can you point me at any legal (or linguistic) authority or text (other than yourself, of course) which argues otherwise?
The problem is - as I have been saying all along - that people are trying to "interpret" the constitution, not (a little of the 1st, the 13th and the 16th amendments excepted) that the plain English of the constitution is flawed. But, you want to talk about interpretations? Fine. Here we go:
They say that authorization for regulating interstate commerce enables Intra state commerce. Court interpretation, turns plain English right on its head - (article 1, section 8.)
Ex post facto laws are forbidden (article 1, sections 9 (fed) and 10 (state)) but yet, the courts manage to "interpret" that we should be (and are) making them. Especially with regard to members of the current scare group - terrorists, save the children, etc. Those supreme court precedents set the bar so low, that a microbe couldn't get underneath it. So when they decide to change your sentence penalties post conviction - even years post conviction - you just shut right up. Think of the children, after all, you insensitive clod (slashdot humor, not meant to be offensive. I admit it is black humor in this case, but still, humor.)
Suspension of habeas corpus (article 1, section 9) is a no-no except under very specific circumstances (which do not obtain) and bingo, we have it anyway. Go ahead... try to tell me this is only for enemy combatants. Oh yeah... and that nasty little clause that says "or while awaiting such determination." Oooops! Our bad. But of course, since the same legislation says that the USSC has no jurisdiction, and the courts have already said they're OK with that... too bad for you, sucker. This one alone pretty much sweeps aside the entire bill of rights.
So. States are forbidden to tax purchases made elsewhere (article 1, section 10), and so the courts have "interpreted" that "use taxes" are... OK. It's not a tax! It's just... a tax. So don't worry about it. Next case!
Changes can be made (section 2, article 5) if the government feels those changes are worthwhile; but instead the very "authority" you cite legislates, effectively, anyway, from the bench. By inventing "interpretations" replacing plain English readings.
Speech is to be absolutely unrestricted (1st, 14th amendments) and yet, the courts have "interpreted" that oh no, what this means is that you can speak sometimes. In certain places. And you might need a permit for that, anyway. Idiots.
No laws favoring the establishment of religions (1st, 14th amendments) and what do we have? We have a situation where I am forced to pay the tax share for religions. This part of the 1st was always way too weak, but we can't even do what it says. And we mustn't forget places like Texas, which outright forbid atheists to serve in political positions. I mean, not that we really want to be involved in something so corrupt, so despicable, so in violation of the trust of the country... that only a religious person would want to go there... but even so, religion's establishment is surely favored if only the religious can serve. Oh well. It's law!
No restrictions on the press (1st, 14th amendments) well, except of course jailing those who stand on those rights. Oh, and censoring what they say on the radio. As well as what they cover, mind you. And what questions they can ask. Other than that... why, none!
No restriction on peaceable assembly (1st, 14th amendments) except of course, for the restrictions. Like permits. Distance from a funeral or a political gathering. You know. Just... restrictions.
No restrictions on keeping arms (2nd, 14th amendments) except for, well, in a lot of cases they won't let us keep them. I mean really, just that. And of course, whereas "by weapons" it was completely understood you could own an armed frigate, cannons, guns and swords, today there's a restriction we can s
I'm not being dense, intentionally or otherwise. I'm simply pointing out that you're making up nonsense. I can take your inapplicable example apart for you in seconds, and I will:
Your donut example uses a second clause where the details can only be applied to the donut; glazing a flower is nonsensical. So it obviously applies to just the one part of the first clause.
The 13th, in sharp contrast, uses a second clause where the punishment could just as easily be either of the slavery or servitude portions; and, BTW, the same as my example, where the jam or jelly could be applied to the bread.
In other words, my restating precisely and definitely matches the 13th; yours definitely does not. One would not use your example as a means to do comparative analysis on the 13th, because one would be led down the wrong cognitive path. But using mine is fine, because I carefully crafted it to use the same construction and the same levels of applicability -- it reads just as the 13th does with regard to applicability and lack of ambiguity.
To be even more specific, "jam nor jelly" is linguistically comparable to "slavery nor involuntary servitude" in that it is two items from the same general domain, of the same general concept, certainly within the same class, such that they are likely to be addressed as one in the same clause. "flowers nor doughnuts" are disjoint, not even members of the same general classes, much less having any more sophisticated similarities. So when the second clause refers to the first, your inappropriate example has disjoint class membership to direct the understanding at hand, specifically as glazing applies to doughnuts only; but neither "slavery nor involuntary servitude" or my "jam nor jelly" do this, and hence there is no demonstrable separation for the second clause to be parsed as to applying to one, and not the other.
given the ambiguity... with identical construction...
The only ambiguity you've demonstrated is in your example, which does not correspond to the 13th. No ambiguity has been demonstrated at this point. That's a fact. Further, your example is a great deal further from "identical construction" than mine is. You're attempting to twist the situation to meet your needs, and that's not going to fly.
call me when the US can sell prisoners to private individuals. then we're talking property.
Private prisons receive prisoners for money all of the time. You're not paying attention.
as for your supposed half-million dollar fines. note, first, that these are not against individuals, but against companies,
Look. I know you're smarter than this, even with that really superficial and incorrectly assembled doughnut example staring me in the face. When you fine a company, you are fining an individual. That's the whole point of a company; it is a legal entity. If you take half a million dollars as a fine for saying a word, I don't care if you apply the fine to a blinking convent, the fine is unreasonable. It is way, way, way out of line. The FCC has imposed up to a million dollars in fines for single incidents, and if you don't think that's excessive, you're too cognitively impaired to even bother talking to. Don't even start with any nonsense about corporations. There are people at those corporations, stockholders and employees and we're talking about words, nipples, and the like. You assume they can pay a million bucks just because they're incorporated? Then you're stupid. The FCC is imposing ridiculous fines, and that is end of the story.
note further that the second link you've posted calls out the fact that the bill is abandoned.
Still, million dollars fines are being levied. The point is, that is the situation right now, the status quo. Censorship (violation of the 1st) being used to drive a violation of the 8th. Government at its worst.
"parse it as written" doesn't help resolve the legitimate linguistic ambiguity
There is no "legitimate linguistic ambiguity." Here's the 13th:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Now here it is again, but put in mundane terms so your mind won't try to confuse you, and you can stop trying to confuse everyone else:
Neither jam nor jelly, except as a reward for chores the child shall have been confirmed to have completed, shall be applied to bread within this household, or at grandma's.
You going to argue jam cannot be used as a reward? Of course not. It's plain English. Interpreting it any other way than the obvious way is the act of an illiterate, or a sophist.
Now, it may well be that the current crop of puppet courts and their legions of tame shysters has decreed that the 13th doesn't mean what it clearly says. That's not a good thing, as we see with the inversion of the commerce clause. It ought to be interpreted as written, thrown the hell out, and replaced with whatever they think it means, if indeed society wants it to mean what they're trying to say it means.
Right now, it means they own you. It means they can do anything they want with you, and by George, that's pretty much how they behave, so again, whatever the shysters are saying is pretty bloody irrelevant in fact as well.
