Posted on 09/11/2008 10:57:32 PM PDT by joanie-f
Most conservatives decry the ‘bread and circuses’ atmosphere of modern politics, principally because the consistent focus on meaningless pursuits takes the citizens’ focus away from the important issues … even crises … that must be considered, and faced, if we are to remain a free society.
Our Founders continually warned that liberty, and the republican form of government that is best suited to ensure it, can only be maintained through an informed citizenry.
Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, are necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties.
Many of us consider the ‘bread and circuses’ nature of modern American society to be most frequently exhibited in our adulation of the Hollywood crowd, professional sports figures, and reality programming, the accumulation of creature comforts, the me-oriented nature of the citizenry, the need to ‘be entertained’, etc. … with an incremental de-emphasis on genuine heroes, the importance of personal character and responsibility, and a sense of civic duty ... which includes being educated about our history, and concerned about our future as a free society.
I completely agree that all of the above trends have increased in intensity over the past fifty years, and that, if they continue to gain momentum, our very lives, liberties and sovereignty as a nation are in grave danger.
A sub-level of this toxic trend has become glaringly apparent over the past few weeks of the election campaign.
Our republic is facing potentially deadly crises the likes of which there is no historical precedent:
... and on and on, ad infinitum ...
One would think that, with one of the (if not the) most crucial presidential elections in the history of our republic approaching in fewer than eight weeks, the crises mentioned above would be foremost on the minds of every American who intends to step into the voting booth on November 4th. And, even more importantly, one would think that the American media (the self-appointed purveyors of information and education) would be hard at work seeking, and reporting, the candidates’ opinions on, and proposed solutions to, all of the above.
Yet what do we predominantly see and hear in all of our media outlets? What are we being subliminally told is of utmost importance in this crucial election?
Many of my conservative friends, all of whom are true patriots, have voiced the opinion over the past few days that they are glad Barack Obama and the left are ‘getting a taste of their own medicine’ via the production of the new RNC ad that plays off of Obama’s lipstick/pig gaffe, and they are pleased with all of the attention his gaffe, whether innocent or purposeful, is receiving.
I could not possibly disagree more vehemently.
By producing such an ad, and even debating Obama’s intent – indeed, by even giving credence to this story – conservatives are accomplishing three fatal outcomes:
(1) they are legitimizing the bread and circus atmosphere in this election process
(2) they are stealing a worthless page out of the left’s playbook
(3) they are spending major campaign funds on nonsense advertising that would be better spent educating the public about issues of critical importance to our republic
On my list of 'Things I Want the Voting Public to Know about Barack Obama That the Media Aren't Reporting', there are 8,563 items ahead of the fact that he may (or may not) have referred to his opponent as a pig.
I think the McCain campaign, and the RNC, should be telling us about those 8,563 things in their campaign ads, and leave the lipstick remark to those who believe it has some importance in the grand scheme of things. The fact that they have wasted the donations of loyal Republicans on such nonsense is infuriating to me.
The media, academia, and the political left profit from such abject stupidity. It allows them to fill the airwaves with such drivel, and to scrupulously avoid discussion of Barack Obama’s dark, longstanding connections to anti-American zealots and his agenda to impose his Marxist/black separatist ideology on a populace that has been programmed to be preoccupied with ‘looking the other way’.
Half of the American electorate is ready to put such a man in the White House. And I believe that ninety percent of that group possesses no real knowledge of his infamous background or his ultra-left-leaning agenda.
Why have so many of our countrymen fallen into such an ignorant stupor? Because, for fifty years, we have allowed the leftists in the media, our institutions of ‘higher education’, and Hollywood to incrementally turn our focus away from the enemy within ... and toward tattletale pranks and kindergarten pursuits.
I don't give a rat's patoot what derogatory label one candidate may affix to another. What I do care about is whether that candidate intends to dismantle the noble foundations upon which my country was built.
And the media be damned.
