BS: A nation founded on injustice?

Subject: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 02:37 PM

It occurs to me to mention (in the context of the injustice of the US health market) that the US constitution appears to have survived only as a result of an injustice and the use of the US army against its own citizens. I speak, of course, of "the Whiskey rebellion", (sort of 1792-ish) in which the US army was used to enforce an unjust tax (one that cost small producers twice as much per barrel as large ones) against its own citizens.

Without that revenue, the adoption by the US of the debts of the renegade states arising from the civil war would have been unfunded and the Union would probably have foundered.

Just a thought.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: robomatic
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 02:59 PM

How original. And you did it without referring to the 3/5 rule or using the word 'irony'!

Robo: who still respects the Magna Carta even though it kicked the Jews 'off the island'

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 03:11 PM

Hey, RB, I know that historical fiction is not your thing, heaven forfend, but if you change your mind try Davd Liss' "The Whiskey Rebels" about that era.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 03:14 PM

Yes, the 3/5 rule was an injustice too. Your point?

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: robomatic
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 03:38 PM

So was the Magna Carta. Your Point?

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Amergin
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 04:11 PM

Well we all know how just the Saxons and the Angles were when they invaded.....and how wonderfully wholesome the monarchs of England have been through the centuries.....

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 04:14 PM

Maybe it's as well that nobody treats the Barons of 1215 as "founding fathers" whose opinions about how things ought to be done, and how the country ought to be run needs to be treated with reverence in current disputes, as a guide to how to act today.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 04:22 PM

History is as history does. We be here now, in spite o' what went doown. Study it, make songs from it, pro or con---whatever.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 04:53 PM

What really pisses me OFF is that chimps don't have the vote yet. THAT's injustice!

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: robomatic
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 05:02 PM

there's already too many people what's allowed to vote.
We need to strike quite a few of 'em off the roles. Unfortunately too many of them are already in Congress.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: artbrooks
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 05:54 PM

"the adoption by the US of the debts of the renegade states arising from the civil war "?? Well, we in the US rarely think of the Revolutionary War as a civil war, but I suppose that a Brit would do so. The US Army was not involved, by the way - the troops that suppressed the Whiskey Rebellion, which was pretty much limited to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the immediately surrounding area, were all militia. The army itself had a total of about 1,000 men at the time.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 06:17 PM

The American Revolution was in fact a civil war. The population was fairly evenly divided into those who supported the revolt and those who favoured the crown, and vicious reprisals were taken on civilians on both sides of that divide by both sides.

It was also a revolution against the crown.

It was both of those things.

The revolution succeeded. Although the British won the majority of pitched battles in that war, they lost a couple of really decisive ones (Saratoga and Yorktown) and that, along with some very effective help from the French Navy at the time of the Battle of Yorktown lost them the war.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 06:55 PM

Actually, the Whiskey Rebellion was in 1792 and the tax collection was unenforceable -- as the Pennsylvanians knew -- because the roads were damned near non-existent. It was also a tax on the transportation of grain to market (25 bushels of corn are much harder to transport by horse than a couple small barrels of 180 proof whiskey, which would be cut to about 90 proof after sale. A gallon of "raw" whiskey sold, in 1810, for about 25 cents in Newport, Kentucky.) And there was no way to tell the difference between taxable and tax-paid whiskey.

At the end of the US Civil War a tax was again imposed upon whiskey, but then the transportation system was far, far better AND distillers were required to age the stuff in charred barrels -- making "red" whiskey and indicating that the tax had been paid.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Peace
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 06:57 PM

"What really pisses me OFF is that chimps don't have the vote yet. THAT's injustice!"

The problem is, chimps DO have the vote. They became chimps when they believed promises from either the Republicans OR the Democrats. imo

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: gnu
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 07:04 PM

errrr... chumps?

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: robomatic
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 07:09 PM

The "American Revolution" is more properly understood as:

The War For Independence. The colonial population was not really divided in half. A rough guestimate it was in thirds: One for Independence, One for the Crown, One didn't really care.

A great many of the Loyalists (to the Crown) wound up losing their property and going to Canada. Canada had at the time a French population and an English administration. Sorting out the new English speaking population among the older French speaking populace had major ramifications which remain with us.

In the above respects there are some parallels with the division of Palestine into Israel, Jordan, and the territories.

There was an American Revolution. It is called The Constitution. In creating a strong civilian executive, three part division of powers, bicameral legislature, incorporating this with a written document with broad rights guaranteed to the people, a true revolutionary format of government was laid down. There was no guarantee that it would survive, and it was a near thing in fact.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 07:13 PM

Correct - the revolution, not the civil war.

Otherwise, see here: -

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 07:14 PM

Oops, here http://www.ttb.gov/public_info/whisky_rebellion.shtml

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Peace
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 07:14 PM

Ooops.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 07:21 PM

Can't see where the parallel with Israel comes in in relation to the dispute between the colonists in America.

Where there is some parallel is in the fate of the people who had been living there before the colonists turned up and took over.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Amos
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 07:31 PM

The Whiskey Rebellion was a reaction, using violent means, against an unjust method of taxation invented by Alexander Hamilton, which unfairly penalized farmers who chose to transport their grain in liquid form to get it to market. But suppressing the use of violent protest was probably a necessary birthing pang. The third President, Jefferson, recogniZing the injustice inherent in the whiskey tax, not only canceled Hamilton's revenue schemes, he canceled ALL internal federal taxes, limiting the national revenue to tariffs on imports and luxuriies. Would his vision had survived!! But he also provided its undoing by hugely multiplying the size of the nation--at three cents an acre, how could he refuse?--even though he knew it would strain the mettle of the Republic for it to grow so large.

It (the Whiskey Rebellion) did not really have any direct connection with the Constitution, I don't believe.

A

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Peace
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 08:02 PM

"The Whiskey Rebellion
George Washington's Proclamation calling Out The Militia To Occupy the Western Counties of Pennsylvania
As It Appears In the August 11, 1794 issue of Claypoole's Daily Advertiser

Angered by an excise tax imposed on whiskey in 1791 by the federal government, farmers in the western counties of Pennsylvania engaged in a series of attacks on excise agents. The tariff effectively eliminated any profit by the farmers from the sale or barter of an important cash crop, and became the lightning rod for a wide variety of grievances by the settlers of the region against the federal government.

