Our system of government is in fact "Catholic", in the sense that it is based on traditions of institutions dealing with each other in certain ways. You would like for our system of government to be "Protestant", with the written Constitution as the "Sola Scriptura" document which anybody, like you, can read and know what it all means just from the words in that document.
That IS NOT our system of government. And at NO POINT from its ratification by the Founding Fathers through the establishment of judicial review by the Founding Fathers (in Marbury) until today has our government resembled anything remotely approaching what you insist is "The Constitution" above.
The law is what I have been saying - what I have been educated in, and am licensed to say in two jurisdictions.
Stop calling me a traitor and I'll stop coming after you personally.
Feel free to come after me in any way you dream up. ---- I say dream because your replies are becoming increasingly bizarre, -- and unlike what a licensed professional would post.
Our Constitution is quite clear that we --- shall make no laws respecting the 'establishments' (beliefs) of our various religions..
Your 'realistic' desire to make religious law is unconstitutional, and gives aid and comfort to enemies who desire the same...
Our written Constitution is a document which anybody, like me, can read and know what it basically means just from the words in the document.
Lawyers like you, hiding behind your !icenses, disagree, naturally. Boast on...
BTW, - concerning Marbury: ---- Jefferson disagreed with Marshall's reasoning -- -
"You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co- equal and co-sovereign within themselves."
Lawyers like you, hiding behind your !icenses, disagree, naturally. Boast on...
It's not a question of hiding behind a license, it's a question of education and standards.
You have a political opinion. You like your political opinion. You read a document - the Constitution - and you read it in a way that allows you to say what you say.
That's nice.
It has no bearing on reality.
I have a law degree. That's not boasting, it's a fact. I have passed the bar exam in two states. Again, not boasting - a fact. In order to pass the bar exam, I had to get a series of questions right. See, there are right and wrong answers in the law, and you don't pass the bar and get a license to practice law unless you get enough of the answers right. The same is true with law school: you don't get the degree if you can't get the exam questions right.
There's no partial credit.
Now, thing is, some of the right answers - what the law IS - do not suit me. What I do that is different from you is that I recognize where my politics differ from the law, and I try to figure out how to get the law to change.
What you do is simply change the meaning of words and declare your opinion to be the law.
It reminds me of the joke about the engineer and the economist who wash up on a desert island with a box of canned food. They each go off to devise a way to get the cans opened. The engineer comes back with a device he made that used two rocks to crush the can, causing the contents to slide out into an waiting half-coconut shell.
The economist's solution began with "Well, first we assume a can opener. That's what you're doing: you're assuming a can opener.
The US Supreme Court has the authority to "interpret" the US Constitution, but their 'authority' is to issue opinions, -- opinions which are NOT binding on the legislative, -- or the executive branch. ---- tpaine posted
Thank you for posting some of my opinions, as I stand by them all..
Jefferson disagreed with Marshall's reasoning in Marbury:---
You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co- equal and co-sovereign within themselves.
Lawyers like you, hiding behind your !icenses, disagree, naturally. Boast on... ---- tpaine
I have a law degree. That's not boasting, it's a fact. I have passed the bar exam in two states. Again, not boasting - a fact. In order to pass the bar exam, I had to get a series of questions right. See, there are right and wrong answers in the law, and you don't pass the bar and get a license to practice law unless you get enough of the answers right.
Law exams are made up by other lawyers, proving of course, that if you want to be licensed you must agree with other lawyers. --- Ridiculous.
You claim that: --- "What I do that is different from you is that I recognize where my politics differ from the law, and I try to figure out how to get the law to change." -------------------- Well, I do exactly the same , the only difference being, --- I make sure that the new laws i advocate, are not UNCONSTITUTIONAL...
Our Constitution is quite clear that we --- shall make no laws respecting the 'establishments' (beliefs) of our various religions..
Your 'realistic' desire to make religious law is unconstitutional, and gives aid and comfort to enemies who desire the same...
Law exams are made up by other lawyers, proving of course, that if you want to be licensed you must agree with other lawyers. --- Ridiculous.
It does not prove that. Rather, it proves that if you want to be licensed, you have to know what the law IS.
