Agreed!
After all Dubya said the Constitution is just a god damned piece of paper!....
Thomas Jefferson
- Thread starter GlennQuagmire
- Start date
After all Dubya said the Constitution is just a god damned piece of paper!....
Dubya didn't!!!!
Dubya said the Constitution is just a god damned piece of paper!....
Slavery, albeit absolutely wrong, wasn't 'illegal' since the Constitution, being the Supreme Law of the USA, tacitly allowed it for 20 years in certain provisions. Slavery, which is beyond the scope of this thread's topic, has nothing to do with Jefferson's statement on the role of government in a capitalistic society or for free enterprise, plain and simple.
He doesn't need an argument - he's Thomas Jefferson, one of the great founding fathers and intellectuals in American history. Can you prove Jefferson's statement wrong?
I thought you implied it. Let me try to understand you. So you question Jefferson's 'role of government' quote on the basis of his civil rights violations, but accept his DOI and preamble on human rights?
Again you're backpedalling. Why is it a strike against the notion if you only renounce Jefferson but not the statement?
Isn't it simply because you disagree with his conservative economic policies or theories?
Incorrect, the Constitution is not and was not the Supreme Law of the USA. It never has been, and it never will be. In fact the drafters of the US Constitution took great pains to point that out when they wrote up the Declaration of Independence. In that document they espoused that universal human rights are superior to ANY constitutional arrangement, and used the supremacy of human rights as the justification for overthrowing the government, and in so doing, denying that their actions were treasonous.
Virtually the same theory was used to prosecute the Nazis at the end of WW2. They had drafted up a constitution for Germany that made the holocaust legal. Despite that, everyone recognized that a nations constitution is in fact NOT the supreme law, that there are universal human rights that trump any constitutional provision. On that theory the Nazis were tried for crimes against humanity, convicted, and jailed.
So not only have the authors of the US Constitution gone to great lengths to explain that constitutions are in fact not supreme law, but there are clear examples in history of leaders of nations being convicted and jailed for crimes against humanity where their national constitutions included no such provisions for any such crimes.
You can go back to the Treaty of Paris in 1815 as well when the topic of slavery, our topic, was debated in the British House of Commons and it was concluded, and ratified, that it is illegal because it represents a violation of human rights that is so odious that it is an affront to human dignity.
So yes it was illegal, and no it doesn't matter WHAT the US Constitution had to say on the topic, because it's well established, including by the drafters of the constitution, that constitutions of nations simply do not have the power to revoke universal human rights.
He's a criminal who should have been jailed for horrific crimes against humanity, and really, we should all go spit on his grave. Anyone who treats another human being the way he did is not worth a second thought. As a degenerate slave owner the man has not got an opinion on freedom that is worth listening to.
I can think of many reasons why it's wrong. Once we get past the point that Jefferson's association with the idea is a strike against it we can go on to talk about why in fact it is often necessary for governments to raise taxes.
We can start by discussing what are the appropriate metrics by which to judge such things: I will put forward economic efficiency with some limits that respect those universal human rights. So for example if it turns out to be more efficient to implement a welfare system then that is what we should do. Now let's leave aside for a moment the question of whether welfare is really more efficient or not--I am using it as an example mostly to illustrate the point that there ought to be no sacred cows.
Whether it is more efficient in fact, or isn't more efficient in fact, is something that we should measure empirically and scientifically and based on solid data we should choose the policy that maximizes efficiency provided that it does not infringe greatly on a fundamental freedom. Thus I leave aside for now the question of WHAT policies we ought to implement, and simply propose the method by which we ought to select such policies.
Specifically, we should never accept or reject a policy for no better reason than some ideology is for or against it--ideologies have the status of religions in my eyes, fanciful fairy tales told to children to help them sleep at night, but not worth considering in serious political discussions.
I find it quite effective to use his own words against him.
Nope. I honestly don't know what Jefferson's economic policies or theories are, other than this quote, so that can't be it.
I do hope that you have the opportunity to point this out to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Oh, by the way good argument as to why the Nuremburg Trials were a most unfortunate overreaching and that the Germans themselves should have conducted the trials.
Aardvark, if the US Supreme Court disagrees then at any time it likes it is free to order the dissolution of the United States, a country whose lawful creation and continued existence is predicated on my point being true, per the Declaration of Independence.
Had the Nuremburg Trials been held under German law then the charges would have been thrown out on the grounds that, at the time the acts were committed, it wasn't a crime under German law to carry out holocausts. Plainly that is wrong: We all KNOW that it's criminal, and it's criminal whether or not the constitution of Germany agrees. There is a superior law that takes hold in such cases.
Had the Nuremburg Trials been held under German law then the charges would have been thrown out on the grounds that, at the time the acts were committed, it wasn't a crime under German law to carry out holocausts. Plainly that is wrong: We all KNOW that it's criminal, and it's criminal whether or not the constitution of Germany agrees. There is a superior law that takes hold in such cases.
There is no due process for a conscript who is shot in the field for desertion.
Conscripts all have the same lack of right to life as any other conscript just as any slave has the same lack of right to life as any other slave.
You are holding up the Declaration of Independence as the supreme law of the United States:
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.
But you have failed to show that conscripts have maintained their right to life.
Conscripts and Draftees become a GI, Government Issue and loose all civilian rights. You are then subject to Military Justice. This was drummed into our heads back when the draft was still in effect. You became a piece of Government property back then. Even with the 'volunteer' Army today, you are probably still treated the same once you sign up and give up your civilian rights.
