Berkeley City Council Doing Its Anti-Democracy Bit

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Radar

The phrase "Common defense" is repeated twice; once in the preamble describing one of the purposes of creating the Constitution and another in Article 1, section 8 when describing the limited powers of Congress. The phrase "Common Defense" defines and limits the role and scope of our military as being solely for the defense of America and for nothing else. It limits the war making powers of congress to being solely for the defense of America.

I thought you'd try this one. But you run aground on the question of what the common defense truly is. Who, being an American and having business in foreign parts, would exclude American business interests from inclusion under the common defense rubric regardless of where those American business interests are? American interest has always been more or less global and globalized. In practice there is no definable endpoint to where the common defense of Americans and of American interests lies. This is particularly true in nations where property rights are not secure from official cupidity -- and these nations are numerous. They do not secure property rights well, which leaves it to our government's protective function to cover for our nationals, on the assumption somebody has to or the economy goes to pot and everyone's poor, because no one can do business if his gains are euchred from him. In the fourteenth century, this happened to the Chinese iron smelting industry -- it was wiped out inside of ten years and it never returned. It took the laissez-faire of Europe to make a success, and a general prosperity, of large scale efficient smelters.

Your approach is only workable in the absence of any other nation over the entire Earth -- and for that matter, the complete absence of foreigners, as well. Is this even clinically sane? The vehemence with which you adhere to this suggests intense xenophobia -- your whole "screw the rest of the planet, they don't get to be free or wealthy as far as I'm concerned -- if I'm concerned at all" attitude, that is. One can scour your posts for any interface with other lands, languages, or cultures, and come up with -- zero. Strategically, this is unconscionable, and that calls for reading between your lines, to diagnose what's behind the screen of words. What I'm seeing isn't pretty.

The clauses containing the term common defense do not limit the role and scope of our military -- as the whole, every last syllable, of historical precedent demonstrates. You pointedly avoid acknowledging this reality. What does that say about you? I say you worship the golden calf of bullheadedness. Fortunately, I do not.

They are a gross misuse of the military and anyone who orders or takes part in such actions is guilty of treason.

A bullheaded eccentric who yells "Treason! Traitor!" at every second opportunity is guilty of ranting each time he does so, and can make no defense -- not even a Constitutional one, particularly if you actually are a strict constructionist, at which point you have to confine your definition of treason to the Constitution's: if I haven't made war upon the United States, I am innocent of treason; if I haven't given aid and comfort to America's enemies, I'm innocent of treason. Since I cannot be sanely imagined to have done either, you do the math. You rant, and your narcissistic personality makes you thoroughly unfit to do politics -- it keeps you from exercising judgement. Really, by your reasoning, every government employee anywhere at any time who ever formed or executed policy from 1776 onwards is "guilty of treason." Hard to credit, putting it mildly.