#65 Steve
“I have a well-thumbed copy on the book shelf right next to me as I type this. Strangely, there is nothing in my copy about the judges ability to tell us what our rights are and are not.”
If your copy does not contain #78, with its very clear endorsement of judicial review, I suggest you find an authetic copy immediately. It will also help disabuse you of the notion that the 2nd Amendment is intended to endorse violent change in the government, as opposed to the prescribed peaceful change via election and amendment.
#66 M. Report
Again, civility exists or does not exist irrelevant of external conditions.
Either you have a basic respect for the rights and feelings of your neighbor and fellow citizens or you do not. If you are only capable of controlling your baser instincts out of fear then the flaw is within you, not within your neighbor.
I am also quite familiar with both Heinlein and Piper.
Before you jump to cite Lone Star Planet, remember Little Fuzzy – you can find a precedent for anything within colonial law. Disarming the populace perhaps?
If you insist on getting Hobbesian with the “nasty, brutish, and short” bit, then why not go the whole way?
Remember, Heinlein sneered at democracy and republics just as much as he sneered at dictatorship. And we know what he said about people who will not defend the state they live in (even while disdaining conscription, which has been part of the traditions of the people of this country since before its establishment).
