On Jun 16, 2009, at 11:37 PM, dan@geer.org wrote:

Speaking for myself, when a government can no longer protect its citizens, its last duty is to arm them.

The first axiom of government being force monopoly, and all that. Maybe the first duty of a citizen is to arm himself against his government? :-) An, um, enthusiastic, constitutionalist I was reading this week somewhere talked about how before the 14th amendment, of all things, (some :-)) people who lived in the US were US nationals, free people, and after the 14th, they were "citizens" and thus as much property of the state as any, say, European. :-) It's amazing how people think that the use of force is somehow magically controlled by lawyers and politicians mouthing the proper incantations... "Force shits on Reason's back." -- Ben Franklin Cheers, RAH