While citizens in the east did not find it difficult to abide by the concept that individual states were "subservient to the country," people west of the mountains were less accepting of decisions made by the central government.

The rebel farmers continued their attacks, rioting in river towns and roughing up tax collectors until the so-called "insurrection" flared into the open in July of 1794 when a federal marshal was attacked in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Almost at the same time several hundred men attacked the residence of the regional inspector, burning his home, barn and several outbuildings. Pittsburgh was another scene of disorder by enraged mobs.

On August 7, 1794, President Washington issued a proclamation, calling out the militia and ordering the disaffected westerners to return to their homes. Washington's order mobilized an army of approximately 13,000 — as large as the one that had defeated the British — under the command of General Harry Lee, the then-Governor of Virginia and father of Robert E. Lee. Washington himself, in a show of presidential authority, set out at the head of the troops to suppress the uprising.

This was the first use of the Militia Law of 1792 setting a precedent for the use of the militia to "execute the laws of the union, (and) suppress insurrections," asserting the right of the national government to enforce order in one state with troops raised in other states. Even more importantly, it was the first test of power of the new federal government, establishing its primacy in disputes with individual states. In the end, a dozen or so men were arrested, sent to Philadelphia to trial and released after pardons by Washington."


from a google of

whiskey rebellion

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: robomatic
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 08:05 PM

McGrath:

The parallel is that Palestinians who were willing to accept living in Israel stayed and live in Israel. They can integrate in Israel in so much as Colonists were willing to integrate into the nascent United States.

The Palestinians who were not are not. Since they are displaced they should stay that way and live in a place like Jordan, which is a valid Palestinian spillway, much as Canada proved to be for Loyalists.

And just as there are Palestinians who want to have a non-Israel in the land that 'was' Palestine, there are issues about non-English speaking Canadians who want to break apart Canada and have their own nation their own way.

These things happen with pretty much any new nation. and the issues can make or break the new nation.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Amos
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 08:13 PM

Living on the far side of the Alleghenies made it really hard to move any cash crop to market in an age when a muddy trail was the only path. Making grain into whiskey first made transport much easier and less bulky. The injustice was that taxing whiskey only burdened some farmers and not others, hence the riot.


A

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 08:43 PM

Yeah, that's what I said.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Ebbie
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 09:16 PM

"One for Independence, One for the Crown, One didn't really care." "In creating a strong civilian executive, three part division of powers..."

Are you trying to correlate something, robo? :)

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 09:35 PM

Robomatic, I believe your 3 way division among the colonials ("One for Independence, One for the Crown, One didn't really care") is quite correct. Good correction on your part.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 10:36 PM

Same thing John Adams said, back a ways.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 11:33 PM

My old daddy made whiskey,
My granddaddy did too,
We ain't paid no whisky tax
Since 1792.

We just lay there by the juniper,
While the moon shines bright,
And watch those jugs a-fillin'
In the pale moonlight.

(from song: "Copper Kettle")

Now this is a music thread!

Art

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Amos
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 11:39 PM

So it is, good Rapaire--my apologies for not reading more closely.


A

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: M.Ted
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 12:55 AM

The grain farmers in the Allegheny region shipped their wheat down the river on flatboats, Amos--what they couldn't sell, they turned into whiskey.

Incidentally, this event is generally only briefly described in in histories(like most events), and then skewed for the purposes of another overarching point (much in the way our much beloved Mr. Bridge has done here)--for those who are entertained by history, here is an account of The Whiskey Insurrection which rich in detail and local color, and which takes what, at first seems
a ridiculous episode, and illuminates it in a way that both edifies and delights--

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 03:54 AM

The only references to Jews in Magna Carta concerned debts due to them:

10. If one who has borrowed from the Jews any sum, great or small, die before that loan be repaid, the debt shall not bear interest while the heir is under age, of whomsoever he may hold; and if the debt fall into our hands, we will not take anything except the principal sum contained in the bond.

11. And if anyone die indebted to the Jews, his wife shall have her dower and pay nothing of that debt; and if any children of the deceased are left under age, necessaries shall be provided for them in keeping with the holding of the deceased; and out of the residue the debt shall be paid, reserving, however, service due to feudal lords; in like manner let it be done touching debts due to others than Jews.



The Jews were expelled by King Edward I in 1290.

There are no references to whiskey in Magna Carta.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: CarolC
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 04:53 AM

The comparison between the colonists who left the US for Canada and Palestinians who left their homes in what is now Israel would be a little bit more correct if the settlers who left the US did so because they were fleeing for their lives. Is that why they left to go to Canada? The other problem is that the colonists who left for Canada really are more appropriately compared to Israelis of European origin than Palestinians, since both groups are/were interlopers on indigenous peoples' land.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 05:15 AM

However, as hinted at above, Jefferson would not have been president but for the 3/5 rule.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 06:24 AM

All the American colonists, regardless of their atitude toward British rule, were "interlopers on indigenous peoples' land".

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: kendall
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 07:07 AM

When a country is in debt, as this one was after the revolution, the only way to pay it off is taxes.

Does anyone see a difference between "Tax and spend" Democrats and "Borrow and spend" Republicans? Doug? BB?

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: olddude
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 08:56 AM

Art said it best, also some things are learned from history, some are repeated. No country anywhere on earth is without both dark and light in their past. But that was then this is now.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 12:25 PM

A danger arises when some aspects of and some individuals from some previous period start to be treated as having some exaggerated mythological status. America's "founding fathers" were every bit as liable to get things wrong as their successors.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: olddude
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 02:33 PM

As with all nations that is a true statement. No one is perfect, light and dark in all people. Even founding fathers of any country, mine included.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 02:52 PM

Yes, and all other nations are founded upon justice. England, in particular, was founded upon a bedrock of justice and equality.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: CarolC
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 02:57 PM

Can England really be said to have been "founded"? If so, when did that happen?

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 03:51 PM

"England, in particular, was founded upon a bedrock of justice and equality." I don't think too many English people would think that claiming it was was an essential part of their patriotism. That isn't really part of the national myth. If it was even the slightest knowledge of history would undermine it.

