I shouldn't have to. You should be able to do this yourself.
Look, moron, the Marxist revolutions were People's revolutions. This destroys your point that "gunz r gud because 'revolution!'"
Nice! +1 to DominionSeraph for the first to resort to name calling.
Marxism revolutions are "People's" revolutions. You know why I used quotes? Because that's what they're called, not what they ever become. Obviously you know all your history front and backwards. Then you should know that Marxism revolutionaries, such as Mao Zedong, became the exact tyrants that they fought against from the beginning. Everyone owns everything, blah blah blah blah. What it always turns into is the State (ie. the few people in power) own everything. Power corrupted them completely. They didn't have a guiding document in place and they didn't design a system with built in checks to make sure they followed their "words on paper" so they became corrupt as all hell. Corruption is the name of the game in China. You talk to any Chinese here and they will use the word corruption all the time. The idea of Marxism is a great way to get the masses on your side and brainwash them into the utopian promise, but it never works in real life. Because those at the top get corrupted.
No enlightened government has EVER been put into place by the primary means of terrorism. Violence is only the punctuation to a solidarity movement of noncompliance. It isn't the "gunz" that topple the government, it is the people's withdrawal of support.
Guns are primarily a tool of oppression. It is conservatards who will take up arm in an instant to go out and wave around their power over others; it takes a lot more to get liberals to decide together that peace is now incompatible with the principles of freedom.
The Berlin Wall didn't fall and the Soviet Union didn't dissolve because the citizens had Glocks, while the Taliban isn't about freedom for all.
The Second Amendment is magical? Ask the Native Americans what good their guns did them.
Ask the Weaver family.
First and Second Amendments? Ask the Mormons what good their guns did against the puritanical federal government oppressing them into monogamy.
Ask the Branch Davidians what good their guns did them.
Ask the South how well their revolt went.
Ask Governor Faubus how well breaking out the Arkansas National Guard worked in revolting against federally-directed desegregation.
And if we're on the tack that the means to overthrow government is an enshrined right, by what right did the federal government have to go to war with organized crime? Free market capitalism allowed them to buy the local governments, and they had guns, too. Their bought-and-paid-for government worked better for them than the federal government did, but the feds went in and oppressed them.
Second Amendment? Hilariously meaningless against government (as the government gets its power from the people), but great for making the country dangerous for civilians.
Not sure why you spent so much time on the second Amendment. The Constitution was designed to evolve with the people. If one wants to change it because the Amendments no longer apply to the current world, then it can be done.
The first step of all repressive governments is to disarm the people it governs. The US did the exact opposite. In fact, it gave people the right to form organized militias to protect themselves, both because the current army was not up to par to protect from outside enemies, but also because it wanted people to organize, arm, and protect themselves from their very own government as a last resort. If this contingency no longer applies to the modern world, it can be changed.
More from your list:
Term limits did not come from the Founding Fathers, and only the President has a limit, which came in 1951. Federal District Court, Circuit Court of Appeals, and Supreme Court justices serve for life.
uhhhh.... no. Seriously? You think only the president has term limits? I really question your understanding of, well, lots of things. There was a 2-term limit even WITHOUT the official 22nd Amendment of 1951. Presidents followed the precedent of George Washington of two term limits even without the official Amendment.
"They allowed the people to vote who will be in power..."
White males; the government from the Articles of Confederation was so weak that nobody wanted to serve because it in no way constituted being "in power"; and the original Federal Government under the Constitution was majorly handicapped as well. Power has slowly centralized, it didn't start off that way.
What does this have to do with anything? They wanted the common people to vote for those in power! And they do. Sure, not everyone had the right to vote, but that changed as the nation got more mature. People were able to fight for their rights and appeal to the government, and they won their rights. Should they have had these rights from the beginning? Of course. But people are not perfect by a long stretch. That's why we need a fair, righteous guiding document and a well designed system in place that makes sure the people, who are fallible, follow said document. And it worked. We are always a work in progress. We as people will never 100% abide by the constitutions and mission statements that we create. Which is why we need systems to help us do it and prevent us from devolving into a lawless country.
"They were adamant that no one part of government can ever have too much power, so they set up a system of checks and balances, limiting their own powers."
Which doesn't really mean much. Government gets out of control when the people let it. It isn't the internal set of rules that stops it, it is the people's belief in those rules.
If George W. Bush had refused to step down, he couldn't have gotten anywhere because the People would have refused to recognize him. Only those who would remove him would've been recognized.
If the People had wanted a dictator, they would have lent power to his grab and worked against anyone trying to remove him.
Words on paper are meaningless by themselves.
See my comment about designing systems to uphold "words on paper." The Constitution has our system of government upholding it at various points. The Chinese Constitution seemingly does not, or if it does, it doesn't work. I laugh when I read it because very little of it is actually upheld.
Our government getting out of control only means we as a people aren't handling our own country correctly. And see the gridlock in Congress? That's checks and balances right there in action. The fathers wanted safety in exchange for speed. Of course they probably didn't expect such gridlock, but there is where revisions of policy come in, if we the people have the will and the organization.
"They made us into a society of laws, where no one is above society's laws but everyone has the right to a trial and legal representation."
'Society' being "white Christian males."
We didn't follow our own Constitution for the longest time in certain aspects. And there are still flaws in the implementation because it's people implementing it. People are flawed. That isn't a knock on the actual Constitution itself. We still have work to do on our systems to make sure we follow our guiding documents. And we have a lot of work to do on the people.
"They gave us the right to say anything we want, print whatever we want, assemble how we want, practice whatever religion we want, and to petition the government for changes. They ingrained in us the spirit of "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Again, only under white Christian male approval, which wasn't extended to blacks, Native Americans, women, Chinese, etc.
Again, you're placing yourself out of time. You're arguing on the events of the past. Aren't we debating modern US? I mean, if you want to say how hypocritical the US in the 1800s and 1900s were, sure, I'll play. It was. But that's not what we're debating (well, I'm debating, you're just calling names). I'm saying that we have a solid Constitution and that we need to stick the hell to it. That means working on our systems and on our accountability of the people that are in government. And working on the voters themselves.
You are enamored with our technological progress and tie it to our system of government, yet note that we were on quite a different path prior to the outside influence of WWII, and note that our progress was paralleled just fine by other nations. Japan has the world's third-largest economy while having nowhere near our natural resources, and somehow they manage to do this without 11,000 firearm homicides per year.
The Native Americans lived in harmony with their environment for 10,000 years. The Egyptians managed a stable system of government for 3000 years. That liberals in the US have been able to patch conservatard failings for 237 years doesn't mean the underlying system is necessarily robust.
The past travesties of the US does not mean we have a bad foundation. It means that we didn't stick to it. Even today, we're not sticking to our own Constitution and founding principles on a lot of things. That's a knock on the current state of the country, not on the foundation.
Where do you get this idea that I'm a conservative? I don't think the status quo is fine, not at all. We have a lot of problems and we have strayed from the foundations that should be guiding us. We need to follow these foundations better. As I said, we're always a work in progress, but in this time of divide, we can't give up. It's too easy to look at something and give up because it's too much work or it seems FUBAR, and completely miss the fact that with a lot more work we can bring it back to what it should be, what it was designed to be. It is us, the people, that fucked it up, the original plan, in the first place.
We have a good thing going. We have a solid foundation, and we're fucking it up. Hell, we were fucking it up from day one. Work in progress.
I am proud that my grandfather decided to emigrate and naturalize with my mother, aunt and uncles. I don't feel more privileged or right to be here than anyone else.
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