[Victoribus Spolia]

In the United States of America there is a vocal minority who proclaim that their right to own firearms is based in the need to rise up against a repressive government. There should be a high correlation (r) within this community of that belief and the belief that unions are needed to counter a repressive business owner class. The actual value of r might be taken as an index of the ability of people to avow two conflicting concepts.

I guess my disagreement here is the gun-owners want guns to protect them from the government; whereas unions are designed (allegedly) to protect the workers from the business class; however, instead of saying, as you posit, that being pro-union and being pro-gun are part of the same mindset, as unions tend to support the expansion of government, they are actually contraries. Gun rights people tend to be anti-big government and union rights people tend to be pro-big government.

So, I guess I don't think your reasoning necessarily holds up here.

[The Immortal Goon]

How dare you!

The two examples that I used in this thread were the police unions and the union that ICE uses. I certainly disagree with both of them on a policy basis.

This being said, the union still represents the only form of worker stability and worker democracy that there is going to be.

In the same way, a lot of pro-Trump people opposed the TPP and NAFTA. These arepolicies that unions fought against. Had the unions been stronger, they may have actually made headway. As it was, by the time the 90s were there the Democrats had joined the Republicans in knee-capping the labour movement.

As representatives of workers' power, unions often don't conform to the neat lines that bourgeois politics try to fit everything into.

A few thoughts from a poor old country mouse.

In a capitalist society there are two, and only two, institutions which can act as a counterpoise to the control which business can exercise over the lives of the workers. These are the government and unions. What can happen [Ed.: and probably will,] when neither protects the worker can be found in the history of the Industrial Revolution in the UK and in the novels of Mr. Charles Dickens.*

In the United States of America there is a vocal minority who proclaim that their right to own firearms is based in the need to rise up against a repressive government. There should be a high correlation (r) within this community of that belief and the belief that unions are needed to counter a repressive business owner class. The actual value of r might be taken as an index of the ability of people to avow two conflicting concepts.

Union vs. anti-union can be framed as a class struggle. There is a struggle presently ongoing within the United States of America. It can be described as a struggle between fact-driven [Enlightenment] reasoning and emotional, doctrine-driven reasoning*. A Venn diagram of the two struggles would be interesting.

* Some of the statements of the current President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, are indicative of the side taken by the US Administration.

But there is some quibbling here that I'll allude to in a response to this:

as you posit, that being pro-union and being pro-gun are part of the same mindset, as unions tend to support the expansion of government, they are actually contraries. Gun rights people tend to be anti-big government and union rights people tend to be pro-big government.

1. Gun rights people are necessarily big government when taken in the context of American history. The Second Amendment was designed to fill a gap deliberately left by the Founders. The Founders hated the idea of a standing military. They also, for the most part, wanted no foreign entanglements (though with Jefferson and other Anti-Federalists there was the option to go through and aid in events like the French Revolution).

The US was supposed to be not unlike Switzerland is today. Constantly neutral, with everyone trained (well regulated) into revolutionary militias that could defend themselves against any foreign (and Indian) issues.

The contemporary "pro-gun" stance as it's usually defined in the US is to expand the US government into foreign spheres and to add a standing army in addition to keeping guns. In other words, by far the two largest expansions of the US government is generally applauded by the same people that also want to keep the militias. It is the biggest possible government expansion mindset possible, far larger than a policy that cities should have fire codes or whatever.

Bourgouis government is for the bourgeoisie. Anything that it does is in defence of its own rights, usually at the cost of the working population.

2. "Union people" are for their own interests as the working class. Though not necessarily ideologically footed as such, they tend to frustrate bourgeois definitions of political stripes, as noted. There are certainly instances where they would prefer a smaller government in some instances (most are not, historically, fans of the FBI and other agencies designed to smash them; and generally they would prefer to have the leverage over trade that might be afforded without policy makers and the military in governmene), though often a fan of court cases (which used to go in their favour...though in the last half-century, not so much).

[Victoribus Spolia]

1. Gun rights people are necessarily big government when taken in the context of American history. The Second Amendment was designed to fill a gap deliberately left by the Founders. The Founders hated the idea of a standing military. They also, for the most part, wanted no foreign entanglements (though with Jefferson and other Anti-Federalists there was the option to go through and aid in events like the French Revolution).

The US was supposed to be not unlike Switzerland is today. Constantly neutral, with everyone trained (well regulated) into revolutionary militias that could defend themselves against any foreign (and Indian) issues.

Agreed.

