument that deserves a nuanced discussion.

Yeah well we have had this discussion over and over and over and over and over again for decades. I just don't see the evidence that our current armed population does much for freedom. I guess in some other context where the population was actually organized into a militia that had competent leaders who were interested in leveraging that group to defend certain political rights of the population that might make some sense. Now in the actual fact such groups often collapse into organized crime is another issue...but I guess it is theoretically true that a population can be armed to protect freedom.

But every rando having an arsenal does nothing at all to protect freedom that I can see.

[HVC]

Yeah well we have had this discussion over and over and over and over and over again for decades. I just don't see the evidence that our current armed population does much for freedom. I guess in some other context where the population was actually organized into a militia that had competent leaders who were interested in leveraging that group to defend certain political rights of the population that might make some sense. Now in the actual fact such groups often collapse into organized crime is another issue...but I guess it is theoretically true that a population can be armed to protect freedom.

But every rando having an arsenal does nothing at all to protect freedom that I can see.

I dont know, without unfettered gun access your country could now, at this very moment, be falling to a facist wave overtaking your largest political party in their crusade to crush the freedoms of your people... oh wait

[Razgovory]

The "freedom" being discussed is really insurance.  You can have freedom, but if populace has no means of defending it, then it is more brittle than the freedom that has armed population behind it.  I don't know if I personally buy it myself, but it's an argument that deserves a nuanced discussion.

That's the freedom to avoid becoming the USSR c. 1970 by becoming Somalia c. 1995 or Lebanon c. 1982.

The people were armed in 1917, that's how the Bolsheviks came to power in the first place.  The "we need weapons to defend against the government" argument really falls on its face with the Russian Civil War.  Doesn't really hold up well for the US Civil War either.  With Nazi Germany, most people didn't have guns, but the ones that did favored Hitler.  The Right didn't stand up to Hitler because it lacked weapons, it didn't stand up to him because it liked what he was doing.

[grumbler]

Why put an extraordinary, almost mythical, threshold to being a fascist?

Because trivializing fascism is aiding fascism. Once you convince people that fascists are just ideologues like Charlie Kirk, they just see fascism as another legitimate political movement.

[grumbler]

The Second Amendment itself states that the security of a free people is guaranteed by a well-regulated militia. It isn't possible for a generally-armed populace to stand up to government, because half of that populace will be violently defending the oppressive government. The US Constitution relegates the task of defending against oppressive government to the national guard (the "well-regulated militia").

[Razgovory]

Other countries, like China have a militia.  They took it fairly seriously requiring training.  They kept the weapons locked up of course, because it makes much more sense to have all the weapons in locked arsenals than just expecting people to show up with their own weapons.  The wife of a friend of mine, who is Chinese, had to train in the militia.

Fat, old men who own 20 shotguns and 5 ARs fantasizing about finally being able to murder their neighbors are not a threat to any government.

[Razgovory]

Maybe it was a cishet white guy with a history of mental illness.

Could be, nobody knows right now.

[Valmy]

Maybe it was a cishet white guy with a history of mental illness.

Could be, nobody knows right now.

Didn't stop the President from denouncing people he doesn't like as responsible and promising revenge.

[Razgovory]

Manhunt still underway.  They released to the two people they had arrested.

[Syt]

From AP:

Immediately before the shooting, Kirk was taking questions from an audience member about mass shootings and gun violence.

"Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?" the person asked. Kirk responded, "Too many."

The questioner followed up: "Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?"

"Counting or not counting gang violence?" Kirk asked.

Then a single shot rang out

.