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Speculating on what someone 2 and a half centuries ago would think of modern society is a laughable endeavor. I think the only thing we can agree upon for sure that Thomas Jefferson would think, if faced with contemporary society, is that it's a real bummer we no longer have slaves to rape.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2015/07/27 16:21:13
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
Speculating on what someone 2 and a half centuries ago would think of modern society is a laughable endeavor. I think the only thing we can agree upon for sure that Thomas Jefferson would think, if faced with contemporary society, is that it's a real bummer we no longer have slaves to rape.
True... but that doesn't mean that the U.S. Constitution is 'outdated'. The idea was to define a framework (the Constitution) that protect rights and is multi-generational.
Which succeeded beyond all expectation imo.
I've said this before... but, if I would to make any changes... I'd do two things:
1) Repeal the 17th amendment.
2) Somehow strengthen the 10th amendment so that we go back to a more federalized setup.
Speculating on what someone 2 and a half centuries ago would think of modern society is a laughable endeavor. I think the only thing we can agree upon for sure that Thomas Jefferson would think, if faced with contemporary society, is that it's a real bummer we no longer have slaves to rape.
Franklin, however, would have 4 Ashley Madison accounts...
Speculating on what someone 2 and a half centuries ago would think of modern society is a laughable endeavor. I think the only thing we can agree upon for sure that Thomas Jefferson would think, if faced with contemporary society, is that it's a real bummer we no longer have slaves to rape.
Franklin, however, would have 4 Ashley Madison accounts...
Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios
I still think that was the best scene in the Adams miniseries. When he walked in on Franklin with that French chick.
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
The patented Franklin Method. His favorite thing to reinvent- was himself.
Klawz-Ramming is a subset of citrus fruit?
Gwar- "And everyone wants a bigger Spleen!"
Mercurial wrote:
I admire your aplomb and instate you as Baron of the Seas and Lord Marshall of Privateers.
Orkeosaurus wrote:Star Trek also said we'd have X-Wings by now. We all see how that prediction turned out.
Orkeosaurus, on homophobia, the nature of homosexuality, and the greatness of George Takei.
English doesn't borrow from other languages. It follows them down dark alleyways and mugs them for loose grammar.
whembly wrote: True... but that doesn't mean that the U.S. Constitution is 'outdated'. The idea was to define a framework (the Constitution) that protect rights and is multi-generational..
Well, sure. I don't think the entire document is outdated in any way. In fact, there are elements I would change but it would be entirely through the pre-existing process for amendments. By definition it's hard to be outdated when we can patch it any any time given sufficient political will.
Pic marginally related
Spoiler:
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
Democracy is a good thing. Stability is also a good thing. So you find a balance between the two, that allows people to change laws while still maintaining stable and consistent institutions and consistency of law.
Good Ol' TJ wrote:"A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824.
So I would assume TJ would believe that any 'new' constitution MUST protect those rights. Else he would have been advocating a return to tyranny every 19 years, since the first constitution was a result of winning independence from tyranny. Scrapping it in whole without protecting the basic rights would not have been something a liberty minded TJ would have approved of.
Basically Jefferson is saying that every generation should be able to decide for themselves, except for the things that I personally believe that every generation must have even if they decide they want something different. The hypocrisy shouldn't be too hard to figure out.
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Ouze wrote: Speculating on what someone 2 and a half centuries ago would think of modern society is a laughable endeavor. I think the only thing we can agree upon for sure that Thomas Jefferson would think, if faced with contemporary society, is that it's a real bummer we no longer have slaves to rape.
It isn't just that 240 years has passed, but we have 240 years of experience with modern, constitutionally founded nation states, while Jefferson had no experience. It's a weird thing in politics that we don't realise how quickly sensibly formed ideas can be revealed as nonsense through experience. We don't do this with anything else that I can think of, no-one goes back through Henry Ford's notes believing that whatever he wrote has insight and wisdom beyond what we've learned in the 60 years since his death. Ford was a smart guy and essential to the development of modern manufactured cars, but going back and reading through his writing to figure out how we should build cars today would be obviously fething stupid, because we have years of experience and learning with cars that Ford wasn't privy to.
Going back and reading Jefferson's ideas today can be interesting in terms of history, but to look for insight in how to run states today is very silly.
This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2015/07/28 02:12:51
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Grey Templar wrote: If the Constitution was revised every 19 years(what an odd number to pick) it would be the basis of all our elections. It would be Mob rule by proxy as only the candidates following the whims of the crowd would win the elections to revise the document.
Sure, if you consider a representative democracy to be "mob rule by proxy". As history shows the candidates that follow the whims of the crowd are not necessarily the ones that get elected, hence the distinction between campaigning and official action.
If the Constitution had been revisited every 19 years there would be an interest scenario in the 1850s-1860s. We would have been several nations by now, all ruled by the benevolent greatness that is Texas.
Not necessarily, but there probably would have been a couple more civil wars.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2015/07/28 03:08:52
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
