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US PoliGAF 2012 | The Romney VeepStakes: Waiting for Chris Christie to Sing…

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Shrinnan said:
You may want to read up on the drafts of the Declaration (all but the final one included a condemnation of slavery). The Founding Fathers' aim was to get the Constitution (and Declaration) passed. To do that, they had to go through the people. It was a process intended to give freedom to everyone, but that freedom wouldn't come fully instantly with the passage of the Constitution - the Constitution was the basis of freedom for their new nation and started the process of it.
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I have read a bit, and I will likely read more. Still, I don't personally believe you can really say that the freedoms and liberty African Americans and women have today were really what some of the founders were getting at, considering they themselves owned slaves. Maybe there was an inkling, and maybe they were better people than most of the country and had to compromise things to get it passed.

Nevertheless the document that was passed still allowed for slavery to exist for a very long time. It allowed for women to not vote for a very long time. It allowed discrimination for a very long time. The thing is we need government to interpret this document and put its foot down in spots where mankind is too cold-hearted to do so on its own.

The free market won't solve everything. I've seen that interview where Ron Paul thinks there should be no sexual harassment type laws at all concerning the workplace. How does that make any sense? Does he think it'll just go away? Does he really think that people that get harassed or discriminated against in the workplace should, or more importantly, can just leave and get a new job? If you believe these things you're incredibly naive.

Liberty and the free market is good for some things, but there are drawbacks. Some people, like the disabled and the minorities, can and likely will get dropped on their asses for no other reason than that there exists a wretched part in an alarming amount of people.
 
A27_StarWolf said:
If Huntsman leaves I'm voting for Obama, hope for 4 mediocre years, then Huntsman 2016.

I think he has a pretty good shot 2016
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Huntsman's done.

The republican party (especially the primary voting block) is not going to get suddenly more tolerant in 2016, another four years of Obama are going to drive them to be even more isolated.

He doesn't have the cache within the party to be get a Dole/McCain "He's earned it" nomination, he took an Obama appointment at a time when the entire party coalesced to actively try and block Obama from doing anything.

If he just waited to 2016 in the first place, he would have stood a better chance within the Republican party.

Huntsman's best bet would have been to lay low and switch parties in 2016, but he's now come out as so visibly pro-life that the left will never accept that. At best he'll maybe get a position in the next Republican administration.
 
ReBurn said:
I read the post. I just don't understand the reply.
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"If Huntsman leaves I'm voting for Obama, hope for 4 mediocre years, then Huntsman 2016".

He's hoping that Obama, the president of the US, will fail.
But again, I think most people think that way, it's unfortunate, but common.
 
Chichikov said:
"If Huntsman leaves I'm voting for Obama, hope for 4 mediocre years, then Huntsman 2016".

He's hoping that Obama, the president of the US, will fail.
But again, I think most people think that way, it's unfortunate, but common.
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Ah, ok. I thought he was just biding time until Huntsman could run again and the reply was critical of supporting a republican in 2016.
 
Averon said:
57% in and Perry still haven't cracked 1,000 votes.

Embarrassing.
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The only way New Hampshire would have broken for Perry is if he somehow trounced Romney in Iowa and built off the momentum.

Perry's best chance is South Carolina now, but even that's marginal at best. I have the strange idea that he's only in this race right now to draw votes from Santorum in SC and that Romney is going to fundraise to pay down his campaign debts when the nomination is secured.
 
RDreamer said:
I have read a bit, and I will likely read more. Still, I don't personally believe you can really say that the freedoms and liberty African Americans and women have today were really what some of the founders were getting at, considering they themselves owned slaves. Maybe there was an inkling, and maybe they were better people than most of the country and had to compromise things to get it passed.

Nevertheless the document that was passed still allowed for slavery to exist for a very long time. It allowed for women to not vote for a very long time. It allowed discrimination for a very long time. The thing is we need government to interpret this document and put its foot down in spots where mankind is too cold-hearted to do so on its own.
Click to expand...

I would disagree that the Constitution allowed slavery to exist. James Madison believed the Bill of Rights didn't need to exist because he believed they were essentially in the base document itself (and he wrote the document).

