CELTICEMPIRE

Yeah, probably. I could use this to show you why the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an abomination... The door was opened and the freedom of association is going to be restricted even further. THAT, not SSM, is the real problem.

Yeah, there are some people who support SSM that think like that, although not long. I do think that we are screwed but not necessarily for this reason.

Actually, it doesn't matter at all, because the world is ending

The fact that they didn't need to "Ban" SSM until 1998 is telling... society didn't collapse. SSM is like my #1 most irrelevant political issue. I think anyone who cares is politically naive.

Well, I consider the idea morally and naturally absurd but if two gay guys want to sign a contract with each other saying they are married they should be allowed to. Nobody should be forced to take it seriously, but if they want to sign that contract between themselves, they have a right to.

Government shouldn't be giving them special recognition though. They shouldn't have anything to do with it.

Yeah, I also wish nobody had come up with the prepostorous idea of SSM, we'd be better off if nobody wanted to get one, but that is irrelevant to legal principle.

I believe he has gotten a couple issues right, probably by dumb luck. I believe he said pot use shouldn't be a crime as well. I agree with you that in a vaccuum I would assume the same as you, however.

He may change his mind once he realizes what side I'm on, though

Which makes me wonder, what if I came out as pro-SSM?

(Meh, I think marriage is a contractual matter that government should have nothing to do with anyways. Technically the pro-SSM people should agree with me, but they don't want liberty of contract, they just want special recognition. I don't care about the debate as it currently stands because both sides take as a given that the government should be involved with marriage.

Last time I made that argument Useless actually said a woman should be allowed to sell her organs... and asked me why I had a problem with it. Even though I was arguing that that should be legal... He misread me entirely.

The pro-choice crowd, predominately, does not want women to be able to control their own bodies. They only care about the right to murder. See here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=12222800#post12222800

If they had the slightest bit of consistency, they would not oppose legalized organ selling.

Sure, why not.

Most of what I know about Tyler is from "Recarving Rushmore" by Ivan Elend. The short version is that the Whig Party was basically "Coalition that hates Andrew Jackson." Most of them wanted to expand the government dramatically but Tyler fought his own party and refused to sign unconstitutional legislation from his own party. He was like the Ron Paul of the 1840's.

Grover Cleveland was also extremely fiscally conservative, and in the real sense, not in the joke sense of the current GOP. He refused to pass all sorts of spending bills, even for Northern aggressor veterans. The only possible flaw I could think of was the Internal Improvements Act, a fairly minor blemish in the grand scheme of things. Neither Tyler nor Cleveland started any wars.

Every President did indeed have his flaws. John Tyler and Grover Cleveland had very, very few. Coolidge had the flaw of enforcing prohibition, but I give him a partial pass for this because he was opposed to the law and wanted to amend the constitution to relegalize alcohol. And it was actually in the constitution at the time.

Ben Franklin was awesome and I use that quote all the time too.

Madison... the War of 1812 was justified (They were attacking our ships) but ill advised. We almost lost the country at the time. Nonetheless, Madison did not suspend civil liberties during the war (A true rarity), and he followed Jefferson in NOT trying to crush the New England secession movement. Definitely a top 10 President.

Jefferson did do something similar to what Adams did, but that was limited to enforcing already existing libel laws in dubious ways, rather than actually making new anti-speech laws (Libel laws are anti-libertarian in the first place). It wasn't as pervasive under Jefferson though. Even still, Jefferson was a much better Founding Father than he was a President. I used to rate Jefferson a bit too highly when it came to actually being President. I'd still put him in the top 10, but not number one

My questions have to do with our policies pre-Pearl Harbor, not the waging of the war post-Pearl Harbor.

