Posted on 08/20/2004 5:43:21 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861
It is no consequence what the British call their own country. I used "Great Britain" as an example of a landmass - to wit - an island. I am correct. Whatever point another poster wished to make in not relevant to the point I did make.
If you say so, it must be true.
"Madison, in his letters, refers directly to the term secession and uses it to describe what would happen as each State ratified the Constitution, thereby seceding from (in preference to violating outright) the AoC."
< Please quote from Madison - one of my favorite patriots - and we can discuss what he meant.
"Sure it did. New contract, new deal, new government, new United States of America, new Union. Out with the old, in with the new.
Well, I'll ask you the same question I have asked another poster: What is the birthdate of the United States of America?
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."
I have always enjoyed Madison's explanation of formation of the new government. What he describes herein, should be understood as the intent of the 10th Amendment. Unfortunately, the cabal forgets the last sentence, which even the most simple of simpletons can see provides no support for the idea of unilateral secession.
He has a very high opinion of himself, doesn't he?
Actually, I prefer "quod erat demonstrandum," with which I could end most of my replies to your silly "points."
You keep telling yourself that. In the meantime, I will once again note that the formal and official term "Great Britain" in the eyes of the British themselves and the world is a component part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
As to the proper geographical term to designate the island you reference, it has historically been known as Britannia Major, or in shortened form, simply Britannia from the latin derivations of Britanniae
...which would constitute an entity without the bind of law upon its membership and without the ability to enforce itself. In short, it was a club for the colonies and nothing more. The legal entity of the union did not exist until July 4, 1776 and did not exist with the unanimous adherence in all 13 colonies until July 19th. As no legal entity can predate the agents that form it, the states necessarily existed prior to the union. As to the 1774 colony club, it is also necessarily true that its component members, namely the individual colonies, also predated its existence - some by more than a century.
I thought possibly you would enjoy what the British, themselves, write on the subject. This comes from the print version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is, for all purposes, the final word.
"The names United Kingdom, Great Britain, and England are often confused, even by U.K. inhabitants. England is just one country within the Kingdom ... while the United Kingdom also includes Northern Ireland. Wales and England were unified politically, administratively, and legally by the acts of union of 1536 and 1542. In 1707 Scotland joined England and Wales in forming a single Parliament for Great Britain, although the three countries had previously shared a monarch."
"Great Britain, the island comprising England, Scotland, and Wales, forms together with numerous smaller islands, the archipelago that is as irregular in shape as it is diverse in its natural heritage."
"The traditional division of Great Britain is into a Highland zone and a Lowland zone."
"The main watershed in Great Britain runs from north to south, keeping well to the west until the basin of the River Severn."
"Great Britain's marginal position between the European landmass to the east and the ever-present, relatively warm Atlantic waters to the west, ensures the modification of both the thermal and moisture characteristics of the principle types of air reaching the country's shores."
You see, the references to "Great Britain" are in the geopgraphical sense. If you were to read the article, when reference is made to the government or the country, the term "Uninted Kingdom" is used. If you don't consider the Britannica, to be authoritative, then possible the Oxford History of England series would help:
"The name 'Great Britain' [as compared to the former 'Britain'], was a reminder of King James I, as was the holding of Scottish peerages by Englishmen like the Fairfaxes and Falklands, and of English peerages by Scotsmen like James Hay, earl of Carlisle."
Another encyclopedic entry explains: "The term Great Britain was first widely used during the reign of King James VI of Scotland, I of England to describe the island, on which co-existed two separate kingdoms ruled over by the same monarch."
It should be clear to you now, that the reason why the first and preferred usage of the term "Great Britain" refers to the island upon which the United Kingdom is found.
Don't feel too bad, though, because as the Britannica notes, even the British screw it up too.
No doubt you have, at least as far as his quotes that seem to support your position are concerned. There are many problems with Madison though.
