Civilians owned the cannons, not the government.

Every man had a rifle. His own. It was either a family heirloom or a tool used to ensure survival. No one dared take a man’s livelihood.

What’s the difference today? Well, most people don’t own cannons.

This is the problem with these pieces. They contain patent falsehoods.

No, the individual American colonists DID NOT own the cannons.

The cannons were owned by the government - which is to say the British. When the colonies rebelled, British cannons fell into American hands. The Continental Army - a confederal government force - took Fort Ticonderoga to get heavy guns from the British. When the British evacuated Boston, they left cannons behind, which were promptly pressed into service by the Continental Army.

The young American Navy stormed a fort in the Bahamas to grab more cannons.

When the French came in, they brought cannons.

It is not true that the cannons were private weapons. Not at all true. Not even a little bit true. Cannons were professional weapons of war, and the American Revolutionaries got their cannons from the British, later also the French. They brought their muskets, not their cannons.

Trouble is, the notion that the citizenry owned the heavy professional military weapons is one of the key rhetorical points of the author's article and IT IS NOT TRUE.

Now, if the article were rewritten from the perspective of truth, it could still make a valid argument. But when an argument starts from a totalitarian position - the colonists owned the equivalent of the tanks of their era - the whole thing dies stillborn, because that's not true.

Truth is, the Second Amendment was designed to preserve the personal firearms in the hands of the citizenry so that COLLECTIVELY they could rebel against an oppressive government. There never was a concept of the INDIVIDUAL right of rebellion - that's called murder.

His argument would mean that you have the right under the Second Amendment to have an arsenal of stinger missiles and chemical munitions, and that it's a "compromise" to surrender that right. It's not true.

Truth is, the Second Amendment was designed to preserve the personal firearms in the hands of the citizenry so that COLLECTIVELY they could rebel against an oppressive government. There never was a concept of the INDIVIDUAL right of rebellion - that's called murder.

Correct. Under the second amendment, ALL arms were protected from federal infringement for state militias. Each state militia then decided how they would arm their militia members and how those arms were to be ke kept.

The individual right to keep and bear arms was protected by each state's constitution. Two different protected rights.

Of course, I'm not much of an originalist. As it has come down, we DO have a personal right to own guns - not Stinger Missiles or Mustard Gas or grenades or nukes - just guns - and with limits (not machine guns). It comes down to us as a matter of custom and belief, and has protection from the traditional reading of that amendment. So the notion that the states, or cities, have the right to take away individual ownership of firearms is unconstitutional.

But that's because the Constitution is a living document and American understanding of our personal rights has come to include the right to own guns over and against an overreaching federal, state and local authority that wants to confiscate them. It isn't because James Madison or whomever thought thus and so in 1789. James Madison thought people were property and that was morally right. Who really gives a damn what that old pirate thought? He's dead. We're living. We have a robust set of rights because we politically protect them. We don't have gun rights because Madison thought we should. We have them because WE think we have them, and WE think we should, and WE'RE willing to wage political warfare in order to keep them. That's why.

The Founding Fathers were not saints, they were not apostles, they were not apostles, and the system of government they created collapsed and failed in 1860. The Lincoln dictatorship pulled the country through the civil war, and the victorious power re-established a government using the old language but on new constitutional principles - of ultimate federal political power - that has stood the test of time better than the ramshackle slavery-protecting structure the Founders cobbled together.

That's an unpopular view, but it's true. The government we have is worth defending as it is, because of what it is. THANK GOD it is no longer what the Founders were trying to do, because otherwise we'd still have slavery and a landed gentry in half the country, and that's not acceptable whether constitutional or not.

As it has come down, we DO have a personal right to own guns - not Stinger Missiles or Mustard Gas or grenades or nukes - just guns - and with limits (not machine guns).

I agree. The types of personal weapons, age restrictions, carry requirements, etc. should be determined by each state according to their state constitution.

"So the notion that the states, or cities, have the right to take away individual ownership of firearms is unconstitutional."

There would be a state constitutional limit. Also, totally disarming the citizenry poses a threat to the formation of state militias -- protected by the second amendment. Plus there are hunting and self-defense issues. Plus a majority of the people would have to support it.

"So the notion that the states, or cities, have the right to take away individual ownership of firearms is unconstitutional."

There is no question we have the right. The question is, do the citizens of a state wish to protect that right (and all that it entails) and for who?

Certainly even you don't want violent felons to have guns. Nor crazy people. Nor small children. Illegals. Foreign visitors. Negroes.

were Americans allowed to own cannons under the second amendment?

Yes, private citizens were allowed to own cannons, and many did. It was very common for private merchant ships (for example) to be equipped with cannons. They were called "armed merchantmen" - so yes, "arms" definitely did include cannons.

However, strictly speaking, the Second Amendment only protected cannons (and other firearms) from Federal bans. Along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, it only applied against the Federal government - states were allowed to do whatever they wanted, subject to their own Constitutions and Bills of Rights, which frequently incorporated similar or identical provisions. This lasted until the early 1900's, when the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated it against the states. For more details, I'd recommend this good comment from /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov.

freedmenspatrolModerator | Antebellum U.S. Slavery Politics 23 points24 points25 points 1 year ago* (18 children)

I've come across two incidences of private ownership of cannons in my nineteenth century reading. Both occur in Territorial Kansas, where the Kansas-Nebraska Act had left the question of whether Kansas (and any other territory) would have slavery or not up to the people there in the hopes that this would spare the nation any political turmoil. The theory was that if you took the slavery question out of Washington, it became a local matter that no one much cared about except locals. There's a huge deal of really interesting background here, but I'm just going to hit the high points on the way to the cannons.

The problem with letting the local people decide for or against slavery, aside from the slavery, is that it doesn't really resolve anything. Specifically, what was the legal status of human property in Kansas before those locals decided one way or the other? If you opposed slavery, it was that slavery was a creature of mere municipal law with no explicit sanction in the law of the nation. Thus, Kansas was free until voted slave. If you were for slavery, then slavery was national law already and applied in Kansas until the territory voted otherwise. You can make a decent argument either way.

Missouri's most enslaved areas lay adjacent to Kansas and they weren't about to just sit by and let a bunch of abolitionists, backed by wealthy New England corporations, set up shop next door. From Kansas' very first election, for a delegate to Congress on November 29, 1854, they came over the border in organized bands. They had expenses paid by major planters and activities coordinated through masonic lodges. The job was to go to the polls and vote, despite the Kansas-Nebraska Act clearly saying that only actual residents of Kansas could do so. If anybody objected, or anybody not looking “sound on the goose” (proslavery) tried to vote, then they would make trouble. One fellow managed to cast a vote by lying about his proslavery bona fides, at which point the crowd literally carried him aloft. Another, John Wakefield, objected strenuously to all of this. He was threatened credibly enough that he took refuge with the election judges and claimed their protection for the day.

But there's no cannon in that story. Lots of guns and knives, though. The cannon came out for the March 30, 1855 elections. For these, Kansans would elect a legislature that could, in principle, hold an immediate vote on whether or not to have slavery in Kansas. They would also be in charge and so shape the development of the state thoroughly to their liking. The Missourians wouldn't miss that and came over in the thousands. They included a future governor of the state (Claiborne Fox Jackson) and just-former (and stil not aware that he wouldn't be re-elected) Senator David Rice Atchison. Atchison was instrumental in the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He came to Kansas that day boasting that he and his border ruffians would take the territory, boasting of the eleven hundred men from his own county who had come to vote

and if that ain’t enough we can send five thousand-enough to kill every God-damned abolitionist in the Territory

This man had recently been President Pro Tempore of the Senate, incidentally.

