Rand Paul on Mitt Romney

[nevergaveitathought]

another unresponsive response

[WTF]

Dont be so hard on yourself

[mastermind238]

Originally Posted by nevergaveitathought

if you would address your remarks to things i say and points i may make, i'd gladly discuss things with you, but your exasperatingly exhausting habit of non-sequiturs and replying to made-up off the point "points" i never make, and not reading any point i might make, or at least not replying to them in any logical way, leaves me with no other option but to politely decline.

this most recent post of yours is but another in a long line of examples

+1

I could have written this myself, about nearly every comment WTF has ever made in reply to my remarks. It is expasperating.

GW warned against foreign entanglements, but the context was fairly narrow - uppermost in his mind was that little ongoing spat between France and England. And again, as you say, such sentiments are nowhere to be found in the Constitution, so accusing Tea Party members on this basis of "picking and choosing" which parts of the Constitution to agree with is just another example of his ignorance. Not all Founders were solidly against foreign "entanglements."

And as for what's actually IN the Constitution ... the only allusion to foreign "entanglements" is in Article 1, Section 8, granting Congress the power to declare war. If war isn't a foreign entanglement, I don't know what is. (Regulating commerce with foreign nations, also in Article 1, Section 8, doesn't strike me as foreign "entanglement').

[nevergaveitathought]

Originally Posted by mastermind238

+1

I could have written this myself, about nearly every comment WTF has ever made in reply to my remarks. It is expasperating.

perhaps theres a medical reason for it... in all seriousness, some strain of dyslexia?

[CuteOldGuy]

It's advanced Obamania, with latent homophobia delusions of grandeur. WTF needs treatment, but he refuses. Or at least the doctors think he's refusing. They can't understand his answers either. Truly sad.

[nevergaveitathought]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

It's advanced Obamania, with latent homophobia delusions of grandeur. WTF needs treatment, but he refuses. Or at least the doctors think he's refusing. They can't understand his answers either. Truly sad.

i was being serious, i do care for fellow humans

[CuteOldGuy]

I was too. I'd like WTF to get treatment.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

I was too. I'd like WTF to get treatment.

Good God now there are three of you Log Cabin Repubs wanting to check my prostate with your tongue

I tell ya what you, never and mastermind238 line up and stick your tongues out. The one with the softest tongue wins.

[CuteOldGuy]

See what I mean? Treatment, definitely. And soon.

[mastermind238]

If that's the first kind of "treatment" you thought of, it kinda makes our point.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

I was too. I'd like WTF to get treatment.

Good God now there are three of you Log Cabin Repubs wanting to check my prostate with your tongue

I tell ya what you, never and mastermind238 line up and stick your tongues out. The one with the softest tongue wins.

[CuteOldGuy]

You'd like that, wouldn't you, WTF. That's why you need help. Admitting you have a problem is the first step. Take it, soon! We'd all love to find out what you'd be like if you made sense.

Now don't RTM this, I'm sincere. I really want you to get help.

[WTF]

Constitution , History and Standing Armies. Read it and weap never and mastermind. COG got enough sense not to put this dick in his mouth! Our Foundinf Fathers were not for this huge military industrial complex.
http://www.worldviewweekend.com/worldview-times/article.php?articleid=7779

It is well documented that many of America's Founding Fathers had a very real and deep-seated distrust of standing armies--and for good reason. They had just fought a costly and bloody war for independence, which had been largely predicated upon the propensities for the abuse and misuse of individual liberties by a pervasive and powerful standing army (belonging to Great Britain) amongst them. Listen to Thomas Jefferson: "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." Note that Jefferson identified both banking institutions and standing armies as being "dangerous to our liberties." James Madison said, "A standing army is one of the greatest mischief that can possibly happen." Elbridge Gerry (Vice President under James Madison) called standing armies "the bane of liberty."



