Without addressing a lot of the side-issues some of you posters have brought up, I think I understand Rob’s original post to mean that when Leftists want change, it means taking away the Constitutional Rights of others. (e.g. the Fundamental Human Right of Self-Defense or, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms)

I’ll take that understanding a step further.

When Leftists seeks additional rights, such as the so-called homosexual right to marry, on the surface it seems innocuous and reasonable.

In practice, once again, those new special rights for what has proven to be a largely diseased and predatory, deviant minority, will come at the cost of the destruction by way of criminalization, of the social morays and religious beliefs of the other 98 percent of heterosexual society.

I, for one, don’t see that as a reasonable trade-off.

I know you want to make all sorts of equivalences to this, Rob, but it’s really a simple Constitutional matter: we have a specifically-enumerated right to keep and bear arms. The other issues you try to bring in are not specifically-enumerated rights. Lefties are always going to be attacking the Constitution because it limits govt, and they want unlimited govt. Trying to link this with your pet ideological stance just doesn’t work.

In my younger and poorer days, camping trips to the Nat’l Parks were the ultimate vacations. I used to backpack into the wilder areas, many times sleeping on a bag laid out on the ground. There were more than a few times that I wished I had something a bit formidable than a knife and hatchet with me (lions, bears, wolves, snakes and a few others predators I couldn’t easily identify). Being able to carry in the parks is no different than being able to carry on the city streets (different group of predators though), both are rights specifically enumerated in the constitution, and as such should not even be subject to question. That they are is less an indication of how far we have drifted from the original intent than it is an indication of how far we have drifted toward the idea of all control being in the hands of government rather than the people.

Moszer,

Yep, that is true. At this point in life though, the only hiking I do is from the beach chair to the pool bar. Haven’t camped in years, (aging backs and bad discs don’t like hard ground) roughing it these days is a Jr. Suite at the Ritz-Carlton, where I normally find a 9mm is adequate to fight off any hostiles.

pp: Well said! Social issues should be left to a vote of the people, and on as local a basis as possible. If some communities want to be more permissive, let the market decide. If they start hemorrhaging residents, the lesson will be learned. Likewise, if the permissives are right, then the less moral communities will thrive and be emulated.
In any case, forcing those things on us through the courts, like Rob wants to do with homo “marriage”, is unAmerican.
In social matters, let the people decide.
Ultimately, someone has to step up and be the referee, if everyone else refuses to do so.

From Rob…

I just don’t understand why there can’t be more live and let live.

The Framers were essentially libertarians who carefully avoided social issues in the drafting of the Constitution.

They were aware of prostitution, drunkeness, gambling and a host of other social issues. Wisely, they chose not to address them, reserving such powers to do so to the states and – ultimately – the people.

If we believe that social issues should be addressed by Congress, then it only matters who is in power and what they believe to be an issue.

President Bush never used the power of the White House to condemn the people for voicing their opposition to the war. Today, the White House and it’s minions openly criticize – even attack! – people for expressing their views… the very thing which the Framers feared most.

The powers granted to the federal government are [for the most part] clearly established in the Constitution. All others – including the power to regulate sexual matters, smoking, fat-laden foods – are not granted.

If another state decides to allow gay marriage the fed also has no business in that.

Not really. We generally recognize marriages performed in one State all over the country, so that would result in one State forcing homo “marriage” on all the rest of us.

Anti-gay activists get upset at the idea that people of the same sex might partner themselves together in civil arrangements they call “marriages.”

First of all, in many states perhaps most, homos can join in civil unions which gives then all the same civil benefits as married couples. So they really have all they need and most people are willing to live and let live on that basis. However, the homos are not satisfied with that. They want to redefine marriage from what it has been for millenium, a union between one man and one women. That we will not stand for.

There are other controversal homo issues too but they can all be summed up as homos trying to normalize an activity that is not even remotely normal.

The Mencken line may be tired, but the sentiment behind it is not. There’s no shortage of laws that simply assuage the conscience of the do-gooders without benefitting (and in many cases hurting) society.

If we want to harp on about “enumerated rights”, let’s point out that one does not have a right under the Constitution to: be married, have sex, have a bank account, own land or property, overeat, sleep in, have a job, raise your kids, not to be overtaxed, etc.

Yet all of us would be mortified if the federal government (or even most states) passed a law limiting most of these basic functions. This is why the 9th (The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.) and 10th (The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.) Amendments were drafted, because the Founders knew that there was a whole host of issues that could be over-reached on if not specifically enumerated (they knew people would use Robert and Suite’s arguments), so they said that just because a right was not specifically named didn’t mean it didn’t exist, and that the federal government was limited to the roles defined.

Let’s remember, when the Bill of Rights was drafted, it was considered by most to be unnecessary, as all these rights were common sense. But the states, and the people, rightfully feared government and guarded jealously their rights, even if the threat was far fetched.

Yet today, we put people in jail for the most trivial of offenses, which have no effect on society, and deprive them of life and liberty without just cause, and often in violation of due process.

This is not ok. Even today, we understand some difference between “assholery” and illegality, though it seems we want to eliminate that line more and more every day. While parents should teach the lesson to not be an asshole, more parents need to teach their kids to mind their own damn business. There are going to be many things you dislike in life, and you need to grow up, be an adult, and deal with it, instead of trying to force your ways on others on things that don’t concern or affect you.

We’ve become a nation of busybodies, both on the right and the left.

Simple dismissiveness of the concerns of others is a hallmark of the exact people you’re decrying with that tired old Mencken line.

In an instant you make anything you say unheard by those people.

You need to stick to the subject, which is whether or not guns are safe or should be had or carried wherever and not simply go right to the dismissing that it’s just because they don’t want you to have fun.

My godson sounds that way when we tell him not to run across the road to the park without stopping to look both ways for traffic, and you do too.

Rob:

I just don’t understand why there can’t be more live and let live.

ONLY someone with FAR LESS intelligence than you could be naive and stupid enough to mean that line literally.

So you’re again dismissing, this time with false accommodation and reasonableness.

Something we’ve seen Obama do with his casual inferences that his opponents don’t want anyone to have the same health care access and he just wants to make it fair.

You’re becoming the people you despise by turns. Slowly but surely, you are.

No one lives in a vacuum. Everything we do affects everyone else. Once upon a time in this nation, people taught their children that, and got it across that freedom isn’t free, nor unlimited, and conscience and right demands of us that we remain cognizant of that and always act accordingly in life. It could be summed up with the phrase, “don’t be an asshole”.

Now, assholery is the national pastime. When people see someone behind them in their rear-view mirror looking agitated, they don’t go faster or change lanes, they slow down, then hit their brakes, playing a passive aggressive game with them.

When asked to douse their cigarette for the moment by someone whose body doesn’t get along with it, they walk over closer and blow more smoke and put on a smug face.

When told by society that our youths are increasingly uncontrolled and largely unable to be trusted sober so please stop giving them alcohol when they’re sixteen, people get indignant and decide to make a point of serving beer in defiance.

I could go on for pages with all the examples of some balance not being achieved because the one party tries to be reasonable, the other refuses childishly, the first escalates to outright unreasonableness, the second side points and calls it justification for their refusal, even if it is after the fact.

Live and let live doesn’t mean what you think it does or more to the point what you wish it did.