Running out of trolls, DU sends a quickly outed retread that is turned to a pile of smoking ashes by The Man Himself
Retreads not welcome Choose decency, preserve marriage
Posted on 08/22/2011 10:21:04 AM PDT by HerbieHoover
On Thursday night's "Stossel Show," which airs on the Fox Business channel, Brian Brown was unable to convince host John Stossel or his libertarian guest (and nationally syndicated columnist) David Harsanyi that civil marriage for gays and lesbians harms, or even changes, marriage between heterosexual couples.
In fact, Harsanyi's suggestion that the marriage debate could be solved if the U.S. decided either to privatize all schools or all marriage contracts was treated as a more legitimate idea by Stossel and Stossel's audience....
"It is a mistake to allow government to define what marriage should be -- gay or not," Harsanyi said....
Brown argued. "The state should support what is true and good and beautiful...."
Stossel's live studio audience erupted in laughter at this comment, and Stossel replied: "I don't want the state deciding what's good and beautiful."...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanindependent.com ...
That's what I mean about politicians learning from their 'mistakes'.
Undermining the Constitution takes time, but apparently there was enough to get from there to here.
I do appreciate the explanation though. :-)
...For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries...But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves. Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. These are spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried about by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever...These are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts; and they mouth great swelling words, flattering people to gain advantage. But you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ: how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts. These are sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And on some have compassion, making a distinction; but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh...
He is talking about the significance of marriage in the history of Western Civilization—which is tied to Natural Law Theory and is why the West is so different from the East in philosophy. We based Right Reason according to Nature as the basis of Just Law (Cicero)-and after thousands of years of philosophy and Judaism and particularly Christianity which baptized Aristotle, noted the effect of the family unit as designed by Nature as being the superior method of insuring the natural biological rights of children (The biological parents proven to be the most efficient and successful method of creating a flourishing, happy, emotionally healthy child (Freud). Biological parents are more likely to love a child, nurture them, and care about the type of people they become....which ensures a future of a society and connects children to the history of a culture which instills a “love” for it.
It is no accident the natural family was considered for thousands of years as the building block of civilizations....and it is not an accident that Gramsci and the cultural Marxists decided to destroy America and Western Civilization, with their vulgar rot and promotion and glorification of vulgar entertainment and destruction of the marriage contract in the 60’s. Their targets—Christianity and the natural family.
That is why we see burning and destruction in England after decades of Marxist ideology—the destruction of the intact family—it is why children grow up grounded with no morality—none—they kill, they rape, they steal—why not? Who cares?—Nobody—they have no functional family.—no moral role models—no people who really gave a d8mn about them or bothered to spend time with them and parent them.
Marxism/homosexuality denies Natural Law Theory—the basis of our legal system which has God’s law as our standard of Right and Wrong. We do not base our laws on the standards of urges and ideologies that say there is no God—no right and wrong—and particularly no teleological reasons for human beings.
Social contracts are the reason for government. Marriage between man and woman ensures equality of the sexes and the natural right of children. The only reason our government exists is to ensure our Natural Rights-—not arbitrary, illogical rights made up by politicians, etc. There is a structure that guides our laws—it is the Constitution and Bill of Rights and jurisprudence has invoked the idea of Supra Positive Law numerous times—including in the Civil Rights legislation.
It seems odd that they are now trying to say that God’s laws are not Absolute when it is what we have done for hundreds of years....we are now saying Satan can decide the standards of right and wrong.
They (marxists) are fundamentally transforming the meaning and intent of our Constitution—Natural Rights does not include rights to other people’s property or forcing people to adopt views which deny Natural Laws and remove reason and logic and science from law. Homosexual marriage removes reason, logic, science, God, and Natural Law from our legal system....which is utterly unconstitutional from all standpoints. It can not be Just Law which is unconstitutional. (Locke/Cicero/Aquinas/Blackstone, etc.)
“Libertarianism is a polite way of saying “anarchy”. “
Actually, it means to let the market decide as many questions as possible. Libertarians are Burkeans, not moral relativists. Our message is not that morals don’t matter, but that given the opportunity to try and fail in the open market, the best set of moral standards will evolve over time. This was exactly the point Edmond Burke was making all those years ago.
