Wednesday, January 02, 2013

OOGA TO THE OOGITY-BOOGA.

neo-neocon started out with a fairly standard rightwing plaint about the big bad liberals:
It’s not just the heady victory of the moment that’s motivating them, it’s their conviction that it’s clear sailing from here on that empowers the left to openly up the ante and signal their next steps in establishing and capitalizing on their hegemony. No need to hide anymore when there’s nothing the right can do about it.
Then suddenly sproinnggg! out of nowhere:
In some ways the anti-white-man rhetoric that has become standard and acceptable lately is the worst sign of all. If the term “hate speech” has a meaning, it most definitely would apply to a great deal of what has been said recently about that despised group. Those who are first to shriek “racism” and “sexism” when criticism is launched against a group defined as oppressed (blacks, women) are turning the tables and dissing white men with impunity. It is both hypocritical and vile, and especially offensive when cloaked in the sanctimony of those on the left who believe they occupy the moral high ground (that would be everyone on the left).
Huh? neo-neocon doesn't explain what the hell she's talking about, so I had to trace back through a link to Victor Davis Hanson she'd left, perhaps inadvertently, as a clue to find out where she caught the fever.

Near as I can tell, this is it: That guy who criticized the Constitution in the New York Times called the Founding Fathers "a group of white propertied men" who "thought it was fine to own slaves." (I like the Constitution fine myself but yeah, obviously they were what he said they were.) Well, Hanson takes exception, but instead of arguing a case he just links the Constitution critic's sentiments to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, for reason unshared with his readers:
I can see Seidman’s vision now: Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi decides that semi-automatic handguns, not cheap Hollywood violence or sick video games, empower the insane to kill, and, presto, their 'considered judgment' and favored 'particular course of action' trump the archaic and evil wisdom of 'white propertied men.'
And that's about it, unless there's a coded reference or an acrostic or something in there that I missed.

Hanson's fit is weird enough, but the way neo-neocon got "everyone on the left" and "dissing white men with impunity" out of it -- that's just surreal. And then there's Ole Perfessor Glenn Reynolds' endorsement of it:
The Obama presidency has certainly been clarifying. Which is probably why gun sales are up.
To recap, some nut thought a professor's smack talk about the Founders owning slaves had something to do with Reid and Pelosi; this stimulated another nut to rage about the left's alleged insults to whitey; and this stimulated a third nut to cite Obama and cheer the rise in gun purchases. It's like a game of Telephone in an insane asylum.

Earlier today I was mildly disappointed that Commentary's new "What Is the Future of Conservatism in the Wake of the 2012 Election? A Symposium" was subscriber-only. But now I feel like I just read it for free.

UPDATE. "The white man has been oppressed ever since Django was unchained," explains Halloween Jack in comments. wjts and others point out that Hanson is once again complaining that someone stole equipment from his property and, once again, suggests the theft has something darkly to do with Obama. Soon these guys will be communicating entirely by dog-whistle: "Someone made off with my entrenching tool last night..." "OOGA BOOGA DEFEND WHITEY!"

164 comments:

  1. To recap, some nut thought a professor's smack talk about the Founders owning slaves had something to do with Reid and Pelosi; this stimulated another nut to rage about the left's alleged insults to whitey; and this stimulated a third nut to cite Obama and cheer the rise in gun purchases. It's like a game of Telephone in an insane asylum.

    It's a Rube Goldberg machine of Wingnuttery, known more simply as a Jonah Goldberg  Machine. One wingnut drools on the head of another causing him to sputter about Obama's unfitness for office because he doesn't act white enough, which turns a little wheel that raises a flag and causes another to salute it while pleading the case for secession over the unconstitutionality of Obamacare. When the flag reaches the top it shoots off a gun which gives another wingnut an erection, tipping over an order of chicken McNuggets which roll down a trough to Jonah Goldberg, who is spoon fed the nuggets by his mommy and the old geezers at Regnery while penning a short column about the utter laziness of liberals - and then finishes with a fart. 

    ...which causes some no-name nut over at Breitbart.com to drool on Jim Hoft while writing about secret FEMA camps and the whole thing starts over again....

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  2. AGoodQuestion11:38 PM

    Gott in Himmel, is there anything that doesn't make Glenn Reynolds buy another popgun?


    "This Oppan Gangnam Style song has certainly been clarifying. Which is probably why gun sales are up."

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  3. calling all toasters11:41 PM

    In related news, it now comes out that Ward Churchill used a time machine financed by George Soros and built in a hippie commune in Cuba to go back to 1932 and foil the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, thus assuring FDR's election.

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  4. montag211:51 PM

    It's like a game of Telephone in an insane asylum.


    Geez, that's funny. And what it conjures up! I'm trying to imagine twenty paranoid right-wingers in a line. The first says, "the sky is falling on me," and the twentieth one ends up mumbling about digging up Clinton's murder victims at the Mena airport.


    Ah, well, maybe their inability to follow a simple train of thought is a good thing.