We're going to pay a terrible price for allowing ourselves to be so pliant in the hands of those who most certainly do not have our best interests at heart.
~ joanie
No one is trying to fool you. You are fooling yourself by not listening carefully to the arguments being made. You bring up a straw man of “states rights trumps unalienable rights types” since there are none on this thread. It would be more useful to the discussion to stick to the arguments that exist here rather than bringing in bogeymen to make your point. What I have said is not “states rights trumps unalienable rights.” Nothing trumps unalienable rights. That is not the issue regardless of how insistent you are that it is. The issue is where does the legal authority lie?
The authority lies with the people. When they withdraw their political support from compromisers with evil like John McCain, the abortion holocaust will come to an end, post haste. But, as long as good people allow themselves to be suckered like they are right now, it will continue. End of story.
I agree with that. But that is a different aspect of the issue than what has been under discussion.
This is a broad fight.
Of course it is. That shouldn’t preclude discussing each aspect of the issue on its own merits.
Sen. John McCain's record of working with Democrats easily outstrips Sen. Barack Obama's efforts with Republicans, according to an analysis by The Washington Times of their legislative records.
Whether looking at bills they have led on or bills they have signed onto, Mr. McCain has reached across the aisle far more frequently and with more members than Mr. Obama since the latter came to the Senate in 2005.
In fact, by several measures, Mr. McCain has been more likely to team up with Democrats than with members of his own party. Democrats made up 55 percent of his political partners over the last two Congresses...since 2005, Mr. McCain has led as chief sponsor of 82 bills, on which he had 120 Democratic co-sponsors out of 220 total, for an average of 55 percent. He worked with Democrats on 50 of his bills, and of those, 37 times Democrats outnumber Republicans as co-sponsors.
The federal government has no right or authority over these unalienable rights, but is charged with their protection. Therefore, having no right over them, they cannot delegate that right to the states, severally or otherwise, nor can they delegate the protection, or interpretation thereof to the states, as that protection is endowed to every American equally under the Constitution … Life is decided in the most Holy of Courts, and no other should presume, without due process.
That would be a noble, common sense approach were it not for the fact, as mentioned above, that the left has made an art form out of messing with semantics, to their benefit. Unless you can come up with a Constitutional definition of ‘life’ (good luck!), your noble argument is all but toothless.
Why it is a noble and common sense approach is because it is the correct one.
There is no Constitutional definition of Life because the law has no business defining life at all. That is in fact, the problem.
So we’re back at the drawing board. Since the definition of ‘life’, God’s most generous gift to man, has now been desecrated to the degree that we must debate it -- just as we debate the definition of ‘marriage’ and the meaning of ‘is’ -- then we must seek out the most effective, Constitutional way in which to defend it. In America 2008 (sadly, a far cry from America 1787), that way is to overturn Roe V. Wade, and get the power to define out of the hands of Washington, and back into the hands of the states (the people), where it belongs.
Again, I will reiterate that this is no balm:
As long as Life is in the hands of any man it remains subject to man's law, and thereby to man's definition. What man has the right to award, he has also the right to repeal. What man sees fit to grant, he can also find himself worthy to remove.
The solution remains the same. It is paramount to cause Congress to assert itself, that it would slap down this rebellious court (and indeed, ALL rebellious courts throughout the land), how ever that end is achieved. It is not enough that the court correct itself, as that leaves the precedent in place that it may overstep it's boundaries if it so chooses.
It is *not* proper for the court to legislate from the bench. It's role is to interpret existing law. That it does take it upon itself to legislate is an affront to our lawmakers, and ultimately to the Constitution itself. We must therefore strive to elect those who will strive to strike them down on that premise alone.
The federal gov't didn't grant Inalienable rights and therefore cannot protect them..
The federal government can ONLY alienate them..
Look, be FOR abortion. You use their argument.
