On 12/30/09 2:08 PM, Neil Brooks wrote:
On Dec 30, 12:45 pm, Tim wrote:
On 12/30/2009 1:05 PM, Neil Brooks wrote:



On Dec 30, 12:01 pm, wrote:
On 12/30/2009 12:27 PM, DGDevin wrote:

wrote in message
...

Best thing we could do to would be to go back to the original concept of
only property owners being able to vote ... but damn would that **** off
the politicians and lobbyist.

This idealistic "right of everyman to vote" will prove to be the root
factor in the eventual downfall of this country.

Sad, but true.

Bull, giving political power only to those with wealth is repugnant, you
couldn't come up with something that would make politicians and lobbyists
happier. The ability of the people to throw morons and crooks out of office
is one of the few things that keep the *******s in line.

Are you going to tell a youth who volunteers to risk his life serving his
country in uniform that he doesn't get to vote because he doesn't have any
property? If the mill closes and people lose their jobs and their homes
should that result in them losing the vote? Do you seriously propose that
citizens who rent apartments are inherently entitled to fewer rights than
people who own houses?

No offense, but that is one lameass idea.

Tell that to your founding fathers, who first instituted the practice.

You mean ... of course ... the slave-owning founding fathers?

Do you have a calendar handy? Do you realize this is ...
effectively ... 2010??

If you yearn for those times, I can list for you a HOST of emerging
nations whose systems much more closely resemble that of our earliest
days as a nation.

[nothing of relevance snipped]

Since you insist on harping on slavery, let me acquaint you with some
realities of slavery you're conveniently ignoring:

- Slavery in some form has existed in all of recorded human history.

- The slavery that brought Africans to the US was instituted BY Africans
AGAINST Africans long before the Europeans ever showed up.

- African Muslim pirates (the Barbary Corsairs) attacked and enslaved
white Europeans well before the Europeans ever engaged in slavery themselves.
These pirates operated from the 11th century through the 19th by
some accounts.

- Of all major cultures ONLY the Judeo-Christian influenced Westerners
*gave up slavery voluntarily*, whether by internal civil war or
legislative decree.

- One of the two places in the world you can still buy slaves in large
numbers is ... wait for it ... AFRICA. (Somalia and Mauretania to be
exact. The other is the white slavery going on in the Eastern Bloc
and Islamic worlds.)

So, before you get too haughty about the eeeeeeeeeevil Founding
Fathers, you might want to ponder their context and realize that in
less than 100 years after the US was formed as a nation (1776-1865)
slavery was abolished. We got rid of something in a hundred years that
had been going on for 10 *thousand* before. It was EXACTLY because of
the ideals of these people and their fundamental principles of
government that slavery could not and did not survive. Dismissing them
as mere slavers with a corrupt morality utterly misses the point.

So, just why do you and your fellow politically correct travelers leap
at the opportunity to criticize the founders of the US - founders
that led us on a path of freedom for more people, more rapidly than
at any point in history - BUT you're entirely silent about the
millennia of slavery and human rights abuses in Africa and the rest of
the world?
world?

Eloquent, but ... sadly ... in the end ... pointless.

They also owned slaves. You may say that was "right for their times"
or ... something equivalent, but ... many "knew better," and the
practice was relatively speedily abolished.

The notion that others did it before them, or that it still goes on
elsewhere, likewise, does nothing to the argument.

It's a fools effort to declare that things that were right in 1776 are
therefore automatically right, now.


Talk about missing the point.


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-MIKE-

"Playing is not something I do at night, it's my function in life"
--Elvin Jones (1927-2004)
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