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Wait, weren't the people who fought to make America independent upset with the King's Authority? Would you not say, today, that they were anti-authorianists? Wo

Wait, weren't the people who fought to make America independent upset with the King's Authority? Would you not say, today, that they were anti-authorianists? Would you not say that an oppressive government would use such a "medical condition" to confiscate guns from people who disagreed with it? Think hard about this, and ask yourself what you would have done in 1774: sided with the Revolutionaries, or sided with the Royalists.

jbooth 13y ago
Take it easy on the rhetoric. No, those founding fathers were not anti-authorianists to the degree that people would call a pathology. The continental congress did not descend into a bunch of bickering every time someone asked someone else to do something. They were mostly, from all reports, pretty well-adjusted and got along with each other civilly even with major disagreements on how to do things.
- ctdonath 13y ago
  But their political opponents would not hesitate to have them declared pathological, and so proceed to establish "legal" grounds to disarm & incarcerate (ahem, involuntary commitment to treatment). Many authoritarian governments have done so to great effect and great harm; ours is heading that way.
  - jbooth 13y ago
    Sort of a non-sequitur here: Someone once called the FOUNDING FATHERS (freedom!) crazy, therefore we shouldn't restrict documented crazy people from buying guns? There is probably a lesson in that disorders that make you inconvenient for the system are more likely to be recognized/categories than those that make you a sheep. Fine. I don't think you can generalize from that to "documented mentally ill should be able to buy guns because what if it's actually a conspiracy vs them and not just voices in their head? then they can use their gun to stop the conspiracy.". That seems like pretty awesomely bad policy to me.
    - ctdonath 13y ago
      The problem is defining "crazy" such that the sane are not labeled as such pursuant to ulterior motives.
- chris_mahan 13y ago
  Except for the shooting and killing of the King's Soldiers at Bunker Hill outside Boston.
  - jbooth 13y ago
    Yes, there was in fact a war during the revolutionary war, but very few if any of the founding fathers were at Bunker Hill, and you'd be hard-pressed to prove the overwhelming majority of soldiers were doing it out of pathological anti-authority problems. They had plenty of non-pathological, reasonable complaints. Sometimes things happen within the normal human spectrum. You're conflating behavior with a category in the DSM with political action by generally sane individuals. As far as what little relation this has to the gun debate: Background checks for mental illness are probably a reasonable idea, and I'm pro gun rights. I was against the recent Toomey-Manchin legislation until I heard that: - It makes creating a federal database of gun owners explicitly illegal - It makes transporting unloaded guns across state lines explicitly legal (this is apparently currently illegal a lot of the time) - It's only applying the same standards for licensed gun dealers to gun shows and internet sales, while explicitly making internet sales legal (gray area before) It's actually a totally reasonable bill that does a lot of what gun rights people have been asking for. But what's the upside for the NRA in a reasonable bill, versus vilifying it and raising a bunch of money to STOP THE GUN GRABBING BILL? That is why we can't have nice things.
    - chris_mahan 13y ago
      Ah, but the British authorities would have definitely seen their action as that of mentally deranged people. Had there been modern psychology then, they might have found them violently anti-authoritarianistic. They might have claimed that these people, instead of harboring true grievances against the King and His Officers, had a mental disease which made them unfit to live among the civilized ones. They might have claimed their brain was defective, diseased, corrupted, disabled of the ability to think properly. That they did not is a credit to British common sense. O that we too in America today could think people hold valid grievances against our own government instead of painting them broadly with the brush of mental illness and washing our hands of the mistreatment they suffer at the hands of our own agents...
cinquemb 13y ago
As far as I'm aware most colonists at the time didn't participate, but the complacency is always desired by people in power. And a lot of slaves and native americans sided with the Royalists and decent portion gained freedom after the war in GB (though many were returned to their masters after the fact), so I think whose side one would take is more complicated than being mere anti-authoritarians. This crashcourse video points out some of these things: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EiSymRrKI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EiSymRrKI4] Despite it all, I would say that an oppressive government could use "medical condition" to confiscate weapons, but whether the populous is armed or not has little to do with the oppressive nature upon the governed in any country.
- ucee054 13y ago
  Please, god, it's "populace", not "populous"
  - chris_mahan 13y ago
    ...a populace can be populous; a pompous people perhaps?
dkuntz2 13y ago
That's a poor question. The Revolutionaries were really just opportunists. They could have received the representation they wanted in parliament, however they saw the chance to start their own government, a new one, built by them, however they wanted. I'm not saying it was a bad thing that they decided to focus their efforts on starting a new government instead of working with their current one, but they didn't have to. The Declaration of Independence was written to discredit parliament and the king (who, at this time, didn't have power anymore, it was already with the House of Commons), and to drum up support with other powers who didn't really like England (specifically France). They could have worked out a deal with the House of Commons giving them a representative spot, but their declaration explicitly decided against it. Take a history class. You might get some context to the events you cite.
- bjhoops1 13y ago
  But what could we base 21st century policy on, if not the divinely inspired actions of 18th century European colonists?
  - dkuntz2 13y ago
    19th century proletariats?
- chris_mahan 13y ago
  Royalist! Traitor! You defy the very premise of the United States of America's existence: The God-given right to live free from the oppression of a Draconian Regime! (I kid, I kid, I like to hear people's opinions) But it's got to strike you as interesting that I have taken many history classes, along with reading many historical books, and still evidently lack the profound knowledge of the 1770s that you have. I wonder whether my classes and books were somehow deficient, perhaps as they were written and taught by the victors, the same sort of people who benefited from these Colonial Opportunists, and may thus be unwilling to besmirch their hallowed reputations...
  - dkuntz2 13y ago

jbooth 13y ago

Take it easy on the rhetoric. No, those founding fathers were not anti-authorianists to the degree that people would call a pathology. The continental congress did not descend into a bunch of bickering every time someone asked someone else to do something. They were mostly, from all reports, pretty well-adjusted and got along with each other civilly even with major disagreements on how to do things.

