2nd Amendment FWIW

[DrDonkeyLove]

Back in your hippie days, I'm sure you got at least one wood shampoo, right?

Never actually hit with baton. Jailed briefly during the San Francisco State riots. However, I believe I have been arrested, detained and jailed in more countries than just about anyone here. England: aiding and abetting some guys who bungee jumped off the Brighton Bridge. Italy, Rome: 20 years old, out late, lousy neighborhood, bar fight. I'm just watching, but some guy shoved me and I shoved him back. Plainclothes cop. Jailed for (this was the exact translation of the crime) "committing an outrage against a public official." Burundi airport, loading up a bush plane. How was I to know that one of the songs played on the scratchy loudspeaker was the national anthem. Detained in broom closet for a couple of hours to learn respect.

I could go on.

The propaganda is that we are 'better' than the 3rd world in terms of individual rights. We expect the broom closet or worse in Africa, but that justice will prevail in our Land of the Free. With the most prisoners, in both raw numbers and percentages, of any society in human history and more prisons being built, cops hired, and 'get tough on crime' laws passed every day, the Great Liberty Lie is what I was seeking anecdotes to deflate.

Everyone, in their bones, knows that the schoolyard bully and small animal torturer grows up to become a cop or a hood. We can't expect them all to be able to exhibit restraint. The gal who called 911 above was almost certainly asking for it, after all - what else could she expect, having a vagina so flagrantly.

The whole thing also illustrates the big problem with democracy. Pull the fear chain and the majority reflexively abandon their civil rights, and yours. Knowing this, the framers intended the constitution to be immutable. #2 is the most important, because it places responsibility for the others in our own hands. She should have shot that cop 17 times in the face.

Whatever foolishness resides in the assorted Tea Party groups and members, they serve an essential purpose for this reason. Their leadership is standing up to the Republicrats who actively support the rapid erosion of the BOR. Our #2 hating masters in NY and CT have been surprised by the resistance to their new gun laws and that resistance is far from its apogee.

It's also why, to our shame, the IRS has been unleashed against them. It's simply a power grab to limit #1 after the Citizens United decision. Since the MSM, the Dems, and establishment Repugs hate the TP, they don't care to see the long term damage to #1. Not surprising but shameful.

[Garm]

The trouble with the T types is the same trouble with their lefty counterparts - they like some civil rights but not others. Their religion is the root of their intolerance and mandates that they mind your business. The object of their impulse to control others is a smoke screen - the natural human aversion to homosexual behavior, for example, lets lots of folks agree with them on the specific issue and thereby abandon the principles of liberty. 2 only doesn't work, nor would 10 - 2.

[DrDonkeyLove]

The trouble with the T types is the same trouble with their lefty counterparts - they like some civil rights but not others. Their religion is the root of their intolerance and mandates that they mind your business. The object of their impulse to control others is a smoke screen - the natural human aversion to homosexual behavior, for example, lets lots of folks agree with them on the specific issue and thereby abandon the principles of liberty. 2 only doesn't work, nor would 10 - 2.

TP is a broad spectrum of people from Bob Jones & Jerry Falwell loving card carrying members of the religious right to secular constitutionalists who want to keep all of their BOR freedoms and implement some fiscal sanity. Not really sure which is the larger faction. Either way the RR can't become too much of a pain in the ass because liberty lovers and G_dless progressives will keep their darker impulses in check.

[Garm]

that's the party line, but it's also bullshit. I'm a 'secular constitutionalist' who finds no common ground with those who take their orders from mythical entities. I don't know a single right thinking American who would associate themselves with the willingly deluded nor rely on magic for solutions to concrete problems.

[Turdacious]

The trouble with the T types is the same trouble with their lefty counterparts - they like some civil rights but not others. Their religion is the root of their intolerance and mandates that they mind your business. The object of their impulse to control others is a smoke screen - the natural human aversion to homosexual behavior, for example, lets lots of folks agree with them on the specific issue and thereby abandon the principles of liberty. 2 only doesn't work, nor would 10 - 2.

You're painting with a mighty broad brush.

[Garm]

Okay, I'll exempt every TP wipe who unilaterally supports free speech, is against secret courts and no-knock warrants, and thinks that the modern version of one's papers include telephony and internet communications and are therefore off limits to the state. Please introduce me to my first one so I can apologize about the width of my brush stroke.

[Turdacious]

Okay, I'll exempt every TP wipe who unilaterally supports free speech, is against secret courts and no-knock warrants, and thinks that the modern version of one's papers include telephony and internet communications and are therefore off limits to the state. Please introduce me to my first one so I can apologize about the width of my brush stroke.

