Posted by Jack
The Northwest Ordinance, adopted in 1787 and passed again in 1789, contains the following beautiful sentence: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary for good government and the happiness of mankind, the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” Accordingly, Congress proceeded to give 1/36 of the land in the vast Northwest Territory—including Michigan and four other states—as an endowment, controlled by the states, to support education in each township.
One of the finest laws written subsequently was the Homestead Act of 1862, by which ten percent of U.S. land—over 270 million acres—passed into the hands of individual citizens. The Homestead Act was 1,320 words in length.
Compare the Northwest Ordinance and the Homestead Act—perfect examples of the older, constitutional way of governing—with the new bureaucratic way of imposing central control through rules and processes that no one can understand. Compare them, for instance, to the Affordable Care Act, which when it was passed in 2010—and this does not include the countless rules and regulations it has generated over the past three years—ran to 363,086 words. This law—and in the true sense of the word it wasn’t a law at all, but something different—was not readable or comprehensible.
Geez, Jack ! There weren’t nothing moral about legislation designed to speed the displacement of the indigenous population in the Pacific Northwest. Fer heaven’s sake ! Have you no shame at all ?!
About the current state of legal prose … you got a point … but try and tell it to the lawyers.
Geez Libby whadda ya want from? Cripes, I didn’t kick one indian out of the Northwest Territory, not one! I never shot one, I never even argued with one. Give me a break! But, what I would really like to know is exactly WHAT would do to appease your conscience over the Northwest territories? What would you say to the current inhabitants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota? Y’all gots to get off this here land cause it belongs to the indians or maybe you will demand some kind of reparations tax? I would love to see that, yes indeedy.
Hey, what’s done is done. But we’re not having any denial about just what was done.
Makes it much too easy to do it again. I was hearing about what a bloody mess Syria has become, and all because what’s-his-name won’t let any of those scruffy islamists into his government … runs an absolutely heinous police state of repression.
We let our scruffy evangelicals into office. They are a nuisance (that Bachmann woman, my Lord!), but they haven’t sunk the nation yet.
Jack: “Geez Libby whadda ya want from? Cripes, I didn’t kick one indian out of the Northwest Territory, not one! I never shot one, I never even argued with one.”
No, you’re just saying that doing so is a “constitutional way of governing.” Can you really not see why that’s offensive? Can you not see why it’s ridiculous to act like a law which forced Native Americans off of their land is somehow more moral than the Affordable Care Act?
Chris I can see it fine, I get it – but, do you? That rediculous law as you call it is tempered with the knowledge that if the roles were reversed the Indians would have done the same to us. Tribes warred all the time, Indian territories changed hands and this was very common at the time. So, yes, some tribes dominated lesser tribes and when we came along we dominated them. Sometimes indians even took slaves! Sometimes they killed women and children! This is Indian history and this is also the history of man. Until the 1800’s weak cultures in newly discovered lands always fell victim to the stronger, name a nation that didn’t do that!
Your sensitivities towards cultural preservation did not really manifest itself until the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Without modern advances, the Indians were mostly considered wild and potentially dangerous savages. This left them without legal standing in our world. Consequently, they could only hold territory by force until they were met by a greater force.
Now you can apply your modern wisdom and say how terrible we were and how we had no right, but we acted within the standards of the day and to the limits of our wisdom. That’s just the way it was and the Indians acted the same way… within the limits of their wisdom. Today, of course it’s different and we would probably negotiate for the land or we would stay out.
Excuse me but the truth of the matter is that Indians of that era believed that no one owned the land. Could be that’s why they initially welcomed the newcomers so graciously. Having ancestors who migrated, they may also have been empathetic. People, including Indians, have migrated for many reasons throughout history, quite often to escape tyranny or oppression of some kind.
No one anticipated the numbers of people who would come to America and keep coming…they are still coming!
Let’s not romanticize or attempt to own this bit of history which does not belong to us. The people who came did not set out to harm the Indians. And the Indians, sadly, were ill equipped to challenge the influx. Evils were committed by members of both sides. Some attempted to handle the situation honorably…others did not…on both sides. Some Indians adapted better than others and many fought bravely in an effort to preserve what they had known as home. But in the end it was the sheer numbers that overwhelmed them. Life happens. The history, good and bad, belongs to all of us now. It is ridiculous to place heavy handed responsibility on this generation of Americans.
It is wonderful to see Indians taking charge of their lives instead of relying on the US government to meet their needs. They know best how to care for their families and members needs.