First and foremost, he was notoriously inconsistent over the years. He wavered from an agrarian jeffersonian to a centralizer to a jeffersonian again to a nullifyer to a centralizer to an agrarian again to an industrializer and so forth. For every quote he gave that seemingly frowns upon secession there is Virginia and Kentucky Resolution giving a substantially more favorable conceptual framework. Thus to rely exclusively or even heavily upon Madison as a determining authority in favor of a specified and defined position necessarily entails picking and choosing certain parts of Madison that mesh with the position you support while rejecting or ignoring those that don't.
Second, Madison was a reasonably intelligent man but in the generation of founders he was far from spectacular as far as intellectual capacities are concerned. This does not disqualify his position, but it does serve to explain why Madison was both notoriously inconsistent over the years and in constant pursuit of a better-refined argument. It also suggests that others may have seen and understood the forces at play in the founding era more clearly and with greater foresight than Madison did. Several specific founders who come to mind as having a substantially stronger intellect that Madison. Franklin is probably among them and Jefferson indisputably is by a long shot. Some of the most intellectually gifted founders also tend to be more obscure in today's popular histories, though not in importance to the era - men like John Taylor and St. George Tucker come to mind as some of the more intellectually gifted persons of that era. One of the most brilliant founders - and he was frighteningly brilliant at that - was Luther Martin. He was quick on his feet, rigidly logical, and had a commanding presence. Few if any other persons at the constitutional convention could best him in debate. His main flaw was that he was also extremely irritable and prone to being somewhat inflamatory. That said, he saw the future implications of the new government with greater clarity than almost every other founder to the point that he predicted the exact scenario of the Civil War almost three quarters of a century before it happened. My point in noting persons such as Jefferson, Martin, Taylor, and Tucker among others is to demonstrate that there are other sources out there with substantially more reliable and intellectually sophisticated takes upon the nature of the new government than Madison.
According to who? The Grand Chief Poobah and Arbiter of Dictionary and Encyclopedia definitions?
As I duly noted and documented for you, the term "Great Britain" derives from the official name of the country we know as the UK: "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland," as called by the UK itself and by the US government in recognizing the UK.
The proper historical term for the island on which Loegria, Cambria, and Albany are located is Britannia as it has been referred to since at least ca. 1136 when Geoffrey of Monmouth standardized the term, along with Britain's supposed geographical history, in his Historia Regum Britanniae. Thus we get Britanniae, which translates into the designation Britannia.
And yes, considering Geoffrey of Monmouth's virtually unparalleled historical contribution to the development of the British culture and identity, i'll take his word on it over both the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Oxford reader on any given day of the week.
You may have noted that, but my documentation suggests otherwise. The name of the Kingdom was derived from the name of the island. You have put the cart before the horse. And if you don't like what the British really have to say about it, then continue to cite yourself as an authoritative source. That should be convincing.
Your documentation - a modern encyclopedia - is inferior to my documentation, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae - the book that has essentially defined the cultural geography of Britain for the last 1,000 years. Geoffrey gave common and virtually universal use to the island's geographic name: Britanniae Major, or what we know today as Britannia. Great Britain, of course, is the political community of the nation's portion that resides on the island of Britanniae Major - or Britannia in common use - that is the territory of Loegria, Cambria, and Albany - England, Scotland, and Wales - which together with Northern Ireland make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The name of the Kingdom was derived from the name of the island.
Wrong. The name Britain derives from the roman name for its inhabitants - Britons. The name of the island, Britanniae in its latin derivative, indicates that it is the home of the Britons.
You have put the cart before the horse.
Wait a minute. Let me make sure I'm getting this - You are trying to pass off your 20th century dictionaries as authoritative determinants of the proper name over my 12th century source yet YOU are accusing ME of putting the cart before the horse? Your entire charade violates the one thing that you cannot manipulate in any way, shape, or form by your beloved word games: the fabric of time.