“Makes me wonder how we got drug prohibition without one [a Constitutional amendment]?”
Because when the federosaurus grew to a certain point, getting Constitutional authority for its actions became unnecessary. Does a tumor have to get authorization for what it gobbles up?
It should be self evident but I'll explain.
Marriage is the time old tradition of the union of a man and a woman and the creation of a family unit. A mortgage, a contract between a lender and a borrower, is the time old tradition of buying property and creating a home.
Whether or not a duly elected government chooses to encourage either marriages or mortgages by the tax code does not change the meaning of what a marriage or a mortgage is.
Neither marriage nor mortgage law in the USA discriminates against anybody. Any man or any woman satisfying their states requirements for marrying or acquiring a mortgage is free to do so. Whether that state encourages same by their tax codes is secondary to the matter of entering into either a marriage or a mortgage. Choosing not to enter into either is not discrimination de facto or de jure.
Is the explanation satisfactory? If it's not please tell me who is being discriminated against and how.
The idea that more dependents in law somehow limits government is one I can't quite wrap my old gray head around.
Give me license or give me death? Not sure that's what Patrick had in mind. But I'm glad we're on the same page as far as entanglement, it ain't gonna happen pre SHTF.
Thanks for sharing that....The more I study history and philosophy and the Bible—the more you see that nothing really ever changes. There always is great evil in the world. Machiavelli wrote about it and I see the world he described perfectly in the early 1500’s.
The Founders warned us also. The Bible which was read by most households in the US at the time of the Founding—really warned of the evil of man.
But most people now believe the Marxist/Rousseau ideas which say man is good—even as they kill and mutilate millions of people and are constantly trying to enslave everyone and tell them what and how to think. They think if we ignore “sin” and evil and call it “good”, then all evil will disappear.
ahhh no. One needs the consent of the state to get married. And one must find a willing lender to enter into a mortgage.
So they are not in fact free to do these things. I am free to breath air and speak my mind. I am not free to drive a car on public roads or enter into marriage unless I get consent from the state. If the state wishes to put no limitations on who marries who THEN you can state people are Free to marry. Until then your statement is false.
Further there is no "legal" reason for marriage to be limited in anyway except to protect minors and to protect the unborn from birth defects (interbreeding) all other concerns are social in nature which is the very definition of "Social Engineering" which by its very nature discriminates.
Remember these three things: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Nowhere in these unalienable rights lies the ability for the state to Social Engineer in fact these three things are in direct opposition to the government entering into Marriage in anyway except for to settle legal matters of property and the care of orphaned dependents.
The Constitution was created to establish a government that protects the Unalienable Rights of the governed. Establishing official rules on who marries who and who benefits from such flies in the face of what the founding fathers set forth!
Pingout tomorrow.
The homosexual agenda is all about destroying everyone’s (except sex perverts and their fan club) freedom of speech, association and religion.
Stossel and other libertarians are morally blind fools.
Eventually, we'll all live in one.
Did you just jump from wanting to legalize cannibus to legalizing ALL illegal narcotics?
Marijuana is one thing, but what does possession and use of black tar herione look like.
Child endangerment is what it looks like to me, I guess, and while I understand and agree with the argument that we are creating a black market for these substances, are there new and exciting substances for which we just cannot draw the line that will just create newer black markets?
We can legalize and license prostitution too I guess, just as we have infanticide.
In fact, maybe that was the low bar anyway. We have not only legalized infanticide, our Supreme Court has held that it is a constitutional right. As such, to say that a soldier who can fight, but cannot legally have a beer is absurd, and along with that any law banning practically any substance a consenting adult might choose to use.
And since infanticide is the low bar, suicide should most assuredly be legal.
You’ve changed my mind, legalize all of the above, so long as infanticide is a civil right, drug use, suicide, and prostitution are positively pedestrian by comparison.
If, however, we make such things legal, we should also first repeal the 14th amendment as we currently understand it, and we should also reform the tort system as well.
