:chinstroke:

"Provide for the common defense"

You just get more stupid every day.

No.

My guess is you never read it.


To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be
for a longer Term than two Years;



James Madison: “As the greatest danger to liberty is from large standing armies, it is best to prevent them by an effectual provision for a good militia.”

Thomas Jefferson: “Nor is it conceived needful or safe that a standing army should be kept up in time of peace for [defense against invasion].”

Your a hypocrite how would you know.

ooh, controversial....

:dramawatch:

Boning up before you shoot your mouth off again???

Those were in the Constitution? (Not that you actually agree with them on those points)

You only left out one part of that post...... :chinstroke:


To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be
for a longer Term than two Years; :whistle:

Here I'll throw you a small bone dimwit.

http://www.constitution.org/mil/militia_debate_1789.htm

Oh and yes I do agree with them.

For amplification purposes, the clauses that regulate the military....

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

I heart this thread.

Because?

Champs??? :lol:

I heart the stupidity that inspired it.

I understand your point, based on the quotes you've cited. However, I also note that the 3rd Amendment states that "No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner...."

Based on that, it seems that the framers of the Constitution anticipated a standing army to be in place; otherwise, why the reference to the quartering of soldiers during peacetime?

ironic how similarly entrenched adherents to the constitution and the bible are.

lazy

Kinda the whole point.

Comparing a legal document created by men to provide a legitimate basis for a national government to a book of fairy tales about an imaginary monster with magic powers. Solid. :thumb:

You just don't want to admit that everything you want the government to do would be a criminal act.

Not that you let your disdain for the Constitution keep you from trying to use it to stop Republicans from doing what THEY want to do. As far as you're concerned, the Constitution means "Leftists can do anything, everyone else has to do as the leftists order them to."

both are yokes eagerly placed around their necks by the unadaptable cattle who mindlessly adhere to THEIR interpretation of them.

No, one is the legal document that provides the entire legitimate basis for our national government, the other is a book of fairy tales.

The Constitution is a yoke around the neck of government, not of the people. An unrestrained, unlimited government is a despicable and evil thing, and the only way to prevent such a monstrosity is to, as Jefferson said, "bind it down with the chains of the Constitution."

I suppose you think we're better off with a government that can do whatever it wants, without any limits whatsoever?

Oh to be Harrison, the all-knowing, all-seeing....

All Christians are mindless cattle?

I get to adhere to my interpretation?

my point isn't that a constitution is unnecessary or harmful. my point is that strict adherence, whether to one's own individual interpretation or to the literal wording of the authors, is suffocatingly unreasonable.

can't count how many times you've posted that this supreme court judge is a criminal for their interpretation of the constitution, or that person is a criminal for not following YOUR interpretation of the constitution, or the other is a criminal for trying to keep things in context rather than limit everything to a super-literal interpretation of 18th century phraseology.



and quoting jefferson of all people? you should HATE him. he was an outspoken racist, and you hate racists.

I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind

- jefferson, notes on the state of virginia

i won't even go into his criticisms of phillis wheatley.

so, should we take his statement literally, intrepret it as strictly as you would have us interpret the constitution? or should we try to keep things in context, in the light of the present day?

Without strict adherence to the literal wording, the entire document is rendered useless. If it's OK to ignore the Constitution as YOU see fit, to allow for socialism, welfare, etc, then it's OK for right wingers to ignore it as THEY see fit, to start wars, torture people, declare US citizens "enemy combatants", tap phones without warrants, etc.

There is absolutely no point to having a constitution that the government is free to ignore or "interpret" however they see fit. The various clauses have specific, inflexible meaning. That is absolutely necessary for the Constitution to have any value as a means of limiting government power.

When confusion arises, or when any part of the Constitution fails to work in modern society, the proper thing to do is to CHANGE the Constitution. Not to ignore it, not to "interpret" it in a different way.

Yes, Jefferson was a racist. That is indisputable. However, that does not impact the legitimacy of many of the things he said regarding liberty and limited government. Those statements stand on their own. Truth is truth, regardless of who says it, regardless of the untruth of anything else they may have said.

I have never, and will never, met or read about any person with whom I agree 100% of the time. And I am not about to throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak.

I hate racism, I don't necessarily hate racists. Whether I hate any individual racist depends on whether they wish to force their racism on others.

