But what if a large enough number of, oh lets say … Bolivians immigrated to the US bringing with them a disease that wiped out enough of the rest of us to give them a large enough majority and then they decided they wanted to join Canada? I’d be as unhappy with that as I am with our current administration but I’d be able to live with it.
I don’t think it’s a desire to farm, something sure to lead to poverty for those that take it up, but rather a desire to own a home. Something that is extremely hard to do here, especially on Oahu. Especially since so much of the best land is owned by the big estates which would much rather sell long leases then sell land. That is after all the thing that makes these estates so fabulously rich.
Although I am loathe to quibble over the ancient scribbles, I don’t read that the way you do. The expression “Entity A guarantees Entity B Entity C” is not usually a copula — e.g., “Mr. Smith guarantees Mr. Jones a ribeye” does not mean that Mr Jones is a ribeye. Thus, the Constitution seems to be saying that each state is guaranteed access to (rather than identity with) a republican form of government.
How can you have access to a republican form of government without being a republic? Say you live in a monarchy. How can you decide that you want you state to be a republic (access to which is guaranteed to you by the Constitution) and abolish the monarchy without having regular elections? And if you have regular elections, aren’t you already living in a republic?
I’ll say that you’re not reading it correctly, then, Liberal. I’d say that you,yourself, switched the way of reading your own example in midstream. To use your example, that expression doesn’t even come close to meaning that Mr. Jones is a rib-eye but rather that he’s been guaranteed having one. There’s no choice in the matter: the constitution says that the states are republics, that the federal government shall provide the states with a government in the form of a republic.
Liberal: What are you doing? Are you just playing games with the words? Are you just typing stuff to see how pretty it is? You’re now stating that the constitution SAID WHAT I SAID IT SAID!
So, why did you post this pointless diversion? What, really, is in it for you?
The Philippines has two primary languages and one of them is English. In the cities the culture has been Americanized to a great extent and what’s wrong with Spanish-Catholic, anyway? I may no longer agree with some of its tenets but I’m at least comfortably familiar with them, like stepping into a time machine to 1965 (1955? 1755? ). America never had a dog in Guyana’s fight (though the argument “a third of our population already lives in the US–let’s make it formal” can be compelling) but in the interest of “promoting independence” we threw both Cuba and the Philippines to wolves like Batista and Marcos without helping make the transition from being colonies of either Spain or the US for hundreds of years. We owe them something.
You are misunderstanding your post. You implied there was a copula; I explained why there is not.
Red herring. I responded directly to your post, challenging your interpretation of the wording that you bolded in order to emphasize its importance. If there exists a pointless diversion, its source was you.
BrainGlutton, unless I’m mistaken, wasn’t saying that Spanish-Catholicism is bad, but rather that the United States of America would not absorb a Spanish-Catholic area into it as a state. That’s a quite reasonable observation given that one of the “reasons” for occupying the Philippines was “to Christianize” it.
In the case of the Philippines, there were Filipinos fighting for independence from Spain long before the US annexed the country.
There is no direct, personal insult in Liberal’s post. There is a continuation of the semantic wrangling that you two have enjoyed for several posts.
I had to read his post twice before I figured out (I think) what “direct insult” you allege he posted. I believe you are taking issue with
Yet he did not say that you were a pointless diversion, he responded to your claim that he had indulged in a pointless diversion by insisting that you were its source. Clearly, your differences of opinion regarding the parsing of the Constitutional language in the context of the general thrust of this thread is not directly on topic, but the point at which it became a diversion can only be determined by subjective judgments and the point at which it became pointless might be judged by outsiders rather earlier than either of you would agree. On a scale of insulting language, I would put it several notches lower than
and
(which, I will note, I also do not consider outside the specific rules of this Forum).
I would note also that a discussion of semantics is not to be confused with trivialization of a point. Rather, it may be argued that the meaning of the Constitutional phrase in question is in fact important, and that “semantic wrangling” is exactly what those who interpret it professionally do. Monty used the wording (and bolded it for emphasis no less) in order to make a point. Since his point is moot if the wording is interpreted differently, I thought it was appropriate to offer up an alternate and more sensible interpretation. It seemed rather a jejune tactic to raise a matter for discussion, and then acccuse those who engage that discussion of “pointless diversion”.
I feel that it’s a disingenuous tactic to stipulate that the phrase clearly says what it clearly does not say. “More sensible” is in the eyes of the beholder. In this case, it seems rather clear that you want the phrase to say something that it doesn’t.
Well, Paul. There is the whole issue of the different constitutions the Hawaiians operated under prior to their annexation. I wonder which of those the restorationists would prefer be readopted if Hawaii were to be separated from the Union.
). America never had a dog in Guyana’s fight (though the argument “a third of our population already lives in the US–let’s make it formal” can be compelling) but in the interest of “promoting independence” we threw both Cuba and the Philippines to wolves like Batista and Marcos without helping make the transition from being colonies of either Spain or the US for hundreds of years. We owe them something.