Why should I need to do that? I've already got two sources that predate yours by centuries and surpass yours in universality by several miles: the Roman Empire, which named the island Britanniae (Britannia or home of the Britons) to begin with, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, who popularized the term Britanniae as a universally accepted matter of British geography in the 12th century.
All you've got by contrast are a couple dictionaries and encyclopedias. I guess you never learned that lesson everybody else does when they do their first college (or in some cases high school) writing assignment: encyclopedias are okay sources for book reports in the sixth grade. They are not okay for academic research papers.
You are sounding like Al Gore now. Are you going to pontificate on Norwood-Dingell too?
It appears that the AV room is missing a projector again.
In modern terminology, Lincoln was on the down low.
Not as high as others have about themselves.
Hirschhorn and Feldman, with a third author, Ian A. Greaves, [22] followed their article on Mary Todd s tabes with another find from a letter written by Herndon: "Mr. Lincoln had an evacuation, a passage, about once a week, ate blue mass." [23] They found elemental mercury to be the active ingredient in blue mass, or blue pills, a medication Lincoln took over an extended period. They even had the blue pills recreated in the laboratory using a recipe from 1879 consisting of licorice root, rosewater, honey, and sugar, plus mercury and dead rose petals. Each pill contained approximately 65 grams of elemental mercury. The authors suggest that Lincoln may have been treated with the blue pills for melancholia, or hypochondriasis. Since syphilis sufferers were both depressed and had so many mysterious ailments that they often thought themselves to be hypochondriacs, the blue pills could have been prescribed for the "syphilis that hung to him" and melancholia and hypochondriasis at the same time.
In the "Blue Pills" article, Hirschhorn, Feldman, and Greaves find Lincoln's secrecy about the medication explained by the "opprobrium that would have been attached to the diagnosis of hypochondriasis in a person who aimed for high office." [24] Syphilis would have been very much more of a reason for circumspection, and a good reason to consult an out-of-town doctor. They suggest that Lincoln suffered from the neurobehavioral consequences of mercury intoxication-rage, for example. Herndon recalled that Lincoln looked like Lucifer when he was in an uncontrollable temper; he once shook a man until his teeth chattered. [25] Prone to moody silences, he was also observed talking "wild and incoherent nonsense" to himself. He had insomnia and headaches and worried about a tremor in his signature. An observer noted in 1863 that Lincoln "certainly is growing feeble. He wrote a note while I was present, and his hand trembled as I never saw it before, and he looked worn and haggard." [26] Lincoln had premonitions that he did not have long to live, and he feared madness. He took the little blue pills at least until 1861, a few months after his inauguration, and may have started them much earlier. Mary Todd tried them in December 1869. She had a quick and severe reaction and supposedly discontinued them immediately.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Hirschhorn et al., "Blue Pills," 315-332.
[23] Hertz, 199.
[24] Hirschorn et al., "Blue Pills," 328.
[25] Hirschorn et al., "Blue Pills," 318.
"Hertz": Emanuel Hertz, The Hidden Lincoln: From the Letters and papers of William H. Herndon (New York:Viking, 1938)
"Blue Pills": Norbert Hirschorn, Robert G. Feldman, and Ian A. Greaves, "Abraham Lincoln's Blue Pills," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 44, no. 3 (Summer 2001)
SOURCE: Deborah Hayden, POX: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis, Basic Books, (2003), pp. 130-1.
