Main Core

May 20, 2008 12:25 PM

The Last Roundup. "Is the government compiling a secret list of citizens to detain under martial law?" [Via]
posted by homunculus (108 comments total)

FEMA camps.
posted by ericb at 12:30 PM on May 20, 2008

Previous related MeFi threads:

Rex 84.

American Concentration Camps.

posted by ericb at 12:32 PM on May 20, 2008

Los Angeles Times: Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision.
posted by ericb at 12:35 PM on May 20, 2008

It helps having an intimate understanding of technology. Having grown up working with computers, when the internet first came into widespread use in the 90s, I began an immediate policy of always posting under pseudonyms that would be very difficult to trace back to my real identity. This policy applies even to fairly mundane stuff. Of course, with IP logging and such, it would be easy for anyone with access to the server logs and a subpoena (or not!) to find out who I am, so I have a personal policy of simply never posting anything I might think too controversial or that I think I might someday regret. Heck, even in real life I have a policy to never put rudeness in writing, or anything that might even be deemed of questionable legality.
posted by PigAlien at 12:36 PM on May 20, 2008

Oh boy! Extended MeFi meetup!

Dibs on the bottom bunk!
posted by cowbellemoo at 12:40 PM on May 20, 2008 [17 favorites]

Here's another related thread on Hoover's list of 12,000 Americans he wanted to detain.
posted by homunculus at 12:43 PM on May 20, 2008

Well isn't that just fucking fantastic. I was wondering how they were going to populate the KBR built detention camps.
posted by Mr_Zero at 12:43 PM on May 20, 2008

so I have a personal policy of simply never posting anything I might think too controversial or that I think I might someday regret.

*shivers* (Does anyone else feel a breeze in here?)
posted by finite at 12:43 PM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

PigAlien, your caution makes you all the more suspicious. You are, therefore, guilty.
posted by xod at 12:43 PM on May 20, 2008

Meanwhile, in Britain: ‘Big Brother’ database for phones and e-mails
posted by homunculus at 12:45 PM on May 20, 2008

I began an immediate policy of always posting under pseudonyms that would be very difficult to trace back to my real identity

Uh oh.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:46 PM on May 20, 2008 [4 favorites]

It's a freedom camp, people.
posted by porn in the woods at 12:47 PM on May 20, 2008 [19 favorites]

According to the Washington Post, the hospital drama revolved around domestic wiretapping:

It allowed the NSA to monitor e-mails and telephone calls between the United States and overseas if one party was believed linked to terrorist groups.

The claim that there is some sort of 'list of citizens to detain' is ludicrous at best. Please forgive me for trusting WaPo's fact checkers over those of Radar.
posted by infinitefloatingbrains at 12:47 PM on May 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

Geez, what a bunch of whiners. Who doesn't like camping?
posted by Skot at 1:02 PM on May 20, 2008

THE FIRST TIME THEY TOOK ME AND KYLE TO FREEDOM CAMP I REMEMBER THEY PARKED THE BUS, I JUMPED OUT AND IMMEDIATELY STEPPED ON A NAIL. WE HAD TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL AND THEN WE WENT HOME BECAUSE I HAD TO GET A TETANUS SHOT OR SOME KIND OF SHOT. IT'S ALL KIND OF HAZY.

THE SECOND TIME THEY TOOK ME AND KYLE TO FREEDOM CAMP WAS A MONTH LATER, IN THE MIDDLE OF JULY. THEY PARKED THE BUS, AND KYLE JUMPED OUT AND IMMEDIATELY TRIED TO LIFT UP SOME SORT OF BOULDER THAT WAS ON A HILL. I DON'T REALLY KNOW WHY HE DID THIS. ANYWAY HE ENDED UP BREAKING HIS FINGER. WE HAD TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL, AND THEN WE HAD TO GO HOME BECAUSE HE WANTED TO BE WITH HIS MOM.

AT THE END OF SUMMER, THE GOVERNMENT, OUT OF COMPLETE DESPERATION TO GET US INTO FREEDOM CAMP, TOOK US OUT AGAIN. I REMEMBER THEY SEEMED A BIT FIDGETY THE WHOLE WAY THERE, AND I REMEMBER THEY WOULDN'T LET US OUT OF THE BUS UNTIL THEY HAD SCOUTED AROUND A LITTLE BIT.

WHEN I GOT OUT OF THE CAR THE GUARDS WERE BUSY TAKING THE BUNGEE CORDS OFF THE ROOF. THEY HAD ABOUT A BILLION THINGS UP ON THE BUS WHICH THEY HAD SECURED WITH AN UNNECESSARY AMOUNT OF BUNGEE CORDS. ANYWAY FOR SOME REASON I UNHOOKED ONE OF THE BUNGEE CORDS ON MY SIDE OF THE BUS. IT WHIZZED OVER THE BUS ROOF LIKE A METEOR AND CUT THE ONE GUARD DEEPLY IN HIS EYEBROW. WHILE THE OTHER GUARD WAS HELPING THE CUT GUARD WE HAD TO FINISH THEM BOTH OFF WITH ROCKS AND BURY THEM UNDER THE BOULDER THAT KYLE HAD MOVED. THEY KIND OF GAVE UP ON THE FREEDOM CAMP IDEA AFTER THAT.*
posted by Floydd at 1:03 PM on May 20, 2008 [35 favorites]

The claim that there is some sort of 'list of citizens to detain' is ludicrous at best. Please forgive me for trusting WaPo's fact checkers over those of Radar.

It's not really a question of "fact checking". The nature of that hospital visit is not a simple matter of public record; it was a secret meeting of officials at the highest levels of the executive branch. And those officials have refused to disclose exactly what was discussed. Determining the nature of their discussion is a matter of investigative journalism. The article in question has made use of a large number of anonymous sources within the intelligence community to reach its conclusions; reporters for the Post might well not have had access to the same sources.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:04 PM on May 20, 2008

LOL, despite the obvious and legitimate reactions to my previous comment, the real reason I had such a policy from the get-go was because of my experience growing up gay and during the cold war. You never know when you might apply for a job or join an organization or apply for some sort of benefits and have some nosy person try and find out all the dirt they can about you and then scream - "aha! he's got teh gay!"

On the other hand, I was a German major in college and learned lots of history about WWII and the Soviet Union and in particular East Germany, where the Stasi turned everyone into a spy. You couldn't even trust your own children, parents, friends or even spouse.

Heck, why did the founders of our country over 200 years ago find it necessary to protect such rights as laid out in the Bill of Rights? Its an inherent trait of human nature to want to control others and to use whatever means necessary to do it. A prudent man (or woman) never forgets this and behaves accordingly.

I've also often held quite unconventional opinions and simply always felt it best to protect my privacy. My reasons for adopting the cloak of anonymity had little to do with a fear of the government, but it turns out such practices were wise to adopt!
posted by PigAlien at 1:10 PM on May 20, 2008

THANK YOU FLOYDD.
posted by mwhybark at 1:11 PM on May 20, 2008

The articles seems pretty responsbily written. And yet -- it's immediately followed by
"READ MORE
• Suspicious Minds: How a ragtag group of conspiracy nuts is changing public perception of 9/11"
posted by msalt at 1:13 PM on May 20, 2008

ON SECOND THOUGHT I AM MAD AT YOU. PEOPLE ARE WONDERING WHY I AM TURNING BEET RED AND TRYING NOT TO CRY, EH?
posted by mwhybark at 1:16 PM on May 20, 2008

I don't want to sound dismissive of the concept that someone, somewhere actually cooked something like this up, but really, look at who's in charge of implementing it. Are you really afraid that this could be successful?
posted by Pollomacho at 1:19 PM on May 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

This is complete and utter nonsense. There are 300 million people in this country, 200 million guns, and 60 million registered gun owners. The imposition of any type of martial law would be an invitation to revolt.
posted by Pastabagel at 1:19 PM on May 20, 2008

The claim that there is some sort of 'list of citizens to detain' is ludicrous at best.

