The ‘long ago’ things that people are reacting to are examples of basic dis-respect for life. If someone accused your of the same acts (leading a gang to hold down and forcibly cut the hair of a classmate)… what would your first reaction be?
(a) WHAT? Are you NUTS? I would never have done that, you can ask anyone
(b) Sure we did it? So what, times were different then and that kid was a odd ball
(c) Gee, I’m not sure? Maybe we did, which one was he again?
I’m sorry, but if at the age of 17/18 he felt so entitled that it was okay to asault a kid over his hair length, what kind of parents raised this kid? Because that is the man that Romney is today.
I personally am not too keen on putting a multi-billion dollar military at the disposal of a person who thinks it is okay to assault people just because they’re different.
You’re a moron, he didn’t get away with it because his father had pull but simply because society did not care about this. People would laugh at you if you called this a “criminal assault” in 1965, literally laugh at you.
Enforcement of the law changes with societal mores. I know someone who drove drunk through a college campus in the 60s and slammed their car into a park bench. Police showed up and drove the guy home and got his car towed out of there, no charges were pressed.
Thirty years later, that guy would have been expelled, had DUI/DWI on his record and etc. Fifty years ago you could be arrested for having gay sex, by the 1980s those laws were still legally valid but virtually never enforced.
Changing mores change how the law would be enforced, and most likely even the victim of this thing would never have considered this a criminal matter in 1965. Romney didn’t avoid trouble because his dad had pull, he avoided trouble because this wasn’t seen as a big deal. Do we even know if the victim reported it to anyone? That in itself is extremely unlikely given the attitudes toward bullying in the 1960s.
This basically boils down to this, no one here that has a problem with this was going to vote for Romney anyway. Everyone here will find ridiculous reasons to call Republicans sociopaths and et cetera, there’s no reason to take that stuff seriously. The Democrats on this forum are basically moronic mouth breathers who masturbate furiously to the Daily Kos and watch more Fox News in a week than most Republicans so they can scream in righteous indignation.
Right, because one side of the political spectrum is absolutely right on 100% of issues and we should never have governing from the other side.
What I find so hilarious about these boards is the complete lack of perspective. Any real American should fully want both parties to alternate power at regular intervals, long periods of single party rule lead to all sorts of negatives. But Democrats here are so mind-numbingly stupid that you all probably vote straight party every election–the definition of absolute stupidity.
Without getting into the whole issue of the specific incident or his particular character, I will note a couple of anachronisms that have shown up in this thread.
In 1965, being an eighteen year old in a boarding high school did not make one an “adult” in Michigan, (or most of the country). Eighteen-year-olds had no voting rights, no drinking rights, (Michigan never had a 3.2 beer law), and only rarely were prosecuted as adults for minor infractions.
At that time, the odds on gathering a “posse” were nil. Certainly, the word would never have been used–more likely the group would have been called a gang–but even the actions would not have been those associated with “posse,” now. More likely, a bunch of guys hanging around a dorm room would have simply talked themselves into a bit of mayhem, saw their victim, and acted without any organizing taking place. (Been there, been the victim.)
In no way do these things change the horrible tauma inflicted on the victim–and Romney’s memory loss is awfully convenient–but he was pretty much acting in accordance with the culture of the school in which he had already spent over five years of his life.
Actually I haven’t. I don’t really pay much attention to gay marriage issues because I don’t care. I think it’s great though, anything to piss off the Democrats. I wish they’d start locking up people who want gender assignment surgery for the mentally ill people that they are and taking children away from gay couples who have no business adopting, too.
The point about 18 years old is one I made, I tried to find out when the age of majority became 18 in Michigan but was unable to find it through googling. But in a lot of places, well into the 20th century, 21 year olds were not prosecuted in adult courts and were not able to do things like get married without permission, sign into contracts and etc. The move to push the age of charging people with adult crimes downward and downward started in the 1980s when people had a panic about young teenage “super criminals” who people were afraid would be allowed to go crazy murdering people and be released at age 21. So now you have 12 year olds going to prison for life for murder.
No one is 100% right on all issues. But the Dems are certainly much, much closer on the vast majority of issues. Most Republican stances are for things that would make the country worse. For instance, they think cutting public sector workers during a recovery is a good idea, that’s just stupid. Couple the nonsense economic beliefs with the absurd social positions and you’ve got a political party that only the ignorant, the misinformed and people with a blind, team-mentality would vote for. Which are you?
Until the Republicans touch ground again, voting for them is stupid. They don’t have sound policies now.
Wow, ok so why exactly should anyone listen to anything you have to say from now on in this thread? You’re becoming more hateful, partisan and unhinged with each subsequent post you’ve made on this issue. And constantly saying how everyone else is an idiot doesn’t look too great for you either.
You’ve pretty much just showed your cards here, and it looks like a 2, 7 off suit. I’d go ahead and fold at this point if I were you.
Is there are Martin Jekyll I could speak to? I don’t think I’m going to have luck reasoning with this particular bucket of shit.
In any case, if you don’t know about the constitutional amendment, I suggest that you’re too ignorant to debate 21st century American politics. How about you do the basic research to get to the level of the average participant here and get back to us?
The GOP care too much about social issues and it will cost them long term. But on economics neither party makes any sense. The GOP are mentally retarded since about 2002 on tax policy but the Democrats are mentally retarded on issues of free trade and corporate taxation, as well as being moderately stupid on some environmental policies.
The problem with voting for Democrats is the risk of them saddling us with programs that will probably be disastrous long term (like Obamacare.) The risk with voting for the GOP is they refuse to generate any government revenue which creates problems of its own, but I think those problems are less than the problems of creating lots of new entitlements.
I just love this “It was legal and even if it wasn’t people were not prosecuted for it back then, so therefore it logically follows that it was ethically and morally the correct thing to do”.
Please tell it again. Maybe it will get better in your 5th telling.
As you’ve been told - it’s not so much the event in the past that is telling here. Many of us have done stupid things that we regret.
Romney however seems to have done stupid things that he either totally forgets due to some cognitive impairment, or he did stupid things that he does not particularly regret. This current behavior of his shows us what kind of man he is today. And it does not look good.
There’s no constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman, people have randomly talked about one for years but it has no chance of passing 3/4ths of the states so is a totally irrelevant thing. I was genuinely unaware Romney had come out in favor of it, and since I don’t care about gay marriage at all I was not likely to stumble upon this information unless it was really prominent. I spend hours each day reading news and hadn’t stumbled upon it, but I’m more than beyond the average participant in this thread when it comes to general knowledge about politics so I’m comfortable staying with you right now, and don’t need to go do any research.
There’s no one that could possibly know every position of every Presidential candidate, especially since they change continuously.