Name me one thing you can do with property that the government can't do with a convicted criminal in prison. They can kill you, or have you killed, that is, dispose of you, that happens all the time. They can move you from here to there, essentially handing you off to another slaveholder or institution full of them, and they can make such moves based on monetary gain. They can trade your warm body for another. They can release you early, if you behave. They can make you do any task, either directly, or indirectly by taking privileges from your fellow inmates, who will force you to comply. They can beat you or have you beaten. They completely control your meals, your medical care (or lack of it) your communications, your ability to see your family, your sex life, they eliminate your political self entirely, you are forced to live in horrible conditions, which can be made more horrible at any time at their whim, they control your reading materials and are just as likely to fill your hovel with propaganda such as religious tripe as they are not. They can keep you beyond your sentence. Forever, if they so decide. They can (and do) take away your children. They can put you on a public list of those to watch out for. They can ensure you're deprived of the right to carry arms. They can see to it that you are mutilated. They can, and do, take your property. They've even taken the trouble to make sure that some people cannot ever find a home, even if they were released. Whipping? Sure, you can be whipped. You can be beaten to death, or all manner of other mistreatments that don't quite get you there. Your life isn't worth a plugged nickel to them. Is your hang-up with the fact that it doesn't matter what color your skin is? I assure you, that's no factor in slavery. Finally, as to treatment in general, there were many slaves in the South who were treated better overall as compared to our prisoners, and very few who were treated worse.
also, i'm curious about this "half-million dollar fine for a curse word" claim. cite?
Here's one for $357,500.00,
here's the legislation for the $500,000 fines, already through the house, the senate is next...and you should read
as the protections of the 8th amendment still apply.
Eh? The protections of the 8th don't even apply to us! Excessive bail? All the time. Excessive fines? All the time. Can you pay a half million dollar fine for uttering a "curse word"? Cruel and unusual punishments - leaving aside the implicit approval of rape, mugging, stabbings, beatings, forced sexual slavery and the rest of what the government lets go on in prisons, today we can proudly add waterboarding, death threats, the very real specter or never getting out because you're never going to see a lawyer or get a phone call. And as for the 13th, parse it as written. Left side, slavery or involuntary servitude; right side, convicted for any crime. Chain gangs. License plates. Road cleaning. Right now, there's a proposal in congress to use prisoners to pick crops. Sound familiar?
Last time I went to Starbucks the WAP was "open" in that it didn't run WEP, but you sure as hell couldn't get one the internet without paying and getting a password.
I was in a City Brew in Billings, Montana last Sunday, and they had a wide open network. So did the hotel I stayed in (the Cherry Tree Inn.) So do I (public, and intentionally so - I have my own, separate DSL connection.)
This recent rush towards censorship and coercion of information transfer is really, really distressing. The last gasp of a formerly free country.
If I didn't commit the crime, I shouldn't be held liable.
What the hell kind of thinking is that? What are you, some kind of old fogy? Goddamit, if we say you're guilty, you're guilty. It has nothing to do with "committing a crime." I've never heard such a ridiculous idea. As if. Sniff.
Can you please explain the pressing need to have open, unrestricted, unlogged Wifi??
I sure can. So people can have open, unrestricted, unlogged, two-way transfer of information, without our burgeoning police state or anyone else second-guessing what they are doing. And by the way, I run an open, unrestricted, unlogged WiFi hotspot. It has its own DSL line, so it doesn't affect my own network at all. I do it as a courtesy to the community. Costs me $50/month. No big deal. ISP is cool with it, too. Any other questions I can help you with?
They [atheists] must activly believe that absolutely nothing created the universe.
Why must we believe anything of the sort? (a) we weren't there, so we don't feel any need to make up stories about it, (b) the fact that we hold no belief in any god or gods doesn't address universe creation in any fashion that I am aware of, (c) lacking belief in a god or gods in no way implies a lack of belief in the universe or the possibility that it is the result of some (of course, unknown) process. (d) science is cooking right along, and perhaps it will provide further insight into this question; until it does, we still don't feel any need to make up stories. You might even trouble yourself to wonder why that is.
In fact, the last time I looked at the Hubble deep space image, the idea of a god came to mind as straight-up humor. Sure some all-powerful dude put all that together. You bet. And stuck us out here on some rural limb of a mediocre galaxy. With Aardvarks, Platypus, Dodos and Octopi. Not to mention Scientologists. I laughed for about five minutes before I was able to get on with my day.:-)
the most significant changes have been the results of amendments
Hmmm. Did you mean to say that the most significant changes have been the results of ignoring the amendments? I mean, really, going from one to ten in order finds only amendment 3 to be relatively unmolested (and all that says is they can't arbitrarily quarter soldiers in our homes.) Otherwise, I'd say that in the last fifty years, most of the amendments in the bill of rights have been used mainly for toilet paper.
yay for no more slavery!
Ah, no. The 13th amendment doesn't do away with slavery at all. What it does is reserves it as a right of the government. All you have to do is be convicted of a crime - any crime - jaywalked lately? - and you are eligible for whatever they want to put you to work doing. Read it and weep.
I'm pretty sure microsoft will have to keep their XP activation servers open for a long time. If they turn them off in even a decade, they will be wide open for some very nasty, very easy lawsuits.
Ok, let us presume that Microsoft would not, under any circumstances, refuse to activate an OS they took money from you for. Even if some serial number generator put your serial number out on the net, Microsoft would say, well, we love you man, and so we're going to re-activate you anyway.
Now. Suppose Microsoft is destroyed as a company. Big earthquake, sinkhole, meteor, new OS company kicks their ass, Apple takes over, the stock market crashes hard and they simply bail, a worm kills every Microsoft machine out there and no one trusts them any longer, linux becomes the obvious choice even to the sheep out there, whatever.
Microsoft is gone, just a memory, like Commodore is today. Who are we going to sue? And how does that help get XP or Vista or HooHaOS working again, anyway?
Yes, that sounds good, doesn't it. It's difficult to think ahead years at a time. However, I've already been down the road. I've got win98 machines, no longer networked, that are doing various things. They work fine, no particular need to fuss with them. Microsoft stopped supporting them - meaning no security updates, no nothing - fairly recently. In 1998 that didn't seem like much of a threat. Today, it means they can't safely be on the Internet. There's no recourse other than upgrading them, but if they fail, reinstall requires no interaction with Microsoft.
Having gone from brand new win98 install to "no longer supported", I tend to think in terms of "what happens?" when the latest and greatest thing of today is discarded, as win98 was. It'll happen; you can count on it. As I said in the original post, since activation is required for a reinstall, and activation, even today, is based on Microsoft policy, you are tying yourself to the whim of whoever sets that policy a few years down the road.
Do you think in five years, when Vista's been out all that time, that they'll re-activate copies of XP? They might, but where is the certainty? And then when Vista is 10 years old and HooHaOS is the latest and greatest, will they reactivate Vista? You seem to think so, while I observe that the fact is I'd have to guess. In the end, I'm not willing to tie the continued functioning of my computers to a guess about Microsoft's future policies. To be frank, I don't trust them.
