The Glade 4.0

So what? They did a shitty job. now we have different people; they can do a better job.



What part about "I don't give a **** about the moral definition" do you not understand? It's not circular or not, because I don't CARE if the law is moral or not. I've never made any such argument; it's a strawman you invent. I care about what it's effects are in practical terms, and its effects are to obfuscate the issue.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I know you don't. I am endeavoring to point out why not doing so is a mistake. Also since you know I don't care about the law; why are you getting upset at me for arguing something you don't care about when that is all you ever do in response to me?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Because the law is the law. You argue the way things "should be" and DE argues the way things "are".

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Holy shitsnacks!

Then you're doing a really shitty job. I've seen no reason at all so far, as in, not even a poor one.



A) I'm not upset at all. Don't give yourself so much credit
B) You do care about the law. You don't accept that the law is correct jsut because it is the law, but you certainly do care about the RULE of law, and I'm quite certain that you have accepted the principle that a law can be unconstitutionally vague in the past. Claiming I'm doing exactly what you're doing does not jibe with positions you've espoused in the past.

Of course, maybe I'm mistaken you don't think clarity is important to the rule of law. If not, then make that clear.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The Rule of Law is the law. You pay deference to things written in paper as opposed to the ideals written by nature on the hearts of man. It is by that nature that the Rule of Law is established and pieces of paper to the contrary are less than without meaning.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

See, this is where you're mostly wrong. In our society, the Letter of the Law is equal or paramount to the Rule (or Spirit) of the law.

You can't enforce "the ideals written by nature on the hearts of man". And to try to do so would be ridiculous.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I don't know of any ideals written by nature on the hearts of men. I'm also not interested in a theocracy, if you're referring to those laws given to us by God and written in us. We don't answer for those laws on earth, so I don't see how they pertain to this discussion, or why the government should concern itself with them.

I'll take what's written on paper, thanks. You've given me no reason to think it's inferior.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

All he's really doing is calling his own personal beliefs the ideals written on everyone's heart. It's just a lot of loaded, predjudicial language in place of argument.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Not when the law conflicts with itself. People are always desiring to follow a lesser law that they like than a higher law they dislike.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Not really. Just echoing the ideals that gave us the Rule of Law we have now. De Soto I believe used the "written on the hearts of man" phrasing.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Which were mostly just a flowery way of justifying getting rid of English government. There weren't any real ideals involved, jsut a desire to be free of arbitrary taxes and such. It was all a practical matter, and they didn't folow those ideals when they set them down on paper.

Which brings us to another point. You're trying to bait-and-switch. One minute you're talking about how the rule of law on paper are "less then without meaning", then you're back to claiming they're the "rule of law we have now". Or are you claiming we're being ruled now by some unknowable "law of nature written in us"?

As for De Soto, why is his opinion on anything relevant?

Not when the law conflicts with itself. People are always desiring to follow a lesser law that they like than a higher law they dislike.




People are always claiming there's a higher law that is whatever they want it to be. There is no "higher law" to be followed except that which IS written on paper and THAT law requires that subordinate laws be clear and understandable.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Domingo de Soto may well have, Elmo, but I know Augustine did about 1000 years earlier:
"Thy law is written in the hearts of men, which iniquity itself effaces not."

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

As in literal higher law DE. The law says that X law is higher than Y. As in Constitution -> Acts of Congress -> State law -> local ordinance

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

So you do care about laws written on paper. You're just all over the place. First it was "I care about the Rule of Law written by nature, not what's on paper" now you're all about the Constitution again, which IS written on paper.

Furthermore, my argument is that the existing alw does not satisfy the constitutional requirement of clarity. A law that is excessivly vague violates Due Process because the person cannot be sure what is prohibited and what isn't.

http://law.jrank.org/pages/11152/Void-Vagueness-Doctrine.html



So far all you've done is ramble from place to place. You've commented baguely about "natural law", now you're back to the Constitution (I think) and there was some mention of somethin that, as far as I could tell was basically "the government called it torture at one time so now they're morally obligated never to rescind that postion, nor even to pass a law making it specifically clear on that score, because that would somehow be inconsistent with something or other, even if when they called it torture they had an ulterior motive."

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You act as if you do not know that our highest law was written in man's best attempt to uphold natural law. Why is every conversation with you like pulling teeth from a man crying about his cavaties yet struggling against the pliers?

If our government has labeled an action torture when done by our enemies (which it has) it is not something that law at a later date should bring into the realm of legality and attempt to dismiss it as not torture simply because a new law now allows us.

For example we correctly call thumb screws torture and if next year a law is written to legally exempt thumbscrews from being considered torture - would this to you make it not torture?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

It wasn't. There is no natural law. There's God's law, but that's not what the Constitution was written to uphold, nor should we use that for our governance.



Of course we should, especially when our defining it that way in the first place served our own purposes. There's no reason at all we shouldn't "bring it into the realm of legality". Torture doesn't enjoy any special status where laws regarding it can't be changed. A torture law that is excessively vague is unconstitutional, unusuable, and should be replaced by a better, more specific law, and no one should be prosecuted under the old one. Torture enjoys no special status where normal legal requirements are dispensed with simply in order to remain consistent with past actions. Conssistency with the political positions of administrations long since out of office isn't important.



This bears no relation to what actually happened. What actually happened was that we called waterboarding torture for our own expedience after WWII. At some point we also passed a law ostensibly prohibiting "torture" - except that the definition of torture that law contains is so vague that it is not clear that waterboarding is covered, or, if it is, that very common practices which it is ludicrous to call torture, such as putting people in a cell, is covered. What I'm saying is that if we want to call waterboarding torture, we need to define it as such clearly, and until then it is unlawful to prosecute anyone, regardless of how we've defined it in the past. Despite calling it torture after WWII, it continues to be used for training and publicity stunts, so clearly it is not torture under current law. Trainees at the sort of school where waterboarding would be used are certainly in the custody of their instructors since the instructors are responsible for their well-being in all the ways that a correctional officer or institution is.

In any case, it doesn't matter what thumb screws would be to me. They wouldn't be torture legally, and attempting to prosecute someone for that would be unlawful.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."