Back in the mid-1700's, sure.

Probably the wrong thread but still: didn't you just justify originalism by admitting that was the original intent?

 

I'm assuming you think that doesn't apply nowadays, so do you think we have a "living Constitution" that changes meaning over time (outside the realm of amending it of course).

^ Hard to tell these days with the whole Don't Tread on Me and We Came Unarmed This Time themes going around. Thanks for the clarification.

Probably for the Second Amendment thread, but wasn't the purpose of the right to bear arms to allow citizens the freedom to protect (with force) their life/liberty/property/rights from those who sought to usurp them? Just sayin'

 

Are you back tracking on your clarification now.  You said (sarcastically I suppose) that rioting was the "only answer".  I said no.  I wasn't saying anything about the Second Amendment.

^ Hard to tell these days with the whole Don't Tread on Me and We Came Unarmed This Time themes going around.  Thanks for the clarification.

Probably for the Second Amendment thread, but wasn't the purpose of the right to bear arms to allow citizens the freedom to protect (with force) their life/liberty/property/rights from those who sought to usurp them? Just sayin'

Are you back tracking on your clarification now.  You said (sarcastically I suppose) that rioting was the "only answer".  I said no.  I wasn't saying anything about the Second Amendment.

No, I was just addressing the validity of your unending obsession with a couple people's signs.

Well, the core principles are fine with the Constitution and shouldn't be changed (Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness and all that jazz) along with the Articles but there are certain amendments that always need to be re-evaluated aka the Second Amendment. 

Well, the core principles are fine with the Constitution and shouldn't be changed (Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness and all that jazz) along with the Articles but there are certain amendments that always need to be re-evaluated aka the Second Amendment.

I'm open to that idea so long as I get to keep my guns and you are open to applying that principle to the Sixteenth Amendment.

so do you think we have a "living Constitution" that changes meaning over time (outside the realm of amending it of course).

 

I do, but not in the way you describe.  It is "living" because it was written without the precise specificity necessary to prohibit how its core values are applied to the "here and now".  The genius of the Founding Fathers is that they realized they didn't know everything and didn't pretend that they would have all the answers for problems/issues that the Nation would face in the times to come.  Translating it to UO speak, they laid out a conceptual design and a brilliant one at that. 

^ Hard to tell these days with the whole Don't Tread on Me and We Came Unarmed This Time themes going around.  Thanks for the clarification.

Probably for the Second Amendment thread, but wasn't the purpose of the right to bear arms to allow citizens the freedom to protect (with force) their life/liberty/property/rights from those who sought to usurp them? Just sayin'

Are you back tracking on your clarification now.  You said (sarcastically I suppose) that rioting was the "only answer".  I said no.  I wasn't saying anything about the Second Amendment.

No, I was just addressing the validity of your unending obsession with a couple people's signs.

 

My obsession is valid.  No need to address it.

Well, the core principles are fine with the Constitution and shouldn't be changed (Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness and all that jazz) along with the Articles but there are certain amendments that always need to be re-evaluated aka the Second Amendment. 

I'm open to that idea so long as I get to keep my guns and you are open to applying that principle to the Sixteenth Amendment.

 

Well, I prefer ALL guns out of this country (archaic provincialism from an agrarian past keep guns in place this day and age) but for now, rules and regulations will have to do.

Well, the core principles are fine with the Constitution and shouldn't be changed (Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness and all that jazz) along with the Articles but there are certain amendments that always need to be re-evaluated aka the Second Amendment. 

I'm open to that idea so long as I get to keep my guns and you are open to applying that principle to the Sixteenth Amendment.

 

Lose the guns and get a dog.  The guns might help stop an attack on your person or home, but the dog will prevent it.

 

I could have a gun in my home, but what good would that be.  It is not like I would hang a sign outside my house telling robbers not to come in becaue I have a gun.  On the other hand, I would love to meet the robber who would not move on to the next house when he heard my 100 lb German Shepherd growling on the other side of the door.

