I agree with all of that, though!

Too much truthy stuff here to be commented on.

Last edited Sat Jun 14, 2014, 04:32 PM - Edit history (1)

white guys looking to create a less discredited identity.

The open carry yahoos still play dumb as to why people don't feel at ease with them carrying their own personal WMD around:



http://www.democraticunderground.com/107818547

But they don't seem to be able to maintain 'civility' for long. They have so much respect for the 2nd Amendment, they deny the 1st Amendment to others:

Spitting, Stalking, Rape Threats: How Gun Extremists Target Women - Welcome to the dark side of America's war over guns

By Mark Follman - May 15, 2014

...Ever since the Sandy Hook massacre, a small but vocal faction of the gun rights movement has been targeting women who speak up on the issue—whether to propose tighter regulations, educate about the dangers to children, or simply to sell guns with innovative security features. The vicious and often sexually degrading attacks have evolved far beyond online trolling, culminating in severe bullying, harassment, invasion of privacy, and physical aggression. Though vitriol flows from both sides in the gun debate, these menacing tactics have begun to alarm even some entrenched pro-gun conservatives...

Last May in her hometown of Phoenix, she (Jennifer Longdon) helped coordinate a gun buyback program with local police over three weekends. On the first Saturday, a group of men assembled across the street from the church parking lot where Longdon was set up. They shouted about constitutional rights and tyranny, and called people arriving to trade in their guns "sellouts." (The program netted nearly 2,000 firearms with more than $200,000 in reimbursements.)

Some of them approached Longdon. "You know what was wrong with your shooting?" one said. "They didn't aim better." Another man came up, looked Longdon up and down and said, "I know who you are." Then he recited her home address. The harassment continued, and the men showed up throughout the program, a Phoenix police official involved confirmed to me.

After a fundraiser one night during the program, Longdon returned home around 10 p.m., parked her ramp-equipped van and began unloading herself. As she wheeled up to her house, a man stepped out of the shadows. He was dressed in black and had a rifle, "like something out of a commando movie," Longdon told me. He took aim at her and pulled the trigger. Longdon was hit with a stream of water. "Don't you wish you had a gun now, bitch?" he scoffed before taking off.

"It was like a mock execution," Longdon says, recalling the intense surge of adrenaline and how the incident triggered her PTSD from the 2004 attack that nearly killed her and her fiancé. She called the police, but they were unable to track down the perpetrator. By the following Saturday, Longdon was back at her post helping run the buyback...

Worth the time to see more details and the videos at the Mother Jones link:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/guns-bullying-open-carry-women-moms-texas

We cannot afford to forget that Confederate leaders not only had a philosophy that was the prescursor of the KKK, which mirrors Libertarian heroes from ancient Greece, they believed some were born to be slaves due to their innate inferiority and said women should not have any voice, period. And they didnt't hesitate to use violence.

Too many similarities to ignore, jaysunb!

I'll post below some text and links, that shows what the guys who push what I've called Confederate Philosophy Dreckt think makes them so wise.

Plato excused / justified slavery:

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2180538?uid=3739960&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102597678397

You know how the RW insists the USA is a 'republic' and not a 'democracy'? Limited government is all they are selling, not the Constitution, which says to look out for the general welfare.

Libertarians say 'democracy'is 'mob rule' as it increases the power of the inferior. Romans used the term 'democrats' as a perjorative since they tried to lift up the working class of the day.

Sound familiar?

More Plato here:

http://www.friesian.com/plato.htm

Now to Aristotle:

Some aspects of Aristotle's theory of slavery

Slavery -- natural or conventional?

Aristole's theory of slavery is found in Book I, Chapters iii through vii of the Politics. and in Book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics.

Aristotle raises the question of whether slavery is natural or conventional. He asserts that the former is the case. So, Aristotle's theory of slavery holds that some people are naturally slaves and others are naturally masters. Thus he says:

"But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature?

There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule."

This suggests that anyone who is ruled must be a slave, which does not seem at all right. Still, given that this is so he must state what characteristics a natural slave must have -- so that he or she can be recognized as such a being. Who is marked out for subjugation, and who for rule? This is where the concept of "barbarian" shows up in Aristotle's account. Aristotle says:

"But among barbarians no distinction is made between women and slaves, because there is no natural ruler among them: they are a community of slaves, male and female. Wherefore the poets say,

'It is meet that Hellenes should rule over barbarians';

as if they thought that the barbarian and the slave were by nature one."

