Good news...
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pseudonym67 wrote:
then and only then are people going to start thinking about doing things differently.
And what would that be? If things really are as bad as they are made out to be, what was the cause? The only solution I can see would be to simply divide up into separate societies. Let those of us who wish to live in a free market, capitalistic, jeffersonian society do so. And let those who don't go their own way. Let the experiment run its course unrestricted. In my Jeffersonian society, we would simply outlaw socialism of any flavor. Government would only be allowed to provide for the general welfare and nothing else, the courts would have no power beyond interpretation of the actual content of the constitution. In yours you could have governmetn be the center of all economic and social decision making. Let people vote with their feet as to which society they wish to live in. And let the one that survives take all.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
Stan Shannon wrote:
general welfare
What exactly do you mean by using those two words. It is in my opinion a vague promise to enhance the well being of the general population. And because it is a vague statement, how would you like your legal system re-defining it. You have this dislike of judges making interpretation of law yet those two words will continue to keep those judges employed. So, what do you exactly mean?
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Stan Shannon wrote:
"My kingdom doesn't belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. My kingdom doesn't have its origin on earth."
Yeah,yeah. Remember the parable of the lost sheep and the rest of the things He said. You will be judged in the other world by your actions in this one. You go around trashing most of His teachings and subverting the essence of His message, and all of this knowingly, and not out of ignorance. You expect Him to be pleased when you report for your final assessment??? Guys like me will probably get a "satisfactory, but could have done better" and be given a harp and nice 8 cylinder cloud to travel around in :cool: But, you !!! You are in biiig trouble buddy! He is going to be sooooooo pissed with you, He will probably put you in the same cell as Ilion and Adnan X|
Otto von Drunkencoder wrote:
Yeah,yeah. Remember the parable of the lost sheep and the rest of the things He said. You will be judged in the other world by your actions in this one. You go around trashing most of His teachings and subverting the essence of His message, and all of this knowingly, and not out of ignorance. You expect Him to be pleased when you report for your final assessment??? Guys like me will probably get a "satisfactory, but could have done better" and be given a harp and nice 8 cylinder cloud to travel around in But, you !!! You are in biiig trouble buddy! He is going to be sooooooo pissed with you, He will probably put you in the same cell as Ilion and Adnan
I glad you are so concerned about my salvation. However, that has nothing to do with my point. The point is that christianity has separation of church and state built into it from the beginning. I do not have to use government to promote my religion to be a christian. Its not part of the deal. few other religions are designed the same way.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Stan Shannon wrote:
general welfare
What exactly do you mean by using those two words. It is in my opinion a vague promise to enhance the well being of the general population. And because it is a vague statement, how would you like your legal system re-defining it. You have this dislike of judges making interpretation of law yet those two words will continue to keep those judges employed. So, what do you exactly mean?
There is nothing vague about the phrase. If nothing else Madison in the federalist papers made the meaning quite explicite. "Geneal Welfare" means things which promote the general public good, things that benefit everyone equally. Therefore, building a road is 'general welfare'. Universal health care is not. Everyone is free to use the road as they please for whatever purposes they please, as long as they follow a set of common laws for that purpose. Universal health care requires forcing people who are perfectly capable of caring for their own health needs to participate economically in a system that diverts public funds to those who cannot. It is not 'general' welfare, it is 'specific' welfare - it requires an overt transfer of wealth from one group to another. One group benefits, another pays for that benefit and are thus renedered that much less able to care for their own needs as individuals. In only the most ludicrous way can that be considered 'general welfare' (ie - keeping the public healthy is good for all. Hell, that would include paying for everyone's food, housing, transportation, education, you could justify any redistribution scheme on such a rationale)
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Richard A. Abbott wrote:
I find that you comments regarding "effective free speech" hard to accept. That free speech you think has been denied to you, does its history have something to do with the Communist Witch Hunt of the 1950's or is from an earlier era than that, or what?