OSX will work for me as long as the computer does and I keep track of the install disks. Linux will work for me as long as the computer does and I have disks. Hell, I've still got a couple of machines running AmigaOS, and Commodore is long since nipples-north. XP and Vista will work as long as Microsoft lets it, and as long as they are around to let it. After that, one crash, and you're dead in the water -- you must migrate to something else, regardless of what compatibility problems and other inconveniences (like spending money) that may cause you. See the conceptual difference?
Activation is literally Digital Rights Management, where the concept is, you don't have ANY right to reinstall your software. That right belongs to Microsoft and is entirely subject to Microsoft policy, as well as their existence. My reaction to that is unprintable.
Microsoft actually weaned me off when they started requiring "activation." So even XP isn't attractive to me — it has the same basic problem as Vista does. I run XP from time to time to verify web pages and test software, but it's in a network-free sandbox when I do. I run win98 the same way - no network - and no activation inside a sandbox (Parallels.) I don't use either one as my main OS, and I certainly have no intention of ever purchasing Vista, just to buy into the same set of risks all over again.
What happens when an XP system needs re-installation and I can't get an activation for any reason? As far as I'm concerned, if I buy it, I expect to install it, perhaps put a registration code in that will work each and every time without ever having to contact the manufacturer, and that's it. I'll grant you that it seems unlikely today that Microsoft won't be there in a few years, but will they activate an XP installation? That's a policy decision, and there's just no telling what that policy will be. I'm not hitching my cart to their policy decisions.
Whatever Vista offers, it isn't enough. I have plenty of functionality between linux and OSX, and I can run both concurrently, as is convenient. If either one ever fails, I'll just grab my install CDs and I'll be up and running in a reasonable amount of time. The rule of thumb here is (a) software on CD or DVD, and (b) registration codes, if any, sealed in the jewel case in a readable fashion.
I remember trying to re-install a screen saver (some very pretty aquarium simulation) and finding out that it wouldn't install, claiming I was trying to install it on multiple machines (I wasn't.) I wrote the company several emails about it (they were still around) and they never replied, nor would the screen saver ever work again. I was annoyed, as you might expect. But if this had been the OS instead of just a $30 screen saver, I'd have been pissed at about the nuclear level. This is exactly the risk everyone faces with XP and Vista.
If you walk in to a room, and I block the door while my buddy beats you to death, I am certainly culpable for your death even though I never dealt you a blow (my buddy is also culpable, and possibly more so). This is because I intentionally took actions which helped to cause your death. Why is speech any different?
Because speech can't block a door, obviously.
Look, really - we're not going to agree here. But it doesn't matter anyway; the bottom line is drawn by the fact that there is no constitutional basis for restricting speech whatsoever, and so any law that does so is, of course, unconstitutional. If you want that changed, by all means, see if you can make any part of the political process work like it is supposed to. If you can get the constitution amended with a replacement for the first amendment that allows for your ideas, then you're all set.
In the meantime, the government cannot censor speech without employing coercion, which is the illegitimate use of force or the threat of the use of force. The reason it has to use coercion is because it has no authority - the only authority it ever had descends directly from the constitution, which provides no authority whatsoever for the suppression of speech, and further, explicitly forbids such laws.
As the government re-invents itself as a coercive force, it is stepping outside its charter, and that means the citizens are entirely within their rights to take the government to task using any mechanism they see fit. Just as we don't care if you deliver newspapers correctly if we catch you murdering old ladies, we don't care if the government is properly toeing the line with regard to maintaining parks if we catch it using coercion with regard to issues covered by the constitution. In both cases, the antisocial behavior justifies destruction of your whole ball of wax. You lose your job and go to jail, someone new is hired to replace you; the government gets taken down and something presumably better is put in its place.
This means every part of the government from the Supreme court at the top to the most menial, minor functionary at the bottom. Remember, the people who resisted the king were patriots. Not traitors.
No. Soaps just select out the weak germs. That's why hospitals are sources for extremely hardy strains of germs. So the soap just makes the remaining germs grow stronger, and not have to compete for resources with weaker germs. Evolution, baby, running full speed at a hospital near you.
Inexplicably, SCOTUS does not consider a drug dog to be an unreasonable search. Go figure.
The USSC (SCOTUS) considers the article 1, section 8 enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce ["among the several states"] to be the foundation of a rationale to regulate intrastate commerce. It considers the highly public listing of citizens as criminals to "not be punishment." It approves ex post facto laws without blinking an eye. It punts regularly on the government's blatant favoring of religion by law (fed and state.) It allows wiretapping without a warrant (and don't get me started on FISA.) It allows breaking into your home without notice. It allows theft of your home and property for any purpose whatsoever. It has had absolutely no problem turning consensual, personal, victimless choices into crimes.
Clearly, the USSC is long past being a useful institution, made up of shills for special interest groups (one of which is the government itself, of course.) It has zero problems pronouncing that black is white and night is day. This should not be a surprise, however, as the number of unauthorized government actions - meaning, absolutely unconstitutional - has skyrocketed in the past half century or so across the entire government structure, judicial, executive, and legislative. The USSC is just one part of an entirely corrupt and out of control government.
Remember to vote so you can pretend you have an effect on all this. That's what they want you to do. That, and complain. It vents the steam safely, as opposed to finding pissed off constituents at their doors. That is why freedom of speech is the least eroded right and will always remain so.
And often that action is the act of uttering words.
No. It isn't. Words do not kill. You make my very point; here you are, spouting words, but if I accepted what you are saying I would be irresponsible, because in fact, the words you are saying are not an accurate portrayal of reality. It would be my fault if I accepted your position, because I am responsible for my own choices, regardless of where I collect the information I base those choices on. And it is your fault that you are wrong, because you are responsible for your own state of mind. The world is chock-full of misinformation. That I have no problem with; I'm well aware that this is the normal state of affairs. What I have a problem with is people who have decided this is not the case, and they can run trippingly through the tulips without a care in the world.
"Obviously"? Given the vast number of plants and the somewhat smaller number of animals that do very effectively manage to arrange things so that they are poisonous if eaten, it would seem quite a trivial thing for food to poison itself.
That food, by definition, has not been "poisoned"; you're conflating the idea of something that was intentionally changed from safe to eat to unsafe - "poisoned" - with the idea of something that is naturally poisonous. All this means is you don't know how to use English very well; it doesn't in the least invalidate my statement that foods don't poison themselves. They don't. Any item that is naturally poisonous isn't food in the first place. When something is poisonous by nature, we don't categorize it as food, we categorize it as poison, plain and simple. You should have paid more attention in English class.
So failing to intervene - i.e. not performing an action - is an act, but opening your mouth and causing sounds to come out - i.e. performing an action - is not an act? Forgive me if I find your reasoning a little difficult to follow here.
No, there's no particular reason for me to forgive you. You're just regurgitating the ideas the mommy government and its spineless minions have jammed into you, and as such, you don't deserve to be forgiven. I'll consider forgiving you if and when you begin to think for yourself and abandon the thesis that trampling on other people's rights is a good thing. And yes indeed, failing to intervene is an action - as the Rush lyric goes, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." You can always provide information to assist others in making a choice you know to be sub-optimal; if you don't when you could have, you're complicit. It isn't your job to make the choice for them, but you need to ensure that your actions are not harmful. That doesn't mean that you can assume, under any conditions, that others are acting in the same way, just as you cannot assume that the fellow who just broke through your door is a cop.
