Berengaria

Joined

• started 68 topics
• posted 6,481 times   see topics posted on
• send a message

Posts by Berengaria

• 
  133

  Election Post-Mortem

  by Simon in

  1. social
  2. current

  i'm sure many people, republicans included, are shocked at the results of the 2016 presidential election.

  really, wtf!.

  the polls were wrong and although it's tempting to blame voter suppression and fbi interference, that would just avoid looking at the real issues for the loss.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Berengaria

  He lied with impunity and his ignorant supporters just lapped it up. Not to mention, the hate factor. His message was one of hate. Not a single positive.Trump said it all when he said "I love the poorly educated". That is what happened. Period.
  
• 
  166

  2nd amendment right ... where should it end?

  by Simon in

  1. social
  2. current

  one thing i like to do to test a theory is to take things to extremes or to their logical conclusion to see if the premises still hold.

  very often, a claim that seems to make sense at a superficial level falls apart when you start to stretch it a little.. so let's play a game.. suppose the 2nd amendment is valid, that some "well regulated militia" really is necessary to hold the government to account.. obviously when this was drafted the government had access to the weapons of it's day which would be muskets!

  so muskets all round.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Berengaria

  Here's an interesting article.........

  The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery

  Tuesday, 15 January 2013 By Thom Hartmann, Truthout

  In the beginning, there were the militias. In the South, they were also called the "slave patrols," and they were regulated by the states.

  In Georgia, for example, a generation before the American Revolution, laws were passed in 1755 and 1757 that required all plantation owners or their male white employees to be members of the Georgia Militia, and for those armed militia members to make monthly inspections of the quarters of all slaves in the state. The law defined which counties had which armed militias and even required armed militia members to keep a keen eye out for slaves who may be planning uprisings.

  As Dr. Carl T. Bogus wrote for the University of California Law Review in 1998, "The Georgia statutes required patrols, under the direction of commissioned militia officers, to examine every plantation each month and authorized them to search 'all Negro Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition' and to apprehend and give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds."

  It's the answer to the question raised by the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained when he asks, "Why don't they just rise up and kill the whites?" If the movie were real, it would have been a purely rhetorical question, because every southerner of the era knew the simple answer: Well regulated militias kept the slaves in chains.

  Sally E. Haden, in her book Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas, notes that, "Although eligibility for the Militia seemed all-encompassing, not every middle-aged white male Virginian or Carolinian became a slave patroller." There were exemptions so "men in critical professions" like judges, legislators and students could stay at their work. Generally, though, she documents how most southern men between ages 18 and 45 - including physicians and ministers - had to serve on slave patrol in the militia at one time or another in their lives.

  And slave rebellions were keeping the slave patrols busy.

  By the time the Constitution was ratified, hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the South. Blacks outnumbered whites in large areas, and the state militias were used to both prevent and to put down slave uprisings. As Dr. Bogus points out, slavery can only exist in the context of a police state, and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias.

  If the anti-slavery folks in the North had figured out a way to disband - or even move out of the state - those southern militias, the police state of the South would collapse. And, similarly, if the North were to invite into military service the slaves of the South, then they could be emancipated, which would collapse the institution of slavery, and the southern economic and social systems, altogether.

  These two possibilities worried southerners like James Monroe, George Mason (who owned over 300 slaves) and the southern Christian evangelical, Patrick Henry (who opposed slavery on principle, but also opposed freeing slaves).

  Their main concern was that Article 1, Section 8 of the newly-proposed Constitution, which gave the federal government the power to raise and supervise a militia, could also allow that federal militia to subsume their state militias and change them from slavery-enforcing institutions into something that could even, one day, free the slaves.

  This was not an imagined threat. Famously, 12 years earlier, during the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, Lord Dunsmore offered freedom to slaves who could escape and join his forces. "Liberty to Slaves" was stitched onto their jacket pocket flaps. During the War, British General Henry Clinton extended the practice in 1779. And numerous freed slaves served in General Washington's army.

  Thus, southern legislators and plantation owners lived not just in fear of their own slaves rebelling, but also in fear that their slaves could be emancipated through military service.

  At the ratifying convention in Virginia in 1788, Henry laid it out:

  "Let me here call your attention to that part [Article 1, Section 8 of the proposed Constitution] which gives the Congress power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States. . . .

  "By this, sir, you see that their control over our last and best defence is unlimited. If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither . . . this power being exclusively given to Congress. The power of appointing officers over men not disciplined or armed is ridiculous; so that this pretended little remains of power left to the states may, at the pleasure of Congress, be rendered nugatory."

  George Mason expressed a similar fear:

  "The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practised in other parts of the world before; that is, by rendering them useless, by disarming them. Under various pretences, Congress may neglect to provide for arming and disciplining the militia; and the state governments cannot do it, for Congress has an exclusive right to arm them [under this proposed Constitution] . . . "

  Henry then bluntly laid it out:

  "If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress . . . . Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution], can call forth the militia."

  And why was that such a concern for Patrick Henry?

  "In this state," he said, "there are two hundred and thirty-six thousand blacks, and there are many in several other states. But there are few or none in the Northern States. . . . May Congress not say, that every black man must fight? Did we not see a little of this last war? We were not so hard pushed as to make emancipation general; but acts of Assembly passed that every slave who would go to the army should be free."

  Patrick Henry was also convinced that the power over the various state militias given the federal government in the new Constitution could be used to strip the slave states of their slave-patrol militias. He knew the majority attitude in the North opposed slavery, and he worried they'd use the Constitution to free the South's slaves (a process then called "Manumission").