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  5. He finished by travelling to Hawaii in 1961, where he placed a birth announcement in a local paper for a little Kenyan baby who would one day travel to America and use ACORN to steal the presidency.

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  6. Are these folks in denial about the Constitutional system being BY and FOR white propertied males?


    I guess if we admit that the original vision of our system has expanded over the years to include more people, we might be forced to admit that it still might have a ways to go.


    Of course, as you point out, even if the writer had said the Founders were purple cannibals, I'm not sure what that has to do with congressional Democrats...


    I might write a post about how the Founders were purple cannibals...

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  7. KatWillow12:08 AM

    By pointing out that the Founder's were white and owned slaves, the professor was sneering and laughing at them ... because (heh!heh!) now they would be so surprised to know a Black Man is now President, and he owns ALL white males in the US!

    Its true: nowadays white males are only counted as -uh- two thirds of a person. That's how Obama won and will continue to win.

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  8. montag212:41 AM

    No doubt, the perishing few who have a little math will grin with pride and strut their stuff: "Two-thirds is more than three-fifths, so we're still better, neener, neener."

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  9. Criminy. I hope these guys never get their hands on a copy of Charles Beard's "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States," which argued that wealthy landowners (hint: the Founding Fathers) ensured that the provisions of the Constitution would preserve and protect the interests of wealthy landowners (see previous hint). Beard's book from 1913 proves that the campaign of libels and slanders against white males goes *way* back!

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  10. Forgive me for being in favor of the constitution, but it was at the very least influenced by people who were oppressed by their government. I don't have such respect for all of the founders (or even most) as some do, but of those who signed the declaration of independence, some died for signing it and others lost their property and children to the cause. They weren't so selfish as to have their purpose be to help only themselves by the new government, they were people who had everything to lose and nothing to gain except satisfaction at having done something good.

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  11. Are these folks in denial about the Constitutional system being BY and FOR white propertied males?

    Hey, man, I saw the same TV show about the Founders that Victor did and only Pete and Captain Greer were white propertied males.

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  12. Devotees of the Inimitable Hanson will find this passage particularly delectable:

    I am sure that history offers all sorts of examples where people without
    evil documents like our Constitution protected free speech and
    religious worship — out of “respect.” Ask Socrates, Jesus, six million
    Jews, 20 million Russians, or those with eyeglasses
    during the days of the Khmer Rouge. Apparently, what stops such carnage
    is not the rule of constitutional law, but good progressive minds who
    care for others and show respect. I’ll try that rhetoric on the next
    thief who for the fourth time will steal the copper wire conduit from my
    pump.


    BLACK PRESIDENT DONE STOLE MAH CHAINSAW AND MAH CONDUIT!

    Also, Hanson - ever the serious student of the human past - asks: "But if we wish to avoid the baleful influence of white guys, can Seidman point to indigenous Aztec texts for liberal guidance?"

    Well, no, Vic, he can't on account of how a bunch of white guys burned the damn things.

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  13. Fats Durston2:46 AM

    A "professor" of the classical era, and the best constitutionless-caused democides he can come up with from then have casualty lists of one?!

    And really, that paragraph is resounding in its idiocy. History does offer millions of examples of the protection of religious worship in constitution-less societies. History also offers plenty of counter-examples where the existence of a constitution which included rights free speech and freedom of religion failed to stop people from being massacred, including Germany, for fuck's sake, not to mention the United States. Murdering tens of millions of people does not equate with petty theft, Victor. AND ANYWAY, THOSE FUCKING COPPER THIEVES THAT TROUBLE YOU SO INCESSANTLY ARE OPERATING UNDER THE AEGIS OF THE FUCKING U.S. CONSTITUTION, YOU TWIT.

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  14. montag22:47 AM

    Ol' VD Hanson is just itchin' to plug somebody what's a-stealin' his copper wire. He may teach the Classics, but I'm betting that he sounds like Jethro Clampett doing it.

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  15. hells littlest angel3:57 AM

    Victor Davis Hanson? Fuck that white motherfucker. With a gun.

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  16. D. Sidhe3:59 AM

    Someone needs to explain to me the bit about liberal legislators feeling that handguns might empower crazy people to kill. Because, and it may simply be that I am crazy, I honestly can't tell what he's trying to say. I went to the link, and I still can't figure out what he's trying to say. It sounds like he's suggesting that it would be highly irrational to believe that crazy people with guns are more likely to kill than crazy people armed with a copy of Natural Born Killers. But that cannot possibly be what he's saying, because... sane people don't talk like that, do you?

    I don't actually want to give Hanson the benefit of the doubt here because I've found him to be full of terrible ideas in the past, but I had been assuming he was at the very least saner than I am. Please tell me I'm just not understanding the underlying literary device or misunderstanding the point of view attribution for that thought or something. Because otherwise, this is another "Screw it, I'm off my antipsychotic meds again if this is how the functional and non-diagnosed think" moment.

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  17. And being written by white males! Uh.. huh.. my Breaitbart bleachbrain confuzlzed.