Sure, because it's not like it has ever happened before, right?.

Given the sheer amount of data that the US government has on its citizens, and the carte blanche they've been handed from Congress, it would be quite surprising for them not to have a cross-referenced list of "undesirables". Once you consider Rex 84 and the government's actions during Katrina, it becomes pretty obvious that anything and everything is fair game during an "emergency", especially the Bill of Rights.
posted by vorfeed at 1:19 PM on May 20, 2008

It's all just so sad.

This is what we have become.

It's not even just America. It's all kinds of places that used to hold freedom and justice as the highest achievement of a society.

Now we've built the same thing that our emigrants - founding through recent - were trying to leave behind.

I love my country. I wish she were allowed to love me back.
posted by batmonkey at 1:19 PM on May 20, 2008

This one time at concentration camp ...
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:20 PM on May 20, 2008 [5 favorites]

It Can't Happen Here
posted by caddis at 1:24 PM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm turning all of you in for thought crimes, in exchange for a cushy job sweeping the guards' quarters.

Sometimes they give me crackers between the beatings.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 1:32 PM on May 20, 2008

The imposition of any type of martial law would be an invitation to revolt.

If the right people imposed it and "officially" targeted it against the right people, the gun owners and their organizations would help to enforce it. The pen is mightier than the sword, so anybody can own a gun, but cellphones and wifi laptops need to be part of a "well regulated militia".
posted by wendell at 1:32 PM on May 20, 2008 [4 favorites]

the gun owners and their organizations would help to enforce it.

All the more reason to become a gun owner yourself, eh?
posted by Pollomacho at 1:37 PM on May 20, 2008

Thought crime? If you can't find laws that everyone here at MetaFilter haven't been in violation of, you just aren't trying. (Not that we've all broken the same laws, but I'm sure 50-100 statutes of various jurisdictions should cover most of the American-based memers)
posted by wendell at 1:38 PM on May 20, 2008

The best part about this new crypto-oligarchy is that we get to imagine that it's our boot stepping on a human face forever.

Of course, that's hardly the point, since "our" boot is made in a Chinese sweatshop, sold to the government by Halliburton and filled by the foot of a "robust temporary employee" from Blackwater.
posted by felix betachat at 1:38 PM on May 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

The claim that there is some sort of 'list of citizens to detain' is ludicrous at best.


Oh yeah. It's almost as ludicrous as the idea that the government would make a list of 900,000 people who aren't supposed to fly.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 1:39 PM on May 20, 2008 [4 favorites]

This is complete and utter nonsense. There are 300 million people in this country, 200 million guns, and 60 million registered gun owners. The imposition of any type of martial law would be an invitation to revolt.

This is nothing but a gun owner fantasy. I don't care how poorly the military have done in Iraq, fat guys armed with hunting rifles they bought from Wal-Mart and whose only experience with them is sitting in a little hi-chair and waiting to plug the deer they've trained with feeders are not going to be able to take on the combined forces of the US Military, not to mention every law enforcement organization from county to federal. Anyone with actual military training who's likely to be on the wrong side will be first up against the wall. They'll probably neutralize the whole Soldier of Fortune subscriber list just to be sure.
posted by DecemberBoy at 1:39 PM on May 20, 2008 [6 favorites]

It's only martial law if the military becomes the government.
posted by furtive at 1:40 PM on May 20, 2008

All the more reason to become a gun owner yourself, eh?

Not unless you desire martyrdom.
posted by wendell at 1:40 PM on May 20, 2008

...and themn there are the (how many? ) 13 million illegals who can not be rounded up as yet.

This "core" group will be more closely monitored: which means to get on the list they already have been monitored...rounded up and put with? the homeless? the houses now vacant through default?
or perhaps the army bases, emptied to send troops to invade countries like Iran et al.
posted by Postroad at 1:47 PM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Close your eyes, can't happen here. Big Bro' on white horse is near. TThe hippies Republicans won't come back, you say? Mellow out or you will pay. Mellow out or You... Will... Pay.
posted by spoobnooble at 1:49 PM on May 20, 2008

That "imagine a boot stomping on a human face -- forever" quote, frankly, is one of Orwell's sillier concepts. (And I am not that much of an Orwell fan) Because, in time, what the boot is stomping ceases to resemble a human face.
posted by wendell at 1:49 PM on May 20, 2008

There are 300 million people in this country, 200 million guns, and 60 million registered gun owners. The imposition of any type of martial law would be an invitation to revolt.

Thats like saying "Rwanda is a nation of 100 million machetes. Genocide could never happen there, because any attempt at genocide would be met with extreme violence." Yeah, no kidding. In fact, you might say that the violence was more of a feature than a bug.

Also, it helps if the people who generally own lots of guns would support rather than fight martial law. After all, it's only "martial law" when you and your friends sent to the camps. When "Hated Enemy Group X" is sent to the camp en masse, it's just "regular law" being enforced.
posted by Avenger at 1:51 PM on May 20, 2008 [3 favorites]

A year or two after 9/11, I got an e-mail from one of my computer science professors, forwarding on a government job opportunity related to data mining and instant messenger software. That's... probably related to this, right?
posted by naju at 1:54 PM on May 20, 2008

And I am not that much of an Orwell fan

Have you read Homage to Catalonia and Down and Out in Paris and London, Wendell? 1984 is quoted and bandied about far out of proportion to its actual contributions to the Canon in my humble O.
posted by Divine_Wino at 1:55 PM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

The claim that there is some sort of 'list of citizens to detain' is ludicrous at best.

I agree. It will be a MS Access database with no data validation and no security hosted on RNC server that isn't backed up.
posted by srboisvert at 2:03 PM on May 20, 2008 [5 favorites]

If the right people imposed it and "officially" targeted it against the right people, the gun owners and their organizations would help to enforce it.

I just finished reading Stanley Milgram's terrifying Obedience to Authority and would sadly have to agree with wendell's prediction. Human beings are predisposed to blind obedience to authority, especially obedience in observation of the rules of a system, as defined by self-assigned leadership.

In a time of crisis, people subjugate their individuality and defer to the will of whatever authority evolves from the chaos. It wouldn't be above the Bush administration to fabricate or allow a terrorist attack shortly before the end of his term, in order to dissolve what's left of the Constitution and declare martial law.

Even with his low approval rating, 9/11 showed that people will rally around his leadership and give him carte blanche to do as he pleases. Most of the gun owners in this country, and in particular a majority of the NRA membership, would likely be happy to let the Republicans run "freedom" concentration camps if it meant that blacks, Muslims, gays, lesbians, Jews and other "undesirables" would be removed from society, in order to protect it.

Let's hope the next six months of his term end peacefully and without incident.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:05 PM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Let's hope the next six months of his term end peacefully and without incident.

...without both real and fabricated incident!
posted by Pollomacho at 2:10 PM on May 20, 2008

Hello muddah, Hello faddah
Here I am Camp Grenada
Camp is very [censored]
And they say [redacted for security purposes by FBI]

I went hiking with [name withheld]
He developed [censored]
You remember [name withheld]
[redacted by DHS] after dinner
posted by never used baby shoes at 2:25 PM on May 20, 2008 [22 favorites]

BUSH

I thank you, good people: there shall be no money;
all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will
apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree
like brothers and worship me their lord.

DICK CHENEY

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
posted by Muddler at 2:26 PM on May 20, 2008

Oh, come on. Why are we going to waste all that money and time and a potential coup on rounding up people for camps? This isn't Nazi Germany, it's the 21st century.

Look, this is how it works. We have a list of people that gets cross-referenced to the big List. Anyone who's not on the List gets put on the List for next time, since if we're checking on you in the first place, there's obviously a reason for it.

Anyone who's already on the list, we now have a retroactive authorization that lets us go around to Google and Amazon and your ISP and the public records database and collate all the info we can find on you or anyone who, you know, has the same name as you and ever bought midget porn.