Markvee, there is no sensible way to compare slavery with conscription. Conscription is temporary, slavery is permanent. Conscription is a response to an extreme existential threat to survival, slavery is the complete removal of all rights on an ordinary, everyday basis. Conscription is balanced against the collective rights of all to have their way of life preserved, slavery is an assymetric benefit to the slave owners at the expense of the enslaved.
That's just a taste, I could go on all day with what the differences are.
At the end of the day the reality is that rights are balanced one against another. No rights can be guaranteed whatsoever when there's an existential threat to the survival of the entire political system--how would your rights be preserved if our democracy yielded to a totalitarian state because we weren't able to field a suitable army? The collective rights of us all to freedom at some point balance against the ordinary rights of individuals--but it takes an exceptional circumstance to make that so.
At any rate, it's in no way the same as slavery ,which is not a response to anything exceptional, it's a social organization that advantages some at the expense of others for no reason of balanced rights nor existential threats.
You seem to have some sort of political agenda, and I sense that you're trying to bend things to your purpose--but it's not right, really, because if you were honest with yourself you'd recognize that four years of service is in no way as horrendous a crime as generation after generate losing every freedom, with no hope of ever recovering it.
That's just a taste, I could go on all day with what the differences are.
At the end of the day the reality is that rights are balanced one against another. No rights can be guaranteed whatsoever when there's an existential threat to the survival of the entire political system--how would your rights be preserved if our democracy yielded to a totalitarian state because we weren't able to field a suitable army? The collective rights of us all to freedom at some point balance against the ordinary rights of individuals--but it takes an exceptional circumstance to make that so.
At any rate, it's in no way the same as slavery ,which is not a response to anything exceptional, it's a social organization that advantages some at the expense of others for no reason of balanced rights nor existential threats.
You seem to have some sort of political agenda, and I sense that you're trying to bend things to your purpose--but it's not right, really, because if you were honest with yourself you'd recognize that four years of service is in no way as horrendous a crime as generation after generate losing every freedom, with no hope of ever recovering it.
What was the existential threat during the Vietnam war during which there was conscription?
On the other hand, there was a real threat to liberty during the War of 1812, leading up to which the British were conscripting Americans into the Royal Navy. The Americans won that war without conscription.
"Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it?" Daniel Webster
My agenda is to make you see the hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson's exception for black slaves in his rhetoric is your own hypocrisy when you balance the lives and liberty of young able bodied male concripts, aganist those of the collective.
Which brings me back to my original quesiton:
If the majority votes to enslave a minority in a democracy (or the majority votes for represenatives that decide to enslave a minority in a representative democracy), does this constitute a legal framework that can justify slavery?
The Domino Theory of course!
John Birchers were carping the commies are coming, commies are coming, commies are coming, 24/7!
Commies HAD to be stopped in NAM before they came to the USA!....
Today these GOPer carping Cons trade with these SAME commies!
Which as has been pointed out by now approaching ad nauseam it is not.
Good luck in court (in the U.S.A) arguing that the Declaration of Independence supercedes the U.S. Constitution.
There are some that have argued (Dubya most recently) that both are just god damned pieces of paper....
Really?
We have gone through all this before on TERB not that long ago.
The War of 1812 was brought on by the War Hawks who saw in it opportunities for westward expansion.
Impressment of Americans by the Royal Navy had been halted before the war began.
The principal shipping sections of the U.S., in particular New England were against the war.
The only clear-cut U.S. military victory of the war was fought after the peace treaty had been signed.
The major U.S. Naval victories of the war were during roughly the first half of it.
The Treaty of Ghent returned everything to status quo antebellum (territorially everything was as it was before the war)
So what did the war do: In Upper Canada it was the impetus for the beginning of a sense of national identity rather than the previous state of we are in exile here and someday everything will be made right and we will all go home. (And what was to become Dalhousie University had a Bursary fund thanks to it.)
In the U.S. it became "the Second War of Independence" the U.S. had managed to survive a war with the world's foremost Naval Power. The Battle of New Orleans remembered, previous defeats ignored.
In the U.K. save for changes in Frigates that lasted until the pre-dreadnaught age it was a minor annoyance in the midst of the very serious struggle of the Napoleonic Wars.
Indeed.
The USA owes much of their success to those Frenchies for keeping Blighty busy on the other side of the pond so as not to be able to throw all they had against those rebellious colonies....
The USA owes much of their success to those Frenchies for keeping Blighty busy on the other side of the pond so as not to be able to throw all they had against those rebellious colonies....
Jefferson is not a man to be admired.
He was an excellent wordsmith, but that was about it.
In truth, the man was a hypocrite, a severe racist, a slave owner, a pedophile, and an opportunist.
Like much in American History - the legend has little to do with the reality.
He was an excellent wordsmith, but that was about it.
In truth, the man was a hypocrite, a severe racist, a slave owner, a pedophile, and an opportunist.
Like much in American History - the legend has little to do with the reality.
Yes, and interestingly enough, the New England States and the Maritime provinces (who have much in common) never ceased trade during the war and never wanted to participate.
Ironically, the War of 1812 helped forge the nation of Canada. Had 1812 never happened, we might very well have all ended up American.
judging the past by today's standards will always allow us to feel better. he fitted in very well to his era. and began the changes which led to todays society. more to come. as for all those character flaws, they were normal around the world until less than 50 or 60 years ago in the western world. they are still normal in some areas. we can't free everybody. social evolution will take time.
Those who launched the Vietnam war believed that if communism was allowed to take root in one country it would eventually sweep the whole free world. I think that view is mistaken, but it's not a war crime to be mistaken. I think they honestly believed it.
