What Divides Us

Legal & Second Amendment
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Person soapbox coming out: The “them” vs “us” mentality is destroying the US.

We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately
Ben Franklin

That quote still applies today.

John Caile’s blog below gives great food for thought about how we need to be united now more than ever. Caile writes: But it is imperative that we continue to unite against our common enemies.

However, people with different opinions aren’t necessarily our enemy. There has to be more thought than just labeling someone we don’t agree with as our “enemy.”

Putting personal soapbox away.

https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/blog/benjamin-franklin-right/

What differentiates someone with a different opinion from an enemy?

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My line is respect this country and the opportunities it provides.

I could care less how anyone else wants to live their life. It’s theirs to live. But to be disrespectful or hateful towards this country is moronic and hypocritical because you’re hating a place that gives you the very freedom to have that voice. You don’t have to be some over the moon patriot but there has to be a line of respect and that line gets trampled on daily. It is at that line that I draw my line.

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When it involves control, as in “there should be a law” or similar.

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For me here’s the line
“I don’t like guns, but it is your constitutional right to own, and bear them.” Is someone that is just a differing opinion.

“I don’t like guns, and nobody needs one. We should confiscate them all!” Is deep into enemy territory with me.

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The attitude. Left or right if you are exuding hate towards the other side, demonizing them unfairly etc you become the enemy.

I warned in 2009 that by 2016 we’d be more divided as country than at any time since the civil war and unfortunately I was right.

You can find compromise or simply agree to disagree with reasonable people who have differing opinions but there’s no middle ground or even a place to start from with someone who hates you and thinks you are evil incarnate.

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I support your 1A as much now as I did in the military. I do wish people understood what the First Amendment was, and that it does not exempt one from the consequences of their speech. I believe in 2A, and I am learning and evolving the specifics of that.

The loudest voices on “The Left” and “The Right” are the extremes and need to be remembered as such. They don’t reflect the majority of us, the us that is US, that >90% under the bell curve.

Try to listen, I’m trying too. It’s not always easy when people jump to stereotypes and generalities about liberals, Californians, girls, and anything else I can be lumped in with, to find a place to start those conversations and discussions so, remember to that as much as you might not like generalizations that could cover you; senior, short, large, tall, conservative, southern, hipster, yuppie… Try not to toss them around yourself.

Thanks guys, glad to be here with you.

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If different opinion doesn’t take freedom from me or my Family… it is not enemy yet…
If different opinion doesn’t take somebody’s life… it is still not enemy…

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KY State Flag says it best.

KY%20State%20Flag
KY State Flag.png848×477 578 KB

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The big problem today is that even one individual acting out and making the headlines as a result will become the poster child for all.

We also have the simple math showing an overwhelming majority of democrats in or running for office want to severely curtail or even eliminate our firearms and self defense rights.

It’s a touchy subject since there are a lot of rank and file democrats that support lawful carry and possession of firearms at least to some degree, but they keep voting for people that are way out of step with themselves and certainly everyone to the right of themselves when it comes to gun and self defense rights for the most part.

Unfortunately the two major parties control every aspect of the electoral process which leaves almost no room for third party candidates except those like Trump who can successfully co-opt and hijack one of the two for their own purposes.

Unfortunately it’s next to impossible to discuss politics at all today much less hot button issues like 2nd Amendment and Self defense rights without stepping on a lot of toes and offending some but we do our best here to walk the line.

One last thought. A signature line I’ve used online for many years. Give it some thought.

“Without the 1st and Second Amendments the rest of the Constitution is meaningless”

When we surrender our rights protected by either to majority whims in the name of “public safety” or “the common good” we are cracking the very foundation that the entire constitution and BOR rest upon so we must I think always remain very guarded and protective of them.

When people surrender their rights at the ballot box they usually are gone forever unless and until they can be won back through violence and I’d hate to ever see our country devolve again to such a point because I don’t believe it could survive as currently constructed and would likely be fractured into four or five new countries aligned in probably two different federations/confederations.

At least one member of each generation of my family has served in every war fought in what is currently the US going back to the early 1700’s and we have sacrificed a lot to become part of and to then preserve and protect the greatest political document in history; The United States Constitution.

We can have constructive conversations on the subject but we have to first divorce ourselves from our emotions and emotional reactions in order to have such a constructive and educational conversation. Again and I hate to overuse the word but unfortunately that is becoming ever more difficult to do even among academics and constitutional “authorities”.

I’d love for anyone to come up with a way we can return to a more rational and less emotional discussion of such issues because it would go a long ways towards healing the “growing Great Divide” we have in this country.

Our constitution was never intended to be a suicide pact but if we keep allowing ourselves to be manipulated by the extremists that’s just what it is going to become.

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I agree with you completely on this one!

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I’m currently reading The Compassionate Achiever and it shares a lot of research that says compassion for each other not only makes us happier as individuals but more successful as well.

I’m only about a quarter of the way through the book, but it’s great to see all of the scientific support for compassion.

