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Originally Posted by dksuddeth
One of the things I really get tired of seeing, and start refusing to acknowledge eventually, is the total misnomer that gun owners are somehow less 'sophisticated' than non gun owners. It smacks of ad hominen, elitism, or just plain envy over anothers apparent nonfear of weapons. It's really getting old.
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You misread what I wrote (and rather far, at that). The sentence isn't meant to be unattached from the paragraph from which it is derived. I meant that Western industrialized governments are more sophisticated than other governments.
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Here is where are cultures differentiate from one another. European culture seems to have it in their mindset that their benevolent government granted them freedom and rights and are bent on protecting those rights and freedoms. Back in the 1700s, the american colonists saw things from a whole other viewpoint. They saw their granted rights easily trod upon by this supposed benevolent government. They therefore decided that people had inalienable rights granted by their creator, not by their government, hence government could only deny rights, not eliminate them. The way to protect those rights from being denied was to be equal with a government agent in the ability of force.
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Either case fits in nicely with governmentality. In both cases, the citizenry are required to be free. There is no opting out of this freedom. (Assuming we are talking about law-abiding citizens.) How they get or protect this freedom differs, sure, but that doesn't stop any government from governing through any form of freedom as a precondition to obtaining and maintaining power.
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That may be the case in England. It is probably the perceived situation by a majority of americans who are ignorant of history. It is not the case by a sizable percentage of individuals though. We are citizens, free citizens, and not subjects.
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This is the thing. Governmentality suggests that everything has been accounted for. Policies are created and maintained though the condition that every citizen is free and autonomous. This not only empowers government, it also maintains its power. Citizens under these governments are free and autonomous, but only because they are subjects of said governments that govern through such freedom.