Adams, I'm not an Adams expert, but the Alien and Sedition Acts are worth mentioning. Basically laws making it illegal to print "False information" about the President or Congress. It was used often against political opponents. To be fair, early Presidents, including Adams, usually refrained from vetoes unless the law was though to be unconstitutional, and not for mere disagreement. It is also the case that Adams did oppose the law in question. He still signed the clearly unconstitutional legislation though. Adams did, however, avoid war with Britain and wisely followed Washington's foreign policy. All in all, Adams was a fairly pathetic President, but he wasn't outright evil like Lincoln, Wilson, either Roosevelt, or their ilk.

FDR definitely belongs near the basement as well. Who was worse between FDR and Lincoln is really a tough one, and would probably depend on whether World War II was avoidable or not. If so, Franklin failed at that as well, and so would have been worse than Abe. If not, FDR at least has the redeeming quality of handling the war as well as could have been done, which would at least make him better than Abe.

We didn't really know about the Holocaust at the time either. Our reason for opposing the Nazis had to do with the fact that their allies attacked us and that the Allies better suited our geopolitical interests. I'm certainly glad that those Jews who were saved were saved, but you can't really justify a war by something you didn't even know until it ended.

I hate Nixon, but he did have a redeemable quality, he actually resigned when his scandal came up, rather than keeping his post in spite of it. That said, he was still pretty low. Just that "If the President does it, it isn't illegal" line puts him at the bottom. He didn't subvert the first amendment though. Any President who does that pretty much belongs in the basement. Even John Adams was pretty bad, although he had the redeeming quality of actually avoiding his war rather than "Fighting it well". He's pretty much the only President to have that combination that I can think of (Suspending free speech and NOT going to war) and while that still isn't a great combination, at least he doesn't have both of them, so I'd probably put him in the "Second to last tier" rather than the bottom tier.

The only reason I reluctantly do not rate Lincoln as the absolute worst is that Lincoln actually did fight his war fairly close to home. Wilson arrested people for criticizing a war halfway across the world.

I don't really "Support" the South per say. The only claim I make was that the South was less bad than the North. That's the only claim I make. Ceteris Parabus, I support the defending side in every conflict (Even if the US is the attacker, I will wish for our troops safety but I will not wish them victory) and you'd need a significant moral cause to even make me say "Well, I disagree with the war, but I understand why you're doing it. Good luck." To get me to actually agree with an aggressive war... well, I don't really think that's a possibility. WWII is the closest and I'm even a bit skeptical there.

Considering the way Lincoln ruled after losing seven states, however, he deserved to lose them all. He probably deserved the shot to the head too, although killing people without a trial isn't right. I have no sympathy for him though. He didn't deserve to be in charge of anything any more than Hitler did.

World War II is a thing I'm a bit iffy on. I want to take a look at Vance's book on it. I suspect, although I am not certain, that the war could have been avoided through a different, more clearly neutral policy, rather than the "We support the Allies, and are going to do everything we can to help them while pretending to be neutral" neutrality. I would almost understand the humanitarian argument of "We need to help the people under Axis oppression". I wouldn't agree with it, but I could understand it, except for one thing. Stalin. Much like Vietnam, we sided with one dictator over another. Of course, Japan did attack us, but we also fought them in China before we were even really at war. Considering Stalin, I have to say that if we could have avoided involvement (Which I am not certain of) it would have been the better thing to do.

I was discussing war with one of my teachers today and I was mentioning how Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR were all valid candidates for the worst President of all time (As much as I want to say Lincoln, at least his war was at home, Wilson wanted to send his progressive agenda around the entire WORLD at the point of a gun so he gets the absolute worst ranking. MagisterCultuum appropriately called Wilson "America's fascist.") My teacher's response was that "War is sometimes tough to avoid when the bad guys won't let you. And I said "Hence the justice of the South's cause." I don't usually go for simple "Good/Bad" splits, usually in a war both sides were wrong, but if there was a "Good guy" in the Civil War, it must be the South, who defended their homes and children from Lincolnian aggression.

What do you think of Napolitano's quote in my sig?

Walter Block

I'd be the only one on this forum for sure.

Regarding Kentucky, I'd probably say its "Southern" in much the same way Maryland or West Virginia is, although I haven't been there to say.