Generational Theory Forum: The Fourth Turning Forum: A message board discussing generations and the Strauss Howe generational theory

(10-31-2018, 05:43 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(10-30-2018, 01:18 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]A challenge has come for Republicans and supporters of Trump, past or present. Trump stirred up this guy Bowers into hatred of immigrants. This Jewish congregation had been helping them. The Trump era is rife with conspiracy theories and neo-Nazi anti-semite movements in the USA. Meanwhile, Trump and the GOP block any bills to limit or prohibit sales of AR-15s and other weapons of war which make mass shootings like this one so frequent. The voters need to hold Trump and the Republicans responsible now for this mayhem. Failure to do so is a judgement upon them.

I do think there is a spiral of rhetoric which precedes the spiral of violence.  Hate speech, including Trump's, does increase the chances of lone nuts going active.  People who try to fight such hate speech are called Social Justice Warriors and as limiting free speech, but you can see them trying to preserve lives.

Traditionally, you cannot limit a constitutional right without due process.  A trial that leaves someone a felon certainly counts.  Would a professional finding that someone is a threat to others suffice?  How much legal formality would have to be applied to give such a finding force of law?  The Supreme Court would have to answer that one, but that seems a step short of repealing the Second that might be worked towards.

It seems that most lone nuts before they went on their shooting sprees first used hate speech, in person or on social media.  Would people support this being sufficient for a professional trained shrink to ban weapons ownership?  Does anyone think such bans would be effective?

There are two criteria that can limit speech through preemption: slander and incitement to riot/violence.  The first seems a bit pathetic given the nature of the speech, so incitement is will have to be.  Is it adequate when the inciting party leaves enough wiggle room to claim a lack of intent?  I don't know, but that's Trump's MO from way back.  He might be tried after the fact for hate speech too, but, again, he's careful to avoid the direct link.

Banning weapons of war like the AR-15 should be applied to anyone who wants to buy one. That we have not yet banned them, is due to Trump and the Republicans. They bear blame for this, as well as for the hate speech and stoking of fear and prejudice by Trump and his supporters.

(11-01-2018, 06:00 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Banning weapons of war like the AR-15 should be applied to anyone who wants to buy one. That we have not yet banned them, is due to Trump and the Republicans.

That, and a little thing called the Constitution.

And not everyone.  There is no right if one is a felon or insane or if a hostile significant other lies.

(11-01-2018, 06:05 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-01-2018, 06:00 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Banning weapons of war like the AR-15 should be applied to anyone who wants to buy one. That we have not yet banned them, is due to Trump and the Republicans.

That, and a little thing called the Constitution.

And not everyone.  There is no right if one is a felon or insane or if a hostile significant other lies.

No-one has a constitutional right to an AR-15, no matter what anyone says. Debating the same thing for years and years with someone is not fruitful. Matt Post asked if there is a will to take weapons of war off our streets. Millions of people answered him "yes," there is a will. The only problem is that Dianne Feinstein's law of 1994 was not made permanent, because the supreme court put Bush in the White House (and his better horoscope put him there....).

You have a right to your opinion too, but don't waste your time trying to change my mind on that weapons of war on our streets issue, and don't bother to complain or insult me because I won't.

(11-02-2018, 12:34 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-01-2018, 06:05 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-01-2018, 06:00 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Banning weapons of war like the AR-15 should be applied to anyone who wants to buy one. That we have not yet banned them, is due to Trump and the Republicans.

That, and a little thing called the Constitution.

And not everyone.  There is no right if one is a felon or insane or if a hostile significant other lies.

No-one has a constitutional right to an AR-15, no matter what anyone says. Debating the same thing for years and years with someone is not fruitful. Matt Post asked if there is a will to take weapons of war off our streets. Millions of people answered him "yes," there is a will. The only problem is that Dianne Feinstein's law of 1994 was not made permanent, because the supreme court put Bush in the White House (and his better horoscope put him there....).

You have a right to your opinion too, but don't waste your time trying to change my mind on that weapons of war on our streets issue, and don't bother to complain or insult me because I won't.

It has not happened largely because hunters spoke up because they were afraid that their rights would be infringed on. And, yes, banning all guns would be about as successful as was the prohibition of liquor nearly a century ago. Former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley was one quoted as saying that these types of assault weapons are not the kind of weapons deer hunters would use. And an assault weapons ban wouldn't bother me in the least because I would never have any interest in obtaining one, and would go a long way toward keeping our streets safer. I don't even believe that the majority of law enforcement uses them.

