But, the dog never laughs in those cartoons.

I’m going to get me a chicken …

There’s a curse in that I’m sure. Must be as bad as, “Dayum their eyes!”

If you like your freedom, thank a Frenchman… Or, would you deny Lafayette his place in our history?

Enjoy your ignorance of history, Dash. No one else can.

What the heck are ‘divers evil counsellors’ ? We all know that lawyers are the spawn of the devil, but is that what this reference means?

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/england.asp

It would be quite easy to label Jefferson et al Plagiarists.

We also have the issue of blaming King George, demonizing him, instead of laying the blame at the door of Parliament.

Just hoping we could have some honest agreement on common facts. If not, I’ll just stick to calling you’all Constitutional Taliban seeking linquistic tyranny through the use of patriotic fatwas.

Let me start with language. The meanings of words aren’t in dictionaries; they are in people. People use a dictionary for spelling checks, pronunciation clues, and for a list of possible meanings to any one word. The word blue is a simple example. Blue is a color but I can see several different blues. Blue could be a mood. Blue could be an unlawful behavior as in ‘blue laws.’ Any one word could have more than one meaning and that meaning could be revealed by the context. Context being dictionary defined as the “words, phrases, or passages that come before and after a particular word or passage in a speech or piece of writing and help to explain its full meaning.” But, using that dictionary definition, context only helps to explain the full meaning of a word by how it was used by a person.

But, that doesn’t yet capture language.

Everyone had a first language. As a Zen Master might ask a student, what was the language that you spoke before you learned to talk? Before we learned to speak, we had some sort of internal language that included labels for things like “warm” and “cold.” Those labels didn’t include any concepts of Fahrenheit or Celsius. Words like Celsius and Fahrenheit do not form naturally in the human mind. The human mind naturally discriminates. Salty tastes different than sweet. Warm feels different than cold. Light is different from dark. And, from the moment of our birth, we began a catalogue of judgments. Those judgments could have been simply, I like this and I don’t like that. So we had to have an internal language with ‘words’ for this and that. Plus various commands to do things like move the hands and feet. And, simple questions like, “What is that and why can’t I reach it with my hand?”

Each of us developed an internal language during our change from fetus to baby to infant right up to and including learning our first vocal and foreign word. We still have our non-verbal and native language. We use it every day. We do things that require no unspoken use of our verbal languages similar to those first natural discriminations, like picking a color for a wedding theme or a setting for the thermostat. We experience an internal clue that starts us down a path to language. My internal temperature should be an ideal 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. When I feel ‘cold,’ it doesn’t mean my body temperature has dropped. My body temperature might still be 98.6 degrees but the effort of keeping that ideal temperature exceeds my ability to ‘warm’ myself. So I could feel ‘cold.’

One cold fact of our language, we kept our first, internally created catalogue of words and meanings. We use them everyday prior to translating our needs, desires, and feelings into our adopted, social language. Our social languages merely give us one set of clues for communicating with others within our personal and human society.

To plead the case of language, the men who wrote and signed the Declaration and the U.S. Constitution are dead. Their society is gone from our planet along with the environment that created and supported it. The circumstances of those men and their society contain clues that are missing from any modern resurrection.

If we could resurrect each of those men, they could not understand our modern questions or fit themselves into our times. Each had a unique interpretation of the documents. Of the 74 men appointed to the Convention in Pennsylvania, only 55 would ever attend. No one from Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, now known as Rhode Island, ever attended. Only 11 states ever voted on the creation of the Constitution, as the New Hampshire delegates were too late to the convention. When the document was completed, only 39 of the 55 signed. One signature, John Dickinson’s, was added by George Read.

So, in addition to language and its meanings, which men would we resurrect? All 74 or only the ones that personally signed the final draft? How do we account for the mob actions on September 29, 1987? In Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania assembly lacked a quorum. Without a quorum, meaning enough members to conduct legal business, the assembly could not vote on calling for a state ratifying convention. A mob formed and dragged two assembly members from their homes to the State House. The two members were forced to remain while their opposition voted for a state ratifying convention. Certainly, a strange way to bring principles like equality into government. Do we resurrect that mob or the two members opposed to the Constitution?