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  18. smut clyde4:55 AM

    I would like to use an elaborate Heath Robinson contraption to deliver to this comment the gratification it so richly deserves.

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  19. smut clyde5:04 AM

    One could further refer Hanson to the Russian Constitutions of 1918 and 1924; and to the Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea of 1976.


    Or he could look them up himself, if he cared.

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  20. Do you not understand because you're crazy....OR NOT CRAZY ENOUGH??


    whoah

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  21. Haystack7:10 AM

    Dissing white men? Pretty sure the constitution allows for that.

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  22. Halloween_Jack7:41 AM

    The white man has been oppressed ever since Django was unchained.

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  23. wileywitch8:06 AM

    If someone is delusional through religion and/or political philosophy it isn't in the DSM; because then psychiatry would have to recognize that people can drive themselves and others mad with delusional thinking without having "a chemical imbalance." Today's psychiatry would have nothing to say about the Third Reich, and everything to say about how chemically cursed those who failed to comfortably adapt to it were.

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  24. Yeah, and it would have been bizarre for Madison and Jefferson to have had 21st century values when it came to women or minorities!

    The main thing that has changed is WHO is considered to be under the umbrella of rights and not the rights themselves.

    In other words, I guess what I mean is that the substance of the rights was already there, if the even if the process of who got to exercise them had some developing to do.

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  25. Doghouse Riley8:20 AM

    Today's psychiatry would have nothing to say about the Third Reich, and everything to say about how chemically cursed those who failed to comfortably adapt to it were.



    True, as social science it's execrable. But as a retail marketing technique...

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  26. lawguy8:29 AM

    Umm, I hate to point this out but the Declaration of Independence was a different document then the Constitution and developed at a different time in history..

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  27. Doghouse Riley8:43 AM

    of those who signed the declaration of independence, some died for signing it and others lost their property and children to the cause.

    Dear me, not this moldy chestnut. No signer of the Declaration "died for signing it". One, New Jersey's Richard Stockton, was imprisoned for doing so. By Tories. No signer died in battle. Several lost property as a result of warfare, not in retaliation for the Declaration. James Witherspoon, son of New Jersey's John Witherspoon, is the only child of a signer known to've died in battle. Several, including Patrick "Give Me Liberty" Henry, chose to sit the fighting out.



    It was the original Ol' Perfessor, Dr. C. Dillon Stengel, who noted that one can, in fact, look this stuff up.

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  28. redoubt8:53 AM

    Well, it's because he's a "professor" of the classical era, where men were men (and women didn't vote). Once he crosses the Atlantic, all need for "constitutional" protections is off.
    Especially if the "protector" wears a uniform.

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  29. wileywitch8:54 AM

    A government subsidized retail marketing technique that is the lion's share of Medicaid costs---

    http://www.rethinkingpsychiatry.org/wasting-the-taxpayers-medicaid-dollars-on-psychiatric-drugs/

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  30. Helmut Monotreme9:04 AM

    Jeez. If he's that mad, I'm surprised he doesn't get a 3 phase 220v pump and "forget" to ground it.

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  31. Stitch9:24 AM

    Jed Clampett. Jethro Bodine.

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  32. Megalon9:32 AM

    "Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi decides that semi-automatic handguns, not
    cheap Hollywood violence or sick video games, empower the insane to kill"

    Can video games, no matter how sick and movies, Hollywood or otherwise really "empower" somebody to kill? I mean, I'm sure the latter day Lacedaemonian of Fresno could slay a dozen chainsaw thieves with his bare hands as easily as Odysseus slew the suitors, but most lesser men need a weapon of some kind.

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  33. montag29:32 AM

    Still and all, Third Reichers were very fond of self-medicating with speed. The Germans practically invented better living through chemistry.

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  34. montag29:34 AM

    Okay, okay, I don't know my Classics as well as I should.

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  35. that's exactly what a black or mexican copper thief would say.

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  36. glennisw9:47 AM

    "It's like a game of Telephone in an insane asylum."


    This. is. perfect.

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  37. Apparently, what stops such carnage is not the rule of constitutional law, but good progressive minds who care for others and show respect. I’ll try that rhetoric on the next thief who for the fourth time will steal the copper wire conduit from my pump.


    what the fuck just happened?

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  38. glennisw9:49 AM

    Sounds like my childhood Mouse Trap game - with just as much hilarity.

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  39. Halloween_Jack9:51 AM

    Copper line, you say? I reckon was ole Jed that done stole it in the first place.

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  40. glennisw9:53 AM

    yes, seeing as how it had to be amended to give non-white non-male citizens those rights, it's a pretty convincing assertion that the Constitution was written by and for white property owning men.

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  41. BigHank5310:00 AM

    Why, a person with an interest in abnormal psychology could spend a lifetime studying the good professor, couldn't they?

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  42. tigrismus10:01 AM

    cloaked in the sanctimony of those on the left who believe they occupy the moral high ground (that would be everyone on the left)



    She's indignant because she thinks the right owns the high ground, not like those filthy hippie Occupy High Ground squatters.

