Once again I am left virtually speechless but the sheer blind rage in this election. The moral leaders of the Church in the Valley in Leakey, Texas felt that it was appropriate to post this sign reading: “Vote for the Mormon, not the Muslim! The capitalist, not the communist!” Putting aside the violation of its tax-exempt status, church leaders thought nothing of the lesson given their children in making such false and prejudicial statements. It shows the dangerously thin line that separates the faithful from the hateful in our society.
Of course, in addition to repeating the false statement about President Obama’s religion, the sign adds the common and equally ridiculous mantra about his being a communist. A term that, when pressed, seems beyond definition for some of these protesters.
The Church in the Valley headed by Pastor Ray Miller (who came up with the idea of the sign) sees nothing wrong is defining people primarily by their alleged faith — whether it is falsely Obama as a Muslim or Romney as a Mormon.
Equally disgusting is the response of a least one local businessman who insist that the controversy will be good for business. Damon White is quoted as saying “I love it. Even if it’s bad attention, bring it on. Come to town, see what it’s about.” Well, Mr. White, we certainly now know what you are about. It does not matter if it is unfair, prejudicial, and disrespectful, it is good for business. Now there is a lesson for the children of Leakey, Texas.
Notably, on its website, the Church proclaims “We believe our faith should be visible in concrete forms and models of personal and social behavior.” That model appears to include insulting and prejudicial statements about people with whom you disagree as well as use of false claims to achieve your political ends. I don’t recall the passage where Jesus Christ led the smear campaign against Pontius Pilatus. Indeed, I seem to recall something out “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Perhaps but it does not sum up Paster Miller or the good people of the Church of the Valley.
Source: KENS as first seen on Reddit.
Yep. Talk about anything other than . . .
“Enoch,
Your complete and utter lack of knowledge and/or disregard of legal principles, jurisprudence in general and what the law actually says is quite impressive. Arguments from ignorance are always so amusing.
“As for tax exemption… the needful right of Congress to levy taxes notwithstanding, a tax is not just or proper simply because it’s lawful. Power, to lie in the people’s hands, should never be allowed to levy taxes by taking.”
The 5th Amendment states:
“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
The highlighted section is known as the Takings Clause. So clearly takings are legal if just compensation is made. That historically the courts have had a difficult time interpreting the boundary lines of what constitutes a taking is simply a matter of jurisprudence being an evolutionary and accumulative process. Taxes are not so much the issue as whether or not and when regulations constitute a taking and this is a matter unsettled in American jurisprudence.
“In one construction of democracy, “realism” and “pragmatism” trump principle – or it can, given a majority. Imagine you had the prettiest daughter in town. Would you want the majority to be able to make her a town’s common property?”
Given that your definitions of technical terms is already demonstrably suspect, I’m going to skip over that and go directly to the Constitutional fact that no one’s daughter (nice appeal to emotion by the way, did you get fries with that logical fallacy?) is going to be anyone’s property held in common or otherwise.
The 13th Amendment states:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation”
These laws of enforcement apply to the states and equally to all citizens via the 14th Amendment.
Once again, you clearly are talking about something you don’t understand.”
What is a Red Herring? It is not some kind of Norwegian mid-range chain of seafood restaurants. A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. For example, foreign languages and old criminal charges instead of Constitutional law.
That is the logical fallacy de jour.
It is also part of the lunch menu at the Stavanger Middle School.
That is all.
Bron – Off to work. If you have more questions, I’m happy to answer them. Hell, if it wasn’t to long, I’d post the pleadings.
sorry – 2C 35:d
No, Bron. There was never any allegation respecting the knife except that I possessed it. I was charged under NJSA 2d 35:d, “possession of a weapon for no legitimate purpose”. No assault. No menacing. Nothing like that.
or did you even touch the knife and they just thought you were going to pull it because you were upset about something?
None of my business but you did mention you were recovering from surgery/sickness. Anything to do with Lab Corp? Like a botched diagnosis by the lab and dealing with schmucks who seem to inhabit the hallowed halls of the medical industry.
It is enough to make a grown man angry. There are some very good people in the industry but there are some really crappy ones as well and when they suck, they seem to really suck. Not just run of the mill incompetence but an incompetence that is embraced as a badge of honor.
I had gone for a pre-employment (Tractor Supply – I’d been asked to help out) drug screening, asked to empty my pockets and I put my knife on a counter.
The technician took exception, and I was vocal about my right to carry the tools of my trade. It was never brandished. It was, in fact, out of my possession, on a counter behind me, the entire time.
enoch:
what did you do? What did they do to you? Did you pull the knife or just put your hand on the knife?
“Ablenkungsmanöver.
ניין ס’יז ריכטיג
Mike,
You addressed a long post to me, way up above. I’m sorry I didn’t see it before now. You deserve a civil answer.
If I introduced slavery where it did not belong among your examples, I apologize. I really would rather understand you and agree or disagree with what you mean to say than try to change the topic to my own.
