On this day in 1946, the first Yugoslav Constitution came into effect. It was patterned after the Soviet Constitution. It reminds me of something a couple of years back when some idiot like Michele Bachmann stated that Obama only cared about upholding the communist constitution. Something like that. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that a lot of people think that authoritarian regimes had terrible constitutions. They rarely did.
The Soviet constitution was great. As Justice Antonin Scalia said, “The bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours.” Those that fetishize the Constitution are idiots. It’s just a document. And it means what we collectively say it means.
This also reminds me of the Second Amendment idiots who think that it’s their guns that will stop the government from turning into a tyranny. If it gets to the point of us having to protect ourselves from the government, then we’ve already lost. Think about the people at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. A truly tyrannical government would just fly a drone over and blow it up. Problem solved!
Societies don’t stay free because of old documents and stockpiles of firearms. They stay free because the people stay engaged in the process. Every time someone opens a voter’s pamphlet, they are helping to save this republic. Every time someone listens to a political debate, they are helping to save this republic. The greatest threat to this republic and to every other free country in the world is apathy. By the time a Hitler or a Stalin or a Pol Pot comes to power, the fight has already been lost.
We all need to remember that. If Dick Cheney were dictator of the world, he would have all kinds of pieces of paper telling you how free you are, just like the Yugoslav Constitution. And he’d allow you to have your guns. Because he wouldn’t have to worry about them. His position would be solidified by something far more powerful.
This is something I used to needle my left wing friends on My Space about a little. The USA PATRIOT Act was pretty bad but its affects were so insidious and scattered it was hard to actually figure out how to push against it. However to their way of thinking it was that the gulag was right down the street and they better what watch what they say or else. Mainly I was saying “have some damn perspective and go campaign for the person who says s/he will repeal it.”
Maybe it was just my finding hyperbolic language kind of silly.
When I was younger, I was far more hyperbolic than I am now. In fact, that’s what made me a libertarian. In a libertarian mind, gun registration leads directly to Nazi Germany. This used to be a far bigger problem on the left than the right. I think the left has become amazingly pragmatic. Even with Bernie Sanders’ supporters there is a real concern about the practicality of it. Did you see Erik Loomis’ article, Bernie Skepticism? He says pretty much what I believe. As I’ve said too many times to count, I don’t see Sanders and Clinton administrations being all that different. There is a chance, of course. The question that I think everyone should be asking is what is that chance and how much are you willing to risk for it?
No I hadn’t. I was mainly focused on torturing myself with my math homework yesterday, putting stuff in storage, short circuiting a fight with the best friend, and *mumble mumble since I don’t want to shock you*.
The left has become a lot more pragmatic (at least with the peeps I interact with on various messaging boards) from what I can tell because we have Obama in office. No idea if that will continue if Trump somehow wins. The Salon article about how Clinton was running on fear was more about her running on worry that the gains we have fought so hard for will disappear if we don’t win this election while the focus of Sanders is of course simply change in how we even do campaigns in this country.
Well, that is a justifiable fear that I think we all fear. I’m sure there are Sanders supporters out there saying there is no difference between Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz — just like they said about Bush and Gore. But those are freaks. There can’t be many of them.
Basically, he said that he agrees with Sanders and will still most likely vote for him, but he doesn’t see any great awakening (doesn’t see historical evidence for it), expects that a Sanders presidency would be very much like a Clinton presidency, and is terrified of losing to the Republicans. I tend to think that in the end, Sanders stacks up better against Trump, and Clinton against everyone else. That doesn’t mean that Sanders would lose to the others or that Clinton would lose to Trump. But I see the argument that Trump will make against Clinton; I don’t see any argument at all that the others can make. What? That’s she’s an insider? Yeah, Cruz and Rubio are such outsiders!
I hope there are not. The ones I keep seeing on news websites are pretty nasty with one of them saying she was the devil.
But since the Republicans are used to being able to do and say almost anything without anything happening to them, I don’t think it matters what they say since no one will keep them from making anything they want up.