re propaganda re re fillibuster in article c otox bji dscomsa desy de hallam dscomsa desy de phill hallam baker writes in article veal utkvm utk edu veal utkvm utk edu david veal writes in article c n wh izv dscomsa desy de hallam dscomsa desy de phill hallam baker writes or are they simply propogranda we can t know what phill really means because he s obviously using arguments designed to convince i make no secret of what i am up to i have stated explicitly in posts that i am a political propagandist on numerous occasions anyone posting to this group who is not probably has the wrong group for example i have on numerous occasions stated quite clearly that i beleive that certain factions of the gun lobby are the worst possible advocates of their cause and i am prepared to do anything in my power to provide them with a platform because they can convince people far better than i could hope that many people with a fixation on lethal weapons are dangerous and derranged if you happen to know a political position which does not have people advocating it who do more harm than good please point it out some people have even accused me of inventing such advocates purely for the purpose of having them trash a set of political views in fact this would be a futile tactic because i could never hope to invent a character as dangerous as sybok athena edu a man who i quite seriously believe to be mentaly ill and a potential psychopath unfortunately the local sherifs office have informed me that they are unable to act untill he attacks someone one of the advantages and draw backs of requiring proof on the part of the government before they may take action against citizens and part of the reason some of us believe weapons should be available so if you were to ask me what is the point that i am trying to make from this current argument on the absolute sanctity of the us constitution what would i answer we are not arguing the absolute sanctity of the u s constitution in fact the fillibuster we re talking about isn t in the constitution i objected to your suggestion that the senate wasn t intended to exercise the power it was clearly given firstly i see that the current us political scene like the uk political scene has become tied to special interests rather than chase the convenient caricatures put about by the media and polititians themselves for this gay rights cmapaigners environmentalists zionists i e jews foreign lobbyists whatever voting power they have etc i sugest that you look at who is really benefiting the inevitable conclusion is that it is the major corporations owned by the ultra wealthy that have benefited regan and bush created what can only be described as a welfare state for the rich i ll point out again that reagan only had a republican majority in the senate during his first term and his coalition in the house came apart at about the same time bush never had any real support in congress the real point is that everybody everywhere got their pork from the big corporations to the guy i saw last night leaving a convenience store with an armful of junk food he d bought with food stamps he spent more in food stamps on junk than i make in a week and i m not on government assitance money was diverted from programs addressing social needs and poured into the weapons industry in the form of cost plus profits contracts lessee let s pull out the old almanac in total u s government budget outlays were billion dollars in est they were trillion dollars an increase of approx billion dollars in national defense cost billion dollars in it was billion dollars and increase of billion dollars that leaves an increase of billion dollars unaccounted for this represented an increase of in income security which includes retirement programs housing assitance and unemployment benefits and i believe welfare cost billion dollars in it was billion dollars or more than national defense started this represented an increase of in the federal government spent billion dollars on medicare in they spent billion dollars an increase of in the feds spent billion dollars on housing credits and subsidies of that like in it was billion in health care services and research was billion dollars in it was billion dollars agriculture up billion to billion science up billion to billion resource conservation up billion to billion education up billion to billion veteran benefits up billion to billion trasnportation up billion to billion about the only things i see which was seriously decreased was under the energy category primarily under supply and community development in the area of disaster relief and between the two of them represent a loss of less than billion dollars where was this huge diversion in order to rectify this situation there must be constitutional revision not that s a stretch if the current government was pushed by the president to create this mess wouldn t one expect it to begin to equalize once the pressure is gone secondly the form of this revision must take account of the changed circumsatnces of the role of the federal government only assuming that the new role is a positive role we want to continue i see very little positive about it the constitution cannot be used to frustrate the democratic process the constitution was designed to frustrate the democratic process so that the voters could be absolutely sure they were getting what they wanted by the time it happened nor do i see putting the brakes on the democratic process an inherently bad thing califronia s riding the edge and every time they pull their ballot initiative nonsense it gets worse if the peoplr want to have welfare spending by the federal government they will have it sometimes or perhaps most of the time the people should be told no and pointed to their local government attempting to prevent this through constitutional trickery only leads to the constitution being brought into disrepute phill would you do me the very great favor of repeating that in talk politics guns methods will always be found to bypass such provisions and once the government gets used to bypassing those provisions they will bypass the others up to the first ammendment cute we can eliminate violations of the law by eliminating the law this is a major reason why the right to own guns should be excluded the implication that this right is equal to the right to free speech is dangerous free speech alone is dangerous phill people know that mass ownership of lethal weapons causes thousands of murders a year the dangerous conclusion they may reach is that the first ammendment may also be the same dangerous mistake ok phill all you gotta show me is a clear pattern of reduction in homicide rates across several countries and that ll be it not current mind you reduction note however that this is not the slippery slope argument it is because the right freedom of speech has been chained to the privilege to own weaponry that the danger arises the advocates of this pivilege must not be allowed to chain freedom of speech to their cause such that if they fall freedom of speech falls as well such actions are not the actions of people genuinely interested in freedom who s chaining anything to freedom of speech by calling it a freedom thirdly and most importantly i want to discover a mechanism wherby i can engender intellectual debate as opposed to totemic debate i consider the grave threat to civilisation to be the loss of the ability to reason about the political debate at anything other than the superficial level the objection i raise to your basing your case entirely on the assertion of the supremacy of the us constitution is that the currency of your argument is limited to the currency of the totem upon which it is based the danger of totems is that they can be reinterpreted in different ways by different people phill you re a master of subtly changing the subject i haven t based my argument against raw democracy on the constitution i ve tried to explain why it isn t a good idea the only time i ve referred to the constitution is to point out it doesn t contain the restrictions on the veto and the senate you appear to believe were meant but just didn t make it in there the constitution doesn t contain the fillibuster rule i only believe that the rule is a good idea you cn t dismiss that as venerating the constitution because it isn t in the constitution david veal univ of tenn div of cont education info services group pa utkvm utk edu i still remember the way you laughed the day your pushed me down the elevator shaft i m beginning to think you don t love me anymore weird al
