From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Thu Sep 21 2000 - 13:48:22 MDT
hal@finney.org wrote:
>
> Ron H. writes:
> > In a message dated 9/21/00 8:03:14 AM Pacific Daylight Time, hal@finney.org
> > writes: << Okay, but you started off with this stuff about being created by
> > God who gave us rights. >>
> >
> > Hal,
> > Given that we know the Washington, Jefferson and many others were
> > somewhat indifferent to organized religion was that phrasing literal or just
> > exhoratory?
>
> My point was that we should respect the reasoning of Washington,
> Jefferson, etc. only if it makes sense to us. Just because they were
> Great Men whom we were taught to worship in state-sponsored schools is
> no reason to give special credence to what they say.
>
> Forrest began by writing, "The reason for an armed populace is very,
> very fundamental:" and then he quoted the Declaration of Independence,
> which starts off by talking about God and how our rights come from him.
Again Hal, you are reading into it. It does not say 'god' it says 'creator'. It
is you who are equating the two.
>
> Why should we, who by and large reject theism, pay attention to a document
> which has this as the foundation? Whatever the authors thought about
> God and organized religion, if they base their theory of natural rights
> on the principle that we are endowed with them by our Creator with a
> capital C, they aren't going to convince me.
What is your creator?
>
> If someone wants to advance the idea that owning weapons is beneficial
> because it makes it harder for organized groups to impose their will
> on individuals, that's fine. But quoting Jefferson isn't productive,
> at least not in this forum, at least not for me.
Why, because he's not politically correct any more? Because he is considered to
be the 'first libertarian', its rather obvious why the media and the left would
need to smear his name on both sides of the aisle, with the fact that he kept
slaves, and kept his own children as slaves when they were born to slaves, to be
some sort of evil thing to abhorred by freedom lovers, while promoting the fact
he had a love affair with his slave and had children by her as a means to get
more bigoted right wing people disliking him. Its been a rather well crafted
propaganda campaign, I must admit, because it alienates him with many groups
across the board, and disparages anything else he ever did or said by its smear
of his person. Hal certainly has bought into it.
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