Our founders indeed would have liked to have you around - they too
would be happy to sacrifice your life to preserve their way of life.
While soldiers marched barefoot, their blood staining the ice and
snow, the richest man in the colonies, General George Washington,
lacked for nothing. He and the other founders were extremely happy
their were people that would give their lives so that they could
continue their lofty musings on freedom and dignity, while their
slaves generated income.
By the way, don't get too stirred up by Patrick Henry's lofty
rhetoric. I quote from a New Yorker review of Ralph Keyes' excellent
"Nice Guys Finish Seventh": " The Patrick Henry who lives in our
heads and hearts is the man who said "Give me liberty, or give me
death!" Apparently, the line was cooked up by his biographer William
Wirt, a notorious embellisher, who also invented Henry's other
familiar quotation, "If this be treason, make the most of it!" But a
Patrick Henry who never said "Give me liberty, or give me death!" or
"If this be treason, make the most of it!," a Patrick Henry without a
death wish, is just not someone we know or care about. "
It's amusing that people that get so worked up over "Give me liberty,
or give me death!" never seem to notice the lines that came
immediately before it in Wirt's phonied up speech: "Is life so dear,
or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and
slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!"
The success of the new nation they formed was built on the labor of
slaves, of course. I wonder if that vexed the real Patrick Henry in
the slightest? Or even the fictional one - I wonder, did Wirt have the
governor of the slave labor reliant state of Virginia by day, donning
cape and cowl at night, escorting runaway slaves across the Canadian
border? "Give me liberty, or give me death!" - sounds like something
Superman or Batman would say, doesn't it?
There is an interesting reference to the real Patrick Henry in an
excellent article
(http://www.citizens
) about the founding fathers use of a false Islamic threat in order
to frighten the population into allowing them to militarize the
country:
[Jefferson's] defense of the Bill of Attainder was perhaps the
inspiration, two centuries later, for both the Clinton and the Bush
Administrations to recapture its spirit in the course of their own
Wars on Terror when they applied regulations written to permit the
freezing of assets of targeted states to "organizations" and to
individuals who "supported" those same groups. Interestingly, too,
Jefferson's Virginia was also the first place in the U.S. to pass an
act empowering the governor to expel "suspicious aliens" in the event
of war. When in 1785 Algeria declared war against the U.S., amid panic
over a pending invasion and reports of "an infinite number" of U.S.
ships captured (when not a single one had been), then-Governor Patrick
Henry invoked that law against sleeper cells. After the militia
rounded up two Algerian men and one woman, he decided (much like John
Ashcroft more than 200 years later) to give them neither liberty nor
death but just to deport them.
On 5/5/07, Larry Wilson <larry@larry-
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I'm with the NRA on this one.
>
> How many people have been killed, in the US, by terrorists with guns?
>
> Since they can classify protesters as terrorists under Provision 802 of the Patriot Act, this is just a back-door to stripping guns from dissidents.
>
> A terrorist with a gun might kill, let's say, 50 people. Vs our rights? You have to decide for yourself, but if I was one of the 50 that knew that, by dying, I could preserve our rights, I'd gladly do it. Our founders felt the same.
>
>
> On 5/5/07, Kathleen Bushman <sassykathy46@
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Terrorists have rights, too http://www2. boomantribune.
> >
> >
> >
> > by Steven D
> > Sat May 5th, 2007 at 01:37:26 PM EST
> > Now, don't get me wrong. In America, terrorists don't have the right to prohibit cruel and unusual punishment from being inflicted upon them (i.e., torture) by the government. They don't have the right to a speedy trial, the right to a jury of their peers or the right to face their accusers if and when a trial is held. They sure don't have the right to apply for a writ of habeas corpus to protest their imprisonment. And by God, if we think someone even looks, sounds or has a name the least bit similar to that of a terrorist, they sure don't have the right to board an airplane.
> >
> > But one right they do have, the most precious right under our Constitution, is the right to go buy guns. You think that's crazy? Well, go tell it to the National Rifle Association, bucko!
> >
> >
> > WASHINGTON -- The National Rifle Association is urging the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill that would prohibit suspected terrorists from buying firearms. [...]
> >
> > In a letter this week to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Chris Cox, NRA executive director, said the bill, offered last week by Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat , "would allow arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights based on mere 'suspicions' of a terrorist threat."
> >
> > "As many of our friends in law enforcement have rightly pointed out, the word 'suspect' has no legal meaning, particularly when it comes to denying constitutional liberties," Cox wrote.
> >
> > And you thought conservatives were all authoritarians, manly men who love other, more manly men , telling them what to think and what to believe and when they can or cannot exercise their freedoms. Ha! You sure were wrong about that. Because there is no more fundamental, God-given right in America than the right to go buy the arms and ammunition of your choice free from any interference by Big Guvmint. And it doesn't matter what you intend to do with those weapons, either. That's none of the gaddammed FBI's, CIA's, DEA's or local police officers' business.
> >
> > Because guns don't kill people, people kill people. And if we stop selling guns to terror suspects we're on the slippery slope to a world dominated by secretive and sinister international organizations like -- the United Nations, for God's sake! Better a thousand terrorists buy an arsenal of weaponry to murder tens of thousands of peace loving Americans, than one innocent person be deprived of his right to obliterate a squirrel at 300 yards with his high powered hunting rifle, or be deprived of destroying junk automobiles with his .50 caliber machine gun. And drink beer while doing it (don't forget the beer).
> >
> > So here's to you, National Rifle Association, for preserving my one essential liberty, no matter who gets hurt because of it. You are true-hearted, red blooded Americans and Super-duper Patriots all! Whatever would our country do without you?
> >
> > (Bush) Plan could give loophole to terrorists (as refugees)
> > Ching (1000+ posts) Sat May-05-07 03:27 PM
> > Original message
> >
> > http://www. democraticundergrou
> >
> >
> > Source: AP
> >
> > WASHINGTON -
> >
> > Today's foreign terrorists could become tomorrow's U.S. refugees if the Bush administration gets its way.
> > The intent is to grant refugee status to rebels who have fought repressive governments or advanced U.S. foreign policy objectives, particularly in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
> >
> >
> > They would cover any foreigner who has engaged in terrorist activity, said Gonzalo Gallegos, a State Department spokesman.
> >
> > "This amendment thus provides the executive branch with the authority to admit aliens who have engaged in armed action against oppressive regimes or in furtherance of U.S. foreign policy or both," he said
> >
> >
> > Among those whom the changes are intended to help are members of Burmese rebel groups such as the Karen National Union and Chin National Front; hill tribes in Vietnam and Laos; the now-defunct, anti-Castro Cuban Alzado insurgency; Ethiopia's Oromo Liberation Front; and southern Sudan's ex-rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement.
> >
> > Without the broad language covering all terrorist groups, supporters of the changes fear that former child soldiers, who may have been forced to fight, never would become eligible for admission to the U.S. Nor would medics or nurses who treated terrorists. [ While I certainly would be in favor of certain exemptions, I certainly do not trust BushCo to decide which group should qualify for an exemption.)
> >
> > Read more: http://news.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
> > inevitable." - JFK
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Larry
>
> "Ashcroft supermoralistically draped the body of the department's statue of justice to hide her contours; Gonzales amoralistically tore off her blindfold." Ronald Goldfarb
>
> Impeachment - now, more than ever!
>
>
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