farenheit 9/11 (the "liberal media", other things relating to film maker Michael Moore)

I think that part of the problem with going into Afghanistan is that it was a sovereign nation. The government wasn't directly responsible for the WTC attacks (at least not that we could prove) and we couldn't justify an invasion right away. We gave them a chance to give up Bin Laden and when they didn't cooperate we invaded and supported an overthrow of their government.I think that the War on Terrorism is mostly bad rhetoric, like the War on Drugs. Since you can't invade Terrorism and it exists in almost every country of the world how could the US possibly hope to wage a war against it? Invade everyone? One way to start to decrease global terrorism would be for the US to stop participating in it. This would go a long way to fighting the "War on Terrorism".

A few months ago I surfed to foxnews.com. They claim to be impartial and one of their tag lines is "We report. You decide." The lead story was about GWB's proposed marriage amendment and the caption was "Bush to back amendment protecting the sanctity of marriage". It sounded to me like they had decided for me that marriage (a) had sanctity and (b) needed protecting. This sounded conservative to me.This is but one example of Fox's unbiased reporting.Of course the truth of the matter is that they are simply following the money. The media will print and show those things which will draw the most viewers. Look at the Lewinsky business in the 90's. There is no way you could look at that and say the media was "backing Clinton", they just wanted ratings.

quote:

---

It has to do with protecting the State. "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State." You get to have a gun so that when Illinois is invaded by Canada, you can join in the defense of the State. Not yourself, not your property, not your loved ones, but the State.

---

You have more constitutional knowledge than I do so this seems like a good place to bring this up. I was under the impression that the second amendment was in place so that the people could defend themselves from their government. Without an armed populous the government thugs can do whatever they want and the people have no recourse but to accept. I think that if Canada invades the federal government has the constitutional right to raise an army.

I know that the framers of the constitution had differing views on how things should be run. I just heard a bit on NPR talking about how Hamilton was in favor of a strong federal government while Jefferson was in favor of strong states and a weak federal government. There where many disputes about how the bill of rights and the constitution should have been written as is attested to by Madison’s preferred wording of the second amendment: But regardless of how Madison would have preferred to have it written the fact of the matter is that it wasn’t written that way. I think the first quote by Jefferson really sums it up for me. With this view of the second amendment it seems to me that there should be no restrictions on what guns people may own. Clearly no one is going to stage a coup of the US government with the standing army we have today but that should in no way negate our rights. While I personally don’t own a gun, I defend your right to do so.Anyway, I'm sure this discussion is as old as the second amendment itself and while I'm sure you will continue to disagree with me I just can't see any good reason to restrict firearms. Not only that, it seems that restrictions are not effective. None of the gun legislation we have passed has reduced gun violence at all.