^ Hard to tell these days with the whole Don't Tread on Me and We Came Unarmed This Time themes going around.  Thanks for the clarification.

Probably for the Second Amendment thread, but wasn't the purpose of the right to bear arms to allow citizens the freedom to protect (with force) their life/liberty/property/rights from those who sought to usurp them? Just sayin'

Are you back tracking on your clarification now.  You said (sarcastically I suppose) that rioting was the "only answer".  I said no.  I wasn't saying anything about the Second Amendment.

No, I was just addressing the validity of your unending obsession with a couple people's signs.

 

My obsession is valid.  No need to address it.

Maybe so, but that doesn't mean the posters that didn't have a valid point too. Just sayin'

 

Well, the core principles are fine with the Constitution and shouldn't be changed (Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness and all that jazz) along with the Articles but there are certain amendments that always need to be re-evaluated aka the Second Amendment. 

I'm open to that idea so long as I get to keep my guns and you are open to applying that principle to the Sixteenth Amendment.

 

Lose the guns and get a dog.  The guns might help stop an attack on your person or home, but the dog will prevent it.

 

I could have a gun in my home, but what good would that be.  It is not like I would hang a sign outside my house telling robbers not to come in becaue I have a gun.  On the other hand, I would love to meet the robber who would not move on to the next house when he heard my 100 lb German Shepherd growling on the other side of the door.

If it was possible to hermetically seal urban areas off from rural areas, you might have a good idea.  There are many places in America where people actually use guns to hunt or for self defense against animals and violent people.  Since your idea is impossible, it's best just to accept it and move on to reality.  The national income tax, on the other hand, could be abolished with the stroke of a pen.

 

And for the record, I have a dog and am considering getting a gun since I was the victim of a burglary/home invasion at a time when my dog happened not to be home.  Besides, the debate is about the right to bear arms, not the actually bearing of arms.

The tea partiers tend not to destroy their own communities when they get mad at 'the man.'  Some might call them a tad more civilized (up to this point in time at least).  If we're comparing the two (which I wasn't originally), I'd prefer some mildly offensive homemade posters to violence and destruction.

 

Now might be a good time to talk about the left, the right, race and in particular black conservatism.  While it would be a fruitful endeavor to discuss the highly learned and highly admirable Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Jesse Lee Peterson, Stephen Broden, Justice Clarence Thomas, Kevin Jackson, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, even Bill Cosby, et al., it's more fun for me to talk about the other, more "authentic" black right/conservatism.

 

Ishmael Reed is an admitted leftist but he is one of the few black leftists that has a favorable view of Booker T. Washington.  Washington's call for self-reliance, community control and alternative black institutions was both conservative and populist. This is quite different from the darling of the Marxist left, WEB DuBois. To those on the conventional left WEB DuBois was the real black leader of the post-Civil War era.  Ishmael Reed isn't a fan of DuBois and suspects "his status with intellectuals has something to do with his 'talented tenth' theory, an inherently elitist, quasi-Leninist idea that calls for ten percent of 'educated, worthy' blacks to infiltrate white society, forming a vanguard that would somehow eventually lift all boats by virtue of their mere existence."

 

In his essay "Mixing It Up" Reed writes the following about playwright August Wilson (who is black):

For some African Americans, including myself, white conservatism is a euphemism for racism. Unlike traditional conservatism, American conservatives seem to have one issue: out-of-wedlock birth in the black underclass, about which they still write op-eds and long, ignorant books, even though the black teenage pregnancy rate has declined while that of white and Hispanic women is soaring.

 

If August Wilson's plays have a conservative line, it was not an appeal to critics who misread him but a reflection of the attitudes of a large segment of the African American community. Wilson's conservatism was his, that of Booker T. Washington, Elijah Muhammed, Malcolm X, and Marcus Garvey, all of whom preached self-help and individual responsibility, and all of whom did business with white people; not theirs, which often took the form of vicious and nasty comments about the underclass. As Wilson said, "The ground that I stand on has been pioneered by my grandfather, by Nat Turner, by Denmark Vesey, by Martin Delaney, Marcus Garvey and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad."