The congressional inquiries into communist infiltration of our social institutions was entirely justified and did not represent a violation of anyone's rights in any way. Congress is supposed to do those kind of things. Thats what they are there for. Thats their proper constitutional role. The example I typically use is the flag burning issue. Anti-flag burning laws represent effective free speech. That is, someone in some community says "Hey, I think we need to protect the flag, the symbol of our country". Someone else says "I second that!" And it becomes a law in their little town. That is entirely constitutional. When the courts said "No, flag burning is a form of free speech", they effectively invalidated free speech. We have less freedom of speech now because of that decision than we had before. Can I burn a flag? Absolutely. But that is a meaningless act and not protected by anything actually in the constitution itself. I no longer have the power, as my ancestors had, to participate in the determination as to how the flag will be treated in my community.
Richard A. Abbott wrote:
You would have thought that if the judges are violating their responsibilities that actions would have been taken to confine their activities to that which is within their sphere of relevance. Unless it is you who find their activities unacceptable where others find their activities as within functional boundaries.
Point taken. I've never actually said that the decisions of the courts are not valid in the sense that they are acceptable to most Americans. But the truth of the matter remains that throughout most of American history, such decisions were not made. It is a recent phenomenon that would have been appalling to most previous generations of Americans.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Those who burn the flag are in effect protesting against something they dislike/distrust/find foul with. Those who protect the flag are essentially putting that flag onto a higher pedestal, becoming almost religious in context, a rallying point.
Richard A. Abbott wrote:
Those who protect the flag are essentially putting that flag onto a higher pedestal, becoming almost religious in context, a rallying point.
And where does the constitution say specifically that we cannot do that? Where does it specifically remove the poewr of we the people to protect those artifacts of our culture that we wish to protect?
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Richard A. Abbott wrote:
So do I take it that you are approving of personal debt but not government debt?
What I approve of is maximizing the opportunity for those things that can function outside the direct control of government, democratic or otherwise, to do so.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Oakman wrote:
You want lezzie faire
No, he doesn't. Stan hates those homos. :rolleyes:
"Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it." -- P.J. O'Rourke
Tim Craig wrote:
No, he doesn't. Stan hates those homos.
Wasn't it Will Rogers who said, "I never met a dyke I didn't like?"
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.
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Richard A. Abbott wrote:
Those who protect the flag are essentially putting that flag onto a higher pedestal, becoming almost religious in context, a rallying point.
And where does the constitution say specifically that we cannot do that? Where does it specifically remove the poewr of we the people to protect those artifacts of our culture that we wish to protect?
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
I don't know the extent of the ruling but as a viewpoint, the judges who said what they said might have done so because if the flag becomes almost religious in context that could cause constitutional difficulties in terms of "separation of state from church", and with church being religious and the flag almost gaining that kind of context, you can probably see the difficulties they may have assumed. But then, that may not be at all relevant to their deliberations, and probably was not.
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I have found if I turn off the radio, don't read the paper, keep the TV off except for netflix movies I have a much pleasanter disposition. On the down side when I go to work (I support a federal agency as a contractor) I hear the feds talk about writing this proposal and that proposal to get a hunk of the Spendulous cash. I almost got in trouble at work for saying they should burn it in a ash canister in the lobby of their the government building to keep things warmer and reduce the carbon footprint... fortunately I only got a wry smile, so I don't think I'm in too much trouble. Damn depressing if you are too wired into this stuff.
MrPlankton
The Second Amendment, the Reset Button on the Constitution --- He that lives upon hope will die fasting. Benjamin Franklin -
Oakman wrote:
None of your quotes address whether socialism or capitalism will prevail, nor does the Constitution itself. Many of the quotes your found do, indeed, speak to the transfer of wealth by the government and on the whole, I agree with them. But you persist in confusing democracy and capitalism. Yet, to anyone whose mind is not totally blinded by ideology, it should be obvious that democracy, by definition, is simple a way-station on the road to socialism. Only the extremes of dictatorship and libertarianism can support capitalism for any length of time.
What the entire document makes clear, is that the founders, and the first several generations of Americans, at the very least, were opposed to the underlieing justification for socialism. There is no hint of any kind that they were opposed to the tenants of free market capitalism. Obviously, the constitution does not represent a ratification of capitalism, but it does represent an overt rejection of colletivism and central planning.