If we resurrected only Jefferson, author of the Declaration and a supporter of a bill of rights, he would have to answer this question, “If slaves did not have equality under the U.S. Constitution, why did they have any value in proportioning seats in the House of Representatives?” Simply repeating. “All men are created equal ” explains nothing about a slave having less value for the purpose of a decennial census. Jefferson doesn’t have to explain that slaves had less value, less rights, and less freedom than others during his lifetime. That is the circumstance of his time and his society. But he must explain why such slaves had any value in allocating power among the 13 states as determined by a federal census.

He could answer, “It was a necessary compromise to get Southern ratification.”

And, it was a compromise. It was a compromise between King George and King Cotton. Any compromise answer eliminates Jefferson and the U.S. Constitution as the ultimate foundation of all government principles. If compromise is a principle of government, then the U.S. Constitution is a starting point for negotiations and citizenship becomes a yard sale.

I don’t know if that works for me. Can I get back to you? Maybe in 1775? 1776? 1787? 1793? OPS! I think those numbers are taken with the magic number being 1776 …

How about you light a torch, run inside a cave, and scream, “I have made light! Mad Dog, bite me! I’m better than you!”

I only have a candle.

When you can’t handle the world as it is, retreat into the past, even if you don’t understand the past.

But, perhaps you can correct me without withdrawing from your pragmatic statements.

Are there any flaws in the Constitution that you’d care to share with me? Or, do you truly find it a flawless refuge?

Sure, sure.

Let’s start an organization dedicated to the truth because so many people are poorly informed.

And, all the truth we ever needed was in the Constitution.

And, let’s name the organization after the year the Declaration of Independence was founded because it’s too hard to educate people.

So, since people don’t know what happened in 1787, let’s call our organization the 1776 Project.

It’s just being pragmatic.

Just wondering what was your first compromise if that wasn’t it.

What you say is very true. What do you think it would take to have one rellay good “media player app”? What does one do to put aside ego and work together? I can tell you that at the 1776 Project this a huge concern for us. We want to work with others, kooky, crazy, sane, conservative, libertarian…it doesn’t matter. We risk more by working apart than by allowing our ego’s to take a backseat. So, I’m curious, how do you think we could bring people together under one banner…how we narrow our focus? I think people are ready for this, so, how do we harness that energy?

We knew this would be an occupation and we have occupied in the past. Due diligence includes planning for an occupation. The non-commissioned do complain, vociferously at that, often. But writing it off as complaint does not negate the truth value about that which they are complaining. We are not arguing whether the action in Iraq was justified or moral or needed. We only say these things in regard to what could be done minimize the loss of our countrymen, some of whom I knew and served with, and to hold politicians (dem and rep.) accountable for mismanaging a large segment of our action for the first 2.5 years. We could argue all day whether this mismanagement is apparent. It is obvious that the general population agrees with this point and admin officials and Generals have commented on attendant mismanagement.
I’m sure that many in England in 1776 probably didn’t find much true in the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence (nor did many here in the States) or agree with their veracity, so, disagreement with us on our grievances is expected. I ask only that you find those areas under which we share philosophical and political real estate and work with us to find a way back to Constitutional government. Whether Iraq’s post invasion action was mismanaged is not a point that our movement rests upon but rather one in a string of points whose verisimilitude rests upon what you are willing to lend to that point ideologically. It is a point that we can discuss aside from the overall goal of restoring, reforming, and replacing our current system.

Glad you like the site…now join up!!!

It is not apparent, and your statement is NOT supported. It has been true in many armies that privates complain about everything. While an E4 is no longer a private, he is no where near being the General Officer that actually makes tactical decisions. What is the proper use of a soldier during what you call the “post invasion” stage? The United States Army is not an occupying force, nor does it have the structure to easily become one. If there was a lack of due diligence, it was in the lack of understanding that an army designed to break things and kill people cannot transition to a police force over night.

By the way, I like your site.