They have happened in the past. They have happened in my state in the last year or two. Some people keep advocating for them. They just haven’t happened at the federal level in 20 years.
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Clarification: they have to form a front with a coherent strategy of self-defense. Not the same as a centralized government.
I’m not saying anarchism in the US is viable right now (I think the current sociopolitical situation has to run its long course), in fact I didn’t bring the issue up, I’ve just been arguing against the idea that anarchists don’t have practical solutions.
In my view, when we have a society racked by major problems, the foremost of which has got to be the genocide in the Middle East, and we have all of these reformists chanting the same tired line for centuries without ever accomplishing what they hope to accomplish, and they even take credit for victories won by militants, such reformists are the true utopians, the ones deluded by a grande dream that has never come true. Reformism is the bankrupt ideology with no practical solutions, just dreams. At least revolutionaries of various stripes can claim even the most fleeting successes, and generally put the teeth in struggles that reformists like to take credit for and white wash. It was MLK who said, after all, that the greatest threat to freedom was the white moderate.
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200 years old?
Always the spurious affirmative statement to support the shaky reasoning. Always.
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Perhaps you are being naive in ignoring the actual lessons that history provides. See above.
I won’t see above. I can’t stand to look.
Yes, modern nation-states were formed within approximately the last 200 years. This is kind of basic. First there were empires, then there was feudalism, then monarchs rose to unify various fiefdoms, then they became nation-states.
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So a bunch of relatively autonomous smaller governing bodies creating a unified partnership to defend their common interests? What a novel idea.
“United we stand, divided we fall …NO WAIT NOT THAT UNITED!”
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Shit no, it’s easy when it comes to gun laws with the congress we have. Congress literally won’t vote to make sure people on the No-Fly List can’t get guns. As much as the No Fly List is fearful bullshit, it’s a sign of how unwilling they are to vote against gun rights in the current environment. Add that to the fact that it would be major news if something started coming down the pipeline that had a chance of winning. People would still have time to build up whatever’s going to go missing before anything comes crawling through to the end of that process. You haven’t watched the YouTube videos I’ve watched where people who own ammo and gun stores, or who have a vested interest successfully convince people to buy more ammo based on nothing but mere rumor. I’m sorry, but that is transparently gullible.
There are too many different states with different laws and rules about this sort of thing for me to keep track of. I can truthfully say that I know people who love guns in my state where the laws aren’t going to change any time soon, who fall for the FUD marketing scheme every time. It’s almost Pavlovian.
Bear in mind, much of what has been proposed at the federal level that has a snowball’s chance in hell of passing won’t affect the vast majority of people who buy guns and ammo on the regular. Getting people to agree on universal background checks is nigh impossible at this point.
How is the Middle East my problem if America keeps its nose out of the Middle East (which it has failed to do over and over, I’ll concede)?
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positive feedback loops are great if you’re a corporation, not so much if you’re a human being.
Anarchists did the same thing during the Russian and Spanish revolutions, the last major experiments in mass anarchism, and they were extinguished by their fickle allies for opposing central governments. It is notable than when the Spanish anarchist leadership in the CNT took comprise so far that they took offices in government–all in the name of forming a unified front–that they began to lose power. In fact they were already losing power by that point, largely because when the Spanish people rose up against Franco they thought they were dying for a new society, not some permutation of the old one advocated by the Republican government, so support plummeted. This is Orwell’s argument and I think it is a good one.
The historical reality is more complex than simply saying a central government is necessary. It was Italian and German intervention on the fascist side that led the Republicans to bring in Soviets, who promptly began destroying the anarchists in the name of a centralized government that failed even worse than the decentralized militia system, which although imperfect was working. What we can take away from actual events involving anarchist forms of organization is that their centralized successors were definitively worse.
The YPG claims to have anarchist tendencies (although I have my doubts) and are fighting ISIS with a decentralized military. In many cases in the past year they have been the only people successfully pushing ISIS back. There’s just no basis for arguing that centralization is the only possible solution simply because it is the dominant one right now.
Going back even further in collective experiments in self management, it was the medieval Italian communes who jump-started the Renaissance, which Lefebvre talks about in The Production of Space, also another great read.
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NEW sales at gun shows have to go through FFL. Unless the person is a private person at a gun show selling their personal gun to another person from the same state, ALL those guns at a gun show are being sold by FFLs and everyone has to fill out the form and get a NICS check.
There are no “new” private sales, technically. Yes someone could have bough a gun and not used it and resells it, but just like if I bought a car, parked it in my garage for a year, and then sold it, it would still be used.
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You know that private party gun sales are illegal here in California, right? (see Cal. Penal Code 27545)
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Come on. Are you that ill-informed, that naive, or willfully spreading misinformation?
First off - I said people. That’s everyone - not just politicians.
“If I could have banned them all - ‘Mr. and Mrs. America turn in your guns’ - I would have!” - Diane Feinstein
That is probably the most famous one. There was a poorly made “assault weapon ban” in 1994 that sun set. Some states still have versions of it in place.
People constantly say, “We just want common sense gun laws like in the UK. No one wants to ban your guns.”
Yeah - the UK laws BANNED a huge number of guns. So don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.
Politicians really aren’t that dumb to out right say they want banning, they want to nibble at the right. If they can get one type banned then it just gives them the ability to later push for another type. Sure they might leave you with single shot .22s, so technically not ALL guns are banned.
And the sick part is even the Democrats pushing for gun control KNOW it wont’ have much affect on actual crime. They are just suing fear to gain more control. Recently released memos from the Clinton anti-gun push.
[quote]
“As much as I hate to say it, the NRA is effective primarily because it is largely right when it claims that most gun control laws inconvenience and threaten the law-abiding while having little or no impact on violent crime or criminals,” wrote Jody Powell, the former Carter press aide.“I support registration in principle,” the memo reads. “But two questions need to be asked. Are the people causing the problem going to comply voluntarily? If not, do you have a way to effectively enforce compliance? If the answer is ‘no’ in both cases, consider whether the benefits are worth making Bob Dole majority leader.”[/quote]
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/19/george-stephanopoulos-sought-gun-control-debate-in/?page=all
Of course Obama isn’t the anti-gun boogey man as much as some try to paint him either. He is rather lukewarm on it, and actually just passed a law that will put tens of thousands of old 1911s in to the hands of the CMP. https://www.congress.gov/114/bills/s1356/BILLS-114s1356enr.pdf
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Why not ALL sales?
I’m well aware. I live in California. Your point being?
I want it for everyone everywhere.
Speaking of making a killing off of killing, folks catch the NRA’s fear ad campaign this fall?
The race-baiting one:
Or, the race-baiting one
How about the race-baiting one?
Stay classy, NRA members.
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WTF??? I DON’T EVEN, 3000+ YEARS OF WRITTEN HISTORY ON NATION STATES… no. just NO.
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I think you’re confusing governments and empires with nation-states. Look, this is not a radical or new idea. In fact it’s old and established. Even Wikipedia has an entry that talks at length about it, so you don’t even need to read Marx or Lefebvre.
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Okay
3000+ years of recorded history of governments and countries of all kinds.
Look once you get so many people in anything larger than a village and get specialized work, fuck it you need a government of some sort, the bigger the population the messier it is.
Your utopia falls apart the same way marx’s does, and the freepers does. Enough of the people are greedy and will game the system whatever system it may be.
I am with @albill while what we got isn’t the greatest thing is the least worst option so far.
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