Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou
Quote Originally Posted by Goofball
You are mixing up totalitarianism with another concept: the tyranny of the majority.
No, Im sorry, but you're apparently mixed up. Accumulation of rights by the state over the people is totalitarianism- no matter how it happens. Tyranny can similarly be implemented democratically.

Regardless, this discussion pretty much nullifies your original point. Whether or not you see it, that is what was meant by a victory over totalitarianism.
No it doesn't, you just don't understand it yet.

When the people vote to take away a freedom but still retain the power to give themselves that freedom back if they so choose in the future, that is not totalitarianism.

OTOH, if the people were to vote (to use this example) to implement a law banning firearms, and also write into that law that the president will be the final authority with respect to all future decisions concerning firearms in the future regardless of what the people want, that would be a step toward totalitarianism.

Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou
Quote Originally Posted by Goofball
It's funny. When we discuss stories of voters deciding by majority to limit other rights/privileges (i.e. abortion, gay marriage), conservatives are quick to defend the decisions because they are the "democratic decisions of the majority." But whenever there is even a possibility that people might vote to limit gun ownership in any form, we hear all the rhetoric about "totalitarianism."
Why join a discussion if you're not willing to examine the points that are raised and maybe even reexamine your own viewpoints?

You are arguing that people voting to restrict gun ownership, which you apparently view as a fundamental right, would be a step toward totalitarianism.

Yet in an almost identical example, people voting to restrict someting as fundamental as an individual's freedom to marry the person they choose, you dodge the point with an emoticon.

Apparently, it's only "totalitarianism" when people vote to give up freedoms that you support. If they are voting to restrict freedoms that you don't support, that's just "democracy in action."