YES, what the law is, IS determined by other lawyers - mainly judges. YES, most certainly that law is often the result of real abusive power grabs by judges. YES, I find quite a bit of the law offensive. But YES, the law IS what the courts and the lawyers who run things have decided it is. The courts WILL uphold that law, and the cops with their guns WILL enforce what the courts say. So YES, if you want to take other people's money for practicing in front of American courts, you have to know what the law IS - what will be enforced, what will happen.
You can think what you want to think without a license, but you can't go take big fees from people asserting that your opinion of the law actually IS the law. It isn't. The law is what the courts - which is to say the lawyers who sit on the bench - SAY the law is.
You don't hire a lawyer to have a philosophical discussion. You hire a lawyer to know the law for you, and to tell you what will happen if you do thus and so. It's not a matter of the lawyer's opinion so much as knowledge of the state of the actual LAW - whether the law is ultimately LEGITIMATE or not is not the question.
Obviously if the Supreme Court overrules Roe and bans abortion, it is not going to do that by stating "We do this because Rome has spoken." They will, rather, read the words of the Constitution and say that nobody can be deprived of life without due process, and due process is not possible for innocent unborn babies, so THEREFORE abortion must be unconstitutional. That's how they would do this.
Sure, this would have the EFFECT of erecting the Catholic canon law as the law of the nation, but the reason given for doing so will be pure-as-the- wind-driven-snow constitutionalism.
The laws against stealing are also religious, but we don't have to strike those down on that account either.
You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, ---- Jefferson, writing to Marshall
It may be dangerous, but it has the virtue of being true. Judges are the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions. ---- Vicomte13
That is your opinion, it is far from being true.
SCOTUS opinions can be, and are overturned by amendments, legislative law, and/or executive & public inaction...
SCOTUS opinions can be, and are overturned by amendments, legislative law, and/or executive & public inaction...
SCOTUS opinions can be erased by constitutional amendment, yes.
When a SCOTUS opinion strikes a part of a statute, Congress can indeed pass a new statute that addresses the problem, and thereby remove the barrier created by the Supreme Court opinion, yes.
Executive inaction can nullify a SCOTUS opinion. President Lincoln ignored the Court's habeas corpus rulings during the Civil War. No President has done so since. The President that did risks impeachment.
Public inaction? The public doesn't fully obey any of the laws now, so not sure what the public has to do with this.
Thank you for posting some of my opinions, as I stand by them all..
I am sure that you do. You live in your own world.
Jefferson disagreed with Marshall's reasoning in Marbury:---
And Marbury is still good law and binding U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
You failed to say what you think the significance of somebody's disagreement with the Opinion of the Court in Marbury might possibly be.
You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
"The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.... The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution...." U.S. Const., Article III
SCOTUS is the ultimate arbiter of the law, including the Constitution. Their opinion of what the law states is binding. If there is a desire for different law, the Constitution can be amended or repealed by the people.
Yep. That's the way our system works. Now, a President who had sufficient popularity and a sufficient partisan majority in Congress COULD attempt to establish a new precedent by explicitly rejecting a Supreme Court decision as itself being unconstitutional, directing the executive branch to not enforce the decision, and then attempt to brazen it out through a combination of public support, obedience by the executive agencies, and non-impeachment by Congress. That would certainly establish a precedent of executive override, but the circumstances would have to be quite peculiar to pull it off, I think.
In a similar vein, the Queen of England has the plenary veto power as a reserved power. She COULD veto an act of Parliament, but to do so would risk a Parliamentary stripping of her veto, so she would have to do it under a circumstance in which the bulk of the people were unambiguously with her, or where the Crown agencies actually were willing to obey her and not a corrupt and unpopular Prime Minister.
In short, a constitutional crisis could change the rules, but nothing short of that is going to.
SCOTUS opinions can be, and are overturned by amendments, legislative law, and/or executive & public inaction... ---- tpaine
SCOTUS opinions can be erased by constitutional amendment, yes.
When a SCOTUS opinion strikes a part of a statute, Congress can indeed pass a new statute that addresses the problem, and thereby remove the barrier created by the Supreme Court opinion, yes.