In any case, Jack was not comparing the legislation in terms of morality and the Indians.
Jack was addressing the difference between modern politicians (lawyers) writing law and those men who wrote law and who were closer to the founding. The difference is stark.
Leave it to the progressives, however, to take every opportunity to play the race card or paint a conservative as a heartless human being based on sentimental, politically correct notions of equality…and their own need to assuage misplaced guilt. This bunch of busy body nannies actually think they need to what they have no power to fix…the feelings, experience, and well being of other human beings (Some of them long dead).
Good gravy let it go. People do not need your sympathy or help. They are quite capable of solving their own problems. If you had any real experience of equality you would realize how condescending your position is. The actual result of all of this phony “caring” is division and resentment among the people. I for one am sick of it. And I am sick of the nagging superiority crew who think they’ve been knighted to fix all of human history.
You want to do a good thing for those you feel are oppressed in this society? respect them as equals…see them as just as capable as anyone else to work through barriers, press through problems and design their own lives.
The ACA is a piece of crap for many reasons. One of them is it’s length and another is its extreme complexity. Business people and doctors have had to hire lawyers to help them figure out how to comply…it’s put some out of business. That only makes this bad law. the pursuit of happiness is basic! Property rights are basic!
The ACA was passed in a sneaky underhanded way. Delayed implementation was designed in to make it pencil out as “affordable”…it is NOT! It was written in secret by one party and passed using intimidation and bribes…and you lefties who supported it and defend it still have the gall to preach to Jack about morals!
The ACA is harming and disrupting hundreds of thousands of lives in America. It will continue to do so over the next year or two as the unanticipated consequences continue to “roll out”.
The point of the article rocks, Jack!
One of the points I wanted people to notice is how they put God in government.
Who was this?
There is nothing in our present emergency to justify a lowering of the standards of employment. Minimum wages should not be reduced. It is my hope, indeed, that the new speed-up of production will cause many businesses which now pay below the minimum standards to bring their wages up.
There is nothing in our present emergency to justify a breaking down of old age pensions or of unemployment insurance. I would rather see the systems extended to other groups who do not now enjoy them.
There is nothing in our present emergency to justify a retreat from any of our social objectives—from conservation of natural resources, assistance to agriculture, housing, and help to the under-privileged.
Conversely, however, I am sure that responsible leaders will not permit some specialized group, which represents a minority of the total employees of a plant or an industry, to break up the continuity of employment of the majority of the employees. Let us remember that the policy and the laws that provide for collective bargaining are still in force. I can assure you that labor will be adequately represented in Washington in the carrying out of this program of defense.
Also, our present emergency and a common sense of decency make it imperative that no new group of war millionaires shall come into being in this nation as a result of the struggles abroad. The American people will not relish the idea of any American citizen growing rich and fat in an emergency of blood and slaughter and human suffering.
And, last of all, this emergency demands that the consumers of America be protected so that our general cost of living can be maintained at a reasonable level. We ought to avoid the spiral processes of the World War, the rising spiral of costs of all kinds. The soundest policy is for every employer in the country to help give useful employment to the millions who are unemployed. By giving to those millions an increased purchasing power, the prosperity of the whole nation will rise to a much higher level.
Today’s threat to our national security is not a matter of military weapons alone. We know of new methods of attack.
The Trojan Horse. The Fifth Column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery.
Spies, saboteurs and traitors are the actors in this new strategy. With all of these we must and will deal vigorously.
But there is an added technique for weakening a nation at its very roots, for disrupting the entire pattern of life of a people. It is important that we understand it.
The method is simple. It is, first, a dissemination of discord. A group—not too large- a group that may be sectional or racial or political—is encouraged to exploit its prejudices through false slogans and emotional appeals. The aim of those who deliberately egg on these groups is to create confusion of counsel, public indecision, political paralysis and, eventually, a state of panic.
Sound national policies come to be viewed with a new and unreasoning skepticism, not through the wholesome political debates of honest and free men, but through the clever schemes of foreign agents.
As a result of these new techniques, armament programs may be dangerously delayed. Singleness of national purpose may be undermined. Men can lose confidence in each other, and therefore lose confidence in the efficacy of their own united action. Faith and courage can yield to doubt and fear. The unity of the State can be so sapped that its strength is destroyed.
All this is no idle dream. It has happened time after time, in nation after nation, during the last two years. Fortunately, American men and women are not easy dupes. Campaigns of group hatred or class struggle have never made much headway among us, and are not making headway now. But new forces are being unleashed, deliberately planned propagandas to divide and weaken us in the face of danger as other nations have been weakened before.
