Since when did dissent become unpatriotic?

[rateyes]

:shrug: Can we only dissent when it's against a position a Republican takes? :shrug:

[Bluebear]

1. Evidently.

It's sickening.

[redqueen]

2. Is dissent the same thing as saying you won't vote for the Dem nominee?

Cause if that's how you mean it... then yeah... it became unpatriotic a few years ago.

[exothermic]

5. Uh, no...that isn't what dissent means.

:shrug:

[redqueen]

9. You might be surprised at what kind of logical leaps are made around here.

Someone says "I can't vote for him now!" and yeah... you'll find at least a dozen to say that qualifies as "dissent" and no one should be mean to the moron who said it.

[elocs]

10. You need to start your own message board with it own rules,

then you can be as patriotic as you like.

[rateyes]

12. I think you know me better than that.

[redqueen]

20. You, yes. Everyone who's reading? Not so much.

Sorry... but I do think it's important to make that distinction crystal clear ASAP.

[mmonk]

3. Yes. Don't you know your police state etiquette?

Unconstitutional acts by us ok. Unconstitutional acts by the GOP not ok. As long as we "win".

[rateyes]

13. Except that the unconstitutional acts by the GOP were

codified into law today with the help of spineless Dems. I guess I need to go back and real the rule book. :hi:

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. "everything changed after 911"

remember, that the dems, while in the minority, never stood up before. Now that they have the majority, they still enjoy acting as though they are in the minority. the worse part is that they may start to wake up only with a D as president.

[cags]

6. It seems blind following is the new fad around here...lol I personally like the discussion

[DrDan]

11. yep - and plenty of threads that profess no disagreement

allowed until after the election.

Kind of a "brown shirt" state.

[Donnachaidh]

26. ahh -- but point that out and be accused of all sorts of nonsense.

Even threats of tombstoning. :shrug:

[tridim]

29. Ahh, the good-ol' Nazi comparison.

It's so much fun to be called a Brownshirt because I support our candidate and want him to win. Awesome work DrDan.

[DrDan]

31. you are COMPLETELY missing the point

who doesn't want a Dem to win??????????

I don't want to be told, however, that I cannot express any displeasure with our candidate. I have heard that over and over and over. And, yes, I do equate that with a brownshirt mentality.

Please support our candidate. Please want him to win. Please DO NOT ask others to refrain from expressing their displeasure if he does something they do not agree with. It is a FREE country . . . there is freedom of speech . . . and WE not only support it, we ENCOURAGE it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Joe Fields]

27. Yes, the whirling dervishes are out tonight in full force.

Many of them have spun themselves into the ground, trying to defend the indefensible.

[villager]

7. Apparently so. Makes one wonder what this board will be like when Obama wins?

n/t

[Individualist]

8. You MUST value the good of the party above the good of your nation!

Do I really need the sarcasm smilie?

(See my sig line.)

[rateyes]

16. Damn. I forgot about that.

No, you don't need the smilie.

[Hydra]

14. Dissent not appreciated in any form.

Shut up, sit down and leave the leading to better heads. So said Speaker Pelosi, and so say our fellow "democrats."

[rateyes]

17. I guess it's time to get in line.

No, can't do it. :hi:

[Hydra]

19. Me either

I guess I'm just a born smart-ass.

Better to die a smart-ass than to live as an idiot or a coward.

[rateyes]

21. Give me liberty

to be a smart-ass, or give me death!! :rofl:

[Hydra]

22. Patrick Henry did call it

I suspect he was quite a smart-ass himself.

It makes me happy to be in such company :evilgrin:

[rateyes]

23. Yeah, but Madison and Jefferson had to put even Patrick Henry

in his place. Madison favored paying religious teachers with tax-dollars. Thus, Jefferson's statute on religious liberty, and Madison's remonstrance against religious assessments.

Still, I'm glad we're in those patriots company together! :hi:

[vanboggie]

15. 2000 n/t

[rateyes]

18. Damn. You mean I haven't been a patriot for 8 years?

:cry:

[Poiuyt]

24. In 1798, the Alien and Sedition Act was passed

But Jefferson abolished it when he became president, so dissent was ok then.

