Certainly you are aware that you are mixing two documents.

The tenth amendment sums up my position.

Your comments regarding the abolishment of slavery are completely uncalled for. Neither myself nor Prager had taken that position, as you very well know.

Slavery has existed for thousands of years and indeed is still happening in Africa. This country has paid a huge price for participating that age old practice.

It’s really astonishing what some people will say when they’re desperate.

Never a perfect union, but always a MORE perfect union.

The trolls are actually arguing against the Constitution and Declaration of Independence and in favor of inequality.

Have you no shame? At long last, have you no sense of decency?

After November 4th, you tools really need to go to a nice quiet spot and re-evaluate your lives and your world views. Do it for the team.

Fifth Amendment: “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” See anything in there about the “pursuit of happiness”?

The Constitution is a written and defined limitation of the powers of the Government.

That’s not all it is, despite what you may wish. See, e.g., the Seventh Amendment, which gives a positive right of jury trial in CIVIL suits over amounts more than $20. How does that define and limit the powers of the Government? How does the Thirteenth Amendment define and limit the powers of the Government, when it forbids slavery (which the government did not practice — that is, the government did not hold slaves — though it did legislate and execute laws to support slaveowners’ rights)?

I could keep going, but the point has been made: the Constitution isn’t solely about defining and limiting the power of government, despite your and Prager’s regrets about the 13th Amendment.

Affirmative action is the law you moron and its been challenged in court. Certainly formulas for affirmative action have been struck down. Others upheld as constitutional.

It’s almost like you have no idea what you’re talking about.

And the thinking of paranoid, reactionary idiots leads to “welfare queens and liberals want to take MY plasma TV and car.” Which is, of course, why you’re not voting for a black man. Why it’d be just like handing your TV and car to lazy (black) people.

Listen, Amused, you live in a fantasy world of right wing rhetoric. Providing the basic means of survival, like fucking FOOD! for god sakes, doesn’t lead to people demanding filet mignon every meal. It leads to people who have a basic chance to improve themselves and their situation and a reasonable expectation that they will be able to do that because they aren’t fucking starving.

Jesus christ.

First up
PG

The Constitution is my lodestar for American values. It keeps it real: the government isn’t here to protect our “pursuit of happiness,” but rather our life, liberty and property.

You seem to misunderstand your lodestar of American Values.
The Constitution is a written and defined limitation of the powers of the Government. We protect ourselves from the government.

Next up Fafaroo

“Another policy that comes under attack under these terms is affirmative action. But affirmative action is precisely designed to promote equal opportunity. It does not guarantee “equal results.” LOL, nor does it provide for equal protection under the law.

“In the preamble of the Constitution states that one of its purposes is to “promote the general welfare.” I’m of the mind that it isn’t such a stretch to argue that a basic social safety net falls within that goal. Promoting the general welfare through a social safety net designed to maintain a substance level of food, shelter and health is hardly an attempt to create a system economic equality.”

Despite the mangled syntax if the general welfare mentioned in the Constitution is a right then it becomes a duty for the citizens to be provided with such. A right to meals and a place to live? Why not a right to a big screen plasma TV or a fancy new car? This is the thinking process of members of a welfare state. While we’re at it let’s force a minority of the citizens to pay for these new “rights” for everyone else.

Strangely that is Obama’s very simple plan, to pander to the desires of a majority by taking the money from a minority and buying votes with it. Socialism, an ever bigger welfare state providing more and more of the needs and services desired by a people once free.

http://thepoorman.net/2008/10/29/step-1-forcefully-apply-head-to-desk-step-2-repeat-until-election-is-over/

Thomas Jefferson, 1784:

The foundation on which all our constitution are built is the natural equality of man [...]

Thomas Jefferson, 1809:

The best principles of our republic secure to all its citizens a perfect equality of rights.

Thomas Paine, 1794:

I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

Alexis de Tocqueville, (apocryphal?):

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963:

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream – a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man’s skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.

Abraham Lincoln, 1863:

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Samuel Adams, 1776:

Were the talents and virtues which heaven has bestowed on men given merely to make them more obedient drudges, to be sacrificed to the follies and ambition of a few? Or, were not the noble gifts so equally dispensed with a divine purpose and law, that they should as nearly as possible be equally exerted, and the blessings of Providence be equally enjoyed by all?

Albert Einstein, 1933:

As long as I have any choice, I will stay only in a country where political liberty, toleration, and equality of all citizens before the law are the rule.

Whatever, those guys were probably totally gay. But what about Dennis’ favorite equality-eschewing document, the very unEuropean Declaration of Independence, 1776?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP_International_F2.pdf

You were saying??

It should piss people off, because it is a fucking lie.

Now go away, you are useless in this debate.

The European models he cited pushed for equality of RESULTS.

We are promised the right to PURSUE happiness, not ACHIEVE it.

It’s still up to us to work for what we want.”

What Prager actually said: “Equality, which is the primary value of the left, is a European value, not an American value.”

Twins of stupidity.

Here’s what the DOI says: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

Here’s what the Constitution says: “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Yeah, the founders of America hated equality so much that they enshrined in the DOI and later into the Constitution.

And he owned slaves. So you got’s yer trolling and hypocrisy in one neat package.

(Hmmm. Thomas Jefferson. “TJ”. Jay Tea. Coincidence?)

The European models he cited pushed for equality of RESULTS.

Except Prager didn’t actually say any of that, Mr. Tea. What he said was:

The French Revolution is not the American Revolution. The French Revolution said Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. The American Revolution said Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

You know, you show a much greater willingness to “interpret” when the speaker is a conservative. Why is that?