[News] Obama signs historic healthcare reform into law

[IndiReloaded]

^^^ and that's what is wrong with modern America.

Principles have degrees of legitimacy dependent on whatever outcome they may or may not induce.

Thanks for reinforcing my point, Indi.

The end never justifies the means.

Well, as you are aware, there is more than one path to the mountaintop. I never said principles don't have legitimacy. But, fact is, in the real world outcomes are influenced by the local environment. Screaming FIRE 2 meters from the back-end of a 747 engine isn't going to bring in the fire department.

Someone with the intelligence to cry FIRE in sight from a distance with the correct tools to actually communicate the emergency, will meet with more success. I'm drawing from direct experience, BTW.

There is an optimal distance, Doc. I'm surprised at you for not realizing this basic truth.

[Junket]

That's just simply not true and earlier American history shows it (aside from the actual slavery trade) People had more freedom, not less.

The freedom to f*ck people over.

We're not an isolated farming society, anymore.

[Doc Durian]

Okay so just checking, overall freedom was greater despite:

Native-Americans forced on death marches

Some were, many more weren't just as some regions and tribes had good relations with the settlers and intermingled/bred/had communities while others fought like cat and dog. Incidentally, these directives were predominately "Federalist" initiatives.

African-Americans forced into slavery

A small proportion of the population at the time not considered part of the overall population due to prevailing cultural biases and a very selective reading of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Poor Americans forced into indentured servitude

Voluntarily is not force. Contracts were made and rendered out and upon completion, ended. Contracts were binding and limited unlike the modern US where indentured servitude has no limits and tends to exist for the span of ones life.

Women denied the right to vote

Again, prevailing social biases and manipulation of the meanings within the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Non-whites denied the right to vote

see prior comment

People without property denied the right to vote

see prior comment

Exactly how was freedom greater?

Overall?

Read the Bill of Rights then check out the Ant-Patriot Act (which your boy is pushing for another year after insisting that he'd end it), check out the health of the 18th and 19th century markets versus the 20th and 21st, the standards of living, etc... but from the perspective of the holders of suffrage.

The majority of your points seem to equate freedom with suffrage, afterall.

Anybody in the 18th and 19th centuries who held suffrage was free, ie. "overall" and far more free than you or I today, whatever our race, class, or distinctions are now.

There was no welfare, medicare, social security, etc...

We were free to live and free to die by our own handiwork and merits. We weren't required to register our modes of transport, register our children when born, carry papers on ourselves, pay large amounts of taxes. A criminal act required a "victim". There were no bailouts or handouts. We had a higher level of personal freedom the likes of which the world has yet to see since. We were a Constitutional Republic and held a healthy overall distrust for unfettered Democracy and mob rule (government manipulation). We did not permit corporations to dictate nor give them status above the individual. We were free market and fair.

Instead of an overall suffrage with good representative government, we've gone the opposite way in the modern US. Universal suffrage voting for an unrepresentative government now reigns supreme. We have fewer of our unalienable human rights left intact, despite Articles guaranteeing us these, and we allow the Federalists to manipulate us into democratically raping the rest.

I don't expect you to get any of this, Playa.

[Doc Durian]

Well, as you are aware, there is more than one path to the mountaintop. I never said principles don't have legitimacy. But, fact is, in the real world outcomes are influenced by the local environment. Screaming FIRE 2 meters from the back-end of a 747 engine isn't going to bring in the fire department.

Someone with the intelligence to cry FIRE in sight from a distance with the correct tools to actually communicate the emergency, will meet with more success. I'm drawing from direct experience, BTW.

There is an optimal distance, Doc. I'm surprised at you for not realizing this basic truth.

Your comparison holds no water to me, Indi.

You made the comment that being principled without purpose (aka goal) was akin to doing nothing worthwhile.

I say to you that taking a stand for what you believe in is more important than what could or could not happen because of it.

We'll have to agree to disagree, Mrs. EndJustifiesTheMeans

[Mish]

So let me see if I got Doc correctly.

People in the 18th - 19th century were much, much freer than us in the 21st.

Except for little inconsequential things like:

Black slaves who had no freedom at all (federalist issue, not related to freedom)
Women not allowed to vote and reduced to servitude role (social bias, not related to real freedom)
Native Americans driven to extincion in multiple regions across US (federalist issue, not related to freedom)
12 hour working days without any freedom for the workers and no worker rights (federalist issue, not related to real freedom)
Non-whites denied the right to vote (federalist issue, not related to real freedom)
People without property denied the right to vote (federalist issue, not related to real freedom)

Is that about right?

[IndiReloaded]

You made the comment that being principled without purpose (aka goal) was akin to doing nothing worthwhile.