Executive inaction can nullify a SCOTUS opinion. President Lincoln ignored the Court's habeas corpus rulings during the Civil War. No President has done so since. The President that did risks impeachment.
Public inaction? The public doesn't fully obey any of the laws now, so ----- Vic
Nolu, ------ SCOTUS is the ultimate arbiter of the law, including the Constitution. Their opinion of what the law states is binding. If there is a desire for different law, the Constitution can be amended or repealed by the people.
You two have some differences. I suggest you discuss them...
I thank Vic for his honesty in agreeing with my points...
I don't think Nolu and I actually disagree at all.
I was saying that Supreme Court opinions are law, and they are.
You mentioned a series of ways, some legitimate, some not, by which a SCOTUS opinion can be overturned. In other words, ways in which a higher law changes a lower law. That's true.
But if it comes to a square on constitutional issue, the Supreme Court trumps. Probably the cardinal example would be a law passed by Congress and signed by the President that purported to strip the Supreme Court of the power of Constitutional review. SCOTUS would strike down that law as unconstitutional.
You mentioned a series of ways, some legitimate, some not, by which a SCOTUS opinion can be overturned. In other words, ways in which a higher law changes a lower law. That's true.
But if it comes to a square on constitutional issue, the Supreme Court trumps.
SCOTUS opinions can be, and are overturned by amendments, legislative law, and/or executive & public inaction.. -------------------- ALL are legitimate when the scotus opinion is unconstitutional. (IE, Dred Scott)
Digress as you will, the fact remains, your desire to pass religious laws is repugnant, and gives aid and comfort to our enemies.
SCOTUS opinions can be, and are overturned by amendments, legislative law, and/or executive & public inaction.. -------------------- ALL are legitimate when the scotus opinion is unconstitutional. (IE, Dred Scott)
Digress as you will, the fact remains, your desire to pass religious laws is repugnant, and gives aid and comfort to our enemies.
Very little of that is true.
Yes, SCOTUS opinions can be, and have been overturned through constitutional amendments, and through legislation. They cannot legally be, and none has ever in fact been, overturned by either executive or public inaction.
There is nothing legitimate, under our current understanding of our government, about disregarding an "unconstitutional" Supreme Court decision. We have never had a case, nor developed any theory of jurisprudence, whereby a Supreme Court decision has itself been, or could be, "declared unconstitutional". There is no body under the Constitution who has ever been viewed as being able to make such a declaration. The people can, of course, AMEND the Constitution, thereby rendering unconstitutional that which was constitutional before, but that is not disregarding the Supreme Court. It is, rather, overriding the court through the amendment of the court's governing document.
No mechanism exists in our tradition for cancellation of a SCOTUS opinion through public inaction. It's not written into the Constitution, and it's never happened.
Executive inaction happened on two occasions: Andrew Jackson ignored SCOTUS on an Indian deportation question, and Lincoln routinely ignored Supreme Court writs of habeas corpus. Both Jackson and Lincoln were very popular presidents, and Lincoln was fighting a war in which the better part of the political opposition had seceded. Neither of these behaviors produced a precedent that any subsequent President has dared to emulate.
Andrew Johnson defied a law, the Tenure of Office Act, and was impeached over it. He survived impeachment and therefore "won" the point (Stanton was not reinstated as Secretary of War). Nevertheless, though he "won" the specific point over which he was impeached (in the sense that he retained the office, and Stanton was not reinstated, so Johnson successfully resisted the law), the precedent that people remember is not that Johnson prevailed on the specific point, but that he was impeached. No President since has dared directly and openly defy the law.
So, you may say that executive or public inaction are means by which SCOTUS opinions are overturned, but that's never actually happened.
Dred Scott was overturned by the enactment of the 13th Amendment,
The notion that a Supreme Court decision could ITSELF be unconstitutional has never been part of our system. I will grant that a very bold President COULD make such an argument. Whether he would prevail or not would be a political matter. Were Trump to try it, he would not have survived. Even a very popular President like FDR took a real hit when he set about threatening to pack the Supreme Court to get his way. American people are wary of actions that would fundamentally violate their sense of civics.
It is YOU who characterize the laws I want to pass as "religious" and "repugnant".
