Guns. Well said Mr President, if only your countrymen had the same courage to consider changing course.

by nicolaou 75 Replies latest social current

  • _Morpheus
    _Morpheus
    They didnt extensively. Most of the original 13 have climates inhospitable for good tea cultivation. The better climates are the southern states and around 1770 there was tea plantation established, but one tea plantition didnt lead to the revolutionary war.
  • LoveUniHateExams
    LoveUniHateExams

    @Gentledawn - your last post made no attempt to link 'drone usage' with US citizens' right to bear arms or with the South Carolina murders.

    So, the inclusion of 'drone usage' on your list is suspect.

  • Vidiot
    Vidiot

    GentleDawn - "...and then only blaming the GUN..."

    Bad gun! Bad gun!

    Go to your room and think about what you've done!

  • Sofia Lose
    Sofia Lose

    Please check out The Young Turks commentary regarding this issue. I could not agree more.

    Right wing/conservative extremists/terrorists inflict a lot more damage in this nation than any other type of terrorist ever has/will.

    SL

  • Simon
    Simon
    Insurance? The last thing we need is to pay yet another mandated tax that goes directly to private corporations.

    Insurance is not a tax. It's why we have separate words for them.

    Simon, with all due respect, please stop painting all of us with that broad of a brush.

    I'm not, I'm talking about the paranoid idiots who think someone is going to gun them down at the Canadian border.

  • Simon
    Simon
    Hey, Simon, I've never heard the story where England reduced taxes on its tea making it cheaper.
    Could you give us a little more info on that story?
    The US never grew tea as far as I know. Was it available from somewhere else as well that the American colonists preferred?
    Would love to hear more.

    It's a fascinating episode and not at all like most people are led to believe (the simplistic "The British want to tax us !!")

    The Tea Act, passed by Parliament on May 10, 1773, would launch the final spark to the revolutionary movement in Boston. The act was not intended to raise revenue in the American colonies, and in fact imposed no new taxes. It was designed to prop up the East India Company which was floundering financially and burdened with eighteen million pounds of unsold tea. This tea was to be shipped directly to the colonies, and sold at a bargain price. The Townshend Duties were still in place, however, and the radical leaders in America found reason to believe that this act was a maneuver to buy popular support for the taxes already in force. The direct sale of tea, via British agents, would also have undercut the business of local merchants.

    Colonists in Philadelphia and New York turned the tea ships back to Britain. In Charleston the cargo was left to rot on the docks. In Boston the Royal Governor was stubborn & held the ships in port, where the colonists would not allow them to unload. Cargoes of tea filled the harbor, and the British ship's crews were stalled in Boston looking for work and often finding trouble. This situation led to the Boston Tea Party.

    http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/related/teaact.htm

    More information in the book:

    http://www.amazon.com/Rebels-Redcoats-American-Revolutionary-War/dp/000715626X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1434740063&sr=1-1

  • TD
    TD

    Simon,

    I agree that something needs to be done, but like you said, I doubt very much if our politicians possess either the brains or the testicular fortitude to do it in a meaningful way.

    On linguistic and historical (But not idealogical) grounds,I do disagree with this statement though:

    Alternatively, stop letting people get away with quoting part of the constitution out of context. Either they are part of a well regulated militia or they don't get to own a gun.

    The majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller devoted many pages to the Latin roots and the history of this sentence structure and parallel usage in state constitutions. I know that not everyone agrees with that decision, but I have yet to see a dissenting opinion that adequately deals either with contemporaneous writings at the time or the fact that mid 19th century editions of Webster's Dictionary actually diagrammed the sentence.

  • TD
    TD

    done4good,

    In the general sense, I would not disagree with your assertions. Within the context of 18th century early America, a fragile new democratic government and both internal and external threats to the country's existence, the USA likely required a constitutional amendment as such. Much existential fear existed during that era.

    Well then in my best Raul Julia impersonation, I would say, "Dirty pool, old man."

    (And I mean that in a friendly, patio conversation sort of way..)

    The fact that the U.S. was born out of a revolution and that much of that fear is plainly evident in the Bill Of Rights doesn't preclude the possibility of those rights evolving in other directions or automatically make someone who believes there is still a certain utility to those amendments an anti-government wingnut.. A woman's right to choose was eventually predicated on the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th & 14th amendments, which very likely was not their original intent.

  • Laika
    Laika
    It's sad how the same people who loudly insist America is a 'christian nation' cannot let go of violence. "He who lives by the [gun] will die by the [gun]"
  • GrreatTeacher
    GrreatTeacher

    Thanks, Simon and Morpheus for the info on tea. I've come to learn that there's always another side to history.

    There was supposedly a local "tea party" during the same time in history here in Maryland in Chestertown. Memorial Day Saturday has reenactments of this, complete with men in historic dress and burlap "bales" of tea being thrown into the river.

    Until the local college's history department undertook an effort to verify this historical happening and discovered that, in all likelihood, it never actually happened.

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