 

In a very basic sense, I am a 'conservative' (which is an adulterated and misunderstood term) that consistently finds myself in closer allegiance to Black America because conservative principles are an authentic reality within the black community compared to the white community barely which adheres to it at all.  I'm also a big fan of Booker T. Washington and his accomplishments and find it enlightening that the "black leadership" (which really is only open to black liberals) doesn't embrace the man's legacy.  Google "why black liberals don't like booker t washington" for more like this:

 

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/10/booker-t-washington-and-the-black-conservative-tradition.php

and

http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2009/03/the-tragedy-and-betrayal-of-booker-t-washington/7092/

 

The tea partiers tend not to destroy their own communities when they get mad at 'the man.'

 

Well, they just started.  They should be given a fair chance to prove themselves as community-destroyers.  And as illustrated in Austin, many of them have access to highly destructive instrumentalities.  Don't count em out!  They can close the gap quickly.

The tea partiers tend not to destroy their own communities when they get mad at 'the man.'

 

Well, they just started. They should be given a fair chance to prove themselves as community-destroyers. And as illustrated in Austin, many of them have access to highly destructive instrumentalities. Don't count em out! They can close the gap quickly.

 

I would guess most of them aren't as desperate (eg. making less than half of the poverty level, etc.) as inner city rioters.  Nor are they responding to violence.

The tea partiers tend not to destroy their own communities when they get mad at 'the man.'  Some might call them a tad more civilized (up to this point in time at least).  If we're comparing the two (which I wasn't originally), I'd prefer some mildly offensive homemade posters to violence and destruction.

 

If you are making the analogy I think you are, may I suggest that we not go down this path.

The tea partiers tend not to destroy their own communities when they get mad at 'the man.' Some might call them a tad more civilized (up to this point in time at least). If we're comparing the two (which I wasn't originally), I'd prefer some mildly offensive homemade posters to violence and destruction.

 

If you are making the analogy I think you are, may I suggest that we not go down this path.

Yeah, no analogy and I'm confused as to what you're talking about.

The tea partiers tend not to destroy their own communities when they get mad at 'the man.'  Some might call them a tad more civilized (up to this point in time at least).  If we're comparing the two (which I wasn't originally), I'd prefer some mildly offensive homemade posters to violence and destruction.

 

If you are making the analogy I think you are, may I suggest that we not go down this path.

Yeah, no analogy and I'm confused as to what you're talking about.

 

Hahahaha, that's so typical.

 

Right out of the Republican playbook.  Make an implicit analogy that's pretty obvious to everyone else, but then deny it when you're called out.

^What are you talking about?  I think peaceful protest is more civilized than rioting.  What's the problem here?

^What are you talking about?  I think peaceful protest is more civilized than rioting.  What's the problem here?

 

The problem is that you were making an obvious analogy rather than simply stating "I think peaceful protest is more civilized than rioting."  You also are ignorant the different circumstances surrounding the protests.

 

You wonder why people can't argue with Republicans?  You can't make veiled references and digs at others and then deny it when you're called out.  That's just dishonest.  Man up to your original statement and argue it if you truly believe in it.

^What are you talking about? I think peaceful protest is more civilized than rioting. What's the problem here?

 

The problem is that you were making an obvious analogy rather than simply stating "I think peaceful protest is more civilized than rioting." You also are ignorant the different circumstances surrounding the protests.

But don't you see? You just proved my point! To say something about how civilized one group of protesters is vs. another group of protesters is some sort of faux-pas.  The inability to talk frankly about the root causes of violence in urban communities does nothing except to let if fester. I wonder what the highly civilized Booker T. Washington or Malcolm X would say about your thin skin.