I merely want the Supreme Court to rule that substantive due process prohibits the killing of an unborn child, because the child had no opportunity to have a fair trial before being deprived of life. That's a constitutional question, not a religious one. YOU say it's religious. I say it's a matter of national security.
SCOTUS opinions can be, and are overturned by amendments, legislative law, and/or executive & public inaction.. -------------------- ALL are legitimate when the scotus opinion is unconstitutional. (IE, Dred Scott)
The Opinion of the Court in Dred Scott was not unconstitutional, was correctly decided, and I very much doubt you have the slightest clue what the mandate of Dred Scott said, or what the actual decision of the case was.
Dred Scott is still citable as good law, and has been cited as recently as 2016 by the Solicitor General of Kansas in a brief to the Supreme Court of Kansas.
SCOTUS opinions interpreting the Constitution are overturned by Amendments to the Constitution, or by the Court revisiting the issue as in Brown and separate but equal. Public inaction does nothing. Executive inaction may mean a lack of enforcement, but it does not effect a legal overturning of the Opinion.
Digress as you [Vicomte13] will, the fact remains, your desire to pass religious laws is repugnant, and gives aid and comfort to our enemies.
He did not say he wants to pass religious laws. He said he wants laws passed that align with his religious moral beliefs. Some have a moral belief that all abortion is wrong and should be prohibited. Advocating for said belief is repugnant to pro-choice folks, not repugnant to pro-life folks, and does not give aid and comfort to our enemies, something that refers to enemies in time of war.
Catholics ------- simply have our set of interests and beliefs, and we want to see them enacted as the law of the land. Nothing more, nothing less.
I merely want the Supreme Court to rule that substantive due process prohibits the killing of an unborn child, because the child had no opportunity to have a fair trial before being deprived of life. That's a constitutional question, not a religious one. YOU say it's religious. I say it's a matter of national security.
You 'merely' want the Supreme Court to enact a Catholic belief as the law of the land..
What you want is specifically mentioned as being unconstitutional in the First Amendment..
He did not say he wants to pass religious laws. He said he wants laws passed that align with his religious moral beliefs. ---- (Yes, he wants his religious moral beliefs passed into laws.)
Some have a moral belief that all abortion is wrong and should be prohibited. Advocating for said belief is repugnant to pro-choice folks, not repugnant to pro-life folks, and does not give aid and comfort to our enemies, something that refers to enemies in time of war.
We have radical Muslim enemies working to install Shira 'law', in the USA..
Religious laws are repugnant to the First Amendment of our Constitution...
Why are you giving and and comfort to religious radicals?
Well, let me correct myself: it’s a free country - you can ascribe whatever motive you like. The liberals just attempted to block Trump’s travel ban because they said that deep down inside it was motivated by religious hatred, but the Supreme Court does not presume to sift through the hearts of men. It’s analysis is straightforward: it’s an immigration matter, the president controls that, what the President is doing has national security as its stated purpose, not racial or religious animus, and the ban is aimed at countries that have a rational relationship to terror - not every Muslim country. Therefore, the law has a rational basis, and it’s clearly within the President’s power. End of analysis.
You want to go farther, to plumb the hearts of men. You know that my motivation for wanting to ban abortion is because I know that the human being is ensouled at conception, a concept rooted in religion, not science. You know that is my motivation - that I believe that because I am Catholic and think that my church is correct on the matter.
But that is not the basis I have argued. I have pointed to the fact that the unborn baby is going to be killed, legally, without having been convicted of any crime, and without a process or a hearing. I’m squarely arguing the due process clause of the 14th amendment. I note that it applies to “persons”, and that there’s no formal definition in law as to when a person becomes a person. I am asking the court to establish that as a constitutional matter, to preclude the states from deciding differently, just as Roe precludes the states from deciding differently in the other direction.
I know I cannot win at the ballot box, and I know that the legislatures of many states won’t go along, So I need a super-powered body to override the democracy if I am going to get my way. That’s why this has to be done through the Supreme Court. There is no other way to do it.
I am a pragmatic objective-driven person, a military man with a military mind. I am interested in winning the war, and the ends justify the means, when the ends are mine. Of course I will bellyache when the other side with ends I don’t support try the same thing and win - not because I don’t understand why they have done what they have done, nor even because I am really morally outraged at their tactics. I am annoyed at their victory - I want to win.