Mercurial remedies were developed by the alchemist Paracelsus (1493-1541) in an attempt to find the "Elixir Vitae," a substance that would purify the body of all disease. Gold, which neither rusts nor tarnishes and is the color of the sun, source of life and energy, was amalgamated with mercury derived from blood-red colored cinnabar ore. Mercury, which had for centuries been used by the Arabs to treat leprosy and yaws, was first used in Europe for the treatment of syphilis in 1497. Hawkers of remedies, or quacksalvers (those who quacked about their salves), promising speedy and complete cures, became known as "quacks," the pejorative aspect deriving in particular from those itinerant vendors who pushed toxic mercury salve, known as quicksilver or quacksilver, for the treatment of syphilis. Reputable physicians also used mercury as their main treatment; this chemotherapy was still found to be "the most potent weapon of attack on syphilis” [2] well into the twentieth century.Mercury, a shiny element with the chemical symbol Hg, weighs 13.6 times as much as an equal volume of water. Iron, stone, and lead can float on its surface. Physicians who applied mercury-based ointments reported a lessening of their patients' pain and clearing of ulcers, but they tended to use such enormous quantities of the toxic metal that a price was paid in physical side effects, including new ulceration, dermatological eruptions, paralysis, shaking, anorexia, gastric distress, diarrhea, nausea, and rotting and loosening of teeth. The syphilitic overdosed with mercury would experience unquenchable thirst even while producing gushing saliva measured in pints and quarts, often while being encased in a steam box daily for a month. A hot iron applied to the skull to curtail salivation when absorbing vast quantities of mercury was one of the tortures these patients endured. Alchemists who distilled the quicksilver from heated cinnabar mixed the liquid metal with henna and herbs and heated it in a dry vessel over coals. The patient sat over a skillet under a cloak and inhaled the fumes.
Today, when dentists debate whether people are wise to have mercury amalgam fillings removed to prevent trace amounts of mercury escaping into the system, mercury applied to the point of extreme salivation seems unconscionable and illustrates how desperate the early practitioners were to find a cure for the hideous malady. How to kill the spirochete without killing the patient or causing damage as serious as that of the original illness was the challenge facing the first doctors treating syphilis. Oncologists today face a similar challenge with chemotherapy.
Mercury added diagnostic confusion when it produced symptoms that also mimicked other diseases or even the syphilis itself. How, for example, could a doctor distinguish the neurological damage of tertiary syphilis from the neurological damage of mercury poisoning? Or mercury paralysis from that of tabes? It was thought that mercury could cause deafness, but so could syphilis.
When the "little blue pill," also known as the small-dose gray powder pill, took the place of salve as a way of dispensing mercury in the middle of the eighteenth century, syphilitics had a treatment that was easily administered and allowed them to keep their mortifying secret. They no longer gleamed with a blue sheen or smelled like a fried potato. Mercury pills contained rosewater, honey, licorice, and conserve of rose petals. During many years of practice, Jonathan Hutchinson found "warm advocates" of treatment with the gray powder pill when the dose was kept continuous, frequent, and small. He recommended one grain of powder every six, four, three, or even two hours according to circumstances, and found that one pill four times a day was sufficient to clear up a chancre or a secondary eruption. He forbade fresh fruits and vegetables and fresh air during treatment. He specifically advised against treatment to the point of salivation except in extreme cases.
Hutchinson believed that those who had kept to long regimens of mercury were less apt than others to develop tertiary symptoms. Irregular and excessive mercurial treatment would jeopardize health, but there would be no loss to general health, Hutchinson promised, if mercury were employed in the way suggested over a long enough time. In cases where there were premonitory symptoms of late syphilis, Hutchinson even advocated a lifelong course. In the early stages, mercury destroyed the parasite, Hutchinson maintained, while in later years it was useful against inflammatory damage. John Stokes also testified to an extraordinary factor of safety combined with therapeutic effectiveness after treating some ten thousand patients who had taken hundreds of thousands of mercury rubs in his clinic.
If some thought that only mercury in abundance cured, the founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, proposed the opposite: to cure syphilis with infinitesimal doses. His student Hartmann wrote: "In that stage of the Syphilitic disease, where the Chancre or the Bubo is yet existing, one single dose of the best mercurial preparation is sufficient to effect a permanent cure of the internal disease, together with the Chancre in the space of a fortnight." As to the dose, "I was formerly in the habit of using successfully 1,2 or 3 globules of the billionth degree, i.e., the 6th centesimal dilution, for the cure of Syphilis. The higher the degrees, however, even the decillionth (the 30th) acts more thoroughly, more speedily and more mildly. If more than one dose should be required, which is seldom the case, the lower degrees may be then employed." [3] Hahnemann claimed that he had never seen syphilis breaking out in the system when the chancre had been cured by homeopathy, unless there had been a previous overuse of mercury.