Here is a scenario for you [manufactured from mushrooms, expert, layman, jealousy, childish ethics]:
The responsibility still rests with the layman. Eating unknown plants is a clear risk. Here, you have the layman compound that risk by being hugely irresponsible. What if the expert couldn't see the mushroom well enough? What if the "expert" is a blowhard? What if the "expert" is simply wrong? What if the "expert" has never seen this particular mushroom before and it just looks like it is safe? And of course, what if the "expert" has it in for the guy? Any or all of these things are possible; which makes eating the mushroom under the specified conditions stupid. If one were really intent on eating some random member of a family of foods that is well known to contain high levels of toxins, one would go to a set of information sources that cannot be biased towards one's self. After consulting these, one would have not one, but multiple identifications of the item to a high
By that logic, if I shoot someone, I didn't hurt the other person, because the bullet did the damage not me. If I build a bomb, the chemical reaction/etc killed people, not me. What if tomorrow a major media outline ran a story on you--whoever you are--and said they had absolute 100% verifiable proof that you embezzled money, were a pedophile, kicked dogs, blah blah blah whatever. Those are words--do they, as you say, "do no harm at all" ?
Nonsense. By my logic, if you say you're going to shoot someone, you said something, and have caused no harm. If you actually shoot them, then obviously, you've shot them and that action is what caused the harm. If you say you're going to build a bomb, you're talking. Nothing more. If you build it, you've built it, and if you set it off, you're complicit in the damage the explosion causes. In either case, society has penalties linked to your actions.
If a newspaper runs a story on me, it has printed a bunch of words. It hasn't done a thing to me. If you, however, take action (such as some vigilante action) because you were stupid enough to believe a newspaper story's words, then you have taken an action, not the newspaper, and I have something to complain about with regard to you, not the newspaper.
And by the way, newspapers and other media sources publish untruths all the time. (Just watch FOX news for an hour!) They do it directly, they do it as "spin", they do it subtly by publishing something wrong and then publishing a retraction on page 900 in type so small you couldn't find it without a magnifying glass. Your logic here is just pitiful -- what I said, and what I clearly meant, was that words are not actions, and it is actions that cause problems. If you knee jerk some incorrect action based on words, you've caused the problem. Not the words.
You are the point of failure, because you have free will and you can choose what to do. Words don't force choices upon you. You make them as an aware and intelligent human being. You can't blame the words for your screw-ups. Those screw-ups are yours, and yours alone.
Lets play out a hypothetical situation, step by step
a) crowded theater
b) someone yells "fire" (falsely)
c) trampling ensues
C would not have been reached if B had not first happened. Are you claiming that the B actor has no responsibility for the outcome of his ACTION?
Let's look at this honestly. The scene is a school. Someone pulls the fire alarm. That someone is the principal, but no one knows that. We call this a "fire drill." Everyone - teachers, students, guests, books salesmen - are expected to file out of the building in an orderly fashion. No one will blame the principal for effectively "yelling fire." However, should one person trample another, they will be admonished, because - obviously - we have to behave rationally during a potential fire situation, and anyone who doesn't is causing a problem. This is (very) basic socialization. You don't trample your fellow human beings, and you also don't panic, you use your head. Because later, perhaps in a theater, perhaps at school, this is going to really, really matter because there will be a fire. Trampling isn't OK if there's a real fire, you know - the fake fire scenario is only valid if that was the case. But it isn't, and it never was.
Now, in your theater example, person in step B has called a fire alarm. No big deal. We should all file out. However, someone is an antisocial, panicky idiot, and tramples someone else. Obviously, this person hasn't taken his grade school education to heart and cannot be trusted in an emergency situation. The consequences here - in a non-fire - are that someone got trampled; that's only because this wasn't a real fire. If it had been a real fire, there would have been people trampled and burned to death because they were crippled
Either you follow the law (legitimate or not) or you will almost certainly be called to pay with some combination of your freedom, possessions, friendships, community standing, employment, employability, and state of mind.
I neglected to include "health" in there. It is important that it be there. Please accept this correction as the original intent:
Either you follow the law (legitimate or not) or you will almost certainly be called to pay with some combination of your health, freedom, possessions, friendships, community standing, employment, employability, and state of mind.
Following the law to the letter is almost always a terrible idea.
Either you follow the law (legitimate or not) or you will almost certainly be called to pay with some combination of your freedom, possessions, friendships, community standing, employment, employability, and state of mind. Consequently, if you decide not to follow the law, you had better be very certain the course you choose results in something worth all of that.
And of course, that also goes for the legislators, courts and executive branch as they violate the constitution left and right.
Similarly, you aren't allowed to kill or injure people with words, which is what happens if you yell "fire" in a crowded place.
Nothing of the sort happens. Words do no harm at all. Actions (such as trampling) do harm. Actions are where laws should concentrate under the current constitution. If you'd like me to completely demolish the "fire in a crowded theater" falsehood, I'm willing. It'll just take a few short paragraphs. Do you want to go there?
You can't compare non-protected speech, such as yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
In the USA, all speech is protected, because (a) the constitution prohibits any restrictions on speech, and (b) the constitution has not been amended to say otherwise. Without such an amendment, any law that says anything different was not made with authority that descends from the constitution, and that means that the law is based upon coercion - use of force and threat of use of force - and that is the very definition of treason, the illegitimate use of force against the citizens of the country.
If the government feels there are categories of speech that can be suppressed, there is a mechanism provided to change the constitution to allow that, and they should get after using it. In the meantime, any restriction on speech whatsoever is the act of a government out of control.
For your reference:
Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech
This is in no way ambiguous or subject to "interpretation." No law. NO LAW.
The 14th amendment applies the bill of rights (amendments 1...10) to the states. That means the same applies to the states. NO LAW.
You cannot argue that the courts or any other government entity can "interpret" this amendment. There is no authority for any such act given in the constitution; therefore, they don't have any such authority.
Don't confuse the actions of an out of control government with legitimate law. That way lies dictatorship. Or worse.
I was saying that your analogy was absurd. It was a complete logic fallacy. Now you are trying to take my reply to your analogy and apply it to your other views. Thusly you are trying to imply that I said absurd to all sorts of things that I did not.
Your initial response was absurd — and that, of course, was the point of the analogy, which was indeed, also absurd. Let's take these events apart.
You wrote that you had been overseas and that you had consequently observed that other governments were various degrees of "bad", which observation you then inverted to claim that our government is "good." More specifically you said, in response to my post which pointed out some of our government's shortcomings:
People on Slashdot seem to be pretty anti-government as a whole. People are always claiming how corrupt our government is and so on and so forth. I encourage any of these people to go visit some countries outside of the US. That certainly opened my eyes to how effective and not-corrupt our government is here in the US.
My responding post, "A" in the analogy, was saying that the neighbor was a murderer - IOW, I was pointing a finger at a problem just as I had at the US, which prompted your reply.
