From: gt1111a@prism.gatech.EDU (Vincent Fox)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: Gutting of the Bill of rights
Date: 15 Aug 92 19:09:07 GMT
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc
Distribution: na
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

In <1992Aug15.171821.25935@athena.mit.edu> wdstarr@athena.mit.edu (William December Starr) writes:
>In article <3=7mj2=.crisp@netcom.com>, 
>crisp@netcom.com (Richard Crisp) said:

>> The thing that is most disturbing to me is that they are slowly
>> eroding our ability to overthrow the bastards when we all wake up
>> someday and decide the system is corrupt, broken and unsalvageable.
>> It is then, my friends, that we will wish we had personal liberties
>> again: liberties to have weapons that are capable of being used in
>> an insurrection, communications equipment for coordination of the
>> activities of the rebels etc.

>I'm no expert on weaponry or insurrection, but... if push came to
>shove, would the presence or absence of weapons -- even "assault
>rifles" -- in the hands of civilians really make much difference to
>the outcome?  Seems to me that, given the vast manpower and arsenals
>of the federal military, the National Guard and (to a lesser extent)
>the conventional police, the deciding factor in any modern-day
>American revolution/insurrection/whatever would be whether those
>groups chose to support or oppose the government; the random
>civilians, even those organized fairly well, would, sooner or later,
>get squashed by the professionals if they opposed them.

A reasonable question. I would recommend reading up on armed insurrections
before tossing out such "obvious" conclusions though. 

The people of many nations, notable examples being Vietnam and Ireland,
would be very surprised at your assertion that "light" weapons in
the hands of their militia are totally useless against modern armies.
Indeed, should Washington decide that using nukes to level a rebellious
Dallas would be a good idea, there is little defense. However, a pile
of rubble adds little to one's prestige or power. Oppressive governments
usually prefer to do their opressing with as little force as needed, and
as little opposition as possible. Forcing soldiers into pitched battle
with fellow countrymen quite often leads to problems with troop loyalty.
Decreasing the possibility of opposition lowers the cost to the opressors,
and thus lowers the threshold for the possibility of it occurring.

>Unrelated question: what are you referring to when you speak of
>"communications equipment for coordination of the activities of the
>rebels"?  (This is an honest question, not a sarcastic one.  Yes, I'm
>aware of government regulation of communications, especially
>television, radio and telephones, but none of that really looks to me
>like something that would be a factor in a rebellion.  If you're
>referring to the current government moves to regulate/ban the use or
>distribution of encryption hardware and software that's "too good,"
>please bear in mind that the people behind that particular crusade
>are, for the most part, the hard-line "law and order" types that tend
>to congregate more at the right/Republican end of the political
>spectrum than at the left/Democratic end.)

I for one, can't see the sense of last long sentence above in relation
to the rest of the paragraph. Are you asserting that it's kind of OK
and expected that this group contemplate such things? Are you trying to
claim that the Left would never go along with such things? Please clarify.
I don't see the Liberal Left exactly falling over themselves to oppose
the NSA's ridiculous ideas either. Making it a crime to hide things from
the government is the sort of thing that "can't happen here" right?

I know not of what the original poster meant, but statists come from both
left and right. I would include for instance, recent demands by the FBI for the
FCC that all digital telephone switching have designed into it the
capability for tapping by government agencies from a remote site. Basically
your phone bill would include the cost of making it easy for some
government flunky in a basement room to push a button and listen in on
your phone conversation. Wayne Rash wrote about this in the July 13,1992
Communications Week. This is but one example. Government agencies are
continually pushing many bits of legislation that "make their job of
serving the public easier". Most of them fail. For instance, the above FBI
backed idea failed when they wanted to have it written into FCC codes.

However, now the Justice Department and the FBI are trying to have it
legislated this to the manufacturers of the equipment directly. Thus your
office PBX and LAN equipment, and not just phone company equipment,
would be required to have such capability.

>-- William December Starr <wdstarr@athena.mit.edu>
-- 
The War on Drugs is just part of the War on the US Constitution. 
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:40345 talk.abortion:32239 alt.politics.bush:1944 alt.conspiracy:10094 talk.bizarre:26438