The contemporary "pro-gun" stance as it's usually defined in the US is to expand the US government into foreign spheres and to add a standing army in addition to keeping guns. In other words, by far the two largest expansions of the US government is generally applauded by the same people that also want to keep the militias. It is the biggest possible government expansion mindset possible, far larger than a policy that cities should have fire codes or whatever.

That some pro-gun people are neo-conservatives does not negate the notion that the pro-gun position is anti-government position, not merely in how it was intended, but in its very construction.

Further, this argument of yours is a bit tu qoque in its criticism of this group, for the reasons they support gun rights and the reason why they would support the military are not necessarily for the same reason and to dismiss the one on the basis of the other is fallacious.

Even a neo-conservative republican will say: "Keep the government away from my guns!" why saying simultaneously: "Expand our military and bomb Iraq!" even if he is inconsistent, the REASON he supports gun rights is still as an anti-government position, even if he is pro-government in other ways, and to dismiss the fact that being pro-gun is to be anti-government in light of this hypocrisy is still a fallacy and ignores the nature of the position itself.

My argument stands: pro-union and pro-gun are contraries, not corollaries.

[The Immortal Goon]

Even a neo-conservative republican will say: "Keep the government away from my guns!" why saying simultaneously: "Expand our military and bomb Iraq!" even if he is inconsistent, the REASON he supports gun rights is still as an anti-government position, even if he is pro-government in other ways, and to dismiss the fact that being pro-gun is to be anti-government in light of this hypocrisy is still a fallacy and ignores the nature of the position itself.

My argument stands: pro-union and pro-gun are contraries, not corollaries.

I’m a gun owner and not against people having guns. I made the necessary qualifications, I think, in alluding to what I was referring to—the vast majority of gun-rights advocates as recognized by mainstream political groupings.

They do not, of course, stop at saying we should bomb Iraq. Typically their position extends to militarize great the police, strengthening immigration policies, empowering the cops to do more, etc, etc.

Compared to a union advocate’s premise that collective bargaining should be upheld by the courts, this is a pretty giant expansion upon government. It would be awful difficult to argue that the NLRB has anything like the power or budget enjoyed by the DOD, DOJ, Homeland Security, or any of the other gigantic programs that conservatives typically champion in their quest for “small government.”

Unless, of course, there is some part of union power in government you can think of that is stronger than any of the three I mentioned.

I only harp on this because it is not some clean line between “rightists question the government and leftists like government.” In fact it tends to be exactly the opposite.

Given my druthers I’d arm all the unions and have them replace the government entirely.

[Victoribus Spolia]

Unless, of course, there is some part of union power in government you can think of that is stronger than any of the three I mentioned.

Once again, regardless of anything else a pro-gun advocate may support, even if it was the state abolition of all property other than his guns, the pro-gun position is still ipso facto a doctrine to limit government. To argue otherwise because of other views held hypocritically by the proponents of such is still a fallacy and stressing the depth of such a hypocrisy only makes the fact that such a breach of reason was committed, that much more stark.

That unions are ipso facto pro-government stems from the fact that they require government protection in order to fully organize if the company they are trying to organize is opposed to the union's activity. This is because striking almost invariably violates property rights or the rights of persons trying to fill vacated positions (scabs). Thus, for unions to be able to organize successfully, they must receive some form of government protection for their ability to prevent a business from hiring and producing its product requires the violation of some sort of rights.

Thus, as I stated:

If pro-gun is ipso facto anti-government and pro-union is ipso facto pro government, then they are by definition contraries and not corollaries.

which was my argument, that still stands.

I don't see whats so difficult about this.

[The Immortal Goon]

Once again, regardless of anything else a pro-gun advocate may support, even if it was the state abolition of all property other than his guns, the pro-gun position is still ipso facto a doctrine to limit government. To argue otherwise because of other views held hypocritically by the proponents of such is still a fallacy and stressing the depth of such a hypocrisy only makes the fact that such a breach of reason was committed, that much more stark.

Ah, but these are rationalizations in your own head. If you were to actually ask people, actually ask gun owners if they were pro-United States government or not, I think we both know that your carefully built thought-doctrine would quickly fall apart. It has no basis in actual political reality at the moment.

Largely because the government, especially Republican senators, a Republican governor, and the NRA, will bend over backward to strip gun-rights from leftists. The reality is that they love a bourgeois state and all the power that it can collect.

That unions are ipso facto pro-government stems from the fact that they require government protection in order to fully organize if the company they are trying to organize is opposed to the union's activity. This is because striking almost invariably violates property rights or the rights of persons trying to fill vacated positions (scabs). Thus, for unions to be able to organize successfully, they must receive some form of government protection for their ability to prevent a business from hiring and producing its product requires the violation of some sort of rights.

