Recently, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas took to the floor of the House to talk about Wikileaks, transparency in government, and the case of Daniel Ellsberg, the 
Pentagon Papers, and the New York Times. He spoke about how the Iraq War was based on lies. He asked how the U. S. government should prosecute a citizen of Australia for publishing classified U. S. documents that he did not steal. Paul also said the following: “Revealing the real nature and goal of our presence in so many Muslim countries is a threat to our empire, and any revelation of this truth is highly resented by those in charge.”
Paul posed a number of questions at the end of his talk:
Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
Number 3: Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?
Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised ‘Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.’ I yield back the balance of my time.
Source: Huffington Post
– Elaine Magliaro
Buddha: “One cannot place their pursuit of happiness – no matter the definition – above the rights of others. That would be both inequitable and unjust and unconstitutional on its face, not to mention the very portrait of sociopathic behavior. That’s where counter-balancing the rights of one against the rights of another comes into play.”
I have no idea where you and Chan L. have been with this argument, but your attempt to read societal laws into the basic framework of the social compact, as simply restated by Jefferson in paragraph two, is absurd. Simply because Jefferson chose a more lofty and vague phrase does alter the basic compact.
John Locke wrote in his 1693 Essay Concerning Human Understanding that “the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness.” [3] Also in 1693, Locke’s philosophical opponent Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz associated “natural right” with happiness in the introduction to his Codex Iuris Gentium.[4] William Wollaston’s 1722 book The Religion of Nature Delineated describes the “truest definition” of “natural religion” as being “The pursuit of happiness by the practice of reason and truth.”[5] The 1763 English translation of Jean Jacques Burlamaqui’s Principles of Natural and Politic Law extolled the “noble pursuit” of “true and solid happiness” in the opening chapter discussing natural rights.[6]
The first and second article of the Virginia Declaration of Rights adopted unanimously by the Virginia Convention of Delegates on June 12, 1776 and written by George Mason, is:
That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
Benjamin Franklin was in agreement with Thomas Jefferson in downplaying protection of “property” as a goal of government, replacing the idea with “happiness”. It is noted that Franklin found property to be a “creature of society” and thus, he believed that it should be taxed as a way to finance civil society.[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_happiness
@Buddha: Yes it does.
In fact using Burlamaqui’s formulations of the responsiblities of the state I think one can argue for unemployment benefits, free education, the welfare state, social security, socialized medicine and / or socialized insurances in general; on the grounds that these services provide peace of mind and emotional well being, while a for-profit formulation of the same services is by its nature a zero-sum game that is contentious, stingy, adversarial, stress inducing and on balance prevents long term emotional well-being.
Which, coincidentally enough, comports perfectly to the linguistic point I just made.
@Bob,Esq: Actually I was too hasty in asserting Jefferson’s allegiance to Locke. In trying to find the source of your claim that “pursuit of happiness” is code for “property,” I find at least one historian has plausibly disputed that assertion: Ray Harvey, in 1937.
Specifically, Harvey claims the phrase “pursuit of happiness” is a rejection of Locke’s property doctrines; and lifted directly from the (Swiss) Jean Jacques Burlamaqui treatise on “natural law” which Jefferson possessed and is likely quoting. Burlamaqui’ conception of the “pursuit of happiness” is that the purpose of law and the state in general is to pursue true and lasting happiness which he defines as good leading to the preservation, perfection, convenience or pleasure of men, but compatible with reason and the natural state of man, otherwise it would lead to evil that would prevent one from being happy.
I reject the notion that “pursuit of happiness” has anything to do with being Lockean code for property, in fact Harvey’s case that it means the opposite is fairly convincing. He is not the only historian claiming Locke is given too much credit. Locke was popular among the founding fathers, but more than one historian has claimed Jefferson was not as influenced by Locke as he was by other writers of the time.
Bernard Baylin (Harvard) in “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution” says, “[i]n pamphlet after pamphlet the American writers cited … Burlamaqui … on the laws of nature and of nations, and on the principles of civil government.”
This was true of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson, “to name a few.” Since a dispute exists, and I lean toward the Occam’s razor probability that the phrase was used by Jefferson in the way that Burlamaqui, who coined it and whose treatises on government were read by Jefferson and other signers of the DOI, meant it. And Burlamaqui meant it in the sense of long term emotional well-being, not in the sense of property.
Chan,
You can call me a fascist (incorrectly) if it makes you feel better about being a sociopath.
Really. I don’t mind. Anyone with a knowledge of high school civics knows that I can’t be for regulation of corporations and getting their influence out of politics and be a fascist at the same time. Just like they know that the left and fascism are diametrically opposed. Just like they know egalitarianism and favoring oligarchy are diametrically opposed. But you keep making up definitions if it makes you feel better about yourself. Far be it from me to deprive you of a coping mechanism. After all, you’re a lost cause. You are not the target audience of what I say, merely the exemplar of a bad example.