I am against abortion and I use the Consitution which clearly indicates the “right to life is an unalienable Right” granted by the Creator and to be upheld by our Judeo Christian government. We have failed ourselves by not enforcing this as well as my Creator. Again, I don’t know if you are an atheist.
Now if you are an atheist, I can better understand your position.
If you read the Constiituion you will understand the in no way shape or form is abortion one of our founding principles. SAHME on YOU! It is not a “state” right to murder the unborn. It never was a “right” till the Constituion was perverted for policitical reasons.
AGAIN, read it:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed…
—The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
Consider the above words, and this is what we learn:
The right to life is a “self-evident truth;” it is not based on the speculations and shifting opinions of men.
The right to life is “unalienable” and an essential part of us. It exists independently from what others want. It is not a grant from government. It exists, whether there is a government or not. And it certainly can’t be ruled out of existence by unelected judges.
The government derives its “just Powers from the Consent of the Governed,” namely us. The Founding Fathers believed in “the capability of a people to govern themselves,” as Abraham Lincoln put it.
The reason for government is “to secure these Rights.” So the Constitution is, to use the words of the political scientist Paul Rahe, the “instrument for the im-plementation” of the Declaration of Independence. Thus, judges are not free to ignore the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence.
Instead of being guided by the Declaration of Independence, the pro-abortion majorities in the Supreme Court’s abortion cases since 1973 have blocked out the bright light of the Declaration and groped around in the resulting “penumbra” and made up a new “right” to suit their purpose. To grasp how far down we have come from the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, try fitting this new “right” of a mother to kill her unborn child to the concepts of a “self-evident truth” or an “unalienable right.”
No more pings.
It’s time for YOU to move on.
We will NOT agree on this issue.
REMOVE me from the ping list for this topic.
You will not brow beat me into taking the pro abortion stand - which is what your contention is.
I want abortion banned and the Constitution taken seriously.
Look, be FOR abortion. You use their argument.
I am against abortion and I use the Constitution which clearly indicates the “right to life is an unalienable Right” granted by the Creator and to be upheld by our Judeo Christian government. We have failed ourselves by not enforcing this as well as my Creator. Again, I don’t know if you are an atheist.
Now if you are an atheist, I can better understand your position.
If you read the Constitution you will understand the in no way shape or form is abortion one of our founding principles. SAHME on YOU! It is not a “state” right to murder the unborn. It never was a “right” till the Constitution was perverted for political reasons.
AGAIN, read it:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed…
—The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
Consider the above words, and this is what we learn:
The right to life is a “self-evident truth;” it is not based on the speculations and shifting opinions of men.
I do not accept you redefinitions of what is obviously a life nor have I lost all my common sense.
Remove my name from your “ping list”.
I have no further to say and I see you as an irritant.
REMOVE me from the ping list for this topic.
You will not brow beat me into taking the pro abortion stand - which is what your contention is.
I want abortion banned and the Constitution taken seriously.
Look, be FOR abortion. You use their argument.
I am against abortion and I use the Constitution which clearly indicates the “right to life is an unalienable Right” granted by the Creator and to be upheld by our Judeo Christian government. We have failed ourselves by not enforcing this as well as my Creator. Again, I don’t know if you are an atheist.
Now if you are an atheist, I can better understand your position.
If you read the Constitution you will understand the in no way shape or form is abortion one of our founding principles. SAHME on YOU! It is not a “state” right to murder the unborn. It never was a “right” till the Constitution was perverted for political reasons.
AGAIN, read it:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed…
—The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
Consider the above words, and this is what we learn:
The right to life is a “self-evident truth;” it is not based on the speculations and shifting opinions of men.
I do not accept you redefinitions of what is obviously a life nor have I lost all my common sense.
Remove my name from your “ping list”.
I have no further to say and I see you as an irritant.
I do not know where you get the idea that I stand against you FRiend, as I argue your position exactly, if I am reading you right. Please read my detailed posts on this thread, where my position is expressed in detail.
