addendum to 44: I said earlier that we as a people try to stop genocide from occuring ever again, but that is a very idealistic and sadly an unrealistic goal. Politics and geopolitical entanglements, history and globalization seem to supersede human rights all too often.

The US is a prime example that war is good business, and I could phrase a conspiracy theory about how some western industrialized countries do not really wanting certain civil wars in Africa (ie kongo)  to stop because the chaos enables them to buy cheap natural resources and to sell their weapons to the warring factions as a bonus.

But what I said about the Holocaust and its effect for contemporary Europe is also true. There are no perfect answers.

Getting back to the original point, "I am certain that essential systems could be repaired in time to prevent the complete breakdown of society and anarchy and restore order" is wishful thinking.  According to the New Scientist article linked to in this post, melted transformer hubs cannot be repaired, only replaced.  That means recovery would take months or years.

That article is talking about a solar flare event, which would affect more of the planet than a nuke scenario.

gangs started taking over, shooting police, mass rapes, looting... you send in the national guard and suddenly it is all gone.

It wasn't really that bad to begin with, actually -- the mayor was repeating a lot of false rumors to the press.  Popular Mechanics story

For those interested in the result of an EMP (however unlikely, or likely) might find the EMP Commission's report interesting.

http://empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf

 

Are you really sure that all civilized social behaviour will go out the window as soon as your own survival is threatened? Humans are a social animal and can adapt, and I have not only faith in the ability of my german authorities lol but also in that which makes human civilization possible to begin with. If everybody for themselves would be the main driving force in human behaviour, humanity would not have developed as it has. So - im no sociologist or anthropologist or cultural expert, but I have seen myself that even the greatest challenges - like for example being a war refugee - do not deter or stop life from going on.

I agree with utemia there.  "Nature, red in tooth and claw" is an ideology -- humans are not as violent nor as selfish as conservatives think they are.  We just tell stories about how violent we are to intimidate other people and how dangerous other people are so we'll look to the State for protection. 

Humans actually have more adaptations for working together than almost any other species besides ants (emotional mirroring, an instinct to specialize that leads to division of labor and trade, and language).  We're not going to have anarchy; organization is going to arise.  It just matters whether we come out with a toxic organization like Stalinism or a better one.

Well, like you said, Germans don't really have guns and tend to just do what the government says.

That, however, didn't work out so well for the Jews and others that the government had decided to exterminate right?

In the United States, that sort of thing wouldn't be possible because the casualties for trying to enforce an extermination program would be astronomical.

There is virtually no gun violence in the United States commited by those with legal gun permits. So even if guns were illegal, it wouldn't have much impact on gun violence in the US other than armed criminals knowing their victims are unarmed.

Really? How did that work in the Balkans only a few years ago? Germany really nipped that ethnic cleansing in the bud right? No. It was, once again, the Americans having to take care of it.

An American would ask what the benefit is of making guns illegal.  By definition, people who shoot other people are breaking the law. So how does that help law abiding citizens?

I don't own a gun. But I don't worry that my law abiding neighbors are going to come over and shoot me. 

Do you worry about being knifed in Germany? Knives are legal right? But people get stabbed. Would making knives illegal make stabbings disappear?

Access to weapons had nothing to do with the Holocaust or WW2, I already said that. It is also not possible to fully discuss the reasons that lead to what happened via commentary. But I can tell you this, it is not as simple as "Germans trust authority = Hitler was a dictator = all authority can't be trusted".

Go and research colaboration with the Nazis and the Holocaust in Europe. It is quite appaling how much support there was. The only nation that actually helped all of their Jewish population to escape was Denmark. Vichy collaborated, Italians love Hitler and Mussolini to this day and the colaboration in Poland was also not a rare and single occasion. It was condoned.