Then we go to your house and interview your family and your neighbors and you, just like we do for a standard NSA employment rundown. It's really straightforward stuff where we ask if you're gay and are nice to your neighbors and would they think about your differently if they knew you'd ever bought midget porn.

And probably there's nothing wrong with you at all -- after all, you're only on the List because you Do Things, like maybe go to Meetups, or work for a company that exports semiconductors that can be used in cruise missiles or Playstations, or you vote. And this is America and you should be allowed to Do Things, but just keep in mind that 99% of dangerous dissidents Do Things as well -- which is why we have The List, right?

Anyway, if there's any serious red flags like political websites on your computer or if you're Islamic or an "activist" or something, we might arrest you, but probably not. And if we do it's usually just a precaution -- you just have to tell your boss that you need a couple of weekdays off to spend in jail while we're investigating you. But that probably won't happen. We'll just let you know that we're looking into things, and we'll even put all of that stuff in the public record where your neighbors and your family can see it and verify its accuracy.

Then we send you the bill and let you know how much we appreciate your cooperation. And we mention that if you've had any difficulties we apologize and you should contact us and we can have a hearing to determine whether all the administrative procedures were conducted properly and the paperwork was filled out and such. Obviously we don't want to risk any lawsuits, so we make sure to immunize ourselves from all that under the APA by creating a paper trail -- and of course because the public deserves to have accountability and to see all the information we eventually pull up on you so they know we're doing our jobs right.

You people are all paranoids.
posted by spiderwire at 2:26 PM on May 20, 2008 [16 favorites]

While I admit that this is a chilling idea - I find I have a hard time taking it too seriously...

First off, FEMA is going to run the camps? Will they even have gates? Or will we need to fill out some sort of paperwork and wait 6 weeks in order to get locked in. Before that, though, we actually need to get TO the camps. I wonder whether they will use buses or trains, cause you know, both of these forms of transportation are excellent here in the 'ol USofA.

Hell, even before all of the above concerns, they actually need to get a computer system set up that can handle the data. I wonder if bidding has even started yet on the proprietary software (it's always proprietary), and if it will even be remotely current by the time it's operational.

The government is generally only scary when you need something from them...otherwise? Not so much.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 2:29 PM on May 20, 2008

infinitefloatingbrains: According to the Washington Post, the hospital drama revolved around domestic wiretapping

Maybe you don't remember, two months after that, Gonzales telling the Senate that "The disagreement that occurred was about other intelligence activities and the reason for the visit to the hospital was about other intelligence activities. It was not about the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people."

So what was it about? What program was so horrifying to John Ashcroft that he wouldn't reauthorize it from his hospital bed? Will you trust the New York Times' fact-checkers?

"A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program."
posted by nicwolff at 2:30 PM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

"Is the government compiling a secret list of citizens to detain under martial law?"

Yes, it is. In fact, I have obtained a copy:

• Carrot Top
• Don Imus
• Gloria Allred
• Paris Hilton
• Engelbert Humperdinck
• Pauly Shore
• Suri Cruise
• David Hasselhoff
• Cher
• Charo
• Verne Troyer
• Tommy Lee
• Florence Henderson
• Michael Jackson
• Tito Jackson
• Randy Jackson
• Burt Bacharach
• Jared (from Subway)
• Wilford Brimley

Lots of brave patriots died obtaining this list. Please protect it with your life.
posted by pardonyou? at 2:38 PM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

The prison industrial complex needs to be fed somehow-- with crime down dramatically, the private prison industry fears that it will no longer grow. Immigrants and "terrorists" are now hated, possibly even more than drug addicts-- so I do not find it improbable that corporate and government interests are allying in this way. We need more "crime" so that we can continue to employ the unemployable to lock each other up, thus preventing people from recognizing how inequitable the whole system has become.

i pray that the next administration takes serious steps to turn this stuff around... i shudder to think about what will happen otherwise.
posted by Maias at 2:40 PM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

This is nothing but a gun owner fantasy. I don't care how poorly the military have done in Iraq, fat guys armed with hunting rifles they bought from Wal-Mart and whose only experience with them is sitting in a little hi-chair and waiting to plug the deer they've trained with feeders are not going to be able to take on the combined forces of the US Military

i.e. "I don't care about recent military experience, or even historical military experience, because my own stereotypes are way more informative". Sorry, but history has shown again and again that it isn't easy to suppress an armed population on its home ground, even with an overwhelmingly superior force. And for every five fat guys who only shoot during deer season, there's another who is at the range every other week, putting holes in paper at 300 yards with his Remington 700 or AR-15. That said, I do think it's a bit of a "gun owner fantasy" that there will be any sort of widespread, open revolt against martial law. Partisan activities and random, small-scale riots are far more likely. Fortunately, they are also far more likely to be effective.

Also, it helps if the people who generally own lots of guns would support rather than fight martial law. After all, it's only "martial law" when you and your friends sent to the camps. When "Hated Enemy Group X" is sent to the camp en masse, it's just "regular law" being enforced.

Actually, the NRA was quite upset about forcible gun confiscations in New Orleans, despite the complacency of many other organizations at the time, including the ACLU. They also helped people get their guns back, and lobbied for new laws that help protect people from confiscation. So much for their support of "regular law".

I'm not a huge fan of the NRA, myself, but the idea that they or "a majority of" their members would support gun grabs or concentration camps(!) is pretty ridiculous. Support for the Patriot Act and the like is a lot less common amongst gun activists than it is among conservatives as a whole, for example, and I've noticed an increasing amount of grumbling in these circles in recent years. A lot of Republican gun owners feel deeply betrayed by the neo-con agenda in general and BushCo in particular.
posted by vorfeed at 2:43 PM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

This is complete and utter nonsense. There are 300 million people in this country, 200 million guns, and 60 million registered gun owners. The imposition of any type of martial law would be an invitation to revolt.

To follow up on the many good counterpoints raised so far, I'd like to add that firearms, as objects, are morally neutral. While some gun owners would like to believe otherwise, having a firearm in the closet does not make you a passionate defender of liberty, a frontiersman, or a modern minuteman. It simply makes you a person with a gun. The gun says nothing about what you will or will not do in a totalitarian society.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 2:48 PM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

The gun says nothing about what you will or will not do in a totalitarian society.

Might get you a job offer -- I'm gonna get some guns and shoot for Third-Class Official Petty Thug, myself. I mean "try for" -- not shoot shoot. Shooting is only for Second-Class Jackbooted Goosesteppers and above. We have rules here, people.
posted by spiderwire at 2:54 PM on May 20, 2008

The gun says nothing about what you will or will not do in a totalitarian society.

Very true. However, it does say something about what you can and cannot do in a totalitarian society.

The application of force is the world's oldest equalizer, which is why many restrictive governments have started by limiting the possession of weapons.
posted by vorfeed at 2:54 PM on May 20, 2008

Blazecock Pileon wrote:

"Even with his low approval rating, 9/11 showed that people will rally around his leadership and give him carte blanche to do as he pleases. Most of the gun owners in this country, and in particular a majority of the NRA membership, would likely be happy to let the Republicans run "freedom" concentration camps if it meant that blacks, Muslims, gays, lesbians, Jews and other "undesirables" would be removed from society, in order to protect it."

you sir are just as bad at pigeon holing as you claim your targets are.
posted by CCK at 2:56 PM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Scary list, pardonyou? It's Arraigning Florence Henderson?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:00 PM on May 20, 2008

So long as they don't confuse Mr. Buttle with Mr. Tuttle. I mean, this isn't Brazil.
posted by paddbear at 3:02 PM on May 20, 2008

Sorry, but history has shown again and again that it isn't easy to suppress an armed population on its home ground, even with an overwhelmingly superior force.

What history is this? I can only think of Hamas.
posted by srboisvert at 3:17 PM on May 20, 2008

"Is the government compiling a secret list of citizens to detain under martial law?"

so I have a personal policy of simply never posting anything I might think too controversial or that I think I might someday regret.

*looks over posting my posting history*

I'm fucked.

Partisan activities and random, small-scale riots are far more likely. Fortunately, they are also far more likely to be effective.

