[MD] Here come the censors

[Arlo Bensinger]

Woods, you have pushed me back into confusion. Let me walk through it slowly.

[Micah had said]
I will assume you live in the States, and therefore you own nuclear 
weapons, since this is a government of the people, by the people and 
for the people. There is no line.

When I said that this form of semantic "ownership" wasn't the issue...

[Woods replied]
that's exactly what I was talking about.

Micah attempts to dissolves the line of civilian/miliatry ownership 
by pointing out that civilians (as taxpayers) DO own the weapons.

Fine, I say, both you and Micah want NO LINE. But whereas your point 
was indeed a contrasting of "what my neighbor owns versus what I 
own", you are talking about something different than Micah's point. 
If your neighbor had a rifle, and it was one YOU contributed money 
towards, so that you technically "owned it", but your neighbor 
exercised full power over its use, it does you no good to say "my 
neighbor and I both own a rifle". He can still use it to enslave you, 
and you can't use it to protect yourself.

[Woods]
that's what you kept trying to steer this discussion into a citizens 
versus military issue.  That was your dividing line, not mine.

[Arlo]
You are talking in abstractions and I am trying to get at the 
pragmatic ends of those abstractions. This line is not "my line", it 
is OUR line. We LIVE in a country where weapon ownership IS 
differentiated between civilian and military groups. And this 
differentiation is not dissolved by saying, "well, technically the 
taxpayers own those tanks". The fact remains that I am NOT ALLOWED to 
drive, operate, own or make use of that tank.

So my question was, and is, in what way would YOU change the current 
system? By wanting "no line" demarcating privileges between 
"military" and "civilian" people, you have two directions you can go. 
One is towards arming the civilians. The other is towards disarming 
the military. But your abstracted end-result, if I understand, is a 
world where there is no military, as this service (or lack thereof) 
is returned to the people-as-a-whole.

If you want to dissolve the line differently, you'll have to give me 
some concrete examples of what life is a post-duality world 
(considering the civilian-military duality) would look like. Would 
there be tanks, for example? If so, would they be owned and 
distributed the same way we own cars? Or would tanks be abolished? 
Simply saying "we are all people" and "its about morality" says 
nothing whatsoever. Yes, we are all people. Yes, its about morality. 
No tell me how the people should morally organize weapons? Any 
organization? No organization? Outlawed? Proliferated? What???