This was a compromise. Unions never required government protection in the recent past.

The only reason the NLRB was created was to help thwart revolutionary activity against the government. Even the government ability to enforce the NLRB is hardly an expansion of government:

The NLRB has no independent power to enforce its orders but may seek enforcement through a U.S. court of appeals. The board may not act on its own motion; in all cases charges and representation petitions must be initiated by employers, individuals, or unions. Over time, the decisions made by the NLRB have done much to shape American labour practices.

It essentially allows that unions (like corporations) can go to court to represent the interests of its members. If this gets stripped away...Maybe not in the next ten years, but some day, there is going to be no more option than to go back to the old days when it armed insurrection was the only option left for the working class. Like I said, we're all accelerationists now.

Now, I wouldn't have even linked these two things together. As alluded, unions used to arm themselves and fight the government at pretty regular intervals at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.

But you insisted on drawing an ideological line between gun-rights activists and union-rights activists. And, again, despite whatever spin you try to put on it—if we're using that dynamic—Your argument is essentially that because unions have (in the last few decades) been able to use courts like their corporate counterparts, they are for an expansion of government. While rooting for the biggest expansion of the American government that has ever been means you're against government.

At best this is a false equivalency that you're trying to jam together to make an ideological point that, you must realize, doesn't really make sense.

[Victoribus Spolia]

Ah, but these are rationalizations in your own head. If you were to actually ask people, actually ask gun owners if they were pro-United States government or not, I think we both know that your carefully built thought-doctrine would quickly fall apart. It has no basis in actual political reality at the moment.

This is a cute way of saying you don't like logic and would rather base your case of the ever-flawed standard of public perception. Hence your added fallacy is:

It essentially allows that unions (like corporations) can go to court to represent the interests of its members. If this gets stripped away...Maybe not in the next ten years, but some day, there is going to be no more option than to go back to the old days when it armed insurrection was the only option left for the working class. Like I said, we're all accelerationists now.

Now, I wouldn't have even linked these two things together. As alluded, unions used to arm themselves and fight the government at pretty regular intervals at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.

That unions started out as armed insurrectionists may be true, and that they used guns to commit violence is also true, but that just means the left is opportunist, that does not mean they are inherently pro-gun. That does not follow.

Besides, the American conception of gun rights and the idea of gun-ownership, especially of military-styled weapons, is inherently anti-government, it is a limiter of government by nature of the definition.

A union is not a limiter of government by nature of the definition, and the fact that they started out not having government support is not proof that they are anti-government, that is just silly.

Rather, that just means they were opposed to a certain kind of government, i.e., that which did not protect the working class.

Hence, given the opportunity, unions would support government and government encroachment on property rights if it meant they (the unions) would be successful. Thus, unions are opportunists who are pro-government whenever possible and the ultimate goal of international socialism, which many early union charters clearly declared as their goal, even further supports the fact that such are inherently pro-government. That they used guns to advance themselves is not an argument. Indeed, many political groups used lawful gun rights to seize power in various nations of the world, and then once having power, abolished such rights. Socialists, in point of fact, are notorious for this.

Likewise, even if I were to engage in your fallacious appeal to public perception, such would not ultimately benefit your cause. American perception of the unions that support the democrat party, is that they are pro-government because they support, with money and aid, the pro-government party in America; whereas, pro-gun folks support the tea party and republicans which are perceived as the anti-government party.

Obviously such an example would be unacceptable to you because, like me, we both reject that the republican and democrat parties represent our respective ideologies of left and right, but that is the point. Public perception is flawed, so I see no reason why your appeal to it should negate the real point which is that being pro-union is not compatible with being pro-gun from a doctrinal standpoint, those concept originate from divergent worldviews with divergent societal goals. Unions only like having guns long enough to kill their employers, not because they perceive such to be an inalienable right against tyrannical government.

Further, I have not engaged in false equivalency, because I have not made any equivalencies, I have been denying them; namely, the claim that to be pro-union and pro-gun amount to the same thing from an ideological perspective. Which is patently ridiculous.

[The Immortal Goon]

This is a cute way of saying you don't like logic and would rather base your case of the ever-flawed standard of public perception. Hence your added fallacy is:

We are talking about public policy. I made my qualifications quite clear in my post in the matter.

This is always the problem with debating someone that thinks that ideas are more important than reality. I am correct. We can measure this and it is obvious.

The rules you made up in your head conflict with this reality. So now we have to go dancing around the May-poll to try and reconcile your internal logic with actual reality.

It’s a big, dumb, pointless game of self-flattery. Reality exists. Deal with it.

