The Observation Deck

Roy Pitchford wrote:May I infer, then, that you consider my political ideals to be extreme?

Based on what I know from your posting history, the answer is yes, I do think it's extreme. To be fair, I can't say that you are definitely, as I can only go on what I know from what I've seen here.

I would consider myself no more extreme than our founders (by nature of the fact that I would like to see the country return to its Constitutional roots).
Are they then, in your opinion, extreme as well?

Only if you've bought into the Tea Party/Glenn Beck/Michelle Bachman mythology and sanitization of our founding fathers. The false understanding of the true nature, beliefs, and ultimate behavior of our founding fathers has been completely distorted out of context and without any historical accuracy by those groups.

Their beliefs of the founding fathers are about as accurate as when they say that America was founded as a Christian nation. It just shows their ignorance of history and the true beliefs of the founding fathers.

The founding fathers are important, but they are not gods, nor are they necessarily any more righteous or smarter than many political and social thinkers of today. They made mistakes, had terrible views on some issues (slavery for example), and most certainly didn't agree on everything.

I suspect it is possible the Founding Fathers all agreed with Glenn Beck or Rand Paul or Roy Pitchford or George Bush Junior.

Bryan Schwegler wrote:

Roy Pitchford wrote:May I infer, then, that you consider my political ideals to be extreme?

Based on what I know from your posting history, the answer is yes, I do think it's extreme. To be fair, I can't say that you are definitely, as I can only go on what I know from what I've seen here.

I would consider myself no more extreme than our founders (by nature of the fact that I would like to see the country return to its Constitutional roots).
Are they then, in your opinion, extreme as well?

Only if you've bought into the Tea Party/Glenn Beck/Michelle Bachman mythology and sanitization of our founding fathers. The false understanding of the true nature, beliefs, and ultimate behavior of our founding fathers has been completely distorted out of context and without any historical accuracy by those groups.

Their beliefs of the founding fathers are about as accurate as when they say that America was founded as a Christian nation. It just shows their ignorance of history and the true beliefs of the founding fathers.

The founding fathers are important, but they are not gods, nor are they necessarily any more righteous or smarter than many political and social thinkers of today. They made mistakes, had terrible views on some issues (slavery for example), and most certainly didn't agree on everything.

Could you be more specific about the inaccuracies and false understandings of which you speak? Since you mentioned them, let's focus on the "founding as a Christian nation" and "terribly views on slavery" to start.
If you truly want to educate myself and others, don't just tell me what to think, show me why its best to think that way.

Roy, you can find it all using Google or even a good college level American history textbook. Lakewood Library would also be a good source.

I really have absolutely no interest in a back and forth with you so you can simply deny historical accuracy and then quote me Tea Party propaganda about our founding fathers. I have better things I can do with my time.

Roy--- take my word for it (just like Angle/Palin/ etc assert) the Constitution says (in this situation) that Kucinich had property rights to his teeth.
And, just like the above I will assert any crazy ass notion of what the Founders or whatever to justify any damn thing I want.
Have a nice day!
Stan
.

The primary cause which allowed our revolutionary forebears to attract followers was the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited colonies from settling west of the appalachians. Britain had spent a lot of money forcing the french and the spanish and the dutch to cede their colonial claims(war), and did not want to spend much more forcing out the natives. Many prosperous british colonials wanted to claim even more land and get more prosperous.

the Boston tea party was a protest of Britain lowering taxes on its own tea industry, and deregulating the tea trade such that the British East India tea company no longer had to sell to middlemen in Britain before shipping it to America. This destroyed the profits of American tea magnates shipping in tea from Amsterdam and Orange.

1/3 of American colonialists were initially interested in the cause of Independence. But the British troops had to roust a lot of American farms and villages looking for Guerrilla Insurgents. This brought more and more Americans to the revolutionary cause. Eventually the the revolutionaries attracted more enlistments by promising the enlistees land west of the Appalachians. the pioneer spirit is driven by a need to get away from landlords and the class of americans who had already become rich or legislators. It was okay, so long as you had infinite land to keep doling out: it is not a sound premise for political ideology.

Eventually Washington understood the british would cede the war so long as he kept a standing army in the field. He initially avoided engagements because the revolutionaries were incapable of supplying and provisioning a large army. Militia men hounded the british supply lines and pecked at the rear of marching armies.

Political Correctness is not a set of beliefs but a method of being polite enough to avoid hurting the others feelings. Adam Smith expounded on this to explain how Scottish Chiefdoms finally stopped stealing each others cattle and summarily executing members of their own chiefdoms.

The prevailing political correctness of the post-revolutionary war era was to not talk to much about slavery. Jefferson would get exasperated and retreat when confronted too directly about this. In his later correspondence with John Adams he would simply ignore Adams when he brought it up. King George wasn't around any more, so he could not be blamed for slavery. The main difference between Jefferson and Adams was that Adams could balance a checkbook, and Jefferson could not control his spending.

As the distance of time grew between the declaration of independence and constitution with the present, the moral sin and hypocrisy of slavery grew. However, rich southernors had the most money for lobbying the feds to keep slavery legal. They were even relentless in expanding slavery. The texas revolution was a revolution of pro-slavery settlers in Mexico(the texas part) against Mexico, which had abolished slavery.

As the anti-slavery states grew more prosperous, they gained more power in the federal government. While the slave states had a number of rich men, they were not very prosperous compared to non-slavery states. So, they decided to make it a states rights issue.

Bryan Schwegler wrote:Roy, you can find it all using Google or even a good college level American history textbook. Lakewood Library would also be a good source.

I really have absolutely no interest in a back and forth with you so you can simply deny historical accuracy and then quote me Tea Party propaganda about our founding fathers. I have better things I can do with my time.

How do you know I will "simply deny" anything? Give me a chance, I might surprise you.

"A thousand years ago everybody knew as a fact, that the earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, they knew it was flat. Fifteen minutes ago, you knew we humans were alone on it. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."
--K, Men in Black--

You assume that everything you have been told is the 100% truth. Have you read the Founders? Not about them through the filter of a potentially biased author, but I mean their actual words?

You see, I don't need to quote "Tea Party propaganda." I can quote the Founders themselves. Is that accurate enough?

Roy Pitchford wrote:"A thousand years ago everybody knew as a fact, that the earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, they knew it was flat. Fifteen minutes ago, you knew we humans were alone on it. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."
--K, Men in Black--

Roy Pitchford wrote:You see, I don't need to quote "Tea Party propaganda."

Ha!

Men in Black?

Edmund Burke sort of wrote:"Those who don't know science fiction are destined to repeat it."

.

I did not know that that K of Men in Black was one of the Founders. This is a surprise.

"One time I turned into a dog and they helped me"--Louis, Ghostbusters II.