Quote:
Originally Posted by ratbastid
dk, you're looking at history through the lens of common-times belief and morality. For slavers, slavery was entirely moral. It wasn't until it got said to be otherwise that it was looked at any other way. It really actually WAS TRUE that white people ruled the world and the rest just had to follow. And for a while there, the sun never set on the British Empire. And then the world changed and made that NOT TRUE ANYMORE.
Prior to the creation of the United States, the subjugation of lower classes by upper classes, nobles, and kings was moral, proper, and divinely ordained. Looking through the philosophical perspective our founders gave us and that we live in now, that looks exploitative and horrible, but THEN AND THERE, it was just how it was.
To now say, "Our founders were in touch with something that had always been there through tens of thousands of years of human history but nobody somehow noticed until Jefferson sat down in 1776 and started writing" is just silly. Doesn't it make more sense to say that our founders created a new view of the interrelation of government and the public? If you look at history, isn't that more or less what happened there?
EDIT: I just want to add that this is one of the most interesting conversations I've had in TP in recent times, and I sincerely thank everyone engaged in it for the opportunity for real thinking it's giving me.
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The bolded part is exactly the point i've been making. For centuries, it was assumed that the rights and freedoms you had were given to you by your king/ruler/whatever and were subject to change. The framers, having been on the seriously shitty end of that deal decided that their rights weren't given to them by the monarchy, but were theirs naturally....maybe even for just being alive. Now, the case could be made that natural law is just a theory, much like rights being granted by governments, but I personally can't agree with the government being the one that grants my rights. They didn't create us, we created the government.
---------- Post added at 02:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:26 PM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by rahl
DK, you also accept these things, otherwise you would be in jail. Do you carry a gun openly everywhere you go? Courthouses, schools, airports? Do you yell bomb on a plane just for fun? If you don't then you are a hypocrit according to your ideology.
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I do carry a gun wherever I go, but concealed. I've carried in schools, i've carried in unsecure portions of the airport, banks, government buildings, etc. Anywhere that I do not have to go through a metal detector. I do not yell fire in a theater or bomb on a plane, but not because i'm afraid of the law or the consequences of doing it. That doesn't make me a hypocrite either. I don't do those things because I don't want to get people hurt. I wouldn't do it whether it was law or not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rahl
You haven't raised up arms and declared war on the tyranical govn't yet have you?
So in some fashion you also have accepted these truths
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I have not accepted these. I'm simply not at the point where revolution is necessary. While there is still the ability to fight these in the legislature and the courts, the peaceful option must be taken.