(11-01-2018, 06:00 PM)Eric the Obtuse Wrote: [ -> ]Banning weapons of war like the AR-15 should be applied to anyone who wants to buy one. That we have not yet banned them, is due to Trump and the Republicans. They bear blame for this, as well as for the hate speech and stoking of fear and prejudice by Trump and his supporters.

As usual you have no idea what you are talking about.  Strictly speaking the AR-15 is not a weapon of war since these days infantry small arms are select fire which can fire multiple rounds with one trigger pull.  The current M-4 which is a lighter and shorter version of the [/URL]M-16 A4[/URL].  State of the art small arms for the military, even to this day, are patterned after the Sturmgewehr 44 and all of them have full auto or burst mode.  They also tend to use ammunition that is on the low power side of rifle ammunition.

If a shooter was going for lethality then he would be better off with an M-1 which fits none of the criteria for 'Assault Rifles' but was a weapon of war in its day.

The main reason that people own the AR-15 is because it is a very modular system that is easy to customize and has a relatively low cost.  You might want to consider this article on the subject.

This simple truth of the matter is that the so called "Assault Weapon" bans are a step on the road to a total ban on firearms.  This is why gun owners fight such bans.

(11-02-2018, 09:34 AM)beechnut79 Wrote: [ -> ]I don't even believe that the majority of law enforcement uses them.

This is no longer true.  These days they seem to have stepped up to a version of the M-4 which is currently the standard issue rifle for all branches of the US military.

(11-02-2018, 12:34 AM)Eric the Obtuse Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-01-2018, 06:05 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-01-2018, 06:00 PM)Eric the Obtuse Wrote: [ -> ]Banning weapons of war like the AR-15 should be applied to anyone who wants to buy one. That we have not yet banned them, is due to Trump and the Republicans.

That, and a little thing called the Constitution.

And not everyone.  There is no right if one is a felon or insane or if a hostile significant other lies.

No-one has a constitutional right to an AR-15, no matter what anyone says.

I suggest that you read about the history of the Militia Acts of 1792.  It gives a very clear picture of exactly what the framers of the Constitution had in mind.  It specified that individuals were to have, what were at the time state of the art, small arms.  Looking at what the founding fathers had to say it becomes clear that they considered owning firearms to be an individual right.  They regarded a large standing army as a threat to liberty.

By the way the Taliban are winning in Afganistan which has little more than infantry small arms.  The situation hasn't gotten any better in the last three years.  The Soviet Union faced the same problem in the eighties and how did that work out for them?

Governments always disarm target populations before genocide.  You are too clueless and short sighted to figure this out.  You simply can't believe that your god, known to the rest of us as the state, is capable of such evil but it is.

The Nazis didn't even allow Jews to keep pet dogs. Cats, sure, to keep rats and mice away. But dogs would have delivered a nasty mauling to a Nazi who broke into a shop window and grabbed some valuables on display or given a fair warning that the SS was there to take the family off to 'resettlement'. Resettlement that goes from a gas chamber and through a chimney.

White people in South Africa have gun rights, but how do they protect their guns? Dogs. Three 80-pound dogs acting as one predator is effectively one lioness, especially in the dark. A burglar can easily recognize that he is no longer the top of the food chain when he meets 'the Other Big Cat'. Lionesses prey on humans, and three medium-to-large dogs can suggest much the same about themselves.

Germans have fewer 'gun rights' today than Germans had under the Nazis (so long as one was on good terms with the Nazis), but by all accounts Germany is about as close to a model of liberal democracy as there can be. Freedom House recognizes Germany as better at human rights and civil liberties than the United States.

Want a defense? Get one with teeth and claws. Dogs give very bad bites, and they do not scratch like cats. They scratch worse. Having been scratched by a pet dog that meant no harm and gotten hospitalized for such, I watch dogs' front paws closely in their presence. In South Africa one would compare a pack of dogs to a lioness. In America, one would compare a pack of dogs to a bear.

I once visited a jewelry store in which the owner, an avid hunter, displayed a trophy bear with fur similar in color to that of my golden cocker spaniel. Except for the ears, the proportions were about the same. About everything was three times as large in linear dimensions, and if you roughly cube the dog into the size of the bear, then that golden cocker spaniel would be hard to distinguish from that bear. Would you like to meet a 270-pound cocker spaniel? Would you break into a house with five thirty-pound cocker spaniels if you were a burglar looking for stuff to pawn for a fix of heroin? Those five dogs might as well be one 150-pound leopard.