That seems to be different from the way that comes across about how many Americans see their history.

I think it's very adroit and encouraging the way Obma has hammered away with that historic phrase about creating "a more perfect union", and used it to try to make Americans see that recognising the injustice of the past, and rejoicing in changes that have removed some of them, can be a foundation of a more mature type of patriotism.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 04:02 PM

All nations of people attempt to set up a system they regard as "just" and proper. There's nothing unusual about that. They enshrine their ideas about what is just and proper in their laws and their official documents.

When it comes to putting those ideas into practice, however, a number of things can go wrong and often do.

Furthermore, those ideas may make sense to one group of people, but not to another. The laws of a country usually turn out in practice to be more beneficial to the rich and powerful than they are to the poor and powerless.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 04:05 PM

". . . chimps don't have the vote yet."

What!?? I thought that's what accounted for the Bush administration!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 04:06 PM

Is there any country in the world not founded on injustice? (Bloodshed is always injustice)

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 04:12 PM

Stringsinger, human societies are founded on both justice AND injustice. There are continual efforts and sincere intentions happening in both directions, just as there are in the breasts of all living humans. It is the struggle between the two, the struggle between light and darkness, that provides most of the drama and challenge in our lives.

If you can see only one of them occurring in a nation, though, you're missing half the picture.

I agree that bloodshed perpetrated by and on behalf of governments always arises out of (or as a reaction to) some form of injustice.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: CarolC
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 04:16 PM

How many countries in the world have actually been "founded"? Some countries certainly were, like the US, but haven't a lot of countries just sort of emerged over the years? Italy, for instance - was that founded or is it the result of a lengthy process of evolution? Same with England. Was it founded, or did it emerge over time to become the nation that it now is?

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: DonMeixner
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 04:19 PM

Kendall, They are really the same thing in the end. Presumedly the Republicans will pay interest on their loans and there by make a profit for the lender. The Democrat simply takes a little away from those who have a little. A little adding to a little becomes alot thereby making the Democrat a Republican.

Don

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 04:22 PM

""The War For Independence. The colonial population was not really divided in half. A rough guestimate it was in thirds: One for Independence, One for the Crown, One didn't really care.""


So for all practical purposes, of those who did register a preference, half were for the crown, half for independence.

Can't quite see the difference between that and a 50/50 spread.

Perhaps if you squint a bit, half close your eyes, and look at it from the left............two thirds were not anti crown, and two thirds were not anti independence.......which means,...er...let's see,.....50/50 give or take a zero or two.

It seems to work out about six of one, and half a dozen of the other.

Of course the wimmin didn't get a say.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 04:27 PM

Except for those wimmin who managed to influence their husbands to one extent or another...and I bet there were a fair number of those.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 04:33 PM

E.g., Abigail Adams.

"John Adams frequently sought the advice of his wife on many matters, and their letters are filled with intellectual discussions on government and politics."

And she wasn't the only one, by any means.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 04:36 PM

""Can England really be said to have been "founded"? If so, when did that happen?""

Don't know the answer to that Carol, and I doubt if any of our ancient ancestors were even aware that it had been "losted".

I can't help feeling that this thread should be taken very lightly.

One man's injustice is another man's law & order, and I don't believe there is a single country on earth that has nothing nasty in its past behaviour,...........except (possibly) Tonga, and even that is dubious.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 05:39 PM

Even Tonga perhaps...

"THE civilized world read with a shudder the news brought to it last week of the killing and eating by Tonga Island cannibals of two Presbyterian missionaries, the Rev. Horatio Hopkins and the Rev. Hector McPherson, both of whom were affiliated with the British Branch of the Presbyterian Foreign Mission Board."

From The New York Times, May 8th 1910.



"

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 05:47 PM

WELL, CHRIST on a BICYCLE!

You eat two missionaries, and all of a sudden your nation is founded on injustice.

And after the lovely presents Salote sent their queen.

Screw You Britain

Signed
Tongan Foreign Minister

P.S. They were tough as hell, and gave us the trots for a WEEK!

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 05:50 PM

LOL! That's telling them!

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 05:51 PM

I think it was in relation to this incident that Chesterton wrote "The Higher Unity" (chnaging the name out of a sense of discretion):

It was Isaiah Bunter
Who sailed to the world's end,
And spread religion in a way
That he did not intend.

He gave, if not the gospel-feast,
At least a ritual meal;
And in a highly painful sense
He was devoured with zeal...

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 06:48 PM

That's taking "feed the multitudes" to a whole new level.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 07:21 PM

Mick Ryan's Lament
From Two Journeys
(1999 by Robert Emmet Dunlap, Prodigal Salmon Music/ASCAP)

(n. b.: Melody is "Garryowen")

Well my name is Mick Ryan, I'm lyin still
In a lonely spot near where I was killed
By a red man defending his native land
In the place that they call Little Big Horn

And I swear I did not see the irony
When I rode with the Seventh Cavalry
I thought that we fought for the land of the free
When we rode from Fort Lincoln that morning

And the band they played the Garryowen
Brass was shining, flags a flowin
I swear if I had only known
I'd have wished that I'd died back at Vicksburg

For my brother and me, we had barely escaped
From the hell that was Ireland in forty eight
Two angry young lads who had learned how to hate
But we loved the idea of Amerikay

And we cursed our cousins who fought and bled
In their bloody coats of bloody red
The sun never sets on the bloody dead
Of those who have chosen an empire

But we'd find a better life somehow
In the land where no man has to bow
It seemed right then and it seems right now
That Paddy he died for the union

Ah, but Michael he somehow got turned around
He had stolen the dream that he thought he'd found
Now I never will see that holy ground
For I turned into something I hated

And I'm haunted by the Garryowen
Drums a beating, bugles blowin'
I swear if I had only known
I'd lie with my brother in Vicksburg

And the band they played that Garryowen
Brass was shin, flags a flowin'
I swear if I had only known, I'd lie with
my brother at Vicksburg

I think that about covers it.

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: GUEST,Midchuck on new computer
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 07:49 PM

Sorry, that Guest was me. I haven't gotten around to signing back up since I got a new computer and connection.