I'm in.
posted by quin at 3:24 PM on May 20, 2008

you sir are just as bad at pigeon holing as you claim your targets are.

While I really hope I'm wrong about the majority of gun owners, I do have some in my larger family who typify that majority, and I know that they would privately admit some or all of these feelings, that so long as the Second Amendment is preserved, other rights (like the right to free assembly, (non-Christian) religion and equal protection under law) are not as important. Perhaps they believe this on the basis that the Second Amendment somehow safeguards those other rights, but I'm not so sure.

In any case, I am occasionally forwarded email missives about Muslims and immigrants ruining the country posted on right-wing news sites, and the only reason I don't receive anything about gay Americans ruining America is that they know I am one myself, and would never dare do so to my face. One, because I would react to it appropriately by disassociating myself from them. Two, because they are, in spite of their irrational phobias, generally decent human beings who -- like most, gun owner or not -- rationalize their fears and compartmentalize those rationalizations when they have to deal with other human beings on a face-to-face basis.

Again, to return to Milgram, most would not deign to hurt others when the punishment has to be meted out in person, because it usually violates that core of morality we're all taught growing up, not to hurt others. It invokes tension when you have to directly face the consequences of your violence towards another human being, especially one to whom you are close. But if you can get a tyrannical regime to violently act out your irrational phobias on a subpopulation you don't like, that system assumes all responsibility for the moral decision, and it is much easier to subjugate to that authority. You're just following orders. If they can get you to believe in the legitimacy of those orders, all the better.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:28 PM on May 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

Blazecock

Well if they are forwarding you info about ILLEGAL immigrants ruining this country, they are doing you a service.

and yet in your third paragraph you repeat in calling a majority of gunowners the type that are immediately for tyrannical regimes. Way to go!
posted by CCK at 3:54 PM on May 20, 2008

I'm not a huge fan of the NRA, myself, but the idea that they or "a majority of" their members would support gun grabs or concentration camps(!) is pretty ridiculous.

I wouldn't agree with this, but I've always been fascinated by the support that the hard right has maintained for events like the Branch Davidian standoff. Ruby Ridge, sure, but the Davidians were obviously a bunch of weirdos. That so many on the right point to those events in Waco as a harbinger of things to come tells me that any movement which isn't specifically taking browns or hippies off the street will receive at least some critical examination by the gun nuts.
posted by wfrgms at 3:54 PM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

God's sounded the alarm!
Don't dare push that snooze button!
Your favourite metalhead and mine
That child-molesting freak
Used Seven Seals to scare his flock, so he could sin
Defiled young girls beneath posters of Megadeth
But then...
They tried to take his guns!
They tried to take his guns!
Coulda grabbed him when he's out jogging
Or scamming chicks in bars
But OOOOOOHHH NOOOO
They brought SWAT teams and tanks
Waco's a sign!
One-World Government!
posted by DecemberBoy at 4:04 PM on May 20, 2008

vorfeed The application of force is the world's oldest equalizer

And shortly after that, a mechanism for a physically weak leader to distance himself from the equalizing effect of force application was invented. It's called "thugs". The chief doesn't care how many of them you kill. He has more. He's busy making more, out of dumb, poor, greedy, aggressive men.

The reply step in the arms race is "assassins". If assassination is what you plan to do with your gun, then you have a chance of achieving something. But if you're planning to openly rebel and shoot government thugs with it, it's just a matter of time before you're dead, or in the same hole with the non-gun-owners. So forget that.

If you're serious about insurgency, get the materials to make unattended or remote-activated bombs, and sniper rifles. You need to be able to kill leaders, do so visibly, and do it in such a way that retaliation, if any, primarily comes down upon the collaborating citizens (of whom, let's face it, there will be approximately 260 million), rather than on yourself, leaving you free to continue the fight. Handguns will do nothing for you there. Of course your enemy will demonize you for this; they will blame you for the cluster bombs they drop, the house-to-house searches, collaborating citizenry shot due to mistaken identity as insurgents, etc. You will wonder if they are right. Certainly if you stopped, they would ... maybe. Their problem of identifying insurgents from population, is a lot harder for them, than your problem of identifying their thugs, from the population is for you. They have a strong incentive to continue repression, even if you gave up.

What the handgun will help with, is countering the next move from the authority: the infiltrating spy. The government will put a high priority on containing insurgents, which implies identifying them. The easiest way to do that, is to pretend to be a recruit. This incidentally makes insurgency recruitment harder.

So your response, as insurgency leader, is to use tactics that do not require you to trust your recruits. Suicide tactics, or tactics of such high risk as to constitute suicide. "Proving worth", being seen to kill enemy soldiers, something a spy is considered less likely to do, although obviously not incapable of doing. You devise a cell-based system, where you can remotely train people to train people to become insurgents. Passed-around copies of instruction manuals, general exhortations to achieve various goals, rather than orders.

That's about where we're up to, I think. Obviously all kinds of side-trails and alternative tactics existed historically (eg Ghandi, although I think the Chinese in Tibet and the Myanmar junta in Burma have found the answer to that tactic - be more ruthless), and a great deal more remain unexplored.

Also, consider the effect of population suppressors such as TV, anti-depressants, and financial desperation on US-based insurgency. It's far easier to watch TV, take your meds, and work hard in case you get fired and lose your health care, your house, your car, your lifestyle, and your friends, than it is to resist the government putting people into camps. These people, by definition, are not you, because otherwise you would be in the camp. And you probably don't like them all that much either. An 8 million person population decrease would be a godsend for finding parking at the malls. It'll make finding jobs easier, too.

Want some good news? An insurgency comes from the targets of the suppression, and those who strongly identify with them, not the general population who, as above, see it as an unpleasant inconvenience but have kids to feed and mortgages to pay. At least in this case, it would be ideological suppression, and it is far harder for the thugs to pick out ideological enemies of the government than racial enemies, somewhat harder than religious enemies, and a lot harder than sexual enemies. The problem of identifying liberals is much harder than the problem of identifying Jews, priests, gypsies, the disabled or gays. Just for a start, any given political questionnaire identifies most people as holding liberal views. To be pro-Bush, one has to be stupid, selfish, or dishonest (or more than one of these); a lot of people aren't any of these, and they will, under the ideological test as proposed, show up as liberals and therefore enemies of the State. This discounts the authority expectation effect on changing personal views ... but that does take a bit of time, and anti-authoritarian views are reinforced by humor at the expense of the authority, which creates a good healthy layer of contempt.

So there is a very, very good chance of false positives, especially as the same type of assholes who are behind the No Fly List are behind this plan, and the same type of assholes who enforce airport security would be used to enforce this too. That implies that everyone is a potential target of the suppression, because of error. Thugs might come to your door looking to take your five-year-old away, because his name is the same as the name of a professor of art history. Even if you are a member in good standing of the Republican Party.

This might serve as a good "immunization meme", but it might not. Oh well. If the rain comes down: pack sniper rifles, IED manufacture instructions, a high-quality color laser printer (counterfeiting money is a great insurgency tool, for two good reasons) and transcripts of the Daily Show.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 4:25 PM on May 20, 2008 [18 favorites]

What history is this? I can only think of Hamas.

Did you even bother to click on the links in the text you quoted? It seems more than a little lazy to ask "what history is this", when I already provided two different history links.

At any rate, one can find successful partisan movements throughout recent history. Freedom fighters in India may have contributed as much or more to Indian independence than Gandhi did. The same with Ireland. Russia, Yugoslavia, Finland, Italy, and France (among many others!) had partisans during WWII, each aimed at a vastly superior force. Since then, the Viet Cong, the Mukti Bahini, the rebels in East Timor, and both the Sandinistas and the Contras come to mind. At the moment, insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Chechnya are active, and have managed to defy the interests of two of the greatest military powers on Earth.

But if you're planning to openly rebel and shoot government thugs with it, it's just a matter of time before you're dead, or in the same hole with the non-gun-owners. So forget that.

