Reply #122: orwell is dead [View All]

[iverglas]

So I'd be saying "Orwell HAD supported ...".

Eric Blair died in 1950.

And any support on his part for "unorganized militias" was based on his belief in the COLLECTIVE RIGHT OF PEOPLES to self-determination -- more specifically, his opposition to fascism, whether home-grown or invading, and to the oppression of the working classes.

I just don't know how anyone could fail to understand that the COLLECTIVE RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION does *not* found a claim that absolutely is entitled to own, possess or carry firearms, anywhere, for any purpose, in any manner s/he might choose.

A collective right to choose a government does *not* found an individual right to vote a government in (i.e. vote an existing government out) whenever, wherever and however one bloody well feels like doing it.

A collective right is exercised in the manner collectively decided by the collective. Individuals do *not* decide how, when or where a collective right will be exercised.

And whether or not your dog's breakfast of that 2nd amendment can somehow be "interpreted" as being intended to grant, and granting, an "individual right to keep and bear arms" for self-defence or target shooting or sexual arousal or whatever other purpose they might serve for an individual, ORWELL was not concerned about those purposes or whatever "right" might be necessary in order for them to be served.

ORWELL was concerned about the collective right of self-determination. In order for that right to be exercised, it might, in some circumstances, be necessary for individuals to be armed. In Orwell's circumstances -- he had seen the threat of indigenous facsism in Spain and the threat of invading fascism in England, and perceived a threat from Stalinism in the USSR -- he considered it to be necessary for individuals to be armed in order to exercise the collective right to self-determination.

The US's founders & framers were in similar circumstances. They had experienced what they reasonably perceived as foreign oppression, and they perceived threats to the freedom of their state on their borders, and internal threats to the security of their state. They were concerned about the exercise of the collective right to self-determination of the people (singular) of the United States -- their right to exist within the secure borders of a state free from foreign intervention in its affairs.

In their circumstances, it was arguably necessary for individuals to be armed, in order to protect the security of the free state that represented that people's exercise of the right to collective self-determination. I see no other way that the 2nd amendment can be interpreted, and I see absolutely nothing in that provision to support the assertion of a "right" to possess firearms for any purpose other than the defence of the freedom and security of the state.

(Just as the right to vote is necessary, in our circumstances, for the purpose of exercising the right to self-determination -- the right of a people to choose its own government. It's entirely conceivable that a people, in some place and at some time, could exercise that right without individuals ever voting at all, in point of fact.)

And what I see next is surely obvious: that the assertion that it is necessary for individuals IN THE U.S. to possess firearms IN THIS CENTURY in order to ensure the continued existence and security of the US as a free state is laughable (if disingenuous) nonsense.

I confidently suggest that Eric Blair would be spinning in his grave to see anyone claim that a situation that is so completely opposite to the world he strove for -- a situation in which the people whose rights he fought for are making their own lives so miserable with fear and violence that no fascist oppressors need even lift a finger to keep them subjugated -- could be justified by appealing to him.

Yuck, says I.

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