Even further off the main thrust of the thread:
My post was explicitly not about whether anybody was “quotable.” Nor whether they were worth reading. Never mind whether they are members of your personal canon of Great Thinkers. The post merely addressed the relatively narrow question of whether Disraeli (and incidentally others) is “a citable authority” in political arguments in the UK by examining whether he is actually cited in practice.
Given your post, I’m hardly inclined to disagree.
Tedster,
usurper,
Lemur866,
I think people get upset because they have an emotional investment in the Constitution. I don’t think there’s any doubt that there is an attachment to the Founders. To me it seems the point of this thread is to explore how strong that devotion is. Does it reach the level of a religion? I’m maintaining that it does, or more specifically that it is strong enough to cause people to abandon rational thinking. I intend to post an example of this behavior tomorrow ( because it’s getting late again ). In a hypothetical example if you were to heap abuse on me after jumping to the wrong conclusion about my beliefs and continued doing so rather than attempting to clear up your misunderstanding then I would wonder why you had abandoned rational discussion. It’s not the jumping to conclusions that lead me to believe that an ideological line is crossed. It’s their loss of composure.
Just my 2sense
Your pity is surely misplaced. How often do Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Newton, Da Vinci, Galileo, Edison or even John Locke get quoted by contemporary Americans discussing politics?
John Hancock was a very successful businessman. He smuggled tea because the only other way to get it was to pay the outrageous taxes on tea. Those taxes were a large part of what started the Revolution.
Almost everyone in the colonies who had any kind of money was in the smuggling of tea business. It’s like smuggling cigarettes from Canada (or in the Illinois case, from Indiana) to avoid the tax. It’s hardly in the same league as smuggling drugs or contraband.
Another view of the Boston Tea Party - the English were going to force the colonists to sell their tea. The colonists weren’t going to let them get it off the boat. The ship’s Captain only had a few weeks to either get the tea off the boat or be forced to relinquish it, without getting any money. That’s why a few dozen men were able to get on a guarded ship and empty a huge amount of tea into the Boston harbor (the sailors apparently helped dump the tea with the ship’s captain’s approval).
Or rather, I would post an example if anyone seemed interested in debating the point.
Well, the high price of tea for most of the period wasn’t due to any tax on tea (because tea was untaxed), but because the East-India company had a monopoly on supply. Later, the Tea Act was passed, which put a tax on tea, but also removed the East India Company’s monopoly, and actually lowered the price of tea. That was what the Boston Tea Party protested, because the Tea Act made tea more profitable to legally ship than smuggle.
usurpe, you said
I have a degree in philosophy, and have talked to many philosphers. I have never met anyone who thought that ANY PHILOSOPHER had PROVED the existence of God, let alone Locke.
Just a thought
Alex
2sense wrote:
Woo hoo! Wealth and power! Par-taaaay!!
tracer,
I thought I had a handle on your previous post.
I took the exclamation points and bolding to indicate sarcasm. Now that you have brought this back to the front page with another exclamation point filled post I’m less sure than before. I don’t see the point of the latest.
Just my 2sense
2sense wrote:
Nobody has a handle on my previous post. It’s the wind, baby.
Well – you say “wealth and power” as though these are bad things.
Any “mystical” regard for any group of mere humans, who scratch, crap and cheat on thier taxes/wives is foolish. But a few words of enthusiasm, if I might.
How many revolutions have been led by men settled, comfortable and for the most part privileged? The oppressed risk little but miserable lives, these men risked losing everything and adorning a gallows for a political principle.
And, most importantly, they were not of one mind, there is no “intent of the Founding Fathers”! They created a framework of surly cooperation, of compromise and half-a-loaf, so that people who had no reason to trust each others motives might cobble together a country. They ran the spectrum from my own sentimental favorite, fire-breathing Bolshevik Tom Paine to the snotty elitism of Alexander Hamilton. The whole scheme of checks and balances and power sharing derives directly from their unwillingness to let anybody get the whip hand.
IMHO, the Declaration of Independence is as close to poetry as any political document has ever come. That said, there is nothing “sacred” about the Founding Fathers, they were as human as we, no more. And therein lies the glory.
When the pursuit of wealth and power leads to crimes against humanity then yeah, I’ve got a problem with that.
Hopefully you do too, tracer.
Just my 2sense
But you seem to be implying that the pursuit of wealth and power normally leads to crimes against humanity – that crimes against humanity are the rule, rather than the exception.
It seems to me that the lack of wealth and power is what tends to drive an individual – or a nation – to lash out against others. “Fat and happy” ain’t just a cute saying about Santa Claus.
I wouldn’t want anyone to infer from my posts that the pursuit of wealth and power normally leads to barbaric behavior. I don’t believe that’s true. What I was trying to imply was that while the wealth and power the it has brought us can cause others to doubt me the injustice that went along hand in hand lends weight to my arguments against the system.
Just my 2sense
“the it” being “the system”
Damnit