Just as I already said above: "Partisan activities and random, small-scale riots are far more likely. Fortunately, they are also far more likely to be effective."
posted by vorfeed at 4:34 PM on May 20, 2008

This is complete and utter nonsense. There are 300 million people in this country, 200 million guns, and 60 million registered gun owners. The imposition of any type of martial law would be an invitation to revolt.

Gun ownership was widespread in Iraq under Saddam. Fat lot of good that did them, eh?
posted by Mental Wimp at 4:36 PM on May 20, 2008

These people, by definition, are not you, because otherwise you would be in the camp. And you probably don't like them all that much either. An 8 million person population decrease would be a godsend for finding parking at the malls. It'll make finding jobs easier, too.

2024
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:43 PM on May 20, 2008

I'm not a huge fan of the NRA, myself, but the idea that they or "a majority of" their members would support gun grabs or concentration camps(!) is pretty ridiculous.

I guess, again, it depends on "gun grabs and concentration camps" for whom? Its great that the NRA made a press release decrying confiscation in New Orleans, but ask yourself this: Does the NRA hold marksmanship classes in, say, inner-city Detroit? So that the Patriotic Citizens of Detroit can, you know, potentially protect themselves from the tyrannical boot-heel of dictatorship?

No? Gosh, I wonder why?
posted by Avenger at 4:49 PM on May 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

Postroad writes "themn there are the (how many? ) 13 million illegals who can not be rounded up as yet"

Not really a good comparison. There is little will to get serious about the illegal immigration in the US.
posted by Mitheral at 4:51 PM on May 20, 2008

The application of force is the world's oldest equalizer, which is why many restrictive governments have started by limiting the possession of weapons.
"If guns are outlawed only the government will have guns."*
posted by Floydd at 5:00 PM on May 20, 2008

Does the NRA hold marksmanship classes in, say, inner-city Detroit? So that the Patriotic Citizens of Detroit can, you know, potentially protect themselves from the tyrannical boot-heel of dictatorship?

Well, actually, they do, throughout the metro area. Concealed carry is quite popular in Detroit, and the NRA's Personal Protection Outside the Home course is available from a number of NRA-certified instructors in the city.
posted by vorfeed at 5:21 PM on May 20, 2008 [4 favorites]

I don't want to sound dismissive of the concept that someone, somewhere actually cooked something like this up, but really, look at who's in charge of implementing it. Are you really afraid that this could be successful?

It doesn't have to be successful to be horrible. See: Iraq.
posted by ryoshu at 5:25 PM on May 20, 2008 [3 favorites]

Well, actually, they do, throughout the metro area.

Well, consider me schooled! Should have done my homework before I said that, I guess. Still, I've always gotten the vibe from NRA workshops and booths (at the county fair, for example) that guns are primarily for home-owning white folks protecting themselves from The Other.
posted by Avenger at 5:31 PM on May 20, 2008

I can't tell whether Radar is a decent source for this kind of news... any info on parent companies, editors, etc?
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 6:03 PM on May 20, 2008

All you people that don't regularly file income taxes, just gave the government your address for $300.
posted by Oyéah at 6:04 PM on May 20, 2008

Well, consider me schooled! Should have done my homework before I said that, I guess. Still, I've always gotten the vibe from NRA workshops and booths (at the county fair, for example) that guns are primarily for home-owning white folks protecting themselves from The Other.

That's the weird thing about NRA... it is a massive organization, which means there are all sorts of people involved, in just about every city and town nationwide. The climate at the gun range(s) in any given town depends a lot more on the local members than on the national NRA itself, even if that range has NRA affiliation. In fact, one of the chief reasons why the NRA has such wide membership is that many of their affiliated clubs and shooting sports require it. Thus, many shooters join even though they do not really care about the NRA.

I've encountered a lot of members who are bothered by some of NRA's politics. I think many people would be out of the NRA and into more liberal shooting groups in a heartbeat, if not for most Democrats' refusal to support the Second Amendment. It'd be nice to see more Democrats come out for gun rights (like Richardson and Gravel did this year!), so as to give people a serious alternative.

Also, it's worth noting that the NRA isn't the only pro-gun group, and it doesn't represent every gun owner. The Pink Pistols is a group I really admire, and there are also some others that don't necessarily support the NRA's views. Hell, there's even a Liberal Gun Club.
posted by vorfeed at 6:41 PM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

infinitefloatingbrains writes "The claim that there is some sort of 'list of citizens to detain' is ludicrous at best."

Does the name"Manzanar" mean anything to you? What about Tule Lake, Granada, Topaz, Heart Mountain, Minidoka, Gila River, Poston, Jerome, and Rohwer?

Have you heard of the Indian Appropriations Act, which established the "reservation" system to which American natives were exiled?

Oh, you want a list of people, right? What about the Mitchell Palmer, then the Attorney General of United States: his list included 10,000 people he had arrested in one night, 6,000 more a few months later. Arrested, held without charges, some deported.

But that was OK, because as President Wilson had explained, those arrested were "Hyphenated Americans [who] have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty and anarchy must be crushed out."

Hoover assisted in that; homunculus above points out Hoover wanted a repeat performance in the 1950s: Hoover had a list of "12,000 Americans he wanted to detain."


So what's ludicrous? That the government might have a list? Or that Americans have so little grasp of their own history?
posted by orthogonality at 8:35 PM on May 20, 2008 [9 favorites]

>So what's ludicrous? That the government might have a list? Or that Americans have so little grasp of their own history?

That people might think a bunch of facts will overcome the national myth.
posted by pompomtom at 10:02 PM on May 20, 2008

Well if they are forwarding you info about ILLEGAL immigrants ruining this country, they are doing you a service.

Sure. if by 'doing you a service' you mean 'being annoying douchebags'.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:04 PM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Gun ownership was widespread in Iraq under Saddam. Fat lot of good that did them, eh?

That's a fascinating and important counterexample to the assertion that arming the people is a viable deterrent against tyranny. Thanks for posting this.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:27 PM on May 20, 2008

What history is this? I can only think of Hamas.

Speaking of American history and of successful resistance movements -- the Howe brothers had some pretty serious advantages over that Washington guy back in the day. Just saying.
posted by spiderwire at 11:59 PM on May 20, 2008

Pastabagel wrote: This is complete and utter nonsense. There are 300 million people in this country, 200 million guns, and 60 million registered gun owners. The imposition of any type of martial law would be an invitation to revolt.

Yeah right. All they need to do is put out a bulletin on Fox News that a bunch of Liberals and Terrorists are going to be temporarily rounded up and the right-wing gun owners like you will join in and help.
posted by Project F at 12:06 AM on May 21, 2008

Honestly, this idea that tyranny can be held off with a 20 gauge shotgun is fucking quaint at best.

If you really want to fight tyrrany, stock up on diesel fuel, fertilizer and remote triggers.

Guns are great fun, but they're fucking worthless against governments.
posted by Project F at 12:08 AM on May 21, 2008 [1 favorite]

All this nonsense about assassination and insurgency tactics is what's quaint. Again: you can't blow up bureaucracies. That's not how it works. And no one's going to be coming for you with a gun to put you in a fucking camp. We have better things to do with our time.

Here's a few hints. Governor Siegelman wasn't abducted in the middle of the night. Khaled Al-Masri was, but it was because he had the wrong name. No one knows what the hell the NSA surveillance program was really about after 7 years, even though we had an Attorney General resign over it after Congressional hearings.

But, not incidentally, he was also grilled over some U.S. Attorney firings you may have heard about that had little to do with suppression of dissent and everything to do with pursuing prosecutorial smear campaigns and character assassination. That's where the action is, kids. Governor Siegelman can probably attest to that. There won't be any jackbooted thugs knocking down your door in the middle of the night. It's much simpler to sue your proletarian ass, wiretap your lawyers, and put all the evidence behind a national-security-interest wall. No muss, no fuss.