If things are expressed in such a direct and honest people, less ruthless minds will quail and retreat. Therefore, hypocrisy is the hommage that my vice of pragmatic ends-justify-the-means victory seeking pays to the virtue of formal rights-based legalism. I will make my argument in the form required for the people who don’t want to face the truth directly, and dance the legal fan dance of concealed motives and hypocrisy, in order to get my way.
Am I really outraged at the way the abortion supporters fight their battle? Of course not. They want to win, and they have been effective at it. I despise their cause, but I tip my hat to their skill in advancing it within our system.
It seems to me that you MIGHT be doing the same thing, but the trouble is that you’re stating things about the physics of the battlefield that are not true. You’re making Pickett’s Charge, over and over again. That was never going to work.
IN our system, you don’t get to read my heart. You only get to react to my argument. Yeah, I want to win a Catholic victory. But no, I have not come onto the battlefield under an icon of Mary. I’ve argued the 14th amendment and due process. I can’t win under an icon - that’s impossible given our system. But I COULD win under the constitutional argument, if similarly minded judges are sitting up there seeking a pretext to do the right thing.
Oh, what a terrible person I am for not directly stating my intentions but hiding them behind valid legal arguments. Hypocrisy is the hommage vice renders to virtue. That’s our system. I am not about making a beau geste. I’m always about winning the battle and getting my way. So sue me.
We have radical Muslim enemies working to install Shira 'law', in the USA..
We have radical nutters claiming their imaginary law is the law of the land. The Republic has not collapsed because of it.
We have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. I have yet to have an encounter where anyone attempted to require me to obey Sharia law.
Religious laws are repugnant to the First Amendment of our Constitution...
Laws reflecting a religious moral belief are not prohibited. Laws establishing a state religion are prohibited.
The Catholic religion, and many Catholics, maintain as a religious moral belief that all abortion is wrong and sinful.
If the people adopted a Constitutional amendment that all abortion was unlawful, or an amendment confirming that a right to abortion emanates from a penumbra of the Bill of Rights, there would be no First Amendment Freedom of Religion implication.
Nobody would have established the Church of Choice, or the Church of Life, as the Church of the United States. A religious moral belief, such as choice or life is not a religion.
The official United States motto is In God We Trust (P.L. 84-140, 70 Stat. 732). And we are all free to be athiests.
Vicomte13 wrote at (#120) ------ Catholics ------- simply have our set of interests and beliefs, and we want to see them enacted as the law of the land. Nothing more, nothing less.I
I merely want the Supreme Court to rule that substantive due process prohibits the killing of an unborn child, because the child had no opportunity to have a fair trial before being deprived of life. That's a constitutional question, not a religious one. YOU say it's religious. I say it's a matter of national security.
I replied: :----- You 'merely' want the Supreme Court to enact a Catholic belief as the law of the land..
What you want is specifically mentioned as being unconstitutional in the First Amendment..
Your last reply: --- "Oh, what a terrible person I am for not directly stating my intentions but hiding them behind valid legal arguments. Hypocrisy is the hommage vice renders to virtue. That’s our system. I am not about making a beau geste. I’m always about winning the battle and getting my way. So sue me."
Instead of a lawsuit, -- how bout I take pity on you, and let you rest? --' You could also consider finding some professional help...
Instead of a lawsuit, -- how bout I take pity on you, and let you rest? --' You could also consider finding some professional help...
Instead of getting professional help, how about I smile at the progressive Hispanicization of America, recognizing the fact that Latinos are much more pro-life on average than whites, even while being more pro- social state.
In other words, as the country fills up with my co-religionists, the Democrat party in particular fills up with people who are markedly less pro-choice than they are, but who otherwise will maintain necessary social welfare.
All I have to do is sit and wait and time and demographics will give me the victory. The Republicans won't be doing it, nor the Independents. It will come from a Democratic Party that has become dominated by Latin Catholics, and they think like I do on abortion.
Give it up? Why would I do that? I'm pretty much winning on everything I care about. Some recipes take longer to cook.