Atchison wasn't kidding. Edward Chapman was present that day and later told his story to a congressional committee sent out to investigate:

They claimed that they had a right to come here and vote; all they asked was to vote here peaceably, and if they could not do it peaceably they must resort to some other means. Most of them had double-barreled shot-guns, and guns of various descriptions, and most of them had side-arms. I saw a couple pieces of artillery.

That's not figurative artillery. Chapman saw the proslavery men settle down in a large camp near his house, so he went out to have a talk. He recognized Claiborne Jackson by sight and got introduced around, all very pleasant. They just wanted to vote, you see? Peaceably, even!

Chapman and some associates of his left the camp and he went on to Lawrence, where a fair helping of the Missourians had gathered. (Others went to attend other polling places.) He got near to the Lawrence polls before one of the Missourians called him aside and asked point-blank if Lawrence would give them any trouble. Chapman thought probably not, probably taking the lesson from all the weaponry that the proslavery men had on hand as one tends to. The other guy said he hoped Chapman was right. Chapman answered to the effect that Lawrence did have men enough to make a fight of it if they caused trouble.

Oh really? The other guy

thought there would be no use in doing that, and invited me to go down a short distance with him. We went to a wagon, and he lifted up a cloth and some blankets, and remarked to me that there was a couple of “bull-dogs” they had, loaded with musket-balls. They were all covered up in the hay, with the exception of the rims of them; they were a couple of brass cannon.

The cannon wasn't used that day, but the Missourians didn't haul it all the way for the hell of it and they proved, quite often, that they were willing to use more than threats of violence to carry Kansas elections. They would vote peacefully, unless someone gave them reason to do otherwise. In another district, they literally tried to knock down the cabin where the voting took place and held the election workers at gunpoint until they resigned.

The proslavery men carried the day and spent most of the summer of 1855 consolidating their hold on Kansas, culimating in a draconian set of laws that literally made saying slavery did not exist in Kansas into a crime. They also got the governor replaced with a more proslavery one and purged from the legislature the few antislavery Kansans elected fair and square in districts where the first governor had ordered new elections after getting solid proof of shenanigans. (That governor, Andrew Horatio Reeder, took the precaution of announcing the special elections while under armed guard.)

That's two cannons for you. I have one more. At the end of November, 1855, a claim dispute with political overtones ended in the murder of an antislavery settler, Charles Dow, by a proslavery settler, Franklin Coleman. Through a convoluted series of events, this led to the new governor of Kansas, Wilson Shannon, ordering the county sheriff (who was one of the guys who held election judges at gunpoint in the district where they tried to knock the house down) to serve a warrant on Jacob Branson. Branson was a friend of Dow's, had his own land dispute with Coleman, and was also an officer in the not-so-secret militia that antislavery Kansans had set up to protect themselves from proslavery attacks. And occasionally burn down the houses of proslavery settlers. Coleman suspected that Dow had something to do with the burning out of his proslavery neighbor, whose claim Dow had then taken up.

Incidentally, it looks quite a lot like Shannon might have sent the sheriff, Samuel Jones, off with a blank commission so he could make someone justice of the peace in exchange for issuing the warrant against Branson. The whole business is convoluted like this.

The murder took place not too far from Lawrence. Jones went off and arrested Branson, though given it was December and in the middle of the night, he found Branson sans pants. Branson had to plead with him a bit to get permission to put some on. (Seriously; Branson recounts it in his testimony on the subject)

Jones was pretty obvious in going for Branson, assemblying a posse of fifteen or so men and making a fair fuss. People noticed and a party of Branson's fellow militiamen, if from the Lawrence chapter rather than his immediate neighborhood, got together, intercepted Jones, and rescued Branson. They took him off to Lawrence, which was by this point the major antislavery headquarters in the territory.

Jones would not take that laying down. He went to Franklin (a town, not Franklin Coleman) and wrote off a letter for his allies in Missouri. He sent that, then wrote a second one to the governor to explain that the law was being thwarted and Lawrence was full of crazies bent on rebellion. It was anarchy.

(back in a moment for part two)

(hello again)

Shannon believed most of what Jones told him. He called up the Kansas militia. Jones' correspondents in Missouri either bought or didn't care and mustered up the troops for a fresh invasion. They were going to wipe Lawrence off the map, using the Dow-Coleman-Jones-Branson affair as the pretense. They may have brought cannons with them, though I haven't seen references to it. They did break into a Missouri militia arsenal and helped themselves to the small arms.

However, and wherever, the proslavery men came from they converged in Lawrence and put it under something loosely resembling a siege. The town was never entirely cut off, but it was in a bad place. The locals, augmented by antislavery militiamen from all about, dug earthworks. Their sort-of-besiegers took potshots at the men digging. A fair bit of smuggling arms through the lines took place. Antislavery Kansans had been slipping things through Missouri for quite a while. At the time of the siege, they had a cannon on order.

My source credits these exploits to a Major Blank, one of those wonderful Blanks known for never suiing for libel. (He's that kind of writer.) Blank knew that someone from New York had sent along a six- or twelve-pounder and the usual accessories. At that very moment, it was created in a Kansas City warehouse. Blank just needed to go get it from an intensely proslavery town and get it past an army of circa 2,000 proslavery militants. Easy, right?

I should say here that it's very likely the story I'm about to tell is heavily (and funnily) embellished. But the historians I've read who speak on the matter (Alice Nichols and Nichole Etcheson) both believe that a cannon really did get through the proslavery lines. So take the following salted to taste:

Blank dropped his military title and went off to Kansas city with a solid wagon and a pair of mules. Yes, he was from Lawrence. But he was there on private business. A friend of his had these boxes stored in the warehouse and he was there to collect them as a favor. Maybe the guy would pay him for his trouble, this time.

Ok, that's fine. Here's your b- Hey wait a minute What exactly have you got going off to Lawrence?

Just some stuff! It's...a wagon. My buddy ought to have bought it in St. Louis and saved on shipping.

The warehouse manager wasn't buying that, so Blank grabbed an axe and pried the lid of the larger box open just a bit to show wheels inside. Blank knew that the wheels for the cannon's carriage would be in the bigger of the two. The light was poor and Blank hadn't torn the whole lid clear, but the skeptical Missourian saw a wagon wheel and bought it. He might have even ordered his slave to help Blank pack things up and load the cannon on his wagon.

Blank and the man at the warehouse shared a drink (corn whisky) and then he was off. It was smooth sailing until he got stuck in the mud, most of the way back to Lawrence and near to the proslavery camps. That's an awfully awkward place for roadside distress, and Blank couldn't get himself loose. But he knew that proslavery men came and went pretty often, so he sat down and waited. When a party came by, he asked them to help a body out.

Well sure, that was just common courtesy. They hitched a pair of horses up and put their shoulders into it. The wagon came free and Blank rode off to Lawrence, where he promptly told his story. When word got back to the besiegers, they decided due diligence required them to go so far as opening up barrels of flour and sifting them before letting them through to the town.

Private cannons were in common use on merchant ships for protection from Barbary and British Pirates etc., and for slavery debates and electioneering in Missouri and Kansas. They bought at least some of the cannons in New York.

Have you hugged your nuke today?

Negroes?

Doesn't matter, There's no constitutional right to possess WMD, or Stinger missiles, grenades, machine guns, land mines, missile batteries, etc. The 2nd Amendment in 2017 is about personal firearms, not automatic ones. It's about self-defense, not mass casualty weapons. Some think otherwise, but the law is not with them and won't be.