Oakman wrote:
Which has, since day one, gradually but inexorably drawn all power to itself. When Jefferson purchased the Louisianna Territory and the Feds decided how it would be parcelled out; when Lincoln refused to allow the South to leave the Union; when taxes were levied not on the States but on the people; when Senators were freed of their responsibility to the State governments; when the National Guard federalized the State Militias; When Roosevelt made owning gold a crime; when Eisenhower decided to build the Interstates; when Nixon repudiated Breton Woods - each and every one of these milestones increased the authority of the government. Most of them had nothing to do either with charity or socialism. They were simply and utterly about power.
I've never denied any of that. In fact, you left out the biggest ones - the IRS,Social Security, etc. My point is that it all remains inherently unconstitutioal given our founding principles. If change is something to believe in, why is a simple re-acknowledgment of those original principles such profoundly unacceptable change? We could wipe all of that away with a few appropriate judicial decisions. But, the only possible way that is going to happen, to run the experiment again with a knowledge of all the mistakes made, is to let everything collpase entirely and start over.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high
Stan Shannon wrote:
What the entire document makes clear, is that the founders, and the first several generations of Americans, at the very least, were opposed to the underlieing justification for socialism. There is no hint of any kind that they were opposed to the tenants of free market capitalism.
Nor any hint that they had, were or would outlaw socialism. Which was my point. The authors of the Constitution believed in the free and open exchange of ideas, believing that truth would always drive out falsehood. And they were right - at least as long as we stayed a small republic with a very limited but well-informed electorate.
Stan Shannon wrote:
In fact, you left out the biggest ones - the IRS,Social Security, etc.
Of course I didn't. Both of those spring directly from the amendment to the Constitition that says the feds have the power to tax individuals, not States. I would have thought you knew that.
Stan Shannon wrote:
to run the experiment again with a knowledge of all the mistakes made
If you go back and study the thinking of the founding fathers, you will discover that they were running the experiment over again and that they knew the traps that their republic could fall into. Jefferson and Adams died in 1826 thinking they'd created a bulwark against the problems encountered by the Greek and Roman republics and all their imitators since. But they did not. They could not and neither could you. A capitalistic republic (rule of law) leads to a mixed democracy (rule of the mob) leads to a socialistic oligarchy (rule of the few) leads to a full-fledged dictatorship (rule of the leader). The only alternative is libertarianism and that, unfortunately requires the entire population to take responsibility for themselves rather than begging the all-wise and all powerful state to assume it - which happens way back in the set up of the republic.
Stan Shannon wrote:
But, the only possible way that is going to happen, to run the experiment again with a knowledge of all the mistakes made, is to let everything collpase entirely and start over.
You talk like there's a choice in the matter. Wake up and smell the Armegeddon, Stan.
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside w
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Oakman wrote:
Stamp out ideas at all costs. Burn some books, institute the anti-fairness doctrine on the media. . .Otherwise, people might think for themselves!
What is the point of people thinking for themselves if they are denied the political power to actually implement their own principles as law in their own communities? You are the one who would deny them that, not me. In your world, the only people who get to do any thinking for themselves are the all wise and knowing Judges.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
Stan Shannon wrote:
What is the point of people thinking for themselves if they are denied the political power to actually implement their own principles as law in their own communities?
And this is your justification for the imposition of Sharia Law?
Stan Shannon wrote:
In your world, the only people who get to do any thinking for themselves are the all wise and knowing Judges.
As usual you seem to confuse your straw-men with the real world. I have told you before and I repeat in case you actually catch on. I think that each person is responsible for his own actions and can be held accountable for those actions by every other person. In "my world" I accept the fact that most people have turned over their judgement to the State and so I try to live in a manner that does not bring down the full force of that state on my head. But ultimately, I obey the laws I approve of, ignore the ones I can, and break the ones that are onerous as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. You, it seems, have no problems with judges making all the live and death decisions about your life, you simply want them to enforce your particular form of Sharia - outlawing socialism for instance. Nothing demonstrates how little you have in common with Jefferson's or Madison's political philosophies than your rabid insistence on controlling the minds of everyone in your "Jeffersonian" community.
