Posted on 02/12/2011 2:45:03 PM PST by pissant
Returning champion Rep. Ron Paul has once the 2011 CPAC straw poll with 30% of the vote, with only one other candidate scoring a double-digit percentage: former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Trailing far behind but worthy of note were also former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson and New Jersey Chris Christie, with the loudest potential candidates– Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum, barely receiving mention.
Paul, who received ebullient praise from the crowd with a speech slamming nearly every important social and neo-conservative policy point, is used to this sort of praise at CPAC, so his win is not particularly surprising. Plus, with the boycott from family values groups and the inclusion of more civil libertarian/diversity groups like GOProud, the population voting in the straw poll was necessarily tailored to this sort of outcome. Nonetheless, the inclusion of Gary Johnson in the top three– a sort of “Ron Paul light” who openly advocates for the legalization of marijuana– and tying with a diametric opposite in both style and substance like Gov. Christie raises some eyebrows.
(Excerpt) Read more at mediaite.com ...
Call off your dogs.
I don’t have any dogs.
It seems your opinion of FReepers is as high as your opinion of the value of the equal protection of the unalienable rights of all persons in this free republic.
So, what other unalienable rights do you think we should “leave up to the states”?
According to the founding documents, the federal government has or should have limited authority.
If you have a beef with abortion, take it up with your city, county, or state governments.
If not, what makes the supreme right, the right to live, so special in your view, that it's alienable if a state feels like alienating it?
And, how do you get around the clear, imperative demand of the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments?
"No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.""No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Then why do you think governments can take them away?
And why do you think any government can eschew its primary sworn duty, which is to protect the unalienable rights of the people?
That is another, larger problem and one to which you contribute.
BTW, it is "inalienable".
That’s not an answer. Which isn’t surprising, since there is no logical answer that supports your position. You don’t have a leg to stand on.
Well then, do you believe:
A. That life IS NOT a right (even though both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence clearly indicate that it is).
or
B. That federal, state and local governments have the authority to take away rights (because that is what giving governments that authority to legalize abortion amounts to.
If you have a beef with abortion, take it up with your city, county, or state governments.
I take you DO NOT "have a beef with abortion" and that you are too ignorant to understand that abortion became a federal matter on January 23, 1973.
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But that isn't what you first said. What you first said is this:
No, I agree with politicians who believe it is not a legitimate concern of theirs in their role as an elected official. 49 posted on February 13, 2011 9:01:26 AM EST by elkfersupper (Member of the Original Defiant Class)
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So, which is it?
If "rights" are not granted by the government, then where in the hell did the "right" to have an abortion come from? Is that an inalienable right? Hell, the Hippocratic Oath (5th Century BC) prohibits doctors from performing abortions and historically nearly every government on the planet until the last 50 years considered Abortion to be a serious crime.
If you have a beef with abortion, take it up with your city, county, or state governments.
WRONG! If you support abortion, then you are in violation of the very principle you espoused (i.e., that government exist to protect rights and not create them).
The right to life is unalienable. It does not come from Government, but from God.
Who in the hell are you to claim that anyone has the right to take the innocent life of another? On what grounds do you claim that abortion should be legal in any community or any state? Just where in the Hell (and I do mean HELL) did the "right" to abortion come from?
I've just given up on most of those things, having argued their necessity on this forum openly and with a number of you indvidually, and seen mostly statist responses.
Few, if any of you would join me in opposing any or all of these other things.
I have decided to pick my battles. I am 59 years old, have 2 children and 4 grandchildren. I will never live long enough to see Roe vs. Wade overturned.
Abortion is here. It has always been here and will always be here.
If you want to change that or any of these other things, you start with your school boards, then your cities, then go to your counties, then to your states, then to the federal government.
Unless you possess the Methuselah gene, that will never happen in any of our lifetimes.
Maybe if you were to focus your attentions on the issue of liberty at large, this one thing which offends you so much would go away.
Without respect for innocent human life, liberty cannot survive. Never.
Diminishment through opportunity is all we can hope for in our lifetimes.
But you said you don’t support diminishing it at the beginning of this exchange.
So now you’re hoping for what you don’t want?
That seems strange.
Err on the side of liberty, rather than statism.
You don’t even know what liberty is, apparently.
If state and local governments don’t have the power to resist federal mandates, where does that put the effort to nullify Obamacare?
Like most folks who hold your political positions, you conflate doing wrong with doing right. It’s very strange.
Which is explicitly the problem with libertarianism. You’ve forgotten, if you ever knew, that the basis for liberty, and for law, and for legitimate government, is moral.
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