These dividing forces are undiluted poison. They must not be allowed to spread in the New World as they have in the Old. Our morale and our mental defenses must be raised as never before against those who would cast a smoke screen across our vision.
The development of our defense program makes it essential that each and every one of us, men and women, feel that we have some contribution to make toward the security of our nation.
At this time, when the world—and the world includes our own American Hemisphere—is threatened by forces of destruction, it is my resolve and yours to build up our armed defenses.
We shall build them to whatever heights the future may require.
We shall rebuild them swiftly, as the methods of warfare swiftly change.
For more than three centuries we Americans have been building on this continent a free society, a society in which the promise of the human spirit may find fulfillment. Commingled here are the blood and genius of all the peoples of the world who have sought this promise.
We have built well. We are continuing our efforts to bring the blessings of a free society, of a free and productive economic system, to every family in the land. This is the promise of America.
It is this that we must continue to build—this that we must continue to defend.
Now that is History, Name the person
“One of the points I wanted people to notice is how they put God in government.”
Fer heaven’s freakin’ sake! How can you not see THAT’S what we object to. Going all piously hypocritical over, using the Deity to justify, a heinous, immoral, wildly malevolent land grab.
It is sick-making, shameful … how am I supposed to be proud to be an American in the face of such ****-**** (you guess) behavior!
Geeeeeeez!
I’m gonna go dredge me up some Hiroshima pictures. Ain’t nothing about the history of this country simple or clean or anything to be righteous about, Jack. I shouldn’t have to say it to a man your age … grow up.
Powerful video~
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Post by Senior Airman Brian Kolfage.
Dewey: “The soundest policy is for every employer in the country to help give useful employment to the millions who are unemployed.”
Most jobs in America are created by small business (50 employees and less). The current administration is not friendly to this group of job creators, assuming that they have an endless pile of cash with which to provide jobs.
Employing people costs a lot of money…more than simply the pay that the employed receive. Higher taxes, increased and complex regulation, disruptions and increases in premiums for insurance plans, rising workers comp and unemployment insurances…and a long spell without much work has not been helpfull.
You are an ignorant person, Dewey, when it comes to actually meeting payroll and you are not alone. Most people who vote left or independent have no experience in meeting payroll and funding a business, so you assume the solution is simply to open the doors and say come on in and we will pay you!
Get a clue. Nothing can be done without the support of business because robust business is where the wealth to employ comes from. Raising taxes, especially in a down economy, removes discourages risk taking and the seed money there is to take that risk.
Dewey: “Now that is History, Name the person”
Big government guy.
Government has no money that it does not first take from its citizens.
Paying for a service provided by a fellow citizen is less expensive than paying for that service through a huge government program that must pay for a huge bureaucracy to collect the necessary taxes, handle the paperwork to disseminate the funds, and pay for investigators to uncover fraud and abuse…especially since government providing services invites less effort on the part of the citizen to provide for himself!
Now, please provide a list of things you stand behind as an Independent. You are avoiding the question.
Libby: “How can you not see THAT’S what we object to. Going all piously hypocritical over, using the Deity to justify, a heinous, immoral, wildly malevolent land grab. It is sick-making, shameful … how am I supposed to be proud to be an American in the face of such ****-**** (you guess) behavior!”
Get a grip!
The citizens of this nation have been subjected to heinous immoral examples of land and money grabs, the manipulation and control of poor/minority citizens, excessive costly restrictions and land grabs by green zealots in the name of their god, Gaia, and all of it perpetrated by leftist progressives who believe in big government solutions and federal control of everything. This has been going on for more than a century without the least bit of consciousness, much less shame, regarding the damage, displacement, theft, and intrusion that they cause.
Jack: “Now you can apply your modern wisdom and say how terrible we were and how we had no right, but we acted within the standards of the day and to the limits of our wisdom. That’s just the way it was and the Indians acted the same way… within the limits of their wisdom. Today, of course it’s different and we would probably negotiate for the land or we would stay out.”
OK, but that’s not what you said.
You said that those laws were actually WISER than many laws today, including the Affordable Care Act. That’s what I was objecting to. You and Tina then decided to rant about political correctness and reparations, essentially arguing with strawmen. As far as I can tell, all we’ve asked you to do is refrain from *openly celebrating* the displacement of the Native American population. How you get from that to reparations is anybody’s guess.
