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Post by Marshall on Sept 5, 2018 10:06:51 GMT -5
It's these parts that speak fearfully about Trump:
When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty[/b]—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.
It's not the political persuasion argument that bothers me. It's the entire being of the man. His dealing in the real world prior to being President disgusts me. His actions with our friends and allies in the world disgusts me. His lying and cheating and bragging misogyny disgusts me. His loud mouthed bullying disgusts me.
It's the moral character of the man.
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Post by aquaduct on Sept 5, 2018 10:09:20 GMT -5
Yeah, we get it.
Just think you're wrong is all.
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Post by Marshall on Sept 5, 2018 10:12:06 GMT -5
OK
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Post by aquaduct on Sept 5, 2018 10:46:50 GMT -5
John, Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for twelve years. I didn’t necessarily agree with the way he went about things as POTUS but I think he’s every bit as committed to the US Constitution as you or I or anyone we know. This may have become an emotional issue fo you. I can understand that. Peace. Whose version of the Constitution? |
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Post by Russell Letson on Sept 5, 2018 11:23:52 GMT -5
IMHO, teaching doesn't require actual knowledge. I learned that in an instructor training class. Just follow the script. You don't have to understand it. I never believed that incidentally so I tended not to follow the script. In that scenario, who is the teacher? The bureaucrat/drone reading the script, or the person (or given the context, the committee) that wrote it? Then there's the matter of what the class so operated is intended to deliver: more follow-the-script behavior or actual understanding of the subject matter. BTW, you must not have actually learned the lesson of the "instructor traing class," since you rejected its premise. So which is it--teaching-is-script-following or something less mechanical? Or were you just being oppositional in not following the script? |
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Post by brucemacneill on Sept 5, 2018 11:34:10 GMT -5
IMHO, teaching doesn't require actual knowledge. I learned that in an instructor training class. Just follow the script. You don't have to understand it. I never believed that incidentally so I tended not to follow the script. In that scenario, who is the teacher? The bureaucrat/drone reading the script, or the person (or given the context, the committee) that wrote it? Then there's the matter of what the class so operated is intended to deliver: more follow-the-script behavior or actual understanding of the subject matter. BTW, you must not have actually learned the lesson of the "instructor traing class," since you rejected its premise. So which is it--teaching-is-script-following or something less mechanical? Or were you just being oppositional in not following the script? Since I was teaching hardware repair at the time, and the scripts were obviously written by script writers not technicians who didn't know that a lot of the information in the script was factually wrong and when presented with the facts their answer was that it was already published and they weren't working on it anymore, I'd leave the script in favor of handouts with corrected information and descriptions of how things really worked. My students were supportive because many of them knew the published stuff was erroneous. My boss was also supportive. The guy who controlled the script writers wasn't supportive. We had a few run-ins. |
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Post by Russell Letson on Sept 5, 2018 12:34:03 GMT -5
So actually-teaching (that is, delivering reliable/useful/accurate) information/skills really does require actual knowledge. And the drones who wrote the materials--the scripts--did not possess actual (that is, reliable/useful/accurate) information and were supervised by somebody who didn't care about that component of the process. That is what I call the bureacratization of education.
The times I wrote tech material, I had to know not just how the software worked (and how it could be broken) but at least some of how the financial systems it enabled operated, at least on the regulatory/procedural end. It's hard for me to imagine a functional corporate setting in which the kind of dysfunction you describe could continue. (Of course, maybe it didn't, and maybe the division or department or the whole company went down or got eaten or whatever becomes of suboptimal corporate creatures.)