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.
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Tim Craig wrote:
No, he doesn't. Stan hates those homos.
Wasn't it Will Rogers who said, "I never met a dyke I didn't like?"
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.
Well, he said "I never met a man I didn't like" which would probably be interpreted in a completely different way nowadays...
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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But the banks were not working out side the government - they were largely working at the behest of the government by making loans to those who could not afford to repay them and in an enviroment where government was actively tinkering with the parameters of the economy, setting them to completely arbitrary and artificial values - inerest rates for example. If the banks had been subject exclusively to the iron fist of the free markets, the entire problem would never have even gotten off the ground.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Stan Shannon wrote:
What is the point of people thinking for themselves if they are denied the political power to actually implement their own principles as law in their own communities?
And this is your justification for the imposition of Sharia Law?
Stan Shannon wrote:
In your world, the only people who get to do any thinking for themselves are the all wise and knowing Judges.
As usual you seem to confuse your straw-men with the real world. I have told you before and I repeat in case you actually catch on. I think that each person is responsible for his own actions and can be held accountable for those actions by every other person. In "my world" I accept the fact that most people have turned over their judgement to the State and so I try to live in a manner that does not bring down the full force of that state on my head. But ultimately, I obey the laws I approve of, ignore the ones I can, and break the ones that are onerous as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. You, it seems, have no problems with judges making all the live and death decisions about your life, you simply want them to enforce your particular form of Sharia - outlawing socialism for instance. Nothing demonstrates how little you have in common with Jefferson's or Madison's political philosophies than your rabid insistence on controlling the minds of everyone in your "Jeffersonian" community.
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.
Oakman wrote:
And this is your justification for the imposition of Sharia Law?
You have a very strange mind, John. You say you want people to think for themselves, but actually allowing them to act on those thoughts means we will have 'Sharia Law'. I don't get it.
Oakman wrote:
You, it seems, have no problems with judges making all the live and death decisions about your life, you simply want them to enforce your particular form of Sharia - outlawing socialism for instance. Nothing demonstrates how little you have in common with Jefferson's or Madison's political philosophies than your rabid insistence on controlling the minds of everyone in your "Jeffersonian" community.
Utter bullshit. I've never even remotely implied any such thing. I am the one who belives people should be free to participate in the process of defining the rules and standards of civilization as long as they do not violate those actually inscribed in the federal constitution. How that becomes twisted into some sort of endorsement of 'sharia law' is absolutely beyond me. All you are saying is that you are comfortable with living in a oligarchy as long as that oligarchy is more or less on your side. Assuming your definition of oligarchy, at the very least I believe, with Jefferson, Madison, et al, that there should be competing oligarchies - the courts and the people. And as to your offense at my attitudes towards socialism, I maintain that the founders would have seen it for what it really is - a thinly disquised continuation of the principles of monarchy that they fought the revolution and wrote the constitution to free us from. I am absolutely certain they would have opposed it in every possible way and seen it accuratly as an abandonement of everything they tried to achieve. I would outlaw it. I would criminalize it. I would make open war on it to destroy it. It is pure, unadulterated evil.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
modified on Sunday, February 22, 2009 12:32 PM
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Stan Shannon wrote:
What the entire document makes clear, is that the founders, and the first several generations of Americans, at the very least, were opposed to the underlieing justification for socialism. There is no hint of any kind that they were opposed to the tenants of free market capitalism.
Nor any hint that they had, were or would outlaw socialism. Which was my point. The authors of the Constitution believed in the free and open exchange of ideas, believing that truth would always drive out falsehood. And they were right - at least as long as we stayed a small republic with a very limited but well-informed electorate.
Stan Shannon wrote:
In fact, you left out the biggest ones - the IRS,Social Security, etc.
