"David R. Birch" wrote in message
...
On 8/22/2011 3:54 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:
.
If an armed society is one in which I'm always under the threat of
death, then stuff your armed society where the sun don't shine.

In a society where free citizens are armed, only the uncivilized are
under the threat of death.

Says who? Do you speak for everyone who is armed, or do you live in a
fantasyland where everyone shares your philosophy, values, and sense of
responsibility?

I don't see any evidence that people carrying guns are any different from
anyone else. In fact, isn't that what the pro-CCW advocates claim, that
"ordinary citizens" are the ones who should be armed?


I want a civilized society where we decide conflicts by law and the
ballot box,

Please, tell where there is such a place

Right here. I've been living in it for 63 years.

At one time, I was naive enough to think it was here in the USA. I
eventually realized that the public side of politics was like shadows of
reality on the wall of a cave.

Who's talking about politics? I'm talking about courts and voting.


not one shaped by perpetual intimidation and coercion.

"shaped by perpetual intimidation and coercion"

Is there another way that governments maintain their power over people?

This government "maintains" its power as long as it remains voted in. The
ones who want to intimidate are people like Gunner, with his "great cull" of
the majority of Americans by his little gaggle of loony-tunes; Larry, who
wants to threaten (and, one has to assume, shoot) elected politicians who
don't do what HIS little gaggle of loony-tunes want; and anyone else who
wants to use force to get what they can't get by voting.

As Jefferson said, they haven't learned that first lesson of importance
about a republican government; they are the last to catch on.

--
Ed Huntress

"The first principle of republicanism in that the lex majoris partis is the
fundamental law of every society of individuals of equal right; to consider
the will of the society enounced by the majority of a single vote, as sacred
as if unanimous, is the first of all lessons of importance, yet the last
which is thoroughly learnt. This law once disregarded, no other remains but
that of force, which ends necessarily in military despotism" -- Thomas
Jefferson to Baron Humboldt (1817)