Guns, Guns Guns

Michael Everett wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:Damn, this forum really needs a popcorn emoticon, because this is utterly hilarious.

Already popped and ready to eat!

Well... If we´re using smileys from elsewhere...











And while i´m at it, i just found this nice little piece of satire:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Syjp9lsWBhc
How a reporter might WANT to report the *ing news.

MAD-4A wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:Mmm, yes that´s usually one of the ways a "civil war happens".

Definition being "a war between citizens of the same country."

No - you truncated the definition - a "Civil War" is:

a war between political factions or regions within the same country.

or (to elaborate) a war between different faction in the same country for control of the entire country. The South was not trying to control the north (regardless of what Kevin Willmott claimed). What happened in 1861 was a war for southern independence or a war of succession - no more a "Civil War" than the war between the colonies & England in 1776 or the war between Mexico & Spain in 1825 or the war between Mexico & Texas 11 years later. The Southern states declared independence and formed their own separate country, which was then invaded by the federal government, controlling the remaining states. Calling a pear a peach doesn't let you make peach cobbler out of it. I was a (failed) "War of Independence" not a "Civil War".

Keep on believing that if you want.
Maybe one day you will realise why noone agrees with you.

That's my whole point. I agree with you that the great majority of USA citizens of the time (white, male, land owners) regarded all slaves with contempt. Times change and societies with them. Thus the whole of the reverence held regarding what these privileged gentlemen wrote at the time is misplaced in today's society.
Their stance was to maintain their status quo, and I'm sure that they would be horrified to see the influence that a black woman like Oprah has nowadays.

Also not being a US citizen I may be wrong, but my understanding is that the northern states were actually much richer than the south, and the whole slavery/cotton economy was unravelling anyway?

MAD-4A wrote:

The E wrote:Oh, and before I forget, as historically significant as the Declaration of Independence was, it is not a legally binding document for US Citizens or any part of the US Government.

Yes it is - It is the basis of the very existencee of the US government - to throw it out is to throw out all legitimacy of the US government even existing in the first place - which means without that document, we rightfully revert to British Colonial rule! That is the charter on which all other US legal documents rest.

Daryl wrote:All men are created equal.
That phrase conveniently ignored all the male slaves on the founder's own plantations, and specifically excluded all the female humans in the country. So does this "individual sovereignty" only apply to white adult male humans nowadays?

As with so many people who grow up in this modern Ivory-Tower of political-correctness today, you apparently view history with the rose-colored-glasses of your own modern prejudices. Do you really believe the $#!% that the south was a bunch of racist bigots and (somehow) the North sent 100s of thousands of their white sons to die freeing the poor blacks down there because it was just the right thing to do? - no the invasion of the south was about money$$$$ - Tobacco and Cotton crops - the "Oil" of the day. A reporter asked Lincoln why they shouldn't just let the south go, his reply was "Then where would we get our money from?" You don't think he didn't use the "N" word all his life - he wrote it in his letters.
Stop being so prejudice against the standards of the day & try to understand things based on what was happening at the time - there was a reason for the 3/5ths clause - it was to help the slaves not belittle them. Do you think if they made the Declaration of Independence or The Constitution include the slaves as free, that the southern colonies would have ever joined?

MAD-4A wrote:

The E wrote:... The Declaration of Independence, as significant as it was, is NOT a constitution. It is NOT a legally binding document for Citizens of the US, the US government, or the UK government...

a) I never said it was a "Constitution" & b) It is the basis for the claim that the American people should not be members of the United Kingdom. The Treaty of Paris was the ratification of the Declaration of Independence. Disregarding it, disregards the claim of independence and thus refutiates the Treaty of Paris and returns the right to rule back to the English crown. It is not irrelevant and it is morally binding to the American people. It is the basis of our independence from the English crown and we are morally obligated, by that fact, to live up to it's ideas. Converting the US to socialist despotism is a violation of those moral obligations and a refutation of both the document and the independence it provided, thus an act of treason.

If the Declaration of Independence is morally binding, then how do the US incarceration/capital punishment rates and the phrase about the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness co-exist?

MAD-4A wrote:Disregarding [the Declaration of Independence], disregards the claim of independence and thus refutiates the Treaty of Paris and returns the right to rule back to the English crown.

No, it doesn't. The treaty of Paris is a standalone agreement between the government of the UK and representatives of the people of the US. In its first article, it says:

His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.

Effectively, this abandons any claims the UK had at the time, and by including the "heirs and successors" of the british crown, it ensures that no future british government may lay claim to the territory and people of the US.

