response 309 of 406:

Oct 27 04:59 UTC 2000

Re #299: actually, the ACLU stays out of the 2nd amendment matter because
it does not concern the most essential civil rights, which are in the
first amendment. At the moment, citizens having guns or not having guns
has no effect upon the democratic political processes and individual
freedoms to participate in those processes without fear of governmental
retributions. If guns ever became an important instrument of personal
freedoms, there is no reason to think the ACLU would not support such
freedoms. 

Eat your words. The Sierra Club is endorsing 7 Republican candidates for
national office this year, in NY, RI, VT and MD. But this is neither here
nor there, and the "leaning" of the Sierra Club is not due to a political
persuasion, but by the polarization of national politics.  The platforms
of the two parties are an antipoles of environmental concern, and their
party members reflect that. Such matters as clean water and air,
wilderness, endangered species, global warming, green space, should not
be political, but get involved because environmental issues sometimes
stand in the way of development and economic growth.

response 311 of 406:

Oct 27 15:44 UTC 2000

Here's an amusing case where the ACLU is defending a girl who was
suspended from school for "casting a spell that caused a teacher to get
sick".  She was also banned from wearing or drawing any symbols related
to the Wicca religion.  http://www.aclu.org/news/2000/n102600.html.
Note that the ACLU is here defending the freedom of an individual to
express their religion by wearing crucifixes and such.  I don't know
that this is relevant to this discussion, but I couldn't resist posting
the link.

The ACLU is unique in being an organization largely composed of idealistic
attorneys.  Idealistic attorneys tend to believe in the enlightened,
but limited rule of law as a positive force in society.  The ACLU
fights to keep the law enlightened, opposing bad laws, but at heart it
does believe in law, including the constitution that is the foundation
for the law of this country.  This is basically a liberal attitude.
The ACLU pursues it's mission of keeping the government from stomping
on the rights of the people by acting entirely within the mechanism of
the government - lobbying and bringing lawsuits.  Their whole style of
operation is founded on a basic faith that government can work right,
if the people are vigilent.

The conservative movement has less essential faith in government.
The whole idea of defending your rights with guns is very different
from defending your rights with lawsuits.  It assumes that government
could fail so completely that no action within its law would suffice
to correct it.  If you think this is a real likelihood, then you have
a fundamental distrust of government.  This is much more in line
with the conservative viewpoint.

My point is that, yes, the ACLU is composed largely of liberals and
its agenda is more in line with liberal philosophy than conservative
philosophy.  They are pro-choice.

But I think that if Jep looked down the list of current ACLU cases and
actions, he'd find that he approved of their stance in about 50% of their
cases, and was glad that someone was doing what they are doing.  The
curious fact is that it actually takes both liberals and conservatives to
make our society work.

response 313 of 406:

Oct 27 16:09 UTC 2000

Thanks for the link, Jan, even though it does look rather irreelevant to this
thread. Personally, I don't find the story itself amusing, although the
behavior of the School Board is amusing in that pitiful way. It's sad that
adults could be behaving in such a prejudiced manner (and if she really DID
cast spells to make someone sick, shame on her, regardless of whether they
worked or not).

Maybe I'll go start an item in Synth and rant about this. =}

response 315 of 406:

Oct 27 16:17 UTC 2000

Ya really think a Glock is going to defend you when the SWAT teams show up?
Koresh's guns didn't help that much.

If the Republican stance on environmentalism is out of a feeling of protecting
private lands, why do Republicans (Bush, especially) have so little regard
for PUBLIC lands? 

response 317 of 406:

Oct 27 16:33 UTC 2000

That my explanation of why the ACLU stays out of gun control issues is
different than the ACLU's, does not mean it is incorrect. Their's is a
reasoned public stance that serves their purposes best (in keeping with
the fact that they are mostly lawyers). 

response 319 of 406:

Oct 27 21:20 UTC 2000

Re #314:
> I don't have any way around this at this time, other than I think no one
> should be building any new homes in the country.  All new construction
> should take place within the city limits, and should be going up or down.

One only has to look at Portland to see the problem with this.  They enacted
anti-sprawl ordinances, and the cost of land inside the city quickly shot
up.  Rents quickly followed.  This in a part of the country that already was
having problems with a cost of living that was going up faster than many
people's wages.

response 321 of 406:

Oct 28 00:38 UTC 2000

re 315

        Naugh, I'm not BAP. But do you think Any repressive government,
 in control of the Law Enforcement system, will let ANYBODY continue to
possess means of self defense, or possible guerilla or resistance weapons?
You can also take note of examples in such cases where the criminal class
in possession of weapons, was included in the power structure as a matter of
course. THey make a very effective and efficient means of supression of
the inhabitants of said state, with the benifit of deniability. Which
leads to more effective oppression, stronger control of the citizenry, and
people willing to give up more of the rights that have already been
sharply curtailed.

        I don't own any guns at present. BUt I'd be willing to bet THere
might be plans for the sten submachine gun within my reach. It was an
easily manufactured and maintained weapon used in world war II by the
resistance, and it was designed by the British, If I remember correctly.
By no means is a gun of any type the only effective weapon that exists, or
can be used, either.

response 323 of 406:

Oct 28 15:52 UTC 2000

re: 316

Janc, that is the WRONG interpretation.  You know, we keep pointing the law
out to people, and they keep say the NRA interpretation is wrong.  I guess
the BIG LIE works.  If this position continues to gain acceptance, I guess
I'll meet you in the ovens.

1.      The second ammendment, like all of the bill of rights (first 10
ammendments) deal with the rights of the individual, not the state.

