Vanity: Is protecting Constitution no longer goal of Freerepublic.com?

Me

[libertylady]

I have recently noticed that the home page of Free Republic no longer has the icon at the top which states that one of the goals of this website is protecting our freedom and our Constitution. Can anyone help me shed some light on this? I would hope that this is a temporary change and not an official declaration made by the staff of this website. With the lack of articles and lack of alarm posted on this website about the Draconian Patriot 1 and Patriot Act 2 I have began to wonder about whether this site really does support the Constitution.

[Havoc]

I'm amazed that the same conservatives who rant and grunt about how it's not the government's job to protect you from yourself suddenly slip on the jackboots when it comes to forcing people not to use drugs. How does someone you're not aware exists using marijuana or cocaine harm you, when that same person drinking beer, owning a gun or eating fatty food is no threat?

Sorry, I said nothing about the government protecting me from myself. I'm interested in them protecting my family from pushers and protecting American families in general from the destructiveness brought into the home by mind and attitude altering drugs. That is the realm of the government. It's first job is the protection of it's citezenry from any influence that can damage it. Drugs destroy family and community. Alcohol is not on the same level. My first stepdad was an alcoholic, and was never arrested for drunk driving. Oddly enough, all the people I've known so far that have been arrested for drunk driving have been potheads. Gee, wonder what the connection is. As is the usual with you guys, you only want to argue with what you think sounds good and tap dance around the rest. One wonders if you've thought about this honestly or are just picking and choosing among the various bad arguments you've heard and regurgitating them. That you can't see the National security and public interest in criminalization of insipid things is unbelieveable if you've really thought about it. Drugs don't destroy families because they are illegal, they destroy families because they are addictive and used.

I lived for 3 years next door to someone who couldn't go two days without pot. She was in and out of jail, in and out of trouble. She started on pot, moved on to other things and ended up messing up her beautiful face after a bad night out with cocaine. I find these arguments about how harmless drugs are to be rather insulting. It's insulting that you guys prey upon people who don't know any better. It's more insulting that you bring this stuff to someone who does know better. I guess you would prefer to say that Pot is "Habit forming" so you can get around the technical term "addictive". There are three breeds of cigarrette smokers - Those who do it and can take it or leave it, those who have a habit, and those who are addicted to the nicotene. Can you tell me which is harder to break - habit or addiction. I can - there is no difference other than the severity of withdrawl. That's practical experience talking. Oops - not supposed to discuss such things. Suppose I should stop making sense so your arguments have a chance attempt at fooling someone.. nah.

[Steve Van Doorn]

” I didn't make a generalization about You're character specifically. I made a statement from experience about the character of the crowd that is largely behind this movement. .”

Again you are making assumptions based on what?

Of course there are pro-drug nuts that want their drugs cheaper so they would agree with me. But that is the same argument as the Democrats use saying, “All Republicans are racists because the KKK are mostly republicans. The KKK are Republicans because they agree mostly with them, thus all Republicans are Racists.” It is a dishonest argument, it is a generalization that should not be used in an honest debate.

[Trailerpark Badass]

Let me do a Boolean logic transformation on this phrase:

anti-"War On Drugs" ==> "pro-drugs"

You obviously failed Logic 101.

[Quix]

THOUGHT SO.

BUT STILL VERY, VERY GLAD TO SEE IT STATED AGAIN.

[Havoc]

This has to be the dumbest thing I have seen on FR in a while, What do you think alcohol is?

Right, we're back to trying to persuade people that alcohol is no different than cocaine, meth, pot or heroine et al. That isn't the dumbest thing being said here; but, the entire package is the most moronic thing I've seen come from self proclaimed "conservatives" on this site. As I've said to others. These arguments may work on the naive and the ignorant; but, don't try to sell this crap to me. I've grown up with an alcoholic stepdad and been surrounded by drug users. My stepdad was a pussycat. If the argument about alcohol was fair, ya'll wouldn't have to stoop to the absurdity of trying to compare pot to Coffee. My butt hairs have more iq points than that argument.

[Lancey Howard]

...Cultural Jihad. He is a legitimate member of this site and a Conservative American. He isnt a prefabricated arguement cut & paste artist or a person given to warped logic.

I agree 100%.

