Lincoln
 

http://alincolnblog.blogspot.com/200...silliness.html


I personally think that men in those days really tried to be a president and not a party leader.

Richie had seen the light for a long time. He will brighten your little meeting considerably.

"Spin" in my opinion is the ability to utilize hyperbole importing it as fact and hence as being authorative. Campaign advisers, politicians, journalist, lawyers and actors are really good in its application.

For example Jose Baez says the reason so many people hate Casey Anthony is because she is white, beautiful and middle class. He did that with a straight face.

These type of folks have lost all credibility with me and I include both Democrats and Republicans. I believe my instincts before I believe anything they say.

I like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v...hFLc&vq=medium

Don't spin the Constitution, please. Your post is a little deceitful. The Founding Fathers knew exactly what they were doing. The Founding Fathers said "all men are created equal, with rights endowed by the Creator"; they didn't exclude blacks or women. They knew, in time, that equality would catch up because it was mandated into the Constitution.

Now you can say; oooooooohhhhhhhhhhh, of course.

Here we go again..."All men are created equal" is not in the Constitution. It is found in the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution is set up to protect the rights of white land owners,those were the voters, not women,blacks or native Americans. Everyone was equal some were more equal than others.

The Founder's created the documents of which I speak. It is flagrantly cynical and deceitful to believe that the Founders created this most perfect of all countries for only the "white land owner". What a crock.

Wayne, take a few minutes and read this. The part about "America's Founders and Slavery" is about halfway down the page on the link I provided at the bottom. This is just a snippet of the facts provided by this wonderful website and organization. Wall Builders.

"The Founders Believed Slavery Was Fundamentally Wrong.
"The overwhelming majority of early Americans and most of America's leaders did not own slaves. Some did own slaves, which were often inherited (like George Washington at age eleven), but many of these people set them free after independence. Most Founders believed that slavery was wrong and that it should be abolished. William Livingston, signer of the Constitution and Governor of New Jersey, wrote to an anti-slavery society in New York (John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and President of the Continental Congress, was President of this society):

" 'I would most ardently wish to become a member of it [the anti-slavery society] and . . . I can safely promise them that neither my tongue, nor my pen, nor purse shall be wanting to promote the abolition of what to me appears so inconsistent with humanity and Christianity. . . . May the great and the equal Father of the human race, who has expressly declared His abhorrence of oppression, and that He is no respecter of persons, succeed a design so laudably calculated to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.' 11

"John Quincy Adams, who worked tirelessly for years to end slavery, spoke of the anti-slavery views of the southern Founders, including Jefferson who owned slaves:

" 'The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented by all the southern patriots of the Revolution; by no one with deeper and more unalterable conviction than by the author of the Declaration himself. No charge of insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence, slavery, in common with every other mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth. Such was the undoubting conviction of Jefferson to his dying day. In the Memoir of His Life, written at the age of seventy-seven, he gave to his countrymen the solemn and emphatic warning that the day was not distant when they must hear and adopt the general emancipation of their slaves. “Nothing is more certainly written,” said he, “in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free.'12

"The Founding Fathers believed that blacks had the same God-given inalienable rights as any other peoples. James Otis of Massachusetts said in 1764 that 'The colonists are by the law of nature freeborn, as indeed all men are, white or black.' ... ” 13



http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissue...asp?id=120#R24

Do not forget it is written in the Constitution that slaves are counted as 3/5 of a white person for representation purposes. Indians are not counted at all.

Women did not get the right to vote until the 20th century.

If you're speaking of the "Dread Scott Decision", which was a Supreme Court decision and not a Constitutional tenet, you are, again, being disingenuous.

The 3/5's designation was instituted, by compromise, for the benefit of the enslaved people. The Southern slave states wanted to count slaves as a whole number for purposes of Federal Representation, while denying slaves the rights of a citizen.

The North did not want to count the slave at all so that the Southern slave states couldn't pad their rosters of slave promoting representatives in the Houses.

Liberals have a long and time honored tradition of misrepresenting the purpose of the fight to limit the census significance of a slave in it's historical perspective.

Excellent site BK. It would do for many to read more before posting "facts"

Excellent and well thought out, Richie.:beer3:

I don't comment on political opinions here, but occasionally will clarify any apparent misstatement of facts.

• The word "slavery" is never used in the constitution.

• The 3/5 designation was in U.S. Contitution and was not, that I know of, mentioned in the Dred Scott Decision. It was, as Richie stated, a compromise between northern and southern states. It did not confer "benefit to the enslaved people". Depending on which side you were on at the time, it either gave the southern states more representation in the U. S. House by allowing them to count slaves as partial people; or it denied southern states some representation in the U.S. House by not allowing them to count slaves as whole people. It also affected how much tax the federal government collected from the southern states.

U.S. Contitution Article 1, Section 2: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

• Though the word is not used, the issue of slavery was alluded to in the Constitution in two other places:

Article 1, Section 9: The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

Article 4, Section 2: No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

• The U.S. Constitution did not specifically prohibit women from voting. Nor did it require land ownership for voting. Qualifications for voting were left to the states. So, in effect, women and most non-land owners could not vote.
  
  According to Wikipedia: "At the time of ratification of the Constitution, most states used property qualifications to restrict the franchise; the exact amount varied by state, but by some estimates, over half of white men were barred from voting. [14] In some states, free men of color (though the property requirement in New York was eventually dropped for whites but not for blacks) also possessed the vote."

So, opinions may vary, but these are some of the facts related to the discussion.

:agree:
May I add their position on stem cell research?

Deserves repeating. Just saying.