Posted on 06/12/2003 5:58:28 AM PDT by Aurelius
Only insofar as, in doing so, they also encounter my frequent adversaries and the vile servants of mammon that they quote.
Well that's the kind of politician I want to follow < /sarcasm>
As for following back on your commentary with 4CJ, your premise has always been that all Democrats are liars. If the Democrats you despise so much created the textbooks, and the 4th grade textbooks you read from praise lincoln as practically walking on water next to Jesus Christ (someone Ingersoll didn't believe in), ergo the textbooks lie about lincoln. However all they seem to do is praise him.
So is the deification unjustified? How do we know what we can and cannot take out of these books to argue your point (never mind there's not anything worth taking)? Or should we just ask you for what's acceptable and argue from that? That's it!! History 101 by Grand Old Partisan. Do you actually have a doctorate in English? Or is parroting Jimmy McPhernut good enough to take on all arguments?
The complete rejection of God is uncalled for even in response to the most hideously misguided of clergymen. Had Ingersoll truly objected to them, he needed only to direct his wrath upon them and point to the errors of their teachings. But Ingersoll did not do that. Instead he blamed God for what the worst of his professed adherents taught and then proceded to supplant the divine with a vile idolatry of the self.
So high taxes, centralized governments, and military suppression of civilian dissenters from the state is "Republican policy"?
You worship blindly at that government's feet and denounce those who object to it and the direction it is headed as "traitors." By contrast I prefer to employ my resources to changing those hideous policies that it currently practices. And unlike you, I will not supplant my worship of God with the state when the two conflict.
Honor is inherent in Southern tradition. Look up the origins of Memorial Day. Southerners offer respect and in some cases admiration for their fallen brothers across these United States.
It seems Southerners have respect for their comrades, but will not tolerate disrespect of their own from others. Why some conservatives attack the South (often here on FR) escapes me.
Because we're the last bastion of accepted bigotry. You'll get fired for making a racist comment such as Sherman or Grant did, however everybody laughs when they make fun of the hick
That's a great contradiction of many atheists. They express nothing but scorn, blame, and hatred against the very thing that they profess not to believe in. He does carry it too far at times, which is a fault of simplistic approach to the subject, but I rarely saw in Ingersoll's writing anything other than genuine belief and his foundations for it.
Genuine belief is not enough to vindicate an error. At most it only mitigates the circumstances. There are people who genuinely believe in abortion, welfare, affirmative action, racism, genocide, and any number of ill-conceived and hideous items. But that alone does not make them any less wrong in those particular beliefs.
I also saw in his works a love of life, freedom, for the American way of life without titles and nobility but opportunity to work one's way up.
What you are witnessing is loaded rhetoric. Look at Ingersoll's life and you will find the very opposite of a freedom-loving individual. You will find a person who devoted much of his political life pushing for higher taxes and redistributionary tariffs, interventionist government economic policy, and, of course, the political subjugation of the south. You will find an individual who surrounded himself with and participated in the careers of some of the most corrupt and dishonest individuals to ever hold political office in this country - the regular Bill Clintons of the day or, put differently, people who assembled their fortunes by defrauding honest hard working individuals, the public treasury that is collected from those individuals, or both.
Exactly where did I call him a "proto-marxist," Partisan? I called him corrupt, vile, wretched, a statist, an atheist, and an economic interventionist - and he was all of those things. But I don't believe I ever called him a proto-marxist.
"In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first." - Ambrose Bierce
The primary reason is that Merryman represents an opinion/ruling by a solitary member of the judiciary, aimed at the President (the President representing a co-equal branch of government with the Judicial Branch). Lincoln's ignoring the ruling falls into a class of acts called "Presidential Acts of Constitutional Interpretation." Lincoln was not the first President, nor the last, to ignor court rulings aimed at the Presidency. Besides Merryman, one could look at Andrew Jackson's refusal to enforce Worchester vs Georgia, 31 US 515 (1832). More recently, Richard Nixon refused to abide by lower court rulings, until threatened by the third branch of Government with impeachment.
There are several other factors that weigh against Merryman. (1) It has not been incorporated into statutory law. (2) It was not accepted by other branches of government. (3) It was the opinion of a lone judge and was unsupported by the US Supreme Court. (4) It was partisan in nature. (5) The act of ignoring the ruling has been supported by history and has itself been precedent setting. (6) It has been eclipsed by other rulings.
Unlike Ex parte Milligan (1866), which has established precedent, the Merryman case is usually only studied as part of history. Indeed, the case is recalled when discussing "the Merryman power of the Presidency." It has ramifications today. When a President commits US troops to conflict in an emergency, without having had time to consult the Congress, or obtain from the a declaration of War, the authority to enforce all aspects of US law is based on the principle of the President's power of constitutional interpretation.
I need to confess, that much of this post is not my own. I have been coached by a lawyer friend of mine who pulled out some of her old law school notes. I am also made aware of a recent book entitled the "Merryman Power and the Dilemma of Automous Executive Branch Interpretation." I'm going to try an find it, if it is still in print.
See my immediately preceeding post. When the Executive Branch refuses to enforce or comply with the ruling of an inferior court, that court may appeal to a higher court. Neither Taney, the offended judge, nor Merryman, appealed. Taney eventually sent his order to Lincon and Lincoln ignored it. Taney then published and distributed his decision to try and win in the court of public opinion. He lost there too. The people did not rise up to protest Lincoln's so-called "injustice," nor did the Congress try to codify the Taney decision. In fact, the Congress specifically supported Lincoln.
By way of history, why was Lt. Merryman arrested? Merryman was a member of the Maryland State militia. In early 1861, rioting occurred in Baltimore. Federal troops were committed to enforce the peace. In fact, the first Union deaths of the Civil War happened in that incident. The Army made an agreement with Baltimore and Maryland Civil authorities to remove the troops and "cool" the tense situation. Merryman led a group of fellow secessionist militia to scout and reconoiter the Federal troop withdrawal into Pennsylvania. He ordered a bridge burned so the Federals could not return to Baltimore the same way they had left. By taking up arms against the Federal government, Merryman earned his arrest and detainment.
Please cite the Article and Section where this "constitutional" duty exists.
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