I have no answer for you as to HOW people were able to just go along with it. It is something that haunts me, believe that. I have done research and read the facts and figures and visited Dachau - it is just not comprehensible, even if you have the facts in front of you. So please do not ask polemic questions, I can't answer even though I wish I had the answers for myself.

whoa, what exactly do you mean now? Balkans as in Bulgaria or Kosovo or the war in Croatia and Bosnia.. my mother is from Croatia, and the US had no sympathy for Croatia wanting independence at all. They wanted Yugoslavia to exist because it was a stable country and stabilized the region. Croatia even had to give back land to the serbs that they had conquered back - thanks to your glorious former sec of state James Baker and president Bush sr.and the Daton agreement. A lot of good that did - refugees still can't go back home to this day.

Genocide in Germany and the EU is highly unlikely and I would bet my life that it will not happen again for a long long long long time. Can't really speak for the rest of the world though, and you have a justified point if you claim that the all talk about preventing it from ever happening are just hot air if nothing is really done to stop it. Just what would you do? send an army? on what grounds, on whose authority, on whose laws? OHH send the UN - fat lot of good that does. It is frustration that realistic foreign policy is restricted in making empty diplomatic threats in 99,9% of the time.

Oh lol the gun debate. I would claim that the distinction between legal and illegal gunowners it totally artificial and pointless. If guns are available they will be used. Who cares if someone was shot by a legal gun or a illegal gun? And I don't worry about being stabbed at all, I live ina pretty good town with almost no violence, normal really, and no mass stab victims either. I don't remember the police to have ever shot anybody since I live here.

 

As an objective outsider, I can tell you that they are right and you are wrong. The second amendment IS a very sensible thing today. It was a very sensible thing in the past, it will be very sensible in the future.

You make up condenscending explanations why "they cannot objectively and reasonably see why it is wrong", where you are in the wrong.

I have lived in many countries, and I never again want to live where the citizens do not have access to arms.

You saying that doesn't make it true.

Put the Nazis in control of the US and let's see them TRY to round up people for extermination.  

When the US government attempts to take on groups by force it always ends poorly. Look at Waco in the US or Ruby Ridge and those are people who weren't even trained or organized.

If Germans had had access to weapons, I don't think there would have been a holacaust. I'd love to understand how you think that the Germans would have been able to round up 12 million armed civilians.

You completely sidestepped the fact that ethnic cleansing just took place in Europe just a decade ago.

I mean, on the one hand, you admit that refugees can't go back home (because they'd be exterminated) at the same time that you say that genocide in the EU is highly unlikely.

 

 

I agree. History is replete with examples (both in the past and in recent history) that when the government has all the guns, the people have a rough time of it.

Germany, France, Spain, Russia, Japan, Italy are all countries who, in just the 20th century ended up with governments who, because the government had total enforcement power, force their people to do whatever they wanted.

By contrast, in the United States, protests always have the specter that if you try to push too hard that the guns can come out.  

Obviously armed civilians can't go up against the US military. But armed civilians could definitely make life rough for the police and federal agents trying to enforce laws.

It wasn't, after all, the Wehrmacht who rounded up the Jews and Gypsies and such.  It was the Gestapo.  We already know what happens in the United States when the FBI (federal police) have tried to bring in armed civilians who thought their rights were being trampled.

I think I can discuss the topic with some objectivity because I don't feel any particular emotion towards the subject.  But history is something I study quite intensely (it's my favorite hobby) and human societies tend to be predictable.  Whenever one group has overwhelming leverage over another the temptation to exploit it becomes irresistable given time.  

I'm not implying that the Germans will start rounding up people for death camps, but the government has a pretty free hand to commit the population towards unpopular causes if they choose to with the only recourse being that they get voted out (of course, the structure of the EU makes that somewhat more challenging since there is no direct vote).

I wonder if there is a correlation between the power of the state and the birthrate in a modern society.

 

Being generally armed has never been a principle as far as I know. Except for switzerland maybe - there everybody has a gun in the closet. It is not as if the Nazis disarmed the populace that they wanted to kill and then rounded them up. In that sense, it is sort of a moot question of "what if..?", it all has to remain speculation because it just was not the case. It is similarly speculative to elaborate wether something like the Holocaust would be possible in the US where everybody could be potentially armed. Did you forget that you had slavery in your own country? Or that civil rights for minorities are not really all that old in the making? I would be careful to imply that access to weapons is the one factor that makes the difference.