 

I'm talking about rioting in general.  But are you trying to say a riot like LA's or Cincinnati's was a good or justifiable idea?

 

I'm tempted to repost my semi-long comment since the conversation has been sidetracked by the PC police.

But don't you see? You just proved my point! To say something about how civilized one group of protesters is vs. another group of protesters is some sort of faux-pas. The inability to talk frankly about the root causes of violence in urban communities does nothing except to let if fester. I wonder what the highly civilized Booker T. Washington or Malcolm X would say about your thin skin.

 

I'm talking about rioting in general. But are you trying to say a riot like LA's or Cincinnati's was a good or justifiable idea?

 

I'm tempted to repost my semi-long comment since the conversation has been sidetracked by the PC police.

 

Thin skin?  I have no problem talking about it.  But let's talk about it, not make thinly veiled digs at entire groups of people, then denying you even did so.

 

I don't know what semi-long comment you are referring to since I'm late to the game on this thread, so if you attempted to talk about it and were shot down by the PC police (which surely wouldn't include myself) then my apologies.

I'm referring to the post that it came from: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,12302.msg467672.html#msg467672

 

And the only people that I might be offending are the criminal rioters who some might call a tad less civilized than the tea partiers.  I say "some" because some people here think the tea partiers are rabid Nazis or something.

Hmm, I somehow missed that (maybe in my haste to reply to the partial quote by 327).  My apologies.  I do find your original post much more interesting after the first paragraph.

Hmm, I somehow missed that (maybe in my haste to reply to the partial quote by 327). My apologies. I do find your original post much more interesting after the first paragraph.

Well I'm glad. Maybe we could discuss that as compared to whatever you found offensive (which wasn't my intention).

 

Right out of the Republican playbook.

 

You wonder why people can't argue with Republicans?

 

1. I'm not a Republican. 

2. If you have issues with them, take it up with this guy:

 

 

or this guy:

Props to jam40jeff for identifying the tactic.  If I had a nickel for every time I've seen the ol' disowned innuendo... I might favor a flat tax. 

The tea partiers tend not to destroy their own communities when they get mad at 'the man.' 

 

Well, they just started.  They should be given a fair chance to prove themselves as community-destroyers.  And as illustrated in Austin, many of them have access to highly destructive instrumentalities.  Don't count em out!  They can close the gap quickly.

He wasn't a tea partier, that is quite obvious.

 

Props to jam40jeff for identifying the tactic. 

What was my tactic? As I've reiterated in other threads, I don't equate tea partiers with white people or riots with black people.  There is probably a few decades difference between the average age of the two groups as well. Read the rest of what I wrote (http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,12302.0/msg,467672.html) and you might come to the same conclusion as jam40jeff (http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,12302.0/msg,467718.html):

Hmm, I somehow missed that (maybe in my haste to reply to the partial quote by 327).  My apologies.  I do find your original post much more interesting after the first paragraph.

The tea partiers tend not to destroy their own communities when they get mad at 'the man.'

 

Well, they just started. They should be given a fair chance to prove themselves as community-destroyers. And as illustrated in Austin, many of them have access to highly destructive instrumentalities. Don't count em out! They can close the gap quickly.

He wasn't a tea partier, that is quite obvious.

 

Props to jam40jeff for identifying the tactic.

What was my tactic? As I've reiterated in other threads, I don't equate tea partiers with white people or riots with black people. There is probably a few decades difference between the average age of the two groups as well. Read the rest of what I wrote (http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,12302.0/msg,467672.html) and you might come to the same conclusion as jam40jeff (http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,12302.0/msg,467718.html):

Hmm, I somehow missed that (maybe in my haste to reply to the partial quote by 327). My apologies. I do find your original post much more interesting after the first paragraph.