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: M.Ted
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 08:28 PM

It is time for our smarmy British Friends to face the truth in this issue, and that is that the excise tax was a much resented British institution, and the rebelling distillers were Scots--here is an excerpt from the History of Westmoreland country, linked in my post above:


The trouble was due to the method adopted, mainly by the National Government, of raising money by taxation. This tax was known in the popular language of that days as an excise tax, a term extremely opprobrious to the English speak-in- people of all ages.

These people were not opposed to paving tax, if levied, for example, on landed property, for then it was at least supposed to be based on the valuation of the land. Nor did they seriously object to a tariff, which is primarily a duty collected on all articles brought into this country from abroad. But an excise tax is one levied on home manufactures, and collected either when the material is produced, or when it is first offered for sale.

If fairly collected, its very nature demands that the government imposing and collecting it shall take charge, to a very great extent, of the labor and the raw material which produces the commodity to be taxed. Because of this necessary supervision on the part of the government, the excise tax had for ages been obnoxious in Great Britain.

In Scotland the inherent hatred, of excise duties had become proverbial before the days of Robert Burns, for in his age, among the peasantry, the killing of an excise tax-collector was considered almost, if not entirely a virtue.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Alice
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 08:49 PM

Nice lyrics add, thanks, Peter.


Alice

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: robomatic
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 10:08 PM

Paul Burke: Thank you for correcting my misinformed and unresearched assertion about the Magna Carta.


CarolC: I think a lot of American Loyalists did leave the nascent United States in fear of their lives. Parts of the conflict were fought with great ferocity between opposing militias. I remember visiting a part of Connecticut where supposedly a family still in residence is remembered by their neighbors for bearing information to the British about them.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 10:49 PM

You are correct, robomatic. Many loyalists fled north in fear of their lives at the conclusion of the American War of Independence. Many more people on both sides were killed in tit for tat reprisals between the loyalists and the revolutionaries during the war years...and many others had their homes and possessions destroyed in those reprisals.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: artbrooks
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 11:33 PM

Italy was definitely "founded" - in many ways, more so than the US. Google "Garibaldi".

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Stu
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 03:43 AM

A nation founded on injustice? You bet, but not the petty squabbles of white imperialists, but on wholesale occupation of land and repression of an entire people, one which continues to this very day:

""Our children are brainwashed," said Gilbert, the tribe's land commissioner. "The children are attracted by the promise of money and the American way of life. They turn their backs on where they come from. They're so brainwashed to believe in the principles of the United States they don't challenge it. They're deeply ingrained to be a colonised person and to behave just like the good old American citizen."

Gilbert is as angry at his own people as he is with the US government and white Americans. He wants Native Americans to fight for their language, their culture and ultimately to try to overturn what he calls the colonisation: "We are prisoners living in occupied America. I really find it fascinating that you don't have real violent resistance here in the States that you do elsewhere off of colonised people. Indigenous peoples are the only ones that have this legitimate struggle to be violent against the United States because of this system of tyranny by the government against indigenous peoples, because by the laws of this land you are forced to behave in this manner."

Taken from this article.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 05:11 AM

Did't he invent biscuits?

Sugarfoot Jack, you have put your finger on something that I had been groping towards in the context of widespread US-based opposition to what it termed colonisation in Ireland (and Afghanistan and Iraq).

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 07:36 AM

One of the things that I find curious, is how so many Americans appear to get angry at Mexicans for entering the US. My thought was that as Mexicans are ethnically more 'American' (mainly a mixture of European and Native American) so to speak than the colonists, this seems wrong some how.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 11:01 AM

It's really a class prejudice as much as anything else. Mexicans are seen to be poorer...therefore lower class and presumably a threat in some way. A richer group of people always fear and resent an influx of poorer people. This has been the case not just in the USA, but in any society I can think of all through human history.

The Mexicans are resented and feared now just like the Irish immigrants were resented and feared by the general American public in the mid-1800's.

As for the oppressed situation of Native Americans in the USA, it sounds to me a lot like the oppressed situation of Tibetans under the heavy hand of China ever since Tibet was occupied shortly after the end of WWII...only that's a more recent conquest.

Injustice is not limited to the USA. Not by any means. It's found all over the place. (And I think we all know that.)

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 11:28 AM

""It is time for our smarmy British Friends to face the truth in this issue, and that is that the excise tax was a much resented British institution,""

Charming turn of phrase, even if it prefaced something of moment, and accuracy.

However, my ill informed friend, if you were to take the trouble to do your homework, you would find excise taxes being levied at least as far back as Ancient Persia, Rome (including Roman Britain), Carthage, and continuing through mediaeval China, Norman Britain, France, and Italy, and on to present day America.

So this British institution spread backwards in time?

And your revolution doesn't seem to have stopped it

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 11:31 AM

There are 2 things no one has been able to stop, Don. Death and taxes. ;-)

Come to think of it, no one's been able to stop Dachshunds from barking either.

Okay, 3 things then.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: GUEST,Red Settler
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 04:27 PM

Some of the comments above are founded in a misperception of how nations are commonly settled and founded. The Native Americans constantly fought over other tribes' land and property. Killing an enemy was a mark of respect, adulthood, and tribal loyalty. This is true of most aboriginal peoples today. Europeans were tribal, once, too. In fact, all humans. Native Americans were technologically outclassed as far as weapons go. What really tipped the scales were epdemics that may have been brought to the New World by Europeans, but were certainly more survival by Europeans due to prior exposure.
As for Native American culture, if some people like Gilbert want to study and make native languages available to people, that's great. If his notion is to reintroduce it as the main language of his people he is barking up the wrong tree.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 05:27 PM

History is used ferociously to defend positions in our culture war, race issues, imperialism and economic injustice.

What I notice however is that 90% of the time the idiosts quoting history are either wrong about the history and the people or 180 degree wrong about their historic example. Yesterday Texas secessionists on the capitol steps were saying Sam Houston was the biggest and most courageous supporter of Confederate sessesion. ?!

The biggest donut hole in our educational system is history.
Of this I am certain.





