Feds: ‘Poor’ Consume Like The Rich

Nope.

And how many of them have been proven to have raped their slaves and keep their own children as slaves?

Show me those, and I'll gladly call them douchebag.

But that certainly doesnt' excuse Jefferson's behavior, especially considering it was his flowery prose that spoke of all men being created equal and he is held in high esteem over it. He's a flaming hypocrite of the highest order.

And this is the part where you explain that slavery and voluntary employment are exactly the same.

Point of order: The DNA testing proved that Sally Heming's descendents shared ancestry with male-line descendents of Thomas Jefferson's uncle.

I agree it's likely based on a preponderance of the evidence that Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings children, but claims to the contrary were not "all proven to be bullshit by the DNA testing" as you claim.

http://www.monticello.org/site/plan...mas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-brief-account

Thanks great, great, great, great, great Grandpa Jefferson!

And thus the story of how Vandygoddess came to be a pretty smart cookie!

Oh, and from all family accounts the relationship was consensual. As consensual as a relationship could be at that time.

Bearing in mind that women in general weren't exactly empowered with equal rights at the time.

To him, they were. Or maybe the slaves just didn't want freedom badly enough.

It doesn't matter if slavery and voluntary employment are the same or not.

Consensual sexual relationships can happen in either case. Of course the likelihood is much, much less, but still, if a slave "loves" her master and wants to be with him, it's consensual whether you want it to be or not.

But let's not split hairs, if you want to be super-picky about it, there wasn't such a thing as consensual sex between men and women anywhere on Earth until modern times in any case.

I at least understand the concepts upon which this nation was founded.

Yeah.

In a manner of speaking yes. You charge for your services don't you?

Maybe you should try to read some from Adams, Jefferson, and Locke.

Didn't say it was. What I said was that government's power derives from our right of self defense.

The government does not posses any right which the idividual does not himself posses. You can't steal and neither can the government. That our government does things it should not does not make those things legitimate.

How can anyone enforce something which does not exist? If a right to life, liberty, and property does not exist independent of the consensus of law or the group how can we lay claim to any of them?

They are written in sand. They always have been.[/quote]

No. They are written in stone. They exist whether you acknowledge them or not. They exist whether the law protects them or not.

That depends on how far back you want to go, and in what region. Many Celtic and Viking cultures gave equal rights to women; Judeo-Christianity took them away. Iceland's parliament, the Althing, established in 800 A.D., gave women the right to vote and to rule as coequals with men. Any citizen could plead their own case before a judge. (A nation without lawyers...imagine that!) Many Native American cultures gave elder women a place on their councils and a say in tribal decisions.

That doesn't even address the number of matriarchies worldwide prior to the Judeo-Christian era.

But, yeah, for the most part in the Common Era, women in most of the world did not have the same rights as men. Slavery just added another layer of inhibition to those rights.

Fair enough.

However, the preponderance of evidence is that he was, and that is the official position of the TJF council which is acknowledged as the more authoritative on the topic:

Clearly people in the Jefferson family attempted to block this for a century after the fact, and yes, that is very likely bullshit.

If the Nazis ever reanimate as zombies, you're safe.

You have no brain for them to eat.

Read further in the same document. She had six children, not four, two of them escaped, they weren't freed.

From the same source:

And:

The summary you cited doesn't include facts in evidence.

While it is not proven conclusively, I do agree that in all likelihood, Hemings children were fathered by Jefferson and certainly the Jefferson family tried to cover it up. Mixed marriages and the children they produce have only begun to gain acceptance during my lifetime.

On her deathbed, Jefferson promised his wife, Martha, that he would never remarry and he lived up to that promise. I tend to think that Hemings became, for all practical purposes, his wife. Perhaps less than a wife, but more than a concubine. She filled that role in his life.

I blame Wiki.

Still, you seem to not acknowledge the fact that he freed them in his will, which was a fairly common practice.

You'll also note that Jefferson died up to his ass in debt. While you and I agree that slavery was wrong, I can understand that a slaveowner would keep the very thing needed to work his farm and pay off his debts.

