Avoiding Climate Talks

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had a plan to make all of the presidential candidates convene for some sort of debate on climate change and global warming, but it appears to have fallen apart. Nobody really even knew that it had been planned until Senator John McCain told everybody last month that he had been invited to participate. The reason he brought it up is because he is widely known as one of the more progressive candidates when it comes to reversing climate change, and this especially separates him from the other Republican candidates. The reason that the project fell apart was because hardly any other candidates besides McCain were willing to participate in the debate. However, the event’s planners hope to continue the debate perhaps sometimes later in the primary season, even if not before the New Hampshire primary. Mitt Romney apparently could not participate because he had been scheduled to appear somewhere else already, Fred Thompson had not made a decision as to whether or not he would participate, and Rudy Giuliani had simply not responded.

The Republican Schwarzenegger has said that he would like it to be a bipartisan debate, and that just while the participation of McCain was nice it was not enough. I personally think that, judging by the information given in this article, the Republican candidates seem to mostly be scared that they will get killed by the Democrats and McCain. Despite this fact, I think they need to step up so the real issues in this country can finally be addressed.

The right to arm bears

Sorry, though I'm sort of ashamed of it now I must say the first time that I saw an old, bearded man with a shirt demanding the right to arm bears I laughed ridiculously hard. Anyways, I was posting comments on other people's posts and this idea came to my mind, so I figured I might as well right about it. It sorta ties in with the talk about gun control and that stuff that people are talking about today. Here is basically the gist of what I am going to write about: the right to bear arms is an unnecessary right that is outdated.

Lots of people would find this position to just be absolutely appalling. They loves their guns, they have every right to keeps their guns, and you can pries their guns from their cold, lifeless hands. So let me just sort of explain my stance on this. It is my belief, as I assume others because I doubt I came up with this on my own, that the right to bear arms was created as a precautionary measure. The founding fathers did not sit back and imagine that in two hundred and fifty years their dreams of walking around with fully automatic weapons that would do absolutely no good if one were hunting. The fact of the matter is this: guns are only good for one thing and that is protection. But if your average Joe did not have and had a very hard time obtaining a gun (so basically just law enforcement had them) then you would have very little reason to need to protect yourself with a gun. The true original intent of the right to bear arms was for the newly formed states to be able to support their own militias at the time if it ever came down to it. It was frankly just easier on this new baby government if each of their citizens had their own gun instead of having to provide them with one. It is not like they decided that it was a key civil liberty; nobody believed that it was an intrinsic right of every human being to be allowed to own a firearm.

There are some things in the Constitution that are just clearly outdated. For example, when was the last time that the U.S. government even tried to quarter troops in our homes without our consent? That was really just a knee jerk reaction to something that they had experienced in their lives as colonials, as the right to bear arms is. I can understand why so many people are so clingy to their right to bear arms, because they think it is some sort of tradition that must be preserved. But really today this right is being abused, and if we could use gun control to lower the amount of crime and death due to guns I personally don't think the right to bear arms should be a viable argument, though I guarantee you it will always be seen as a viable argument by most of the country, especially the Supreme Court.