Quote of the Day

[frankie_the_yankee]

With a total lack of irony, Abraham Lincoln delivered this as part of his first inaugral address (4 March 1861):

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

Looking deeper into that quote, I believe this is a prime example of the "theory" that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a GOD GIVEN RIGHT. Otherwise, how would the people be capable of their revolutionary right?

I don't think you're just "looking" deeper into it. It seems like you're "reading" things into it that are not there.

Lincoln doesn't mention God or God given rights. Just constitutional rights.

Guns might be one way of driving a revolution, but they are far from the only way. Look at how the people did away with the communist governments of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for instance. They sure didn't use guns.

[Liberty]

Lincoln doesn't mention God or God given rights. Just constitutional rights.

Guns might be one way of driving a revolution, but they are far from the only way. Look at how the people did away with the communist governments of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for instance. They sure didn't use guns.

Your point is well taken, but the citizens may not have used guns but we sure had a bounteous display of them parked right on their border, and It caused the Reds to spend , more money than they really had causing further stress. A war in Afghanistan which we made contributions further worked to weaken the once powerful nation. Guns and armys cost money. So does feeding the subjects. Sometimes govenments let the subjects starve (Stalin & Mao), Sometimes they sell the guns and let the people eat.

[frankie_the_yankee]

Your point is well taken, but the citizens may not have used guns but we sure had a bounteous display of them parked right on their border, and It caused the Reds to spend , more money than they really had causing further stress.

Certainly, our military buildup (of, be it noted, government-owned weapons) was a factor in bringing down the Iron Curtain. Driving them broke trying to keep up did much to sap the strength of the governments and the faith that the ordinary people had in them.

So when the governments themselves finally fell it was because at bottom line, the soldiers/police would not obey orders to shoot the people. The government apparatchiks had stopped believing in their own legitimacy to govern by then, and in most cases knew that the soldier/cop would not carry out such orders so they were for the most part never given.

Comtrast this with what happened in 1956 (Hungary) and 1966 (Czechoslovokia). Back then, the Soviets had full confidence in their power. The people, from top to bottom, believed in the primacy of the government's power (whether they agreed with the government's legitimacy or not) and as such, the government did not hesitate to use it, successfully, to crush the opposition.