Now, now, let's get this thread back on topic.

Abortion.

Absolutely. You just haven't taken the next three steps to determine if those concepts are philosophically sound.

It's a 10th graders understanding. No, the Founding Fathers didn't always agree, no, there isn't just one way they looked at things, and no, they weren't always right even when they did agree.

It's very useful rhetoric, but it isn't an absolute.

I have. Every high school student has. It's where you start Sandbagger. It's not the sum total of thought on governance, or even the American concept of Republicanism.

Yes, I know, you didn't understand Locke. I get it. Replace the word 'power' with 'legitimacy' and you have a start. And of course, Locke isn't the only major thinker on this matter.

I think Hobbes 'nasty, brutish and short' diatribe more fitting than Locke's 'all things exist in bounty in a state of nature' argument. Locke get separation of powers right.

Clearly wrong. The government reserves the right of force - it can punish, it can fine, it can execute. Individuals can't do these things. Very obviously wrong, even in Jeffersonian Republicanism.

Because they have the force to do so. That's it. It's happening across the globe right now. There's no fundamental human right to be brainwashed by North Korea.

Consensus itself can bring force. Ask the Indians.

All of these things are issues of the social contract of the respective culture.

We can say we want more than that, but it only matters when we have the force to back it up. It doesn't exist by itself, God doesn't make it happen, and people die awfully for assuming otherwise.

Reality 101.

Of course they don't.

They haven't for any number of human beings explicitly because we didn't enforce them.

It's magic pixie dust. It isn't real.

That doesn't mean we don't fight to make sure it is real for US.

But it doesn't mean squat to some poor sod being tortured in North Korea for reading a book by Locke.

It's the fundamental principles we hold dear in our social contract.

And unless we explicitly fight to keep them, they can and will be removed. Hell, they could even be suppressed to the point they were unknown.

Non sequitor. You've never proved nor is there any historical evidence to prove your assertion that Jefferson "raped" Sally Heming.

Well this generation is doing really well. So it's all good. Also how the hell did the conversation get here???

This is an interesting bit. Because if that is your explicit view, then your implicit view is that, somehow, business is obligated to employ people who are obsolete and not cost effective.

If you could plait the best goddamn buggy whips in the world and more and more shiny Model T's are rolling off the assembly line down the street, it is your responsibility to think about learning a new trade--say, engine repair.

Because businesses aren't in business to carry dead weight. They are in business to make more money than they spend. Paying useless people to be useless because they've been with the company for 28 years is idiotic.

It is also not the business of government to provide an income to people just because their job is obsolete. It is the job of government to ensure fair trade, protect borders, arguably to build transportation networks, and enough laws and punishment that you don't rape, steal, and murder people. Oh, and to put out fires before the whole goddamned town burns to the ground.

[yt=You Have No Rights!]hWiBt-pqp0E[/yt]

Demi shot John Wilkes Booth.

The implication is that businesses should be obligated to employ people in the countries they are making a profit in, rather than ship'em to China where labour is pennies on the dollar. Avoiding obsolescence for the current staff with up to date training is usually considered more cost effective, isn't it? If so, then yeah, maybe it's an obligation to the continued success of the business.

Buggy whips? C'mon... how do you expect me to take you seriously when you expect me to argue that point? Besides, I'd think that the guys who know how to build a Model T know a bit about maintaining the engine...

And yeah, your dead weight example is also stupid. 28 years and they're "useless"? Try it again with realistic conditions.

He had sex with a person who he fucking owned.

Consent was impossible.

I usually don't own a woman until after sex...

Consent was quite possible.

In likelihood, it was probable.

If you hold a gun to a woman's head and ask if she'll have sex with you and she says yes, is that consent?

Or, better:

If you have sex with a mentally incompetent adult who is under your legal guardianship, is that consensual?

I disagree. It is uncompetitive and counterproductive and such policies only serve to force businesses to exit the market, taking away even the jobs that must be done locally and the taxes generated by the business' operation, to say nothing of the goods and services they provide.

Why do the Randians always fall back on the buggy whips meme?