An Armed Society Is A Polite Society?

[chris_gerrib]

Jim Wright notes that the origin of the phrase "an armed society is a polite society" is is a Robert Heinlein story. In the story, humans have become immortal and don't have to work, so they spend their time fighting duels. In short, it's about as far from current reality as you can get.

Actually, the closest historical period to the Heinlein story would be Japan. There was a period where the Emperor managed to impose peace on the various feuding nobles. This left the Samurai AKA warrior class with nothing to do. These individuals basically wandered around Japan, enforcing laws as judge, jury and executioner.

It was a "polite" period in Japanese history, if by "polite" you mean "everybody was scared shitless that a Samurai having a bad day would cut their head off for them." In other words, a period in which the commoners were in fear. In an armed society, a similar phenomenon would develop. Those with the quickest draws and most willing to pull would run around shooting people. (Gee, Old West anybody?)

Not very polite, if you ask me.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

It does seem to me that a lot of so called Libertarian thinking harks back to times which ultimately led to the creation of laws to get around the problem that absolutely nobody sane wanted to live in that kind of society. It was mostly the same in the UK, a lot of things that got created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were reactions to just how crappy things got during the Industrial Revolution.

One of the nice things about living in a modern liberal democracy is you, on the whole, aren't living in abject fear all the time.