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Friday, January 27, 2012

Quotes on Politics

Viper
Former repub, still repenting
4 hours ago ( 3:17 PM)
"When economic power became concentrat­ed in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny." John Adams

Thomas Jefferson. “Progressi­ve taxes are required to prevent a permanent rich aristocrac­y that then buys government and ends democracy as happened in England ” ..

This happened under the robber barons which repub policies return us to, and not unlike now.

"As riches increase and accumulate in few hands . . . the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard." Alexander Hamilton

Ab Lincoln: "I hope we shall crush ... in its birth the aristocrac­y of our moneyed corporatio­ns, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country".

Justice Brandies: “ You can have great wealth or democracy, you can have one or the other,but not both” .

The founders were Locke liberals fighting the Burke conservati­ve 1000 richest families of the British Empire. Our founding fathers were secular progressiv­es. The Conservati­ves , called Tories were on the side of King George and Aristocrac­y. Somethings never change.
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MarkModerator6 days agoin reply to EmbraceTheTruth
"Slavery was on its way out?" What, was it a fad? What are you talking about?

Owning slaves was owning free money. You owned human beings that you could legally order to do anything in the whole wide world except to kill, injure, or offend a fellow of your own 'people-owning' class.

Do you know how much money a person could make by being able to force just one person to do some shit you don't want to do? You wouldn't have to go to work. Get the slave a job. Need some extra cash? Rent out a slave. Ask a pimp about it.

So what you're telling me is that a bunch of very rich and powerful Southern families - some of them entrenched for more than two centuries, possessed with what they feel is a sacred duty, to pass down their family fortunes, along with their legacies and honorable names - would be willing to give all up without a fight when offered a measly one time payment for their slaves?

Nay, Capitalism does not work like that. With each of the family's generations growing up and multiplying, the number of slaves they owned increased exponentially, as did the family fortune. That is why Southern businessmen and lawmakers were fiercely scheming to bring more slave states into the union, including the newly occupied territories seized in the Mexican-American war in 1848.

Rather than to hasten the demise of slavery in the American south, The Industrial Revolution gave the slave industry a tremendous boost. When Eli Whitney patented his mechanical cotton gin in 1794, demand for more cotton and more slaves skyrocketed.

The property value of individual slaves increased after the very last ship to bring slaves to the United States arrived in Alabama in 1857. And the Dred Scott decision by the. Supreme Court held, that a slave did not become free when taken into a free state, Congress could not bar slavery from a territory, and blacks could not be citizens. There were 3,953,696 slaves in the United States in 1859. The total number of slave owners was 385,000. This does not look like a business model "on its way out."

You say "the only single positive that came out of that war was the end to slavery," as if it were the most insignificant problem or issue a person could have. You don't think one group of your fellow Americans forcibly holding another group of your fellow Americans in captivity for forced labor, or any other purposes, under threat of severe violence or death is worth having a war about?

What kind of master of irony are you EmbraceTheTruth? That you could speak reverently of "the entire Constitution" and indignant about "the value for freedom" being trampled upon, at the same time you're trivializing the necessity to fight for freedom against slavery, and downplaying the urgency of immediate release from tyranny.
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Jonathan MooreModerator6 days agoin reply to David
"The Industrial Revolution had already made slavery irrelevant in the North and the US was basically the last Western power to abolish slavery in their own country - so yes, it was on it's way out."

I'm sorry, but there's very little evidence that it was on its way out. Quite the contrary, there is evidence that the South was resisting integration into the industrial economy of the North, a major factor in their secession. As of 1860 the percentage of Southern families that owned slaves has been estimated to be 43 percent in the lower South, 36 percent in the upper South and 22 percent in the border states that fought mostly for the Union. This statistic comes from James G. Randall and David Donald's book "Civil War and Reconstruction".

Southern concerns included not only economic loss but also fears of racial equality. The Texas Declaration of Causes for Secession said that the non-slave-holding states were "proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color", and that the African race "were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race". Alabama secessionist E. S. Dargan warned that whites and free blacks could not live together; if slaves were emancipated and remained in the South, "we ourselves would become the executioners of our own slaves. To this extent would the policy of our Northern enemies drive us; and thus would we not only be reduced to poverty, but what is still worse, we should be driven to crime, to the commission of sin."

