I'll not leap to conclusions; I ran around for twenty years thinking I coined a phrase from Voltaire because the only times I'd ever seen it was immediately after typing it. If someone else said it though, you either misquoted them or their logic is all shot to hell.

Honesty is a very desirable trait.

I'll not leap to conclusions; I ran around for twenty years thinking I coined a phrase from Voltaire because the only times I'd ever seen it was immediately after typing it. If someone else said it though, you either misquoted them or their logic is all shot to hell. The line is that CIVIL RIGHTS are fundamental, because it is without those that all others become but privileges granted by a powerful elite who can and will rescind them when it suits them. Otherwise the proper response to "why are you raping that girl?" would be "because I own her; wanna see the receipt?" We fought a war over this, remember? The Souths logical and strategic error there was making it about state and property rights, because civil rights trump both; that's why the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are written as they are. The legacy of that error is how many people think only racists believe in states rights because they think the Civil War repealed the 10th Amendment. Because the South made civil and property rights equal, but subordinate to absolute states rights, and industrialists chafing at planter dominance let them, knowing what would happen. It's also why when I hear people complaining their earnings are being "stolen" to provide people who'd get them no other way health care, food, housing, education and other things I consider civil rights I just stare at them in the hope the sheer growing weight of my contempt will alert them to their logical error and help them remember their humanity, if no one elses.

I'm annoyed on several levels now: I feel you quoted me without attribution, inaccurately, to rebutt the very point I frequently made on wotmania. If you have an independent source for the statement in question I'll withdraw my first and possibly my second objection, with sincere and humble apologies, but the construction is so similar to something I said on wotmania more times than I could count I can't believe it coincidental; change "property" to "civil" and it's just a (thinly disguised) paraphrase. Also, you clearly did use another quote because you formatted it accordingly (but still without attribution. ) The last objection stands regardless: If someone else said it first and in that way, they're wrong; if property rights>civil rights people could be property in a democracy and we'd need to repeal different Amendments than the Tenth. I'll go further: Excepting states rights, I can think of no right in this country that is not given to INDIVIDUALS, making property and all other rights particular civil rights (and once again subordinating property rights to a greater one. )