We should do these things first, because a reasonably prudent person might argue that they see no problem whatsoever in discriminating against such people as would participate in drug use, prostitution, and infanticide, while we are at it. A reasonably prudent person may fear for the safety of their families in such a society, and I definitely think each state would have to make their own call on all of this legalization.
I would think more unintended consequences may include the arson of locations providing such services within 100 miles of their towns. I would think that the advocates and users of such services, while well within their legal right to do such things, may in some circles be seen as a clear and present danger.
I was watching the 5PM news tonight, this very evening, and a man was stabbed on a Seattle Transit bus while with his two sons, and some family from out of town. The perp had been causing trouble for some time on the bus, harrassing passengers and making a scene prior to the stabbing. This family was only trying to get off the bus and leave this threat to their rudder.
The perp apparently took offense and stabbed the father in the chest.
Seattle Transit, concerned that you might see such a thing as a deterrent to riding their busses, wanted us all to know that there were ONLY 67 violent assaults last year committed on Seattle Transit busses.
That’s, of course, more than one incident per week. My wife and I just laughed. So taking the Seattle Transit is like playing an assault lottery where on a weekly basis some random family may have their father stabbed in the chest, or some variant there of. Your odds, of course, are small, but we’ll have this drawing weekly, and more often during the holidays - that’s when people start feeling blue.
Imagine downtown in a country where black tar herione use, or any other drug for that matter, was LEGAL.
Now, if all of these things were legal, I think eventually that would embolden the advocates of such things to infer that legality was the same as general social acceptance.
I’d love to speculate on whether that 67 assaults number goes up or down, but from a law enforcement perspective, you’ve just changed the mandate. I think you’d find attorney’s that could twist Murder 2 into voluntary manslaughter due to the fact that the crime was committed while under the influence of a narcotic. We’ll seek help for these poor wretches, and remind people of the bad old days when gangs used to roam the streets killing indiscriminately.
I have news though. When you put these gangs out of business, they are going to find another line of work, and it won’t be at a McDonalds.
The gangs will steal from people to replace their income stream, and worse, and the junkies will still steal from people to buy another bag of rock, even if it’s Uncle Sam selling it, because he’s going to want his cut, no matter how low the price is, and he’s not going to pass it out with the Food Stamps and the five pound blocks of cheese.
Woe betide the guy selling the rock at one of Uncle Sam’s dispensaries after midnight - if he sells it to someone who’s already high, and the guy kills somebody, then a lawyer will sue him civilly after he’s locked up criminally for involuntary manslaughter. If he decides NOT to sell it, then he may end up getting shot, right? Poor guy selling the rock is going to take his chances and sell the rock, because he took this job part time for the extra dough to send his kid to school and he’s not going to get killed for holding a $5 rock from some skell.
There will be a group of people willing to wall their city and patrol it to ensure none of that gets in. I think there will be more than a few that will agree.
I don’t think libertarians have thought all of this through.
Needle Park in Zurich is one thing. Imagine such a thing in a society of 700 million people. I can’t.
I get and accept the short term academic argument, but like all academic arguments, its only as strong as its assumptions.
Economists assume gangs will just break up and go away. They’ll find legitimate pursuits. They assume that junkies can be managed with the savings we’ll realize from the recovered WOD money. This assumes, of course, you’re willing to admit that these junkies won’t get sicker more often than any other medicare dependent.
This assumes legalized prostitution will actually decrease the amount of STD cases in a given population (it doesn’t, of course, because since sex in all its forms is legal, and therefore socially acceptible in certain places, there is more unprotected sex going on.)
So, to make a very long story short, if we decide to legalize drugs, prostitution, suicide, and continue to believe that infanticide is a right, then we should declare the Constitution null and void and start over with something like a parliamentary system.
Jefferson or Franklin commented on the system proposed by them and pointed out that it can only work for a moral people. Clearly they were right in the criticism of their own system, because its not failing today, it has already failed. Our elected officials spend more time figuring out new ways around to violate your rights than they do to protect them, all in the pursuit of your safety and protection.
You could legalize all those things, but if you don’t give people who cannot live in such a society some sort of compensation, there will be violent reaction to such a thing.
Look at homosexuality, it is victimless but yet there are so many victims - from discrimination suits to AIDS patients to increases in sexual abuse of children by their fathers.