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  43. The Obama presidency has certainly been clarifying. Which is probably why gun sales are up.


    I don't follow the implication here, Glenn. Now, if you had noted that video game sales are up, you might be on to something.

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  44. Gold Star Plus Plus for the "entrenching tool" reference which I take it is to Decka Mitford/Nancy Mitford's insane father?

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  45. Famously the UK *still has no written constitution*--in fact they are still fighting to get one. And yet.

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  46. I think its "with a chain saw."


    aimai

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  47. I totally want a bumpersticker that says "Occupy the Moral High Ground."

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  48. smut clyde10:20 AM

    Which is probably why gun sales are up.
    Wait, no credit for the NRA? The arms traders are collecting all that money for nothing?

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  49. churchill!

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  50. If you actually read the article that has VDH all het up, you'll see a constitutional professor arguing for some sort of semi-parliamentary system with less sharply defined checks and balances. I'm not sure if I agree with him on everything, but it's hardly the idiosyncratic America-bashing that America's Worst Classicist thinks it is.

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  51. BigHank5310:35 AM

    There's a joke in there involving the word "refried" but I'm not willing to break my last New Year's resolution.

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  52. smut clyde10:41 AM

    Soon these guys will be communicating entirely by dog-whistle

    "Shaka, when the walls fell BECAUSE OBAMA STOLE THE COPPER WIRE CONDUIT"

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  53. Yes, I've known plenty of psychiatrists who've argued that the only sane thing to do was murder millions of people. That's a totally accurate allegation and not at all a slander against thousands of people.

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  54. catclub10:54 AM

    and it would be a short lifetime, ending in one's intestines reaching up to strangle one.

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  55. M. Krebs10:58 AM

    Either him or George Tirebiter.

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  56. Usually, yes ... which is why it's been stolen.

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  57. sharculese11:02 AM

    In the wingnut mind a gun is a psychological totem completely divorced from it's function as a tool. So when they hear someone say guns lead to more deaths, it couldn't be because guns are useful for y'know, killing people, the argument must be that they work some deep sinister magic on the mind of the innocent gun nut.

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  58. Mr. Wonderful11:05 AM

    Take that, OK GO. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

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  59. sharculese11:06 AM

    Beard's book from 1913 proves that the campaign of libels and slanders against white males goes *way* back!


    Isn't this essentially the thesis of Liberal Fascism?

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  60. sharculese11:09 AM

    A rusty chainsaw of course, because you know Those People won't lavish the same loving care on it as pretend gentleman farmer Victor Davis Hanson.

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  61. Good stuff, s.c.


    (IF that is your real name!!1!)
    ~

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  62. You know what's funny is that when I read the constitutions I see outlined a system of government, but when you read it you seem to see things that aren't there simply because of your disdain for the people who wrote it. I never said I was oppressed, and I also said there weren't many founders I particularly liked.

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  63. Halloween_Jack11:31 AM

    Potrzebie, when he facepalmed.

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  64. Mr. Wonderful11:31 AM

    That IS a simple train of thought, to them. We're talking about the people who invented the can't-miss formula for success:


    1. Underpants.
    2. ???
    3. Profit!


    One thing to remember about these clowns is, *they* assert the supremacy of principle when it comes time to proclaim their tribal membership. When anyone else does, they offer (usually mythical) anecdotes of "real life" to mock the very principle of having principles. You'd call it "hypocrisy" if you thought they were self-aware.

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  65. Oh my, excuuuuse me for making a mistake. So then I'm wrong to say that these people had everything to lose for signing it?

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  66. Mr. Wonderful11:35 AM

    Stop posting on alicublog and finish your homework.

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  67. RogerAiles11:38 AM

    V.D. is going to wait for the fourth time? That gives every thief three free passes.


    That's mighty white of you, V.D.!

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  68. True, even those among them who wanted more good things to be included in the law did not have the support they deserved. At least there was forethought enough to allow flexibility of the constitution to make needed changes, and I'm sure the good people around back then had to push for this. Looks like I posted what I said in the wrong forum :-/ I don't know where people get off pretending that all the founders were hateful people, even those that held slaves though doing something wrong disn't all hate blacks. Some of them treated their slaves better than they would have been treated if they were set free. But two dimensional logic is considered dangerous by some I guess.

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  69. I'd like to think that, had I lived in 1776 or 1789, I would have been anti-slavery, pro-equal rights for women and minorities, etc.


    But statistically speaking, it is unlikely I would have been right?


    I don't buy off on that being "hateful," either.

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  70. bourbaki11:49 AM

    Two dimensional logic?



    I give this mixed metaphor three Friedman's.

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  71. sharculese11:53 AM

    Some of them treated their slaves better than they would have been treated if they were set free.


    The whole forcing them to do menial labor for no pay thing excluded, of course.

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  72. true that, at the very least you'd have to hide your positions or be shamed politically. We sure haven't got past the part about having to hide your positions or be shamed politically, but at least a lot of things that shouldn't be shameful are no longer considered so!