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Post by aquaduct on Sept 5, 2018 12:57:53 GMT -5
It's hard for me to imagine a functional corporate setting in which the kind of dysfunction you describe could continue. So I take it you've never worked outside of academia? |
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Post by millring on Sept 5, 2018 15:20:26 GMT -5
John, Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for twelve years. There is nothing about studying or knowing the Constitution that implies what he thinks about it. Given his personal history and acquaintances at the time, it's just as likely that he was studying it for the express purpose of knowing what he was fighting against. He wanted to understand the constitution to better enable him to alter it into something he could tolerate. IMHO, teaching doesn't require actual knowledge.. Nonsense. Of course he knows the constitution. He just doesn't view it as an "originalist" would. He views it as a post modern scholar would. He knows the Constitution. He just doesn't much care for it. I imagine his views are much like Ruth Bader Ginsberg's views on the Constitution -- that it's not a very good document and if he could re-write it, he would make it entirely different. |
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Post by Russell Letson on Sept 5, 2018 15:55:55 GMT -5
Originalism is, um, interesting insofar as whatever the original describes or engages remains the same. The Bill of Rights protects speech, the press, exercise of religion, the right to bear and keep arms; forbids the establishment of religion; assures the right to a speedy trial; and so on. But what exactly constitutes "speech"? All speech (including perjury, libel, slander, threats of bodily harm)? What arms? Shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles? Poison gas? And what happens when one protected right comes in conflict with another? And how much scope does the Tenth Amendment give States?
Questions like these arose very quickly, and Congress and the Supreme Court had to interpret and eventually (gasp!) adapt the language and intent of the Framers. I know that the favored answer of "originalists" is that the fix for blatant injustices and abuses is to amend the Constitution, and that has been done in some cases. But every code of conduct, from the Mosaic Code onward, has needed interpretation and adaptation. There comes a point where originalism is dysfunctional.
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Post by millring on Sept 5, 2018 16:15:11 GMT -5
Originalism is, um, interesting insofar as whatever the original describes or engages remains the same. The Bill of Rights protects speech, the press, exercise of religion, the right to bear and keep arms; forbids the establishment of religion; assures the right to a speedy trial; and so on. But what exactly constitutes "speech"? All speech (including perjury, libel, slander, threats of bodily harm)? What arms? Shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles? Poison gas? And what happens when one protected right comes in conflict with another? And how much scope does the Tenth Amendment give States? Questions like these arose very quickly, and Congress and the Supreme Court had to interpret and eventually (gasp!) adapt the language and intent of the Framers. I know that the favored answer of "originalists" is that the fix for blatant injustices and abuses is to amend the Constitution, and that has been done in some cases. But every code of conduct, from the Mosaic Code onward, has needed interpretation and adaptation. There comes a point where originalism is dysfunctional. And, of course, you know that's not the complete story. You also know that if you asked a post modernist and a modernist what is meant by "interpret", you would get two answers. A third from an originalist. And you know what is meant by originalism -- though, no matter what name we call that rose, you will find some way to make that new appellation into a stinking pejorative worthy of ridicule -- and you will address that new straw man rather than address the reality that no person wishing to follow the instructions for making some necessary bit of technology would ever accept "interpret" as described by the post modernist. And yet you find the culturally nearly universally understood, if not agreed with, concept of determining the intent of a document to be the one definition of "interpret" you find ridiculous. Feinstein, for example, this very day questioned the qualifications of a supreme court justice on the basis that his views on guns might not be "mainstream" enough. That's the problem in a nutshell. The progressive view is that the court should interpret according to current fashion -- with a total disregard for (a post-modernist view of) original intent. You complain that amendment isn't adequate. Feinstein's assertion is that amendment shouldn't be necessary. |
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Post by brucemacneill on Sept 5, 2018 16:19:19 GMT -5
Feinstein didn't lay a hand on him. None of them have.
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Post by Marshall on Sept 5, 2018 18:48:45 GMT -5
I was listening to part of the confirmation whilest driving my mother around today. And Ted Cruz was lauding Kavanagh's record and saying how there was 96% agreement with K and Obama's guy Garland on the same court. And I thought, "Why the hell didn't the Republican Senate want to do hearings on Garland, then?"
Politicians. Gotta love them.
(Maybe Cruz was telling the Ds that they secretly should shut up and let them approve this guy. It could get a lot worse.)
