Frazzled wrote:
not certain what that has to do with the Confederate Flag

Relapse wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
not certain what that has to do with the Confederate Flag

Because the flag is, in many quarters, being blamed for the shootings. From there it became a hop to gun control for some.

http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2015/06/19/3671684/charleston-shooting-confederate-flag/

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
@ Polonius, I see what you are saying, and I agree with you. I was merely speculating that if the South had gone with indentured servitude with the Africans, instead of the chattel system we had, things may have gone a bit differently, because indentured servitude isn't a "race" thing any more than chattel slavery is (remember the Romans basically had a chattel system, but it was much more broad in nature)

 Polonius wrote:

Relapse wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
not certain what that has to do with the Confederate Flag

Because the flag is, in many quarters, being blamed for the shootings. From there it became a hop to gun control for some.

http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2015/06/19/3671684/charleston-shooting-confederate-flag/

Yeah, gun control is a real reflex for liberals. I'm a liberal, and while I agree that our lax gun control laws certainly lead to more deaths, I also know that this isn't a fight worth having. We're in the midst of watching the right wing strangle itself with it's obsessions with gay marriage and family values in an environment where fewer people agree, and the left wants to keep going to the stupid well of gun control.

 Frazzled wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:
Quanah Parker wasn't a Founder of the USA, nor was he educated in a manner that included the teachings of The Enlightenment (Teachings largely rejected by The South - which is an idiomatic expression for the CSA, since we seem to be interested in splitting hairs).

MB

But he would still cut out your eyes for saying the US flag didn't represent genocide. Scalp you and skin you alive too. Or to be more precise, the women would do it. Thats wimminz work. Don't bother Quanah when there's a game on the tele. Considering its representatives wiped out everything he ever knew, he'd be right. So don't get high and mighty there.

Quanah Parker, proving our "bad guys" were even better bad guys than your bad guys because... Texas!

Relapse wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:
The most readily available simulation is a group in McKinney Texas, known for advocating arming the population:


http://kxan.com/2015/01/14/texas-gun-owners-re-enact-charlie-hebdo-massacre/

The simulation failed to save any of the victims (save for one who ran away), and at best only one gunman was taken out (which turned out to be a rare event).

There were simulations by the military on mass shootings after Columbine, which showed the same results (that an armed population wouldn't help at all, and would just be a nightmare for Law Enforcement if they showed up - innocent people ALWAYS got killed by Law Enforcement in the simulations).

I am still looking for any links to those, given how long it has been since they were done (and difficulties surrounding searching for them).

The "Easy Fix" is to limit access to firearms by the population.

This has worked in EVERY country where it has been implemented.

Critics like to site what they claim are increases in violent crimes in these countries (which are specious claims, but IRRELEVANT), but they neglect to point out that there is not even a percentage of the deaths related to firearms in these countries as there is in the USA.

Of course, Gun-Nuts like to freak out at this point and claim this is just a prelude to taking away all of their guns, or it is an abrigement of their Second Amendment Rights (which would both be wholly false claims, nothing but insane ravings).

Strange talk from a man who brags about having shot a couple of people. You say one thing and claim to practice another.

What he would do means absolutely nothing in terms of the founding principles of the USA.

It is attempting to define by the exception rather than the rule.

 Polonius wrote:
Okay, first off, it was 3/5, not 2/3. It was a compromise, which right away hints that this wasn't exactly a core principle. Basically, the question was, when allocating representatives based on population, should slaves count? The slave states felt that they should, the north said no, and in a classic bit of compromise, they decided that for purposes of the House/Electoral college (and taxes), free people were counted, untaxed indians were not, and "all other persons" would count for 3/5.

The 14th amendment did override this.

BeAfraid wrote:
So, then it is still Law?

We still count Black People as 3/5th of a person?

Unless I am mistaken, we do not.

