Well, Queen Elizabeth II and I don’t see eye-to-eye on every issue, but I bet that by now even she’d have lost patience and started asking you to name a specific example of what the heck you’re talking about.
Much obliged.
That explains it: you are still sore from that “irrelevant” piece of paper and subsequent loss of empire.
The amazing thing about that “irrelevant peace” of paper is how easily it still separates patriot from tyrant; citizen from criminal. Ask anyone if they see the truth in the inalienable rights of all. Ask whether it is the duty of government is to secure these rights for all through regulation and justice. The words and actions in response will surely tell.
Some will recognize and understand immediately and do their best to live by these standards. These I honor as patriots and citizens.
Some will simply not understand the true meaning of the words, but many of those can learn and most can usually be trained to respect the rights of others.
It is the skeptics that debate and demand proof of these truths that are prone to create strife. As they do not accept these rights as true, they tend to impose their own will with power or law; but without any proof of “irrelevant” justice. These I call bully and criminal and tyrant.
The new york supreme court’s CherryCoke was obviously spiked. They did not see the obvious truth that prohibition creates the health problems it then blames on the vice. The truth is that regulation benefits public health, prohibition does not.
That cannot be said of criminalized prostitution.
BTW, do you believe that the first commander in chiefs: george and john and thom also found the DoI irrelevant? Do you think tony and eliza~ find the concept of inalienable rights foreign?
r~
I can’t take these attacks seriously because the ignorance behind them is so comical. I’m looking forward to the day when Canada gets a piece of paper of its own and formally becomes a republic. The British Empire was on the skids long before I came along; I have no emotional attachment to it.
But it was pretty funny that although you somehow remembered one of my past statements about being in the military, you first assumed I was American, then British, when “Montreal, QC” is and always has been right there in my Location field. I guess you’re more of a big picture guy rather than one who deals with details.
And the rest of the post is more pointless speechmaking. The Declaration of Independence is irrelevant to the current body of laws enshrined by the United States and no amount of rhetoric will make it so.
Hey, if you want to argue for legalization, I’m with you. That doesn’t prove the original law was unconstitutional, though. In fact, why is the DoI relevant to this thread, which asks if prohibition of vice is constitutional?
I’m pretty sure they revered the document, but I don’t see any evidence they felt compelled to mangle it into the basis of government and law. For that, they wrote the Articles of Confederation (which didn’t work) and the Constitution (which more-or-less has).
As for Tony and Liz, I’ll ask them at the next Commonwealth get-together.
Would you believe you are sore because you do not have your own peace of paper and still chaff under the yoke of government tyranny?
Attacks? My intent is to keep my words true and humorous. Is it the truth or my poor attempt at humor that you feel as attack?
I assure you that liberty is constantly and seriously under attack by tyrants that do not recognize the difference between their misguided morals and law, sin and crime, or church and state. Liberty is constantly and seriously under attack by tyrants that find liberty and justice for all irrelevant; or believe liberty and justice is whatever less they say it is. You are seriously mistaken if you do not recognize these threats.
Six signers of the constitution also signed on for the inalienable right of (peaceful) pursuit of happiness. George Clymer, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, George Read, Roger Sherman, and James Wilson signed both the constitution and the DoI. Two future presidents (John Adams and Thomas Jefferson) under the constitution also signed for this right. Please note also that future supreme court justice James Wilson signed to both.
This clearly proves the relevant link between DoI and constitution.
Now, again I ask you to please reveal any sign you might possess that demonstrates peaceful pursuit of happiness is not a right retained by the people, and therefore constitutional.
Yet before liberty is justly denied; justice demands more than a simple sign, justice demands proof. Show me your proof.
r~
<Inigo Montoya> You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. </IM>
Yes, I look forward to the Canadian equivalent of the second amendment so I can buy a gun and keep the King of England outta my face.
Well, don’t take it too seriously. It was an inept attack, and if it truly was meant as humour, it was inept humour.
Liberty is under constant attack and the price of freedom is vigilance and such, but can you give us any specific point on the specific matter of vice laws? Isn’t this the fourth of fifth time I’ve made such a request in this thread? Isn’t this the fortieth or fiftieth such request you’ve received, and have you an response other than rhetoric?
That there was some overlap is no more relevant than arguing that since Aaron Sorkin created Sports Night and later, West Wing, any discussion of West Wing must take into account episodes of Sports Night.
My proof that “vice” (awaiting your definition) is not constitutionally protected is that the right to vice is not specifically enshrined in the Constitution. In practice, I believe, common law prevails (everywhere but Louisiana) and laws against “vice” are typically sustained by the courts. If want a more specific proof, you’ll have to supply a more specific argument.
Because it’s not in the Constitution or Bill of Rights. It’s only in the Declaration of Independence, which was a propaganda piece to justify American independence and the rebellion. And the founders, even the ones you mention (Franklin, Wilson, Jefferson, Sherman, etc) had a much more restrictive view of what liberty was than you apparently do. They were fine with regulating “vice”, and passing laws with a moral basis. They were, under your definition, tyrants.
I imagine you’re right, but I’d still like to see a cite for that assertion. Any examples of early vice laws in the US?
Well, there was that whole Whiskey Rebellion thing in the early years of our country, relating to high taxes on drink.
Tax is not prohibition. (And you see how well the people of the era responded to even taxation of a vice. Imagine how they’d have reacted to prohibition.)
Well, every state but Georgia had sodomy laws at the time of the adoption of the constitutution, for example. Georgia went on to adopt them in 1817. A number of states also had blue laws…laws restricting commerce or actions on Sunday. Here’s a fairly amusing example given by the First Amendment Center.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/rel_liberty/free_exercise/topic.aspx?topic=blue_laws
A lot of states also had laws against obscenity, for instance.