As to Jefferson and his contemporaries, they were indeed far from perfect. Just like every other human being who has ever walked the earth. Nonetheless, the fact of the matter is that what they accomplished represented a quantum leap forward in human civilization for the concepts of liberty and human rights.

And again, you seem unable to tell the difference between an individual's statement of their own opinion and a legal document providing the legitimate basis for a national government. Believe it or not, they are two entirely different things.

not at all. as i said, the ones who mindlessly adhere to THEIR interpretation while charging all others with transgression are though.

same with the people like bears and HB. anyone or anything that doesn't agree with THEIR interpretation of the constitution is branded criminal.

think anyone who doesn't believe in all 10 commandments or see jesus as the son of god is a lost sinner doomed to hell? think gun control laws are unconstitutional criminal actions of an evil fascist government? both are equally irrational.

Your false premise is that there is no inherent meaning to any of the clauses of the Constitution. Which, again, renders the entire document meaningless and therefore worthless, except as a means for thieves, looters, warmongers, and slavers to use it to provide a false veneer of legitimacy for their activities.

Federal gun control laws are un-Constitutional. That is an absolute, black-and-white, literal fact. That is what the Constitution says. The only way to deny this is to try to "interpret" the Constitution to mean something other than what it plainly says. So, if gun control is "Constitutional", than so is the drug war, torture, imprisoning people without trial or access to a lawyer indefinitely, tapping phones without warrants, starting wars without a declaration of war from Congress, or any other government action you may not approve of. Because, after all, to claim that ANY government action is "un-Constitutional" is only one person's "interpretation", right? Since, according to you, nothing in that document has any inherent meaning of its own, since according to you every clause can mean anything anyone wants it to, therefore there are absolutely no limits on what the government can and cannot do.

And again, your inability to differentiate between a legal document and a fairy tale is rather disturbing.

no, but there is no single interpretation of EVERY clause of the constitution, nor should there be. the authors of the constitution, as impressive and well intentioned as they may have been, could not conceivably account for what has come to pass. so relying solely on their limited perspective on EVERY issue they touched is just damn foolish. they weren't omniscient then, and they damn sure didn't understand many of the things that we know now.


ehhh god, here we go again...."if ANY clause is open to REASONABLE interpretations, then ALL clauses MUST be open to ANY interpretation." seriously?

yeah, i can easily distinguish the two. however, it is not as easy to distinguish the parochialism of each one's "there is only one interpretation!" throng.

so the constitution prohibits any federal "control" of guns? period? based on the plain language of the second amendment?

Yes there is, and yes there absolutely has to be for the document to have any value. And AGAIN, you ignore my point about the CONSTITUTIONAL way to change the Constitution when it no longer serves the needs of modern society. Why is that? Why do people who want the Constitution to have no meaning always refuse to acknowledge that the Constitution itself contains two perfectly legitimate ways to change it? Why do you folks always try to pretend that the best and only way is to "interpret" it however you want?

And, AGAIN, if none of the clauses have any inherent meaning of their own, not subject to "interpretation", then HOW CAN THE DOCUMENT HAVE ANY VALUE WHATSOEVER? If it doesn't mean anything, than it means nothing.

Yes, seriously. Especially since you consider the Second Amendment not protecting "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" to be a "reasonable" interpretation. You consider it perfectly reasonable to "interpret" the parts you don't like as meaning the exact opposite of what they actually say. How that qualifies as "reasonable" is anybodies guess.

So you CAN distinguish between them, yet you're trying to pretend they're the same thing anyways?

Don't forget the Tenth Amendment. Just because the SCOTUS chooses to freely ignore it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

HB and Bears are both constitution thumpers. :yup:

btw where did Champs go. . . . . :lol:

ok, so what does the commerce clause mean? tell me EXACTLY what powers the commerce clause grants the federal government and why. clearly list or outline all of them.

as far as changing the constitution, because of its wording it isn't always necessary or desirable or possible to properly change the constitution. especially if an interpretation has been made and a judgment rendered that confirms the constitutionality of something. look at the EPA. if a case is made that a clause provides for such entities even though the constitution does not explicitly delegate that power to that entity, why and how would you change the constitution to effectively delegate evolving powers to an evolving entity.

no, i'm not pretending THEY'RE the same thing. i saying those who see each as a black and white set of regulations and prescriptions not open to interpretation are remarkably similar.

I don't live here. Sorry. Sometimes I actually live in the real world.