Of course I didn't. Both of those spring directly from the amendment to the Constitition that says the feds have the power to tax individuals, not States. I would have thought you knew that.
Stan Shannon wrote:
to run the experiment again with a knowledge of all the mistakes made
If you go back and study the thinking of the founding fathers, you will discover that they were running the experiment over again and that they knew the traps that their republic could fall into. Jefferson and Adams died in 1826 thinking they'd created a bulwark against the problems encountered by the Greek and Roman republics and all their imitators since. But they did not. They could not and neither could you. A capitalistic republic (rule of law) leads to a mixed democracy (rule of the mob) leads to a socialistic oligarchy (rule of the few) leads to a full-fledged dictatorship (rule of the leader). The only alternative is libertarianism and that, unfortunately requires the entire population to take responsibility for themselves rather than begging the all-wise and all powerful state to assume it - which happens way back in the set up of the republic.
Stan Shannon wrote:
But, the only possible way that is going to happen, to run the experiment again with a knowledge of all the mistakes made, is to let everything collpase entirely and start over.
You talk like there's a choice in the matter. Wake up and smell the Armegeddon, Stan.
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside w
Oakman wrote:
Nor any hint that they had, were or would outlaw socialism.
Our founding documents are the most profound repudiation of the basic tenants of socialism that one could possibly devise.
Oakman wrote:
Of course I didn't. Both of those spring directly from the amendment to the Constitition that says the feds have the power to tax individuals, not States. I would have thought you knew that.
An amendment which would never have been approved by any earlier generation of Americans. The 16th amendment represents an overt violation of the fourth.
Oakman wrote:
The only alternative is libertarianism and that, unfortunately requires the entire population to take responsibility for themselves rather than begging the all-wise and all powerful state to assume it - which happens way back in the set up of the republic.
The irony of libertarianism is that it requires an all-powerful state to protect it. Absolute rights require absolute power or else they are not absolute. I reject your thesis that the failure of our first republic was inevitable. It was engineered. It can be rebuilt.
Oakman wrote:
You talk like there's a choice in the matter. Wake up and smell the Armegeddon, Stan.
I embrace the armegeddon.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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I don't know the extent of the ruling but as a viewpoint, the judges who said what they said might have done so because if the flag becomes almost religious in context that could cause constitutional difficulties in terms of "separation of state from church", and with church being religious and the flag almost gaining that kind of context, you can probably see the difficulties they may have assumed. But then, that may not be at all relevant to their deliberations, and probably was not.
The only point of the decision was to put the people in their place. It was an overt and purposeful statement that the old federalism was really and trully dead and that the new one had full control.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Oakman wrote:
And this is your justification for the imposition of Sharia Law?
You have a very strange mind, John. You say you want people to think for themselves, but actually allowing them to act on those thoughts means we will have 'Sharia Law'. I don't get it.
Oakman wrote:
You, it seems, have no problems with judges making all the live and death decisions about your life, you simply want them to enforce your particular form of Sharia - outlawing socialism for instance. Nothing demonstrates how little you have in common with Jefferson's or Madison's political philosophies than your rabid insistence on controlling the minds of everyone in your "Jeffersonian" community.
Utter bullshit. I've never even remotely implied any such thing. I am the one who belives people should be free to participate in the process of defining the rules and standards of civilization as long as they do not violate those actually inscribed in the federal constitution. How that becomes twisted into some sort of endorsement of 'sharia law' is absolutely beyond me. All you are saying is that you are comfortable with living in a oligarchy as long as that oligarchy is more or less on your side. Assuming your definition of oligarchy, at the very least I believe, with Jefferson, Madison, et al, that there should be competing oligarchies - the courts and the people. And as to your offense at my attitudes towards socialism, I maintain that the founders would have seen it for what it really is - a thinly disquised continuation of the principles of monarchy that they fought the revolution and wrote the constitution to free us from. I am absolutely certain they would have opposed it in every possible way and seen it accuratly as an abandonement of everything they tried to achieve. I would outlaw it. I would criminalize it. I would make open war on it to destroy it. It is pure, unadulterated evil.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
modified on Sunday, February 22, 2009 12:32 PM
Tell me Stan, isn't the Federal Constitution, with all of its amendments, as now applied a mere shadow of what your founding fathers stated in the Declaration of Independence. If that's the case, then man has spoken and redefined the rules and subsequently the standards of civilization. A further amendment here or there that reflects the wants and needs of the "today and now" is just an extension of what has already been done.