The 2nd Amendment in 2017 is about personal firearms, not automatic ones. It's about self-defense, not mass casualty weapons. Some think otherwise, but the law is not with them and won't be.

How do you make up the US Constitution when there has been no amendment process? I often regard you as a bit silly on this chit chat channel because you offer no supportive structure about your uncommon ideas.

Doesn't matter,

Because you're a scofflaw and a tyrant.

You'll get zero sympathy if I'm on your jury.

How do you make up the US Constitution when there has been no amendment process? I often regard you as a bit silly on this chit chat channel because you offer no supportive structure about your uncommon ideas.

"Silly", etc.

My "uncommon ideas" are the Law of the Land from sea to shining sea, Bub.

Can Americans legally and easily own machine guns. No. They haven't been able to do so for almost a century. Have the laws against the possession of mass casualty weapons been struck down in federal court? No. And they won't be.

Fact is, the Constitution IS what the Courts SAY it is. That doesn't sit well with a cranky minority of what I might call "Evangelical Sola Constitutionalist Originalists" - sort of like lunatic fringe Protestants for whom the Bible is the only source of authority, but who substitute the Constitution and then read it to say what they want it to say. That's the fantasy of the majority of folks on this chit-chat site.

Fact is, though, that the actual LAW, which is what is enforced by guns, police, the army, prosecutors the courts, from sea to shining sea, is "Catholic". The Supreme Court and the Federal Courts ARE the final arbiters of the Constitution, The "Protestant" wing says otherwise, screams it, and listens to their own echo chamber, but when it comes to the law, this is a very "Catholic" country. The Supreme Court says what the Constitution means. That is the position of the vast majority of Americans, if they think of it at all. That's the position of the entirety of the judicial system, law enforcement and the army. That is how the country is really run, and there isn't a crack in that edifice.

Old men with crazy ideas on an Internet chat site does not constitute a majority of anything other than on the site. You have very strong ideas about the Constitution. So do the jihadists. So do the Communists. So do college students protesting the eating of meat. But little hard pockets of completely convinced fanatics do not make the law. The Supreme Court makes the law, along with Congress, and state and local legislators.

Machine guns and WMD are illegal, as a matter of hard written and enforced law, from coast to coast, and no court has struck that down, or will. You can go bellyaching forever that the "Constitution" "says otherwise", but what you say is a fantasy. The Constitution itself, the piece of paper, is unclear, but the law as enforced, and as upheld by the courts' action and inaction, is very clear and hasn't changed in nearly a century. Efforts to go further, to strike down all semiautomatic gun ownership, have failed in the Supreme Court because they, like most of the country, see an individual right to own sidearms for protection, subject to restrictions as to where and how one may carry and keep them. That is left to the localities to decide, and they do decide.

The facts of the law, the concrete, rigid enforced facts of our society are just that: facts. There are people who scream against gun laws as unconstitutional. They PRETEND - because that's all it is - make believe - that THEY are the sovereigns who get to decide what the Constitution means, like cranky Protestant cults who get to decide on their own what the Bible means. In exactly the same vein there are tax resisters who pretend that THEY get to decide that the Constitution says they don't have to pay taxes, so they don't. Then they get arrested and go to jail, and the courts don't even listen to their cranky arguments, don't even let them speak.

The Law of the Land that will be enforced upon you is that you cannot legally own automatic weapons without jumping through a zillion hoops, and you cannot walk around with a weapon unless you are licensed or live in a locality that says how and where you can. If you break those laws you are harshly punished, and no court will agree with your home-grown interpretation of what the Constitution means, because every judge sitting there knows that he or she is the arbiter of what the Constitution means, not you.

I measure the crazy factor of this place by the fact that when I say perfectly realistic, perfectly true things about the Second Amendment, or Social Security, or similar things, that the men here go queer and batshit crazy, as though I have paraded out a unicorn.

The gun laws are real. They are not unconstitutional. They are not going away. I'm a realist and I speak reality on such things. It shouldn't be controversial, but it is among the special snowflakes on the far right who believe that THEY get to decide individually what the Constitution or the tax laws means, and how they apply. Well, they DO get to decide that each day, but if they decide wrong - because the courts and the police HAVE set a right answer to this question - then they lose their liberty, their property and quite possibly their lives, and the system never upholds their self-asserted right to interpret the Constitution to their liking, because individuals have no such right, never have had it, and never will have it. There is word for what would result from the actual application of such a belief: anarchy. We're not really in anarchy, we're not headed that direction, and it is the lawmakers who decide the limits on gun ownership. Individuals can decide whether or not to own within the law. If an individual decides that he's going to have WMD, "because Constitution", then he's a potential domestic terrorist, nothing more, and will be treated as such by the police, by the army, by the courts, and by the citizenry. He can wave around his personal interpretation of the Constitution with his buddies in the federal pen, or in Gehenna after he gets gunned down, but he's simply wrong, always was, and will have lost everything learning that he as an individual is NOT the final arbiter of what the Constitution means: the Supreme Court is, and they don't agree with the gun nuts.

This is not a radical fringe creampuff stance. It's the truth. It's the law of the land. It amazes me that you don't understand this and think that I'M the guy on the fringe.

You'll get zero sympathy if I'm on your jury.

Fair enough. Your kind never gets sympathy from us when we arrest you, decide to prosecute you, sit on the bench or in the jury box judging you, or guard you in prison, so it's only to be expected that you have the same belief system in reverse.

The trouble for you is that there are 300 million of me, and 20 million of you, and the entire government and most of the people, from sea to shining sea, are with me. You've got the guys living in shacks on Ruby Ridge, fanatics in the compounds at Waco, and Ted Kaczinsky's cat with you.

So I'm not going to be worried about your threat of petty injustice and tyranny, but you had better sit up and take notice when I tell you what the law of the land is, because I actually know what it is, and what I say about it is the objective truth that will be applied to your hide, whether you like it, or agree with it, or not.

You consider it tyranny that you have to obey laws you don't agree with. Better move to Siberia, then, where you will not have to deal with other people. Because anywhere in THIS country you will be governed by a rule of law. You get a say in what that law is, through your vote. But you don't get to secede from the law if you don't like the outcome, and yet stay here. You CAN secede - individually - by emigrating. What you don't get to do is to take your piece of land with you. Nor do you get to live here entirely on your rules. Because civil society does not - and CANNOT - work that way.

I guess it makes you guys feel good to call me names. In truth, I'm just trying to keep you out of trouble, keep you from running afoul of the law and losing your liberty, your property and your life, by telling you what the law IS.

You seem to prefer to live in a fantasyland where YOU get to determine what the law is. Actually, you live in Democrat-Republican-land, and THEY get to decide it, and they do, and they have, and you don't like the law very much. Neither do I. But I am a realist and recognize it for what it IS: the Law. You have this cranky belief that you, all by yourself, get to decide what the Constitution means. You don't, You never will.

If you want to die on that hill, the authorities are always ready to martyr you for your cause. I'm not eager to see it, but I have to say that with the endless goading here for being reasonable, I become less sympathetic to the hard right by the day. Maybe you should test your crazy theories about what the Constitution means and go out and act in the manner you think it supports. Then we'll get the Hondo case alongside of Waco and Ruby Ridge. You'll have been a martyr for your cause, and the world will go on shaking its head at suicidal lunatics who live in shacks and who can't live by the rules.

Negroes?

Just to see if you were paying attention.

Can Americans legally and easily own machine guns. No.