No matter what you may believe, if you guys were to abandon the US constitution, you wouldn't revert to being subjects of the british crown. That just isn't in the cards.

It is not irrelevant and it is morally binding to the American people. It is the basis of our independence from the English crown and we are morally obligated, by that fact, to live up to it's ideas.

Even if you were (you aren't), being morally obligated is something substantially different to being legally obligated.
To repeat: The only reason we're having this conversation is because PeterZ insists that no country apart from the US recognizes individual sovereignty as the basis from which its government derives its power and authority.
I have shown that:
-There is no language in the legally binding documents defining the relationship between US citizens and the US government that defines a concept of individual sovereignty
-The formulations implementing popular sovereignty in modern constitutions are largely equivalent

So far, you and PeterZ have both failed to refute any of these points.

Converting the US to socialist despotism is a violation of those moral obligations and a refutation of both the document and the independence it provided, thus an act of treason.

No, it is not. If the will of the people as expressed through the mechanisms you set up yourself indicates that they wish to alter the terms of the social contract, then it is perfectly legal. Democracy doesn't mean that everything has to stay exactly as it was, after all.

I'm probably assuming too much, but the Fox current affairs program that asserted the same individual sovereign rights nonsense (as several here do) went on to say that countries such as Australia and western Europe have lost individual freedoms because they don't possess "individual sovereign rights" and the citizens are unable to publically criticize their governments.
I have a fond memory of showing a friend I was staying with near London how to Google your own name. Up comes a Letter To The Editor of our national paper where I described our then PM as a Bush suppository. This was just after the "coalition of the willing" invaded Iraq. The (right wing Murdock) paper liked my letter so much that they got their political cartoonist to do a very funny and rude cartoon of it. I'm still free and stirring the pot.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we just had 250000 people protesting TTIP in our capital. And tons and tons of speech and text critical of our government is produced every single week.

I could, of course, just be imagining things. Or falling for an elaborate disinformation stunt orchestrated by the Government to make us believe that giving voice to government criticism is an OK thing to do around here.

Daryl wrote:I'm probably assuming too much, but the Fox current affairs program that asserted the same individual sovereign rights nonsense (as several here do) went on to say that countries such as Australia and western Europe have lost individual freedoms because they don't possess "individual sovereign rights" and the citizens are unable to publically criticize their governments.
I have a fond memory of showing a friend I was staying with near London how to Google your own name. Up comes a Letter To The Editor of our national paper where I described our then PM as a Bush suppository. This was just after the "coalition of the willing" invaded Iraq. The (right wing Murdock) paper liked my letter so much that they got their political cartoonist to do a very funny and rude cartoon of it. I'm still free and stirring the pot.

I must admit to sending our former Prime Minister a message saying that he wasn't fit to lick shit off of (former Prime Minister) John Howard's loafers.

Never did hear back.



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jchilds wrote:If the Declaration of Independence is morally binding, then how do the US incarceration/capital punishment rates and the phrase about the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness co-exist?

Why do people not understand something so simple? OK, to explain...You don't have the right to do what ever you want to who-ever you want to. When you violate someone else's rights, you, by that act, give up your right to them. So, if you kill someone, then you have stolen their right to life and forfeit your own. Its that simple. Its like the old saying you cant steel from a thief, you cant go around steeling something from someone else and then complain when another person takes it from you.

gcomeau wrote:Those words you're using don't mean what you're trying to use them to mean.

I know exactly what they mean, Ratify: “making it officially valid”

gcomeau wrote:The Declaration of Independence was absolutely not "ratified" at the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The Treaty of Paris in no way whatsoever so much as referenced the Declaration.

It didn’t say it in the words – You think everything has to be written down in every document? If that were so then, as my example before, every document would need and entire dictionary for a preamble, The Treaty of Paris legitimized the existence of an “independent” country where the British colonies had been, a country whose very existence was based on the Declaration of Independence making that document legitimate (and thus – by definition - ratified). Had the British won, the Declaration would have been burned and all the founding fathers hunted down and killed (or chased out beyond British reach).

gcomeau wrote: No it does not. The Treaty of Paris is a STAND ALONE legally binding international agreement. It did not in any way at all depend on anything written in the Declaration.

The Treaty of Paris was (as it states in the title) A Treaty: (a formally concluded and ratified agreement between countries.) therefore it is an agreement between two already existing countries and (by definition) could not be what created the country in the first place – that was the Declaration of Independence, which created the country, the Treaty of Paris Ratified (made "officially valid") the country which the Declaration created. - simple cause and effect here.