Meaning that we realized that this was a mistake, and we CHANGED IT (Nullified it, eliminated it as law, removed it from Statutes, etc.)

Yes, you can still look at a copy of the Constitution to see the legacy.

But you are missing the FUNDAMENTAL POINT THAT WE REALIZED IT CONFLICTED WITH THE BASIC FOUNDATIONS OF OUR LAW!

MB

 Polonius wrote:
I'm here to educate, not to castigate.

I think it's illuminating that the founders saw a unified nation as more important that abolition of slavery though.

BeAfraid wrote:
The Civil War was necessary only to alter the law.

It did not alter the basic principle that:

"that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

When the founders had to move from basic principles to actual governing, the ideals had to give way to the reality of economics.

This did not mean that the ideals were wrong, or invalid, or simply did not exist.

As for castigating. . . When ignorance goes beyond merely a lack of education, and into a willful dismissal of facts, and distortion of reality through the egregious manipulation of language, and the definitions of meaning, then, as Karl Popper said when discussing the Tolerance of the Intolerable, we have no duty any longer to restrain ourselves to Tolerance, and Intolerance of the Intolerable is demanded.

MB

BeAfraid wrote:
I am writing him off as a Troll at this point.

He is welcome to the ignorance he so proudly displays.

MB

BeAfraid wrote:
I am writing him off as a Troll at this point.

He is welcome to the ignorance he so proudly displays.

MB

 Polonius wrote:
I'm here to educate, not to castigate.

I think it's illuminating that the founders saw a unified nation as more important that abolition of slavery though.

I think it's pretty telling that every state above the Mason-Dixon Line had adopted some kind of anti-slavery law by 1804 (with the earliest being the Republic of Vermont, which banned adult slavery in 1777). Granted, it was mostly done by way of general emancipation instead of sudden emancipation, but it was better than founding your entire country around it (like the CSA).

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I'm here to educate, not to castigate.

I think it's illuminating that the founders saw a unified nation as more important that abolition of slavery though.

I agree and somewhat disagree. Many of them regarded slavery as "evil" and an affront to to the core principles of the nation ("All men are created equal" and all that), but they also recognized that there was no easy solution to ending it. Also, they thought that the white man was inherently superior to the black man, so that didn't help either.

I think it's pretty telling that every state above the Mason-Dixon Line had adopted some kind of anti-slavery law by 1804 (with the earliest being the Republic of Vermont, which banned adult slavery in 1777). Granted, it was mostly done by way of general emancipation instead of sudden emancipation, but it was better than founding your entire country around it (like the CSA).

 Polonius wrote:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I'm here to educate, not to castigate.

I think it's illuminating that the founders saw a unified nation as more important that abolition of slavery though.

I agree and somewhat disagree. Many of them regarded slavery as "evil" and an affront to to the core principles of the nation ("All men are created equal" and all that), but they also recognized that there was no easy solution to ending it. Also, they thought that the white man was inherently superior to the black man, so that didn't help either.

I think it's pretty telling that every state above the Mason-Dixon Line had adopted some kind of anti-slavery law by 1804 (with the earliest being the Republic of Vermont, which banned adult slavery in 1777). Granted, it was mostly done by way of general emancipation instead of sudden emancipation, but it was better than founding your entire country around it (like the CSA).

Sure, plenty of founders had problems with it. But when the chips were down, uniting into one country was better than splitting into two (or more). The slave states (meaning states where slavery was key to the economy) would not have even declared independence if they thought they would lose their slaves. Independence, followed by forming a federal government, were bigger priorities than abolition.

I mean, you can find it telling that the states without a lot of slaves to begin with eventually banned them, while those that had lots to begin with became more entrenched in keeping them. One of my assumptions in sociology is that people are no better or worse, morally or ethically, when you cross time and space. Meaning, the south was no more evil or wrong than the north, it just made more sense to keep up a pretty awful practice. After a few generations, peopel start believing that stuff, but it's not because they are morally flawed, they are simply raised in a moral framework that conditions them to see that their system is immoral.