  The abolitionists would, he was certain, use that power (and, ironically, this is pretty much what Abraham Lincoln ended up doing):

  "[T]hey will search that paper [the Constitution], and see if they have power of manumission," said Henry. "And have they not, sir? Have they not power to provide for the general defence and welfare? May they not think that these call for the abolition of slavery? May they not pronounce all slaves free, and will they not be warranted by that power?

  "This is no ambiguous implication or logical deduction. The paper speaks to the point: they have the power in clear, unequivocal terms, and will clearly and certainly exercise it."

  He added: "This is a local matter, and I can see no propriety in subjecting it to Congress."

  James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution" and a slaveholder himself, basically called Patrick Henry paranoid.

  "I was struck with surprise," Madison said, "when I heard him express himself alarmed with respect to the emancipation of slaves. . . . There is no power to warrant it, in that paper [the Constitution]. If there be, I know it not."

  But the southern fears wouldn't go away.

  Patrick Henry even argued that southerner's "property" (slaves) would be lost under the new Constitution, and the resulting slave uprising would be less than peaceful or tranquil:

  "In this situation," Henry said to Madison, "I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and their peace and tranquility gone."

  So Madison, who had (at Jefferson's insistence) already begun to prepare proposed amendments to the Constitution, changed his first draft of one that addressed the militia issue to make sure it was unambiguous that the southern states could maintain their slave patrol militias.

  His first draft for what became the Second Amendment had said: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country [emphasis mine]: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person."

  But Henry, Mason and others wanted southern states to preserve their slave-patrol militias independent of the federal government. So Madison changed the word "country" to the word "state," and redrafted the Second Amendment into today's form:

  "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State [emphasis mine], the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

  Little did Madison realize that one day in the future weapons-manufacturing corporations, newly defined as "persons" by a Supreme Court some have called dysfunctional, would use his slave patrol militia amendment to protect their "right" to manufacture and sell assault weapons used to murder schoolchildren.

  http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery
• 
  66

  What Should the Minimum Wage Be (USA)?

  by Village Idiot in

  1. social
  2. current

  during the gop debates donald trump said that american’s “wages [are] too high” and later said “that having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country” (7:25)..

  do you agree and if so why?.

  my two cents on this issue; do the math.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Berengaria

  First, I apologize for not reading past page one. Second, why not include references when making assertions? Who simply accepts arguments without supporting data?
• 
  39

  JAMES WOODS is in the hospital (heart related)

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  james woods has been a long time regular on this discussion group in all of its incarnations.. he had some kind of "heart-attack" and has been in dallas' emergency ward for several days.

  he also has a blood clot doctors are working to break up.. 972-261-4412 is his cell number.. he was in a talking mood yesterday afternoon.. i bet it wouldn't kill him to get some well-wishes.. james goes back a long way as an ex-jw.

  he knows where the bodies are buried :).

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Berengaria

  Bump
• 
  39

  JAMES WOODS is in the hospital (heart related)

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  james woods has been a long time regular on this discussion group in all of its incarnations.. he had some kind of "heart-attack" and has been in dallas' emergency ward for several days.

  he also has a blood clot doctors are working to break up.. 972-261-4412 is his cell number.. he was in a talking mood yesterday afternoon.. i bet it wouldn't kill him to get some well-wishes.. james goes back a long way as an ex-jw.

  he knows where the bodies are buried :).

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Berengaria

  How is James doing?
• 
  238

  Another mass shooting, three or four hours ago.

  by James Mixon in

  1. social
  2. current

  san bernardino california.

  up to 12 people have been killed.. the center a private non-profit agency that assists people with developmental.

  disabilities.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Berengaria

  The fact is in this country the likelihood of being killed by a demented white Christian gun nut male are far higher than being killed by a demented muslim.

  True.
• 
  51

  Happy Veterans Day! (America)

  by freemindfade in

  1. social
  2. current

  people have varied and strong feelings about politics and wars, but you can't deny the courage a sacrifice of our veterans.

  too often they do not get the honor they deserve.

  in this country once they come home their sacrifice and heroism is too quickly forgotten.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Berengaria

  I would hope that Shadow is being sarcastic, with a point. Americans can be jingoistic to grossness. I appreciate Veterans who do their job no matter how horrific. Or pointless. But it's a good idea to remember that most military action is only for the benefit of a very few who have something to gain.

  "What a thing to say Shadow ? War is the biggest insanity that humans can commit " TS, I assume that is essentially what Shadow is saying?
• 
  48

  America Mass Shooting: 10/1/2015

  by adjusted knowledge in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  since this will be the norm in america, perhaps we should put a date on each of these topics.

  can't really put school mass shooting because too many to choose from.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Berengaria

  Speechless
• 
  28

  help me understand: My wife seems to be utterly detested by skelletons and skulls. Why?

  by goingthruthemotions in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  so, here i am again....asking more questions to help me understand my wife.

  she was brought up in the cult in the 70's and 80's.

  so i can only imagine what kind of indoctrination she deals with.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Berengaria

  Heh, I'll never forget not long after the Exorcist came out, they had the paperback on the counter at the grocery store. I absently picked it up to see what it was (I was maybe 12/13), and my mother nearly had a heart attack. Screamed and grabbed it out of my hand throwing it down on the counter like it was on fire.
• 
  52

  Helen Keller is not a hero

  by StopTheTears in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  few realize just how wicked some of the most revered people in history were.

  helen keeler (1880 to 1968) was a wolf in sheep's clothing, no hero.

  keller was a communist.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Berengaria

  Actually the OP is just another one of those folks that refuse to credit the authors

  http://jesus-is-savior.com/Wolves/helen_keller.htm

  Hey Slimboy!!! How ya been?