Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/04/10/oregonians-to-vote-on-whether.html
…
7 Likes
Oregonians to vote on whether to end constitutional ban on duels between public officials
I see a real upside to this if it picks up speed in DC.
21 Likes
Personally I dream of the day Ron Wyden draws his Hattori Hanzō steel.
18 Likes
Looks like we may need a copy of this again:
https://archive.org/details/onlyapprovedguid00hami
(I seem to remember an article about it on BB at some point in the past, but searching doesn’t turn it up.)
4 Likes
If I had more energy I’d erase the guns from their right hands and put pies, or something, in their left hands.
18 Likes
As I recall, pistol dueling was an Olympic sport (an “associate” event, and not a medal winning one) a long time ago:
Low loads, wax bullets, and protective clothing (apparently).
ETA:
27 Likes
So much yes…
2 Likes
I think the ban on duelling has stifled vigorous public debate long enough. If a public official is not willing to risk death to defend a policy position, how can they be trusted?
22 Likes
Make it mandatory.
15 Likes
Everybody treats the Founding Fathers like they were the walking embodiment of rationality and decorum but we tend to forget just how often they settled differences of opinion via ritualized murder.
23 Likes
In a more refined age, you couldn’t just spout crazy shit about your opponents. You’d be called out, and be shunned by society if you refused. Of course this only applied to the upper classes. Still, I’d like to see Obama stick a sword through Trump for slandering him.
15 Likes
Well Trump does seem to want to be compared to Jackson…
I see lots of upsides to this depending on how structured and by the rules they stay to
5 Likes
Oh, if only it was the dueling thing that stopped us from trusting public officials.
7 Likes
They haven’t legalized murder yet, so Florida is still way out in front.
3 Likes
Depending on how good your aim was. Some sociopaths who happened to get off on ritualized murder spouted crazy shit about their opponents specifically because they DID want to provoke them into accepting a duel.
7 Likes
Umm, not everyone.
Also, to my mind, the only thing that the FF’s had ‘productively’ going for them was their Deism (and how that informed them); this from wiki…
“… the largest group consisted of founders who retained Christian loyalties and practice but were influenced by Deism. They believed in little or none of the miracles and supernaturalism inherent in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Holmes finds a spectrum of such Deistic Christians among the founders,[citation needed] ranging from John Adams and George Washington on the conservative right to Benjamin Franklin and James Monroe on the skeptical left.”
… and I suspect that more than just a couple of them were Atheists.
5 Likes
No system’s perfect? I think the trend to pistols from blades tended to level the field, besides smooth bore pistols being notoriously inaccurate past point blank range. You have to be ballsy to take the chance just for chuckles.
5 Likes
That he was, but you gotta give him credit for doing some of it personally, Ned Stark style. We’ve had plenty of murderous psychos in the White House who delegated the task and kept their hands clean.
9 Likes
I think he was more of a “Ramsay Bolton” type.
8 Likes
