MN Republicans to our community: Fuck off.

[JB3]

NO SIR. You have it all wrong. I do have an understanding of how the system world works. I understand that the constitution was fundamental in establishing rights people have, through constitutional amendments. It's clear you don't understand how the system works.

Your thinking is gravely wrong, and quite honestly a bit naive.

The other guy accused me of being a neo-nazi, and that's a personal attack. And he's been reported for it.

Rather than going back and forth I'll just say this: If you honestly believe what you posted above, you have not read the history of this country, read the founding documents of this country, nor do you have any understanding whatsoever of the function of the constitution. Rights are not granted by the constitution. Any reading of the document in that manner is wrong. There is no situation in which that understanding could be deemed correct. To put it plainly: you don't know what you're talking about. You're understanding is incorrect, and your conception of the function of our government and constitution is just plain wrong.

To live in the world you describe would be horrifying. I find it sad that you honestly believe what you post. Yours is a world that does not exist, and has never existed, in the history of this country.

 

[Centexfarmer]

NO SIR. You have it all wrong. I do have an understanding of how the system world works. I understand that the constitution was fundamental in establishing rights people have, through constitutional amendments. It's clear you don't understand how the system works.

Your thinking is gravely wrong, and quite honestly a bit naive.

The other guy accused me of being a neo-nazi, and that's a personal attack. And he's been reported for it.

The United States Constitution clearly states in the preamble We the People.

The powers of the United States Government are derived FROM the people, and therefore it does not have the right, under the U.S. Constitution, to deprive anyone of rights, unless it is given that power BY the People.

Now if you agree with that perspective then what we have here is a misunderstanding between yourself and other members here.

No one here personally called you a nazi, neo or otherwise.

This is what was stated:

Your approach reduces to might makes right -- exactly what the neo-Nazis preach. You believe we're property, at root, that there's actually nothing wrong with burning gays for having sex or hanging them for kissing; it just matters what the law is. So if the law says skinheads can beat up on gays and there will be no punishment, by your philosophy there's nothing wrong with that.

Kulindahr, over the years posting here, has proven himself to be more knowledgeable on the intention and verse of the U.S. Constitution than most people that I know.

The U.S. Constitution is set up in a way that's supposed to protect minorities from the tyranny of a majority.

Whether by majority is comprised of a political party, or too much political influence from corporations.

It's the laws that have been passed by our elected representatives that have been screwing everything up for the past 100 years or so.

Some of those laws have passed Constitutional Muster, some of them have not.

In the interim many a minority has had to live under the tyranny of those laws until they can be effectively challenged before the United States Supreme Court.

That's how the system works.

That is one of the fundamental principles and functions of the U.S. Constitution.

Now this petty back and forth is going to come to an end now, or I'll be locking this thread and further action will be taken on the part of the Mod Team here.

 

[Kulindahr]

Talk about putting words in my mouth and misrepresenting my views. Some seem to do that expertly around here. I have a perfect understanding of the law. Who said I would be happy if the DOMA passes as a constitutional amendment?

You say rights come from government. If that's true, then there's no difference between having a law one way or having it the other; both are entirely moral. If rights come from government, then slavery is moral, child labor is moral, prostitution is moral, lynchings are moral -- so long as the law says so. If rights come from government, then the only morality is might makes right.

Now you lose absolutely all credibility by bringing up neo-nazis. I didn't say we are property. You are wrong, and I will report your post. This is the end of it. You brought up a red herring and ad hominem attack and you will be reported for it. You have no right to compare me to neo-nazis because you don't understand my view points!

If rights come from law, and law comes from government, then we're property. All I did was give the logical outcome of your stated position.

Once again, you start getting whiney when someone points out the reality of your position. Touchy, touchy.

No, this is a distorted view that only pleases those religious types. Lets just drop the fight for marriage... because we are WORRIED and too politically correct and might offend them! That my friend is basically giving up our fight for rights.

Um, forcing the religious freaks to get out of the way and submit to the same thing everyone else does is "giving up our fight for rights"? By that reasoning, beating an enemy and forcing him to the negotiating table is surrender.

You don't think forcing them to conform to a secular term wouldn't offend them? that if they had to go the the courthouse to register a union, just like gays or anyone else, it wouldn't offend them? that if they didn't have the word "marriage" to grab to try to make everyone conform to their god-talk, they'd be pleased? You don't understand them at all! The Elephangelicals would be furious -- if they understood what was going on. That's why the way to do it would be to cast it as the "Restoring Sacred Marriage Act", letting the churches define marriage -- while the rest of us moved on to something obviously belonging to the government.