Several comments after yours have tried to raise my question: there is an intrinsic push-and-pull between the need for an objective and a subjective scheme of ethics. The objections to a subjective scheme of ethics should be clear in examples such as the Holocaust. The objections to an objective scheme of ethics is similarly clear in examples such as, “The Nazi at the Door” (the Gestapo comes to the house Anne Frank is hidden in, and asks the owner if he knows where any Jews are hidden – how do we insist on honesty as a moral absolute in such a case?).
So, with both approaches to ethics problematic, what do we do?
I propose that one reason religion has been so successful is that it posits a law given by God (fixed and unchangeable), interpretable by an elite that can tailor “God’s law” to circumstance and condition. I believe that Mason/Jefferson suggested the same device for our own notion of rights under the law: they are ours by nature/our Creator, fixed and unchangeable, and yet available to interpretation by an elite as necessity dictates.
“If I introduced slavery where it did not belong among your examples, I apologize. I really would rather understand you and agree or disagree with what you mean to say than try to change the topic to my own.”
Enoch,
I never ask anyone for an apology, though I consistently apologize when I’m wrong. If an apology has to be asked for then it is not worth it. In your case, however, since I didn’t ask for an apology, but you appeared to give it I believe I must address it. The use of “if” in an apology format negates the apology, since it transfers the burden to the one being apologized to, without admitting any real responsibility on the part of the giver. To put it into a hyperbolic analogy, the apology “If my punch that broke your nose was unwarranted then I’m sorry I did it.” Rather than “I was wrong for breaking your nose and I’m sorry”. The “if” and “unwarranted” in the sentence delete it of meaning.
Much less dramatically, you introduced slavery into the argument specifically because you were seeking a lead in to a topic obviously close to your heart, which is that taxation is an unwarranted taking. Given that I was specifically addressing the topic of this particular article by Professor Turley which was the outrageous signage of this Church and what were its greater implications. You were so anxious to twist this topic to your own ends that you never gave an opinion about this Church ad about the greater implications of its behavior. I note that you don’t refer to any other issues I addressed in my comment and since you have arrived here you have fallen into this pattern with everyone. except for Bron. Bron in contrast to you is far more honest about his beliefs and has made some good contributions to the discussion. While he and I disagree on much, I nevertheless respect his good will as a person. In your case I was and am dubious since from the beginning your contributions here have been that of someone pushing a definite agenda, in short a propagandist.
Ablenkungsmanöver.
gbk – I speak Hebrew (“Biblical,” Mishnaic and modern), Aramaic and Yiddish (and a few other languages as well).
Which Aramaic do you mean? ” The Gemara is mostly written in Aramaic, the Jerusalem Gemara in Western Aramaic and the Babylonian in Eastern Aramaic, but both contain portions in Hebrew. Sometimes the language changes in the middle of a story” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemara)
Also, the Hebrew characters (“aleph-bais/bet,” Ashkenaz or S’phard depending) have various forms in themselves. In other words, Hebrew doesn’t resemble Hebrew in some texts.
Second, there is no standard vocalization of Hebrew, so how can it be said that the “sounds” of Aramaic don’t agree with it? The Hebrew word for “blessing” (for example), ברוך, is pronounced, “Baruch,” “Boruch” or “Booreech,” depending if one follows the S’phardic custom (“Baruch”), the Russian/Lithuanian custom (“Baruch”) or the Hungarian/Rumanian custom (“Booreech”) – and spoken Aramaic follows the same rules as for Hebrew, except in the academy (which follows a pattern nearest the S’phardic custom, but includes some differences even from that).
Now, if you can tell me how to post a .jpg file here, I can post a chart to demonstrate the statement that Hebrew doesn’t always resemble the Hebrew of a Bible (for example). As for vocalizations, if you like, I can probably find some you-tube clips of the various customs.
So, which aleph-bais does Aramaic resemble (or not)?
Perhaps this is counterintuitive – or just simply ignorant – but I suspect the decline of American Christianity of all sorts could be accelerated by letting their practitioners conflate and ultimately substitute their politics for their religion without penalty of law.
enoch,
Whatever, I really don’t care about your knife or gun. But have you seen the error of long ago and far away in stating that:
“But neither is like modern Hebrew, in which characters Aramaic survives as a living tongue, today.”
When Aramaic script is modern Hebrew in script. Not in the phonetic sounds associated with the script, but in the actual symbols used? Do you know the difference?
gbk – “Tuesday, September 14, 2010 @ approximately 11:34 AM – Police arrested Enoch Wisner, age 51 of Hillsborough, and charged him with unlawful possession of a weapon following a traffic stop on Rt.31. Police were initially dispatched to Lab Corp at 1 Wescott Drive for a client with a knife is his possession who had left after creating a disturbance in the office. Staff at Lab Corp provided a vehicle description and license plate number for the vehicle Wisner was driving. Police located and stopped the vehicle on Rt. 31. Wisner was found to have a hunting knife in his possession and was subsequently taken into custody. Investigation and arrest by Ptl. Michael Dendis.”