[Adsos Letter]

25. Did Jefferson support, in any way, the Alien and Sedition Acts?

[autorank]

28. He was appalled

Alien and Sedition Acts
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts

The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the United States Congress—who were waging an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War—and signed into law by President John Adams. Proponents claimed the acts were designed to protect the United States from alien citizens of enemy powers and to stop seditious attacks from weakening the government. The Democratic-Republicans, like later historians, attacked them as being both unconstitutional and designed to stifle criticism of the administration, and as infringing on the right of the states to act in these areas. They became a major political issue in the elections of 1798 and 1800. One act — the Alien Enemies Act — is still in force in 2008, and has frequently been enforced in wartime. The others expired or were repealed by 1802. Thomas Jefferson held them all to be unconstitutional and void, then pardoned and ordered the release of all who had been convicted of violating them.


The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes. Federal Edition. Collected and Edited by Paul Leicester Ford. http://tinyurl.com/5ppu85


As early as April 26, 1798 (see ante. p. 411) Jefferson was predicting and disapproving of possible Alien and Sedition bills, and from that time his letters express the strongest dislike to those acts. Thoroughly opposed to disunion (see letter to John Taylor, VII, p. 430) yet believing these Federalist measures only initial steps towards a dictatorship or monarchy, Jefferson cast about him for some means of checking the project, and finally hit upon the now famous doctrine of nullification of Federal statutes by means of resolutions of state legislatures. No one better realized the hazard of such a doctrine than its inventor, as is indicated not merely by the guarded phrasing, (done with purpose as is shown by his letters to Madison, Taylor, and Nicholas, post,) but quite as much by the absolute secrecy with which his share in the whole attempt was kept for many years.

Jefferson wrote to Madison:
"Monticello, November 17, 1798.
"I enclose you a copy of the draught of the Kentucky resolves. I think we should distinctly affirm all the important principles they contain, so as to hold to that ground in future, and leave the matter in such a tram as that we may not be committed to push matters to extremities, & yet may be free to push as far as events will render prudent."

To Taylor he wrote:
"Monticello, Nov. 26, 1798.
"For the present I should be for resolving the alien & sedition laws to be against the constitution & merely void, and for addressing the other States to obtain similar declarations; and I would not do anything at this moment which should commit us further, but reserve ourselves to shape our future measures or no measures, by the events which may happen."

[Adsos Letter]

30. That was my point...

I should have used the sarcasm smiley to highlight the pointed question...but I appreciate your citations; perhaps they will get us thinking about the nature of the issues involved. :hi:

[autorank]

37. I must have been in a literal state of mind;)

But the quotations are terrific. I was surprised that Jefferson kept his writing efforts for the
Kentucky resolution a secret. He was literally proposing a radical doctrine that he found
dangerous in order to stop the vile act. I like the part about him pardoning the people arrested.
What a guy!

:hi:

[spanone]

32. when ronald reagan became president---ever since

[Yupster]

33. It started with a Democratic antiwar congressman from Ohio

He said the war was folly, and was called a traitor.

A movie should be made about him.

It was.

The Man Without a Country

It's about Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio. He believed the south had a Constitutional right to secede. (I agree with him).
He said the US had no legal right to invade the south. He was arrested for his dissent, and eventually thrown out of the country.

He was nominated as the Democratic candidate for Governor of Ohio in 1864 from his exile in Canada.

He died under weird terms. He was a defense attorney arguing that his client was innocent of murder because the victim actually shot himself taking his gun out of his pocket. Demonstrating the accident to his defense team in his hotel room, he indeed really shot himself and died.

[Individualist]

34. kick

[Jack Rabbit]

35. Why, the right wing morans said so during the Vietnam War, too

For those of you too young to remember, it's nothing new.

As Patrick Henry said, if this is treason let us make the most of it.

[LVjinx]

36. Apparently, some here were only pretending to dislike wiretapping, faith based initiatives, etc.

Just like Republicans were only pretending that "character counted" in the 90s, before trying to shove that pervert Giuliani off on us.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. Noticed that too? Sent a note to Skinner on how fast this is becoming

free republic II