Acting as if Southerners of the time were immoral monsters, while the Northerners were enlightened saviors, is both incorrect and inflammatory.

"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

ARTICLE I, SECTION 2, CLAUSE 3

The three-fifths rule for counting slaves is often misunderstood. When the Constitutional Convention debated the issue of how to count population for the purposes of representation, the Southern delegates to the Convention would have been pleased if nonvoting slaves had been counted as full persons. That way, the Southern states would have had a greater representation in the House of Representatives. In contrast, some Northern delegates resisted counting slaves at all. Why, asked Elbridge Gerry, "shd. the blacks, who were property in the South, be in the rule of representation more than the cattle & horses of the North?" Among other things, counting slaves provided an incentive to import still more slaves.

Nor was the three-fifths rule new at the Convention. It was derived from a mechanism adopted in 1783 to apportion requisitions (the national government's only revenue source under the Articles of Confederation) among the states. That rule was intended to provide rough equality between the North and the South, and when the idea first appeared at the Convention, no one suggested that another fraction would be more appropriate. Indeed, the rule was included in a June 11 motion, made by James Wilson of Pennsylvania and seconded by Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, suggesting that a compromise had already occurred behind the scenes.

By itself, however, the three-fifths compromise for representation was not enough. Facing deadlock at the Convention, Gouverneur Morris (representing Pennsylvania) moved on July 12 to add a "proviso that taxation shall be in proportion to Representation" (later limited to direct taxation), the purpose of which, wrote James Madison, was to "lessen the eagerness on one side, & the opposition on the other, to the share of Representation claimed by the [Southern] States on account of the Negroes." Morris subsequently said he meant his motion only "as a bridge to assist us over a certain gulph," but tying apportionment to both taxation and representation turned out to be crucial. Slaves were to be counted as less than whites for representation, which was not in the interests of the South. Slaves were, however, also to be counted as less than whites for measuring a state's apportioned direct-tax liability, and that was a benefit to the South. A fuller account of how the Framers dealt with the issue of slavery can be ascertained by considering the other clauses of the Constitution that deal with slavery. (See Article I, Section 9, Clause 1; Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3; and Article V.)

Furthermore, the compromise protected the integrity of the census, as Madison explained in The Federalist No. 54: "The States should feel as little bias as possible to swell or to reduce the amount of their numbers....By extending the rule to both [taxation and representation], the States will have opposite interests which will control and balance each other and produce the requisite impartiality."

The three-fifths rule does not directly affect litigation today, but it affects how scholars interpret the apportionment requirement for direct taxes. It has been argued, for example, that the direct-tax clauses should be ignored because they are tainted by slavery, or because, with slavery ended, there is no longer reason to honor any part of the compromise. In light of the entire history that led to the Revolution and the Constitution, however, it would go too far to assume that in a world without slavery, the Founders would have been indifferent to the dangers of national taxation.

Furthermore, understood in context, the apportionment rule was not proslavery. Even though slaves were property under the laws of the Southern states, the Constitution itself acknowledged that they were persons. In addition, by tying both representation and direct taxation to apportionment, the Framers removed any sectional benefit, and thus any proslavery taint, from the special counting rule.

 Sinful Hero wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:
I am writing him off as a Troll at this point.

He is welcome to the ignorance he so proudly displays.

MB

Were you going to respond to the mass shootings discussion, or did you concede the point that they are not on the rise?

Edit- After actually going back and trying to find the relevance mass shootings have to the confederate flag, it's off topic.

 CptJake wrote:
If you were actually in a position where you had to fire a weapon and take human life, for you to now advocate for laws which would have restricted your ability to have that weapon seems a bit odd.

"Yes, thank goodness I had this gun! Now we need to change the laws so I won't have it ever again, and so that future victims of what I went through have the option of self defense taken from them."