No gun, gbk, just my knife. On Apr. 2, 2012, the charges were dimissed, after being knocked down from a felony to a misdemeanor and getting kicked from Raritan Township municipal court to Hillsborough municipal court. The knife was returned to me by the Raritan Township P.D. on Apr. 12, 2012.
I’m really quite proud of the arrest, process and dismissal (achieved pro se, I might add): farmers carry knives, and the public just needs to get over it. I still carry the same, fixed-blade knife – I’ve even carried it back into the Raritan Township P.D. They leave me alone.
“It’s time for the people to demand that a constitutional convention through the auspices of state legislators be called to address some fundamental issues of non-representation and the financial excess of our collective addiction to the corporatist state that we currently live in.”
Hear, hear, gbk.
Fascism, corporatist or otherwise, never ends well.
Gene,
“Government is necessary for society of any scale.”
Granted. I’ve never argued otherwise.
“I contend that a majority of our problem come from faulty processes in how we select leadership combined with pure complexity in the mathematical sense.”
Yep.
“Too many people with no ethical sense at all other than their greed and love of self over all other consideration get into positions of power.”
Yep.
It’s time for the people to demand that a constitutional convention through the auspices of state legislators be called to address some fundamental issues of non-representation and the financial excess of our collective addiction to the corporatist state that we currently live in.
enochwisner,
Maybe this will jar your memory:
http://local.nixle.com/alert/3488726/
And stop kidding yourself.
What you do is not really learning. It’s absorbing catch phrases and cherry picking that caters to your ideologically driven confirmation biases, Enoch. You’re very good at regurgitation though. I’m willing to bet beyond very basic reading, you haven’t learned anything in years that didn’t simply confirm what you already thought.
gbk – Re. murder, I mean that the word is biased in itself. By definition, murder is wrong/immoral, because it is the word we use to describe the wrong/immoral death of one human at the hands of another. For other man-caused deaths, there are other descriptions – homicides (justifiable and culpable), “doctor assisted suicides,” state-sanctioned executions and, on battle fields, simply “war dead,” or, “casualties” (this latter including both the dead and the injured).
Culturally, though, there are disagreements regarding moral justifiability of homicide. In some cultures, “honor” killings may not rise to the distinction of murder. In other cultures, female infants may be killed (if by deliberate neglect). In still others, blowing one’s self up in order to kill certain others is also not murder.
Yes, we all agree murder is wrong/immoral – but we don’t all agree what murder is.
I thought you weren’t going to address me again.
Awwww. Did I hit a nerve there, Enoch?
You old teabagger you.
How about you first addressing the factual problems of your earlier statements on this thread that I pointed out and you promptly ran away from proclaiming I should “take [my] pills” and “Post what you like, I will not reply to you”? Hmmm? You know, the bullshit you were trying to spread before I called you on it and then gbk came along and started dismantling your tea bagger gibberish instead?
Oh, that’s right! Because you’re a
philosophy student of notetotal pantsload.“Gene – This is going to be my one and only reply to you on this page – and the only reason I’m making even that is to illustrate your idiocy.”
Good luck with that.
“This is what I wrote:
“How about compulsory payments to government, which can only be discharged, even if in a single case, by labor: does that labor, by virtue of its “belonging” to government (in the form of the compensation derived by it), and the fact that the laborer has no say in the matter, rise to the level of “involuntary servitude”?
Or, of course, we can skip over all the sophomoricisms and simply discuss what each other clearly means.”
It’s again a loaded question and begs the question that taxation (a percentage of your work due society to pay for your mutually derived benefit(s)) is anything other than that component of the social compact that funds governmental operations and directly derives from economic value. Taxation is not indentured servitude or slavery of any sort. It’s your portion of the bill. Or do you think you should get to be a free rider on society? Seems so.
“Personally, I’d prefer this last, but I’m afraid that some others here just wouldn’t let that be.”
I don’t care what you prefer.
“a) The word, “tax,” does not appear in any form. Your delusions cannot change what I wrote in black and white.”
No, but your description is of a tax (possibly a fine, but you’re a self-confessed tea bagger on your websites, you mean taxes no matter how much you want to equivocate here) – “compulsory payments to government, which can only be discharged, even if in a single case, by labor.”
Compare with this definition of taxation: “The process whereby charges are imposed on individuals or property by the legislative branch of the federal government and by many state governments to raise funds for public purposes.
The theory that underlies taxation is that charges are imposed to support the government in exchange for the general advantages and protection afforded by the government to the taxpayer and his or her property. The existence of government is a necessity that cannot continue without financial means to pay its expenses; therefore, the government has the right to compel all citizens and property within its limits to share its costs. The state and federal governments both have the power to impose taxes upon their citizens.”
Why, that’s not your teabagger code word to imply slavery!
See, such loaded language as “indentured servitude” can come back to bite you in the ass when dealing with people who understand the fineries of both the English language and its application to propaganda.
The rest of what you say is meaningless gibberish designed to hide the fact you’ve got squat for argumentation skills and no evidence at all other than your ridiculous tea bagger ideology.
But why don’t we address how divorced from reality your “daughter” blather was?
Hmmm?
That ought to be really funny.