[Havoc]

I'm not making assumptions, pal. If you bothered to read for comprehension instead of for a point to pick at, you'd note that I'm speaking from experience. Long experience.
I went out to my favorite local bar one night some 7 years ago and played my rotation on the pool tables for my sponsor. After breaking down my McDermott cue stick, I went out and had breakfast with a few associates and found myself sitting across from a man I'd heard stories about for years and didn't know who he was.

Two years later, I picked up my local paper to find his face on the front page. Felony record - busted with a steamer trunk full of controlled substances and a butload of weapons including full auto assault rifles. He was such a nice guy at breakfast. Quiet. Kindof has that Goodfellas charm, he just happened to have a spread in Kentucky where he farmed pot and shipped it around the state by the truckloads to keep up with the demand of his Ahem "unaddicted" habitual customers. I'm sure he'd appreciate his drugs being cheaper. I'm sure he'd appreciate you legalizing his product so he wouldn't have to pay an army to gaurd his fields in Kentucky. I'm sure he'd also appreciate not being in jail so he could sell his product at will and destroy families with it in the thousands.

Does personal responsibility matter. Of course. But that doesn't in any way release our representatives from protecting the rest of us from addicts and "habitual" users and abusers. Dishonest is trying to ignore all these things and pretend this is a harmless little thing that affects no one and that in a perfect utopian world that would exist if it was just legal, all the effects on the persons would magically change because it would be legal for these people to use what's destroying them, their families and their neighborhoods. See, most of the damage does not come from the murderers that peddle the crap - it comes from the people who actually use the stuff and let it run their lives. But in your utopia, that stuff just doesn't happen - I keep forgetting. We have to gloss over reality and paint the rosey world that will be if the government would just see it your way. Oh, gee, how marvelous.

[Havoc]

Uh, no. Look at the constitution and tell me what the job of the government is. Their Number one role is the protection of the populace. Number one. That doesn't make us a dictatorship; but, it's a nice argument you guys steal from the liberals trying to convince people that conservatives are orwellian for making people abide by the law.

So no drunks have ever been arrested for drunk driving, but marijuana puts alcohol in your system? And regardless of whether a substance is legal or not, it is very illegal to operate a vehicle in an unsafe manner

Oh, gee. Woe is me. Not the twist my words into something I didn't say and try to defeat the strawman tactic. Nooooooooooo. (/sarcasm)

No one is saying drugs are harmless, just that a) things that are perfectly legal are more dangerous than those that are not and b) it's not the government's job to stop you from harming yourself, unless you live in the Soviet Union

Things that are legal can be dangerous. I hope you didn't have to get a degree to figure that out. I could have saved you the time, stress and money and pointed that out readily. Problem is, the circumstances in which they would be dangerous are largely ACCIDENTS. Drugs being dangerous to the people round about the users and the user's themselves is not accidental, it goes with the territory. That's falacy number one.

Your point b is falacy number two. For the second, third, fourth or how many ever times it's been said and ya'll have read right on past it, I didn't say it's the governments job to protect you from you. What I did say is that it is the governments job to protect me from morons out there that do drugs and may wreck my life with their behaviors derived from that abuse. It's not my job to try to understand and coddle everyone that wants to destroy their lives and the lives of people around them by the behavior they espouse because they are addicted to drugs or habitually using them. If people want to "escape" reality with illegal drugs, they can escape to Jail away from the insippid hassle of society and try to be understood there. Or, they can act like human beings, get with the program and learn something in life instead of caving to drugs and wandering off into a good time of escapism, self pity or what have you. In any case, I don't have to put up with it. I don't mind helping people that want help. But poor people won't suddenly become wealthy enough to stop stealing to support their habbits just because the drug has been legalized, not that this would be an only concern - it's just one of many impacts drugs have which you would have us believe will just magically dissappear into your utopian dreamstate with legalization..

Tetrahydrocannibol is not chemically addictive (although smoking marijuana, like gambling or washing your hands, can be psychologically addictive) like nicotine is. If that's your logic when do you propose we criminalize tobacco?

Not hardly. When Tobacco starts having the same effects as THC, you come see me. Till then, there's no good reason to legislate against nicotene. Nor is there any honest comparison. Rather it is a highly dishonest comparison that you guys milk for how it appears on it's face. Tobacco is addictive therefore it must be bad. That isn't the reason Pot is illegal, now is it. Nope. There are a pile of factors that go into making pot illegal. So start comparing apples with apples. Even alcohol doesn't have the effect that pot has - no comparison. Sorry. The problem you have is there is no comparison that is honest so you have to rely on dishonest arguments to make the case you don't have to begin with. IE Pull the other one.

