Murphy's Fifth Law: If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
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The Day That SCOTUS Gutted the Ninth Amendment
Choose Life: Daddies and Daughters
I have mixed feelings about the following clip, about a nurse discovering her patient is the father who abandoned his baby girl and her mother several years back. Whereas I don't mean to question the daughter's joy of reunification with her prodigal father, but I have zero respect for a man who abandons his family. Does he understand what a privilege it is to have a beautiful daughter to raise? He gave up moments I've never had the opportunity to experience...
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(Bastiat Institute). "The most natural advance next for marriage lies in legalized polygamy—yet many of the same people who pressed for marriage equality for gay couples oppose it...The moral reasoning behind society’s rejection of polygamy remains just as uncomfortable and legally weak as same-sex marriage opposition was until recently."
Whereas I don't think we should ban nontraditional relationships, I oppose any judicial fascism which attempts to intervene on long-standing social norms and preferences, with the unintended consequences of socially experimental policy.
(Bastiat Institute). It's no more illogical than the statement that the 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to individuals. Think about that one for a minute: The government apparently wrote a constitutional amendment to ensure that the military would be allowed to have guns.
It doesn't surprise me that Senator Lesbian thinks that only "progressives" have the right of "free expression", the privilege of the collective politically correct, and while others are compelled to tolerate their point of view, no other rights are recognized. More seriously, the first nine amendments are all about individual, not collective rights. The UN's Universal Declaration Article 18 is more explicit: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance." But going back to the Bill of Rights, note the phrasing of the Tenth Amendment and the distinction between the collective rights of the states and "the people".
For over two hundred years, the second amendments has been interpreted to not apply to individuals. Learn your history.
The second amendment WAS about individual rights, regardless of the ignorance of "progressive" trolls. Rifles and ammunition before the Revolution were owned by individuals, not the collective. You need to stop republishing propaganda; learn your REAL history, retard.
(Cato Institute). "We still hear those claims: the Confederate flag stands for history, states’ rights, resistance to an overbearing federal government, Southern pride. For some people it probably does. But those who seceded from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America were pretty clear about what they were seeking...The Confederacy was a new nation, conceived in the defense of slavery, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal."
No, the article is still fumbling for a coherent explanation for the North's invasion of the South; it was not under the flag of the Confederacy that slaves were imported into America. It was not under a Constitution amended to outlaw slavery; in fact, a million slaves were held in Union states, who were not "freed" by Lincoln (in the Emancipation Proclamation, he generously freed slaves in territory he did not control).
Boaz in fact jumps the shark here. States had seceded before Lincoln took office, Lincoln even admitted in his inaugural address that he was willing to coexist with the constitutional protections of slavery. The thirteenth amendment was enacted several months after the end of the Civil War. So arguing the Confederate flag is a referendum about slavery is at best disingenuous.
The whole kerfuffle over free vs. slave states had to do with regional conflicts; in fact, I think the Texas rant against Northern politicians makes that point. The South felt increasingly marginalized in the Union, with the North spending an undue proportion of tariff revenues, largely raised by the South, adversely affected in terms of trade and the cost of living. The vast majority of Confederate soldiers were not fighting to protect slavery but their homes from the Northern invaders. To argue that they battled for slavery is a gross injustice to those veterans; it was more resistance against majoritarian tyranny.
And what of the noble Union? What was their motive in the war? Most of big government as we know it today could not have existed under the original Constitution. It was only the post Civil War amendments that permitted it. Even the most brief study of American history teaches that the outcome of the Civil War dramatically curtailed states' rights and expanded Federal power, not just for the former slave states, but for the North as well. The victorious Union was happy to tolerate Jim Crow for almost a hundred years.
While the southern states seceded primarily in defense of chattel slavery, the Union wasn't noble at all. Lincoln's motivation for going to war was not the abolition of slavery, but to prevent the southern states from seceding. But the Union's ignobility should not be seen as somehow justifying the confederate's cause
The troll is wrong. Most of the states did not list slavery as a motive for secession; in fact, it wasn't until Lincoln invaded the South that a number of border states left the Union.
It had more to do with unconstitutional regional (Northern) dominance of a central government. The fact is that South Carolina almost seceded during the Jackson Administration over tariffs. The North was in favor of high tariffs to protect the Northeast industry. The South founds their exports affected by trade wars over tariffs; they ended up paying a considerable portion, at the expense of their living standard, of tariffs, and the expenditure of those tariffs by the North. If you look at the Confederate Constitution, it had stripped out the hated "general welfare" loophole and seriously reined in spending authority and the tariff authority.
(Reason). Welcome back to the Reason Weekly Contest! This week’s question is: What should U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders' slogan be??
"Hillary speaks tor the 1%; Don't let her Occupy the White House....."
(Cato Institute). “Anyone who cares about human liberty—to whatever degree—ought to despise the Confederacy.”
This is a disappointing screed/analysis. No libertarian is going to support slavery in the Old South, case closed. But it's also indisputable that the Confederate Constitution did not include the fascist wild card big spending "general welfare" clause, it was far more economically liberal when it came to tariffs and spending, and you don't have corrupt omnibus spending bills.
Plus, as any legitimate scholar knows, the Confederacy put slavery on the table near the end of the war hoping to win European recognition. And in any event the industrial revolution and rapid improvements in agricultural technology made the overhead of maintaining large slave holdings unsustainable. What is embarrassing is the tyranny of Union states invading Southern states. Other countries made their peace over slavery without tearing the country apart. This Union the author champions invoked conscription, itself a form of slavery, ignored the Bill of Rights, and did not include the slaves held in its own border states in the Emancipation Proclamation. I know the author is hoping to jump onto the politically correct anti-Confederate bandwagon, but he fundamentally lacks integrity and balance.
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| Courtesy of Steve Breen via Townhall |
Dionne Warwick (with Luther Vandross), "How Many Times Can We Say Goodbye?". This is a shining example of how to perform a great duet...