Tina: “Let’s not romanticize or attempt to own this bit of history which does not belong to us.”
Who are you talking to? Jack? He’s the only one who has attempted to “romanticize” the past.
“Leave it to the progressives, however, to take every opportunity to play the race card or paint a conservative as a heartless human being based on sentimental, politically correct notions of equality…and their own need to assuage misplaced guilt. This bunch of busy body nannies actually think they need to what they have no power to fix…the feelings, experience, and well being of other human beings (Some of them long dead).”
And leave it to you to totally mischaracterize what Libby and I have said. We didn’t bring up the past, Jack did, so telling us to “let it go” makes absolutely no sense. All we’ve said it’s that it’s wrong to bring up those laws as FAVORABLE comparisons to the ACA.
I don’t believe Jack was thinking of the Native Americans when he complemented the Northwest Ordinance. That doesn’t make him heartless. It just wasn’t on his radar. That might say something about the very white-centric way history is taught in this country. The concerns of Native Americans just aren’t given a whole lot of weight when discussing the progress made by the United States government.
It’s not evil, it’s just privilege.
“Property rights are basic!”
Which law respected property rights less, the ACA or the Northwest Ordinance?
If you think that’s a ridiculous question to ask, maybe that will help you understand just how ridiculous Jack’s initial comparison of the two was.
Chris, you took it completely wrong and you still twist my words….very frustrating.
Dewey, the answer is FDR, but I don’t think that will do any good here, since we’re dealing with a group of people who think the New Deal didn’t work.
Tina: “Most jobs in America are created by small business (50 employees and less). The current administration is not friendly to this group of job creators, assuming that they have an endless pile of cash with which to provide jobs.”
Can you give an example of how Obama has been unfriendly to businesses with less than 50 employees?
“Higher taxes,”
Aren’t most small businesses exempt from tax increases passed under Obama?
“Most people who vote left or independent have no experience in meeting payroll and funding a business,”
You say this a lot, almost as if you have some evidence that Republicans are more likely to run businesses than Democrats. Since you’ve never provided such evidence, I guess I’ll just have to take your word that you have it–after all, you would never make such unwarranted generalizations about an entire group of people.
Oh wait, you totally do that all the time.
Evidence, please.
“Raising taxes, especially in a down economy, removes discourages risk taking and the seed money there is to take that risk.”
Again, what tax increases have small businesses been subjected to under Obama?
Chris: “Can you give an example of how Obama has been unfriendly to businesses with less than 50 employees? … Aren’t most small businesses exempt from tax increases passed under Obama?”
Representative Jeff Duncan posted a list of taxes imposed on small businesses and families taken from “Americans for Tax Reform”. I will select a few that affect small business and post here but the percentages didn’t copy well so you will have to look at the page yourself to make the comparisons.
Not all small businesses will be affected by these new taxes. But many will. Many small businesses are being impacted by new regulations.
A 2010 study by the Small Business Administration sheds some light on the cost of new regulations:
Daily Caller:
We’ve had high gasoline prices too which also affect all businesses.
Inflation may not be officially recognized but families and small businesses are experiencing the rise in the cost of food, goods, and, for manufacturers, parts! Some of this can be attributed to monetary policy but a lot of it is attributed to taxes and regulation placed on big businesses. We buy a lot of our parts from big businesses.
Wealth trickled throughout the economy under Reagan.
Poverty is trickling throughout the economy because of the policies and taxes imposed by Obama and his gang of tax, regulate, spend, and control freaks.
The ACA is immoral. It is pure redistribution, which is actually just theft. It is filled with taxes and regulations that harm citizens and the economy. I has put some people out of business and harmed others in the middle of needed treatments. People have lost insurance and face higher costs for healthcare and insurance.
The government has no business doing any of this. It has no business deciding what people can and cannot have or how much they must spend or that they must buy!
Neither of the laws that Jack cited were anything like the ACA in terms of morality or in terms of impositions and controls placed on the people.
Chris: “You say this a lot, almost as if you have some evidence that Republicans are more likely to run businesses than Democrats.”
Actually I don’t think I have ever said, “Most people who vote left or independent have no experience in meeting payroll and funding a business,” before. I have asked people if they ever met a payroll. I have challenged people saying they have never met payroll.
But I think I can give some evidence that it is likely fairly accurate to support my contention that most Democrats have never met a payroll.
Who are most of the Democrat voters?
People working in education. People working in government. People in unions. Poor people. Minority people. Young people.