That unions started out as armed insurrectionists may be true, and that they used guns to commit violence is also true, but that just means the left is opportunist, that does not mean they are inherently pro-gun. That does not follow.

The communists would certainly disagree. As I used as an example, the right clamored all over themselves to disarm leftists in the form of the Black Panthers, and then still began executing them. The left is against gun ownership only in that we are functionally disarmed by the bourgeois state. Individuals may arm, but leftists, as a group, may not.

Besides, the American conception of gun rights and the idea of gun-ownership, especially of military-styled weapons, is inherently anti-government, it is a limiter of government by nature of the definition.

You keep saying this. Fine, but do remember I had qualifiers and we are talking about some strange binary you set up where it’s political gun-owners on one side (who, politically, also love expanding the government and running huge deficits to do it) and unions on the other side.

I don’t buy this binary, but this is where you chose to plant your flag. And it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

A union is not a limiter of government by nature of the definition, and the fact that they started out not having government support is not proof that they are anti-government, that is just silly.

They did not start out as “not having government support,” they started out as, “being systematically murdered by the government.”

It would be hard to think of a way in which the guerilla wars they ran against the National Guard was pro-government.

And, again, as organizations of workers’ democracy, they are certainly in inherent conflict with the government—which is, again, why the NLRB was even started. And, again, all this really does is allow them some (but not all) of the rights extended to corporations.

Rather, that just means they were opposed to a certain kind of government, i.e., that which did not protect the working class.

Which is in inherent conflict with the US government. Hardly demanding an expansion of it.

Hence, given the opportunity, unions would support government and government encroachment on property rights if it meant they (the unions) would be successful.

This is a big generalized statement with no specifics that essentially amounts to nothing.

Thus, unions are opportunists who are pro-government whenever possible and the ultimate goal of international socialism, which many early union charters clearly declared as their goal, even further supports the fact that such are inherently pro-government.

Since this is supported on your hysterical fear of whatever-something property rights that you dont even bother to qualify, I’m not sure there’s anything useful here.

Further, I never claimed that unions in the US had a deliberate goal of “international socialism.” I said that they represented workers’ democracy, and as a long term push—historically speaking—international socialism is the only way to resolve the contradictions within capitalism that unions typically attempt to address. This does not mean that the police and ICE unions that the government are taking down right now are specifically advocating for international socialism.

But since we are expanding out this wide, international socialism is begins the liquidation of the state entirely and the end of government. This is true for Marxists, anarchists, and every other leftist tendency. The ultimate goal is to have no government at all.

For the right, however, defence of the state as a defender of property is paramount. A continued existence of an ever expanding and constant hardening of government forever.

But it’s pretty flimsy to try to take this long view to justify any kind of contemporary political ideology in the confines of politics. Then again, I’m not the one that set up this absurd binary.

That they used guns to advance themselves is not an argument. Indeed, many political groups used lawful gun rights to seize power in various nations of the world, and then once having power, abolished such rights. Socialists, in point of fact, are notorious for this.

Access to guns actually increase in socialist regimes. In the Soviet Union you learned to shoot in high school, and those famous Russian snipers didn’t come from nowhere—they were used to handling guns all the time. It is true that in cities guns were more controlled after Kruschev. Like everything else in the Soviet Union it became a commodity that generally you needed to have access to via the party. But the revolutionary generation saw the revolution won with mass arms, and the counter-revolution smashed in the civil war with mass guns. Everyone learned to shoot, guns were everywhere; and then, in time, everyone learned to shoot and there were fewer guns.

The same in Cuba where mass arms put down the Bay of Pigs. China might be more of an exception, I don’t know about today. But into the 1970s it was handing out rifles to children to do what they would to have perpetual armed revolutionary citizen-soldiers. Hardly the bleak lack of access to guns that American Conservatives imagine (except for when clutching their pearls at how irresponsible it was to distribute rifles to everyone in the Cultural Revolution).

Likewise, even if I were to engage in your fallacious appeal to public perception, such would not ultimately benefit your cause.

Whoa there. You set up the idea that there was a binary here in public policy between gun owners and unions in American politics. To pretend that, when convenient, public perception doesn’t matter in American politics is to be rather insincere.

American perception of the unions that support the democrat party, is that they are pro-government because they support, with money and aid, the pro-government party in America; whereas, pro-gun folks support the tea party and republicans which are perceived as the anti-government party.

For Republicans, sure. Democrats will see themselves as curbing the power of the Republican big government desire for militarized police, giant standing militaries, and enforced government social norms.

They’re both full of shit.