Ah, well there is your incorrect assumption^. But yes, we will have to agree to disagree. I acknowledge I have limited time on this rock to get things done. So I set things up so as to avoid pissing into the wind as little as possible.

[Lipp]

Of course corporations would have aims and practices that are more suitable for providing an absolutely vital service for the entire population than a government ever would.

[MVPlaya]

Yeah thats about right.

[MVPlaya]

Doc, your arguments are ridiculous. You gave a terrible example when you were trying to support your claim that freedom was better times ago, and now you can't back away from it. Its becoming increasingly bizarre to anyone reading what you are claiming.

You are claiming freedom was greater two centuries ago, and with that, you are brushing aside the most significant violations of freedom possible as if they are somehow negligible.

(Indians) Some were, many more weren't just as some regions and tribes had good relations with the settlers and intermingled/bred/had communities while others fought like cat and dog. Incidentally, these directives were predominately "Federalist" initiatives.

Indians were killed en-masse, even in areas where they had 'good relations.' Indians were killed for sport, they died from disease, they died from the intentional infliction of diseases, As soon as the settlers wanted to expand, Indians were forced to migrate West-ward into new encampments. Perpetually caught in wars, attacked by settlers, forced further and further outwards, and dying in long death marches (see: Trail of Tears).

A small proportion of the population at the time not considered part of the overall population due to prevailing cultural biases and a very selective reading of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

There was nothing selective about the reading. The founding fathers owned slaves.

And I don't even understand how you can say something as ridiculous as: "A small proportion of the population at the time not considered part of the overall population due to prevailing cultural biases and a very selective reading."

You are brushing off the complete enslavement of one sixth of the US population (and as high as one third of the population in the South) as "a small proportion of the population at the time was not considered part of the overall population"? Oh, they just weren't considered part of the overall population, guess you're right then, thats not much of an infringement on freedom.

Slaves in the United States have been beaten, killed, lynched, bunched up like cattle, denied any and all advancements, killed for speaking out or seeking an education, forcibly broken up, and had life expectancies 20 to 30 years lower than the rest of the population. While slaves were only 1/6th the population, you should keep in mind that the number of slave deaths compared to white deaths is about 2 fifths of all US casualties due to the much shorter life spans and higher mortality rates of slaves. So about 40% of all deaths in the America's have been slave deaths, if you count from 1776-1865.

Voluntarily is not force. Contracts were made and rendered out and upon completion, ended. Contracts were binding and limited unlike the modern US where indentured servitude has no limits and tends to exist for the span of ones life.

Voluntary is not force? People had no other options. Its a very shitty society when your best bet to survive is to be sold into slavery.

Again, prevailing social biases and manipulation of the meanings within the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.
see prior comment
see prior comment

I don't care how you want to explain it. The fact is it was there, real, and suffered through by millions who you brush aside in your grand speeches of the free frontiers. Thats whats so ridiculous.

Overall?

Read the Bill of Rights then check out the Ant-Patriot Act (which your boy is pushing for another year after insisting that he'd end it), check out the health of the 18th and 19th century markets versus the 20th and 21st, the standards of living, etc... but from the perspective of the holders of suffrage.

The majority of your points seem to equate freedom with suffrage, afterall.

Anybody in the 18th and 19th centuries who held suffrage was free, ie. "overall" and far more free than you or I today, whatever our race, class, or distinctions are now.

There was no welfare, medicare, social security, etc...

We were free to live and free to die by our own handiwork and merits. We weren't required to register our modes of transport, register our children when born, carry papers on ourselves, pay large amounts of taxes. A criminal act required a "victim". There were no bailouts or handouts. We had a higher level of personal freedom the likes of which the world has yet to see since. We were a Constitutional Republic and held a healthy overall distrust for unfettered Democracy and mob rule (government manipulation). We did not permit corporations to dictate nor give them status above the individual. We were free market and fair.

Instead of an overall suffrage with good representative government, we've gone the opposite way in the modern US. Universal suffrage voting for an unrepresentative government now reigns supreme. We have fewer of our unalienable human rights left intact, despite Articles guaranteeing us these, and we allow the Federalists to manipulate us into democratically raping the rest.

I don't expect you to get any of this, Playa.

Your argument is very simple. There were fewer regulations in the 18th century than today (a tautological claim). You are right, you did not have to carry as much documentation (how could people be asked, the technology wasnt there, forgery was far too easy), and social services lacked the infrastructure to be provided.