I wasn't aware they thought free speech was supposed to be the primary issue they should focus on.

[Garm]

Exactly the point. Whatever their agenda might be, it is not in line with American political philosophy.

[Turdacious]

Exactly the point. Whatever their agenda might be, it is not in line with American political philosophy.

An American political philosophy held primarily by libertarians under 30.

[Garm]

I suppose that a few of them were, but Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and the rest of the ones who mattered were substantially older than that. I don't think that it was commonly felt that a white male had fully developed the capacity for abstract thought by 30. Probably right, if you think about it.

American political philosophy is fully elaborated in one place, for just that reason ( among others). Populism and democracy lead inevitability to tyranny, so the things that must never change weren't subject to the whims of the young, fashion, expediency, etc. My rights are given away by others in reality, but lots of real things are wrong.

PS, libertarians are fools, just like liberals, conservatives, and Xtians. That whole capacity for abstract thought problem again. If you have an actual position on any subject that doesn't have dogma at it's root, it would be refreshing to discuss it. If it's regurgitation of what they told you to think, I've been bored with whatever it might be for quite some time.

[Turdacious]

I suppose that a few of them were, but Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and the rest of the ones who mattered were substantially older than that. I don't think that it was commonly felt that a white male had fully developed the capacity for abstract thought by 30. Probably right, if you think about it.

American political philosophy is fully elaborated in one place, for just that reason ( among others). Populism and democracy lead inevitability to tyranny, so the things that must never change weren't subject to the whims of the young, fashion, expediency, etc. My rights are given away by others in reality, but lots of real things are wrong.

PS, libertarians are fools, just like liberals, conservatives, and Xtians. That whole capacity for abstract thought problem again. If you have an actual position on any subject that doesn't have dogma at it's root, it would be refreshing to discuss it. If it's regurgitation of what they told you to think, I've been bored with whatever it might be for quite some time.

Practical American political philosophy was developed to deal with the British threat culminating in the War of 1812.

[Pinky]

Okay, I'll exempt every TP wipe who unilaterally supports free speech, is against secret courts and no-knock warrants, and thinks that the modern version of one's papers include telephony and internet communications and are therefore off limits to the state. Please introduce me to my first one so I can apologize about the width of my brush stroke.

Rand Paul fits this description better than any other known Tea Party figure. He's far from the Palinite religious populists who took over the Tea Party as soon as it started getting decent press.

[Garm]

I like Rand Paul, if only because his principled stance is grounded in rational thought. Foreign policy is the problem he's got - those outside the circle must always be treated as dangerous. We do what's good for us and fuck them is definitive lassaise faire, and if a principle is right on one scale its right on all of them.

[Andy83]

Tax protester Sixteenth Amendment arguments are assertions that the imposition of the U.S. federal income tax is illegal because the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration," was never properly ratified,[1] or that the amendment provides no power to tax income. Proper ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment is disputed by tax protesters who argue that the quoted text of the Amendment differed from the text proposed by Congress, or that Ohio was not a State during ratification.[2] Sixteenth Amendment ratification arguments have been rejected in every court case where they have been raised and have been identified as legally frivolous.[3]
Some protesters have argued that because the Sixteenth Amendment does not contain the words "repeal" or "repealed", the Amendment is ineffective to change the law. Others argue that due to language in Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., the income tax is an unconstitutional direct tax that should be apportioned (divided equally amongst the population of the various states). Several tax protesters assert that the Congress has no constitutional power to tax labor or income from labor,[4] citing a variety of court cases. These arguments include claims that the word "income" as used in the Sixteenth Amendment cannot be interpreted as applying to wages; that wages are not income because labor is exchanged for them; that taxing wages violates individuals' right to property,[5] and several others. Another argument raised is that because the federal income tax is progressive, the discriminations and inequalities created by the tax should render the tax unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law. Such arguments have been ruled without merit under contemporary jurisprudence

[Garm]

The best argument is that you didn't earn any constitutional money, which is specified to be 'redeemable in specie'. You only owe taxes on income paid to you in gold certificates, therefore. I've never had the balls to try it, but I'd sure like to see what happens in court when someone with more guts pulled it.

Safest: fill out the forms & put the taxes into an escrow account first, so it's clearly a test case.

[Turdacious]

Rand Paul fits this description better than any other known Tea Party figure. He's far from the Palinite religious populists who took over the Tea Party as soon as it started getting decent press.

Those populists were always the core of the tea party.