Slavery and the lack of woman's rights were apart of the culture. To expect the entire culture to change based on the passage of one document is naive, quite frankly. I also believe that if the Founders (who did own slaves - some of which were passed down through their ancestors) freed their slaves the slaves would then get recaptured under what would turn out to be a harsher master. I also think it was illegal to free your slaves during that time, but it's been a long time since I researched it.

Despite Jefferson's owning slaves, he was actually against the concept (he wrote it into the drafts of the Declaration). Abigail Adams (and John Adams) were completely against slavery as well - Abigail Adams once questioned how anything good could come out of a house built by slaves. That's just to name a few.
 
VindicatorZ said:
HOOOOOLY SHIT. ABBY HUNTSMAN IS FINE AS FUCK
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? They don't do much for me. Especially the one on the

huntsmans-daughters-lightbox.jpg
 
Split the votes, Romney rides to victory!

Romney with same % as McCain, not bad at all.

And wtf...Huntsman should be dropping out. He has got nothing left.
 
Shrinnan said:
I would disagree that the Constitution allowed slavery to exist. James Madison believed the Bill of Rights didn't need to exist because he believed they were essentially in the base document itself (and he wrote the document).

Slavery and the lack of woman's rights were apart of the culture. To expect the entire culture to change based on the passage of one document is naive, quite frankly. I also believe that if the Founders (who did own slaves - some of which were passed down through their ancestors) freed their slaves the slaves would then get recaptured under what would turn out to be a harsher master.

Despite Jefferson's owning slaves, he was actually against the concept (he wrote it into the drafts of the Declaration). Abigail Adams (and John Adams) were completely against slavery as well - Abigail Adams once questioned how anything good could come out of a house built by slaves.
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Oh my God I hate all this money my slaves are making me!
 
Chichikov said:
"If Huntsman leaves I'm voting for Obama, hope for 4 mediocre years, then Huntsman 2016".

He's hoping that Obama, the president of the US, will fail.
But again, I think most people think that way, it's unfortunate, but common.
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Nah, I don't think Starwolf is going that far.

I think what he's saying is that he expects that four more years of Obama will wreck the country, but he's hoping that Obama's second term will at least float by without too much damage. Expect the worst, hope for something decent.
 
Volimar said:
Oh my God I hate all this money my slaves are making me!
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That completely makes sense, since, you know, the Founders were risking everything by even trying to declare freedom. The odds were kinda against them...
 
I see Perry, Gingrich and Huntsman dropping out if they fail to break 10% in SC (Perry won't break 10%, Gingrich will probably get around 15%, Huntsman will probably get just under, maybe 9%).
 
Shrinnan said:
That completely makes sense, since, you know, the Founders were risking everything by even trying to declare freedom. The odds were kinda against them...
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Sorry, I should have said, "Oh my God, I can't believe I have to send some of this shitload of money my slaves are making me to that tyrannical regime across the Ocean with no say in the matter!"

I'm not anti founder, but let's not whitewash history. There was more in it for most of those people than just "freedom, woohoo!"
 
Volimar said:
Sorry, I should have said, "Oh my God, I can't believe I have to send some of this shitload of money my slaves are making me to that tyrannical regime across the Ocean with no say in the matter!"

I'm not anti founder, but let's not whitewash history. There was more in it for most of those people than just "freedom, woohoo!"
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Let's also not try to categorize every Founder into a category of "was for slavery" because not every Founder was. Like I said, I am almost 100% sure that it was illegal to free your slaves (it's been a long time since I researched it so I can't say for 100%), certain Founders got their slaves through their fathers (like Washington), many didn't own slaves and actively campaigned against it and some who did own them were still against it and tried to change it legally (if Jefferson had cared about his slaves making him money, he wouldn't have tried to change it in the three drafts of the Declaration before the final one - the third one that included the condemnation of slavery was passed by the Committee of Five).

The Founders weren't perfect. I'm not going to even try to say that. I actually, quite frankly, don't like some of them. I'm just trying to argue against the notion that all of them were favorable toward owning slaves. I actually believe a great majority were against the idea.
 