Now we are looking for a few good gay men, and we don’t even know where and how we can berth them in a 60 person berthing bay on a ship without massively violating the privacy of those poor homophobes who feel weird showering in front of men that may fancy having anal sex with them someday. They’ll get used to such a thing over 9 months deployed in the West Pacific away from their wives and kids defending freedom and their way of life. They should suck it up a little. After all, its not as if they are ACTUALLY having anal sex with you. They are only doing it during the 4 to 8’s in the forward crew lounge. Stay out of there and you won’t have to deal with it.
All of this liberalization comes with costs that equal or exceed what we pay to battle gangs.
These are the days of the end of the glory of the United States. They found Uncle Sam dead in his hotel room with a half eaten pizza, the top button of his pants had popped off long ago, and there was a needle stuck in his arm.
The two hookers that woke to find him dead between them commented on what a shame it was that such a well meaning guy like that should die so suddenly. “Sammy was so passionate about defending people’s freedoms, and he lived what he preached. He left behind a couple of wives and about seven kids though. Sammy was a freedom fighter, but responsibility was never his long suit. I hear he was only a month away from gender reassignment surgery too. He may have been much more at peace with himself as Aunt Samantha. All in all, he meant well, and it wasn’t like he was committing a crime or anything. He just overdid it . . . .”
This is a nicely written and passionate post, but you fell in the end to the same illogical trap that any statist argument invariably does. You take the example well past the limits of libertarianism, and into anarchy, then use the results to show that libertarianism is bad, when you're really discussing anarchy.
Child endangerment is still child endangerment. Your second amendment rights don't mean you can store a loaded revolver in your child's toy box and be free of any responsibility if the child uses it. Having legalized drugs doesn't mean it's defensible to store it next to the Play Dough and crayons. Sure, some irresponsible person might do that. They might also accidentally shoot their child, drive around with them without seat belts, or let them play unattended in the swimming pool.
Abuse is still abuse. The right to harm others is not a libertarian one, it's an anarchist one.
The question is, does legalization prove an overall net gain for society, not an absolute gain in all aspects. If you consider the pros of the drug prohibition (militarization of the police, eroded freedoms, encroaching police state, drug cartels, destabilized governments, corruption, thousands of dead a year) vice what we could achieve by spending that drug warrior money on education and treatment, it's really a no brainer. The Drug War failed. The idea that the occasional 3 year old might get killed by a careless junkie ... well, that probably already happens, because people already do as many drugs as they like. That's not a justification for a dozen other offenses against life, liberty and prosperity that the Drug War inflicts.
Drug cartels have no place in a world where drugs are legal. Drug gangs may not like it, but it's not economically feasible to move a legal substance. Not much call for bootleg bathtub gin, is there?
Drug legalization can and should come with the same stigma as smoking. Warning labels on the pack. Government programs to drive it into unpopularity. Education and stigmatization are the only weapon that works. It's taken decades, but tobacco use has fallen off dramatically in America. It'll take decades more to get the same drop out of narcotics. Until we bring drugs into the light, we can't discredit them socially like we have tobacco, and our society will becoming increasingly less free under the boots of SWAT enforcers.
Marijuana is different from the other drugs and alcohol: it grows like a weed, it does not have to be processed.
Unless it’s being processed, sold, or used fraudulently or to cause harm of another person, what business does the government have in noticing it?
“Stossel replied: “I don’t want the state deciding what’s good and beautiful.””
Then don’t come to the state to ask for any assistance with dissolving that union (divorce), or dividing property, or adoption or child custody. Don’t ask for benefits in the form of Social Security, insurance, Medicare, citizenship, or all of the other things that marriage currently bestows or enables.
Stossel lies: he wants the state to decide what he wants to be true, regardless of historic evidence. He wants to change, it’s imperative that he prove that there will be no damage to society and that he won’t be harming children.
Until there’s an amendment to the Constitution, it’s most likely state by state. The problem will be that “commerce claus” thingy.
However, there’s just no evidence that the change will be good for the children coming out of the new society. Let’s just watch the Netherlands and other nations that have legalized same sex unions and see how it goes for a 100 years or so.
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