In response, you post a paragraph that does not hold up actual virtues of the US or address the claimed problems in any way; instead, you point elsewhere, and say that problems where you are pointing are worse. In the analogy, this is "B" saying "Well, my neighbor is a mass murderer!"
Clearly, the intent of your pointing elsewhere was to somehow defuse my observation, and in the analogy, I complied, with "A" remarking "Oh. I guess my neighbor is nothing to worry about, then." Which is indeed absurd, and so demonstrates in compact form precisely what was wrong with your post.
I closed the post containing the analogy by remarking that the problem with your reasoning should now be obvious to you (because of the analogy's 1:1 correspondence with your actions), and by bulwarking my initial position that the country has major problems (specifically, it is operating outside its constituting authority.)
Finally, you responded with "absurd" which can only be accurate in this context if it is taken to describe your reasoning — which is what the analogy uses.
Tell me of a government that did not have any corruption in the past, or that had less than we have now. I don't think you can, because corruption has always gone hand-in-hand with governmental authority.
Look: Again, you appeal to the defects of others to justify the defects at hand. That's not going to fly. The defects at hand are serious and we need to address them because they are serious, the defects of others are not our problem or responsibility and are entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand.
I don't see that corruption increasing, I see it decreasing.
Then I would simply call your attention to the following laundry list of problems, most of them new government problems, or problems that are getting worse, without being fixed or being made legitimate by the appropriate constitutional modification procedure:
Constitutional violation: Interference with intrastate commerce (article 1, section 8)
Constitutional violation: Ex post facto laws (article 1, sections 9 (fed) and 10 (state))
Constitutional violation: Suspension of Habeas Corpus (article 1, section 9)
Constitutional violation: States taxing purchases made elsewhere (article 1, section 10)
Constitutional violation: Failure to amend (section 2, article 5)
Constitutional violation: Restrictions on free speech (1st, 14th ame
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is - as I have been saying all along - that people are trying to "interpret" the constitution, not (a little of the 1st, the 13th and the 16th amendments excepted) that the plain English of the constitution is flawed. But, you want to talk about interpretations? Fine. Here we go:
They say that authorization for regulating interstate commerce enables Intra state commerce. Court interpretation, turns plain English right on its head - (article 1, section 8.)
Ex post facto laws are forbidden (article 1, sections 9 (fed) and 10 (state)) but yet, the courts manage to "interpret" that we should be (and are) making them. Especially with regard to members of the current scare group - terrorists, save the children, etc. Those supreme court precedents set the bar so low, that a microbe couldn't get underneath it. So when they decide to change your sentence penalties post conviction - even years post conviction - you just shut right up. Think of the children, after all, you insensitive clod (slashdot humor, not meant to be offensive. I admit it is black humor in this case, but still, humor.)
Suspension of habeas corpus (article 1, section 9) is a no-no except under very specific circumstances (which do not obtain) and bingo, we have it anyway. Go ahead... try to tell me this is only for enemy combatants. Oh yeah... and that nasty little clause that says "or while awaiting such determination." Oooops! Our bad. But of course, since the same legislation says that the USSC has no jurisdiction, and the courts have already said they're OK with that... too bad for you, sucker. This one alone pretty much sweeps aside the entire bill of rights.
So. States are forbidden to tax purchases made elsewhere (article 1, section 10), and so the courts have "interpreted" that "use taxes" are... OK. It's not a tax! It's just... a tax. So don't worry about it. Next case!
Changes can be made (section 2, article 5) if the government feels those changes are worthwhile; but instead the very "authority" you cite legislates, effectively, anyway, from the bench. By inventing "interpretations" replacing plain English readings.
Speech is to be absolutely unrestricted (1st, 14th amendments) and yet, the courts have "interpreted" that oh no, what this means is that you can speak sometimes. In certain places. And you might need a permit for that, anyway. Idiots.
No laws favoring the establishment of religions (1st, 14th amendments) and what do we have? We have a situation where I am forced to pay the tax share for religions. This part of the 1st was always way too weak, but we can't even do what it says. And we mustn't forget places like Texas, which outright forbid atheists to serve in political positions. I mean, not that we really want to be involved in something so corrupt, so despicable, so in violation of the trust of the country... that only a religious person would want to go there... but even so, religion's establishment is surely favored if only the religious can serve. Oh well. It's law!
No restrictions on the press (1st, 14th amendments) well, except of course jailing those who stand on those rights. Oh, and censoring what they say on the radio. As well as what they cover, mind you. And what questions they can ask. Other than that... why, none!
No restriction on peaceable assembly (1st, 14th amendments) except of course, for the restrictions. Like permits. Distance from a funeral or a political gathering. You know. Just... restrictions.
No restrictions on keeping arms (2nd, 14th amendments) except for, well, in a lot of cases they won't let us keep them. I mean really, just that. And of course, whereas "by weapons" it was completely understood you could own an armed frigate, cannons, guns and swords, today there's a restriction we can s
I'm not being dense, intentionally or otherwise. I'm simply pointing out that you're making up nonsense. I can take your inapplicable example apart for you in seconds, and I will:
Your donut example uses a second clause where the details can only be applied to the donut; glazing a flower is nonsensical. So it obviously applies to just the one part of the first clause.
The 13th, in sharp contrast, uses a second clause where the punishment could just as easily be either of the slavery or servitude portions; and, BTW, the same as my example, where the jam or jelly could be applied to the bread.
In other words, my restating precisely and definitely matches the 13th; yours definitely does not. One would not use your example as a means to do comparative analysis on the 13th, because one would be led down the wrong cognitive path. But using mine is fine, because I carefully crafted it to use the same construction and the same levels of applicability -- it reads just as the 13th does with regard to applicability and lack of ambiguity.
To be even more specific, "jam nor jelly" is linguistically comparable to "slavery nor involuntary servitude" in that it is two items from the same general domain, of the same general concept, certainly within the same class, such that they are likely to be addressed as one in the same clause. "flowers nor doughnuts" are disjoint, not even members of the same general classes, much less having any more sophisticated similarities. So when the second clause refers to the first, your inappropriate example has disjoint class membership to direct the understanding at hand, specifically as glazing applies to doughnuts only; but neither "slavery nor involuntary servitude" or my "jam nor jelly" do this, and hence there is no demonstrable separation for the second clause to be parsed as to applying to one, and not the other.
The only ambiguity you've demonstrated is in your example, which does not correspond to the 13th. No ambiguity has been demonstrated at this point. That's a fact. Further, your example is a great deal further from "identical construction" than mine is. You're attempting to twist the situation to meet your needs, and that's not going to fly.
Private prisons receive prisoners for money all of the time. You're not paying attention.
Look. I know you're smarter than this, even with that really superficial and incorrectly assembled doughnut example staring me in the face. When you fine a company, you are fining an individual. That's the whole point of a company; it is a legal entity. If you take half a million dollars as a fine for saying a word, I don't care if you apply the fine to a blinking convent, the fine is unreasonable. It is way, way, way out of line. The FCC has imposed up to a million dollars in fines for single incidents, and if you don't think that's excessive, you're too cognitively impaired to even bother talking to. Don't even start with any nonsense about corporations. There are people at those corporations, stockholders and employees and we're talking about words, nipples, and the like. You assume they can pay a million bucks just because they're incorporated? Then you're stupid. The FCC is imposing ridiculous fines, and that is end of the story.