Do you really think totalitarian governments are set up just for kicks? Oppression is a means, not an end; the Iraq example above is accurate, of course, but not exactly as described. The reason gun ownership didn't do much under the Hussein regime is because guns aren't fucking helpful against five independent secret police forces that could come to your house if you were heard talking shit about the government and rape your wife and daughters in the street just to make a point.

And in the U.S., we'd even call that inefficient tactics. If the goal is control and power, it's a lot easier to just fire someone from their job without recourse. But then, why bother? Seriously, do you think we're going to set up concentration camps just for fun? That's a lot of work. That's not where the money is, kids. The real goal is having a mistress, getting some kickbacks, and retiring in style without ever fearing the consequences of your actions. Do you really think we want to forcibly move all the potential dissidents into the same place and give them a real reason to revolt? We're not that stupid, and we're certainly more frugal. The bread and circuses program is actually working pretty well right now, as you may have noticed while watching the elections if you've been paying any attention.

But yes, take solace in the gun nuts as they look to the dipshit cro-magnons at Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidian compound as evidence that the world is still as it was back in the days of Sacco and Vanzetti, when blowing things up like an idiot still sometimes made a difference -- and consider that they do that because they're comforted by the notion that maybe they're not powerless against a government that doesn't even have anyone useful enough to overthrow in the first place.

At some level you probably know full well that those survivalist morons are just a bunch of fucking nutcases who could barely figure out how to bang two rocks together -- and that the faux-revolutionary nonsense didn't work for AIM or the Weathermen thirty years ago and it sure as hell isn't good for anything today. The gun nuts probably suspect it deep down, too.

So does all that really comfort you? The fact that the guys sitting on lawn chairs guarding the Mexican border and the gonzo libertarians contributing to the Ron Paul Blimp Fund have guns if you ever need to call in the backup? Who, exactly, are they going to shoot at, FEMA? Are you going to tell them to march to Galt's Gulch and reestablish the gold standard? Almost no power you encounter in your daily lives is found in the barrel of a gun -- mostly because guns are expensive -- but no one seems to consider that fact very often, because having guns is comforting as long as you can convince yourself they're good for something.

But, OK, whatever, keep stockpiling the food and bullets -- we'll just be over here counting our money. Oh, good luck if you need to get on an airplane anytime soon, you hippies.
posted by spiderwire at 1:11 AM on May 21, 2008 [10 favorites]

Who, exactly, are they going to shoot at, FEMA?

If the IRS or Homeland Security asks you to appear at your local federal building to answer a few routine questions, who are you going to shoot at? And, if, when you show up, you learn that all of your assets have been frozen as a precautionary measure, who are you going to shoot at then? Only a terrorist would engage in a shoot out with the Feds.

The Radar story is probably nonsense. But the idea that owning a gun or two will protect you from any modern government with any degree of police authority is just moronic.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:24 AM on May 21, 2008

If you really want to fight tyrrany, stock up on diesel fuel, fertilizer and remote triggers.
Guns are great fun, but they're fucking worthless against governments.

Well, I was going to have our cell knock over a couple of Party-run liquor stores so we could get enough cash to buy all that stuff on the black market... but it seems that guns are worthless against governments! I guess it's back to the drawing board. Darn!

All this nonsense about assassination and insurgency tactics is what's quaint. Again: you can't blow up bureaucracies. That's not how it works.

Again: I can think of two nations that secured their independence from one of the largest bureaucracies in history, less than a hundred years ago, partly by using assassination and insurgency tactics. That is how it works.

Bureaucracies are not magical; they depend on a complicated system of supply and control, one which can be disrupted. And they depend on worker bees who hate anything that upsets the rhythm of the hive. The key to defeating bureaucracy isn't in the people who run it, it's in the people who run it.

Almost no power you encounter in your daily lives is found in the barrel of a gun -- mostly because guns are expensive -- but no one seems to consider that fact very often, because having guns is comforting as long as you can convince yourself they're good for something.

Sorry, but it sounds to me as if you're the one trying very hard to convince yourself of something. You're right, it's not going to be easy nor simple to fight the kind of oppression that's most likely to appear; this is partially because so many of our citizens are too busy telling themselves snarky, nihilistic just-so stories about how pointless it is to even try.

As for the idea that "almost no power you encounter in your daily lives is found in the barrel of a gun -- mostly because guns are expensive"... well, that may be true for you, but it is not necessarily true for others, especially those who are living in the areas that really are oppressive. Ask somebody from the bad part of Oakland or Baltimore about how true either of those statements are. Even in the rest of the country, in which every middle-class family expects to own a gigantic TV and buys a new car before the old one breaks, guns are not really "expensive". And as for the idea that they're expensive for the oppressors, it's funny to hear this about America -- you know, the country whose economy is very much based on arms manufacturing and a violent military-prison-industrial complex. You want silent, weaponless, bureaucratic oppression, try Europe; we don't really do that here. We set people on fire.

Also, one look at any of the cop-shooting threads around here shows that Americans have been very much conditioned by the kind of power which comes from the barrel of a gun.

the idea that owning a gun or two will protect you from any modern government with any degree of police authority is just moronic.

You should consider that "protection" may not be the main idea, here, or at least not the way you seem to think it is.
posted by vorfeed at 8:25 AM on May 21, 2008 [1 favorite]

Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan--all of them love their guns and yet somehow manage to have virtually unchecked, brutally oppressive governments.

As an aside, here's an interesting take on the popular myth that the Nazi's used gun control laws to cement their hold on power in Nazi Germany. In fact, the Nazis came to power in an essentially bloodless coup (disregarding the failed beer-hall putsch) and paid fastidious attention to the form of the law, while enjoying massive popular support.

A quick but relevant excerpt:

The only feasible argument that gun control favored the Nazis would be that the 1928 law deprived private armies of a means to defeat them. The basic flaw with this argument is that the Nazis did not seize power by force of arms, but through their success at the ballot box (and the political cunning of Hitler himself).
posted by saulgoodman at 9:36 AM on May 21, 2008 [2 favorites]

Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan--all of them love their guns and yet somehow manage to have virtually unchecked, brutally oppressive governments.

I think it's possible to argue that the possession of arms is a necessary condition for successful resistance against tyranny, but it's obviously not a sufficient one.

As for the Nazis -- I agree that the whole "the German people couldn't rise up" myth is inaccurate, mainly because they weren't really interested in rising up, but it's important to note that the Nazis did use gun control laws to cement their hold on occupied territories, and that people in those territories commonly used guns against them, to great effect.
posted by vorfeed at 11:57 AM on May 21, 2008

I think many people would be out of the NRA and into more liberal shooting groups in a heartbeat, if not for most Democrats' refusal to support the Second Amendment. It'd be nice to see more Democrats come out for gun rights (like Richardson and Gravel did this year!), so as to give people a serious alternative.

I support the Second Amendment. The National Guard and the Reserves.

Seriously, I'm not for taking weapons away. I'm fed up with the NRA, though, standing by allowing just about anyone to have guns as a way of "sticking up for the Second Amendment." Christ Almighty, even after Virginia Tech, they tried to get in the way of allowing checks on mental patients getting guns.
posted by etaoin at 12:06 PM on May 21, 2008

etaoin: a lot of people are not crazy (heh) about the idea of people being disenfranchised based on mental tests. There's quite a bit of nasty historic precedent for that sort of thing, and American treatment of the mentally ill has, at times, more than justified the taking up of arms for self-defense. It's important to remember that "mentally ill" is a broad category, one which includes many people who are not a danger to others. Also, I'm personally worried that this sort of thing might become a disincentive, and discourage people from getting help for mental illness. There's more on these issues here.

Personally, I'd like to see more background checks, but at the same time, I think it's obvious that they are used to disenfranchise -- just take a look at the non-violence-related things that can already disqualify you from owning guns. Also, at least in this state, you can lose your concealed carry license through any number of non-violent and/or non-gun-related infractions.

The right to bear arms is an inalienable right. It does indeed belong to "just about everyone", including people you may or may not trust or even like. I think this is part of the price we pay for being part of an armed society.
posted by vorfeed at 12:54 PM on May 21, 2008

The right to bear arms is an inalienable right.

