On Sat, 13 Mar 2004 09:19:40 GMT, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

"Gunner" wrote in message
.. .

Not at all. It's the spirit of the society itself. If a need to carry
concealed handguns is considered a normal and acceptable part of social
existence, then the society has an attitude problem. It lacks the spirit
that the ancient Greeks identified so well as the necessary condition for
a
civil society, particularly for a democratic one, to thrive.


I notice that the Greeks seemed to be rather heavily armed, while
keeping a rather tough military about them. They were also slave
holders of the first water.

Then you missed the important parts. Their military was not for supressing
their own citizens. It was for conducting wars against other city-states.

You are right..the slaves were simply property.

The important part was the concepts they developed for the relationships of
people in a civil society.

As to armaments..perhaps you may with to read this book. Its most
interesting and well documented

http://members.aol.com/protell/everyman.html

What's it about?

THAT EVERY MAN BE ARMED
The Evolution of a Constitutional Right
By Stephen P. Halbrook
Published by University of New Mexico Press, 1994
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This book, published by the University of New Mexico Press in 1984 and
reprinted by the Independent Institute in 1994, is the most
comprehensive work ever written on the right to keep and bear arms,
which is guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Its author, attorney Stephen P. Halbrook, traces the philosophical,
historical, and legal roots of the right of the citizen to have arms,
beginning in ancient Greece and carrying the analysis forward to legal
and policy controversies of today.

The power of firearms has stirred passions over the right of the
citizenry to own and bear weapons throughout western civilization.
Authored by the principal legal expert on the Second Amendment, That
Every Man Be Armed is the authorative book on the ideas, history, and
legal precedents of the citizen's right to possess arms as being
essential to democracy as is freedom of speech.



The real spiritual failure is that the society has failed to
inculcate -
through moral education, fear of punishment, or whatever - in a
significant
portion of our population a respect for others.

That's a good issue. Lack of that sense of civic responsibility, the
social
responsibilities we have to each other, is a result of the giving-up that
I
was talking about.

Ed Huntress

When the society is no longer able to provide the safety and justice it
promises..many indeed simply lay down. Others provide for themselves.

We call the first group "sheeple".
We call the second group "freemen"

I'm sure you do. In fact, you label people with any words you can find -- or
cook up -- that belittle them while making yourselves sound grand.

Ed Huntress


Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.

Gunner

"personal weapons are the ultimate decentralization
of political power."