"Obamacare found Constitutional"

  On 7/2/2012 at 10:35 PM, azatoth said:

Americans seem really obsessed with their constitution. Sure, it was pretty ground-breaking when it was written, but geez ease up a bit. It's not like the founding fathers were infallible and the constitution the word of god, no matter what some wingnuts would make you believe.

If you were born in Russia in 1917 and grew up since then you would understand what tyranny means

  On 7/2/2012 at 10:44 PM, gmanyo said:

  On 7/2/2012 at 10:41 PM, sweepstakes said:

  On 7/2/2012 at 10:35 PM, azatoth said:

Americans seem really obsessed with their constitution. Sure, it was pretty ground-breaking when it was written, but geez ease up a bit. It's not like the founding fathers were infallible and the constitution the word of god, no matter what some wingnuts would make you believe.

 

We yanks are big fans of extolling old documents that we're not interested in actually reading.

 

As much as I usually agree with living constitutionalists, I actually think that they're often wrong in their interpretations of the document. We really need to fix it up considering the amount of change that the world has gone through. Constitutional Convention II.

I have a feeling if a new constitution would be drafted it would be worse than the current one, too many moneyed interests. That said I think that having a look and occasional update of a constitution wouldn't hurt. How relevant is a 230 year old document really and how much can you really adapt and interpret from it to fit the modern day?

there was an anonymous writer in a colonial newspaper that once said something along the lines of (im paraphrasing here): the validity of law is only predicated by the zeal of the righteous that participate under it.

I'd say that sums it up pretty nicely, for better or for worse.

  On 7/2/2012 at 10:48 PM, chunky said:

  On 7/2/2012 at 10:35 PM, azatoth said:

Americans seem really obsessed with their constitution. Sure, it was pretty ground-breaking when it was written, but geez ease up a bit. It's not like the founding fathers were infallible and the constitution the word of god, no matter what some wingnuts would make you believe.

 

If you were born in Russia in 1917 and grew up since then you would understand what tyranny means

yes. only in 20th Century Russia is the concept of tyranny relevant and understood.

As for my thoughts on "Obamacare", I think it's a handout to the insurance industry, it has some nice points, but it really is a rather weak attempt to fix a fundamentally broken system. I wonder if I will see the day when the US adopts a single-payer UHC system like the rest of the civilized world.

Well, how could you live in Finland and not learn from the history of your neighbours?

umm ok

  On 7/2/2012 at 10:59 PM, chunky said:

Well, how could you live in Finland and not learn from the history of your neighbours?

What? I am not quite sure what you are on about.

methinks its a thinly veiled insult towards American foreign ignorance, but that might just be me.

Why do you think that Americans love their constitution? It's not because these people are wingnuts. It's because the constitution has a 200 year track record of guaranteeing liberty. It works! Without a constitution like that, along with Christian people to keep it going, America would have been a third world dump.

i refuse to get sucked in to this discussion, but i can't leave without shitting my opinion out at least.

i think it's good in that it is trying something different. the health costs in our country are currently insane, and this has a slight chance of changing the system up in the long run.

  On 7/2/2012 at 11:04 PM, azatoth said:

  On 7/2/2012 at 10:59 PM, chunky said:

Well, how could you live in Finland and not learn from the history of your neighbours?

 

What? I am not quite sure what you are on about.

Have you not seen the disaster-zone that is scandinavia? Hell on earth I tell you.

  On 7/2/2012 at 11:19 PM, chunky said:

Why do you think that Americans love their constitution?

This is a common fallacy. We actually despise it. Most foreigners do not know this, but our upcoming celebration of Independence Day is partially celebrated by a ritual in which we consume double cheeseburgers on federally subsidized scooter chairs, wiping the grease off of our mouths with Constitution napkins. We also use history books for toilet paper, and are only aware of a single historical fact: that the French have never won a military engagement.

  On 7/2/2012 at 11:22 PM, Gocab said:

Have you not seen the disaster-zone that is scandinavia? Hell on earth I tell you.

Hehe, remember when your country was occupied by Nazis? Not that it's relevant to this discussion. Azatoth criticises the US constitution , because he's not quite able to understand the value of tradition. He doesn't understand the value of such a document, even though he lives next to a country which is one of the best examples in history of what the absence of liberty can look like.

Smettingham Rotherford IV seems confused about an old discussion we had about France's disastrous Maginot Line and the general shitness of their military strategy during WWI&WWII.

The dumbest shit in this thread is the reference to 'right wing nuts'. These 'wingnut' Americans come from the Saxons, the people that wrote the Magna Carta fer fuck's sake.

I'm glad I'm not a parrot, repeating the bullshit from huffington post

  On 7/2/2012 at 10:49 PM, azatoth said:

too many moneyed interests.

ugh yeah, fuck that. Something needs to be done, though.