That's almost as quaint an idea as the Geneva Conventions. There are no more inalienable rights. They've all been shown, in one way or another, to be somewhat less than inalienable in practice.

Property rights? Think you've got them? Nah, your local government has every right to yank your home and land out from under you, tear down your house, and put up a strip mall or Wal-Mart, if it can be reasonably argued that it serves the public interest (and of course, they won't be expected to compensate you on an ongoing basis with a percentage of the revenues the use generates, just a one-time pay-out is more than generous, just like in the business world...).

Expectations of privacy or protection against unreasonable search or seizure? Don't even need a link for that one. Nor for cruel and unusual punishment, though this one to the DOJ's recently released documents concerning some of the specific abuses FBI agents reported at Guantanamo is an interesting read.

My point is, in practice, there aren't any inalienable rights anymore. We're sailing in extra-constitutional territory now, and have been for some time. So arguments built on the basis of a document that's effectively been denuded of any meaningful legal weight don't have a whole lot of persuasive power anymore. Too much ground has been given up already. It's going to take a massive effort of collective will to turn things around.
posted by saulgoodman at 1:45 PM on May 21, 2008

That's almost as quaint an idea as the Geneva Conventions. There are no more inalienable rights. They've all been shown, in one way or another, to be somewhat less than inalienable in practice. [...] So arguments built on the basis of a document that's effectively been denuded of any meaningful legal weight don't have a whole lot of persuasive power anymore. Too much ground has been given up already. It's going to take a massive effort of collective will to turn things around.

On, what, precisely, is that collective will to be based upon, if not ideas like inalienable rights? I understand that our rights have been deeply infringed upon, but that doesn't mean that the arguments which were used to codify them are invalid. You'll note that the founders of this country also lived under a government that routinely infringed upon these rights, yet they were fully capable of conceiving them; the same is true for Americans, despite your insistence that this is not so.

I'm not even sure what you're arguing, here. I'm talking to somebody who explicitly said "I support the Second Amendment" -- that being so, your own opinions on what's convincing or not... well, let's just say that they don't have a whole lot of persuasive power.
posted by vorfeed at 2:26 PM on May 21, 2008

Boehner Wants Protection From Illegal Wiretapping - But Only For Himself

(It's pronounced B-A-Yner, btw.)
posted by homunculus at 2:50 PM on May 21, 2008

I know it's not popular among certain segments of our population to point this out, but the Second Amendment does refer to well regulated militia as preamble to the right to keep and bear arms. Like so much of our founding documents, the Bill of Rights was a carefully orchestrated compromise between conflicting ideas, and this one is no exception. The Supreme Court (so far; it's been packed pretty heavily lately) has held that Second Amendment rights do not entitle everyone to own a firearm, and it is difficult to justify owning firearms as being on the same level as speech, religion, assembly, search & seizure, etc., without making the argument that somehow having unfettered access to firearms in your house is necessary to guarantee these other rights. Empirically, the argument is weak (see above), but is debatable: Hence our current state of ambivalence about a putative right that seems to kill many more than it benefits. Also as pointed out above, a sufficiently powerful and sophisticated central government doesn't need to risk armed conflict if it can do away with the other rights. For this reason, I don't tend to hold the view that individual liberty is guaranteed by individuals' rights to keep a firearm in their house.

But as I said, I recognize that one can debate this.
posted by Mental Wimp at 2:59 PM on May 21, 2008

I know it's not popular among certain segments of our population to point this out, but the Second Amendment does refer to well regulated militia as preamble to the right to keep and bear arms. Like so much of our founding documents, the Bill of Rights was a carefully orchestrated compromise between conflicting ideas, and this one is no exception. The Supreme Court (so far; it's been packed pretty heavily lately) has held that Second Amendment rights do not entitle everyone to own a firearm, and it is difficult to justify owning firearms as being on the same level as speech, religion, assembly, search & seizure, etc., without making the argument that somehow having unfettered access to firearms in your house is necessary to guarantee these other rights. Empirically, the argument is weak (see above), but is debatable: Hence our current state of ambivalence about a putative right that seems to kill many more than it benefits. Also as pointed out above, a sufficiently powerful and sophisticated central government doesn't need to risk armed conflict if it can do away with the other rights. For this reason, I don't tend to hold the view that individual liberty is guaranteed by individuals' rights to keep a firearm in their house.

But as I said, I recognize that one can debate this.


I cannot remember where I read this just recently--perhaps Languagehat or others might?--that explained why that weird comma that makes the Second Amendment read so oddly to our eyes was perfectly legitimate usage at the time and unquestionably--according to the article I read--explicitly referred to a militia, not a bunch of people carrying pistols under their jackets.

I respect the fact that the people making a different argument here today have been polite and thoughtful even as we disagree.

I do not think "living in an armed society" as a positive thing, at all and I frankly never heard that phrase applied in a positive way before. I grew up in a household where people were concerned about other relatives' drinking and bad tempers and feared the availability of guns. Deaths linked to the supposed "right to bear arms" when misapplied are unforgiving. As far as mental illness or problems being used as an excuse to deny, then I'm all for that if the rules are applied sensibly. Any number of multiple murders where people have gotten guns despite obvious mental problems should make us rethink the rules--and how carefully they're followed or ignored-- that allowed that to happen.
posted by etaoin at 3:39 PM on May 21, 2008

Wait a second. I just read your link which went back to literacy tests being used to disenfranchise minority voters. THAT'S your example for how "gun rights" can be improperly limited? So a rule that requires that you be a little bit sane before you can buy a gun and kill me and 30 other people compares to racist use of literacy tests? Sorry, that's a very bad comparison.
posted by etaoin at 3:43 PM on May 21, 2008

So a rule that requires that you be a little bit sane before you can buy a gun and kill me and 30 other people compares to racist use of literacy tests?

Considering that there are still many people living who were committed to mental hospitals for being gay or mentally retarded? Yes, I think there's grounds for comparison. The new law has nothing to do with you being "a little bit sane", it has to do with not having been involuntarily committed. As anyone with passing familiarity with the diagnosis of mental illness can tell you, that does not necessarily equal "insane", nor does the opposite equal "sane". For example, in many states parents or even teachers can get teens committed for just about any reason. I don't like the idea of people being disenfranchised, for life, based on crap like this.

That said, I only meant the comparison as an example of how seemingly objective tests can be used to disenfranchise entire groups.

As for the whole individual/collective rights controversy, I'm not going to bother to get into it in any depth, partly because it can be argued either way, and partly because it doesn't really matter -- as saulgoodman pointed out, it's not as if the Constitution matters much to the Supreme Court these days. That said, I find it pretty odd that the Bill of Rights should list two individual rights using the term "the right of the People", and another which follows the same language, but is actually supposed to be a collective right. Also, it sure is strange that English common law and the 1689 English Bill of Rights established this as an individual right, yet the founders are supposed to have not only assumed the opposite, but failed to make that assumption absolutely explicit!
posted by vorfeed at 4:32 PM on May 21, 2008

Property rights? Think you've got them? Nah, your local government has every right to yank your home and land out from under you, tear down your house, and put up a strip mall or Wal-Mart, if it can be reasonably argued that it serves the public interest (and of course, they won't be expected to compensate you on an ongoing basis with a percentage of the revenues the use generates, just a one-time pay-out is more than generous, just like in the business world...).

Can we drop this stupid Kelo canard already? The government has been able to repossess your land for a very long time now -- Kelo adds nothing nothing that wasn't in Midkiff and probably nothing that wasn't in Boerne v. Flores; it's all right there in the 5th Amendment.

Kelo wasn't any kind of new judicial development; it was a tearjerker case that was cherry-picked by a hardcore libertarian advocacy group in a nearly-successful attempt to overturn long-standing 5th Amendment precedent, and bunch of people got suckered in by the stupid sob story.