What's odd is that machine guns are weapons specifically protected by the second amendment, as they ARE used by the militia.

If you recall, that was the litmus test in United States v. Miller 307 U.S. 174 (1939) -- the court asked if Miller's shotgun had "any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia" in order to "say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon".

That court that got it right on the second amendment.

What's odd is that machine guns are weapons specifically protected by the second amendment, as they ARE used by the militia.

But individuals cannot own them without jumping through many hoops (hoops designed to prevent mass murder incidents).

But individuals cannot own them without jumping through many hoops (hoops designed to prevent mass murder incidents).

Let me put it this way. If Mr. Miller of United States v. Miller 307 U.S. 174 (1939) had a registered machine gun(rather than a sawed-off shotgun), it would have been 100% legal to transport it.

I measure the crazy factor of this place by the fact that when I say perfectly realistic, perfectly true things about the Second Amendment, or Social Security, or similar things, that the men here go queer and batshit crazy, as though I have paraded out a unicorn.

Vic being Vic.

Nice little rant. Love the usual insanity, the pot shots at Evangelical Protestants on behalf of the anti-Christ Catholicism which has for centuries mislead Christ's sheep and taught their flock instead to worship and pray to Mary and the "Saints" (because her Son is apparently too angry or busy to listen to His Children's prayers.) Oh, and let's not forget all those candles, mantras, magic beads, prayers on behalf of the dead, Indulgences, and magic wafers that BECOME a newly-minted resurrected "Jesus Christ" Himself during every Mass! Just as Scripture states repeatedly in Chapter...uhhh...Verse...uhhh. OH WAIT...

You mean NONE of the above wishful thinking and/or heathen practices were ever commanded as a condition by Jesus Christ Himself for Eternal Salvation OR Gospel? Hmmm. Those rascally Protestants!!

With all those IQ points swirling around your massive cranial cavity, one would presume you to understand and preach the simple message of Jesus Christ Himself to Preach the Gospel to all that hunger (instead of paying for the RCC's historical threats, blackmail, the enabling of evil "Secrets" played out in the bowels of Rome, and its intercessory jukebox Salvation.)

Aaah, Vic -- Special by birth, admittedly self-anointed royalty, lacking a humility demanded by Christ, IQ of 160 -- yet unable to wrap real history, facts, and truth around your head. And haven't you heard? Those who are last will be first. Of course your believe first go Popes, then Cardinals, then the rest of the RCCs. AND THEN ST. PETER HIMSELF SLAMS HEAVEN'S GATE SHUT. Eh?

You claim to be LF's Arbiter of Truth, yet you've sadly in time instead become even more deceived. Your concept of justice, redemption, and the Gospel are tainted and become rancid by centuries of Vatican lies, thefts of souls, and a Catholicism that has more in common with Islam than Christianity. Your current "Vicar of Christ" has nothing in common with The Lord, but MUCH in common with Islam. With Marxism. With Satanism. He is a usurper of the label "Christian."

Your Cult discounts The Word of God and instead replaces it with a Corrupt Man's Word -- the Apostles Creed (neither written NOR past down by actual Apostles) as well as the pseudo "Infallibility" of Papal "authority" -- an authority NOT rooted in Scripture, but deeply in Man's Own Vanity as well as Satan's same old own whispers heard by Adam, Eve, and Cain.

What else shall we expect from past and current Vatican agents fronting for Satan as they eagerly await the Beast.

No, I would say in *your* special world, you truly believe you sh*t rainbows of truth. In seven shades of brown.

I'm sorry I'm being a bit hard on you, but you seem to be hankering for a bit of a challenge.

The truth is, your demon-possessed Pope is your Black Unicorn. Yet, you still honor him as well as a Vatican and Roman Catholicism that can no longer be given the benefit of doubt as "Christian." It has been unmasked in its historical hatred of Jews, of Israel, of the House of David, and the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. AND dismissal and disrespect of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Prophets.

Fact is, the Constitution IS what the Courts SAY it is. That doesn't sit well with a cranky minority of what I might call "Evangelical Sola Constitutionalist Originalists" - sort of like lunatic fringe Protestants for whom the Bible is the only source of authority, but who substitute the Constitution and then read it to say what they want it to say. That's the fantasy of the majority of folks on this chit-chat site.

Fact is, though, that the actual LAW,....is "Catholic". The Supreme Court and the Federal Courts ARE the final arbiters of the Constitution, The "Protestant" wing says otherwise, screams it, and listens to their own echo chamber, but when it comes to the law, this is a very "Catholic" country.

Thanks for enumerating and reminding us EXACTLY why the AMERICAN Founders eschewed ANY Catholic/Vatican influence at the outset...

...Because EVENTUALLY the Vatican's corruption, tyranny, and worship of the Beast would be exposed, leading this Great Republic straight into the crapper.

Remember THIS: ONLY Protestants established a nation, a Republic rooted in a Constitution and Bill of Rights. NOT any Catholic. They aren't capable as we both know. Too arrogant. Too obedient to Rome's word instead of The Word of God.

So...A special gratitude for the Jesuits Cult and clueless Catholic Sheep for leading America to the slaughter, corrupting America's PROTESTANT-ESTABLISHED Republic with its work ethics and morals straight to your Progressive-Hell in a handbasket.

Yes, one could well thank your crypto-Marxist heathen/Satanic cult, Jesuit-infested SCOTUS and Kennedy Family Values for he war IT declared ON US. Thanks to your ilk, the USA was on Life-Support by 1965 and DOA by 1973.

It's ironic that RCCs have this wonderfully crafted reputation as fierce opponents of Abortion when it is THEY who are most responsible.

Rudderless, hypocritical Cafeteria Catholics and the recent Catholic majority in SCOTUS have all but hammered the final nails in America's coffin, and here YOU are acting all glib.

The "Protestant Wing" btw the the ONLY demographic of the USA holding this nation together. NOT that you care -- at heart you're a loyalist of ancient Holy Roman Empire.

Go ahead and leave. You know you crave bowing before all those fancy red, purple and white skirts. And taking a knee for Pope Frankie back "home."

Let me put it this way. If Mr. Miller of United States v. Miller 307 U.S. 174 (1939) had a registered machine gun(rather than a sawed-off shotgun), it would have been 100% legal to transport it.

In 1939.

ONLY PROTESTANTS

No. General St. Clair was Catholic. John Carroll, Maryland political leader, was Catholic. Catholics fought in the American Revolution. The Marquis de Lafayette was Catholic. So was Count Rochambeau, the Comte de Grasse, the Comte d"Estaign, and the rest of that French Navy and French Army that came and fought and bled and was decisive in defeating the British and giving America a chance to live. The Spanish army that drove the British out of Florida to assist the American Revolution was also Catholic. The British Army the Americans were fighting, the King of England himself, and all those Hessians and Prussians that fought on his side were Protestants.

General Kozsciousko, likewise, was Catholic.

A great number of Catholics fought to liberate America from your Protestant King and his Protestant Army. But hey, you go on pretending that it's 1500 if you want to. If it were not for the willingness of Catholic monarchs, Catholic Armies and Catholic soldiers to fight, and bleed and die, on the side of American independence, you would be a British subject.

Enough about this Protestant superiority. The Protestants fought you. Your King and his Redcoats and German soldiers marching about the American countryside in his service, and his Navy marauding you on the high seas - they were all Protestants. The Catholics fought FOR you. Your attempt to make the American Revolution about Protestantism and Catholicism fails, and in the process proves that Catholics were heavily engaged in fighting the Protestants who were oppressing you. IN America, the small number of native born Catholics fought FOR the Revolution, except for the Scots Highlanders, who remained loyal to the King and emigrated to Canada.