I do not believe the Constitution/Declaration of Independence allows any level of government power over inalienable rights, including Life.
I believe the Constitutional power to protect our inalienable rights rests in the federal government to ensure equal protection under the law. This includes innately the responsibility to protect Life in her laws and in her courts at the highest level.
I believe that federal power to protect our inalienable rights limits the states wrt writing laws which would infringe upon those rights, to include, most certainly, the life of the unborn.
IOW, the states, and their courts have no right or jurisdiction to declare abortion to be a legal endeavor whatsoever, nor do the federal level and their court either. That right, the life of a child (or any other man), is left only, and wholly, to the Most Holy of Judges, as it should be.
A court should tread fearfully on this issue, even in such gray areas as do exist, such as "life of the mother"; being ever so careful to handle such cases with every reverence and deference to the Almighty as might be given, for it is His Courts we walk in, and we had best be sure in our intentions.
I apologize for any misunderstanding you might have had, and will honor your request to refrain from pinging you further, until you should state otherwise.
How is that proper? The federal government doesn't "define the parameters" of any other murder statute. It is up to the state to write those laws and, like all laws, are subject to challenge in the court system. You apparently want to bypass that basic structure of our republic. That is not federalist it is centralist. Or, as I accurately described it before, statist.
Not at all, sir. You may not be summarily killed in any state in the Union. Your protection against such treatment flows directly from the Constitution itself. I argue that such treatment is (not "should be") naturally extended to the unborn as well.
It would still be left to the state to write such laws and statutes as they might, the only difference would be that murder of the unborn, or murder of the retarded, or murder of the elderly, or any other "justifiable" killing that the state might try to sanction would be rightly prohibited, in the very same fashion that your own right to life is protected, and would have to pass muster before a (limited) US Supreme Court, interpreting such laws and statutes in the light of the Constitution as is proper.
As is always the case with Conservatism, I do not seek to change the Constitution, I seek to change it back.
No one, least of all me, has suggested the government has "power over unalienable rights." It does have authority to make, enforce and adjudicate law and the founders created a very specific structure by which it is supposed to operate to do that.
Agreed, and that authority, by it's nature is limiting in nature, it proscribes particular borders, and that should always be the proper assumption, as I understand it. It's authority is granted in order to protect those rights which it has no power over.
It is understandable that you don't trust that system since it appears to have failed so often and so badly. But IMO it is not the system that has failed but the use of it by the people and our representatives that is at fault. Over the course of our history the system has been mis-used and ignored. The system can't be blamed for that.
It is not that I do not trust the system. I do not believe that unalienable rights fall under the purview of the states as the Federalists do, and I never will. Nor do I believe them to fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal government, as the statists do, but that they are to remain sacrosanct, above all jurisdictions of men.
The problem is that life in the womb isn't considered to be an individual human life by current legal definition. Until that changes any law outlawing abortion, federal or state, would be subject to rejection. The only way that will change is by having many fervent arguments in the courts of law.
You have correctly identified the problem, but again, I will reiterate: It is no business of man to define what Life is. It is beyond man's jurisdiction. Until the United States Congress passes some sense of that truth to strike down the rebellious justices of the Supreme Court, there will be no justice in this land, and other unalienable rights will become "definable" as well- Do you want someone telling you what "Liberty" is? Do you care to have it's limitations defined in the halls of men?
The federal gov't didn't grant Inalienable rights and therefore cannot protect them..
The federal government can ONLY alienate them..
It was the original states acting severally, IOW, federally, who endeavored to define a government which would protect those unalienable rights. The formation of that government was their singular purpose in uniting, and the protection of those unalienable rights was their foremost, and also the very heart of their agreement.
If this, the equal protection of unalienable rights under law (all men are endowed by their Creator), the very first cause of Union (federation), is not a federal issue, then there is no cause for federation at all.