You can also disparage my education all you want. At least I have one and it’s a proper one too. In the the appropriate field to evaluate law and political science I might add.
And your background is what again, exactly? Other than being professionally greedy, self-centered and self-rationalizing? I sense you are an engineer of some sort since you try to work around every argument that blocks your path. Not very well, but you do try.
Keep banging those rocks together, sport!
________
Bob,
“Pursuit of happiness is Lockean shorthand for property rights.”
Did you get that from your secret Lockean decoder ring? Man, I sure wish I drank Ovaltine. That’s some good stuff.
Had Jefferson meant property rights, he’d have said property rights. Plainly so. He didn’t speak in code anywhere else in the DOI but used very direct and plain language. There is no reason to think his choice of language in that one sentence to be drafted otherwise. To suppose this is “shorthand” for Lockean property interests is just that: supposition. What is not supposition is that Locke punted the ball on the issue of unlimited accumulation and left equitable distribution (which Locke acknowledged to be a problem) to be a proper function of government – a function he refused to address.
But the point is moot anyway.
The pursuit of happiness is going to be subordinate to the rights of others to life and liberty and have to be as a matter of logic. It may make a murderer happy to kill people, but that doesn’t give him the right to kill with impunity simply because it makes him happy. One cannot place their pursuit of happiness – no matter the definition – above the rights of others. That would be both inequitable and unjust and unconstitutional on its face, not to mention the very portrait of sociopathic behavior. That’s where counter-balancing the rights of one against the rights of another comes into play.
And let’s go ahead and ask how much for the gorilla . . . the Constitution is the controlling document.
The provision of seeking justice (and its attendant dependence upon equity) limit the aspirational language of the DOI concerning both the pursuit of happiness and liberty, but maybe not life (that’s an entirely different argument for a different day and more suited to a thread about capital punishment or Presidentially mandated assassination without due process). We incarcerate killers, depriving them of both liberty and happiness because it is both just and equitable. We can also Constitutionally limit property rights just as justly and equitably when they become abusive of others rights. We do it all the time. Just look at landlord-tenant laws for a plethora of examples.
Although you may have a technical point, it’s just as easily categorized as supposition in light of the rest of the DOI’s plain language and Jefferson’s skill as a writer. He was nothing if not precise. What Lockean ideals he wished to incorporate into the document, he could – and likely would – have done so plainly. The DOI is nothing if not to the point. The pursuit of happiness is a purposefully nebulous term and it’s very nature as nebulous doesn’t mean it automatically equates to property. Jefferson knew the difference between a right to property and the pursuit of happiness. To think otherwise is to severely underestimate the man. He knew that not all people would seek happiness in the accumulation of property but felt that the pursuit itself was the important thing, not so much the objective required to reach that state of mind. If your pursuit of happiness entails taking the Christ-like path of forgoing your worldly goods, your state of happiness would be owning no property of consequence other than your life and your service to your fellow man. A perfectly valid pursuit of happiness that deprives no one of life or liberty but forgoes property in all but the strictest Lockean definition of right to property of self. Code versus plain language? Plain language, even though admittedly (and probably purposefully) nebulous is a more likely explanation of the choice of words than “it’s a code”.
Gyges are you shitless too 🙂
Chan,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_chorus
You really should know what words mean before you use them.
Since I’m bored, here’s a few suggested metaphors for you: Sidekick in the comic book of Buddha’s intellect; The contra-auguste in the circus of Buddha’s rhetoric; Straight man in the comedy of Buddha’s ideology.
If the CIA wants to keep things secret just put them where Obama’s birth certificate and college papers are.
Tony C:
then why even bother? They wanted to be in charge of their own commerce.
Federalist No. 42, where James Madison wrote:
The powers included in the THIRD class are those which provide for the harmony and proper intercourse among the States. Under this head might be included the particular restraints imposed on the authority of the States, and certain powers of the judicial department; but the former are reserved for a distinct class, and the latter will be particularly examined when we arrive at the structure and organization of the government. I shall confine myself to a cursory review of the remaining powers comprehended under this third description, to wit: to regulate commerce among the several States and the Indian tribes; to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin; to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the current coin and secureties of the United States; to fix the standard of weights and measures; to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws of bankruptcy, to prescribe the manner in which the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of each State shall be proved, and the effect they shall have in other States; and to establish post offices and post roads. The defect of power in the existing Confederacy to regulate the commerce between its several members, is in the number of those which have been clearly pointed out by experience.
To the proofs and remarks which former papers have brought into view on this subject, it may be added that without this supplemental provision, the great and essential power of regulating foreign commerce would have been incomplete and ineffectual. A very material object of this power was the relief of the States which import and export through other States, from the improper contributions levied on them by the latter. Were these at liberty to regulate the trade between State and State, it must be foreseen that ways would be found out to load the articles of import and export, during the passage through their jurisdiction, with duties which would fall on the makers of the latter and the consumers of the former. We may be assured by past experience, that such a practice would be introduced by future contrivances; and both by that and a common knowledge of human affairs, that it would nourish unceasing animosities, and not improbably terminate in serious interruptions of the public tranquillity.