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  73. coozledad12:01 PM

    He's not your son, Mr. Wonderful.

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  74. Duncan195112:06 PM

    Neither does Israel. Let's see Hanson and neocon address that. Should be fun.

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  75. Yeah, people SHOULD be ashamed of loving other people THE NERVE!

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  76. Bitter Scribe12:12 PM

    Yes, stealing wire from a pump is just like the Holocaust.

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  77. Duncan195112:13 PM

    Stop torturing me, coozledad.

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  78. what a loving response. sounds like you didn't even read what I said.

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  79. BigHank5312:19 PM

    Given the tax liability many of them were looking to get out from under by declaring independence, I'd say that signing the Declaration was a gamble. A gamble with reasonable odds and and a hefty pay-out, of course.


    Fifteen seconds with a history book will tell you how keen the British Empire was on executing white men with money. Try again.

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  80. Its just a variant of Always Be Closing--first line in the salesman's handbook: find a way to work your product into your pitch no matter what the ostensible subject of conversation is.

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  81. BigHank5312:22 PM

    Maybe next time he should employ an alarm system instead of rhetoric.

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  82. I for one think we as a nation have been making great strides in welcoming white males back into society. They have received much-needed upgrades in their polling places, to the point where they are now mostly superior to those that minorities have to use. White soul and R&B singers have been making inroads into a previously rigidly segregated musical genre, and the three point shot has helped level the playing field, as it were, in basketball, as have white set asides for punters and place kickers in football. True, we're not there yet, but one day the dream will be realized.

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  83. Perhaps if you read the DOI you'd notice it's about rights for all, not just white men. Take off your hate goggles for just a minute and read it.

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  84. This seems weirdly backwards. What is the evidence that "then psychiatry would have to recognize that people can drive themselves and others mad with delusional thinking without having been born with a chemical imbalance" specifically with respect to the Third Reich?


    The Nazis killed millions of people because they were willing to commit murder against individuals and groups classified as sub human or non human. There's nothing particularly noteworthy about that, it has been happening since man crawled down from the trees. They weren't "mad"--an archaic and unhelpful term--they weren't hearing voices, they weren't doing it because they have OCD, they weren't incapable of knowing the plain meaning of their acts. They didn't do it because they were delusional. (And by the way Religious mania, hearing voices, etc...are all in the DSM, or used to be). Of course there's been lots of writing from both psychologists and sociologists and philsophers about why and how the abnormal became the normal but none of it would lead you to think that it had to do with a chemical imablance. That isn't an indictment of modern science and neurology. You are just talking about different things.

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  85. Jon Hendry12:32 PM

    "McNuggets which roll down a trough to Jonah Goldberg, who is spoon fed the nuggets by his mommy and the old geezers at Regnery "


    Are you sure that isn't from "Human Centipede 3: Peak Wingnut"?

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  86. That's not really true. The plain meaning of the words would have looked different to men of that time. If you read a book like Albion's Seed (an ethnography and history of the four different white British communities which founded this country) you will quickly come to understand that words like "equality" "honor" "liberty" were understood differently from New England to the Southern colonies and were (in general) assumed not to have any real referent in women, children, indentured persons, and non whites (Indians, Africans). The past is another country, they do things differently there and they for sure speak another language.

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  87. I don't have any disdain for the people who wrote the constitution or the DOI but I also don't have any illusions that it was the best document even they could have written--they were fighting over a compromise, for fuck's sake, and a whole lot of people were fucked over in that compromise for the sake of a particular subset of other people (slaveowners). That should be obvious.

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  88. That's a weird idea you have there about the "treatment" afforded free labor in a world overflowing with available land and in which labor was the chief constraint. Why would being kept in bondage, laboring for nothing, be "better treatment" than taking up a homestead and farming for yourself *which was the obvious option of generations of free white labor in the North? If the sons of farmers in Massachuesetts moved up to New Hampshire, Maine, and later westward to farm for themselves, or opened up factories, why would ex slaves be in a worse position? What "treatment" would their land rich and money poor former owners be in a position to mete out to them absent the role of the state in surpressing worker's rights?

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  89. I think we have to presume it was rusty because that idiot keeps leaving it out at night.

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  90. sharculese12:48 PM

    On the other hand, you better believe that's a paddling.

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  91. Only in the first amendment, which we all know was superseded by the second amendment.

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  92. To be scrupulously fair to Hanson, he is not saying that the multiple thefts of his conduit were like the Holocaust. He is saying that the multiple thefts of his conduit were like the Holocaust, the crucifixion, the liquidation of the Kulaks, the Cambodian genocide, and the execution of Socrates combined.

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  93. coozledad1:00 PM

    Those same white dudes who fought the revolution and subsequently drafted the articles of confederation were actively engaged in shooting their fellow citizens (although admittedly, ones of slightly lower standing) just a few years previous for engaging in what must have been called 'premature anti-empire activities".