Still, million dollars fines are being levied. The point is, that is the situation right now, the status quo. Censorship (violation of the 1st) being used to drive a violation of the 8th. Government at its worst.
Right. So in other words, your position is indefensible, you are unable to argue any of your claims, and you take refuge in ad hominem. Good job!
There is no "legitimate linguistic ambiguity." Here's the 13th:
Now here it is again, but put in mundane terms so your mind won't try to confuse you, and you can stop trying to confuse everyone else:
Neither jam nor jelly, except as a reward for chores the child shall have been confirmed to have completed, shall be applied to bread within this household, or at grandma's.
You going to argue jam cannot be used as a reward? Of course not. It's plain English. Interpreting it any other way than the obvious way is the act of an illiterate, or a sophist.
Now, it may well be that the current crop of puppet courts and their legions of tame shysters has decreed that the 13th doesn't mean what it clearly says. That's not a good thing, as we see with the inversion of the commerce clause. It ought to be interpreted as written, thrown the hell out, and replaced with whatever they think it means, if indeed society wants it to mean what they're trying to say it means.
Right now, it means they own you. It means they can do anything they want with you, and by George, that's pretty much how they behave, so again, whatever the shysters are saying is pretty bloody irrelevant in fact as well.
Name me one thing you can do with property that the government can't do with a convicted criminal in prison. They can kill you, or have you killed, that is, dispose of you, that happens all the time. They can move you from here to there, essentially handing you off to another slaveholder or institution full of them, and they can make such moves based on monetary gain. They can trade your warm body for another. They can release you early, if you behave. They can make you do any task, either directly, or indirectly by taking privileges from your fellow inmates, who will force you to comply. They can beat you or have you beaten. They completely control your meals, your medical care (or lack of it) your communications, your ability to see your family, your sex life, they eliminate your political self entirely, you are forced to live in horrible conditions, which can be made more horrible at any time at their whim, they control your reading materials and are just as likely to fill your hovel with propaganda such as religious tripe as they are not. They can keep you beyond your sentence. Forever, if they so decide. They can (and do) take away your children. They can put you on a public list of those to watch out for. They can ensure you're deprived of the right to carry arms. They can see to it that you are mutilated. They can, and do, take your property. They've even taken the trouble to make sure that some people cannot ever find a home, even if they were released. Whipping? Sure, you can be whipped. You can be beaten to death, or all manner of other mistreatments that don't quite get you there. Your life isn't worth a plugged nickel to them. Is your hang-up with the fact that it doesn't matter what color your skin is? I assure you, that's no factor in slavery. Finally, as to treatment in general, there were many slaves in the South who were treated better overall as compared to our prisoners, and very few who were treated worse.
Here's one for $357,500.00, here's the legislation for the $500,000 fines, already through the house, the senate is next ...and you should read
Eh? The protections of the 8th don't even apply to us! Excessive bail? All the time. Excessive fines? All the time. Can you pay a half million dollar fine for uttering a "curse word"? Cruel and unusual punishments - leaving aside the implicit approval of rape, mugging, stabbings, beatings, forced sexual slavery and the rest of what the government lets go on in prisons, today we can proudly add waterboarding, death threats, the very real specter or never getting out because you're never going to see a lawyer or get a phone call. And as for the 13th, parse it as written. Left side, slavery or involuntary servitude; right side, convicted for any crime. Chain gangs. License plates. Road cleaning. Right now, there's a proposal in congress to use prisoners to pick crops. Sound familiar?
Your optimism astounds me. Truly.
I was in a City Brew in Billings, Montana last Sunday, and they had a wide open network. So did the hotel I stayed in (the Cherry Tree Inn.) So do I (public, and intentionally so - I have my own, separate DSL connection.)
This recent rush towards censorship and coercion of information transfer is really, really distressing. The last gasp of a formerly free country.
I smell traitors.
What the hell kind of thinking is that? What are you, some kind of old fogy? Goddamit, if we say you're guilty, you're guilty. It has nothing to do with "committing a crime." I've never heard such a ridiculous idea. As if. Sniff.
I sure can. So people can have open, unrestricted, unlogged, two-way transfer of information, without our burgeoning police state or anyone else second-guessing what they are doing. And by the way, I run an open, unrestricted, unlogged WiFi hotspot. It has its own DSL line, so it doesn't affect my own network at all. I do it as a courtesy to the community. Costs me $50/month. No big deal. ISP is cool with it, too. Any other questions I can help you with?
Why must we believe anything of the sort? (a) we weren't there, so we don't feel any need to make up stories about it, (b) the fact that we hold no belief in any god or gods doesn't address universe creation in any fashion that I am aware of, (c) lacking belief in a god or gods in no way implies a lack of belief in the universe or the possibility that it is the result of some (of course, unknown) process. (d) science is cooking right along, and perhaps it will provide further insight into this question; until it does, we still don't feel any need to make up stories. You might even trouble yourself to wonder why that is.
In fact, the last time I looked at the Hubble deep space image, the idea of a god came to mind as straight-up humor. Sure some all-powerful dude put all that together. You bet. And stuck us out here on some rural limb of a mediocre galaxy. With Aardvarks, Platypus, Dodos and Octopi. Not to mention Scientologists. I laughed for about five minutes before I was able to get on with my day. :-)
Are you Irish? I only ask because I really want to read "you filthy pro-freedom scum" with a lovely Irish lilt to it.
Hmmm. Did you mean to say that the most significant changes have been the results of ignoring the amendments? I mean, really, going from one to ten in order finds only amendment 3 to be relatively unmolested (and all that says is they can't arbitrarily quarter soldiers in our homes.) Otherwise, I'd say that in the last fifty years, most of the amendments in the bill of rights have been used mainly for toilet paper.
Ah, no. The 13th amendment doesn't do away with slavery at all. What it does is reserves it as a right of the government. All you have to do is be convicted of a crime - any crime - jaywalked lately? - and you are eligible for whatever they want to put you to work doing. Read it and weep.
Ok, let us presume that Microsoft would not, under any circumstances, refuse to activate an OS they took money from you for. Even if some serial number generator put your serial number out on the net, Microsoft would say, well, we love you man, and so we're going to re-activate you anyway.
Now. Suppose Microsoft is destroyed as a company. Big earthquake, sinkhole, meteor, new OS company kicks their ass, Apple takes over, the stock market crashes hard and they simply bail, a worm kills every Microsoft machine out there and no one trusts them any longer, linux becomes the obvious choice even to the sheep out there, whatever.
Microsoft is gone, just a memory, like Commodore is today. Who are we going to sue? And how does that help get XP or Vista or HooHaOS working again, anyway?