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan... Tear down that wall Mr. Pope, and let the illegal aliens in! Francis hates immigrants. Trump loves them, and will sign amnesty for millions of illegal aliens. It's "a bill of love." Jeb! will be so proud of Donnell then.
You won't because your Republican capitalists will never tolerate the loss of profits from the cheap exploitable labor, and of course the Democrats will join with the Republican capitalists because the Dems are looking forward to the votes of the illegals' children (and some of the illegals themselves).
If you can get your Republicans in line with what you want, you would get it. But you can't, they won't, and it won't happen.
My comments about our Constitution are only radical in your confused mind..
Your claims about the Constitution are not citable to any legal authority but The tpaine Court of the Imagination™. The views of a minority of one, posing as the established law of the land, is about as radical as it gets.
How about I smile at the progressive Hispanicization of America, recognizing the fact that Latinos are much more pro-life on average than whites, even while being more pro- social state.
So when MS-13 swarms into YOUR town, squat across the street in a tent as the town grow more dangerous, socialist and ILLEGALLY Hispanic...you mean YOU'RE ok with that?
And btw -- Latinos may be more pro-life than "whites" (secular, atheist and RCC whites that is), but by and large the ONLY way these ILLEGAL INVADER families and the fathers can afford larger families is because they are being subsidized by AMERICAN taxpayers. IOW, they are thieves of US sovereignty and US taxpayer resources via socialism at the local, state and national level. WITHOUT OUR CONSENT. Yet THIS theft without the consent of Americans makes you smile? Just...weird on so many levels.
All I have to do is sit and wait and time and demographics will give me the victory....as the country fills up with my co-religionists...
HUH?? Give YOU "the victory"?? Over who? WHO LOSES?? REAL AMERICANS?? Protestant Americans? That's a pretty galling principle. In your mind you've declared war...on the USA. Just like the Globalists and Democrats
Moreover, it's actually treasonous and a betrayal of all those descendants of the Americans who've established, built AND sacrificed for the principles of the Founders.
[My victory] will come from a Democratic Party that has become dominated by Latin Catholics, and they think like I do on abortion.
Talk about a Pyrrhic victory.
The day the the dominant demo of Democrats are the same outlaw Latinos who invaded the USA and re-established La Raza is THE day there is no more USA. Chyeah -- "WOO-HOO!!" Feliz Cinco de Mayo! And btw Vic -- the Democrats' "holy sacrament" of Abortion will NEVER change. Their leadership will remain the Tom Perez-Che types.
I'm pretty much winning on everything I care about.
As confused as you seem to be across the board about issues that really matter to freedom and sovereignty, that doesn't surprise me.
Better learn Spanish.
Why? Was a war fought and someone forgot to tell us? Or...Are some posters moving to El Salvador or Mexifornia?
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan... Tear down that wall Mr. Pope, and let the illegal aliens in! Francis hates immigrants. Trump loves them, and will sign amnesty for millions of illegal aliens. It's "a bill of love." Jeb! will be so proud of Donnell then.
To paraphrase John McEnroe: "You can NOT be serious!!"
(Applies to both you and Vic.)
Yet I know you are serious. Both of you are.
But Hondo, I can't tell you how impressed I am by your consistent brilliance at conflating several inanities in a single post.
Oy. I'm starting to miss the rational arguments of Yukon.
You guys lose the bubble every time you go here. You are a minority. You do not get to define treason. Whenever you scream that I am traitor, with my two decades of military service, including wartime service, because you disagree with me politically, my mind immediately goes to full FUCK YOU mode.
No, I'm not a traitor, and who the hell do you people think you are to say I am.
I will tell you what you are. You are a minority in a losing cause. Your ideas have not prevailed. you have not held the battlefield. Know why? Because there is a fundamental, irreconcilable illogic in the basic principles on which your beliefs are built. You try to glue together Christianity, militarism and unregulated capitalism, all into one.
That creates a set of beliefs as much in conflict and unworkable as Soviet Communism. And your ideas failed in the battlefield of ideas. They did not produce an economy prosperous enough, or a society stable enough, to be able to hold the votes in a democracy. So you receded from power and other more practical ideas took hold.