In any case, I agree that the Civil War was one of the worst things that happened to our country and it could've been avoided, but Lincoln and the Northern States were not in the wrong nor were they the primary culprits of the Civil War. As to why the War was fought, well South Carolina first seceded arguing for States Rights for Slave owners in the South, but complained about States Rights in the North with respect to the Fugitive Slave Act, claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling their federal obligations under the Constitution. All the alleged violations of the rights of Southern states were related to slavery.
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Jonathan MooreModerator6 days agoin reply to Jay
"Also, the British Empire did eliminate slavery without a war. The U.S. could have as well."

This is a very bad argument. The British Empire was very different from the United States economically and culturally. Nevertheless, the U.S. could've ended slavery peacefully, but the South refused.
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Jonathan MooreModerator6 days agoin reply to Jay
His history is radically mistaken and his proposed solution is morally offensive because it suggests that Black people are property that can be bought and sold. His history is mistaken for a number of reasons.

(1) The South was the aggressor. It was not Lincoln that started the war.
(2) Ron Paul's suggested proposal was actually proposed numerous times by Lincoln as a representative. Once in November 1861 and then in March 1862. The 1861 proposal was to purchase all of the slaves from the State of Delaware. Delaware was the smallest slave state. The proposal was rejected by the Delaware State government by 1 vote. In 1862, Lincoln proposed legislation to purchase all slaves. It passed with Republican support despite opposition from the Democrats. The Democrats were largely representing the slave states. So it passed, but the offer of money was rejected by slave owners, so the plan stalled. Ron Paul's "solution" just wasn't an option at the time, and we have pretty clear evidence of that. Slavery was so ingrained in the Southern culture that there simply was no chance that they would take steps to eliminate it.
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MarkModerator6 days agoin reply to NoQuestion
First of all it's not true.

Under the leadership of former slaves Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henri Christophe, rebel slaves overthrew the French in Haiti and abolished slavery in 1801.

In 1793 Canada abolished the importing of slaves and by 1803 had completely abolished slavery without either having to buy them or having a war about it.

When the Mexican War of Independence began in 1810, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla declared slavery abolished, but it wasn't official until the war ended in 1829.

In Argentina, the law stated that those born after January 31, 1813 would be granted freedom when contracting matrimony, or on their 16th birthday for women and 20th for men, and upon their manumission would be given land and tools to work it. In 1853, slavery was completely abolished.

In 1814, Uruguay declared all slaves in their territories free.

Bolivia abolished slavery in 1831.

The British Slavery Abolition Act abolished slavery in their West Indies colonies in 1834.

In 1848, Slavery was abolished in all French and Danish colonies in the West Indies.

Argentina abolished slavery while enacting its Constitution in 1853,

Peru and Venezuela abolished slavery in 1854.

In 1862, Cuba abolished the slave trade.

Only in Gran Colombia (Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama) was compensation paid for freed sons and daughters born to slave mothers.

Secondly, economic powers in the southern United States were not interested in ending the institution of industrialized slavery. Their entire economy, culture and lifestyle was based on slavery. Many may have sold their slaves, but many more would not, or would simply relocate and purchase more of them.

At the time, Southerners were seeking to expand the number of slave holding states entering the union. Territory annexed after the Mexican-American war was targeted by them for this purpose. The main reason the northern dominated Congress refused to expropriate more than the 55% of Mexico than The United States did, was to prevent the south from expanding slavery into the deeper reaches of Mexico past Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

That is why 'we' did not do the same.

And that is not the flag of Mississippi. The Mississippi state flag has the 'stars and bars' in the upper left corner with a thick blue and a thick white horizontal stripe to its right and one long thick red stripe along the entire bottom beneath everything else. Ron Paul is speaking in front of the Confederate flag.

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Jonathan MooreModerator6 days agoin reply to NoQuestion
Lincoln tried (tor purchase and free all slaves) in 1862. Southern slave-owners refused. Furthermore, the proposed "solution" buys into the racist ideology that Black people can legitimately be bought and sold. This is why it makes sense to call him a neo-confederate.
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MarkModerator6 days agoin reply to Nathaniel Hamrick
That's because there wasn't a whole class and culture of beneficiaries willing to fight to the death to preserve the industrialized chattel slavery that upheld their economy and their very way of life like in the American south.
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Jonathan MooreModerator6 days agoin reply to Tim
Saying he's against the war entirely is rather empty. The South was against the war as well. They would've much rather preferred to be able to own their slaves without opposition.

