Support for the US Constitution and the Founding Fathers

Post Reply New Topic

Or you are compelled to pay for the damages done.

ruveyn

By that logic, you can include hunting knives, kitchen knives, gardening tools, sports equipment and even auto and metal fabricator shop equipment as a continuum of items useable as weapons and put them on your spectrum with your intellectually dishonest and beaten to death nuclear weapon argument.

On this continuum, one of these things is not like the others!

What creator? That is just silly.

Not to mention the separation between state and church. Thinking the constitution is based on some non-existence object is self contradictory.

What we believe or don't believe now doesn't change that the US was founded with certain religious beliefs. The fairly common belief now of separation of church and state is a 20th century concept, not an 18th century one. This is abundantly clear in other writings of the period.

There seems to be a proliferation of this idea that in order to justify your viewpoint, you have to revise history to suggest that the founding fathers supported your viewpoint. Why not just disagree with them like we do about the topic of slavery?

As a matter of fact I can.

None of the Aspies on here are the type, but our common trait is obsessiveness, not obsessive use of electronic equipment. You may be dedicated to your computer, your smartphone, and your gaming console. But that does not mean that another is not dedicated to his lathe, his milling machine and his hand tools.

Ostensably, the Tea Party is about libertarian virtue words like 'fiscal responsibility' etc but under my eyes, it is a front group for billionaires, based upon a hilariously stupid misinterpretation of the Boston Tea Party (which was protesting Taxation Without Representation. Unless you think Obama is planning to do away with elections, then I don't quite understand the Tea Party.

I think Hitchens has it summed up here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2Z66HoICQQ

Last edited by lostexplorer on 03 Jan 2013, 3:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah, of course. But all of those things are less dangerous than handguns, so they don't come into the equation. I think people should be allowed to own handguns, so of course I think that people should be able to own all the things you listed. The interesting things are the ones which are more dangerous than handguns.

But surely that's not what a right is! Just because people do something doesn't mean that they have the right to do it.

I mean, you might as well say that people will steal food when they are poor and hungry, and therefore poor and hungry people have the right to steal food.

You want to know what a right is? A right is an authority to act, or to refrain from acting, or an entitlement to a benefit that is enforcable at law. Period.

-When you own property, you have a right to quiet enjoyment. And when others infringe on that right, you can sue in nuisance.
-When you buy something on amazon.com you have a contractual right to delivery of the goods, fit for the purpose for which they are intended.
-When you apply for a passport, you have the right to have an official make a decision on your application in accordance with the principles of natural justice.

All of these things are rights. And included within them is the right to use such force, as is reasonable in the circumstances, as is necessary to protect yourself from an immediate threat to your person from an assault or a battery on the part of another. It has been part of the law of torts for many centuries, it has been codified in the criminal law of every common law jurisdiction for nearly as many, and it is most assuredly enforcable at law.

The question is not, "Is self-defence a right?" The question is, "What is reasonable force in the particular circumstances of a particular individual?" There is no general principle that you are always entitled to pull out a firearm and to use deadly force. But neither is there a principle that deadly force cannot be used except in response to deadly force. The decision of reasonableness is, in the end, a matter for a trier of fact--whether judge or jury--to determine after hearing the totality of the evidence.