  On 7/2/2012 at 11:05 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

methinks its a thinly veiled insult towards American foreign ignorance, but that might just be me.

to be fair, it might be deserved

My problem with the "right wing nuts" is that even though they're the people who love the founding fathers the most, I would bet money that if the founding fathers were alive today they would be liberal. There were liberals in their time, after all.

edit:

wtf highlighted text, stop fuckin wit my swag

i will say this right now before that tangent goes any further: the people you speak of have no love for the Founding Fathers. Whatsoever. I am dead serious.

What they are in love with is a self-created image of the Founding Fathers. Washington "deity worship" that people grew out of by the late 1800s. They have no idea what they are talking about, and anything they state in relation to Founding Fathers should be immediately ignored.

Goddamn that stuff gets me POed.

also chunky, I see your point now. You must at least admit that your original statement was incredibly vague.

  On 7/2/2012 at 11:48 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

i will say this right now before that tangent goes any further: the people you speak of have no love for the Founding Fathers. Whatsoever. I am dead serious.

 

What they are in love with is a self-created image of the Founding Fathers. Washington "deity worship" that people grew out of by the late 1800s. They have no idea what they are talking about, and anything they state in relation to Founding Fathers should be immediately ignored.

 

Goddamn that stuff gets me POed.

yeah, agreed here

So anyone got any praise/hate about the specifics in Obamacare? I haven't looked at it enough yet.

  On 7/2/2012 at 11:35 PM, chunky said:

  On 7/2/2012 at 11:22 PM, Gocab said:

Have you not seen the disaster-zone that is scandinavia? Hell on earth I tell you.

Hehe, remember when your country was occupied by Nazis? Not that it's relevant to this discussion. Azatoth criticises the US constitution , because he's not quite able to understand the value of tradition. He doesn't understand the value of such a document, even though he lives next to a country which is one of the best examples in history of what the absence of liberty can look like.

 

Smettingham Rotherford IV seems confused about an old discussion we had about France's disastrous Maginot Line and the general shitness of their military strategy during WWI&WWII.

 

The dumbest shit in this thread is the reference to 'right wing nuts'. These 'wingnut' Americans come from the Saxons, the people that wrote the Magna Carta fer fuck's sake.

 

I'm glad I'm not a parrot, repeating the bullshit from huffington post

What, I am not criticizing the constitution just the religious-like reverence some Americans seem to have for it. As I said, it was a ground breaking document when it was written 230 years ago, but the rest of the world caught up and it isn't so special anymore.

And nice job, the Godwin card used already.

  On 7/2/2012 at 10:45 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

  On 7/2/2012 at 10:41 PM, sweepstakes said:

  On 7/2/2012 at 10:35 PM, azatoth said:

Americans seem really obsessed with their constitution. Sure, it was pretty ground-breaking when it was written, but geez ease up a bit. It's not like the founding fathers were infallible and the constitution the word of god, no matter what some wingnuts would make you believe.

 

We yanks are big fans of extolling old documents that we're not interested in actually reading.

 

Well, if anyone has ever known anything about American history, the Constitution has been changed dozens of times. It was intentionally made hard to do...this was a document that required years of incredibly intense and great arguments from all sides, based upon ideological foundations of the Enlightenment all the way back to the birth of the Greek concept of demos.

 

The Constitution itself is not the problem; the problem is those who interpret it and come to absurd conclusions.

i agree with that. the constitution "Itself" is in its own way perfect. because its imperfect. it allows changes to be made to it. unlike many such documents that were out there then, and out there even today. the things that people are upset with are the modifications that have been made over the years. not the original document. it doesn't need to be canned and rewritten. we just need people that actually have common sense be the ones modifying it. not the retards (aka: just about all politicians).

as for the whole healthcare thing, its death. doesn't matter what side your on. every time a president tried to reform it a bunch of people got pissed. we will NEVER come to an agreement that everyone can accept. there will always be a large percentage of us against the current policy. every time.

I think the problem is in part the constitution. If anything the incorrect interpretations are the things saving America; if we interpreted it how it was meant to be interpreted then things wouldn't work out to well considering how much change everything has gone through.

  On 7/3/2012 at 12:02 AM, gmanyo said:

how it was meant to be interpreted

???

  On 7/3/2012 at 12:02 AM, gmanyo said:

I think the problem is in part the constitution. If anything the incorrect interpretations are the things saving America; if we interpreted it how it was meant to be interpreted then things wouldn't work out to well considering how much change everything has gone through.

i don't have healthcare.

america doesn't have a healthcare system, it has a healthcare industry.

  On 7/3/2012 at 12:42 AM, Hoodie said:

america doesn't have a healthcare system, it has a healthcare industry.

  On 7/2/2012 at 11:24 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

  On 7/2/2012 at 11:19 PM, chunky said:

Why do you think that Americans love their constitution?

 

This is a common fallacy. We actually despise it. Most foreigners do not know this, but our upcoming celebration of Independence Day is partially celebrated by a ritual in which we consume double cheeseburgers on federally subsidized scooter chairs, wiping the grease off of our mouths with Constitution napkins. We also use history books for toilet paper, and are only aware of a single historical fact: that the French have never won a military engagement.

Are you serious?