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The only point of the decision was to put the people in their place. It was an overt and purposeful statement that the old federalism was really and trully dead and that the new one had full control.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Tell me Stan, isn't the Federal Constitution, with all of its amendments, as now applied a mere shadow of what your founding fathers stated in the Declaration of Independence. If that's the case, then man has spoken and redefined the rules and subsequently the standards of civilization. A further amendment here or there that reflects the wants and needs of the "today and now" is just an extension of what has already been done.
Richard A. Abbott wrote:
Tell me Stan, isn't the Federal Constitution, with all of its amendments, as now applied a mere shadow of what your founding fathers stated in the Declaration of Independence. If that's the case, then man has spoken and redefined the rules and subsequently the standards of civilization. A further amendment here or there that reflects the wants and needs of the "today and now" is just an extension of what has already been done.
Of course. I don't believe I have ever declared any of these changes invalid. I am merely pointing out that they do represent an abandonment of the founding principles. If that is what the people want, that is what they should have. My real frustration is over why those founding principles are so threatening that any possibility of a government being established where those of us who wish to live in that way can go is viewed as some kind of radical extremism. I cannot comprehend why trully decentralized political power is viewed as such a threat by so many today.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Oakman wrote:
And this is your justification for the imposition of Sharia Law?
You have a very strange mind, John. You say you want people to think for themselves, but actually allowing them to act on those thoughts means we will have 'Sharia Law'. I don't get it.
Oakman wrote:
You, it seems, have no problems with judges making all the live and death decisions about your life, you simply want them to enforce your particular form of Sharia - outlawing socialism for instance. Nothing demonstrates how little you have in common with Jefferson's or Madison's political philosophies than your rabid insistence on controlling the minds of everyone in your "Jeffersonian" community.
Utter bullshit. I've never even remotely implied any such thing. I am the one who belives people should be free to participate in the process of defining the rules and standards of civilization as long as they do not violate those actually inscribed in the federal constitution. How that becomes twisted into some sort of endorsement of 'sharia law' is absolutely beyond me. All you are saying is that you are comfortable with living in a oligarchy as long as that oligarchy is more or less on your side. Assuming your definition of oligarchy, at the very least I believe, with Jefferson, Madison, et al, that there should be competing oligarchies - the courts and the people. And as to your offense at my attitudes towards socialism, I maintain that the founders would have seen it for what it really is - a thinly disquised continuation of the principles of monarchy that they fought the revolution and wrote the constitution to free us from. I am absolutely certain they would have opposed it in every possible way and seen it accuratly as an abandonement of everything they tried to achieve. I would outlaw it. I would criminalize it. I would make open war on it to destroy it. It is pure, unadulterated evil.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
modified on Sunday, February 22, 2009 12:32 PM
Stan Shannon wrote:
I don't get it.
You certainly don't. Or pretend that you paint yourself into a corner.
Stan Shannon wrote:
I am the one who belives people should be free to participate in the process of defining the rules and standards of civilization as long as they do not violate those actually inscribed in the federal constitution. How that becomes twisted into some sort of endorsement of 'sharia law' is absolutely beyond me.
Stan, you aren't comfortable living in a community that permits anyone to do anything that you don't approve of. Somehow you think that somewhere there is actually a place on this earth that you could find a dictatorship of the majority and do things like "outlaw socialism" but you find it offensive. You realise that the Federal Government will never, ever come down on your side, you you have retreated back to a white-washed image of a past that never really existed.
Stan Shannon wrote:
I would outlaw it. I would criminalize it. I would make open war on it to destroy it. It is pure, unadulterated evil.
Thank you for proving my point. (You sound like Osama Bin Laden at his most rabid.)
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.