[Havoc]

Well, your father is far different from most alcoholics, who tend to be violent. And I have yet to hear you claim that the "potheads" you were surrrounded by were.

Oh, boy. You sure you don't smoke that stuff. Cause your attention span is short enough to tell me otherwise. That or you have a problem following a conversation. Or perhaps you're being purposely dishonest in your debating. Hmm. Which could it be. You should go back and read for comprehension - just see what you've missed in what I've said here tonight so far. Might be an eye opener.

You're essentially laying out the liberal argument that tobacco and red meat should be banned because we outlaw other unhealthy products, regardless of the degree of danger.

Oh, no. No you don't. If you want to pile on yet another dishonest ploy from your talking points you aren't going to do it by putting words in my mouth. I didn't say anything about illegalizing drugs for being unhealthy, let alone just for being unhealthy. You can stuff that right back where you got it from. It's dishonest the way you dragged it in and the argument itself is dishonest. You guys are shameless. But then I should expect that.

And I must admit it's been a while since I've seen "butt hairs" used in a discussion.

When the intelligence level of your arguments calls for an eye opener, I'm glad to provide one. When you get an argument that rises above the iq level of a butt hair and above the honesty level of a pile of little white lies, we might actually reach the level of a responsible adult conversation. You can help with that. But do you have the unburnt capacity to imagine how..

[Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy]

Welcome to unFree Republic, where no criticism of Israel or the Bush administration is tolerated. Don't you know there's a war on? No, sorry, we're too busy rounding up hate speech criminals to observe such Constitutional niceties as actually declaring war. Savage says anyone who opposes the war is flirting with Sedition! Round them up! What, why are you acting as though Clinton were still in the White House? There's absolutely no danger to the Constitution or our rights and liberties. And if you think otherwise, you're a terrorist working for a foreign power, and we are going to kidnap you in the middle of the night, revoke your citizenship, and ship you off to anonymous concentration camps, or to foreign countries that don't trouble themselves unduly over concerns for "human rights". It's a wonderful time time to be a jackbooted authoritarian! Huzzah!

[Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy]

We will have no constitution to protect if we allow our enemies to destroy us.

We will have no Constitution worthy of the name if we allow people to "defend" it in the manner they propose in recent legislation. The reality is that the "terrorists" have no power to do 1/1000th the damage which is currently being done by the overzealous and lunatic "war on (fill in the blank)" orchestrated by humorless and dangerous authoritarians who wouldn't know a Constitutional issue if it bit them in the @ss.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

**snore**

[Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy]

**snore**

That's pretty funny coming from someone called Chancellor Palpatine. I guess you have an innate sympathy for those attempting to subvert constitutional republics, yes? Can't wait until the jackboot is on the other foot, hmmm?

[arete]

Sometimes I wonder if FR is beginning to morph from a truly conservative website to a wholly-owned subsidiary of the RNC.

Ever since GW took office, FR has gone straight down hill. It is party line all the way. Just threw convervatism out the window. If anyone criticises GW for his big government expansion and trashing of the constitution, they are told to go to DU with the other socialists and lefties. Anyone who doesn't parrot the party line is sent packing. Sad.

Richard W.

[A CA Guy]

Maybe the WOD issue is a 10 in your book, but to make that your banner in the name of the Constitution rates about a 1 or 2 on a scale of 100. There are far more important issues not connected to vice of importance I think.

I would think mostly only illegal-drug-users would want to talk over and over again about this legalizing drugs issue.

There is more to life than illegal drugs or finding a way to use them in while dragging the Constitution over that issue.
I find that offensive just as that so-called-art where a crucifix was placed in urine was.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Yeah, right. Whatever. You under 1% ideologues have been trying to define the rest of us for years, but guess what? We're not going to let you anymore.

Enjoy perpetual irrelevance.

[VaBthang4]

I repeat, nevertheless...

[Cultural Jihad]

If the only objective is to shrink the government, then that would explain Harry Browne's capitulation to terrorists. Once they have destroyed our nation's institutions of self-governance, Harry and his lackeys can claim victory, supposedly.