Justus For All

http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2007/02/guliani_dancing.php

He is weak on the 2nd Amendment.

The second amendment is the foundation of all the other amendments. It protects the right to speak, own property, and assemble.

The systematic militarization of the police while at the same time disarming the populace is slowing eating away at the second.

I don’t believe that the second ammendment is the foundation of all the other ammendments (certainly it isn’t the foundation of the 17th ammendment for example) I don’t even believe, as you probably meant to say, that the right to keep and bear arms is the foundation for other rights.

Indeed, I think the foundation for our rights, including the right to weapons, is the inherent dignity of sovreignty of the individual.

And while I support the second ammendment and the right to keep and bear arms, I don’t believe for an instant it is sufficient to protect our other rights. If it ever comes to needing guns to protect freedom os speech, for example, I am quite sure that that will fail. The protection of the right to keep and bear arms is an important bellweather, but not sufficient in and of itself to protect our other rights.

Would I be happy if Giuliani were stronger on the right to keep and bear arms? Sure. It isn’t my number one issue though. My number one issue is being able to successfully prosecute the global war on terror, as if we fail in that I am quite sure we can kiss many of our rights good bye. If a nuclear weapon wipes out Manhattan, all the pro-gun laws in the world won’t help us much.

While a Giuliani presidency won’t guarantee that that doesn’t happen, It is I think the best chance we have. Add in that I agree with him on a whole lot of other issues of lesser importance, and he is far and away my favorite choice.

Why is Giuliani qualified to successfully prosecute the war on terror?

“Indeed, I think the foundation for our rights, including the right to weapons, is the inherent dignity of sovreignty of the individual.”

Sounds nice on paper but the sovreignty of the individual means nothing without the force to back it up. The means of keeping sovrignty is protected by the 2nd. The 2nd helps protect all the rest of those rights.

Secondly, If Giuliani is willing to compromise on the 2nd, why not limit the frist also. I am sure as Giuliani is prosecuting the WOT, that he could find many reasons to limit speech or maybe he belives it is a states issue, like the 2nd.

Though hannity was listing Giuliani’s accomplishments, today. I could get behind him if he will at least ensure no new gun laws, while possibly cleaning up the BATF.

HP,

There are several reasons I think that. First an foremost is that I really like his leadership style, with its emphasis on developing useful, measurable metrics. I think that will be a challenge to do in the war on terror, but his experiences in dealing with crime in NYC presented challenges that were similar in some ways. He of course has expirience being the person where the buck stops, which is something that Senators don’t have in their position, and has shown he can effectively lead in a crisis situation. And of course, as Mayor of New York and in his activities since then, he has aquired about as much expirience in dealing with foreign governments as anybody.

Simply based on resume, I don’t think you can point to hardly anyone, certainly no one that is running, with better qualifications.

As for more partisan issues, unsurprisingly I like Giuliani’s general take on the WOT and am utterly convinced that he takes the matter extremely seriously. These are judgement calls, but combined with the above, the make a compelling case for me.

Cube,

Owning a gun won’t protect your rights from government intrusion. If you think it will, look into Waco or Ruby Ridge sometime. Rights are protected by being involved in politics and ensuring that our government works for us, not against us. Pro-Gun legislation is an example of this, support for it is a useful thing, but it is not the only thing that matters and is certainly not in and of itself necessary.

As serendipity would have it, Yglesias linked to this article today addressing this broad issue, but I have some responses of my own as well.

You say you like his leadership style. You also cite Giuliani’s record on the crime issue. What really happened in New York shows that there two points are in tension with each other. To the extent that the policies of the Giuliani administration can be credited with the drop in the crime rate (a dubious proposition, given that crime dropped in big cities all over the country during the same period and started dropping under Giuliani’s predecessor, David Dinkins), they were the policies of Police Chief William Bratton, mostly the “Compstat” innovations.

Rather than embrace Bratton, the man credited with the crime strategy, Giuliani bristled and ran him out of the job because his leadership style can’t truck with well-qualified people with minds of their own, not just Bratton, but other police chiefs and a train of Education superintendents.

As a New Yorker, I’m heartened that you think that I live in an important enough city that our mayor would have foreign policy experience. But I just don’t see how that’s the case. John McCain on the Republican side and Bill Richardson on the Democratic side have actually had to grapple with substantive foreign policy issues in their careers in ways that Giuliani never has.

Of course the Yglesias article you link to disagrees with your analysis of Giuliani’s crime fighting ability, so at best it offers mixed support for what you say.

I’ve read Giuliani’s book, it impressed me. I also think that New York improved under his watch, and while there is some truth that that happened other places as well, the numbers I have seen show that it was most dramatic in New York.

New York is of course the home of the U.N., so even in the best of times it is heavily connected to diplomatic events. As a world financial capital and major center of trade there are also a whole lot of international implications to being Mayor of that city that are probably more extensive then most Governors have. And of course he has run a consulting firm since his time as mayor that works directly with foreign governments. Most interesting is that this expirience is somewhat different then the norm for foreign policy expirience, but I think may be just as valuable. Also, as Yglesias points out, Giuliani has experience in dealing with the mafia and there are some similarities to organized crime and the mafia (contrary to Yglesias’s assertions, I think most conservatives think that focusing as terrorism only as a military and not also as a criminal problem would be as mistake, but focusing on it only as a criminal problem is a mistake as well, many tools are required.)

John McCain and Bill Richardson are both viable candidates with good foreign policy expirience. I put Hillary in that category as well. I don’t have much substantive differences with John McCain on WOT terror issues, my problems with him lie in other areas, but I also think that experience as an executive, rather then a Senator, is a definite plus. The responsibilities in the two roles are quite different. There is also a lot that I like about Richardson, but I don’t think he has a prayer of winning the nomination, if that were to happen, I would certainly take a look at him again.

As for Clinton, I have liked a lot of what she has done in the past, but my perception of her was hurt badly by her actions in the Dubai Ports World mess, and many of her subsequent actions I have not liked all that much either. If Giuliani doesn’t win the primary though, she still has a chance for my vote.

this will be my last comment concerning the matter.

“Owning a gun won’t protect your rights from government intrusion.”

Funny the same thing could be said about the poltical process. For example Ruby Ridge and Waco. I read both the wikipedia accounts. It is stange that some people who were involved in Ruby ridge were also involved in Waco. A perfect example of the goverment not policing it’s own and running amok. Another similarity is that both incidents were started by gun violations, which i think is also intresting.

“Rights are protected by being involved in politics and ensuring that our government works for us, not against us.”

I actually agree one hundred and ten percent, that is why i feel Giuliani will probably not really help that situtaion much. If he is weak on the second, i wonder what else he is weak on.

Secondly, when the poltical process fails (it has and will) it must be corrected somehow, i belive the most natural and best way of correction is that the goverment meets resitance from its “subjects”. Were there any indiments? Anybody gett fired after Ruby Ridge and Waco?

Thridly, i also belive that Waco and Ruby point to the fact that people should be better armed. In those two case a few automatic weapons could have stopped the .gov in its tracks.

Finally, I will also provide some links where it looks like guns played quite and important role in protecting people from intrustion by the goverment.

http://www.saysuncle.com/archives/2007/02/08/kathryn_johnston_update-2/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Maye
http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2007/01/18/man_skips_tax_trial_holes_up_in_house_jury_deliberating/
(the last on is intresting, because it looks like the .gov learned it’s leason)