But let’s not stand on one side of them, declare that to be the only perception, and then try to make up reality to conform with that partisan platform.

Obviously such an example would be unacceptable to you because, like me, we both reject that the republican and democrat parties represent our respective ideologies of left and right, but that is the point. Public perception is flawed, so I see no reason why your appeal to it should negate the real point which is that being pro-union is not compatible with being pro-gun from a doctrinal standpoint, those concept originate from divergent worldviews with divergent societal goals. Unions only like having guns long enough to kill their employers, not because they perceive such to be an inalienable right against tyrannical government.

Because the binary you are trying to paint that “being pro-union is not compatible with being pro-gun” is obviously absurd. It can only exist as some kind of acceptance of Republican (and to a lesser extend Democrat) public perception. You try to deny this by presuming that unions have a collective group think (again, are you really maintaining that police and ICE unions are only interested in armed members as a way to murder their bosses?) do you really think that the Wobblies, when setting up machine gun nests to kill American soldiers were thinking that they they had no inalienable rights against a tyrannical government? Do you think that they were just doing it for funsies? Do you think the miners arming after Ludlow or Anacanda didn’t think that there was a tyrannical government that needed to be put into its place after it had murdered their wives and children?

Further, I have not engaged in false equivalency, because I have not made any equivalencies, I have been denying them; namely, the claim that to be pro-union and pro-gun amount to the same thing from an ideological perspective. Which is patently ridiculous.

The whole binary you set up to try and twist logic out of this is clearly wanting in historical and ideological accuracy.

[Victoribus Spolia]

This is always the problem with debating someone that thinks that ideas are more important than reality. I am correct. We can measure this and it is obvious.

The rules you made up in your head conflict with this reality. So now we have to go dancing around the May-poll to try and reconcile your internal logic with actual reality.

It’s a big, dumb, pointless game of self-flattery. Reality exists. Deal with it.

Spoken like a typical Marxist having a temper tantrum because he was caught engaging numerous fallacies. Anytime someone demonstrates error in his thought, it must be that damn "bourgeois logic" again!

I love it how you keep bringing up the measurable as though that somehow gets you an out-of-jail free card from engaging in metaphysics and ideas. Its as cute as it is naive.

Measurement assumes the quantifiable, the quantifiable assumes differentiation, and differentiation assumes identity, and identity is logic.

Reality is understood and is intelligible via logic, and that IS reality. Deal with it.

A good place to start would be to stop making fallacies and then making excuses for making them in the first place by making the foolish mistake of assuming your position is neither metaphysical nor ideological and somehow the laws of logic don't apply to you.

The communists would certainly disagree. As I used as an example, the right clamored all over themselves to disarm leftists in the form of the Black Panthers, and then still began executing them. The left is against gun ownership only in that we are functionally disarmed by the bourgeois state. Individuals may arm, but leftists, as a group, may not.

What self-avowed communist regimes today allow individual citizens the free exercise of gun rights equivalent to America's second amendment?

In the Soviet Union you learned to shoot in high school, and those famous Russian snipers didn’t come from nowhere—they were used to handling guns all the time. It is true that in cities guns were more controlled after Kruschev. Like everything else in the Soviet Union it became a commodity that generally you needed to have access to via the party. But the revolutionary generation saw the revolution won with mass arms, and the counter-revolution smashed in the civil war with mass guns. Everyone learned to shoot, guns were everywhere; and then, in time, everyone learned to shoot and there were fewer guns.

The same in Cuba where mass arms put down the Bay of Pigs. China might be more of an exception, I don’t know about today. But into the 1970s it was handing out rifles to children to do what they would to have perpetual armed revolutionary citizen-soldiers. Hardly the bleak lack of access to guns that American Conservatives imagine (except for when clutching their pearls at how irresponsible it was to distribute rifles to everyone in the Cultural Revolution).

You are being duplicitous here. Revolutionaries use guns, obviously, but once in power, they being to curb individual gun ownership (you sort of even conceded this already)

Teaching people to shoot that you plan on possibly conscripting hardly counts as being politically in favor of the private retaining of firearms. That unions during the period where they were under the threat of violence often had socialist or anarchist origins was a good reason why the government wanted to kill them and that was good reason why unions felt like they needed to armed themselves, this is not denied and it is consistent with the main point.

The unions like the revolutionaries they aspired after, used and wanted to have guns and access to guns to overthrow their enemies, but once in power, would have no "need" of them and generally prohibited the general population from having guns and yes these nations had an interest in a trained population that was ready for conscription at any time. This does not amount to having gun rights.

