[extropy-chat] Why I am No Longer a Libertarian Either...

[Mike Lorrey]

cc'd to Extro-freedom yahoogroup. Please continue discussion there...

--- Robbie Lindauer <robgobblin at aol.com> wrote:
> On Jul 26, 2005, at 9:55 PM, The Avantguardian wrote:
> > --- Robert Lindauer <robgobblin at aol.com> wrote:
> >
> >> It's implied.  Read it again.
> >
> > I don't need to read it again. I can recite the
> > preamble from memory and it is nowhere implied.
> 
> "We the people" does not include blacks, native americans or chinese.
> That their posterity did would have been a complete surprise to the 
> formers.

This is a shibboleth promoted by right wing radicals like LB Bork and
left wing revisionists.

> 
> Think of it this way, if they'd wished to ensure the blessings of 
> liberty to themselves and their posterity and the "themselves" and 
> "posterity" included the slaves, then they'd have made abolition a
> part 
> of the constitution originally.  Posterity is vague between "future 
> generations" and one's own descendants.

Quite a few tried to do so. The problem at the time was that the
federal government was broke and couldn't afford the solution the
British Whigs implemented about 1830, i.e. buying all the slaves and
setting them free. Given the serious lack of currency in the US, they
couldn't afford the morals they wanted to exercise at the time. Even
when they could afford it, turned out they preferred to spend several
times more money fighting a civil war over it than to just buy all the
slaves out of bondage.

> >
> > That's my point, the moment they were accepted as
> > people, the Constitution applied to them.
> 
> Not really, there remains unfair treatment under the law where 
> expeditious decisions of one generation are regarded as unthinkable
> at later dates.  Like making fellow "citizens" sit at the back of the
> bus and pay a poll tax.

If everyone pays the poll tax, there is no unfair treatment.
Expeditious is not the same as just.

> > Don't forget that Old America
> > was a tiny sliver of runty states and commonwealths
> > stretched along the atlantic sea-board. Our America
> > stretches from sea to shining sea.
> 
> It's amazing what you can do with some guns and the willingness to
> use them.

I always find it amazing that some alleged libertarians are for
unlimited immigration into the US, but are opposed to us immigrating
into other countries en masse, or to have done so, as was done in the
old west, or to stand up for our right to do so.

> 
> >  Admittedly the
> > native-americans and the blacks got shafted, but
> > nobody twisted the arms of the Chinese to come here
> > and build our railroads for us. They did it of their
> > own free will and they accomplished a great deed for
> > which this country is grateful.
> 
> That's a doubtful interpretation. More accurately things sucked worse

> where they were from or they were hornswaggled.  But how does saying 
> that the chinese came of their own free will make it better that they
> were terrifyingly treated when they got here?

Voluntary indenturement is no crime. Says so right there in the 14th
amendment.

> >
> > Yeah and others financed it and got rich for it and
> > still others claimed a few acres in the Oklahoma land
> > rush, grew some crops, and pretty much minded their
> > own business. So what's your point? That because some
> > Americans are rich and lazy while others are
> > hard-working and poor that the Constitution somehow
> > sucks? That does not logically follow.
> 
> No, my point is that for all its supposed value, the constitution 
> failed to do the one relevant thing for this discussion - to empower 
> the lowly, prevent oppression and make even the generational poverty 
> that continues to plague us to this very day.  From that point of
> view it's "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

The US revolution was not a bottom-up revolution, it was a revolt of
the local ruling class against a foreign ruling class. If you want
people's revolts, try France's Terror, gee, that lasted long. It took
em another 100 years after that to get some semblance of democracy
again.
> 
> 
> >> This had been going on for more than a hundred years  at the time
> >> of the drafting of the constitution and its signing exclusively by
> >> slave owners, none of whom showed remorse at the having of them.
> >
> > You know what your problem is Robbie? It's that you
> > can't break your mind free of the cultural shackles.

Nor can he tell the truth, only half of it. The Constitution was most
decidedly NOT signed only by slave owners, that is a lie that only some
revisionist punk would make. Few signers from northern states owned
slaves, and Vermont, which was the 14th state, banned slavery in its
jurisdiction from its founding (Vermont, BTW, revolted in 1774, before
the Declaration of Independence, and outlawed slavery long before the
US Constitution was drafted).

> 
> You don't know me very well and this doesn't excuse the formers of
> the constitution for being slave owners.  Rhetorically this is called

> "changing the subject" and it's what people do when they've run out
> of interesting things to say.

As opposed to revising history, which people do when they've run out of
actual facts.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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