I am currently trying to see if my supposition that the US has never won a foreign civil war has any validity, be it Viet Nam or Iraq Wars but I need a history expert to review this idea before I can state it as fact.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: artbrooks
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 06:01 PM

One of the interesting phenomena is outside beliefs of American perceptions of immigrants, legal or otherwise. We certainly have our fair share of bigots, but we are also a multi-ethnic society and a very large number of Americans (in the absence of a valid poll, I won't say most) welcome others and celebrate the diversity of our nation.   Not every op-ed writer decrying the influx of undocumented Mexicans is necessarily a WASP - for example, Reuben Navarette. In San Antonio, where my daughter lives, there has been a large influx in the past few years of wealthy Mexicans and people there (many of whom are of Spanish heritage) are no more happy about them than the poor ones.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 06:23 PM

Killing an enemy as a mark of espect, adulthood, and tribal loyalty (in the form of warring between European nation-states) certainly continued on that continent long after society was no longer structured along tribal lines. It didn't end until after WWII. It didn't end on the North American continent after the native tribal structure was mostly eliminated, either. It continues to this very day, although we've decided to take the wars to other countries rather than fight them here. The only real difference is the size of the conflicts and the numbers of people killed.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 12:24 AM

To expand this thread to cover a wider interpretation of the question it posits than simply the OP's Whiskey Tax:

I (an Englishman) love America and Americans. I am in constant e-contact with a dear sister-in-law married for 50 years to a Chicago-an; and with a first-cousin in Virginia; and with the closest-possible friends in Santa Monica. I have visited the US many times, Coast-to-coast, and always been hospitably received and felt greatly at home. But someone [a fellow-Brit] once said to me, "The trouble is, the Land Of The Free was founded jointly on genocide and slavery; and not just in the South — notoriously Thomas Jefferson, one of the revered Founding Fathers and author of their Dec of Ind, owned slaves".

I endeavoured to frame a riposte; but couldn't think of one. Is there one?

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: CarolC
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 12:32 AM

Nope. That pretty much sums it up.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: CarolC
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 12:34 AM

(Although Virginia, Thomas Jefferson's home state, is considered to be a part of the South. However, the industrial states in the North benefited as much from slavery as the South.)

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Melissa
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 12:47 AM

MtheGM,
I'd say "..guess that's where the "home of the brave" part comes in"

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 07:16 AM

But it shouldn't be forgotten that slavery was introduced into the American Colonies while they were under British rule, and the Atlantic slave trade was very much a British enterprise, with the profits coming back to this country to build country houses and finance industrial development.

Thomas Jefferson and the other founding fathers were essentially British landowners living overseas. Much the same, for good and for ill, as their predecessors in the English Revolution a century earlier.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: artbrooks
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 08:12 AM

As morally reprehensible as it was (and is), slavery or some other form of coerced labor was necessary for the plantation-style agribusiness practiced in the American South...as well as the British (and French) West Indies. Cotton, sugar and tobacco were labor-intensive products which were profitable only when produced on a large scale and with very low labor costs.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 09:56 AM

""As morally reprehensible as it was (and is), slavery or some other form of coerced labor was necessary for the plantation-style agribusiness practiced in the American South...as well as the British (and French) West Indies. Cotton, sugar and tobacco were labor-intensive products which were profitable only when produced on a large scale and with very low labor costs.""

To me, that sounds like the kind of rationalisation one might expect from a fat cat plantation owner, or a well bribed politician.

I suspect that labour as cheap, or cheaper, COULD have been acquired from various regions of South America, but THEY would have been free workers, able to come and go at will.

The whole point of slavery, it seems to me, was to have the workers under complete control, to get the crops planted and harvested, and meanwhile to breed more workers who would then become a commodity to sell for even more profit.

Given enough time, you don't even have to import more, you have enough for a sustainable breeding program.

There is NO conceivable rationalisation that could begin to excuse treating human beings worse than cattle.

However, as I tried to point out earlier in this unfortunate slanging match, THERE ISN'T A NATION ON EARTH FOUNDED ENTIRELY ON JUSTICE, TRUTH, AND FAIR SHARES FOR ALL!

So please tell me what is the sense in all this point scoring nonsense. None are innocent. None are exceptionally guilty, except possibly the fortunately defunct Third Reich.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 10:19 AM

Even on economic grounds, slavery is a very suspect way of organising things. The great advantage of "free labour", from the point of view of the owners, is that when times are bad, you can just lay the workers off and let them fend for themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: pdq
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 10:36 AM

"...the Atlantic slave trade was very much a British enterprise..."

Oh, crap. About 70% of the Blacks brought to the Americas were bought and sold by the Portugese, who felt entitled to do so by their recent history. They had been enslaved by the Moors from about 711-1492.

Nearly 800 years of Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula changed the appearance of their people greatly. I'm not sure the percent of Arab v. African Black in the mix of Moors, but some were surely Black.

The majority of future slaves went to Brasil, an area that the Portugese thought would propel them into one of the rich and powerful countries of the world.

Spain also had a hand in things. The claimed the area (essentially) east of New Orleans all the way through Florida to the Atlantic. Spain was the second largest trader in the Modern Slave Trade era.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 10:52 AM

"During the eighteenth century, when the slave trade accounted for the transport of a staggering 6 million Africans, Britain was the worst transgressor - responsible for almost 2.5 million. This is a fact often forgotten by those who regularly cite Britain's prime role in the abolition of the slave trade." From this site.

No doubt there are uncertainties about those kind of statistics. There always are. But the major role played by British based slave-traders is beyond question.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: pdq
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 11:09 AM

...from your article:


"As a result of the slave trade, five times as many Africans arrived in the Americas than Europeans. Slaves were needed on plantations and for mines and the majority was shipped to Brazil, the Caribbean, and the Spanish Empire. Less than 5% traveled to the Northern American States formally held by the British.


If that means that 5% of the total went directly to the US, that is the same approximation I have heard. The remainder came to the US from other slave counrties, mostly Carribean. Half the Blacks living in the US have absolutely no ancestor, not even one, who was ever a slave in this country.

The site is one I have read before. Even though most of what is said is accurate, they exaggerated British responsilbility as part of their agenda. I believe the Brits were a distant fourth behind Portugal, Spain and France. The Dutch had some involvement too.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Stu
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 11:24 AM

" None are exceptionally guilty, except possibly the fortunately defunct Third Reich."