One was to engage in faraway wars, which inevitably entailed enormous expenditures, enabling the government to place ever-increasing tax burdens on the people. Such wars also inevitably entailed “patriotic” calls for blind allegiance to the government so long as the war was being waged. Consider, for example, the immortal words of James Madison, who is commonly referred to as “the father of the Constitution”:

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0409a.asp

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.... [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and ... degeneracy of manners and of morals.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

The second way to use a standing army to impose tyranny was the direct one — the use of troops to establish order and obedience among the citizenry. Ordinarily, if a government has no huge standing army at its disposal, many people will choose to violate immoral laws that always come with a tyrannical regime; that is, they engage in what is commonly known as “civil disobedience” — the disobedience to immoral laws. But as the Chinese people discovered at Tiananmen Square, when the government has a standing army to enforce its will, civil disobedience becomes much more problematic.
Consider again the words of Madison:

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

The idea is that governments use their armies to produce the enemies, then scare the people with cries that the barbarians are at the gates, and then claim that war is necessary to put down the barbarians. With all this, needless to say, comes increased governmental power over the people.
Sound familiar?

The Founding Fathers

Here is how Henry St. George Tucker put it in Blackstone’s 1768 Commentaries on the Laws of England:

Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

Virginian Patrick Henry pointed out the difficulty associated with violent resistance to tyranny when a standing army is enforcing the orders of the government:

A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders? Will your mace-bearer be a match for a disciplined regiment?

When the Commonwealth of Virginia ratified the Constitution in 1788, its concern over standing armies mirrored that of Patrick Henry:

... that standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.

Virginia’s concern was expressed by North Carolina, which stated in its Declaration of Rights in 1776,

that the people have a Right to bear Arms for the Defence of the State, and as Standing Armies in Time of Peace are dangerous to Liberty, they ought not to be kept up, and that the military should be kept under strict Subordination to, and governed by the Civil Power.

The Pennsylvania Convention repeated that principle:

... as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military shall be kept under strict subordination to and be governed by the civil power.

The U.S. State Department’s own website describes the convictions of the Founding Fathers regarding standing armies:

Wrenching memories of the Old World lingered in the 13 original English colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America, giving rise to deep opposition to the maintenance of a standing army in time of peace. All too often the standing armies of Europe were regarded as, at best, a rationale for imposing high taxes, and, at worst, a means to control the civilian population and extort its wealth.

In fact, as Roy G. Weatherup pointed out in his excellent article, “Standing Armies and Armed Citizens: A Historical Analysis of the Second Amendment” (www.saf.org/journal/ 1_stand.html), the abuses of their government’s standing army was one of the primary reasons that the British colonists took up arms against that army in 1776:

[The Declaration of Independence] listed the colonists’ grievances, including the presence of standing armies, subordination of civil to military power, use of foreign mercenary soldiers, quartering of troops, and the use of the royal prerogative to suspend laws and charters. All of these legal actions resulted from reliance on standing armies in place of the militia.

Moreover, as William S. Fields and David T. Hardy point out in their excellent article, “The Third Amendment and the Issue of the Maintenance of Standing Armies: A Legal History” (www.saf.org/LawReviews/FieldsAnd Hardy2.html), the deep antipathy that the Founders had toward standing armies followed a long tradition among the British people of opposing the standing armies of their king:

The experience of the early Middle Ages had instilled in the English people a deep aversion to the professional army, which they came to associate with oppressive taxes, and physical abuses of their persons and property (and corresponding fondness for their traditional institution the militia). This development was to have a profound effect on the development of civil rights in both England and the American colonies.... During the seventeenth century, problems associated with the involuntary quartering of soldiers and the maintenance of standing armies became crucial issues propelling the English nation toward civil war.

Did the antipathy against standing armies mean that our ancestors were pacifists? On the contrary! After all, don’t forget that they had only recently won a violent war against their own government and its enormous and powerful standing army.
In their minds, the military bedrock of a free society lay not in an enormous standing army but rather in the concept of the citizen-soldier — the person in ordinary life in civil society who is well-armed and well-trained in the use of weapons and who is always ready in times of deepest peril to come to the aid of his country — but only to defend against invasion and not to go overseas to wage wars of aggression or wars of “liberation.” As John Quincy Adams put it in his July 4, 1821, address to Congress, America “does not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”

[WTF]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

You'd like that, wouldn't you, WTF. .

I wouldn't wipe my ass for a week if I knew you three wanted to lick it clean so bad!

[Iaintliein]

I don't trust Romney, no matter who else does, and I will not, under any circumstances vote for a self described "progressive".

Gary Johnson has my vote.