As far as Catholics being unable to establish republics, the next republic founded in a revolution after the American was the French Republic, and an attempt at a Polish Republic (which was crushed out by the Protestant Prussians and Orthodox Russians).

And then revolution swept all of Latin America, turning the whole continent into Republics. Meanwhile in Europe the Protestant countries all were monarchies, and mostly still are!

So actually, Catholics have been the ones mostly to throw off kings, and Catholic assistance was necessary to obtain American independence from your Protestant king as well.

In short: your religious bigotry is unhinged and stupid and contrary to the facts.

You want me to leave? Nah. I prefer to stay and rule.

We've got the miracles, me included. You've got angry words, and words are wind.

Pope Benedict XI, it is said, admires America’s religious freedom and history. I do too, especially where we have ended up. But as we focus this week on the role of Catholics in America, it’s worth remembering just how loathed Catholics were at the founding of this nation. Indeed, to an extent rarely acknowledged anti-Catholicism helped fuel the American revolution. If that sounds harsh, consider the evidence (plucked from my new book, Founding Faith): Only three of the 13 colonies allowed Catholics to vote. All new England colonies except Rhode island and the Carolinas prohibited Catholics form holding office; Virginia would have priests arrested for entering the colony; Catholic schools were banned in all states except Pennsylvania. During the lead up to revolution, rebels seeking to stoke hatred of Great Britain routinely equated the practices of the Church of England with that of the Catholic Church. In the late 1760s and early 1770s, colonists celebrated anti-Pope Days, an anti-Catholic festival derived from the English Guy Fawkes day (named for a Catholic who attempted to assassinated King James I). “Orations, cartoons, and public hangings of effigies depicted royal ministers as in league alternately with the pope and the devil,” writes historian Ruth Bloch. Roger Sherman and other members of Continental Congress wanted to prohibit Catholics from serving in the Continental Army. In 1774, Parliament passed the Quebec Act, taking the enlightened position that the Catholic Church could remain the official church of Quebec. This appalled and terrified many colonists, who assumed this to be a British attempt to subjugate them religiously by allowing the loathsome Catholics to expand into the colonies. Colonial newspapers railed against the Popish threat. The Pennsylvania Gazette said the legislation would now allow “these dogs of Hell” to “erect their Heads and triumph within our Borders.” The Boston Evening Post reported that the step was “for the execution of this hellish plan” to organize 4,000 Canadian Catholics for an attack on America. In Rhode Island, every single issue of the Newport Mercury from October 2, 1774 to March 20, 1775 contained “at least one invidious reference to the Catholic religion of the Canadians,” according to historian Charles Metzger. Protestant clergy fanned the flames. Rev. John Lathrop of the Second Church in Boston said Catholics “had disgraced humanity” and “crimsoned a great part of the world with innocent blood.” Rev. Samuel West of Dartmouth declared the pope to be “the second beast” of Revelation while Joseph Perry warned his Connecticut neighbors that they would soon need to swap “the best religion in the world” for “all the barbarity, trumpery and superstition of popery; or burn at the stake, or submit to the tortures of the inquisition.” And, he reasoned, English lawmakers were being controlled by the devil; the Quebec Act “first sprang from that original wicked politician.” Commenting on anti-Catholic fervor, historian Alan Heimert wrote that there was “a special and even frenetic urgency to their efforts to revive ancient prejudices by announcing that the Quebec Act—and it alone—confronted America with the possibility of the ‘scarlet whore’ soon riding ‘triumphant over the heads of true Protestants, making multitudes drunk with the wine of her fornications.'” The 1774 Pope Day was one of the grandest in years; in Newport, two large effigies of the pope were paraded. In New York, a group marched to the financial Exchange carrying a huge flag inscribed, “George III Rex, and the Liberties of America. No Popery.” Later that day, a pamphlet that had been distributed urging tolerance toward the Catholics of Canada was smeared with tar and feathers and nailed to the pillory. These views were echoed even by some of our most respected founding fathers. Alexander Hamilton decried the Quebec Act as a diabolical threat. “Does not your blood run cold to think that an English Parliament should pass an Act for the establishment of arbitrary power and Popery in such an extensive country?…Your loves, your property, your religion are all at stake.” He warned that the Canadian tolerance in Quebec would draw, like a magnet, Catholics from throughout Europe who would eventually destroy America. Sam Adams told a group of Mohawk Indians that the law “to establish the religion of the Pope in Canada” would mean that “some of your children may be induced instead of worshipping the only true God, to pay his dues to images made with their own hands.” The silversmith and engraver Paul Revere created a cartoon for the Royal American Magazine called “The Mitred Minuet.” It depicted four contented-looking mitred Anglican Bishops, dancing a minuet around a copy of the Quebec Act to show their “approbation and countenance of the Roman religion.” Standing nearby are the authors of the Quebec Act, while a Devil with bat ears and spiky wings hovers behind them, whispering instructions. The Continental Congress took a stand against the Catholic menace. On October 21, 1774 it issued an address “to the People of Great Britain”, written by John Jay, Richard Henry Lee and William Livingston, which expressed shock that Parliament would promote a religion that “disbursed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellions through every part of the world.” It predicted that the measure would encourage Canadians to “act with hostility against the free Protestant colonies, whenever a wicked Ministry shall choose to direct them.” Once Americans were converted to Catholicism, they would be enlisted in a vast Popish army to enslave English Protestants. If it seems today a bit strange that a war against a Protestant King George III could be cast as a fight against Catholicism, this was a paradox apparent to some British at the time. Describing the Quebec Act as the turning point, General Thomas Gage puzzled over how colonists had become convinced that Britain would eliminate their religious freedom. When they could not “be made to believe the contrary…the Flame [of rebellion] blased out in all Parts.” Ambrose Serle, who served as secretary to Admiral Lord Richard Howe from 1776 to 1778, reported to his superiors that “at Boston the war is very much a religious war.” Not surprisingly, some Britons over the years have chafed over the idea that the revolution was about lofty concepts of freedom. In 1912, the English Cardinal Gasquet flatly declared that “the American Revolution was not a movement for civil and religious liberty; its principal cause was the bigoted rage of the American Puritan and Presbyterian ministers at the concession of full religious liberty and equality to Catholics of French Canada. “ Yes, he noted, people were upset by taxation but that could have been resolved if not for the “Puritan firebrands and the bigotry of the people.” Tomorrow, I will explore how George Washington helped purge the nation of its anti-Catholic urges. Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/stevenwaldman/2008/04/how- anticatholicism-helped-fue.html#8msbo2HsDkY4OATo.99

A great number of Catholics fought to liberate America from your Protestant King and his Protestant Army. But hey, you go on pretending that it's 1500 if you want to. If it were not for the willingness of Catholic monarchs, Catholic Armies and Catholic soldiers to fight, and bleed and die, on the side of American independence, you would be a British subject.

By the time of the American Revolution, 35,000 Catholics formed 1.2% of the 2.5 million white population of the thirteen seaboard colonies.

You are full of it this morning.

We've got the miracles, me included.

But you cannot prove your miracle.

I like the line words are wind.

Pope Benedict XI, it is said, admires America’s religious freedom and history. I do too, especially where we have ended up. But as we focus this week on the role of Catholics in America, it’s worth remembering just how loathed Catholics were at the founding of this nation.

Indeed, to an extent rarely acknowledged, anti-Catholicism helped fuel the American revolution. If that sounds harsh, consider the evidence (plucked from my new book, Founding Faith): Only three of the 13 colonies allowed Catholics to vote.