Heck, they might contort themselves into the amusing position of refusing to register their marriages as unions, because they'd be sharing it with gays. That would be worth more than a few laughs.

 

[Kulindahr]

you don't know my stance because you refuse to understand what I really wrote. Then you choose to engage in personal attacks by accusing me of being a neo-nazi. You've made this personal, so I'm turning this over to a moderator. you really crossed the line here.

I'm a leftist, not a fascist conservative like most right wingers! I stand for the people!



NO SIR. Your stance seems to indicate that. All you want is to please the religious extremists and not call things as they are. Your viewpoints don't indicate dignity... they indicate submissiveness to the extremist, and fascist elements within a society.



You don't even BEGIN to understand what my viewpoints are and you are now engaging in more personal attacks. Your rhetoric SICKENS ME to the core.

I'm downright horrified and ENRAGED that you come to the conclusions you did by misunderstanding what I wrote. Next time you should ask me more about my views before jumping to pretentious assumptions.

HAVE A NICE DAY.

Such a drama queen.

There haven't been any personal attacks n you at all.

Instead of responding and explaining, you whine and throw a tantrum. While that's entertaining, it doesn't further discussion.

You said rights come from law. Law comes from government. Rights are thus whatever some government decides to give. They can be awarded to just the wealthy, just one color, just the strong, or whatever -- whatever the law says.

That means we're property. It's the direct result of your stated position.

When you're ready to talk instead of whine and scream, I'll listen to some rational output.

 

[Kulindahr]

I haven't made a single personal attack, G. You see them where they don't exist -- for what reason, I won't guess.

I've read Plato's Republic, in the original. It has two flaws: it's a totalitarian system based on the notion that people are property, and it's built on a lie. It is, by Plato's own definitions, false philosophy.

You believe that rights come from the law, from the government, that they are not inherent. The only way that's true is if people are property. Now, instead of making wild assertions that have nothing to do with anything anyone has said, try to explain how people without any natural rights are anything but property.

 

[Kulindahr]

You continue making false statements about what I think. Fair enough man. I never said rights were not inherent. I also never said that people were property. But then again, you have nothing to say about the slavery the founding fathers had engaged in.

Sorry -- I've stated exactly what you said:

Oh but I do understand rights. You have it backwards my friend. Rights are not granted until the law allows it. Why the need for various amendments, including the 14th amendment, if your logic was right?

The idea that rights are inherent and inalienable is a good one, but it's not realistic.

You referred right there to the concepts that rights come from being sentient and are inalienable as "backwards". You gave the "forwards" position as that rights are granted by the law. So yes, you did say that rights aren't inherent.

That makes "rights" mean nothing more than "important privileges". And the privileges are granted by those with the most power. People are thus reduced to the property of those with the most power. And democracy is reduced to a game the powerful let the rest of us play for their amusement.

WTF do the founding fathers and slaves have to do with it? You could drag in the Whiskey Rebellion, too, but that wouldn't make it part of the issue. The issue is your basic principles; for those, you have yet to offer an argument how they aren't that people are property.

Now people are slaves to corporations. That's the flaw of this country.

I think I don't want to say anymore for the sake of the topic of this thread. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

If you'd communicate instead of throwing a snit fit, there would be a lot less misunderstanding.

 

[JB3]

I have not said whether I agreed or disagreed with that perspective. Someone here took my views out of context, and proceeded to distort what I have said. Everything I believe in is in the post above.



Then why does he proceed with the complete misinterpretations over what I said? He accused me of saying that people are property. This is disgusting.

Maybe he should look at who wrote the US Constitution... and see who was considered property. Certainly, slavery was a real common part of this country until the 1860s. Property... I take one look at that ... and I wonder why this country accepted slavery for so long... even from the founding.

Only WASP males were free, everyone else was property including women. Maybe America really is the land of saying one thing and doing the other! Certainly the founding fathers were the master of that... "I believe in freedom for all... but..."

I'm a pragmatic. I have a fundamentally different view of democracy.

Ok, first of all, what he and I have said about your views is completely accurate. They match with your own words and descriptions.

Second of all, its interesting you bring the founding fathers into this, because the majority of them viewed slavery as an abhorrent practice that they would have preferred to leave to the Europeans. But, being pragmatic (which you claim to be) they also realized that outlawing slavery at the get-go would have 1) Prevented the Union from even being brought together and 2) Crippled the Union economically. You are viewing that action through your 21st century lens. It is neither appropriate nor accurate.