The balkan issue. I am sorry, that claim is correct. I did sidestep it - I realized that when I had turned my computer off but then I was already too tired. And honestly, thinking about genocide and Nazi war crimes is not very pleasant. The holocaust was madness with a perfected method.. I don't think that will be repeated anytime soon in the same way. If you think about it - the logistical level of organization needed to do what they did, the cold detached industrialized way of going about killing millions, that is just not.. I don't even know if it is possible grasp it. That same sort of genocide will not happen again. What happened during the civil war in Yugoslavia does not fall into that same category that the holocaust is in. It was horrible, and there was no way to stop it. The UN forces watched helplessly because they did not have the mandate to engage when not attacked themselves - just to watch. What can you do? The only realistic goal that is achievable is to be responsible for Germany never doing something like that again. And for that, I am certain. And also not in the EU. It is quite a unique construct - do you realize that this is the first time for major western European countries like Germany and France to not have had a war in almost every generation? it has been 64 years, and soon the last veterans will all have died of old age.  The memberstates of the EU vow to never attack other memberstates and to maintain peace - and that is also the first time in European history that that happeend.

They would not be exterminated - sorry I was too unspecific again. Bosnia has been parted into 3 parts, one serbian, one muslim and one croatian - but not really according to where the majority of the groups had lived. The Dayton agreement says that everybody can go home, but the reality is that it is almost impossible due to bureaucratic bricks always thrown in the way. They would not start exterminating each other. It was not the Gestapo alone, the colaboration or silent condonement was unbelievably huge, as mentioned above. This part of history has only begun to be researched, because no one wanted to admit to colaboration. Francois Mitterand, former French president, had been a member of the vichy regime under the Nazis when he was young, and it was forbidden to speak of the Vichy schmoozing with the Nazis. They had built this myth that everybody was inthe resistance.. as if.

You know, I never actually said that the 2nd amendment had to be abolished, just that one should be able to question it without being crucified. Hell, the result could very well be that the 2nd amendment is constitutive for the american mentality, that guns made the settlement of the whole continent possible (gotta be able to defend yourself when you're all alone after all), and therefore play a huge role in american culture and identity and as such, the 2nd amendment can't be dismissed. Or something like that. My own oppinion about the usefulness of guns has nothing to do with that debate.

Yes, the temptation is undoubtedly there. But I am still not personally convinced that owning guns really levels the playingfield that much.

Well, don't take the happy pills passed out by the government in that case..

My remarks about slavery and civil rights in the US were not intended to rationalize the holocaust by comparing it to other histories. Just you said "Had those 12 million Jews and Gypsies been armed, then history could have been difrerent" and I tried to apply that principle to US history - but it is really not very productive, even if it is fun to think about what could have been and what should have been.

Dear taltamir, if you believe that the 2nd amendmend is a very sensible thing today, has been in the past and will be in the future, then you should be able to make that argument and explain why that is so without becoming condescending yourself. That is the point I try to make, not that your opinion is wrong.

I picked the 2nd amendmend as an example because it is an issue that everybody feels strongly about and because it came up in the course of this topic. But the same problem I have with the way this debate is held applies to almost every other political issue. Brad himself mentioned the militancy of certain environmentalist groups, and that is just the same problem. Certain environmentalist groups don't argue rationally with you, they condemn you if you have another opinion. Take capital punishment, education, welfare, healthcare (oh my), and you'll find the same pattern. People are not even willing to listen to each others arguments - instead you have your respective popular ideological political TV shows and talk radio where prominent figures discredit and ridicule each other. (And that is considered journalism... seriously? Parts of the US media resemble a circus IMO) I am not deadset on my oppinion about the 2nd amendment (after all, I am not a US citizen), and I didn't try to argue my point - it should be allowed to question wether the 2nd amendment is still up to date for the modern US society - by ridiculing someone elses oppinion. And that seems to be the prevalent tactic used. Simply put, I criticized the method of arguing, not the different oppinion itself.