 

I found the rest of your post interesting too.  I didn't have a response to it then and still don't.  You get an A for those paragraphs.  When discussing race I try to keep my metaphors tighter than normal.  As for your riot comment, there was an awkward comparison in its phrasing.  Surely you can see that, and surely you understand why that might be controversial.  It's not a gotcha moment, it's an "oh, come on" moment.  Just a couple posts ago here, you preceded "rioters" with "criminal" and employed humorous understatement to highlight how much more "civilized" the tea partiers are viewed to be.  If you think the only people you might offend are "criminal rioters" think again.

edit: nevermind

Black Folks We'd Like To Remove From Black History

theroot.com

 

As happy as we are for the nation to get its yearly reminder that black people do exist in the context of American history, there’s a growing list of characters that has us harking back to Zora Neale Hurston’s famous words: “All my skinfolk ain’t kinfolk.” Indeed, while we love our own, we sure do dream of erasing a few of them from the history books. Some are politicos, others are pop culture figures, but they all share one common attribute: They’re embarrassing.

 

1. Marion Berry

2. Michael Steele

3. OJ Simpson

4. Sheila Dixson

5. Dennis Rodman

6. DC Sniper John Allen Muhammad

7. Dr. Conrad Murray

8. R. Kelly

9. Flavor Flav

10. Clarence Thomas

11. Omarosa

12. Bishop Don Magic Juan

13. Wesley Snipes

14. Soulja Boy Tell 'Em

15. Karrine Steffans

16. Idi Amin

17. Papa Doc

18. Baby Doc

19. Robert Mugabe

20. Rafael Trujillo

 

for explanations and more: http://www.theroot.com/multimedia/black-folks-wed-remove-black-history

Taking out My Eraser

John McWhorter

March 5, 2010 | 12:00 am

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/taking-out-my-eraser

 

The Root has an interesting list of people they say black history could do without. It got me thinking about who I would include on a top-ten list of that kind.

 

I’m going to take a different tack than they did. My interest is not in people it’s just fun to dump on, but in people who have had a decisive impact on black lives and thought in general—and so no Dennis Rodman or Wesley Snipes. I am also thinking about true uniqueness, i.e. people whose essences and trajectories were idiosyncratic enough that if they hadn’t come along, chances are no equivalent person would have filled their shoes (so, no Dennis Rodman or Wesley Snipes!).

 

I find that a list like this, if it’s really about impact on black people, cannot even be limited to black people. Here goes.

 

1. Malcolm X

2./3. Frances Fox Piven & Richard Cloward

4. Price Cobbs

5. Al Jonson

6. Paulo Freire

7. William Ryan

8. Ron Karenga

9. Jonathon Kozol

10. Orenthal James Simpson

 

for explanations and more: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/taking-out-my-eraser

I think there are a few people in the black community that would like to put Dr. McWhorter on his own list.

Replace Malcom X with Elijah Muhammad.  Malcom X only told the truth, the guilt of that truth is what upset people.  Not his fault.  400 years of systematic racism and cultural genocide, one guy lets everyone know he would rather be dead.  How is that not a man to be proud of?

Yes, we can really take this stuff seriously when fine people like Michael Steele and Clarence Thomas are given the same consideration as common criminals and murderers simply because they don't share the same ideas.

fine people like Michael Steele

 

Prepare for Scrabble's wrath...

fine people like Michael Steele

 

Prepare for Scrabble's wrath...

What do you mean?

 

Replace Malcom X with Elijah Muhammad.  Malcom X only told the truth, the guilt of that truth is what upset people.  Not his fault.  400 years of systematic racism and cultural genocide, one guy lets everyone know he would rather be dead.  How is that not a man to be proud of?

This is how John McWhorter described in choice of Malcolm X:

Yes, I understand that in Malcolm’s time, rage among black people was deeply rooted for fully understandable reasons. Yes, I know that near the end of his life he was preaching a more inclusive message. Still, the way he comes down to us in shorthand is as the one who taught black people to channel their inner Angry Motherfucker. Articulately so—the speeches still work. But the problem is what that does for us now.