Yes, that sounds good, doesn't it. It's difficult to think ahead years at a time. However, I've already been down the road. I've got win98 machines, no longer networked, that are doing various things. They work fine, no particular need to fuss with them. Microsoft stopped supporting them - meaning no security updates, no nothing - fairly recently. In 1998 that didn't seem like much of a threat. Today, it means they can't safely be on the Internet. There's no recourse other than upgrading them, but if they fail, reinstall requires no interaction with Microsoft.
Having gone from brand new win98 install to "no longer supported", I tend to think in terms of "what happens?" when the latest and greatest thing of today is discarded, as win98 was. It'll happen; you can count on it. As I said in the original post, since activation is required for a reinstall, and activation, even today, is based on Microsoft policy, you are tying yourself to the whim of whoever sets that policy a few years down the road.
Do you think in five years, when Vista's been out all that time, that they'll re-activate copies of XP? They might, but where is the certainty? And then when Vista is 10 years old and HooHaOS is the latest and greatest, will they reactivate Vista? You seem to think so, while I observe that the fact is I'd have to guess. In the end, I'm not willing to tie the continued functioning of my computers to a guess about Microsoft's future policies. To be frank, I don't trust them.
OSX will work for me as long as the computer does and I keep track of the install disks. Linux will work for me as long as the computer does and I have disks. Hell, I've still got a couple of machines running AmigaOS, and Commodore is long since nipples-north. XP and Vista will work as long as Microsoft lets it, and as long as they are around to let it. After that, one crash, and you're dead in the water -- you must migrate to something else, regardless of what compatibility problems and other inconveniences (like spending money) that may cause you. See the conceptual difference?
Activation is literally Digital Rights Management, where the concept is, you don't have ANY right to reinstall your software. That right belongs to Microsoft and is entirely subject to Microsoft policy, as well as their existence. My reaction to that is unprintable.
Microsoft actually weaned me off when they started requiring "activation." So even XP isn't attractive to me — it has the same basic problem as Vista does. I run XP from time to time to verify web pages and test software, but it's in a network-free sandbox when I do. I run win98 the same way - no network - and no activation inside a sandbox (Parallels.) I don't use either one as my main OS, and I certainly have no intention of ever purchasing Vista, just to buy into the same set of risks all over again.
What happens when an XP system needs re-installation and I can't get an activation for any reason? As far as I'm concerned, if I buy it, I expect to install it, perhaps put a registration code in that will work each and every time without ever having to contact the manufacturer, and that's it. I'll grant you that it seems unlikely today that Microsoft won't be there in a few years, but will they activate an XP installation? That's a policy decision, and there's just no telling what that policy will be. I'm not hitching my cart to their policy decisions.
Whatever Vista offers, it isn't enough. I have plenty of functionality between linux and OSX, and I can run both concurrently, as is convenient. If either one ever fails, I'll just grab my install CDs and I'll be up and running in a reasonable amount of time. The rule of thumb here is (a) software on CD or DVD, and (b) registration codes, if any, sealed in the jewel case in a readable fashion.
I remember trying to re-install a screen saver (some very pretty aquarium simulation) and finding out that it wouldn't install, claiming I was trying to install it on multiple machines (I wasn't.) I wrote the company several emails about it (they were still around) and they never replied, nor would the screen saver ever work again. I was annoyed, as you might expect. But if this had been the OS instead of just a $30 screen saver, I'd have been pissed at about the nuclear level. This is exactly the risk everyone faces with XP and Vista.
Mohawk tribe of the Iroquois Nation
Because speech can't block a door, obviously.
Look, really - we're not going to agree here. But it doesn't matter anyway; the bottom line is drawn by the fact that there is no constitutional basis for restricting speech whatsoever, and so any law that does so is, of course, unconstitutional. If you want that changed, by all means, see if you can make any part of the political process work like it is supposed to. If you can get the constitution amended with a replacement for the first amendment that allows for your ideas, then you're all set.
In the meantime, the government cannot censor speech without employing coercion, which is the illegitimate use of force or the threat of the use of force. The reason it has to use coercion is because it has no authority - the only authority it ever had descends directly from the constitution, which provides no authority whatsoever for the suppression of speech, and further, explicitly forbids such laws.
As the government re-invents itself as a coercive force, it is stepping outside its charter, and that means the citizens are entirely within their rights to take the government to task using any mechanism they see fit. Just as we don't care if you deliver newspapers correctly if we catch you murdering old ladies, we don't care if the government is properly toeing the line with regard to maintaining parks if we catch it using coercion with regard to issues covered by the constitution. In both cases, the antisocial behavior justifies destruction of your whole ball of wax. You lose your job and go to jail, someone new is hired to replace you; the government gets taken down and something presumably better is put in its place.
This means every part of the government from the Supreme court at the top to the most menial, minor functionary at the bottom. Remember, the people who resisted the king were patriots. Not traitors.
If we're going to give anyone credit for popularizing the Mohawk, let's give it to the Iroquoi. I mean, after all... a punk rock band? Hardly.
No. Soaps just select out the weak germs. That's why hospitals are sources for extremely hardy strains of germs. So the soap just makes the remaining germs grow stronger, and not have to compete for resources with weaker germs. Evolution, baby, running full speed at a hospital near you.
The USSC (SCOTUS) considers the article 1, section 8 enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce ["among the several states"] to be the foundation of a rationale to regulate intrastate commerce. It considers the highly public listing of citizens as criminals to "not be punishment." It approves ex post facto laws without blinking an eye. It punts regularly on the government's blatant favoring of religion by law (fed and state.) It allows wiretapping without a warrant (and don't get me started on FISA.) It allows breaking into your home without notice. It allows theft of your home and property for any purpose whatsoever. It has had absolutely no problem turning consensual, personal, victimless choices into crimes.
Clearly, the USSC is long past being a useful institution, made up of shills for special interest groups (one of which is the government itself, of course.) It has zero problems pronouncing that black is white and night is day. This should not be a surprise, however, as the number of unauthorized government actions - meaning, absolutely unconstitutional - has skyrocketed in the past half century or so across the entire government structure, judicial, executive, and legislative. The USSC is just one part of an entirely corrupt and out of control government.
Remember to vote so you can pretend you have an effect on all this. That's what they want you to do. That, and complain. It vents the steam safely, as opposed to finding pissed off constituents at their doors. That is why freedom of speech is the least eroded right and will always remain so.
No. It isn't. Words do not kill. You make my very point; here you are, spouting words, but if I accepted what you are saying I would be irresponsible, because in fact, the words you are saying are not an accurate portrayal of reality. It would be my fault if I accepted your position, because I am responsible for my own choices, regardless of where I collect the information I base those choices on. And it is your fault that you are wrong, because you are responsible for your own state of mind. The world is chock-full of misinformation. That I have no problem with; I'm well aware that this is the normal state of affairs. What I have a problem with is people who have decided this is not the case, and they can run trippingly through the tulips without a care in the world.
That food, by definition, has not been "poisoned"; you're conflating the idea of something that was intentionally changed from safe to eat to unsafe - "poisoned" - with the idea of something that is naturally poisonous. All this means is you don't know how to use English very well; it doesn't in the least invalidate my statement that foods don't poison themselves. They don't. Any item that is naturally poisonous isn't food in the first place. When something is poisonous by nature, we don't categorize it as food, we categorize it as poison, plain and simple. You should have paid more attention in English class.