Shrinnan said:
I would disagree that the Constitution allowed slavery to exist. James Madison believed the Bill of Rights didn't need to exist because he believed they were essentially in the base document itself (and he wrote the document).

Slavery and the lack of woman's rights were apart of the culture. To expect the entire culture to change based on the passage of one document is naive, quite frankly. I also believe that if the Founders (who did own slaves - some of which were passed down through their ancestors) freed their slaves the slaves would then get recaptured under what would turn out to be a harsher master. I also think it was illegal to free your slaves during that time, but it's been a long time since I researched it.

Despite Jefferson's owning slaves, he was actually against the concept (he wrote it into the drafts of the Declaration). Abigail Adams (and John Adams) were completely against slavery as well - Abigail Adams once questioned how anything good could come out of a house built by slaves. That's just to name a few.
Click to expand...

The thing is that I find owning a human being to be such a repugnant act that I can't really imagine someone who is against it actively participating in it at the same time. That's probably partially just coming from the fact that I was raised in a different time. I'll admit I'm a bit biased.

And I suppose I could at least concede the point a bit that the constitution allowed for slavery to exist. Maybe it doesn't, but there are a lot of degrees between when we first ended slavery and how equality exists now. The kind of liberty Ron Paul and some pure constitutionalists seem to want to go toward still allows for a lot of discrimination and things like the sexual harassment thing I brought up in my last post. We do need a government to protect the minority from the majority in some cases. Ron Paul only seems to want the government to step in when it involves bodily harm.
 
Shrinnan said:
I also believe that if the Founders (who did own slaves - some of which were passed down through their ancestors) freed their slaves the slaves would then get recaptured under what would turn out to be a harsher master. I also think it was illegal to free your slaves during that time, but it's been a long time since I researched it.
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There were freed blacks throughout the United States. So no, it wasn't illegal to free your slaves. Washington actually freed his manservant when he died (yet kept the rest of his slaves in bondage), and Jefferson freed the children of Sally Hemmings after he died. Probably because some of them were his children.
 
Due to the GOPs rule banning winner take all primaries until April this process won't end in SC. As long as the money keeps up it makes more sense to keep bombing a weak front runner hoping for him to slip while building personal notoriety. I don't see anyone dropping out after SC except maybe Perry.
 
the "founders" could barely agree on anything, paul is being a disingenuous twat when he cites them as authority for his batshit crazy ideas.

i do not understand why we even have this discussion. who gives a flying fuck what the founders thought anyway, one way or the other.
 
Frank the Great said:
the "founders" could barely agree on anything, paul is being a disingenuous twat when he cites them as authority for his batshit crazy ideas.

i do not understand why we even have this discussion. who gives a flying fuck what the founders thought anyway, one way or the other.
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Because we're 200 years in to a 1000 year process where they are deified as Gods and not men.
 
RDreamer said:
The thing is that I find owning a human being to be such a repugnant act that I can't really imagine someone who is against it actively participating in it at the same time. That's probably partially just coming from the fact that I was raised in a different time. I'll admit I'm a bit biased.
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I find the idea repugnant as well, but a lot of times you have to put history into the context that it was set in. Slavery was apart of that culture for a long time before the Founders. It can't be expected of them to change the status quo that easily.

Measley said:
There were freed blacks throughout the United States. So no, it wasn't illegal to free your slaves. Washington actually freed his manservant when he died (yet kept the rest of his slaves in bondage), and Jefferson freed the children of Sally Hemmings after he died. Probably because some of them were his children.
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Then I was wrong about it being illegal but that doesn't change the fact that many tried to change the law on slavery. Jefferson being one of them.
 
The 3/5ths Compromise was a loathsome policy that put slavery up on a near-impregnable hill until the plain inferiority of the slave-owning system as an economic principle had run the states bequeathed with the gift of bonus representation without citizenship into the ground. Even then it took one of the bloodiest wars of a bloody century to kill the cursed thing off.

It's hard for me to pretend the founders- particularly those founders from the states who most benefited from the blood trade- are innocent of the consequences.
 
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