Some of these may own small businesses, may have met payroll, but I would bet the majority do/have not.
The difference in the Republican Party is that the ideals of the party are more aligned with the entrepreneur, the business owner and the investor. Most Republicans also work for someone rather than owning a business.
Most people work for someone else and have no idea how intrusive and costly government is or what the expense is costing them when it’s passed on to them through higher prices for goods and services. They don’t pay attention to payroll taxes except for a few days a year when they do tax returns. they don’t have to make the deposits. they pay attention to the bottom line. Heck some people think when government has taken too much out of their paychecks and they get a refund that they have done well. Actually the government has used their money interest free all year! People pay sales taxes but they don’t have to report them or write the check to the government. They fill their tanks with gas but the tax is built in to the price. If you want to know the reason that business people are more likely to object its because they actually report and pay the taxes all year long.
Democrats today do have support from mega rich business owners, but they are so very rich and their businesses so big that the regulation and taxes mean nothing to their everyday experience.
Bankers, particularly small bankers, have taken a real beating under Obama. They serve the general public in small towns and cities across America and are often blamed because of rising fees. People are unaware of the extra regulatory burdens that have been placed on them. They are struggling and going out of business left and right. They service home seekers, farmers, retailers, manufacturers and restaurant owners and when these businesses have needs or are hurting they turn to the banks which in some cases now are no longer there.
Wow, the trio of trolls are really laying it on thick in the personal attack department. The Dewp is as rambling, verbose above and beyond exasperation, and non-lucid as ever. He has definitely eclipsed Chris The Punk and Blame-The-Victim Libby as head troll.
Re #17 Post Scripts : “Chris, you took it completely wrong and you still twist my words….very frustrating.”
You could not more more precisely define Chris’ raison d’être. That also includes the other two trolls.
I would not say this is my favorite entry in Post Scripts, but Jack and Tina are out there floating ideas and opinion every day. No one who goes up to bat like they do can expect to get a hit every time.
Which brings us to the ever present progressive harpy assholes, Chris The Punk, Blame-The-Victim Libby, and the The Dewp.
Where the hell are your blogs? Who do you allow to comment in them? Where is your output besides the steady stream of insult, personal attack, condescension, and sneers you heap upon Jack and Tina?
Oh, I get it, alright. You either have no blogs or are too cowardly to publish and put your real names to your own work. I completely understand your need and purpose for anonymity.
While Considering the rantings of Libby in this post, after reading her comment of:
I’m gonna go dredge me up some Hiroshima pictures. Ain’t nothing about the history of this country simple or clean or anything to be righteous about, Jack.
I’ll just suggest she goes to this link instead. It might be a lot more crowded if not for Truman’s and others gut wrenching decision of those day’s and times….
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/
Chris the ugliest tax is the rise in investment taxes.
This “income” is money that fuels business start-ups through loans, helps to sustain and grow small (all) businesses, and helps small business grow the pot that helps stabilize cash flow. It is also income that is reinvested rather than spent directly on products. When businesses can keep and invest this money certainty is created. Conversely anxiety over continuing viability is created when rates rise. Opportunity is diminished when investment income is taxed.
If we cared about people we would encourage savings and investment, quit holding interest rates down artificially, and lower the investments tax rate to zero.
Imagine a poor population making the discovery that through savings and investment they could lift themselves and their progeny out of poverty. Add personal SS accounts to the mix and within a generation the numbers of the poor would begin to fall.
Harold the left is ignorant of causes and consequences. America was not the bad guy in WWII; we were the liberators.
Japan’s prideful unwillingness to end a war they started put our president in the terrible position of deciding between two horrifying choices, 1. Continue fighting with traditional methods that would end in millions of American and Japanese deaths or, 2. Attempt to end the war quickly and thus limit the numbers of deaths on both sides.
Thomas Sowell is brilliant on the subject:
White House History:
It is also telling that the left never expresses concern or dismay about the massive numbers murdered, wrongly imprisoned and tortured, or killed in war by advancing communist and fascist regimes.
Leftists believe they can wave a magic wand and transform devils, making them angels. They believe that if a communist/fascist system could be imposed on the world there would be “peace”. They deny that evil exists in human beings, allowing themselves justification that if placed in Truman’s position they would not choose the lesser of two evils but would befriend and de-fang the Emperor of Japan.
“Leftists believe they can wave a magic wand and transform devils, making them angels.”
No, we progressives do not. (Leftists are not necessarily progressives and vice versa.) We simply recognize the devils all around.