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Regulation

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  94. Jay Tea, how about you actually say what you want instead of being a bore?

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  95. You take an odd position to think that a freed slave has a competetive market when those looking for labor would simply purchase another slave instea of pay fair wages.

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  96. Why don't you just say you hate me rather than pretending to be bored?

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  97. Doghouse Riley1:21 PM

    Yes. But, on a positive note, at least you were wrong for all the wrong reasons.

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  98. It's actually not true that slaves were never paid. And of course you conveniently ignore that having a warm place to live and plenty of food can be good care.

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  99. sharculese1:42 PM

    Oh, you mean they treated valuable property with some degree of care? That totally makes up for that property being another human being.

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  100. We might not always agree, but after being lambasted with ad hominems I sure do appreciate that you avoid being nasty... Of course there were a few other posts that actually made points as well

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  101. aimai1:46 PM

    Absent government maintenance of slavery, yes, a freed slave would be in a highly competitive market for labor just as Northerners were in a highly competitive market for labor or, where immigration and land scarcity pushed them out, sought land to farm for themselves.


    Slavery only worked because 1) it brought laborers to a land rich/labor poor region and 2) the slave owners kept the cost of the reproduction of the worker low by stiffing the workers on food, clothing, housing and education. In no way could the "treatment" of any slaveowner, at any time, be considered more humane than the behavior of any other capitalist oppressor of the working class or even distinct from it. The main distinction lay in the ability of free labor to form coalitions, unions, and strikes for better treatment, or to vote with their feet and leave undesirable employers. And that difference between slave and free labor certainly doesn't cut in favor of the slaveowning class.


    Where did you learn your history and sociology? From some bowlderized texas textbook or glenn beck? You seem to know not nothing but the exact opposite of something true.


    aimai

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  102. It does not follow that being legally considered property itself means the "owner" treated them as such.

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  103. aimai1:49 PM

    Oh that takes a fuck off you fucking fuck. You are not discussing something that everyone doesn't really well understand, you know. Some slaves were permitted to work for pay--of course! You are talking about a 400 year history of evolving laws and customs. Something happened at least once to someone during that time. But if you knew anything at all about actual slave lives on plantations and in small holdings you would know that slaves were not generallya fforded a "warm place to live" and "plenty of food" and they were of course famously denied medical care, education and religion.


    aimai

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  104. aimai1:50 PM

    I'll bite--I don't hate you but I do despise you! Also: you bore me because you are boring. You are tediously, childishly, almost spitefully uninformed about the subject you are discussing.

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  105. There's only one sort of person in history, never two sorts, right?

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  106. aimai2:03 PM

    What does that even mean? I mean, mean to you? Because it means nothing to me. You seem to be descending to spouting gibberish.

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  107. I always try and stay positive. In part, I have to because there is so much I don't know. Sometimes, I get revved up and make rude statements to people, but it's relatively rare.

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  108. aimai2:04 PM

    Why is owner in quotes? Do you think that the entire edifice of law that built up around slavery was in some sense not real? Do you think that when slaves were beaten, branded, raped, sold, starved and discarded that this was done by some weird process of osmosis or accident and not as a part of a legally defined and maintained set of relationships?


    aimai

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  109. sharculese2:15 PM

    I just don't even know what the fuck to make of this.


    I'm sure the property in question would have taken great comfort from your bizarre, empty semantics.

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  110. It looks as though he put the word owner in quotes to distance himself from the notion that people can be owned, although, at the time of the founders, legally they could...

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  111. aimai2:19 PM

    Personally I think "fuck off you fucking fuck" was a pretty positive response to Jay. You should see the other things I thought of saying.

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  112. wileywitch2:19 PM

    If the founders are great men in the sky looking over us, then they should be proud of things like the Civil Rights Act and the Violence Against Women Act, and the regulation of industries that wreck the environment. It's the "that's not what the founders intended" (or they would have written it into the constitution) phenomenon that creates the need to state the obvious from time to time. Don't blame us for the efforts of radical Right wingers to use the Constitution to justify racism, misogyny, vandalism, and nihilism in the name of "freedom".


    They weren't gods, they weren't perfect men. If the Constitution were so perfect then, why did it take 200 years to give women and people of color the right to vote?


    We can do better.

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  113. aimai2:20 PM

    How do you shame someone politically? Do you mean that they are socially shamed and it has some political repercussions? That's called Democracy and you are soaking in it.

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  114. wileywitch2:35 PM

    They weren't "mad"--an archaic and unhelpful term--they weren't hearing voices, they weren't doing it because they have OCD, they weren't incapable of knowing the plain meaning of their acts.


    Neither are one out of four people. Believing your self to be of a superior race who can righteously murder whatever class of people you determine is not your race, is delusional.

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  115. redoubt2:36 PM

    Beard's book from 1913 proves that the campaign of libels and slanders against white males goes *way* back!

    Same year the Federal Reserve was established (12 USC Ooga Booga, subchapter 3)

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  116. sharculese2:40 PM

    I want to have a sinister, clandestine meeting with this comment off the coast of Georgia.

