Re: Every country should have nukes...
old europe wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:Self-defense is certainly a fundamental, inherent right of all living beings, but just as we deny gun ownership to felons and the insane, nuke ownership may be denied to analogous rogue nations.
Who would deny a country nuke ownership? Who makes the call whether or not a whole country is 'insane'. Other countries?
That would be like a mob banding together, declaring someone insane and denying him his God given right to own and bear guns.
Every country has an inherent right to defend itself. No other country has the moral authority to grant or deny that right, or to declare what means of self-defence are appropriate.
More nukes - less wars.
First of all, I'll repeat that I believe that self-defense is an inherent right of people, animals, and countries. But, in fact, we do deny gun ownership to certain people - to felons and often to dangerously mentally ill people, and I support that as a reasonable restriction on the right. In exactly the same way, I believe that there exists no moral authority to deny the ownership of WMD to countries which are analogous to sane, law abiding citizens, but that there is an analagous authority to deny nuke ownership to certain rogue nations. It actually is a somewhat similar situation. Who should enforce such restrictions in the international arena is a separate debate from whether the restrictions should exist.
There are elements of the analogy that break down here, though. Enforcement of civil laws within a country simply isn't the same thing as international policy. Within a country, there is a clear civil authority for the enforcement law - the courts and the police. There is widespread agreement that the courts and the police may interpret and enforce the law as long as they obey it. In America, the courts may properly keep guns from some individuals, as long as they act in accordance with the Constitution and the principle that citizens in general have the right to own and carry guns. If there were an analogous, universally agreed upon international authority that each country could depend on to represent its interests fairly, I guess that would be the one to decide this and other international disputes, but there isn't, so each country has to and has a right to make its own foreign policy. If you're trying to imply that a belief in the right of all beings to defend themselves results in some sort of contradiction, you're wrong - it doesn't.
And, incidentally, you might want to take note of the fact that firing a gun once can kill one or two people, but firing a nuke once can kill hundreds of thousands.
As to your real topic, gun ownership, if you want to live under a government that renders people completely helpless to defend themselves and also throws people in jail for the expression of forbidden opinions, then you're welcome to your police state. We Americans, on the other hand, are a country of free men and women, and we're going to stay that way. Get used to it or don't - it won't change.