Also, you may not have considered this, but Kelo also stands for the proposition that local governments can repossess Wal-Marts if they feel like it -- which wasn't entirely clear before -- and as I recall, the stock of many of the big-box retail stores took a hit the day after the decision. And post-Kelo, a number of states passed eminent domain limitations just like the Court suggested (the basis of the decision is a refusal to interfere with local legislatures by setting judicially-imposed baselines).

This is a tempest in a teapot. Read before you parrot.
posted by spiderwire at 5:03 PM on May 21, 2008

Hence our current state of ambivalence about a putative right that seems to kill many more than it benefits.

What? There are about 30,000 people killed by guns each year, over half of them suicides. There are another ~70,000 people seriously injured. And there are millions of gun owners -- even the most conservative estimates put gun ownership at over 30% of American households, and 20% of adult individuals. Likewise, the most conservative estimate of the number of times guns are used in self-defense each year is greater than the number of people killed and wounded by guns, put together; the true figure is probably closer to twice as many or more.

Sorry, but guns do not kill more than they benefit... in fact, the opposite is true, by a factor of ten! Gun control in America is by no means a Utilitarian "greatest good for the greatest number" proposition.
posted by vorfeed at 5:05 PM on May 21, 2008 [1 favorite]

This is a tempest in a teapot. Read before you parrot.

Phew! Thanks for the case law lesson there, spiderwire, but I think it's misplaced. My original point was that the property rights enumerated in the bill of rights (which specifically allow for the government to take property for the public good in exchange for just compensation) have been eroded over the years in the case law leading up to Kelo.

I don't happen to agree with the general direction those decisions have gone in, especially with regard to how vague the idea of "just compensation" has been left, and I definitely don't agree with Kelo in particular, no matter how justified a decision it might have been as a matter of judicial precedence and interpretation.

I'm not parroting this position--I just absolutely can't accept the principle that it's a good idea to give local governments (where small-time corruption tends to accumulate like fungus and kick-backs and other quid pro quo schemes with real-estate developers are just business as usual) the power to seize people's property for commercial uses, no matter what the case law says, and certainly there should be a clear requirement that the just compensation include some ongoing compensation for the commercial value of the property, rather than a simple onetime pay-out.

You're free to disagree. But if you honestly don't think eminent domain is currently being abused in many cases and that the courts were wrong not to impose stricter requirements, I really just can't believe you know how small-time politics works.
posted by saulgoodman at 6:19 PM on May 21, 2008

You're free to disagree. But if you honestly don't think eminent domain is currently being abused in many cases and that the courts were wrong not to impose stricter requirements, I really just can't believe you know how small-time politics works.

First, of course eminent domain is abused in certain cases. It was abused in the Kelo case, but no one found out about it until afterwards and courts simply can't come in and reverse the decisions of democratically-elected legislatures because someone whines about their house being taken away. People complain about that in every takings case. That's kind of the point. The 5th Amendment is specifically designed to counter that particular holdout problem, and being able to circumvent it via courts rather than through the proper channels -- like the local development committees -- would be nothing more than gaming the system.

The rules are very clear that takings are only permitted pursuant to a specific development plan and particularized findings, and the plaintiff's claim in Kelo that it's presumptively impermissible to exercise eminent domain over private property is simply wrong as a matter of text, as a matter of practice, and as a matter of law. It's the same claim that's been advanced in these cases for the better part of a century and it's always been smacked down by the courts because it's incorrect. Eminent domain power is specifically delegated to the legislature, not the judiciary, period.

Second, the Court very specifically did impose stricter requirements in Kelo, to the extent it was allowed to do so. Kennedy's swing opinion says very clearly that these sorts of cases should trigger automatic presumptions of possible impropriety and increased judicial oversight, but that such oversight can't go so far as to facially invalidate a taking simply because it's of private property.

The reason the plaintiffs lost in Kelo is because they weren't able to adduce any specific facts or impropriety until after the trial -- arguably because they were focused almost entirely upon their crappy 5th Amendment argument, and the "gummint takin' our land" claim was always only intended as window dressing.

Third, with regard to the point on compensation, there is a very specific Constitutional requirement that just compensation is just that -- "just" -- and none of the takings cases, Kelo included, really focus on that as a problem. In fact, the studies I've read have indicated that the payout in takings cases actually tends to run at about 10% above actual market value. Furthermore, there's no reasons why compensation can't be regular or as a lump sum -- that's not an issue because it's merely a question of valuation. And all that says nothing about the general social utility of the eminent domain power, which is why you have things like, oh, railroads, schools, things like that.

Come on, this should all be pretty self-evident. Of course corruption isn't good, but that wasn't the argument you made and that's not an argument that's made in the caselaw. The cases specifically say that government takings have to be just and they have to be compensated and they have to be done pursuant to certain procedures, plans, and findings, and that arbitrary or retroactive condemnations aren't permissible.

Plenty of eminent domain cases have been successfully contested on those grounds, even though those cases are less sexy and thus less publicized. You can contest and change those procedures in the legislature, and the courts can investigate them beforehand, but the courts aren't allowed to do what the Kelo plaintiffs were asking for, which was to stop the development plan in New London based on a reading of the Constitution that takings that end up in the hands of private parties are presumptively impermissible.

That's nonsense, and it's almost embarrassing that the Court's vote was as close as it was considering how obvious the issue was and that most of those judges had voted unanimously in the opposite direction when O'Connor wrote the opinion in Midkiff some time ago.

Look, elected officials -- particularly local elected officials in some instances -- do bad things, but you can't disrupt the constitutional allocation of power based on a smell test. It's not perfect, but it's better than the alternative. There's a reason I don't live in Houston, thanks.
posted by spiderwire at 6:50 PM on May 21, 2008 [1 favorite]

And I apologize for the parroting comment. This argument just gets on my nerves.
posted by spiderwire at 7:05 PM on May 21, 2008

McCain Campaign: Telecom Amnesty Requires Hearings and Apologies for Spying
posted by homunculus at 10:42 PM on May 21, 2008

In fact, the studies I've read have indicated that the payout in takings cases actually tends to run at about 10% above actual market value.

Yeah, a property put to a commercial use is worth much, much more over time than the simple "market value" of the property because when the property is leased out for the commercial use, it yields a steady flow of income that can substantially exceed the market value of the property over time. Just compensation would give the previous owner/owners a piece of that action, in terms of points, as well as market value or better for the property. That's not how it usually works.

I still strongly disagree with the ruling and many of the rulings leading up to it. While I understand your arguments are technically correct, I think a much broader point has been lost in all the particulars of the case law, but this is far, far off topic so let's just let it go.
posted by saulgoodman at 6:36 AM on May 22, 2008

I still strongly disagree with the ruling and many of the rulings leading up to it. While I understand your arguments are technically correct, I think a much broader point has been lost in all the particulars of the case law, but this is far, far off topic so let's just let it go.

I prefer discussing the 5th Amendment to discussing the 2nd, but so be it. Oh, but I found that article about Wal-Mart I was alluding to... in 2006, the city of Hercules, CA used their eminent domain power to repossess land from Wal-Mart. Revenge is sweet, no?

Just keep in mind that it's not all the little guy getting screwed all the time. There may be New England homeowners on one hand, but on the other hand there are oligarchs in Hawaii squeezing their tenants (Midkiff -- where, though it also concerned private landowners, O'Connor had no qualms about writing the decision), or abandoned factories in Detroit whose owners are OK with gangs and crackhouses because the revitalization fund isn't as lucrative as the gentrification money coming down the pipe.

But yes -- back to guns. As saul said above, eminent domain is yet another example of where having guns isn't really useful against the modern bureaucracy... Yes, unless you live in a bunker in Montana, which is looking like a better option each day, frankly.
posted by spiderwire at 12:32 PM on May 22, 2008

McCain: Stop! I'm for Amnesty for Lawbreaking Telecoms
posted by homunculus at 11:13 PM on May 23, 2008

The Immigration Raids: Harbinger Of A Police State?
posted by homunculus at 10:02 AM on May 25, 2008