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  117. satch2:48 PM

    If only some liberal with an impish sense of humor would go over to the Hanson estate tonight and plant a sign in the front yard saying "Free copper conduit! Help yourself."

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  118. Fats Durston3:54 PM

    Who can forget the Philly freedom rides in support of Hall & Oates?

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  119. The Dark Avenger4:16 PM

    Or the Million Men for Hootie March?

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  120. zencomix4:40 PM

    The pump don't work cuz Obama stole the wire,
    lookout kid, it's something he did
    don't look now but he's doin' it again

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  121. smut clyde4:44 PM

    How about seven-dimensional transfinite set theory?

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  122. KatWillow5:58 PM

    Yes, he doesn't seem to take very good care of his Stuff, does he? If I had pump-copper wire stolen just once, I'd figure out a way to secure it, and maybe put up a "Beware of Dog!" sign, to boot.

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  123. KatWillow6:06 PM

    Scientists & doctors tend to think each latest clever theory, revelation or "discovery" in the medical field, whether its the first real comprehension of what bacteria are, or virus's, or T-cells, or chemical brain imbalance,IS IT !!11! finally: the Unified Theory of Medicine. They're just as bad as the "latest vitamin" or herbal supplement (melonin, garlic, jojoba (?) ginsing, etc etc and so on... people.

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  124. bourbaki6:08 PM

    That's a royal Friedman's because its just gobbledygook.

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  125. KatWillow6:10 PM

    You know what? I bet whoever is stealing the copper wire thingy is doing it because they HATE VDH, not for the money a pound of copper might bring them. Maybe its his wife?

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  126. KatWillow6:12 PM

    I like this... still, surely if Obama had it in for VDH he could just send a DRONE or two?

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  127. bourbaki6:21 PM

    This reminded me of this epic thread.

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  128. wileywitch6:22 PM

    Finally I've learned that one study isn't a valid scientific argument for anything.

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  129. Ridiculous! I mean, does Chick-Fil-A even make mcnuggets?

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  130. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard7:19 PM

    I can see Seidman’s vision now: Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi decides that semi-automatic handguns, not cheap Hollywood violence or sick video games, empower the insane to kill
    Sick video games empower the insane to kill- remember when that madman bludgeoned a dozen people to death with the Disc Case of his copy of Grand Theft Auto?

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  131. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard7:23 PM

    Speaking as a white guy, I have to say that the biggest problem white guys face is other white guys. The person who laid you off? White guy (unless you worked for Godfather's Pizza). The guy who threatened you with a gun after the fender bender? White guy. Every once in a while, there's a bad black guy who did something bad to a white guy, but those angry white guys tend to be mad at the good black guy who just asked for an equal chance at making a go of it.

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  132. i think the down vote is because you forgot to include the new deal.

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  133. my hair is an al sharpton, therefore your argument is invalid.

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  134. and maybe put up a "Beware of Dog!" sign, to boot.


    Which would make Obama's participation even likelier, as he'd want to eat it.

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  135. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard7:33 PM

    Think of it as a reverse Ouroborous- a serpent shitting into its own mouth.

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  136. Scientists & doctors tend to think each latest clever theory,
    revelation or "discovery" in the medical field, whether its the first
    real comprehension of what bacteria are, or virus's, or T-cells, or
    chemical brain imbalance,IS IT !!11! finally: the Unified Theory of
    Medicine.


    I was wondering why the hardware store was out of ridiculously broad brushes.

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  137. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard7:39 PM

    Of course, there's a veiled threat in the whole "dissing white men with impunity" thing- they miss the days when "dissing whitey" would end up with an extrajudicial execution with no repercussions for the perps. It's the whole rationale behind "stand your ground" laws... hell, dude gets "uppity" in the pizza line, shoot him.

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  138. redoubt7:44 PM

    Sort of. Not that he could tell the difference.

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  139. wileywitch7:55 PM

    Every attempted revolution has costs and the risk of failure. The American Revolution is no different. Had the French not helped out, then those who wrote the Declaration of Independence might have lost everything, but they didn't because they won. These things are true about every revolution and do not represent the hand of God in American affairs. What they did was admirable, but not worthy of worship.

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  140. wileywitch8:03 PM

    You want a pointier brush?

    http://www.criticalpsychiatry.net/?p=527

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  141. woah now, your reply is definitely one of my favorite on this article, but I have no worship for the american revolution. I merely regard it as having had one of the best outcomes in consideration of all factors. I don't give mind to those who say it was evil because of slavery or womens rights, as those things would have been the same without the revolution, if not worse.

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  142. M. Krebs8:08 PM

    I can go with the theory about doctors, though with a much finer brush, and it's equally applicable to people in various other vocations, particularly those in the education field. But any example who claims to be a scientist is a walking oxymoron.

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  143. M. Krebs8:14 PM

    I'm in Savannah. Maybe I can hook you up.