I also find it interesting you claim that the Founders backed your view, yet refuse to cite a single one of them to support your views. In the absence of your effort, I'll do it for you. Here are the words of Thomas Jefferson:

"The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being, and we but obeyed them in pursuing undeviatingly the course they called for. It issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man the enjoyment of his equal rights." --Thomas Jefferson to Georgetown Republicans, 1809. ME 16:349

"Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:441

"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." --Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774. ME 1:209, Papers 1:134

"Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance." --Thomas Jefferson: Legal Argument, 1770. FE 1:376

"What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789.

"Nothing... is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:48

"The evidence of [the] natural right [of expatriation], like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness, is not left to the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason, but is impressed on the sense of every man. We do not claim these under the charters of kings or legislators, but under the King of Kings." --Thomas Jefferson to John Manners, 1817. ME 15:124

"Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1797. ME 9:422

"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?" --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVIII, 1782. ME 2:227

"Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on French Treaties, 1793. ME 3:235

"It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means without which it could not be used, that is to say, that the means follow their end." --Thomas Jefferson: --Thomas Jefferson: Report on Navigation of the Mississippi, 1792. ME 3:180

"The right to use a thing comprehends a right to the means necessary to its use, and without which it would be useless." --Thomas Jefferson to William Carmichael, 1790. ME 8:72

"The Declaration of Independence... [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and of the rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Adams Wells, 1819. ME 15:200

"Some other natural rights... [have] not yet entered into any declaration of rights." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:272

"I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Danbury Baptists, 1802. ME 16:282

I could continue to post the words of others, but hopefully you get the idea. Your opinion of rights is not supported by much, if anything, in the history of this nation and in the history of the world.

 

[Kulindahr]

Second of all, its interesting you bring the founding fathers into this, because the majority of them viewed slavery as an abhorrent practice that they would have preferred to leave to the Europeans. But, being pragmatic (which you claim to be) they also realized that outlawing slavery at the get-go would have 1) Prevented the Union from even being brought together and 2) Crippled the Union economically. You are viewing that action through your 21st century lens. It is neither appropriate nor accurate.

To say nothing of the fact that to someone on the left, one of the main reasons many of the Founding Fathers kept their slaves was compassion: they couldn't manage to set them free while providing them with the means to begin a new life. A destitute black family then would have been easy prey for someone less than reputable to scoop up and sell again into slavery. Later, with children gone from households, wills provided that beginning stake and the liberty it would support.

 

[JB3]

This goes beyond opinion making, you are not reading my posts with a clear thought process. You are using clouded judgment. You have consistently, and still persist, in misinterpreting my words and descriptions. This is where you have failed, and will continue to fail.

We're reading them as you write them. Perhaps you should try writing them from the point of view of other people.

Then why did a majority of them engage in slavery? That's the common practice of... saying one thing, yet doing the other.

This makes me doubt that you've ever read a history book. Slavery was a necessary evil of the time, both economically, and for the safety of the slaves. In fact, most of those that did own slaves have a plethora of writings stating that they would have released them but feared for their safety if they did so.

You still continue to misconstrue what I said. You haven't stated my views correctly, nor have you interpreted anything I've said correctly.

Nonsense. Just because you don't like the conclusions we're reaching about your views doesn't mean we're wrong.

Bold words for someone who has demonstrated insufficient knowledge about my views. You've failed once again.

You can copy and paste everything you want, but when you provide no clear logical explanation for what you post, you have proved absolutely nothing. And not once have you stated my actual views. You continue to rely on fantasies and lies about what I believe in. I'm sure you'll have a huge response prepared to this, but I really have nothing else to say to you. I've already placed the other guy on my ignore list, and you will be there too.

Have a nice day.

Ah, so now, when confronted with real concrete truth, you resort to attacking me instead of attempting to provide a counterpoint. I'm still waiting on your examples from our founders. I've provided ones that make your views laughably irrelevant, so where are your supporting examples? Thank you for finally admitting defeat. It took long enough. You are wrong, you have been wrong, and your way of thinking is not representative of anything except your own warped worldview.

We have your words for what your 'actual views' are. You have posted them. They are clear as day to anyone that can read. You have attempted to run from them when confronted with their reality, but we're not going to let you. What I've proved is that you have no idea of the consequences of your beliefs, you have no foundation on which to argue, and you very clearly know nothing of the history of this nation, the enlightenment, or the founding fathers. Or in short, you're an intellectual midget in a land of giants.