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The votes for Democrats, aren’t often on the issues of firearms. It is on the issues of bodily autonomy, that is to say, a woman’s freedom to choose what to do with her own body, be that birth control, abortion, whatever. A corpse should not have more rights than a woman, but that is the case in many states, and why many vote Democrat. Social issues like this, and living wages, protections for those of us who are LGBT from discrimination in housing, employment, or even the simple right to use the bathroom. The need for healthcare. These are the reasons, people vote for Democrat or left leaning politicians. Unfortunately these campaigning legislators can’t be divorced from their, as you pointed out, common gun control inclusive tickets. But owning a gun in the now, doesn’t help all the women who don’t have access to abortion services or birth control, or the people denied healthcare because their states refused Medicaid expansion, or the people suffering discrimination and harrasment at work, school, or homeless because they are not protected by anti-discrimination legislation.

I don’t disagree with the idea of your old forum sig, in fact I love the poetic touch of it @WildRose, and I appreciate you sharing it, and your input here.

I would love to see all our voting move to ranked choice so we can move away from Democrat and GOP, to candidates that fill in that space between so we can keep addressing these important and urgent social issues, without surrendering 2A.

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I’m really not too comfortable getting far into the weeks here but let me say this.

There is roughly about 85-90% agreement that there should be limits on late term abortions.

All the polls I’m seeing show abortion to be down around 8-10th on the list of items most important to democrats in 2020 with gun control being consistently in the top two to four.

Point being here all else aside no matter what your primary reason’s might be for voting for democrats in the end, you will be voting for the anti gun, anti carry agenda of the party and against your own self interests in the long run if not directly, indirectly, implicitly or explicitly.

Remember the platforms are set for the party at the convention and that is a melding and homogenization of the candidates who have been running for the nomination up to that point.

Right now there’s not enough distinguishing between the top 20-25 running on those key issues so odds are it isn’t going to change a whole lot between now and the convention.

Gun control will remain a primary plank, abortion may get pushed up from the basement, but it isn’t going to be due to sudden changing of minds.

That 85-90% support for limits on late term abortion has been consistent now for about thirty plus hears. As the party goes further and further to the extreme left, on the issue they are losing voters, not gaining new converts.

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The GOP isn’t gonna win me over on 2A alone, when they are focused on stripping away bodily autonomy of women, equal rights for LGBTQ, health care for everyone, and promoting a state religion, as you have described it for the Democrats, the primary planks of the party platform. Seeing as how I am a woman who wants bodily autonomy, Bi who wants freedom from discrimination for we LGBTQ, someone who needs healthcare, and someone who doesn’t belong to the religion that a not insignificant number of people would like to see established as a state religion, the Trump administration and their court packing has not been in my interest, not that they have done much for 2A anyway so, as it were, I would like to say again, I would much prefer we move to ranked voting, so we weren’t pressed to the extremes, and could vote for people more independent of these two, quite honestly terrible and corrupt groups that call themselves parties, people that more truly Represent, as intended, we the people.

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Sadly I’m seeing this dive so far off course it’s likely beyond anything Dawn wants us to engage in here so I’m going to drop it.

I’ll leave it with this. Since you are apparently supporting the most extreme positions of the left without even room for discussions and definitions of fact it doesn’t appear there is any tolerance, acceptance, or even room for discussion of fact so we are at polar opposites here with no room for conversations unfortunately.

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I hope you have a pleasant rest of your evening @WildRose thank you for talking with me.

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Respectfully,
Sexual preference, abortion, and healthcare are not rights. Those are privileges. We have anti discrimination laws from the top down. Abortion is legal, just shouldn’t be in the taxpayers dime. I believe abortion is murder, and don’t want my tax dollars used for that. If someone doesn’t have health insurance, they should get a job, and buy health insurance. If they are disabled, we have government programs for that(which we should). I believe, in the latest studies, the numbers say 68 percent of this nation claim a Judeo-Christian religion. That would mean the GOP is representing 68% of voters. Again, this is all with respect to you, or anyone else’s right to live their life within the law. But, let’s not muddy the waters of what are actual Constitutional Rights, and what are privileges.

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@45IPAC there are a lot of things that tax payer money should nit go towards. Like the 84+ million dollars every year the Pentagon spends on erectile dysfunction medications. I won’t get into a political arguement here because they never go anywhere due to the fact no one will see eye to eye. I will say this though, I totally get where @Hailey is coming from. What happens with a womans body is her choice not a group of old white male politicians. Along with her other concerns…

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And I respect your, and her right to those opinions. I was just saying, let’s not confuse our rights, with our privileges. I’m of the opinion, no one’s privileges should be paid for by the tax dollars of another. So, I try not to use my religious beliefs to drive conversations on here. Self defense is a right, that we all have, regardless of sexual preference, religion, race, creed, or country of origin.

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A few enemies we should all be able to agree on:

Nazis
Ku Klux Klan
AtomWaffen Division
ISIS-ISIL
Boko Haram
And all those who aid, support, and willingly do nothing to oppose them.

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