In the Soviet Union, after 1929, a regular citizen did not have the right to bear arms as in the United States, this is also true of Cuba, and China (post 1935). That rural Russians were permitted hunting rifles (which is where they likely learned their shooting skills) is true, but does not negate the point of not being permitted military quality and styled weaponry for the purpose of curbing government efforts. Simply put, not letting rural folks have guns is foolish and even the strictest regimes usually allow that much armament so farmers can protect flocks etc.,.

A population armed with military-grade weapons would undermine the entire program of communist regimes to help liberate the proletariat who, if not being fully purified of their connections to their property and old ideologies, could resist the state's requirements imposed upon them. That would be unacceptable, so they were disarmed.

Access to guns actually increase in socialist regimes.

What do you mean by "access," Are you saying more people could privately retain a military comparable firearm post 1929 in the Soviet union than during the rule of the Tsar? If so, what proof do you have? Because merely being trained how to shoot a gun in a government run and controlled educational environment does not qualify at all.

Democrats will see themselves as curbing the power of the Republican big government desire for militarized police, giant standing militaries, and enforced government social norms.

Democrats do see government on the whole as better and the need for expanding welfare programs, social security, etc., Most republicans have given up on social issues, especially compared to the 90s, and the war-hawks are a minority, and even so, that represents only one primary issue where they are for big government. Likewise, saying that they are big government because they increase the deficit is also deceitful. The reason this has been the case is because they lower taxes without cutting expenditures which causes the deficit to rise. That is not an indicator that they want government to be bigger, just that they are afraid to cut already existing programs that were typically created and or expanded by progressives, but end up cutting taxes anyway.

But I agree, both sides are full of shit.

You try to deny this by presuming that unions have a collective group think (again, are you really maintaining that police and ICE unions are only interested in armed members as a way to murder their bosses?) do you really think that the Wobblies, when setting up machine gun nests to kill American soldiers were thinking that they they had no inalienable rights against a tyrannical government? Do you think that they were just doing it for funsies? Do you think the miners arming after Ludlow or Anacanda didn’t think that there was a tyrannical government that needed to be put into its place after it had murdered their wives and children?

Calm down champ....your starting to sound emotional.

Once again, communist regimes have not supported the private retaining of military grade arms for non-conscripted members. Most of the BIG unions we have been talking about during the period where you cite them being independent and even opposed to government, were still international socialist. YES many unions today are not, but the union principle today, in any sphere, originates in a progressive theory of economics and history, not the medieval guild-system so lets stop pretending shall we?

1. Unions in the late 19th and early 20th century were either communist, anarchist, socialist, or leaned in one of those directions. They were opposed by governments that did not like communism, anarchism, and socialism and by businesses that did not want collective bargaining. This is a FACT.

2. Unions, in order to get collective bargaining, and to protect themselves and or attack SCABS , mercenaries (like the pinkertons), the military, or the police, would use guns and wanted to have guns to do so. THIS IS A FACT (I never denied this either).

3. Likewise, communists, anarchists, and socialists who were involved in revolutions in Cuba, China, and Russia, all had guns and wanted guns to kills their overlords and to establish a revolutionary government. THIS IS A FACT.

4. Communist governments limited the rights of an individual to possess and retain a military-style and comparable firearms independent of conscription; especially, when compared to the United States. THIS IS A FACT.

5. America's 2nd Amendment was coherent with their theory of a very limited and decentralized government. Which you admit, and IS A FACT.

6. Socialist regimes are not compatible with a very limited and decentralized government because of how they redistribute incomes, control the means of production, and eliminate libertarian conceptions of private property.

7. Hence, Gun rights are incompatible with a socialist theory of governance, because people could resist the means of production being controlled through armed resistance, along with whatever programs the revolutionary government might impose. THIS FOLLOWS given #5 and #6.

8. The Major Unions historically were SOCIALIST, and wanted such as there GOAL.

9. Thus, given #5-8, Being pro-union and being pro-gun are ipso facto contraries not corollaries.

The "Binary" stands.

[The Immortal Goon]

Spoken like a typical Marxist having a temper tantrum because he was caught engaging numerous fallacies. Anytime someone demonstrates error in his thought, it must be that damn "bourgeois logic" again!

I am not engaging in logical fallacies, but dealing with reality (that you yourself conceded) instead of questioning every bit of language in an attempt to win an argument like a college freshman that opened up Nietzsche for the first time.

You already conceded that:

Gun rights people are necessarily big government when taken in the context of American history. The Second Amendment was designed to fill a gap deliberately left by the Founders. The Founders hated the idea of a standing military. They also, for the most part, wanted no foreign entanglements (though with Jefferson and other Anti-Federalists there was the option to go through and aid in events like the French Revolution).