All new England colonies except Rhode island and the Carolinas prohibited Catholics form holding office; Virginia would have priests arrested for entering the colony; Catholic schools were banned in all states except Pennsylvania. During the lead up to revolution, rebels seeking to stoke hatred of Great Britain routinely equated the practices of the Church of England with that of the Catholic Church.

In the late 1760s and early 1770s, colonists celebrated anti-Pope Days, an anti-Catholic festival derived from the English Guy Fawkes day (named for a Catholic who attempted to assassinated King James I).

“Orations, cartoons, and public hangings of effigies depicted royal ministers as in league alternately with the pope and the devil,” writes historian Ruth Bloch. Roger Sherman and other members of Continental Congress wanted to prohibit Catholics from serving in the Continental Army.

In 1774, Parliament passed the Quebec Act, taking the enlightened position that the Catholic Church could remain the official church of Quebec. This appalled and terrified many colonists, who assumed this to be a British attempt to subjugate them religiously by allowing the loathsome Catholics to expand into the colonies.

Colonial newspapers railed against the Popish threat. The Pennsylvania Gazette said the legislation would now allow “these dogs of Hell” to “erect their Heads and triumph within our Borders." The Boston Evening Post reported that the step was “for the execution of this hellish plan” to organize 4,000 Canadian Catholics for an attack on America.

In Rhode Island, every single issue of the Newport Mercury from October 2, 1774 to March 20, 1775 contained “at least one invidious reference to the Catholic religion of the Canadians,” according to historian Charles Metzger. Protestant clergy fanned the flames. Rev. John Lathrop of the Second Church in Boston said Catholics “had disgraced humanity” and “crimsoned a great part of the world with innocent blood.”

Rev. Samuel West of Dartmouth declared the pope to be “the second beast” of Revelation while Joseph Perry warned his Connecticut neighbors that they would soon need to swap “the best religion in the world” for “all the barbarity, trumpery and superstition of popery; or burn at the stake, or submit to the tortures of the inquisition.” And, he reasoned, English lawmakers were being controlled by the devil; the Quebec Act “first sprang from that original wicked politician.”

Commenting on anti-Catholic fervor, historian Alan Heimert wrote that there was “a special and even frenetic urgency to their efforts to revive ancient prejudices by announcing that the Quebec Act—and it alone—confronted America with the possibility of the ‘scarlet whore’ soon riding ‘triumphant over the heads of true Protestants, making multitudes drunk with the wine of her fornications.'”

The 1774 Pope Day was one of the grandest in years; in Newport, two large effigies of the pope were paraded. In New York, a group marched to the financial Exchange carrying a huge flag inscribed, “George III Rex, and the Liberties of America. No Popery.”

Later that day, a pamphlet that had been distributed urging tolerance toward the Catholics of Canada was smeared with tar and feathers and nailed to the pillory. These views were echoed even by some of our most respected founding fathers.

Alexander Hamilton decried the Quebec Act as a diabolical threat. “Does not your blood run cold to think that an English Parliament should pass an Act for the establishment of arbitrary power and Popery in such an extensive country?…Your loves, your property, your religion are all at stake.” He warned that the Canadian tolerance in Quebec would draw, like a magnet, Catholics from throughout Europe who would eventually destroy America.

Sam Adams told a group of Mohawk Indians that the law “to establish the religion of the Pope in Canada” would mean that “some of your children may be induced instead of worshipping the only true God, to pay his dues to images made with their own hands.”

The silversmith and engraver Paul Revere created a cartoon for the Royal American Magazine called “The Mitred Minuet.” It depicted four contented-looking mitred Anglican Bishops, dancing a minuet around a copy of the Quebec Act to show their “approbation and countenance of the Roman religion.” Standing nearby are the authors of the Quebec Act, while a Devil with bat ears and spiky wings hovers behind them, whispering instructions. The Continental Congress took a stand against the Catholic menace.

On October 21, 1774 it issued an address “to the People of Great Britain”, written by John Jay, Richard Henry Lee and William Livingston, which expressed shock that Parliament would promote a religion that “disbursed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellions through every part of the world.”

It predicted that the measure would encourage Canadians to “act with hostility against the free Protestant colonies, whenever a wicked Ministry shall choose to direct them.” Once Americans were converted to Catholicism, they would be enlisted in a vast Popish army to enslave English Protestants.

If it seems today a bit strange that a war against a Protestant King George III could be cast as a fight against Catholicism, this was a paradox apparent to some British at the time. Describing the Quebec Act as the turning point, General Thomas Gage puzzled over how colonists had become convinced that Britain would eliminate their religious freedom. When they could not “be made to believe the contrary…the Flame [of rebellion] blased out in all Parts.”

[Even] Ambrose Serle, who served as secretary to Admiral Lord Richard Howe from 1776 to 1778, reported to his superiors that “at Boston the war is very much a religious war.”

Not surprisingly, some Britons over the years have chafed over the idea that the revolution was about lofty concepts of freedom. In 1912, the English Cardinal Gasquet flatly declared that “the American Revolution was not a movement for civil and religious liberty; its principal cause was the bigoted rage of the American Puritan and Presbyterian ministers at the concession of full religious liberty and equality to Catholics of French Canada. “ Yes, he noted, people were upset by taxation but that could have been resolved if not for the “Puritan firebrands and the bigotry of the people.”

Tomorrow, I will explore how George Washington helped purge the nation of its anti-Catholic urges.

Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/stevenwaldman/2008/04/how- anticatholicism-helped-fue.html#8msbo2HsDkY4OATo.99

Because your linked piece was pertinent to the context of the times, I had to convert it into more readable paragraphs.

It was with a very weary eye (or damning squint) with which the Founders and colonists perceived Roman Catholics, whose "King" was ostensibly, the Pope." And therein lie their ultimate loyalty.

The Vatican threat was palpable and legitimate to America's colonists AND sizable number of primary Founders -- FOR GOOD REASON:

Past and current Popes squeezed Europe's Kings and Queens to do their dirty work for them like Mafia Godfathers -- to enforce the Vatican's muscle as world's biggest violator and usurper of liberty and freedom, and proponent of eventual tyranny even seen. This charge was led by power-drunken Caesars/Popes, aka throughout EVERY century since Christ. (Much to Vic's chagrin, dismay and historical revisionism.)

These days the Vatican is STILL up to its usual shenanigans, masquerade, and power plays. And STILL ignoring Christ's Commandment: "SPREAD THE GOSPEL!"

Guess what? AMERICA'S FOUNDERS WERE RIGHT!

By the time of the American Revolution, 35,000 Catholics formed 1.2% of the 2.5 million white population of the thirteen seaboard colonies.

SPECULATION: How many were sent by the Vatican as spies and saboteurs?

The Brits were loyal only to their King.

RCCs were loyal only to theirs: THE POPE.

We've got the miracles, me included. You've got angry words, and words are wind.

Guess what? We are ALL "miracles." No newsflash there, Vic.

As to "miracles"...which ones would you like to discuss? Shoot.

Words are wind.

Yes...

And some words are just breezy enough that they blow down weak houses of straw; Other windy words wind up as hurricanes obliterating all that stands.

As to "miracles"...which ones would you like to discuss?