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Post by aquaduct on Sept 5, 2018 19:09:46 GMT -5
I was listening to part of the confirmation whilest driving my mother around today. And Ted Cruz was lauding Kavanagh's record and saying how there was 96% agreement with K and Obama's guy Garland on the same court. And I thought, "Why the hell didn't the Republican Senate want to do hearings on Garland, then?"Politicians. Gotta love them. (Maybe Cruz was telling the Ds that they secretly should shut up and let them approve this guy. It could get a lot worse.) What was the vote on Obamacare? Politics and paybacks are a bitch. |
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Post by james on Sept 5, 2018 19:14:56 GMT -5
As are pre-existing medical conditions.
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Post by Marshall on Sept 6, 2018 10:23:50 GMT -5
I like your pots.  I've reread the Hamilton quote. I'll grant you the first paragraph could apply, in varying degrees, to any Presidential candidate. But the 2nd paragraph speaks "Trump" to me more than any candidate I've ever known. And I think it applies equally, but more dangerously, to Obama. More dangerously because a majority of Americans, informed by the national press, are in agreement with Obama's goals toward dismantling the constitutional limits on our government. What Trump has done so far is hardly anything more than undoing the overreaching power grab for the executive that Obama executed. If one agrees with Obama's goals, they don't see his overreach as dangerous. We think a despot we agree with is okay. **sigh** I'll agree with you that Obama did too much by Presidential decree. That's a big weakness on his part. He was not able, or interested, in doing the work to get a congressional consensus on anything (if that's possible). And I'll agree that most of what Trump has done legally is to undo previous presidential orders. I'm OK with that. Politics as normal. But the man is such a scum bag that I can't trust him. He has no integrity other than aggrandizing his own large ass. And on international fronts, he's stiffed our historic allies and thrown a monkey wrench into the economic order. I hate the man. That's not politics. It's a personality problems. I would never trust getting into a financial contract with a scumbag developer like Trump. I avoided them in private practice, because I saw time and time again his ilk lie and cheat good people out of their contractual due. I don't trust him to protect the nation's interests. He's out for himself.
"to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind."
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Post by aquaduct on Sept 6, 2018 10:39:35 GMT -5
And I think it applies equally, but more dangerously, to Obama. More dangerously because a majority of Americans, informed by the national press, are in agreement with Obama's goals toward dismantling the constitutional limits on our government. What Trump has done so far is hardly anything more than undoing the overreaching power grab for the executive that Obama executed. If one agrees with Obama's goals, they don't see his overreach as dangerous. We think a despot we agree with is okay. **sigh** I'll agree with you that Obama did too much by Presidential decree. That's a big weakness on his part. He was not able, or interested, in doing the work to get a congressional consensus on anything (if that's possible). And I'll agree that most of what Trump has done legally is to undo previous presidential orders. I'm OK with that. Politics as normal. But the man is such a scum bag that I can't trust him. He has no integrity other than aggrandizing his own large ass. And on international fronts, he's stiffed our historic allies and thrown a monkey wrench into the economic order. I hate the man. That's not politics. It's a personality problems. I would never trust getting into a financial contract with a scumbag developer like Trump. I avoided them in private practice, because I saw time and time again his ilk lie and cheat good people out of their contractual due. I don't trust him to protect the nation's interests. He's out for himself.
"to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind."
That's alright. I probably wouldn't cross the street to watch Obama bleed to death. |
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Post by Marshall on Sept 6, 2018 12:10:00 GMT -5
I'd cross the street to help Trump.
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Post by Marshall on Sept 6, 2018 13:04:36 GMT -5
I don't mean to put myself and my motivations above anybody else's. I imagine Peter to be a good upstanding person. And I'm not any braver that the average schmuck. If push came to bleed, who knows what would really happen. There would be so many more factors involved.
But it does highlight the power of rhetoric in any discussion.
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Post by dradtke on Sept 6, 2018 15:38:35 GMT -5
I'd cross the street to help Trump. I'd draw the line at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, though. |
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