(11-03-2018, 10:24 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]The Nazis didn't even allow Jews to keep pet dogs. Cats, sure, to keep rats and mice away. But dogs would have delivered a nasty mauling to a Nazi who broke into a shop window and grabbed some valuables on display or given a fair warning that the SS was there to take the family off to 'resettlement'. Resettlement that goes from a gas chamber and through a chimney.

White people in South Africa have gun rights, but how do they protect their guns? Dogs. Three 80-pound dogs acting as one predator is effectively one lioness, especially in the dark. A burglar can easily recognize that he is no longer the top of the food chain when he meets 'the Other Big Cat'. Lionesses prey on humans, and three medium-to-large dogs can suggest much the same about themselves.

Germans have fewer 'gun rights' today than Germans had under the Nazis (so long as one was on good terms with the Nazis), but by all accounts Germany is about as close to a model of liberal democracy as there can be. Freedom House recognizes Germany as better at human rights and civil liberties than the United States.

Want a defense? Get one with teeth and claws. Dogs give very bad bites, and they do not scratch like cats. They scratch worse. Having been scratched by a pet dog that meant no harm and gotten hospitalized for such, I watch dogs' front paws closely in their presence. In South Africa one would compare a pack of dogs to a lioness. In America, one would compare a pack of dogs to a bear.

I once visited a jewelry store in which the owner, an avid hunter, displayed a trophy bear with fur similar in color to that of my golden cocker spaniel. Except for the ears, the proportions were about the same. About everything was three times as large in linear dimensions, and if you roughly cube the dog into the size of the bear, then that golden cocker spaniel would be hard to distinguish from that bear. Would you like to meet a 270-pound cocker spaniel? Would you break into a house with five thirty-pound cocker spaniels if you were a burglar looking for stuff to pawn for a fix of heroin? Those five dogs might as well be one 150-pound leopard.

And all of which are no comparison to an armed human.  I can't help but look back at hunter-gatherer days when it was the dogs job to run down the prey and then wait for the humans to get there.  This trend is made no better in these bang you are dead days.

I know you have a dog fetish, but you really should give up the deadliness difference.  And the law difference.  And on understanding the founding father's perspective.  Or understanding the red perspective.  In fact, you are missing about half the gun issue.

(11-03-2018, 09:08 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]I suggest that you read about the history of the Militia Acts of 1792.  It gives a very clear picture of exactly what the framers of the Constitution had in mind.  It specified that individuals were to have, what were at the time state of the art, small arms.  Looking at what the founding fathers had to say it becomes clear that they considered owning firearms to be an individual right.  They regarded a large standing army as a threat to liberty.

By the way the Taliban are winning in Afganistan which has little more than infantry small arms.  The situation hasn't gotten any better in the last three years.  The Soviet Union faced the same problem in the eighties and how did that work out for them?

Governments always disarm target populations before genocide.  You are too clueless and short sighted to figure this out.  You simply can't believe that your god, known to the rest of us as the state, is capable of such evil but it is.

I do think autocratic governments act quite differently than long term democratic ones, but I agree with you on the Founding Father's well documented perspective and the Taliban's (and other similar autocratic factions) ability to keep proxy wars alive by not winning.  Well, George Washington would have understood.  Even George III understood eventually.

(11-03-2018, 11:54 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]I know you have a dog fetish, but you really should give up the deadliness difference.  And the law difference.  And on understanding the founding father's perspective.  Or understanding the red perspective.  In fact, you are missing about half the gun issue.

I don't think he is capable of understanding these issues because they lead to conclusions that he does not like.  He simply can't believe that governments tend to kill their own citizens.  He believes that it can't happen here but the founding fathers had a rather different opinion which is reflected in their own actions and writings.  In a very real sense the founding fathers would have agreed with Mao that political power grows out of a barrel of a gun and so they decided the people must be armed to insure that they held ultimate political power.

Pbrower missed rather more than half of the issue and seems to be heading to Eric the Obtuse levels of ignorance.  From a strictly numbers point of view the garden variety criminal can't even begin to match the body count that governments routinely rack up.  They simply refuse to consider the second and third order effects of policy choices.

I must admit that I really don't understand pbrower's obsession on dogs either.