His "solution" is more telling. It assumes that Black people are property that can be bought and sold. Anyone who recognizes that people aren't property, will immediately see what's so offensive about his "solution".
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Jonathan MooreModerator6 days agoin reply to Tim
Except that his solution is morally offensive and his history is wrong. It's morally offensive because, like I've stated earlier in the thread, it assumes that Black people are property that can be bought and sold. His history is mistaken because his proposal wasn't an option at the time. In fact, it was tried by Lincoln, passed in the Congress, but was rejected by Southern slaver owners. Ron Paul just doesn't understand what the world was like at the time, especially in the South.
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Jonathan MooreModerator6 days agoin reply to Ash K
"the Civil War was not fought over slaves"

This is so absurdly false, it's hard to believe people are trumpetting it. All the alleged violations of the rights of Southern states were related to slavery. See the official declaration by South Carolina, "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union"

Historian James McPherson writes concerning states' rights and other non-slavery explanations:
"While one or more of these interpretations remain popular among the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other Southern heritage groups, few professional historians now subscribe to them. Of all these interpretations, the state's-rights argument is perhaps the weakest. It fails to ask the question, state's rights for what purpose? State's rights, or sovereignty, was always more a means than an end, an instrument to achieve a certain goal more than a principle."

It's great that they put their motivations in writing. It makes it easier to refute b____.
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DandelionModerator6 days ago
Bull crap, Dr. Paul. If the slave owners sold their slaves, who were they going to use for free labor?
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Donna StevensModerator6 days agoin reply to Hana Johnson
I see you got neo-confederate Lew Rockwell on your twitter feed. Nice try! Sorry sister, the South shall NOT rise again...not in our lifetime at least.
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Donna StevensModerator6 days agoin reply to Mary Hysmith
The very fact Ron Paul claims the North should have paid to buy slaves from southern slave owners shows he does not regard them as people but as a commodity.
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Jonathan MooreModerator6 days agoin reply to USSConstitution
The morally appalling thing refers to his "solution" since it still presumes that black people are property that can be bought and sold instead of human beings that deserve to have their rights protected.

The false thing(s) is the premise of his "solution". (1) He failed to mention that his proposal was rejected by southern slave owners in 1862. (2) He failed to mention who was the aggressor of the war. (3) He claimed that slavery wasn't the main cause of Civil War, which virtually every historian disagrees with, etc...
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Joey TranchinaModerator2 days agoin reply to Max RonPaul Rich
Max RonPaul Rich wrote:
"great speech. this has nothing to do with racism you ignorant assumptuous d____"

That's a perfect example of how Libertarians never get it.

Their principles are a mask for racism, and they allow it on principle.

There are two sorts of Libertarians fools and wolves. The fools are too stupid to know that the enemy is the bigotry that has disgraced America from its inception — the bigotry written in its Constitution; the wolves know how to make use of stupidity — they convince White people that racism works for them, when it weakens them by dividing them from natural allies, while it strengthens predators.

Why do you think the KKK burned Black schools? The canard still works.

As I wrote in a poem decades ago:
They have a word for "victim" in the jungle. It's "lunch."
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Joey TranchinaModerator2 days agoin reply to Tiffany Madison
What did I say: "fools & wolves." I was one of the fools. I grew up on a cattle ranch. I admire the principles of self reliance but it is a moral responsibility, in a political organization, to honestly appraise the uses to which one's principles are being put.

The Libertarian Party, in fact the entire Conservative movement, is used as a front for predatory capitalists (the opposite of free enterprise — read Adam Smith), for Christian reconstructionists and for the comfort of Southern bigots, to keep the Old South voting block under the GOP circus-tent.

Principles meet practice. High sounding principles about liberty do not match the smell test when one examines Republican policy. Of course, the LP has no policies because they have virtually no one in office and are thus a debating society, which offers a quiasi-principled front for the degenerate Republican Party, that is almost entirely corrupt.
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Donna StevensModerator6 days agoin reply to carlton
"We don't need your kind "??? Spoken like a true racist. Unfortunately for you and your fellow Paulbots when the main stream media shows the video they won't be explaining any of what you said they will simply play the part with him saying "the south was right" and how slaves should have been continued to be treated like a commodity and sold to the North because as you know the 'evil' mainstream media does not like Ron Paul. He's finished. Now please resume your cousin loving.
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Donna StevensModerator6 days agoin reply to MattAH84
smoke screens in politics? Ron Paul is standing in front of a confederate flag. The image alone is worth a thousand words. He's in fourth place in a four man race. He raised 4 million on his December money bomb but his January money bomb barely netted 1.3 million. He's finished. People are waking up and the only one who is ignorant are supporters like you who refuse to admit it.

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