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  144. Even worse was Leisure Suit Larry...
    ~

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  145. M. Krebs8:20 PM

    Actually, now I'm really curious which it is. Roy?

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  146. aimai8:22 PM

    Its not delusional. A brief acquaintance with sociology, anthropology, history and theories that encompass the social construction of reality will demonstrate to you that even paranoids have real enemies and that when a large number of people hold the same beliefs those beliefs generally can not be disconfirmed in a way that a true delusion can be disconfirmed. A large number of people in this country are assholes, limit their information to fox news, are authoritarians and probably have bad hygiene but they are not "mad" and they are not exactly "delusional" in any realistic meaning of the term. Just because I think and say they are crazy assholes doesn't mean that either a psychologist or a psychiatrist would diagnose them and try to treat them--nor should it.**



    This entire discussion reminds me of that old joke. "My brother thinks he's a chicken." "Really? That's terrible! What are you doing to cure him?" "Nothing: we need the eggs."


    Look: people can be quite functional and believe in fairies, in gods, in a caring universe, that learning Klingon will improve their lives. This has literally nothing to do with your pet peeve which is that a fairly large population in this country is in fact mentally ill--like psychotic, paranoid schizophrenic, hearing voices, gibbering lunatics, self medicating using drugs and alcohol and in need of an incredibly high level of care (medical and social) which society and their families are simply not set up to afford them.

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  147. aimai8:25 PM

    But he'd have to put it up in Spanish, and you know that would really get his goat.

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  148. wileywitch8:53 PM

    Anyone now who does not think that slavery is evil, or who makes excuses for it can not claim to be on the high ground, though.

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  149. AGoodQuestion10:25 PM

    Or he could look them up himself, if he cared. His "caring" about the Constitution is limited to the twenty seconds it takes to spout off about it, so go figure.

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  150. AGoodQuestion10:41 PM

    Unfortunately his psychiatrist wife has no interest in psychology of any kind.

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  151. AGoodQuestion11:04 PM

    Could almost make you think that having a law that gives permission to shoot unarmed people is a less than great idea.

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  152. bekabot11:55 PM

    I think I know how you shame someone politically...you shame someone politically by winning an election, and winning it in, um, spades. You shame people politically by causing them to experience defeat at those whom they regard as their inferiors, those whom they believe don't vote because they shouldn't vote. You shame them by demonstrating that a nation which they regard as theirs by right is full of voters who don't like them or trust them and who wouldn't willingly walk on the same side of the street as them, with reason. That's how it's done.* And how do you know when somebody's been politically shamed and understands that he's been politically shamed? Well, one way to tell is that sometimes he stitches his hurt fee-fee's onto his shirtsleeve and goes around meeping about how hateful his opponents are. End of sermon.

    *It's even cooler and more ironic if you perform this feat while running a candidate who is actually a moderate Republican, even though his enemies like to characterize him as a Kenyan imposter socialist. Now that's droll, if you know what I mean, although of course it's not ideal from a progressive-political point of view.

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  153. I never said slavery was not evil nor did I make excuses for it. What I said was that in spite of slavery being tolerated by people of that day the constitution was a good thing, and the fact that it was properly ammended to outlaw slavery made it better.

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  154. Fats Durston1:33 AM

    ... or someone with fat fingers on an iPhone.

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  155. Hate you? I've hated a lot of people and it requires considerable emotional juice. Like Philip Marlowe, I hate strong but not long. Resentment I carry as a scar for later.I don't have the energy to hate someone as hopeless as you. I save my hatred for people who know what they're talking about, yet STILL choose to be evil. You seem like yet another delusional autistic libertarian with a weak grasp of English. In other words,

    you're too stoooopid to hate. Or should I speak slower?

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  156. ColBatGuano2:21 AM

    Just a quick reminder:
    It's actually not true that slaves were never paid. And of course you
    conveniently ignore that having a warm place to live and plenty of food
    can be good care.

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  157. Nord113:59 AM

    It's a grand idea as long as you're not one of those people to whom the term "uppity" might apply.

    sigyn

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  158. wileywitch5:20 AM

    You said that some slave-owners were "good" to their slaves. No. Slavery is slavery is slavery.

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  159. Yes, that narrows it down again to practicioners in a specific, often scientifically questionable subfield of medicine, thanks. As a "scientist" who was surprised to discover that I think each latest clever theory is the Unified Theory of Medicine regardless of the actual evidence, I appreciate it.

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  160. zencomix10:34 AM

    Thanks for that link.That was fun!

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  161. It wasn't good that the slaves were slaves, no, but that doesn't necessitate that all slaves were abused, nor that the so-called owner didn't share good things with them. There were slave owners who weren't cruel people, and if they hadn't "bought" the slave they would have been leaving the person in the hands of someone who would have mistreated the person. Such people did exist, and though they "owned" the slave on paper they treated them as employees. Of course that isn't the purpose of slavery, but there are ways for good people to get around the law to help people in unortunate circumstances.

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  162. And how can you draw the conclusion from this that I said slavery was not evil?

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