To those who do not view the question through the medium of passion or of interest, the desire of the commercial States to collect, in any form, an indirect revenue from their uncommercial neighbors, must appear not less impolitic than it is unfair; since it would stimulate the injured party, by resentment as well as interest, to resort to less convenient channels for their foreign trade. But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain. The necessity of a superintending authority over the reciprocal trade of confederated States, has been illustrated by other examples as well as our own. In Switzerland, where the Union is so very slight, each canton is obliged to allow to merchandises a passage through its jurisdiction into other cantons, without an augmentation of the tolls. In Germany it is a law of the empire, that the princes and states shall not lay tolls or customs on bridges, rivers, or passages, without the consent of the emperor and the diet; though it appears from a quotation in an antecedent paper, that the practice in this, as in many other instances in that confederacy, has not followed the law, and has produced there the mischiefs which have been foreseen here. Among the restraints imposed by the Union of the Netherlands on its members, one is, that they shall not establish imposts disadvantageous to their neighbors, without the general permission.
Gyges:
That’s OK. Are you Bubbha’s sycophant? The Greek Chorus in Bubbha’s intellectual tragedy?
@Bob,Esq: “Lockean shorthand”? Please, the DOI says what it says in plain English. I know, as Jefferson said, that Locke influenced his thoughts heavily, but Jefferson was quite explicit in the rest of the document as to the reasons for separation, and they do not include anything about “property rights.”
Whether the phrase “pursuit of happiness” was intended to be some kind of coded dog whistle about property rights or not, and if so what specifically Jefferson thought were the limits of property rights in society, is lost to history, unless somebody can point me to a specific and verifiable writing of Jefferson that unambiguously says otherwise.
Whatever Jefferson thought and the founders thought about property rights, they did not include it in the DOI; and what they DID include explicitly revealed their desire to form a government and to regulate commerce; they were in fact complaining about the King nullifying the laws they wished to establish in that regard. Certainly the DOI proves the founders did NOT believe in a no-holds-barred free market, and the Constitution and the right to regulate interstate commerce just proves that further: If Jefferson and the founders DID believe in a free market, why bother with explicitly giving the federal government the right to regulate it and tax it and assess tariffs? This country was not founded on the idea of free markets, and whatever respect they may have had for Lockean logic, while they explicitly forbad the government from imposing many restrictions on citizens (with the Bill of Rights) they did not forbid the government from regulating, taxing or even prohibiting trade.
Please bear in mind this statement from Professor Turley within his Blawg 100 Misinformation thread:
“We have a great blog that combines thoughtful discussions of legal and political issues with a commitment to civility. That makes us something of a standout among the blogs.”
Bubbha:
Sect. 27. Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.
There is plenty left for others, Mr. Locke doesn’t say that one man should be forced fed to another. Let the others go and remove their share from the commons. But most cannot and depend on those who can. The ones who can are not exploiting those who cannot. For they would surely die in a pure state of nature. Those who can make it easier for the rest of us who cannot gather as much from nature.
The people who are able to dig ore and gather nuts are in no way responsible for those who cannot or will not.
It is government that perverts this by enacting laws which restrict competition or encourage favored actors. It is government which has the power, not business. By your logic the rape victim is the agressor.
Buddha,
“I equate individual rights to nothing other than individual rights as counter-balanced by the rights of others. Again, your right to make a profit does not extend to the right to make a profit at the expense of the rights of others. ”
Seems to me there’s a great example using baseball bats and faces in there somewhere.
Tony,
Man did you luck out. He only used = instead of arrows. You can at least argue against that.
See:
Gyges=beer drinker=greatest person alive.
Well, I do drink beer, but my wife’s a better person.
Chan,
Yup, I am going to do this every time. There are some things I just can’t help but make fun of.
Sect. 22. THE natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule. The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth; nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact, according to the trust put in it. Freedom then is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us, Observations, A. 55. a liberty for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws: but freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature.
Bubbha:
now your just making shit up out of thin air:
“See, it’s that last part you keep leaving out – counter-balanced by the rights of others – that shows exactly what a sociopath you really are. Equal rights means equal for everyone. Not just who can grease the most palms. What you seek is mercantile oligarchy. That’s fascism.”
No that’s Hamilton and his Federal Reserve. That is exactly what Hamilton wanted and pushed for. And it is socialism/fascism.
If you think the FED is a good idea, there is no way you are a Jeffersonian liberal.
I have never left out others rights in any of my posts. Individual rights is individual rights whether it is me or someone else. I am consistent, you are not because your ideas are wrong. And so you accuse me of being a greedy sociopath, it is pathetic.
Tony C + ASS = Handed 2 U
Go Bob Go !!!!!!!!
Tony C:
to make it simple; Life = work = property.
‘
‘ ‘
Life = property.
Right to Life = right to property.