(11-03-2018, 11:54 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-03-2018, 10:24 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]The Nazis didn't even allow Jews to keep pet dogs. Cats, sure, to keep rats and mice away. But dogs would have delivered a nasty mauling to a Nazi who broke into a shop window and grabbed some valuables on display or given a fair warning that the SS was there to take the family off to 'resettlement'. Resettlement that goes from a gas chamber and through a chimney.

White people in South Africa have gun rights, but how do they protect their guns? Dogs. Three 80-pound dogs acting as one predator is effectively one lioness, especially in the dark. A burglar can easily recognize that he is no longer the top of the food chain when he meets 'the Other Big Cat'. Lionesses prey on humans, and three medium-to-large dogs can suggest much the same about themselves.

Germans have fewer 'gun rights' today than Germans had under the Nazis (so long as one was on good terms with the Nazis), but by all accounts Germany is about as close to a model of liberal democracy as there can be. Freedom House recognizes Germany as better at human rights and civil liberties than the United States.

Want a defense? Get one with teeth and claws. Dogs give very bad bites, and they do not scratch like cats. They scratch worse. Having been scratched by a pet dog that meant no harm and gotten hospitalized for such, I watch dogs' front paws closely in their presence. In South Africa one would compare a pack of dogs to a lioness. In America, one would compare a pack of dogs to a bear.

I once visited a jewelry store in which the owner, an avid hunter, displayed a trophy bear with fur similar in color to that of my golden cocker spaniel. Except for the ears, the proportions were about the same. About everything was three times as large in linear dimensions, and if you roughly cube the dog into the size of the bear, then that golden cocker spaniel would be hard to distinguish from that bear. Would you like to meet a 270-pound cocker spaniel? Would you break into a house with five thirty-pound cocker spaniels if you were a burglar looking for stuff to pawn for a fix of heroin? Those five dogs might as well be one 150-pound leopard.

And all of which are no comparison to an armed human.  I can't help but look back at hunter-gatherer days when it was the dogs job to run down the prey and then wait for the humans to get there.  This trend is made no better in these bang you are dead days.

A dog knows where you belong and where others don't. Nobody wants to get mauled, and people back off from dogs.

But the large, barking dog is the usual, untrained defender. It's really asking for help. The trained security dog sneaks up on an intruder and attacks with no warning except being knocked down (which is a fall, a dangerous situation in itself) before the fangs approached. It's the primal fear, when Man's Best Friend starts acting like a bear or Big Cat, depending upon which predator is part of the local culture. 

But note well: the dog does not have to maul an intruder to drive him off. It's the best-behaved large predator, the one that can leave some doubt about who the top predator is in many places.

Quote:I know you have a dog fetish, but you really should give up the deadliness difference.  And the law difference.  And on understanding the founding father's perspective.  Or understanding the red perspective.  In fact, you are missing about half the gun issue.

The impression of deadliness is enough. "Get the Hell out of here!" is the message. The scariest situation that I have ever had came while I did Census work -- four dogs, about 80 pounds each, charging a door with a flimsy latch. I was safe so long as the latch did not break. Do the math. 320 pounds of predator facing me without a weapon? I quickly got the primal fear of being killed and eaten.

I might have gotten an award that one usually gets posthumously -- a Darwin Award. That is for doing something stupid that takes one permanently out of the gene pool, like dying or having one's reproductive capacities put at an end. Instead I submitted one
from a Detroit-area news report.

A man was driving on Interstate 75 in Detroit while watching pornography. He made a turn too fast and was thrown through the sunroof -- and killed.

His pants were down at the time.

(11-04-2018, 12:16 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-03-2018, 11:54 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]I know you have a dog fetish, but you really should give up the deadliness difference.  And the law difference.  And on understanding the founding father's perspective.  Or understanding the red perspective.  In fact, you are missing about half the gun issue.

I don't think he is capable of understanding these issues because they lead to conclusions that he does not like.  He simply can't believe that governments tend to kill their own citizens.  He believes that it can't happen here but the founding fathers had a rather different opinion which is reflected in their own actions and writings.  In a very real sense the founding fathers would have agreed with Mao that political power grows out of a barrel of a gun and so they decided the people must be armed to insure that they held ultimate political power.

Pbrower missed rather more than half of the issue and seems to be heading to Eric the Obtuse levels of ignorance.  From a strictly numbers point of view the garden variety criminal can't even begin to match the body count that governments routinely rack up.  They simply refuse to consider the second and third order effects of policy choices.