Thats a load of bull.. if rights are unalienable they cannot be protected because they are already inalienable.. and can only BE stolen.. or submerged in BS..
When rights come from God a government cannot overide them.. a government can only alienate them.. or hide them.. from the nieve..
The Constitution’s language that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” would clearly seem to prohibit abortion.
What i an unborn child but a human being, a person? It has all the genetic characteristis from conception. It comes out a full-blown human being. It clearly isn’t a cat. (Not that there is anything wrong with cats, as my boy kitty who is sitting ehre reminds me.)
So, then since due process has not unfolded, how can abotion be said not to be in violation of the Constitution?
While I hope that the next President will appint good judges who understand and respect the Constitution, I know that judges are only a part of the answer, as you point out, EV. Adn frankly, I don’t trust either Obama or McCain (”I won’t appoint anyone like Alito”)to give us that kind of judges anyway.
Thanks for the Tenth Amendment dicussion. The Tenth Amendment is hte key amendment in the whole thing. If you want to diffuse power, you can’t do better than “to the states respectively or to the people.”
The New Left never realized that “Power to the people” is a CONSERVATIVE principle.
That is the crux of the whole situation. It isn't a matter of making a law to say what forms of killing can and cannot be sanctioned it is about the legally accepted definition of life. Your argument doesn't advance the debate at all.
It is not that I do not trust the system. I do not believe that unalienable rights fall under the purview of the states as the Federalists do, and I never will.
Well, I don't believe that and I don't think "they" do either.
Nor do I believe them to fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal government, as the statists do, but that they are to remain sacrosanct, above all jurisdictions of men.
No argument. It is not a question of what unalienable rights are, in my view, and putting legal authority to make law back in state's hands doesn't do that IMO. Overturning RvW only removes the fed gov's heavy unlegislated hand off of the states. Then states can make their law and have it stand or fall by virtue of legitimate Constitutional challenges where that argument over a proper definition of life and "persons" is supposed to take place. That is taking us back to what it is supposed to be. Given the advances in bio-medical science in the last forty years it would be much harder to make a rational case that a unique human life is not created at the moment of conception. It probably would have been ridiculous even forty years ago had things proceeded through the courts in the proper manner.
You are making it sound like things turn on the definition of unalienable rights. I don't think any court has even entertained a case made on that basis. What they have done is question the definition of human life. They haven't changed the meaning of unalienable rights they simply set the subject, the unborn, outside of its scope. Euthanasia turns on other legal issues.
It is no business of man to define what Life is. It is beyond man's jurisdiction.
Men wrote the Constitution, men wrote the statutes there under, men write all secular laws. Who else is going to decide the legal definitions of our secular canon of law. Do you want to put a piece of blank paper on Mt. Sinai and wait for something to appear on it? Even if something does there is no provision in the Constitution for using that or any other divinely acquired document to use as our secular law. That is the game we have now, the reality we live by, as long as we look to the Constitution as our supreme law of the land.
Until the United States Congress passes some sense of that truth to strike down the rebellious justices of the Supreme Court, there will be no justice in this land, and other unalienable rights will become "definable" as well- Do you want someone telling you what "Liberty" is? Do you care to have it's limitations defined in the halls of men?
As was posted by someone else on this thread it will be a long time until we get a Congress that will do that. It doesn't matter what I want. Reality as it is is what we have. My liberty is already defined in the "halls of men." That would be true even if every law and every court had followed the Constitution to the letter.
Law doesn't "govern lawlessness." On my view, that term is so abstract that it conveys little concrete meaning.
Every law (or nearly so), beyond it's original canon, is written in reaction to some nefarious deed, or trend. That action (or rather, reaction) is in fact what governance is. A good and moral people have little need of governance, and therefore have few laws above them. I would submit that the goodness (lawfulness) of a people can be directly correlated to the lack of burdensome law within their society.
[...] Rather, law imposes penalties on behaviors that are unacceptable/intolerable to society as defined by legislatures expressing and acting on behalf of the public interest. The emphasis is on behaviors.