 

[JB3]

To say nothing of the fact that to someone on the left, one of the main reasons many of the Founding Fathers kept their slaves was compassion: they couldn't manage to set them free while providing them with the means to begin a new life. A destitute black family then would have been easy prey for someone less than reputable to scoop up and sell again into slavery. Later, with children gone from households, wills provided that beginning stake and the liberty it would support.

He's got you on ignore so I'll just quote this so he can read it.

 

[NineOfClubs]

There is one thing GC said that attracted my attention and no one else has challenged:

"Then why did a majority of them engage in slavery? That's the common practice of... saying one thing, yet doing the other."

I immediately thought of John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin. I would venture that most of the founders did not own slaves and that many found slavery abhorrent.

 

[MoltenRock III]

There is one thing GC said that attracted my attention and no one else has challenged:

"Then why did a majority of them engage in slavery? That's the common practice of... saying one thing, yet doing the other."

I immediately thought of John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin. I would venture that most of the founders did not own slaves and that many found slavery abhorrent.

Franklin had two or three slaves if I'm not mistaken. Only later in life did he become an abolishionist. He is quite correct, the majority were slave owners. And you need to read your history on Hamilton as well. So yes, you are wrong.

 

[NineOfClubs]

Franklin had two or three slaves if I'm not mistaken. Only later in life did he become an abolishionist. He is quite correct, the majority were slave owners. And you need to read your history on Hamilton as well. So yes, you are wrong.

He is incorrect and so are you.

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=293

Of the 55 Convention delegates, about 25 owned slaves. Many of the framers harbored moral qualms about slavery. Some, including Benjamin Franklin (a former slave-owner) and Alexander Hamilton (who was born in a slave colony in the British West Indies) became members of antislavery societies.

 

[JB3]

I've read enough of American history to know the majority of them were indeed slave owners. And even if they weren't... what was their view on women or say the poor voting? The poor and women were viewed as separate classes even by abolitionists at the time.

I'm sure those two guys will try to distort what I said here as they did this entire thread. It's rather irritating, so I took the advised route. Ignore them. I've learned when people talk angrily like that, they aren't interested in a debate. They are only interested in being condescending. Fair enough. I can't change them.

I get it though. I come from a vastly different background then they do. My entire life is vastly different. Just wishing for something and saying it's supposed to exist doesn't mean it actually exists. Just wishing for democracy doesn't happen. I'm not one of those dreamy idealist types... maybe a bit rough on the edges.

Interesting you claim we don't want debate when you're the one that put us on ignore.

We're not idealistic, we actually believe in the accurate telling of history.

 

[MoltenRock III]

He is incorrect and so are you.

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=293

Of the 55 Convention delegates, about 25 owned slaves. Many of the framers harbored moral qualms about slavery. Some, including Benjamin Franklin (a former slave-owner) and Alexander Hamilton (who was born in a slave colony in the British West Indies) became members of antislavery societies.

Lmao! Yet you dismiss that I corrected you on both Hamilton and Franklin as spending their formative years as slave traders/owners, and only later in life being against the practice to reinforce your own cognitive dissonance about your precious founding fathers. Hello Michelle Bachmann. Lmao!

 

[NineOfClubs]

Lmao! Yet you dismiss that I corrected you on both Hamilton and Franklin as spending their formative years as slave traders/owners, and only later in life being against the practice to reinforce your own cognitive dissonance about your precious founding fathers. Hello Michelle Bachmann. Lmao!

WTF are you talking about?

25 out of 55 is not MOST. You both state most founders owned slaves....

But pick and choose, MR. A great career in propaganda awaits you.

 

[JB3]

I can guarantee you more than 27/28 owned indentured servants...

Nice try though.

Prove it. Let's see some links.

 

[MoltenRock III]

Next you're going to tell us that the 3/5ths law was to help end slavery. LOL

 

[NineOfClubs]

Oh but how many owned indentured servants? And how many viewed women as slaves? You see twist it however you want... indentured servants were treated only marginally better than slaves (and even I can't say that with a straight face).

Don't give me the rubbish that "indentured servants" were not slaves.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awlaw3/slavery.html

"Before the Civil War, slaves and indentured servants were considered personal property, and they or their descendants could be sold or inherited like any other personalty. "

Don't even go there.

Wait... personal property? Haven't we heard this one before. Just another instance of the founding Americans saying one thing, but doing the other.

In 200 years you, GC, will possibly be considered a barbarian by people of that future time.

For eating meat, maybe, which may be seen in 2211 much the way we see cannibalism.

They will probably judge us very harshly for many other aspects of our daily life that we take for granted.

 

[MoltenRock III]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzSWi2gruU8[/ame]