I must admit that I really don't understand pbrower's obsession on dogs either.

I think it is some sort of weapons substitution.  He is not helpless without weapons cause he can get another weapon?  Thus, he imagines his best case and assumes it the usual case?  Anyway, he cannot see where the Truth gets left behind.

Anyway, he follows the Jim Crow interpretation as much as you follow the Founding Father's. Understandable, as the Jim Crow interpretation was generally accepted for a century plus. I am biased about anything to do with Jim Crow. One must admit both Jim Crow and the Founding Fathers had political agendas. I just admire the Founding Father's agenda of rights to white males more than the Jim Crow agenda of denying rights to blacks. This is not to say that rights to only white males is not lacking.

But I do think a belief in representative democracy, that violence glorified was necessary more in the Industrial Age than the current new age, makes the Founding Father's glorification of violence as less necessary for change and defense against tyranny. He just does not see violence as necessary against the government sometimes as a valid argument???

(11-04-2018, 03:55 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-04-2018, 12:16 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]I don't think he is capable of understanding these issues because they lead to conclusions that he does not like.  He simply can't believe that governments tend to kill their own citizens.  He believes that it can't happen here but the founding fathers had a rather different opinion which is reflected in their own actions and writings.  In a very real sense the founding fathers would have agreed with Mao that political power grows out of a barrel of a gun and so they decided the people must be armed to insure that they held ultimate political power.

Pbrower missed rather more than half of the issue and seems to be heading to Eric the Obtuse levels of ignorance.  From a strictly numbers point of view the garden variety criminal can't even begin to match the body count that governments routinely rack up.  They simply refuse to consider the second and third order effects of policy choices.

I must admit that I really don't understand pbrower's obsession on dogs either.

Anyway, he follows the Jim Crow interpretation as much as you follow the Founding Father's.  Understandable, as the Jim Crow interpretation was generally accepted for a century plus.  I am biased about anything to do with Jim Crow.  One must admit both Jim Crow and the Founding Fathers had political agendas.  I just admire the Founding Father's agenda of rights to white males more than the Jim Crow agenda of denying rights to blacks.  This is not to say that rights to only white males is not lacking.

The Jim Crow agenda was an unfortunate consequence, one of many, from the compromise of allowing slavery to continue after the American Revolution.  I am not a big fan as you might imagine since involuntary servitude is not something libertarians are in favor of.  This forms the basis of the libertarian view of taxation as theft.

The Founding Fathers on the whole, Alexander Hamilton is an exception, could be considered in modern terms to be Minarchist Libertarians.  Murray Rothbard's Conceived In Libery covers this evolution toward individual liberty from Colonial Times to the early Federalist period.  Their agenda was to create a government that was limited in power which was an unheard of idea in the eighteenth century.

Modern liberals and progressives are not and never have been in favor of individual liberty.  The battle always has and always be between liberty and tyranny.

(11-04-2018, 06:08 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]The Jim Crow agenda was an unfortunate consequence, one of many, from the compromise of allowing slavery to continue after the American Revolution.  I am not a big fan as you might imagine since involuntary servitude is not something libertarians are in favor of.  This forms the basis of the libertarian view of taxation as theft.

The Founding Fathers on the whole, Alexander Hamilton is an exception, could be considered in modern terms to be Minarchist Libertarians.  Murray Rothbard's Conceived In Libery covers this evolution toward individual liberty from Colonial Times to the early Federalist period.  Their agenda was to create a government that was limited in power which was an unheard of idea in the eighteenth century.

Modern liberals and progressives are not and never have been in favor of individual liberty.  The battle always has and always be between liberty and tyranny.

But as I see it, liberty should not get in the way of human rights.  Robber Barrons thus should not get in the way of food, shelter, health care, retirement and other basic rights supposedly guaranteed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights.  Thus, so long as the absurd division of wealth exists side by side with a denial of rights, this progressive for one can scream.

Democracy can take it further.  The poor generally have more votes than the rich.  Again, I think democracy too should be limited by the rights of the individual.

And rights do not guarantee the right to harm another.    Your right to swing your fist around ends where my nose begins.  There is no right to yell 'fire' in a crowded theater.  There is no right to insult and demean minorities.  Too often some people abuse the concept of liberty out of a desire to harm others.

When you embrace this view, freedom and rights become natural and often benign enemies.  Government exists to secure rights among people, among other reasons.

But not a bad summary of some basics.