However, your claim is that the 18th century was more free than today, and in making that claim, you comfortably ignore the enslavement of millions, the death marches the Native Americans suffered through, the massive discrimination against (and murder of) all minorities, especially Asians, Mexicans, Italians, New Wave Immigrants, the Irish, hell, anyone you had any excuse to kill, you could.

The 18th century was a time of few laws is the only accurate statement you made. It was also a time of few rights. No rights to equality. No protection from being lynched or murdered. No right to vote. No right to a fair trial.

Your argument gets worse as it goes on. Examine freedom from the rights of the suffrage holders?

There is a goddamn problem when everyone isn't a suffrage holder, and you cannot analyze a society by looking at its priveleged few. I guess if you were a wealthy white mainstream Christian Anglo-Saxon male, you had it decent. If you were anyone else, you know, poor, or black, or enslaved, or indian, or female, or Jewish, or lacking property, you were throroughly ****ed. If you only analyze society's by looking at their priveleged few and ignoring the disadvantaged many, then you whitewash history.

The fact is that the 18th century was built on the backs of slaves, and to discount those slaves as being a small portion of the population, and then lecture about the health of the markets in the 18th century, is just preposterous. I'd say any market where slave labor constitutes the majority of all surplus revenue is not a healthy market, or even a market.

I'd also say that when Blacks, Indians, and Jews weren't allowed into the same public spaces as Whites, you have to be out of your mind to talk about freedom.

There was no freedom in the 18th century, there was simply the ability of the powerful to kill whoever they disliked. And I guess thats one right that I'm glad we no longer have today.



About the only part of what you write that I agree with is the problems with the Patriot Act (not the Anti-Patriot Act, which you mistakenly wrote) and the new corporate spheres. But you have to be out of your mind to ignore the millions of problems in the 18th century that were just as severe and far more devastating for large sections of America when you claim America was somehow freer.

We've come a loooong way in many respects, and you cannot whitewash history to pretend the frontiers were some idyllic American pastoral.

[vashti]

Another battle of the smart people.

Please pass the popcorn.

[Doc Durian]

Why am I not surprised that the pair of socialist skippies hopped in toeing the Chairman Rudd line with one severely riding a straw man?

People in the 18th - 19th century were much, much freer than us in the 21st.

Unless you're American, it doesn't apply to you. You're still a slave with no Bill of Rights and no recourse if singled out.

That whole Eureka Stockade thing really fizzled out, didn't it? A regular non-event it was... a small handful dead and the rest more than willing to touch toes and take it up the backside as part and parcel to the entire history of Australia, pre and post Federation.

[Doc Durian]

Another battle of the smart people.

Please pass the popcorn.

Smart people understand the implications of the word, "overall", Vashti.

[MVPlaya]

Doc, your argument is that one fifth of the population was freer then (those being priveleged white, Christian property owning males of British descent). How that could possibly mean to be overall blows my mind.

Vashti, keep in mind, Doc Durian thinks that people were overall freer in the 18th century than today, which I took offense with. Apparently we were overall freer except that only 1/5th of the population could vote, one sixth was enslaved, and minorities were routinely lynched and barred from sharing public spaces with Whites.

I think what Doc meant to say was "overall for a select portion of Whites," or just admit that when he says overall, he is speaking from the perspective of a priveleged white male, and has no idea who, overall, were the Americans of the 18th century.

Vashti, don't use the term smart too liberally. Doc is many things, learned is not one of them. He's smart in a Sarah Paliny sort of way, and I'm sure he'd think it a compliment.

[Doc Durian]

Bing!

(the meaning of "overall" finally dawns on the simple minded fellow) lol

Although I thoroughly enjoy his fishing expedition for ideology origins, plus the added steam escaping from his carp gills when I continue to turf him up on the river bank and watch him languish back to the rivers edge.

[MVPlaya]

Overall does not mean "overall for a select portion of whites," in fact, that is a minority. (One in five is a minority, four in five a majority.) When four in five Americans had it a lot worse in the 18th century, you cannot state something as idiotic as "overall America was much freer in the 18th century." It is, in fact, the exact opposite, since overall includes everyone.

All that has dawned on me is that you make stupid arguments and phrase them even worse. Your entire argument is apparently "for priveleged upper-class Whites, there are more laws existing today than in the 18th century," and I'd say thats a damn good thing, considering they can't go around lynching negroes and Natives and barrings Jews and coloreds from entering their favorite hotspots. I'd say its absolutely idiotic to say the 18th century was freer in any meaningful way, or to claim that you should only look at priveleged people when you analyze history.

Your argument is about as useful as saying "overall, there was a lot more freedom in Nazi Germany" "oh yes but Jews were just a small portion of the population that wasn't considered part of the overall population, you should look at all the rights the Germans had."