Tell that to the Tibetans and the Native Americans, at least two peoples who will never get their countries back. Like you said, this point scoring is a waste of time but also suggesting only Hitler shares some responsibility and should carry the burden of guilt for the mass destruction of people and cultures is very wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 12:21 PM

Yes, there are a number of past regimes that were exceptionally guilty...while all of them were guilty to some extent. It's become fashionable to drag out the Nazis as an exclusive example of extraordinary evil whenever the subject of organized evil comes up, but they were certainly not alone in that respect.

Nor were they alone in the fact that the majority of their own population at the time had no idea they were helping to support evil causes, but went forth with much the same sense of idealism and sense of moral rightness in their minds as people in other places did. They were very badly led.

When an organized evil is made "normal" in a society (usually for financial purposes or imperial ambitions), most people there at the time take it as normal and they don't question it. They accept it. They would be quite upset by someone who questioned it. That sort of thing has been going on ever since civilization came into existence. It's only with the clarity of hindsight following a great social change that a population comes to realize that a great wrong has been committed by what was previously seen as "normal".

In Rome, for example, anyone with a reasonable amount of money owned slaves. And that was seen as perfectly normal. It wasn't normal by our standards, but it was normal by the standards of Rome and most nations around Rome at that time in history. They would have been rather annoyed with someone who came and lectured them about it, I imagine...because to them it was just a normal practice.

There are always a few radicals in any society, though, people of exceptional vision and independence of mind, who question such normalities and suggest that they are immoral and wrong. Such radical thinkers are considered "troublemakers" by the vast majority of people around them. ;-) Sometimes they are compelled to shut up in various ways, in fact, because they disturb the steady flow of "business as usual" and people don't like that. Socrates was made to drink poison. Martin Luther was excommunicated. The examples of that sort of thing are endless.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: GUEST,Sugarfoot Jack frying onions
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 01:04 PM

Excellent post LH.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: artbrooks
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 06:45 PM

I suspect that labour as cheap, or cheaper, COULD have been acquired from various regions of South America, but THEY would have been free workers, able to come and go at will. The whole point of slavery, it seems to me, was to have the workers under complete control, to get the crops planted and harvested, and meanwhile to breed more workers who would then become a commodity to sell for even more profit.

That is, regrettably, a 21st century perspective on a 18th century issue. Yes, plantation owners in the American South and the West Indies could have obtained workers in Central and South America - except that there was already a labor shortage there, caused at least in part because much of the indigenous population population had been enslaved by the Spanish and died. Whether they would have been, if imported as workers further north, "free to come and go at will" is pure conjecture. Personally, I doubt it. The point of slavery, whether one is talking about Africans in Georgia or Jews in Rome, is to obtain affordable labor when workers are a scarce commodity. Human ownership is unnecessary for effective control of the labor force - just ask any black sharecropper in the South during the century after the Emancipation Proclamation or any Russian serf before 1917.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: robomatic
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 11:21 PM

MGthes wrote:

To expand this thread to cover a wider interpretation of the question it posits than simply the OP's Whiskey Tax:

I (an Englishman) love America and Americans. I am in constant e-contact with a dear sister-in-law married for 50 years to a Chicago-an; and with a first-cousin in Virginia; and with the closest-possible friends in Santa Monica. I have visited the US many times, Coast-to-coast, and always been hospitably received and felt greatly at home. But someone [a fellow-Brit] once said to me, "The trouble is, the Land Of The Free was founded jointly on genocide and slavery; and not just in the South — notoriously Thomas Jefferson, one of the revered Founding Fathers and author of their Dec of Ind, owned slaves".

I endeavoured to frame a riposte; but couldn't think of one. Is there one?

Response 1, The Bland: "What's Your Point?"
Response 2, The Topper: "I've heard it said that the United States it the only land to go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening period of civilization."
Response 3, The Practical: "Put it on a T-Shirt and take it to Disneyworld."
Response 4, The Realistic: "I saw that episode of the Simpsons."
Response 5, American Street: "You should see the other guy."
Response 6, Historical: "At least Thomas Jefferson was man enough to feel BAD about it."
Response 7, Religious: "And some people say there's no such thing as Original Sin."
Response 8, School of Positive Thinking: "It made jazz possible!"
Response 9, New Jersey: "Oh, yeah? Well, up your hole with a mello roll!"

Anyone think I can't make it to double digits, place yer bets.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: CarolC
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 11:35 PM

It's not a question of can or can't. It's a question of should or shouldn't.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: M.Ted
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 12:24 AM

The most accurate response would have been, "The problem is that the "land of the free" was founded by British subjects."

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 02:30 AM

Thanks for your suggestions, Robo. Nice try [tho this was long before time of The Simpsons]. I expect I could think of a few dozen responses for myself along those sorts of lines... But as for any that would genuinely have deconstructed the original point — still waiting.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: akenaton
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 03:04 AM

For a change, I agree with what Little Hawk said!

Bringing his reasoning up to the present, it seems to me that our troops are as much "slaves" as the people who worked for the Romans.

They are dying daily in unwinnable wars promoted by our politicians, with our tacit approval. For this privilege, they are given as remunaration, slightly above the National Minimum Wage and over £6000 per annum less than a firefighter or police officer.

They are required to act as killing machines, forbidden to think or express their opinions on the actions they are involved in.

Who in their right mind, would encourage their children to join the military to save our brave "liberal democracy".

The problem our leaders have, is in reducing "soldiership" to "just another job" like policeman or firefighter, they would be required to listen to the voice of the rank and file, over pay, equipment, conditions and most importantly, the reasons why they are being forced to lay their lives and their limbs on the line.....Ake

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 04:45 AM

""They are required to act as killing machines, forbidden to think or express their opinions on the actions they are involved in.

Who in their right mind, would encourage their children to join the military to save our brave "liberal democracy".""

Unless things have changed in the last ten minutes, I believe the British Military Services are 100% volunteers.

I can't recall a single reference, anywhere, anytime, to people volunteering for slavery.