A correct definition on measure, though I would submit that the emphasis is on deterrence. Efficacy may have little to do with it. Behavior modification reeks of punishment, which is not the idea, or is not meant to be the idea.
Evidently you believe that the mere existence of the penalty will have a profound behavior-modification effect [...]
Within limits, yes, I do. To counter your temperance argument, I need only point to the huge spike in abortions the very moment abortion was made legal. There is no doubt in my mind that legalization has a legitimizing effect.
Whatever "moral issue" was involved here, the mere existence of law couldn't touch it. You can prohibit something all day long, but if the people want it, they will get it. And don't fool yourself about that!
Whatever I may desire, legal or otherwise, is at my fingertips- A temptation more certain for me, perhaps, than for most others... It is both a pleasure and a curse, and a product of my brilliantly misspent yoot. I know perfectly well how easy it is to obtain things on the street, even though I now elect to abide (mostly) within the confines of the law.
Even so, and especially when addictions are removed from the argument, most people do tend to stay within the confines of the law, and that which is made "legal" is given some weight of moral credence, even when it is truly immoral in value. Most of the ailments from which our nation suffers are directly related to "relative morality" or "moral equivalence" finding the weight of some supposed virtue by way of "legality" through the courts, chief among them, of course, the ability to take life without just cause.
Now, through this moral relativism and it's fulcrum, called multiculturalism, we now have an ever burgeoning body of law to define limitations to liberty which were once without need, being a good and gentle people, instead of the people of lawlessness we have become. In striving to write these strange ethics into law, instead of relying on the Judeo-Christian ethic of our birth, we sully ourselves and ruin all that we once called freedom.
As I said. It is just a matter of whose morality one legislates. there is no such thing as a moral vacuum. Amorality is nothing more than a theoretical construct, a word to define a concept, impossible to effect IRL.
I do fully understand your references to Skinner, BTW, and I do not want to make light of your point. There is a point to be made there, of course; but considering my already overly loquacious missive, I will leave it for another day. Suffice it to say that good law is not effected by pleasure or pain, as per Skinner, but by the higher sense of reason. Those who are lawless are merely deterred, be it by fines and penalties to appeal to reason, or by incarceration (or worse) to remove the felon from the order of society.
Of course the federal government cannot grant itself power over life or anything else. It has a charter to execute which it received directly from the sovereign People; nothing more, nothing less — and it is a charter that is supremely devoted to the defense of the life, liberty, and property of the people. All the powers that the federal government has ultimately are grants from the people. (And the people live in the several states.)
Agreed. Perfectly said.
So we can say we understand the federal obligation to defend Life while noting that the federal government is acting as if it did not recognize its obligation. TO US.
YES! This is the point in fact! My question to you then, would be this: In what way was it proper for the federal government, in the light of it's obligation, to have ever allowed any state to legalize abortion in the first place? Herein lies the basis of my argument, and if I am not mistaken, that of my good FRiend EternalVigilance, as well.
I do not believe that justice will be restored unto this nation until Congress, assembled, renews that obligation before the People, and before God, as is proper, and as is their solemn, sworn duty. How they do that does not concern me, but that they do, with all due haste and good effect, is of paramount necessity. We are a nation of laws, and only the law can put the issue of Life beyond it's own reach, where it belongs.
It has certainly been a pleasure speaking with you, betty boop! I have a feeling I would enjoy your company so much more; a back porch, some sweet tea, and deep conversations being more to my liking, where I am less inconvenienced by these accursed thumbs of mine (all 10 of them)! :D
Have a great day.
America always has the Congress it deserves.. Congress always matches the morality of the people.. If the people are good, Congress is good, if the people are corrupt then Congress is corrupt.. If machine politics chooses Congress the people don't approve of Congress.. but deserve it anyway because they didn't revolt.. being corrupt cowards..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.