[ONLY PROTESTANTS]

No. General St. Clair was Catholic. John Carroll, Maryland political leader, was Catholic. Catholics fought in the American Revolution. The Marquis de Lafayette was Catholic. So was Count Rochambeau, the Comte de Grasse, the Comte d"Estaign, and the rest of that French Navy and French Army that came and fought and bled and was decisive in defeating the British and giving America a chance to live. The Spanish army that drove the British out of Florida to assist the American Revolution was also Catholic. The British Army the Americans were fighting, the King of England himself, and all those Hessians and Prussians that fought on his side were Protestants.

General Kozsciousko, likewise, was Catholic.

A great number of Catholics fought to liberate America from your Protestant King and his Protestant Army. But hey, you go on pretending that it's 1500 if you want to. If it were not for the willingness of Catholic monarchs, Catholic Armies and Catholic soldiers to fight, and bleed and die, on the side of American independence, you would be a British subject.

Enough about this Protestant superiority. The Protestants fought you. Your King and his Redcoats and German soldiers marching about the American countryside in his service, and his Navy marauding you on the high seas - they were all Protestants. The Catholics fought FOR you. Your attempt to make the American Revolution about Protestantism and Catholicism fails, and in the process proves that Catholics were heavily engaged in fighting the Protestants who were oppressing you. IN America, the small number of native born Catholics fought FOR the Revolution, except for the Scots Highlanders, who remained loyal to the King and emigrated to Canada.

As far as Catholics being unable to establish republics, the next republic founded in a revolution after the American was the French Republic, and an attempt at a Polish Republic (which was crushed out by the Protestant Prussians and Orthodox Russians).

And then revolution swept all of Latin America, turning the whole continent into Republics. Meanwhile in Europe the Protestant countries all were monarchies, and mostly still are!

So actually, Catholics have been the ones mostly to throw off kings, and Catholic assistance was necessary to obtain American independence from your Protestant king as well.

In short: your religious bigotry is unhinged and stupid and contrary to the facts.

You want me to leave? Nah. I prefer to stay and rule.

Uh, YES. PROTESTANTS INDEED ESTABLISHED OUR REPUBLIC. We speak ENGLISH for good reason.

Protestants: They and they alone are responsible for "America."They borrowed from the Bible our basis for "American" morals and honor and work-ethic.

THEY are the authors of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and every other declarative document of personal, provincial and national sovereignty. No token Catholic was ever needed or required.

John Carroll? Yes, he did indeed sign the US Constitution. However, his signing was purely political. You may argue the case, but all indications appear to support that thesis.

In 1776 Congress asked Carroll (as a Roman Catholic) to go with Ben Franklin to hopefully influence Canada's RCC contingent and try to enlist their support of the Revolution. Carroll predictably FAILED at his mission despite having THE best negotiator ever riding shotgun (Franklin.)

John Carroll also established the Vatican base known as 'George Washington U.' (nice touch to usurp the "Father of Our Country" as it's moniker.) The University -- true to its roots -- has become a hotbed of subversiveness, covering up the image of Jesus Christ during Muslim Barry 0bama's visit.

Seems John Carroll was one of the original SJWs:

“Freedom and independence, acquired by…the mingled blood of Protestant and Catholic fellow-citizens, should be equally enjoyed by all.”

Stretched the truth as though it were salt-water taffy. During that time, the vast majority of RCCs were still mentally enslaved by a Vatican and cult whose conditions for Salvation were NOT scriptural.

THE FRENCH?? Sure, they helped. ONLY because they were bitter enemies of the Brits. ("The Enemy of my Enemy is my friend." Sound familiar?)

France helped America not out of any commitment or obligation to America and the ideal of Freedom and liberty. In other words, to spite and weaken Britain.

As a mostly Catholic nation-in-name-only even back then, the French Revolution predictably took a very ugly turn.

Spain?

Yes. The Spaniards battled the British. OVER TURF. And POWER. Not out of any loyalty of love for America's colonists, who were not taken very seriously.

And how did Spain (in their quest for Gold and Silver, human trafficking, and conversion to their Cult and loyalty to the Pope as their mission) influence Central and South America?

By enslaving the entire continent for centuries into a vicious cycle poverty, payments to Rome -- as it quashing freedom and liberty.

Moreover, because of a coerced loyalty to Rome, ALL commerce ventures, faith, and governance required Vatican autority.

Ironically, conversion to Protestantism had been BANNED until quite recently in a number of South American nations.

As it turns out, the Vatican has been behind the great ILLEGAL INVASION to the USA as its churches cloak, hide, and connive, sabotaging America through the "Religion" back-door.

When not underming America's soverignty, they are undermining Christianity WHILE appeasing and praising Islam. Popes even kiss the Koran. Other then obviously attempting to set up their ecumenical One World Religion, please explain away ANY of THAT, Vic.

THE Truth is hard to accept for hard-core Vatican agents cultists. It is POLITICAL organization. A Mafia of Mafias. Always has been. I don't blame RCCs as much as the machination of Rome. Most RCCs remain confused by their own religion. BY DESIGN.

I haven't even scraped the surface of the Christian-Counterfeit Vatican's past and present misdeeds, attempts to corrupt the Gospel and history itself, and its manipulation and deception of mankind. It and its Marxist-Anarchist Pope continue its usurpation of the Holy Name of Jesus Christ while making a mockery of His mission and Gospel.

So...with respect to the RCC and Vatican? Thanks for NOTHING. They play for the wrong team.

As to your claim that I want you to "leave"? How did you come to that conclusion? I've always found your posts interesting and provocative. Even if we disagree.

Cheers.

For starters ;-)

Protestants: They and they alone are responsible for "America."

By the same token, the French won World War II.

Jesus turning water to wine.

Typical Protestant idol worship!

A great number of Catholics fought to liberate America from your Protestant King and his Protestant Army. But hey, you go on pretending that it's 1500 if you want to. If it were not for the willingness of Catholic monarchs, Catholic Armies and Catholic soldiers to fight, and bleed and die, on the side of American independence, you would be a British subject. By the time of the American Revolution, 35,000 Catholics formed 1.2% of the 2.5 million white population of the thirteen seaboard colonies.

You are full of it this morning.

I am not full of it.

The American Revolution started in 1775. The Americans managed to stay in the war with Washington's crossing of the Delaware, but they won little. Saratoga, in 1777, was a turning point precisely BECAUSE it caused the French to eventually join the war. It was French power, primarily, that defeated the British, at Yorktown specifically.

Between Saratoga, in 1777, and Yorktown, in 1781, there were about 104 battles or skirmishes, all but a few of them small, none of them decisive, up and down the East Coast of America. The Spanish (who were Catholics) won 7 of them, driving the British out of Florida, and establishing overland supply routes into America for the French ammunition and musketry that flowed from France.

Of the remaining 97 battles, the British won 70%. The Americans won small skirmishes in the countryside and in Indian Territory. The British, much like the Americans in Vietnam, controlled the sea and moved their large and effective army at will up and down the coast, capturing whatever city they chose to land at. New York was British. Charleston was British when the British sailed down and took it. The Americans could not hold anything.

Then the French came - and they were overwhelmingly Catholic. The British were run to ground at Yorktown.

What happened at Yorktown? First, an allied Army consisting of 8800 French Catholic regulars, 8000 American regulars, and 3100 American militiamen, overwhelmingly Protestant, laid siege to the main British Army in America.

Then the French Navy, 20,000 Catholic sailors strong, came and blocked the mouth of the Chesapeake. The British Navy arrived, and was decisively defeated by the French, driven off, unable to relieve, remove or resupply the besieged British Army. This caused the British to surrender their army to the Franco-American force, effectively ending the military phase of the War of American Independence.