I’m pretty sure the phrase “bawdy house” isn’t a 20th-century invention.
Fine, if taxation of a vice isn’t sufficient, there’s a whole body of blue laws that date before and after independence, and before and after the Constitution. See also here.
Please explain more clearly and give me an example of the specific points to which you refer.
This means rights do not have to be written in the constitution or the bill of rights to exist.
The right of privacy is a similar right that is also not listed in the constitution or bill of rights yet is still retained by the people.
Nowhere in the constitution or bill of rights is the right of the supreme court to even rule whether a law is constitutional. Yet that right clearly belongs to justice.
In a court of justice, liberty is not required to prove innocence or constitutionality of law. Before liberty can be justly denied, it is the responsibility and obligation of the prosecution to prove both guilt of defendant and just authority of law. Nothing offered so far comes even close to meeting the demands of justice.
I understand your points and opinions, but they do not reach the level of proof required to deny liberty. Not even precedent of past tyranny is proof that tyranny is constitutional.
r~
You were actually specific about something? I must have missed that when my eyes glazed over.
Anyway, on issues of sodomy and drug use, I think all the laws on the former and most of the laws on the latter are obsolete, unnecessary or ill-advised, but I don’t see how they were unconstitutional. I suppose one could apply a community risk standard. Speeding is not harmful in and of itself, but it does increase the chance of vehicular mayhem. Similarly, one can argue that the presence of a brothel, though none of the customers or workers are being harmed, increases the risk to the surrounding community in the form of increased crime, public drunkenness and impairment, lewdness, general scumbaggery, etc.
In any case, no community I’m aware of has completely abdicated the right to regulate and ban certain behaviours within its borders, and on some categories, the courts are just fine with it, as I’m sure were all the founding fathers pointlessly cited earlier.
Look, I know you feel strongly about this and all, but there’s got to be a point at which you realize that no matter how much passion you have, there’s just nothing in the Constitution or the history of the interpretation that supports what you are arguing, that all vice laws are prohibited by the Constitution.
No Supreme Court has never issued such a ruling. Forty-three presidents haven’t acted in a way to support your view. One hundred and nine Congresses have not abolished those laws to which you are referring. Something like a hundred million voters in the last election – and scores of millions more in virtually every election before that – certainly didn’t send any messages that they concur in any large numbers with that viewpoint. You haven’t found one single passage of the Federalist Papers that indicates that even one of the Framers subscribed to your view.
So, we seem to be left with three alternatives to explain these facts: First, that pretty much everyone in America except you and a handful of people somewhere (doesn’t seem like anyone on this board, BTW) are in on some tyrannical conspiracy against the Constitution; second, that the Constitution simply doesn’t mean what you think it does; or third, what you are actually arguing is not what the Constitution actually says, but what you think it should say.
If it is the first, then I cannot help but wonder what it is like to live in a world in which everyone is against you. If it is the second, well, join everyone else in this thread. If it is the third, let’s give up on these really exceptionally poor arguments about links between the Declaration of Independence and our current laws and other complete nonsense and cough up a proposed constitutional amendment that you might like and we can debate that.
Article I
Section 8
“general welfare”
That ‘splains it. Winter ice and smoking guns will do that. r)
Maybe you can ‘splain to me what liquor has glazed over the eyes of America. I hear old crow does it quick as any:
Please explain how my words of vice being well regulated provoked this fall to “all vice laws are prohibited”. How else can a vice be well regulated if not by law? The alternatives of unregulated or prohibited vices are easily shown to threaten the peace and health of others; and others also have right of peaceful pursuit.
The constitution actually says
That means it does not matter that “right of peaceful pursuit of happiness” is not specifically listed in the constitution. That means it is prosecution’s responsibility to prove the constitution specifically lists peaceful pursuit of happiness as a right not retained by the people”.
Again; your words, not mine.
Do you recognize that all possess the inherent right of peaceful pursuit of happiness?
Would you agree that just governments are the ones instituted to secure the inalienable rights of life, liberty and (peaceful) pursuit of happiness for all?
Irrelevant. It matters not if liberty does not or has not proved precedence. Liberty is presumed innocent. Liberty may even remain silent.
In court of justice; it is the prosecution and only the prosecution that must prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. Liberty is presumed innocent even if doubt is reasonable. To deny liberty, any and all doubt of innocence must be unreasonable.
Show me the clear words of constitution that say “peaceful pursuit of happiness is not a right retained by the people”. Prove beyond reasonable doubt that the inalienable right of peaceful pursuit of happiness is not simply hidden from the sight of tyrants. It is clearly there by mine.
r~
So the intent of the founding fathers is irrelevant to your argument but undermines ours? Can you supply us with a single quote from a single FF along the lines of: “All men are free - to go to whorehouses!” And be specific, please, general platitudes about freedom don’t count.
Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if Ben Franklin wrote boatloads of essays on pointless prudishness. He didn’t manage to get those views written into law, though. In any case, laws against “vice” were around before the DoI and the DoI (and Constitution) did nothing to eliminate them.
Can you prove the intent of the founding fathers? The words of the constitution clearly state that simply because it isn’t listed, does not mean it isn’t a right. Isn’t this the fourth of fifth time I’ve made such a request for proof, not opinion, in this thread? Yet you would have judgment to deny liberty based only on opinion and precedent, not proof. Isn’t this the fortieth or fiftieth such request for any board member to offer something at least posing as proof? Yet you still offer only opinion and precedence.
I have offered words of constitution to support my position, yet liberty needs prove nothing to be presumed innocent.
Justice demands proof before liberty is denied. You have offered no words of constitution to support your claims that run counter the very clear words of the 9th amendment. Show me your proof.
r~