Posted on 07/04/2008 4:27:27 PM PDT by Flavius
PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - Panama has ruled out hosting a U.S. military base to replace one in Ecuador which is being reclaimed by the Quito government, a senior Panamanian official said on Friday.
Panama -- along with Peru and Colombia -- had been tipped as a possible site to replace the Manta air base in western Ecuador, a key strategic asset in Washington's campaign to stop Latin American cocaine from reaching the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
For like, the 3rd time, please enlighten me. Please explain these moral underpinnings of the constitution that support your right to tell everyone else what to do.
Sure I'm familiar with the motivation. Let's accept as a premise that the men were all moral, Christian men. They had the opportunity to write a constitution with the clear ability for other moral Christian men to tell everyone else to do, yet they didn't. Instead they imposed strict limits on what the Fed Gov't could do, and delegated the rest to the states or the people.
Your view of the Constitution is very similar, actually to Stephen Breyer's, and is an anathema to freedom. Breyer's basic point is that the founders intended to create a great country, and the Constitution was a vehicle for that. Therefore, he feels free to rule in whatever way makes the country better, as making the country better is what the founders would have wanted.
Your view is that the founders wanted a moral and Christian nation, therefore anything that promotes that is constitutional.
Both interpretations are wrong.
Both products of your fevered imagination.
Case in point. You say:
Your view is that the founders wanted a moral and Christian nation, therefore anything (emphasis added) that promotes that is constitutional.
Tell me, since you know me so well, what exactly do I believe on the issue of church and state?
The constitution has no prohibition against bank robbery so I guess saying we should take a moral stand against it flies in the face of the constitution?
In all of these threads, I have never advocated for taking a moral stand based on the Constitution!!!
You people (to borrow a phrase) get in a hyper constitutional frenzy whenever someone suggests acting on a moral standard. The constitution is to protect us generally and keep government off our back. It is not, Mr Ron Jeremy, a license for morally ambivalent lifestyle. The problem is not me, sir, it's your conscience.
I’ve asked you numerous times now to back up your original assertions. You refuse to do so. Therefore there is nothing more to talk about. When you back up your original assertions, I will answer your questions to me.
Until then, I will assume that you are just a loudmouth who makes grand pronouncements that he is incapable of backing up.
Back to your bong, rottndog.
Sorry...never taken an illegal drug in my life. Never will.
Next insult?
My original assertion was that as a society, we should moral stand.
And the backup is: Proverbs 14:34
34 Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.
(You might want to pick a better hero. I'm pretty sure RJ is going to hit the fires of hell penis first.)
PEOPLE LIKE YOU BELONG IN PRISON!
“You’re right. I think we ought to give in and allow every thing that destroys peoples’ souls; drugs, prostitution, pornography, whatever vice”
The sarcasm dripping from your reply was void of wine/beer and spirits. Don’t forget those soul crushing evil vices.
Of course you knew that, you are just not a polite person. It's amazing how rude people who routinely cite the bible for authority can be.
Many of the things we see as vices, really aren’t.
For example, all the evils associated with prostitution shouldn’t be. Sex, even ill advised, is legal, in fact, it is vital for our society. Giving people money, even for stupid reasons, is also legal, and it would be disastrous if it wasn’t. So why should combining the two be illegal?
Instead, the question should not be whether prostitution should be allowed, but more to the point, why is it so popular? Implied is that our society needs to develop social arenas for people to develop healthier relationships, and starting at a very young age.
In turn, this would also address much of the pornography problem, and why it is so popular. People in healthy and loving relationships have little interest at all in pornography, or they are kidding themselves. Many adults today have no intimate interface with the opposite sex, so they are filled with ridiculous assumptions, notions, superstitions, and worse. This makes life terribly hard.
But in both cases, these are not problems for government to solve, but for citizens to innovate solutions for themselves and others.
In the case of drugs of all varieties, making them illegal is again based on flawed rationales. Up until the age of about 21, drugs shouldn’t just be illegal, they should be *very* illegal, as well as the punishments for providing drugs to children.
This is because until about age 21, people do not yet have a fully mature brain. An immature brain is susceptible to addictions, and each addiction opens the door to other addictions. But after age 21, this is no longer a problem.
That is, if a child makes it to 21 without any addictive drugs, including caffeine, nicotine, pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and illegal drugs, it is much harder for them as adults to develop an addiction, and much easier for them to break out of it. So if society adopted a strict attitude for children, many of its adult problems would be strongly lessened.
In other words, if only adults could smoke, drink, do drugs, etc., and children could not, few adults *would* smoke, or drink, or do drugs. The market would collapse, and society would be much better for it.
Once again, government does not help the situation, by trying to help the situation. Instead, there is a vast amount of collateral damage.
Since the days of Prohibition, there has been a steady erosion of rights, down to the quick, as pragmatists discard or find ways around them. The injunction was unheard of until juries refused to convict rum runners, then were used to evade jury trials, and punish people who violated ad hoc laws issued from the bench.
Perhaps the most horrific abuse was the RICO Act. In the last few years before it was modestly reformed, some $300M in property was confiscated every year, often with no concurrent arrest or trial. Minuscule amounts of drugs, even not associated with property owners, were used as an excuse to confiscate tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in property. The minimum price to recover your goods in Superior Court was estimated to be $200K.
That was not just bad, that was insane. But it was just the apex of decades of erosion. All because government wanted to interfere in something the constitution gave it no authority to do.
Well, of course I did. You're the one who told me in you own words
"while I guess I am not familiar with the moral underpinning of the constitution.."
you are just not a polite person.
You have also said, ”I will assume that you are just a loudmouth” and ”mosts(sic) of the holier than thou crowd”. You have no room for commentary on politeness or rudeness.
You were being rude. I noticed that. I also clicked on your posts and noticed that you are rude to everybody.
I then remarked that, well, I will assume you are rude. I also remarked that I find it interesting that people who cite the bible often are very rude.
None of that makes me a rude person.
I'll bet your neighbors and coworkers think you are a great guy. /sarcasm
I think a more pertinent question is whether or not criminalizing these vices reduces their impact on the aforementioned souls.
Having given it much thought and study, I'm quite sure you can't prove it has. I am sensitive to the notion that "legalizing" an activity gives it the imprimatur of our society. Yet I can't help wonder if the reverse is true.
I look forward to your thoughts.
And yet, he won't be.
So your wailings do nothing but betray your own impotence.
As a "society?" Or as a "government?"
The two are not the same, unless you're a socialist.
Pornogrophy is legal but very detrimental, drugs even more so.
Actually, it's my belief that pornography is much more harmful than the use of intoxicants, but they both have negative impacts on our culture, to one degree or another.
No, but we do need to keep them at bay as much as possible.
Is your outrage enough? Is it working?
You see, that's the cool thing about the USA; we don't tell citizens what the "proper morality" should be. We have here, in the good ol USA, FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE (look it up).
What we have is a government that is supposed TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF ITS CITIZENS, INCLUDING FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE.
As long as one's moral code, as enacted, doesn't infringe on the rights of another, it is allowable, even if it is distateful to someone else. Not being offended is not a right that existed until moral authoritarians, utopian socialists foremost among them, started feeling their oats.
Please don't presume to be able to tell me what my moral code should be, no matter how many others you can get riled up. If you're not smart enough to distinguish between morality and legality, please leave.
Oh really, how do you manage that, specifically? Examples would be nice, LOL.
I didn't, if you're offended, it's your fault.
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