In this decisive battle, about 29,000 French Catholics and about 11,000 American Protestants defeated the British Protestant Army and Navy, winning in one blow an American Revolution that the American Protestants lacked the power to ever win on their own.

To say that the Catholics, who were small in number as residents of the American colonies, did not "fight to liberate America" is not true. Tens of thousands did, in French and Spanish uniforms. Also, the small Catholic community in America was - Highlander Scots aside (who remained loyalists) was heavily pro-Independence. I mentioned before Generals St. Clair, Kosciouszko and LaFayette. To them I will add Continental Army Generals Duportail and Pulaski. Washinton's private secretary, Col. John Fitzgerald, was Catholic. Overall, about 5% of the Continental Army was Catholic, well out of proportion to the 1.2% of the population. This was not a population that was divided a third rebel - a third neutral - and a third loyalist. Catholics heavily leaned towards American Independence.

Yes, their native numbers were small - disproportionate in ranks, but small. But foreign Catholics - the French in particular, also the Spanish, bled on American battlefields also, and secured American independence. Without the French, there is no reason to believe that the Americans would have ultimately prevailed in the war, given the degree of American casualties.

So yes: a great number of Catholics fought to liberate America from the British. I am not full of it to note that: I am stating a fact.

On point, let me let somebody else make the case for me: General George Washington.

This is what Washington said in a public address after the war:

"As mankind become more liberal they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protection of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations in examples of justice and liberality. And I presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you [Catholics] took in the accomplishment of their Revolution, and the establishment of their government; or the important assistance which they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic faith is professed."

Washington presumed that you would not forget the patriotic part which we Catholics took in the accomplishment of the Revolution, or the important (very important) assistance received from Roman Catholic France in achieving it.

Don't go pretending that Catholics didn't play a decisive role in American Independence. We did, both in American uniform and in French and Spanish uniform. Without Catholic France - and specifically the French Navy - there would probably BE no independent United States. We would be the Dominion of America and everything would be different.

On the other hand, American colonial anti-Catholicism DID cost America rather dearly. You yourself quoted the insane rhetoric of the Americans concerning the granting by the British Crown of recognition of the French and Catholic nature of Quebec to the Quebecois. The French-Canadians had, and have, no love for the British. They would have only been too happy to throw them off and have been a 14th Colony in the Revolution - BUT the American colonial anti-Catholic rhetoric was as inflammatory as that which we've seen here in this 21st Century on this very thread from certain posters. Seeing that and understanding what it meant, the French Canadians wisely decided to steer clear of the United States and to maintain their ties to the British Crown, thereby securing their religion, culture and rights in the land of their ancestors. Two American invasions - in 1775 and in 1812, were repulsed from French Canada on account of this. Had the anti- Catholic bigotry not been so plainly a part of the American colonial character, the United States would run from the North Pole to the Rio Grande, and we probably would have been able to avoid a civil war to boot, given the political balance that would have been in place from the beginning. The English war effort would have been massively complicated, their American base in Halifax would have been in constant jeopardy, and they would have had no Indian allies to agitate on the frontier, having no access to them.

It's really too bad, but it's the price America paid for its early anti- Catholicism.

For Americans to fulminate against Catholics is very ugly. Catholics have always fought very hard for this nation's existence. One quarter of the US military - 25% - are Catholics. The closest other religion to this is the Baptists, who fill up 15% of the ranks, followed by "No religious preference" at 13%.

No token Catholic was ever needed or required.

Sure. Other than the French Navy, French Army and French taxpayers...

As to your claim that I want you to "leave"? How did you come to that conclusion?

Because you wrote "Go ahead and leave" above on the thread.

You have an interesting fantasy going there about the Catholic Church, the Vatican, yadda yadda. Clearly you believe it. Clearly Muslims believe their stuff. Clearly alien-watchers believe in UFOs. Clearly some people believe in mystic crystals. Clearly Republican voters really believe that Lucy won't move the football THIS time.

There's no accounting for crazy. There's also no possible conversation with it either.

Obviously I disagree with the bulk of your "facts". They are nonsense. And without the false facts the whole edifice crashes down. Trouble is, you absolutely believe them to be true, and you'll dig in to the death.

What sort of conversation is even possible?

RCCs were loyal only to theirs: THE POPE.

I am a Catholic, a Latin Rite Catholic, therefore properly called a "Roman Catholic", an RCC (as opposed to, say, a Greek Catholic, or a Coptic Catholic, or a Syriac Catholic).

To be clear: the Pope is not our king, and aside from the inhabitants of Vatican City or the old Papal States, never has been our king.

God is our King. Always has been. The Pope is the head of Christ's Church, the "servant of the servants of God". He is not the king. God is the King.

I am tired of taking shots at Protestantism in general when responding to you, because I don't actually hate Protestants, or really CARE about Protestantism at all. It's no skin off MY nose what somebody else believes. This is America. With all of the intermarriage and the mix of cultures, it's not possible to not be related to Protestants, and it's not possible to have lots of friends and acquaintances of all sorts of religious denominations.

I simply don't have the energy, or the interest, to worry about what other people believe. I've tried to, but I don't. Believe what you believe - that's between you and God, not between you and me.

Apparently, you do not think the same way. Catholics, to you, are a THREAT. That is not OUR problem, not MY problem that you feel threatened by us, by me. I've never done anything to threaten you, and neither has any Catholic on this earth ever done anything to religiously threaten you. The Protestants/Catholic wars are centuries in the past outside of Ulster, and I'm not from there. Neither are you, as far as I know.

I perceive, with crystalline clarity, your degree of sheer screaming hatred towards Catholicism. I'm an American, from Midwestern America, where, as everywhere else, most people are Protestants and a lot of people are Catholic. I'm Catholic, have been since I was baptized as one as a baby. Could be a Protestant if I wanted to, nobody is standing there with a gun keeping me in the Church. I've never seen any reason to leave the Church. I can understand why my friends and family who grew up Protestant never saw any reason to leave theirs.

I've observed that when people move, it's usually because of marriage, and one spouse being more religious than the other, so the other accommodating in order to raise the kids the way one spouse thinks is really important, because most people think it's good for the kids to have exposure to the faith, even if they themselves have never been very devout.

I see nothing wrong in any of that. Outside of the deep South, I've never experienced any sort of anti-Catholic bigotry except on Right Wing websites like this one.

When I do, it strikes me as strange, like some sort of weird invasive species of venomous snake has invaded an otherwise nice garden.

You're so wildly over the top - literally SCREAMING in ALLCAPS about things that never happened and are not true.

It's as though you've become mentally unstable from hatred. It doesn't scare me. I'm a military guy, not a shrinking violet. I'm more inclined to poke it, to provoke it, to make fun of it, and you, than to take any of it seriously. I just cannot believe that educated, rational Americans in 2017 actually, really, truly believe the sort of nonsense that you were screaming up there. It's unhinged.

So I play with the ideas. What if it's actually TRUE? The Blacks are always screaming about the Klan - I've never seen the Klan as anything other than inbreds and government agents, but suppose there really is this large, potent, emotional, crazy anti-Catholic faction all over the country, eyes bugging out. Suppose Jack Chick really is taken seriously by millions of earnest Americans?

I guess back in time it was true of some. Fortunately, America and what America represents, the aspirations of a united nation, crowned with brotherhood from sea to shining sea, has proven too strong for the old tribal hatreds of MOST Americans.

But not you. You still burn with a purple passion of hatred against a Catholicism you've never seen or met, because it has never existed anywhere for several lifetimes.

It's just odd. I wonder: do you REALLY BELIEVE the stuff you write?