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Publishing Company Puts Warning Label on Constitution
Wilder Publication is under fire for putting warning labels on copies of historical US documents, including the Constitution. The label warns "This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today." From the article: "The disclaimer goes on to tell parents that they 'might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.'"
Warning, this constitution is of its time, its views might not reflect the actions of those sworn to protect it and uphold it or the courts sworn to interpret it correctly.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I think the Bible would be a better book to slap that kind of a warning on.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm mystified. Why is somebody unhappy about having advice to take historical context in mind when reading the constitution, which in its original doesn't reflect (for example) voting rights for women and former slaves?
This is a very worrying trend, parents should not "wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work" because otherwise that leaves things into interpretation and prevents people from forming their own opinion.
The constitution wasn't written with symbolism and to make it be hard to read. No. The constitution and other works of that time period dealing with politics were made for the every day voter and the vocabulary, though slightly archaic is a whole lot easier than that of, say, Shakespeare and lacks the annoying, long, wordiness of later authors like Dickens making it very accessible.
What is next? The banning of all primary source materials in school textbooks because they are old?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The warning itself says "Copyright 2007". Why is FoxNews complaining about this now, 3 years later? I'm sure they'll try to blame this on Obama, the people who support him, and their 'attack on America' somehow.
And why is Slashdot acting as a frontman for FoxNews?
The US Constitution itself is a politically correct document. Look how it dances around the issue of slavery: "Person held to Service or Labour" and "three fifths of all other Persons" are the really egregious ones. Everyone knew who these "other Persons" were, but nobody wanted to say it. It wasn't until 1865, almost 80 years later, that the word "slavery" appeared in the 13th amendment, when it was safely in the past tense -- and then in 1870, when the mealy-mouthed Southern gentry, who had been willing to fight a war on behalf of slavery but could never talk about it when Yankees were about, were back in Congress, the 15th gently whispers about "previous condition of servitude."
So for those who think PC is some new an unique blight on our language, sorry, it's pretty much part of our national DNA.
There are other instances which still cause trouble today. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" means that it's illegal for the government to give money to churches just as much as "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" means that it's illegal for for the government to ban them. And "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" is explanatory, not prescriptive; "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" is the part that has the force of law, and all they really needed to write. But there's been enough wiggle room in the phrasing for the enemies of liberty to exploit for the last 220+ years.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Hate to break up of the controversy with facts, but this disclaimer is just boilerplate the distributor puts on all of his products. He publishes lots of public domain works and he got sick an tired of people complaining about the language or mores.
You can get the full story on his blog: http://warrenlapine.livejournal.com/
I've known Warren for years. If he had been trying to make a point, he would flat out say that was what he was doing.
``This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today.'' Uh, yeah.
The "disclaimer" is not only mere boilerplate for all their historical documents, but a value neutral and true observation. The trolling comes from pure speculation.
And it gets better: `By putting on the warning, you’re making controversial something that’s not controversial: our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence.'' Right. I seem to recall W saying that it was just a "goddam piece of paper." Nothing controversial there.
The fact that we've already amended the Constitution 27 times suggests fairly strongly that the disclaimer is true as stated.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
No one actually reads the Constitution anyway. They just tell you what it says.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
It said nothing about black people. It referred to persons bound to labor, which SURPRISINGLY ENOUGH included a large number of white indentured servants (and IIRC some outright slaves.) Nice try though.
no, actually, when i say it I mean that no one section should hold primacy over the rest. So for example, Bush had legitimate Article II power to run the military and defend the country but he overreached when he claimed it enabled him to annul Habeas and the 4th amendment. See how that works there? Each part of the constitution is as important as each other part.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Also, human language is vague.
****A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.****
How the fuck is that vague? What part of SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED do people not understand?!?!?!
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, but Corporations are more equal than others. That products are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Patentability, Copyright and the pursuit of Profit. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their powers from the payment of the governing. That whenever any Form of Behavior becomes destructive to the maximization of profits, it is the Right of the Corporate to alter or to abolish it.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
For starters it doesn't mention how the militia should be regulated, what constitutes Arms or where they have the right to keep and bear them.
The part where the people are tearing the arms off of bears.
There is room for legitimate disagreement over the definition of 'arms'. To wit: does it include machine guns? Flamethrowers? SAMs? Nukes? Why or why not?
A political right means that anybody is automatically WRONG to interfere with you when you do it. By 'wrong' I mean: it would create an environment unsuitable for creatures with our nature and requirements. For example, it is wrong to ban books, because our nature as rational sovereigns is to pursue truth independently and then build consensus by persuasion.
Regarding the RKBA, it is automatically wrong for someone to take away a means of self-defense that is practical in those situations where the state can't protect you. Today that amounts to handguns, shotguns, etc.; tomorrow it will mean stun-phasers, sleep rays, whatever. It does not and will not include nukes (etc.) because it is the state's prerogative to protect you in those contexts... hence, nukes are not included in the RKBA. In other words, it is not automatically wrong for somebody to say you can't have a nuke.