No, there's no particular reason for me to forgive you. You're just regurgitating the ideas the mommy government and its spineless minions have jammed into you, and as such, you don't deserve to be forgiven. I'll consider forgiving you if and when you begin to think for yourself and abandon the thesis that trampling on other people's rights is a good thing. And yes indeed, failing to intervene is an action - as the Rush lyric goes, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." You can always provide information to assist others in making a choice you know to be sub-optimal; if you don't when you could have, you're complicit. It isn't your job to make the choice for them, but you need to ensure that your actions are not harmful. That doesn't mean that you can assume, under any conditions, that others are acting in the same way, just as you cannot assume that the fellow who just broke through your door is a cop.
The responsibility still rests with the layman. Eating unknown plants is a clear risk. Here, you have the layman compound that risk by being hugely irresponsible. What if the expert couldn't see the mushroom well enough? What if the "expert" is a blowhard? What if the "expert" is simply wrong? What if the "expert" has never seen this particular mushroom before and it just looks like it is safe? And of course, what if the "expert" has it in for the guy? Any or all of these things are possible; which makes eating the mushroom under the specified conditions stupid. If one were really intent on eating some random member of a family of foods that is well known to contain high levels of toxins, one would go to a set of information sources that cannot be biased towards one's self. After consulting these, one would have not one, but multiple identifications of the item to a high
Nonsense. By my logic, if you say you're going to shoot someone, you said something, and have caused no harm. If you actually shoot them, then obviously, you've shot them and that action is what caused the harm. If you say you're going to build a bomb, you're talking. Nothing more. If you build it, you've built it, and if you set it off, you're complicit in the damage the explosion causes. In either case, society has penalties linked to your actions.
If a newspaper runs a story on me, it has printed a bunch of words. It hasn't done a thing to me. If you, however, take action (such as some vigilante action) because you were stupid enough to believe a newspaper story's words, then you have taken an action, not the newspaper, and I have something to complain about with regard to you, not the newspaper.
And by the way, newspapers and other media sources publish untruths all the time. (Just watch FOX news for an hour!) They do it directly, they do it as "spin", they do it subtly by publishing something wrong and then publishing a retraction on page 900 in type so small you couldn't find it without a magnifying glass. Your logic here is just pitiful -- what I said, and what I clearly meant, was that words are not actions, and it is actions that cause problems. If you knee jerk some incorrect action based on words, you've caused the problem. Not the words.
You are the point of failure, because you have free will and you can choose what to do. Words don't force choices upon you. You make them as an aware and intelligent human being. You can't blame the words for your screw-ups. Those screw-ups are yours, and yours alone.
Let's look at this honestly. The scene is a school. Someone pulls the fire alarm. That someone is the principal, but no one knows that. We call this a "fire drill." Everyone - teachers, students, guests, books salesmen - are expected to file out of the building in an orderly fashion. No one will blame the principal for effectively "yelling fire." However, should one person trample another, they will be admonished, because - obviously - we have to behave rationally during a potential fire situation, and anyone who doesn't is causing a problem. This is (very) basic socialization. You don't trample your fellow human beings, and you also don't panic, you use your head. Because later, perhaps in a theater, perhaps at school, this is going to really, really matter because there will be a fire. Trampling isn't OK if there's a real fire, you know - the fake fire scenario is only valid if that was the case. But it isn't, and it never was.
Now, in your theater example, person in step B has called a fire alarm. No big deal. We should all file out. However, someone is an antisocial, panicky idiot, and tramples someone else. Obviously, this person hasn't taken his grade school education to heart and cannot be trusted in an emergency situation. The consequences here - in a non-fire - are that someone got trampled; that's only because this wasn't a real fire. If it had been a real fire, there would have been people trampled and burned to death because they were crippled
I neglected to include "health" in there. It is important that it be there. Please accept this correction as the original intent:
Either you follow the law (legitimate or not) or you will almost certainly be called to pay with some combination of your freedom, possessions, friendships, community standing, employment, employability, and state of mind. Consequently, if you decide not to follow the law, you had better be very certain the course you choose results in something worth all of that.
And of course, that also goes for the legislators, courts and executive branch as they violate the constitution left and right.
Nothing of the sort happens. Words do no harm at all. Actions (such as trampling) do harm. Actions are where laws should concentrate under the current constitution. If you'd like me to completely demolish the "fire in a crowded theater" falsehood, I'm willing. It'll just take a few short paragraphs. Do you want to go there?
In the USA, all speech is protected, because (a) the constitution prohibits any restrictions on speech, and (b) the constitution has not been amended to say otherwise. Without such an amendment, any law that says anything different was not made with authority that descends from the constitution, and that means that the law is based upon coercion - use of force and threat of use of force - and that is the very definition of treason, the illegitimate use of force against the citizens of the country.
If the government feels there are categories of speech that can be suppressed, there is a mechanism provided to change the constitution to allow that, and they should get after using it. In the meantime, any restriction on speech whatsoever is the act of a government out of control.
For your reference:
This is in no way ambiguous or subject to "interpretation." No law. NO LAW.
The 14th amendment applies the bill of rights (amendments 1...10) to the states. That means the same applies to the states. NO LAW.
You cannot argue that the courts or any other government entity can "interpret" this amendment. There is no authority for any such act given in the constitution; therefore, they don't have any such authority.
Don't confuse the actions of an out of control government with legitimate law. That way lies dictatorship. Or worse.
Your initial response was absurd — and that, of course, was the point of the analogy, which was indeed, also absurd. Let's take these events apart.
You wrote that you had been overseas and that you had consequently observed that other governments were various degrees of "bad", which observation you then inverted to claim that our government is "good." More specifically you said, in response to my post which pointed out some of our government's shortcomings:
My responding post, "A" in the analogy, was saying that the neighbor was a murderer - IOW, I was pointing a finger at a problem just as I had at the US, which prompted your reply.
In response, you post a paragraph that does not hold up actual virtues of the US or address the claimed problems in any way; instead, you point elsewhere, and say that problems where you are pointing are worse. In the analogy, this is "B" saying "Well, my neighbor is a mass murderer!"
Clearly, the intent of your pointing elsewhere was to somehow defuse my observation, and in the analogy, I complied, with "A" remarking "Oh. I guess my neighbor is nothing to worry about, then." Which is indeed absurd, and so demonstrates in compact form precisely what was wrong with your post.
I closed the post containing the analogy by remarking that the problem with your reasoning should now be obvious to you (because of the analogy's 1:1 correspondence with your actions), and by bulwarking my initial position that the country has major problems (specifically, it is operating outside its constituting authority.)
Finally, you responded with "absurd" which can only be accurate in this context if it is taken to describe your reasoning — which is what the analogy uses.
Look: Again, you appeal to the defects of others to justify the defects at hand. That's not going to fly. The defects at hand are serious and we need to address them because they are serious, the defects of others are not our problem or responsibility and are entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Then I would simply call your attention to the following laundry list of problems, most of them new government problems, or problems that are getting worse, without being fixed or being made legitimate by the appropriate constitutional modification procedure: