The American founding fathers were sufficiently wary of democracy that they gave us a constitutional republic instead. Democracy is a fancy name for mob-rule (as in rule by the mob/crowd/masses, not as in rule by the Mafia). Also, rights are not something people are given by government but are inherent in the human species (natural rights).

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

But when the criminals are carrying even more powerful weapons...

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

I do accept that a constitution may be drawn up to limit what a government can do, as long as the constitution can be altered, I actually quite like the American constitution but I feel that it has suffered from having leaders that ignore it and leaders unwilling to significantly change it. But I do not accept the idea of natural rights as your link presents it.

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Trust me, I'm a socialist!

There's power in a factory,power in the land, power in the hand of the worker. But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand, there is power in a union.
The union forever defending our rights, down with the blackleg, workers unite. To our brothers and our sisters in many far off lands, there is power in a union.
Money speaks for money, the devil for his own. - Billy Bragg

Not at all. Liberal democracies, such as the US, are concerned - and rightly so - about the probability of the tyranny of the majority. It's just that other countries have different forms of checks and balances. This argument that a republic can't be a democracy is misleading but I've even read it in at least one academic political text in the US. The government in form is republican but its philosophy is of a democracy. You've failed to look at other democracies that are also republics or constitutional monarchies or perhaps other forms to acknowledged that a modern democracy is far from the mob rule feared by the founding fathers.

Republican theory in politics is another topic.

It's always been thus, the NYPD didn't become armed until armed criminals became a threat.

No offense but I have always hated that saying.

Chuck Yager is an Old Bold Pilot and so were many others.

They were well trained and very calculating but that doesn't mean they were any less bold.

My father told me once, just before I was about to go up against an Olympic level fencer in a Sabre match, "Some times all its takes is unmitigated gall."
I beat that fencer that day.

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Walt Whitman
"I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences."

No offence taken - I actually thought of the adapted version but decided to use the original.

Chuck Yeager is a legend, my admiration for him knows no bounds (I'm not a pilot of any type).

But my point was about recklessness and it was a response to Finny, a bit of a leg-pull.

There's not a thing wrong with boldness, so long as it's tempered. If it isn't then it becomes recklessness.

btw well done against your opponent - that took boldness and skill.

Just like wearing helmets while riding motorcycles, as if that stops that concussion you'll get if you fly around a corner too fast

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"I find no black men appealing, they look like giant monkeys." -LilithIshtar (some member of another forum I used to be part of)

You know why shopping centres have parking spaces for motorcycles right near the door?

Because the shopping centre owners know the motorcyclists haven't got time to spare.

Told to me by an avid motorcyclist.

Anyway I like Bill Cosby's explanation for seat belts. It's so the paramedics can find the body

The United States of America is not, and has never been, a democracy and has never been entirely Liberal either.

If any.

It's philosophy is not democratic (as in the adjective form of democracy. Democracy, by it's very nature, is direct rule by the citizenry. Whenever you start putting layers between the citizens and ruling (as you do with representative government), it ceases to be democratic.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."