That said, I'm a rabid gun owner, CCL, second-amendment advocate, and so forth. But I think we do ourselves a disservice when we insist that the RKBA is infinite, or without context.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
How dare you answer that question in concise, direct, thoughtful, and non-inflammatory terms! Gah!
That's correct. The Cherokee that lived in South Carolina paid taxes, counted as whole free persons, obeyed the laws, and even appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court when their tribal lands were being confiscated by the State.
Unfortunately the U.S. Supreme Court found in favor of the Cherokee, that they could keep their homes, but a certain asshole president ignored the court's ruling and used the army to force the Cherokee to move to the western territories. If anybody should have been impeached, it should have been him - Andrew Jackson (D).
But because it was Indians, nobody cared enough to defend them, not even their own representatives. Kinda like how people turned a blind eye when innocent Americans were thrown-into concentration camps & their property confiscated by President FDR.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Also, human language is vague.
****A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.****
How the fuck is that vague? What part of SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED do people not understand?!?!?!
"A well regulated militia" - what exactly is a militia? When exactly does one become "well regulated"
"the right" - is this an absolute right? Can it be contingent on something else, such as obeying the law?
"the people" - who are the people? Does it refer to individuals or the collective? If it's the former, is it everyone, or only adults? What about foreign citizens?
"keep and bear" - What exactly does this entail? Does the right to "keep and bear" also give the right to buy and sell? Can you bear the guns everywhere or only to certain places?
"bear Arms" - what exactly are the arms? Does it include all weapons or only those envisioned by the framers?
"shall not be infringed" - When is the right infringed - is it infringed if some guns are banned or only if all guns are banned? What about if all guns are banned but other weaponry is available? What if guns are not banned but are made prohibitively expensive - does this infringe on the right?
If you've ever read a modern contract you'll know the lengths lawyers have to go to to try to remove all uncertainty - and they almost never succeed. Derrida said that since every word is defined only by other words it doesn't matter how far back you go, you can never get to a solid anchor; change the underlying assumptions that the reader of a text holds and you change the meaning of the text, even though the words are still the same. Even if you could give an absolutely solid answer to every question I posed above - and you can't, no-one can - there would still be more questions. As the GP said - human language is vague.
It's quite simple and progressive moonbats seem to lose reading comprehension when reading the 2nd amendment. Now that the reciprocal insults are out of the way, lets parse:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State - this means that in order for a country to exist it needs an army to defend itself, yes?
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed - this means that the rights of the citizens to keep weapons shall not be interfered with by the government. so far, so good?
The context: The founders and the people of the colonies had just fought a war with Britain for freedom, and they clearly understood, better than any of us today apparently, that governments have a tendency to become self serving and oppressive. see the collected works of Thomas Jefferson, et.al for more details. If you read the other writings of the founders from that time period, you will understand that the point of the 2nd amendment is to ensure that the people retain at least some ability to defend themselves from the militia of the oppressive government.
That's the context of it. Or perhaps you think those hack framers just fucked up the wording? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GNu7ldL1LM
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
For starters it doesn't mention how the militia should be regulated, what constitutes Arms or where they have the right to keep and bear them
A well regulated militia is necessary. The Right shall not be infringed. A statement of fact, and a requirement.
It's amazing how non-vague the constitution is until you start trying to interpret in a way that limits freedom.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
You also should be careful not to impose a modern definition of a word when the actual definition at the time was COMPLETELY different.
A clock should be "well regulated", but that has nothing to do with laws or statutes or rules.
http://www.constitution.org/cons/wellregu.htm
=======
The following are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, and bracket in time the writing of the 2nd amendment:
1709: "If a liberal Education has formed in us well-regulated Appetites and worthy Inclinations."
1714: "The practice of all well-regulated courts of justice in the world."
1812: "The equation of time ... is the adjustment of the difference of time as shown by a well-regulated clock and a true sun dial."
1848: "A remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated person will blame the Mayor."
1862: "It appeared to her well-regulated mind, like a clandestine proceeding."
1894: "The newspaper, a never wanting adjunct to every well-regulated American embryo city."
The phrase "well-regulated" was in common use long before 1789, and remained so for a century thereafter. It referred to the property of something being in proper working order. Something that was well-regulated was calibrated correctly, functioning as expected. Establishing government oversight of the people's arms was not only not the intent in using the phrase in the 2nd amendment, it was precisely to render the government powerless to do so that the founders wrote it.
To the best of my understanding, many whose signature was solicited for the Bill of Rights considered it superfluous and perhaps even harmful, specifically because it did not prohibit anything which would have otherwise been permitted under the original Constitution. Some wanted it as an additional guarantee against later reinterpretation or undiscovered loopholes, but—as others feared—it has more often been taken as a license to do anything not explicitly prohibited, contrary to their design.
So the original version did include those protections; it just didn't state them explicitly, because it didn't need to. Even before the amendments were passed, the Constitution did not grant the federal government the power to violate anything in the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was more a statement of intent than an actual change in the nature of the Constitution.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
For starters it doesn't mention how the militia should be regulated, what constitutes Arms or where they have the right to keep and bear them.
