Control Group
Member
A few things I need to clarify before I actually raise the question. First, I'm assuming that everyone here accepts that the 2nd Amendment has been systematically and increasingly violated in both its text and its intent over the course of the last century plus. If anyone wants to disagree with that, please do so elsewhere. Second, I'm taking as given that the current state of affairs WRT to the 2nd is a natural and inevitable result of how our society has evolved over the last ~200 years. As evidence, I point to the fact that it's happened that way. This, I understand, is a debatable point, and even one I'd like to debate - but not in this thread. For the moment, please accept this as a given.
With that said: we, as a society, have achieved a level of personal and cultural safety, longevity, prosperity, and knowledge utterly unprecedented in human history. So much so, in fact, that a large majority of people feel so secure that they see no need to be prepared to defend themselves. Moreover, their sense of security is so comprehensive that they don't see why anyone should need to be prepared to defend himself.
As a consequence, the individual right to own and carry weapons is being systematically reduced.
A simple question: is our progress as a society worth what we've done to our freedoms? Are modern medicine, transportation, communication, technology, military might, and all the other conveniences, marvels, and benefits of modern America worth the cost?
I'm not asking whether we should fight to regain what we've lost, because we absolutely should. But just looking at where we're at right now - are we better off, on the whole, than we were in, say, 1850? 1900? 1950? Or do you feel we should have arrested our progress (I use progress in as connotation-neutral a manner as possible; though progress has positive connotations, I simply mean change over time) at some point in the past, giving up modern convenience in the name of freedom? Or has the choice we made - freedom for progress - been, on the whole, a good one?
Please think carefully before answering; there's no picking and choosing. For the purposes of this question, if we want the freedoms associated with life in 1850, we also have to take the medicine, crime rate, sanitation, technology, etc.
Is it worth it?
With that said: we, as a society, have achieved a level of personal and cultural safety, longevity, prosperity, and knowledge utterly unprecedented in human history. So much so, in fact, that a large majority of people feel so secure that they see no need to be prepared to defend themselves. Moreover, their sense of security is so comprehensive that they don't see why anyone should need to be prepared to defend himself.
As a consequence, the individual right to own and carry weapons is being systematically reduced.
A simple question: is our progress as a society worth what we've done to our freedoms? Are modern medicine, transportation, communication, technology, military might, and all the other conveniences, marvels, and benefits of modern America worth the cost?
I'm not asking whether we should fight to regain what we've lost, because we absolutely should. But just looking at where we're at right now - are we better off, on the whole, than we were in, say, 1850? 1900? 1950? Or do you feel we should have arrested our progress (I use progress in as connotation-neutral a manner as possible; though progress has positive connotations, I simply mean change over time) at some point in the past, giving up modern convenience in the name of freedom? Or has the choice we made - freedom for progress - been, on the whole, a good one?
Please think carefully before answering; there's no picking and choosing. For the purposes of this question, if we want the freedoms associated with life in 1850, we also have to take the medicine, crime rate, sanitation, technology, etc.
Is it worth it?