2.      All of the founding fathers said the right of the individual to keep
and bear arms was required, not just to protect the nation, but to protect
the people themselves from the government if required.

3.      The Michigan state constitution says it is a citizens right to keep
and bear arms.

4.      Despite people pointing to the MILLER decision, said decision never
said the people of this country did not have a right to own weapons, only that
the militia had no need for that particular weapon ( a sawed off shotgun) and
refered the decision back to the original court.

The FACT is, despite all the rhetoric from the gun grabbers, is that we have
a right to own weapons (and that includes cannon)(it's in the law).  You may
not like it, but if you ever succeed in getting a law passed in this country
that says everyone has to turn in their guns, there are going to be a hell
of a lot of law breakers out here who otherwise never broke a law in their
lives.  And you will be very close to another civil war.

response 325 of 406:

Oct 28 19:30 UTC 2000

Sorry, Bruce.  One of the lies that your teachers told you was that the
U.S. Constitution is the final word on the law of the land.  OK, it's not
a lie but a half-truth.  The constitution was written by a number of smart
people over a 5 month period in 1787.  Aside from some amendments, it has
been pretty much static ever since.  Constitutional Law, on the other hand,
is a continously evolving body of legal precidents and opinions that have
been worked out on a case-by-case basis, day-by-day for the last two hundred
years.  It has it's roots in the Constitution, but has grown rather far
from those roots.  It recognizes a "Right to Privacy" that isn't in the
Constitution.  It reinterprets many rights in new ways, and figures out how
to apply them to things the founding fathers never heard of.

Practically speaking, the rights you have today are the ones granted not
by the original U.S. Constitution, but by current Constitutional Law.
Whatever may or may not have been intended by the authors of the Constitution
(I personally suspect they did mean an individual right, but I'm no legal
scholar), in practical fact you have no such individual right to bear arms
right now, because the government doesn't recognize it.  The Supreme Court
has always declined to overturn gun control laws on the basis of the second
amendment.  Today, in the United States, you have no meaningful right to
bear arms.  You do have a meaningful right to privacy, so this evolution of
Constitutional Law is not an unmixed blessing.

I gather that there is a judical movement that believes in staying closer
to the original text of the Constitution.  I think they are called "Strict
Constructionists" or maybe "Strict Constitutionalists" or something like that.
Obviously even these people are going to believe that some degree of
interpretation is OK, but a smaller degree than recent courts have indulged
in.  These people will tend to disapprove of things like the court-manufactured
right to privacy, and might disapprove of throwing out the second amendment.
Vote for Bush if you want this kind of viewpoint on the Supreme Court - that's
the kind of justice he has been promising to appoint.

However, don't get your hopes up for a Court that will affirm the Second
Amendment any time soon.  Throwing out the current interpretation of that
amendment is easy.  Agreeing one a new one is hard.  Even if you get a
majority of justices who want to do so, they are going to have a really
hard time figuring out what form a Second Amendment for the 21st century
should take.  This is one of the points the ACLU paage is making.  If the
justification for gun control is to give the citizens an effective ability
to resist government oppression, then it seems clear that the citizens must
be given the right to own weapons that are vaguely comparable to the ones the
government could bring to bear.  Where will your new court draw the line on
what kinds of weapons can be regulated in what kinds of ways?  Expect a
generation of so to try to figure that one out.

Personally, I like the more flexible approach to the constitution that has
been taken in the last century.  I think they've done a good job of holding
on to what is good and critical to freedom, and expanding it rather
agressively.  The fact that the courts are deliberately being reluctant to
allow regulation of the Internet for the time being is a typical example of
their enlightenment.  Two hundred years of experience deciding millions of
cases leads to a richer and more effective law than a five-month theoretical
committee session.

Personally, I don't feel a need for reviving the second amendment.  The Courts
have said that Congress (federal and state) may decided whether or not to
regulate guns.  Fine.  I think that armed resistance is only useful if the
government completely loses all respect for human liberty and all
responsiveness to the public.  If that happens we resist the government,
AND WE DON'T ASK THE GOVERNMENT'S PERMISSION TO DO SO.  Why in blazes do we
need armed revolutions to be legal?

I think there may be other valid reasons for gun ownership, but none of these
are critical enough to human freedom to need to be protected by Constitutional
Law.  Leave it up to the legislators, and ultimately the majority of the
people.

response 327 of 406:

Oct 28 23:33 UTC 2000

Close to a civil war?  What a ridiculous idea.  Even if it *were* true, it
merely evidifies the worst stereotypes people have about gun owners.  If
that's the only reason to rebel against the state, then the rebels need their
heads checked.

response 329 of 406:

Oct 29 02:25 UTC 2000

I didn't know that estate taxes could be paid over time.  That's certainly
a sensible thing to allow.  Of course, if the business is just marginally
profitable, then having to carry the extra expense of paying estate tax
installments every year could still kill it.

response 331 of 406:

Oct 29 05:38 UTC 2000

You would probably be wrong on the last.  If a land can be sold as
suburban lawns, then that's what it's worth "on the market place".  Of
course, it's hard to measure that value without actually selling it, so
it's possible the IRS will instead use the figure of whatever the land
is worth for property taxes.  That figure is usually less than the going
market rate, by some percentage that typically varies from county to
country.  The IRS probably has a formula to correct for this.

There *is* one way around this; there's a way to sell the right to build
houses to the gov't, in exchange for which they give you a chunk of
money.  You, and any future owner of that land then can't build any
houses, so it's only worth it as farmland, and hence the value remains
lower.  Of course, since that also reduces the future potential property
tax base, the local gov't may have quotas or other restrictions designed
to keep all the land from going in that direction.