For that you do what "historiographers" do: Go back to the writings of the time and find out what the words meant to the authors and the other politicians who debated, suggested, and approved the wording. These people wrote a LOT of stuff which has survived in the historical record, much of it explaining what they meant or debating what it should say and why.
The editor of _The Federalist_ - the political party paper of one of the major factions, in which much of this stuff was published - was Noah Webster, who was also a language reformer who wrote the then-definitive textbooks for teaching American English and compiled and published the first dictionary of the American English language. Timeline:
- 1783 Speller published.
- 1784 Grammar published.
- 1785 Reader published.
- 1787 Constitution completed.
- 1789 Bill of Rights completed.
- 1806 Webster's first dictionary published.
It's pretty clear that
- "Militia" was "everybody with their privately-owned arms" (later defined in law as divided into the "organized militia" - males of appropriate age except for those exempt due to things like being in other government service, and the "unorganized militia" - everybody else able and willing to fight.
- "Arms" in private hands at the time included warships, cannon (both small and large, including crew-served weapons on shipboard and on carriages), the latest smooth bore, rifle, and pistol technology, rockets, bombs, bayonets, swords, daggers, and other edged weapons, etc. Figure on it including anything of potential military application. (They also understood and promoted progress and invention, and knew about attempts at automatic weapons and interchangeable parts for mass production. So figure it includes future developments, just as "press" includes automated high-speed presses and broadcast media, and "papers" includes electronic records.)
- "Well-regulated" at the time meant "well-adjusted" or "in accurate operating condition", not "under the rule of a government official". Like a voltage regulator, not a beaurocrat. A clock was "well-regulated" to keep accurate time. A double-barreled shotgun was "well regulated" if the shot patterns from both barrels hit the same spot. "Well-regulated" for a militia meant that they had training in how to shoot and how to work together. At the time this was typically done on a local level, with periodic practice and with officers elected by the militiamen themselves.
- Where: 1785 August 19. (Jefferson to Peter Carr). "As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a mederate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprize, and independence to the mind. Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion of your walks."
Obviously Jefferson didn't completely agree with Webster's attempts to "regulate" American English spelling.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A "strict interpretation" of the Constitution is anything but unconstitutional.
You have it backwards. Any power not explicitly granted to the Federal Government is a power that they do not have. This is explicitly stated by the 9th and 10th amendments.
This is the Opt-in equivalent to Federal power, as was originally intended.. as opposed to the Opt-out version that is currently the practice in Washington.
I'm a bit puzzled as to why you'd be against government schools (clearly, something nearly demanded by the grant of authority to Congress for "promoting the general welfare").
I love how "promote the general welfare" is interpreted as a free pass for the federal government to expand its powers for anything that provides any benefit to a significant number of people. It strikes me that, at a minimum, an analysis should be done as to whether the federal government's providing of a non-essential given service/product (be it interstate roads, education, healthcare, internet access, or a free pony) contributes more to the general welfare than if it just let its citizens keep their money and choose the product/service for themselves. It seems that Aldous Huxley's world (or John Galt's) can be achieved through a continuous series of efforts to "promote the general welfare".
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
I'm pretty sure letting the citizens keep their money is somewhere around the opposite of promoting the general welfare -- its promoting the welfare only of those who have money to keep. Now in a society where everyone has relatively equal amounts of money, this could be construed as the "general welfare", but I've yet to see any indication that such a society is even possible, never mind existing.
I'm also a little hazy on what you'd consider an "essential service" if health care is among the explicit list of what you consider non-essential. I can't think of anything less beneficial to the general welfare than letting people suffer or die when they could be saved because they don't happen to fall into the upper percentage of folk who can afford a hospital bed.
Things like roads, power and telephone lines, etc.. there's been a huge push over the past two decades to "privatize" these things for the "good" of the people. Basically what this amounts to is trading off government oversight (generally considered bad but necessary) with a monopoly power and _NO_ oversight (ALWAYS considered bad). Its one thing to spout rhetoric about the potential for competition, its quite another for any competitor to come up with several billion dollars to string their own lines (never mind the legal battles over right-of-ways and whatever else that will take time and money.. which the incumbent company will fight tooth and nail to stop on top of all the other hurdles).
Any utility or service that is effectively impossible to duplicate (economically or politically) should always remain in the hands of the government -- at least the people will have theoretical oversight. Of course, the /maintenance/ of such utilities can be contracted out, but the utilities themselves should remain public (and for things like telephone lines, the service itself can even be privatized providing the lines -- the part that can't be practically duplicated in any practical sense -- are maintained publicly.)
It is of course definitely worth arguing which level of government should maintain these things (in the sense of intrastate versus interstate splits.. but it could be broken down further to intra-city vs inter-city, intra-community vs inter-community.. and so on down until you end up with the home owner being responsible for the final leg between his house and the edge of his property if you really want to go that far.. think of a driveway that connects to the street). But its ridiculous to argue that an uncontrolled monopoly power over a shared utility is ever better than government oversight -- its only better for the CEOs and shareholders of the monopolistic company. Maintaining balance over shared resources is the reason governments exist!