So men rule naturally over women, and Greeks over barbarians! But what is it which makes a barbarian a slave? Here is what Aristotle says:

"Where then there is such a difference as that between soul and body, or between men and animals (as in the case of those whose business is to use their body, and who can do nothing better), the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master. For he who can be, and therefore is, another's and he who participates in rational principle enough to apprehend, but not to have, such a principle, is a slave by nature. Whereas the lower animals cannot even apprehend a principle; they obey their instincts. And indeed the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for both with their bodies minister to the needs of life. Nature would like to distinguish between the bodies of freemen and slaves, making the one strong for servile labor, the other upright, and although useless for such services, useful for political life in the arts both of war and peace. But the opposite often happens--that some have the souls and others have the bodies of freemen. And doubtless if men differed from one another in the mere forms of their bodies as much as the statues of the Gods do from men, all would acknowledge that the inferior class should be slaves of the superior. And if this is true of the body, how much more just that a similar distinction should exist in the soul? but the beauty of the body is seen, whereas the beauty of the soul is not seen. It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right."

So the theory is that natural slaves should have powerful bodies but be unable to rule themselves. Thus, they become very much like beasts of burden, except that unlike these beasts human slaves recognize that they need to be ruled. The trouble with this theory, as Aristotle quite explicitly states, is that the right kind of souls and bodies do not always go together!

So, one could have the soul of a slave and the body of a freeman, and vice versa! Nonetheless, apparently because there are some in whom the body and soul are appropriate to natural slavery, that is a strong body and a weak soul, Aristotle holds that there are people who should naturally be slaves. It also seems that men naturally rule women and that bararians are naturally more servile than Greeks! This seems like an odd, indeed arbitrary, way for the virtues of the soul to be distributed!

Las Casas deals with a similar problem in regard to the native peoples of the Americas...

Contrast the ancient 1% with:

...John Locke's theory of slavery in The Second Treatise of Civil Government Locke does not believe in natural slaves or in the conventional view that all prisoners of war can be legitimately enslaved. He is a just war theorist who explicitly rejects the doctrine that might makes right.

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/distance_arc/las_casas/Aristotle-slavery.html

I don't idolize people who defended slavery in the exact same terms as the Confederacy, in their claims of others' innate inferiority. The Founders owned slaves but realized if equality was going to mean anything it would have to be eliminated eventually.

The South rejected the idea of human equality by the same rationale as Plato and Aristotle. Th Libertarian party's ideas of governance ignore the rights of those whom the powerful regard as innately inferior and put on Earth for their use. So enough already!

Last edited Sat Aug 15, 2015, 07:18 PM - Edit history (1)

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted.

The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day.

Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail.

That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal...

As I have stated, the truth of this principle may be slow in development, as all truths are and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo it was so with Adam Smith and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey, and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is stated that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society.

Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so.

It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. For His own purposes, He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made "one star to differ from another star in glory." The great objects of humanity are best attained when there is conformity to His laws and decrees, in the formation of governments as well as in all things else.

Our confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders "is become the chief of the corner" the real "corner-stone" in our new edifice. I have been asked, what of the future? It has been apprehended by some that we would have arrayed against us the civilized world.

I care not who or how many they may be against us, when we stand upon the eternal principles of truth, if we are true to ourselves and the principles for which we contend, we are obliged to, and must triumph...


http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=76

This is where the conservatives began calling liberals insane, by their logic. That is what it boils down to, accept inequality as the basis of society or not.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014260932#post149

Last edited Sat Aug 15, 2015, 07:10 PM - Edit history (1)

And I'm speaking as someone who grew up in a state which had an official holiday for Jefferson *fucking* Davis!

Jefferson Davis said after the Emancipation Proclamation that in every free state they marched into, they would kidnap all free blacks and return them and keep all of their descendants to slavery FOREVER.

What kind of person would condemn an unborn child to a life of slavery? The 'life is so sacred we have to get rid of birth control' group?

BTW, I don't want anyone to take my words for that. So here are Jefferson Davis' own words:

"...Now, therefore, as a compensatory measure, I do hereby issue the following Address to the People of the Non-Slaveholding States:

"On and after February 22, 1863, all free negroes within the limits of the Southern Confederacy shall be placed on the slave status, and be deemed to be chattels, they and their issue forever. (RE - ENSLAVE ALL BLACKS EVER FREED)

"All negroes who shall be taken in any of the States in which slavery does not now exist, in the progress of our arms, shall be adjudged, immediately after such capture, to occupy the slave status, and in all States which shall be vanquished by our arms, all free negroes shall, ipsofacto, be reduced to the condition of helotism, so that the respective normal conditions of the white and black races may be ultimately placed on a permanent basis, so as to prevent the public peace from being thereafter endangered...

http://davisspeech.blogspot.com/

I bid you Adieu for a time...

Would be happy to trade what we have now for those days again.