(11-04-2018, 06:08 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-04-2018, 03:55 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-04-2018, 12:16 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]I don't think he is capable of understanding these issues because they lead to conclusions that he does not like.  He simply can't believe that governments tend to kill their own citizens.  He believes that it can't happen here but the founding fathers had a rather different opinion which is reflected in their own actions and writings.  In a very real sense the founding fathers would have agreed with Mao that political power grows out of a barrel of a gun and so they decided the people must be armed to insure that they held ultimate political power.

Pbrower missed rather more than half of the issue and seems to be heading to Eric the Obtuse levels of ignorance.  From a strictly numbers point of view the garden variety criminal can't even begin to match the body count that governments routinely rack up.  They simply refuse to consider the second and third order effects of policy choices.

I must admit that I really don't understand pbrower's obsession on dogs either.

Anyway, he follows the Jim Crow interpretation as much as you follow the Founding Father's.  Understandable, as the Jim Crow interpretation was generally accepted for a century plus.  I am biased about anything to do with Jim Crow.  One must admit both Jim Crow and the Founding Fathers had political agendas.  I just admire the Founding Father's agenda of rights to white males more than the Jim Crow agenda of denying rights to blacks.  This is not to say that rights to only white males is not lacking.

The Jim Crow agenda was an unfortunate consequence, one of many, from the compromise of allowing slavery to continue after the American Revolution.  I am not a big fan as you might imagine since involuntary servitude is not something libertarians are in favor of.  This forms the basis of the libertarian view of taxation as theft.

The Founding Fathers on the whole, Alexander Hamilton is an exception, could be considered in modern terms to be Minarchist Libertarians.  Murray Rothbard's Conceived In Libery covers this evolution toward individual liberty from Colonial Times to the early Federalist period.  Their agenda was to create a government that was limited in power which was an unheard of idea in the eighteenth century.

Modern liberals and progressives are not and never have been in favor of individual liberty.  The battle always has and always be between liberty and tyranny.

The Jim Crow heritage results from a hypocrisy characteristic of feudal times: freedom for the lords, but not for the peasants. In the feudal world the King was simply the biggest landlord, and the other nobles were lesser lords. The peasants were simply machines of meat as disposable as livestock. Taxation in medieval times was in kind -- the only production then available (largely foodstuffs) and the only commodity regularly available  (peasant labor that could be drafted at will for the alleged good of him). Without a cash economy, as most people never saw even so much as a coin, taxation as we now understand it was impossible. Taxation came either from taking food off the peasant's table or compelling the peasant to perform service, especially in war. The peasant? If he thought his life precious and so asserted himself, he would be killed -- burning at the stake? impalement? A paradise for the lord of the manor and his privileged retainers was a Hell for the peasant.

With the abolition of slavery the slave proletariat became nominally free, but economically destitute among people who owned the property but needed toil. For a while the freedmen got some political power in the name of the Republican Party, but the reality that people must still eat and that power comes from a gun set in. Within ten years the freedmen were slaves of personal needs that they could meet only one way, in subjection to the landowning elite.

As Abraham Lincoln put it, as Carl Sandburg selected it, and as Aaron Copland set it in music in a tribute to Abraham Lincoln (A Lincoln Portrait) as the expression of another struggle against one of the most egregious forms of slavery to have ever existed:

Quote:Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country

It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says "You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy

That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth

America would do its share to 'disenthrall' Germany and Japan, whose leaders had brought a new form of egregious slavery upon free peoples.

No rapacious elite deserves unqualified power to take whatever it wants. Priests? Pharaohs? Kings? Emperors? Generals? Lords? Planters? Plutocrats? Party hacks? Executives? Mobsters? They have all showed themselves unsuited to such power. The libertarians are no more trustworthy in their efforts to find a rationale for a few people having complete power over the economy. It will take a Klan, a Cheka, or a Gestapo to establish the dystopia of a few people owning everything or controlling everything and making everyone else helpless. The first Pharaoh, Donald Trump, and Kim Jong-Un are more alike than they seem. 

(11-04-2018, 06:08 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]The Jim Crow agenda was an unfortunate consequence, one of many, from the compromise of allowing slavery to continue after the American Revolution.  I am not a big fan as you might imagine since involuntary servitude is not something libertarians are in favor of.  This forms the basis of the libertarian view of taxation as theft.