The US was supposed to be not unlike Switzerland is today. Constantly neutral, with everyone trained (well regulated) into revolutionary militias that could defend themselves against any foreign (and Indian) issues.

When you:

Agreed.

You are now attempting to wiggle out of that by throwing up all kind of metaphysical mumbo-jumbo into the air in order to distort a reality that you agree exists. Which, again, is why arguing this kind of stuff is pointless. Xeno's paradox is interesting, but a fucking arrow goes through the air.

I love it how you keep bringing up the measurable as though that somehow gets you an out-of-jail free card from engaging in metaphysics and ideas. Its as cute as it is naive...Reality is understood and is intelligible via logic, and that IS reality. Deal with it.

Your feelings are irrelevant. Not incidentally, your "ideas" do not cancel out reality.

A good place to start would be to stop making fallacies and then making excuses for making them in the first place by making the foolish mistake of assuming your position is neither metaphysical nor ideological and somehow the laws of logic don't apply to you.

So, to be clear, you are arguing that I am incorrect. Your argument is that most gun-owners in the United States do not regard themselves as patriots loyal to the American government.

If this is your position then defend it. Don't snivelingly try to change your argument by throwing around the Latin that you read in your college textbook.

What self-avowed communist regimes today allow individual citizens the free exercise of gun rights equivalent to America's second amendment?

What other country in the world uses America's Bill of Rights?

You are being duplicitous here. Revolutionaries use guns, obviously, but once in power, they being to curb individual gun ownership (you sort of even conceded this already)

This is not necessarily true. I can't find the documents, but I do know people in Montenegro (and have seen nothing to dispute this) that Yugoslavia under Tito had plenty of weapons citizens were encouraged to have. This, of course, stems from the founding of Yugoslavia as a partisan state. And, more than likely, speaks to the tension of being both at odds with NATO and the Warsaw Pact—meaning an armed citizenry served its interests quite well. Similarly (though I have less information) Albania, starting in 1976 when relations with the USSR soured, supposedly encouraged citizens to train and retain weapons to become quick partisans.

Nonetheless, if your assertion were correct then certainly non-communist countries would allow free guns everywhere. This is obviously not the case. The United States is relatively unique, and it's insincere to try and pretend that other communist countries are irregular by comparing it against the US, which itself is not the norm.

Teaching people to shoot that you plan on possibly conscripting hardly counts as being politically in favor of the private retaining of firearms.

This is not necessarily true either, nor does this stem from the false binary that you are attempting to build. For instance, I'm working on a project that has to do a great deal with paramiliterism at the end of the Long 19th Century. The Ulster Volunteer Force and the National Volunteers, by far a larger and more popular force than their counterparts, believed in having standardized and uniform weapons that everybody was trained with. This meant, necessarily, that the weapons were centralized and generally controlled by a stronger hand as this aided in consistency in the event of mass mobilized use. The Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, the romantics and communists respectively, just grabbed whatever weapon they could.

In this example, far from the universal law that you are attempting to create, the communists actually adhered more to a "second amendment" style version of gun ownership that was countered by their reactionary and nationalist counterparts.

Neither of these were necessarily poor tactics, incidentally.

The unions like the revolutionaries they aspired after, used and wanted to have guns and access to guns to overthrow their enemies, but once in power, would have no "need" of them and generally prohibited the general population from having guns and yes these nations had an interest in a trained population that was ready for conscription at any time.

This presumes a union militancy that simply did not exist, for the most part, in the United States. The closest you can come to this would be the Wobblies, and they have no such mission statement—at least not until virtually everyone in the world is unionized.

In the Soviet Union, after 1929, a regular citizen did not have the right to bear arms as in the United States, this is also true of Cuba, and China (post 1935).

Though it seems that English sources are scarce, my impression is that you were to have collectivized training (like the UVF and NV). And, I believe that gun ownership was permitted as a general right—the problem being that goods of all types were collectivized and distributed to those "according to their need," meaning the need of the Soviet State.

I have plenty of issues with the Stalinist system. But they were not some evil fun-house mirror of the United States.

As for China, again, your statement simply isn't true. Surely you know of the Cultural Revolution when rifles were handed out to everyone and encouraged to be used. This is certainly far more permissive than any kind of American conception of gun rights—to the point of being considered dangerous and downright crazy by most Americans:

They carried out mass killings in Beijing and other cities as the violence swept across the country. They also battled one another, sometimes with heavy weapons, such as in the city of Chongqing. The military joined the conflict, adding to the factional violence and killing of civilians.