Now, people like me want to work with you, and part of that means bringing you in off the ledge of crazy and making you see WHY your ideas do not hold together and do not make rational sense. They are in conflict with each other, and they have actually failed already on the field of political battle.
But you adopt a "take no prisoners" approach AS THOUGH you are the superior army. Many of you hearken back to the old Confederacy and how grand it was, and how right its cause was. But then you stride onto that battlefield like Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, and you don't realize that, actually, you're the inferior army, you're the weaker side. So you do something damned foolish just like he did, and charge directly at the stronger, better equipped army: Pickett's Charge. You charge straight into the guns, AS THOUGH somehow God were on your side and will carry you through to victory.
And just exactly like Lee's Confederates at Gettysburg, you get massacred. The disciplined, larger, stronger army on the other side just pours fire down on you, and God stands on the side of the bigger battalions. Your brave warriors get shot all to pieces in a charge that any sensible commander should have known was hopeless, and stupid, and both the battle and the war is lost in an afternoon.
But then, instead of learning from it, and admitting that Robert E. Lee was really a fool, you curl back into a fetal position of pride and extol his virtues and the virtues of your cause, even as everything goes to pieces around you.
Truth is, the battle didn't need to be fought in the first place.
Yes, yes, imaged language. That seems to exceed your ability to grasp, so I'll be straightforward.
When somebody calls me a traitor - I stop reading. You've lost when you do that. Whatever you have to say after that is pointless, because your reasoning has already derailed.
My long service and combat medals erase your ability to call me that, especially if you don't have any. Simple fact is, I put myself in harm's way for this country for two decades, and you did not. Therefore, you are an idiot when you call me a traitor, and what you have to say is of zero value.
You can scream at the moon, but it's a losing position. We disagree politically, and I'm a very intelligent, experienced and successful man. Successful in the military. Successful in this American economy since the military. A top one percent. The sort of success story that Americans like you claim is the be all and end all of America. But you want to presume to lecture me with your hysterical politics, like a woman on her period.
It's ridiculous. What you say is ridiculous, over the top. And it brings out my bad manners.
Now, if you want to have a calm, rational discussion of the issues, I am all for that. But the distemper that guys like you, or Stone or others thrown at me is the whining of angry old men and fringe people whose causes are lost. You don't have power BECAUSE you speak stupidly and spit at people. You can't get along with people, so you scream at them that they are traitors.
It's Pickett's Charge all over again, time after time, and you never learn a goddamned thing from it.
Do I want the country to go Spanish? No, not really. But if it's a choice between Spanish-speakers and morons who presume to call me a traitor, I'd rather replace you with them, yeah. And that's YOUR fault, buddy, not mine.
You lose the fight, and the war, every time you resort to "traitor" or "Marxist" or any of these other teenage words of an hysterical woman. You lost when you call the Catholic Church "Satanists" or the Pope "the poop" or any of the other 14 year old logic.
I stay here because it amuses me to do so. Sometimes I realize that my doing so is just an utter waste of time, that I'd be better off doing just about ANYTHING else - going and taking a walk down on the beach, etc.
I stay, I think, because actually I came right out of the deep country like you did, and I am an American success story, and I have plenty to teach you. The most important lesson is how to calm down and be reasonable and moderate in tone, and not come unglued under pressure. You're just going to keep on losing as long as you do that.
If you're calling me a traitor, you've gone postal and lost. Every time. No matter how angry you get, I am not a traitor, by definition, and if you've become so wedded to some political position that you're calling me one, it means that YOU have gone off into carnkville and need to rein yourself back in.
Vic is a weirdo. Anyone who claims they raise mice and cockroaches from the dead isn't all there mentally. The guy is delusional and isn't really pro life. He said he prefers hollary and abortion to Ted criz and Christianity. He's a flake and a fake.
You guys lose the bubble every time you go here. You are a minority. You do not get to define treason. Whenever you scream that I am traitor, with my two decades of military service, including wartime service,
Hitler and Benedict Arnold were in the military too. So your service doesn't mean shit in determining if you are a traitor. You like about stupid stuff like raising mice from the dead. So you could lie about anything and everything. Or maybe you're just nuts.
