Posted on 12/30/2001 1:25:13 AM PST by NoCurrentFreeperByThatName
And when's the last time a member of Congress even suggested a SCOTUS judge should face impeachment? What a flaming bunch of co-conspirators they are.
You ARE ignorant. The Constitution GRANTS NOTHING. Rights are not GRANTED by government, for what government gives government can take away. RIGHTS come from God and Nature. The Constitution we live under PROTECTS our rights from government. Please learn to read and think. Especially THINK! It pains me to see such ignorance and one of your fellow drug warriors says that such pain is a violation of my rights.
Pathetic.
Defending liberty means defending the right of a person to do things I may think are stupid or self-destructive. If I only defend those things that I think are correct and valid then I don't deserve liberty nor will I long have it.
If you believe that it is moral to put your neighbor in prison for doing something you don't like, not only are you an enemy of everything American, you are an enemy of Christianity.
Bizarre.
Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.
Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.
Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.
In vices, the very essence of crime - that is, the design to injure the person or property of another - is wanting.
It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another.
But no one ever practises a vice with any such criminal intent. He practices his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others.
Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property, and the corresponding and coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property.
For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.
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As you can see this debate has raged for quite sometime.
With the exception of the short-lived prohibition experiment, our government has tended to agree with the above, recently however that has not been the case.
Could it be that the prevalent vision of what life is about has changed in America?
Let me clarify my question;
If a man chooses to {insert vice here} after a long day of plowing behind his mule in the middle of the 100 acre farm that he owns, under what veil of morality can he be labeled a criminal?
He can't.
In order to make that leap we have to change the scenario, we must bring that man into a closer relationship to other individuals. We must bring him into the village.
Perhaps Hillery was right .... it takes a village.
So much depends on our perception of who we are. Are we free and independent men or are we members of the village?
As for me, I stand free.
The bible has withstood the test of time. It means what it says and says what it means, despite the continued attempts to change, ignore, or explain it away.
The Constitution, on the other hand, has been twisted, ignored, diluted and virtually discarded by the very people entrusted to enforce it (judges, legislators, and presidents). Thus, as much as I, like most of you, will always hold in high esteem and honor the words it contains and the men who gave it to us, history -- especially since 1861 -- has practically relegated it to the ash heap. When one compares its words to the present state of our union, it can easily be said that "it's not worth the paper it's written on." For proof of its virtual demise, one only has to read it, and then take a look at the Federal budget, the Federal bureaucracy, the "separation of church and state," the many ways and many times the right to keep and bear arms has been infringed, the seizing of States' powers by the Federal government, etc., etc.
First of all, freedom is a lot of things. You might think of our country as having a "freedom score", where out of a perfect 100 we are scoring about a 60. I have spoken with middle class Mexicans who think Mexico is far more free than the US. I have spoken with Dutch people who think they are far freer than the US.
Keep in mind that a freedom score of 100 does not mean you can commit a crime. There is no such thing as the freedom to commit a crime. But vices are not crimes. When we try and turn vices into crimes our "freedom score" goes down.
Do you really understand the meaning of freedom?
It's obvious that Roscoe has no conception of freedom, considering his latest Drivel McNugget answer to your question.
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