This is hardly gun-control and, in most circles, is considered totalitarian despite the fact it was the public encouraged to get guns and use them. This is something still debated today for many reasons, of course, but one of the things that doesn't come up is whether or not they needed more guns as the country was awash with marching bands of out-of-control (and I meant this literally) armed masses.

That rural Russians were permitted hunting rifles (which is where they likely learned their shooting skills) is true, but does not negate the point of not being permitted military quality and styled weaponry for the purpose of curbing government efforts. Simply put, not letting rural folks have guns is foolish and even the strictest regimes usually allow that much armament so farmers can protect flocks etc.,.

As mentioned, my impression is that this was less a policy and more that rural people needed the guns more and there simply wasn't the production to give a gun to everyone that wasn't a soldier. Do remember, rather famously, the Soviet tactic even in WWII was to have unarmed people follow the armed, pick up the gun when the first guy died, and keep running until shot down and replaced.

A population armed with military-grade weapons would undermine the entire program of communist regimes to help liberate the proletariat who, if not being fully purified of their connections to their property and old ideologies, could resist the state's requirements imposed upon them. That would be unacceptable, so they were disarmed.

This has not historically proven to by the case (some examples above). Further, it is counter to the theory.

The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.

The minimum programme of the Social-Democrats calls for the replacement of the standing army by a universal arming of the people. Most of the official Social-Democrats in Europe and most of our own Menshevik leaders, however, have “forgotten” or put aside the Party’s programme, substituting chauvinism (“defencism”) for internationalism, reformism for revolutionary tactics.

Yet now of all times, at the present revolutionary moment, it is most urgent and essential that there be a universal arming of the people. To assert that, while we have a revolutionary army, there is no need to arm the proletariat, or that there would “not be enough” arms to go round, is mere deception and trickery. The thing is to begin organising a universal militia straight away, so that everyone should learn the use of arms even if there is “not enough” to go round, for it is not at all necessary that the people have enough weapons to arm everybody. The people must learn, one and all, how to use arms, they must belong, one and all, to the militia which is to replace the police and the standing army.

The workers do not want an army standing apart from the people; what they want is that the workers and soldiers should merge into a single militia consisting of all the people.

An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot, unless we have become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living in a class society from which there is no way out, nor can there be, save through the class struggle. In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed. Not only the modern standing army, but even the modern militia—and even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland, for instance—represent the bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat. That is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon it. Suffice it to point to the use of troops against strikers in all capitalist countries.

A bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat is one of the biggest fundamental and cardinal facts of modern capitalist society. And in face of this fact, revolutionary Social-Democrats are urged to “demand” “disarmament”! That is tantamount of complete abandonment of the class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of revolution. Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism.

Even both Trotsky and Stalin agreed that a general arming of the population must take place. And those two didn't agree on anything.

If we are to assume that communist reality (in most circumstances) did not agree to the theory, should we not still celebrate the theory as pro-gun, correct, and communist?

Or are you using the measurable outcome in the post Stalin USSR and current China "as though that somehow gets you an out-of-jail free card from engaging in metaphysics and ideas?" Rendering your argument, "as cute as it is naive?"

But I agree, both sides are full of shit.

Then why engage with arguments that are full of shit?

American perception of the unions that support the democrat party, is that they are pro-government because they support, with money and aid, the pro-government party in America; whereas, pro-gun folks support the tea party and republicans which are perceived as the anti-government party.

If you actually believe that these arguments, that you made, are full of shit then to what end are we even discussing this?

Most of the BIG unions we have been talking about during the period where you cite them being independent and even opposed to government, were still international socialist.

So far as I know, only the Wobblies were, and they were mostly replaced by the Knights of Labor and those that followed who were all about American labor.

This wasn't a loyalty test as you imagine, so much as a practical economic fight. The Wobblies wanted an international union as it would prevent countries from leaving the workers in one country jobless to exploit a foreign workforce. The Knights of Labor and those that followed, the Teamsters, Steelworkers, etc, were more worried about an American workforce and had no interest at all in anything overseas. Which is, of course, more immediately appealing for its members. But when the factory picks up and moves to China they're left pretty boned. But there's a reason that these latter unions universally proudly have the stars and stripes on their badges and whatnot.

1. Unions in the late 19th and early 20th century were either communist, anarchist, socialist, or leaned in one of those directions. They were opposed by governments that did not like communism, anarchism, and socialism and by businesses that did not want collective bargaining. This is a FACT.

Again, I can only think of one. Maybe two, that were.

I'm not going to go through the rest of these as, it is pretty clear that they are arguments that don't mean anything in light of what I've already responded with.