ctdonath 13y ago
But their political opponents would not hesitate to have them declared pathological, and so proceed to establish "legal" grounds to disarm & incarcerate (ahem, involuntary commitment to treatment). Many authoritarian governments have done so to great effect and great harm; ours is heading that way.
- jbooth 13y ago
  Sort of a non-sequitur here: Someone once called the FOUNDING FATHERS (freedom!) crazy, therefore we shouldn't restrict documented crazy people from buying guns? There is probably a lesson in that disorders that make you inconvenient for the system are more likely to be recognized/categories than those that make you a sheep. Fine. I don't think you can generalize from that to "documented mentally ill should be able to buy guns because what if it's actually a conspiracy vs them and not just voices in their head? then they can use their gun to stop the conspiracy.". That seems like pretty awesomely bad policy to me.
  - ctdonath 13y ago
    The problem is defining "crazy" such that the sane are not labeled as such pursuant to ulterior motives.
chris_mahan 13y ago
Except for the shooting and killing of the King's Soldiers at Bunker Hill outside Boston.
- jbooth 13y ago
  Yes, there was in fact a war during the revolutionary war, but very few if any of the founding fathers were at Bunker Hill, and you'd be hard-pressed to prove the overwhelming majority of soldiers were doing it out of pathological anti-authority problems. They had plenty of non-pathological, reasonable complaints. Sometimes things happen within the normal human spectrum. You're conflating behavior with a category in the DSM with political action by generally sane individuals. As far as what little relation this has to the gun debate: Background checks for mental illness are probably a reasonable idea, and I'm pro gun rights. I was against the recent Toomey-Manchin legislation until I heard that: - It makes creating a federal database of gun owners explicitly illegal - It makes transporting unloaded guns across state lines explicitly legal (this is apparently currently illegal a lot of the time) - It's only applying the same standards for licensed gun dealers to gun shows and internet sales, while explicitly making internet sales legal (gray area before) It's actually a totally reasonable bill that does a lot of what gun rights people have been asking for. But what's the upside for the NRA in a reasonable bill, versus vilifying it and raising a bunch of money to STOP THE GUN GRABBING BILL? That is why we can't have nice things.
  - chris_mahan 13y ago
    Ah, but the British authorities would have definitely seen their action as that of mentally deranged people. Had there been modern psychology then, they might have found them violently anti-authoritarianistic. They might have claimed that these people, instead of harboring true grievances against the King and His Officers, had a mental disease which made them unfit to live among the civilized ones. They might have claimed their brain was defective, diseased, corrupted, disabled of the ability to think properly. That they did not is a credit to British common sense. O that we too in America today could think people hold valid grievances against our own government instead of painting them broadly with the brush of mental illness and washing our hands of the mistreatment they suffer at the hands of our own agents...

cinquemb 13y ago

As far as I'm aware most colonists at the time didn't participate, but the complacency is always desired by people in power. And a lot of slaves and native americans sided with the Royalists and decent portion gained freedom after the war in GB (though many were returned to their masters after the fact), so I think whose side one would take is more complicated than being mere anti-authoritarians. This crashcourse video points out some of these things: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EiSymRrKI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EiSymRrKI4] Despite it all, I would say that an oppressive government could use "medical condition" to confiscate weapons, but whether the populous is armed or not has little to do with the oppressive nature upon the governed in any country.

ucee054 13y ago
Please, god, it's "populace", not "populous"
- chris_mahan 13y ago
  ...a populace can be populous; a pompous people perhaps?

dkuntz2 13y ago

That's a poor question. The Revolutionaries were really just opportunists. They could have received the representation they wanted in parliament, however they saw the chance to start their own government, a new one, built by them, however they wanted. I'm not saying it was a bad thing that they decided to focus their efforts on starting a new government instead of working with their current one, but they didn't have to. The Declaration of Independence was written to discredit parliament and the king (who, at this time, didn't have power anymore, it was already with the House of Commons), and to drum up support with other powers who didn't really like England (specifically France). They could have worked out a deal with the House of Commons giving them a representative spot, but their declaration explicitly decided against it. Take a history class. You might get some context to the events you cite.

bjhoops1 13y ago
But what could we base 21st century policy on, if not the divinely inspired actions of 18th century European colonists?
- dkuntz2 13y ago
  19th century proletariats?
chris_mahan 13y ago
Royalist! Traitor! You defy the very premise of the United States of America's existence: The God-given right to live free from the oppression of a Draconian Regime! (I kid, I kid, I like to hear people's opinions) But it's got to strike you as interesting that I have taken many history classes, along with reading many historical books, and still evidently lack the profound knowledge of the 1770s that you have. I wonder whether my classes and books were somehow deficient, perhaps as they were written and taught by the victors, the same sort of people who benefited from these Colonial Opportunists, and may thus be unwilling to besmirch their hallowed reputations...
- dkuntz2 13y ago