Our soldiers could indeed be better supported, but to call them slaves is to debase the service they render to all of those who stay at home and talk a good fight.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 05:40 AM

I enjoyed Mick Ryan's Lament about an Irish American 7th Cavalryman questioning the war he was fighting.
Is that one of those revisionist songs that put modern ideas into the mouths of the dead?
But US also took much territory from Mexico, and Irish American soldiers really did change sides and fought to defend Mexico against USA.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 06:28 AM

Don (W) T: "Our soldiers could indeed be better supported, but to call them slaves is to debase the service they render to all of those who stay at home and talk a good fight."


All well and good, Don...I mean it sounds good... but I would argue that our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq are not rendering any real service whatsoever to those of us who stay at home in Canada, the USA, or the UK...and they're being used. Someone may imagine that they are rendering a service to us, but that's a delusion. The Afghan and Iraqi people and governments represent no threat whatsoever to the freedom, liberty, and lifestyle of Canadians, Americans, and Britons, and they never did. Not at any time. Afghanistan and Iraq never presented any real threat at all to Canada, America, or the UK. They are nations physically and technologically completely incapable of threatening us at the present time.

As for the 911 attacks, those were not planned or carried out by the governments and people of either Afghanistan or Iraq. They were planned and carried out by a very well hidden group of plotters, a quite small number of people who acted entirely in secret, and who did not do so on behalf of either Afghanistan or Iraq. They did it entirely on their own behalf...which is what criminals do. It was a criminal act, not an act of war between sovereign nations.

The soldiers we presently have fielded in Iraq and Afghanistan are not dying to protect us or our way of life. They're dying to protect the financial interests of some big oil companies and other multinational corporations. In other words...from their own personal persepective...they're dying for nothing. Eventually I think most of them will figure that out, but too late to save the ones who don't come back...or who come back maimed for life.

We should support them by bringing them home ASAP. Same as in the Vietnam War.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: M.Ted
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 09:28 AM

Not that I disagree with you, overall, LH, but you said that Afghanistan and Iraq are physically and technologically incapable of threatening us at the present time. If 9-11 proved anything, it is that, with when you combine malice, imagination, and determination, you can do a lot with a little.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 10:06 AM

But invading foreign countries, almost at random, does not do anything whatsoever to eliminate "malice, imagination, and determination".

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 10:42 AM

Yes, M. Ted, you can do a lot with a little if you wish to, but the governments of Aghanistan and Iraq and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq did not plan, organize or commit the violent acts on 911. Those were criminal acts, not acts of war between nations. They should have been responded to with a full scale internationally organized criminal investigation and with covert intelligence action, not with 2 unjustified wars against small nations by a superpower (and its allies).

Invasion of foreign countries on completely flimsy pretences creates malice, imagination, and determination on the part of many individuals who wish to avenge the devastation wrought upon their own nations. It sows the seeds of many future sorrows, and when those seeds ripen almost ALL the people that get hurt will just be innocent bystanders, much like the 3,000 who died on 911.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 06:48 PM

LH, I agree with every word you said about the lack of good reason for being in Afghanistan, and Iraq, and in fact anywhere outside our own borders.

Nonetheless, to equate our soldiers with slaves is to denigrate, and debase, a fine bunch of men who have signed up voluntarily to put themselves in harms way in our service, which has cost 220 of them everything they had.

By all means query the actions of the fools and blackguards who have put them where they are, but don't blame a worker for doing his job, when it's his boss that is screwing up.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 06:52 PM

""Not that I disagree with you, overall, LH, but you said that Afghanistan and Iraq are physically and technologically incapable of threatening us at the present time. If 9-11 proved anything, it is that, with when you combine malice, imagination, and determination, you can do a lot with a little.""

Very true! So true, in fact, that terrorists do not need training camps in Afghanistan to function. They can learn all they need to know on the internet.

These are not representatives of any country, so what LH says is largely true.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 10:53 AM

My sympathies are very much with the soldiers, Don, as well as with anyone else who gets hurt in these wars. Soldiers go forth with a strong sense of duty and try to do their best, and I recognize that.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 11:40 AM

LH:

It would indeed have been wiser to treat the 9-11 perps as criminals. But you should not lose sight of the fact that the Taliban of Afghanistan provided them with a baseof operations and covered for them.


A

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Ebbie
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 12:23 PM

"There are always a few radicals in any society, though, people of exceptional vision and independence of mind, who question such normalities and suggest that they are immoral and wrong. Such radical thinkers are considered "troublemakers" by the vast majority of people around them." Little Hawk, Sept. 2, 12:21 pm

I frequently make the point that a person of his of her age is not remarkable. It is what most of us are.

It is people you describe here that are ahead of their time- and that is why we remember them.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 01:10 PM

I'm not so convinced of your theory regarding the Taliban's protection of Al Quaeda, Amos. I'm not even so convinced that the people who planned 911 and carried it out really emanated from Al Quaeda camps in Afghanistan. They may have, but there are other possibilities.

In any case, say that there were allegedly some American White supremacists operating some secret camps in Idaho in 2001. Allegedly. And say that a horrible terrorist attack was carried out in 2001 on Russia or China, using hijacked airliners. Next, say that the Russians or Chinese asserted that those attacks had been carried out by people from the White supremacist groups in Idaho....and they extrapolated that to mean that the whole USA was therefore guilty of an act of war on Russia or China, and that they were going to bomb and invade the USA if all the White supremacists (American residents) weren't immediately extradited and turned over for trial in Moscow or Beijing.

What would be the USA's reaction to such a demand by the Russians and Chinese? OUTRAGE, that's what. The USA would tell them to go to hell, and would further ask for irrefutable proof that American residents had committed the attacks in Russia or China.

Say there were no living survivors among the terrorist attackers,   no one that the Russians or Chinese could bring forward and say for sure, "This person did it. And he's one of yours."

The whole situation would be ridiculous. And the Russians and Chinese would never push it that far anyway...because the risk to their own nations would be too great.

So....when the USA decided that Osama Bin Laden was behind the 911 attacks and that he was based in Afghanistan, the Afghan government did a perfectly normal thing that any government would do: they requested that the USA provide evidence to back up its charges. They requested proof. The USA did nothing of the sort. They simply issued the charges and said, basically, "Surrender to our will NOW or we will give you a taste of 'shock and awe'."