It is fitting that the remedies for early syphilis potent enough to kill spirochetes deep in the tissues were the heavy metals, mercury and bismuth, and a poison, arsenic. The other major syphilis medication, potassium iodide, used more for resolution of the gummy tumors of late syphilis and for advanced syphilis of the heart, was more benign, although patients complained of depression. Martin of Lubeck first administered an iodide for syphilis in 1821, using a burned sponge for the treatment of venereal ulcers of the throat. Wallace of Dublin used potassium salt in 1834.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Burton Peter Thom, Syphilis (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1922), 202.
[3] N.K. Banerjee, Homeopathjy in the Treatment of Gonorrhea & Syphilis (Delhi: B. Jain, 1995), 158.
SOURCE: Deborah Hayden, POX: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis, Basic Books, (2003), pp. 45-8.
Great Britain is NOT a nation-state. The United Kingdom is the nation state. Great Britain is part of the United Kingdom.
[cr #2941] It is no consequence what the British call their own country. I used "Great Britain" as an example of a landmass - to wit - an island.
NO. YOU SAID GREAT BRITAIN EXISTS AS A NATION-STATE.
[cr #2865] "Great Britain" is to the United Kingdom as "America" is to the United States.
Great Britain is part of the United Kingdom.
America is not part of the United States. The United States is on the continent of North America and is part of America.
[cr #2890] You really aren't very smart, are you?
I only lived in the UK for five years. capitan_refugio, on the other hand, has consulted the "Merriam Webster Dictionary Online." It is obvious that CapnR is the expert. But I still want to know why they issue passports that read, "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland."
Ping to my #2958
Those are the words of David Horowitz, not Randall Robinson.
I have since obtained Robinson's book to fact-check Horowitz.
What did Randall Robinson actually say?
[p. 33] "It is well known that Thoma Jefferson had slaves. It is less well known that he had them chased and brought back when they escaped."
[p. 241] "Colonel Anderson never paid Jourdon Anderson what he owed him for his labor, nor had any of the other slaveholders (including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) who had stolen the labor of tens of Millions of blacks and by so doing, robbed the future of all who would descend from them"
[p. 49-50] "I thought of Sally Hemings, another light-skinned slave who was the half sister of Thomas Jefferson's wife, Martha. When Jefferson, forty-three, was serving in Paris in 1786 as ambassador to France, Sally, fourteen, was ordered by Jefferson to accompany his youngest dauthter, mary, on the long sea voyage. After returning to Monticello with Jefferson in 1789, Sally bore, while living on the estate, as least five children, several of whom were said to strikingly resemble Jefferson, and at least one of whom, Eston, was later conclusively proved through DNA comparisons to have been Jefferson's son."
[nc - I believe the DNA tests proved there to be a Jefferson descendent, but not conclusively a descendent of Thomas Jefferson. I believe Robinson is in error on this point. However, I believe that Sally Hemings knew who the father of her children was. I further believe that information was handed down through the generations. The Hemings know who their White Daddy was.]
[p. 50] "The nation's third president, author of the Declaration of Independence, and rutting statesman would pinion slave child Sally captive beneath him for a period that would run to thirty-eight years, never to set her free. Lubricious with heat by night, writing by day."
[p. 50] "In another place and time the middle-aged Jefferson's sexual plundering of Sally would have been described as rape. She had begun with him as a child, and even well into her majority she would have no choice in the matter. He was the father of American liberty, who had indeed taken plenty with a young woman he had selected from a pool of human property he once described in animal terms."
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