The Founding Fathers on the whole, Alexander Hamilton is an exception, could be considered in modern terms to be Minarchist Libertarians.  Murray Rothbard's Conceived In Libery covers this evolution toward individual liberty from Colonial Times to the early Federalist period.  Their agenda was to create a government that was limited in power which was an unheard of idea in the eighteenth century.

Modern liberals and progressives are not and never have been in favor of individual liberty.  The battle always has and always be between liberty and tyranny.

I am not nearly in agreement with calling the Founding Fathers Minarchists. Ben Franklin at least was famous for approving taxes to provide services should a majority go along.  The Constitution allows for collection of taxes to provide an enumerated set of services.  The state and local levels provide other, less limited, services.

In one local town, there was one group of elders that wanted the town to build a senior citizens center, and another group of mostly parents who wanted to build a new school.  At first the two groups worked against each other, thinking they were competing for the same budget dollars.  Later they agreed to lobby for each other, that working together enough votes could be mustered that both could be provided.  Now, I don't see that the majority of the people wanting services and making the payments is tyranny.  If the bulk of a community wants a service enough to pay for it, they should get the service.

So says this guy who never got married, never had children, and has never entered a senior center.  So says a guy who for many years contributed without complaint to an employer based health plan, and does not feel the slightest bit of guilt nowadays for drawing from a government based plan.  I'll pull my weight, expect my due, and no two people need identical services.  

And some work for a strong community, not self interest.

The Constitution written and passed by the founding fathers certainly follows that theory.  While computers and networks could eventually provide bills only for services used and approved of, taxing anyone who lives in a territory and has the representation to vote for or against taxes and services is the best the founding fathers could do.  

Democracy, overall, has proven a good thing.  

I like the theory in general.  In practice, the government  has been bought by the robber barons.  A few pay less than their share, resulting in a huge imbalance of wealth.  A few get services that the majority has no need for and would oppose if they could.  The politicians just care more for those who give large donations than serving the people well.  That is a problem, one that is well within range of being solved these days.  Various people are mad enough at the Establishment to seize the government back.  When they do so, there will be enough anger at the Establishment that they are apt to be severely punished for years of treating the people with contempt.

(11-04-2018, 10:28 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-04-2018, 06:08 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]The Jim Crow agenda was an unfortunate consequence, one of many, from the compromise of allowing slavery to continue after the American Revolution.  I am not a big fan as you might imagine since involuntary servitude is not something libertarians are in favor of.  This forms the basis of the libertarian view of taxation as theft.

The Founding Fathers on the whole, Alexander Hamilton is an exception, could be considered in modern terms to be Minarchist Libertarians.  Murray Rothbard's Conceived In Libery covers this evolution toward individual liberty from Colonial Times to the early Federalist period.  Their agenda was to create a government that was limited in power which was an unheard of idea in the eighteenth century.

Modern liberals and progressives are not and never have been in favor of individual liberty.  The battle always has and always be between liberty and tyranny.

But as I see it, liberty should not get in the way of human rights.  Robber Barrons thus should not get in the way of food, shelter, health care, retirement and other basic rights supposedly guaranteed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights.  Thus, so long as the absurd division of wealth exists side by side with a denial of rights, this progressive for one can scream.

Progressives tend to define everything as a right and has no concept of the difference between positive and negative rights.  It never occurs to you that the progressive tendency to declare everything to be a human right would create a tyranny on par with the Soviet Union.

The problem with positive rights is that you have to apply coercion to get the resources for those things that you consider to be rights.  There is no limit to what progressive consider to be rights which is why progressives tend to be such a nasty bunch of totalitarians.

(11-05-2018, 12:45 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]Progressives tend to define everything as a right and has no concept of the difference between positive and negative rights.  It never occurs to you that the progressive tendency to declare everything to be a human right would create a tyranny on par with the Soviet Union.

The problem with positive rights is that you have to apply coercion to get the resources for those things that you consider to be rights.  There is no limit to what progressive consider to be rights which is why progressives tend to be such a nasty bunch of totalitarians.

Which rights are you opposed to? That a child has sufficient food to eat? Free speech? You are fond of talking about generics, and avoid speaking about how you really want society to work.

I do agree that there has been too much legislation from the judicial bench including the invention of new rights, but in general it is hard to define a new right through the amendment process. The judges are never isolated from the political element.

In general there exists people with little compassion for others, who care only for themselves, and would just as soon see other people suffer. Again, so long as the huge division of wealth exists because of the suffering of others, the error is in the direction of not enough guaranteed minimums.