The Afghans did what any sovereign nation in the same circumstance would do. They asked for the incriminating evidence. They asked for irrefutable proof. They asked for due process of law. They said that if they were provided with that that they would arrest Osama Bin Laden and his people and try them.

They got none of that, they simply got attacked by the superpower...for something they didn't do, and something they could most likely not have known about or prevented from happening in the first place.

That's ridiculous. No country would have done other than the Afghans did, given the situation.

My town is NOT guilty if a band of criminals secretly based in my town goes and robs a bank in Toronto and kills someone. The police in my town require some kind of evidence in order to get warrants and go out and arrest those criminals. Not just hysterical accusations by Toronto. Evidence.

I believe, Amos, that that war was orchestrated for reasons other than 911...reasons that are still keeping American forces engaged in the Afghan war. I think 911 was equivalent to the Reichstag fire. It enabled a major political/strategic shift to occur by frightening and angering the American public into supporting some very radical policies both domestic and foreign that they would otherwise never have supported.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 01:14 PM

Even the most intelligent people sometimes miss a crucial point.



By way of some of the first English immigrants landing on the eastern shore of this continent it is argued that Aneruca was founded on the premise that religious freedom is paramount and could not be attained back home.

When I look at religions I find that all or most of them have injustice built into them.

Islam :       HONOR killings
Babtist :       Women must be subservient and OBEY
Catholicism :   The Pope is infallable and SPEAKS for God
Evangelists :   Some Guy down the street speaks for God
Jewish : The Old Testament... nuff said.

They all teach some form of ' who to hate and why '.


Is it any wonder that Republicans defend most of their polices on the foundation of Christianity? Be it unfair or not to claim that God wants a oil pipe line or defense contract, if one opposes their claim, they will say or imply that you are going against God's word/law.

Its a great scam if you are the one using it, but it is unjust.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 01:24 PM

There's an ugly side and a beautiful side in most religious traditions. You'll find either one if you look for it. The kindly and loving find the beautiful side. The judgemental and cruel find the ugly side. They both use it in the way that comes naturally to them.

Kind of like a kitchen knife. You can use it to cut vegetables and make a delicious meal for the hungry...or you can use it to cut someone's throat and then take their wallet.

The problem is not in the knife. The problem is in the attitude of the one who uses it.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 06:07 PM

The Pilgrim Fathers weren't actually for religious freedom in the abstract. They wanted not just the freedom to worship in their own way, but also the freedom to outlaw any other way of worshipping.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 09:01 PM

good points you guys


Religious freedom for some did mean that others must be punished if they dared disagree with the leaders freedom. Just like today when Plain pals talk about REAL Americans.

Religion is a knife all right, expcept for the music.
Religion often tends to life's tragic cuts as well as its joys. Living within a framework is a comfort to many. I too celebrate family holidays with a morality play at its foundation. It can be fun and people have an excuse to gather outside the home or market.

however
The God business always becomes intractibly evil in maintaining its own defense and power of long standing laws made by their leaders.

Here I would like to interject:
A law can only take away a natural right and freedom.
A law can not create freedom, it can not create inalienable rights, it can only modify our being.


for example I will cite Catholicism since they claim to have an infallible leader who has an I-phone app to talk to God...

The Pope still outlaws the use of condoms for AIDS infected men who want to have sex with uninfected girls or wives.
Go out and multiply AIDS.

What is the blessing there? Where is the humanity? Is God once again moving in a mysterius way? Is this what we are to expect from God's will? Is this just the sick evil trade off a Pope uses to maintain tradition?

The Pope chooses evil over a sensible decision because they have to maintain the myth of their own infallibility, with the threat of taking away the goodies that they promise by excommunication.
When excomunication was not enough they tortured and killed.

To be balanced I see a similar extremeism among fellow Jews who go around ranking who is a truer Jew or seeking vengengence above all other things in life. The more "reformed" the more rational Jews become, at least in my eyes. When they become reformed enough they become transmogrified athiests with the Jewish culture as an attitude, a knowledge and a wisdom celebrated among friends, family and the world.

People outside religion who merely usurp or pretend to be religious are nearly as evil. Like Madoff's tradeoff selling mostly to Jews or Jim Baker who ripped off Christians. Using religion as a political tool to fool a homogeneous group is so old I am frankly amazed that it is not worn out and that it works today as well as it did thousands of years ago.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: olddude
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 09:09 PM

Donuel
As a Catholic, I can explain that the church believes the Pope infallible only in the area of the sacraments, confession, communion and the like. They are religious only. Anything else he is speaking for himself. Like most catholic if he wants to talk about confession or communion he has my ear. If he wants to talk about politics etc. he is on his own. Some listen like they do to anyone they agree with, others ignore ... pretty much the same with condom use and the like ... my friend ... Pretty much most churches are off the mark when it comes to God. Me I don't believe I have to go to any church to praise God. It is with me and in my heart not in any leader or building. That is how I see it anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 10:47 PM

Religion doesn't have to propose a God at all, Donuel. The 3 great religions which arose in the Middle East do feature a God, yes...and so do a great many other religions...while some feature a large number of gods and goddesses (which are sometimes merely symbolic of different aspects of life). But Buddhism and Taoism do not feature a God. Buddhism and Taoism instead propose a spiritual way of life for human beings to directly apply IN their daily lives, a balanced and harmonious way of behaviour that greatly improves one's life if followed wisely and improves one's personal development and destiny.

Have you ever read any Buddhist or Taoist books? If you did, you would not find anything about "God" in them, but you would find a great deal about moral and ethical issues, health issues, techniques for mastery of one's negative emotions, techniques for overcoming negativity, hostility, addictive behaviours, and so on.

Very sensible and moderate stuff, in fact. No "god" is necessary to deal with any of it. Check it out if you have not yet done so.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 05 Sep 09 - 10:31 AM

""Pretty much most churches are off the mark when it comes to God. Me I don't believe I have to go to any church to praise God. It is with me and in my heart not in any leader or building. That is how I see it anyway.""

Exactly how I see it too, Olddude, Faith, and Religion are NOT synonymous, and churches and priests are not essential to Faith.

I am not by any means religious, but if I were that way inclined, Buddhism would do for me. Respect for ALL life somehow gels with my idea of what a God would want.

Don T.