 

There is a tacit sense that the kind of anger Malcolm became famous for, with the upheld fist and the menacing “By Any Means Necessary,” is portentous, the start of something. But in real life, what Starts Things now is not going to be black America rising up in anger. The community isn’t cohesive enough, and the problems today aren’t simple enough.

 

I don’t wish Malcolm X had never existed, but I wish he hadn’t become famous. He was quirky enough that it’s possible that no one with equivalent star power to his would have emerged otherwise, and the mood he represented, long on oomph and so short on result, would be represented by no iconic historical figure today. The Black Panthers were so over-the-top that we marvel at them rather than wanting to be them, and Spike Lee wouldn’t have made a movie about Stokely Carmichael. The Malcolm T-shirts and the sense of reading his autobiography as a smart black persons’ rite of passage are distractions from the actions, as opposed to the moods and gestures, that really help black people.

My bad... I thought you didn't like Michael Steele.

My bad... I thought you didn't like Michael Steele.

He is easy to criticize but his job is to raise money and win elections and the GOP has done both fairly well since he took power. There's no telling how the GOP might have fared with a different chairman. In today's race-conscious world, it's probably a smart strategy to have a chairman who is black criticizing the president who is black. Ken Blackwell was another black candidate for chairman but the stars weren't aligned for someone like him.

I agree about the strategy.  It is sort of like having a woman lawyer defend you against a charge of rape ;)

I agree about the strategy.  It is sort of like having a woman lawyer defend you against a charge of rape ;)

That's funny and I'm not sure why.

 

Oh, now I think I know why. :(

Well, the core principles are fine with the Constitution and shouldn't be changed (Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness and all that jazz) along with the Articles but there are certain amendments that always need to be re-evaluated aka the Second Amendment. 

I'm open to that idea so long as I get to keep my guns and you are open to applying that principle to the Sixteenth Amendment.

 

Well, I prefer ALL guns out of this country (archaic provincialism from an agrarian past keep guns in place this day and age) but for now, rules and regulations will have to do.

 

You Samoans are all the same; you have no faith in the essential decency of the White man's culture.

*ANGRY FIST*

Yeah, but seriously, all guns will never be out of this country.  It's in the Constitution, don't cha know.

I agree about the strategy. It is sort of like having a woman lawyer defend you against a charge of rape ;)

 

Same strategy that my woman lawyer used to get my divorce case in front of a woman judge who saw right through the "woman" I was married to, and awarded me custody of my 2 little girls, ages 3 and 1.  Unfortunately, my woman English teacher would probably fail me for this last sentence!

 

Thanks for the tip DanB! That's good advice to have in my back pocket just in case.

^Eh... knowing Dan's age ;), that was probably before the time of "random selection".... lawyers are not able to scheme what judge you get anymore.  Thank Cuyahoga County and our "way" of doing things for that.  In smaller counties though, there may be only one judge.

Thanks for the tip DanB! That's good advice to have in my back pocket just in case.

 

Don't even joke about it!  It was still the scariest time of my life.  I shudder thinking how I got through each day.  There were some funny moments, as this was a case of really nothing being wrong with either of us as parents, and the marriage actually wasn't bad.

 

At one point, my mother-in-law was testifying, and when asked how much time I actually spent with my 3YO, she said that when they were visiting one Sat. morning, and my daughter became bored with the cartoons, I continued to watch them by myself!  The judge replied, "Yeah, my husband does that too!"

 

 

You monster!

I think it's interesting to note that Obama didn't win the white vote. But neither has any other Democrat since LBJ.

 

Obama's support from whites is falling. The Economist had a good article on this last week. I'll quote it if I can find it online or I'll type it out from my hard copy.

Knock me over with a feather...

He won a larger proportion of white votes than any previous nonincumbent Democratic presidential candidate since Carter.

He won a larger proportion of white votes than any previous nonincumbent Democratic presidential candidate since Carter.

Interesting.