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From: AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org>
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.tech
Subject: Re: bike light optics
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2024 15:53:38 -0500
Organization: Yellow Jersey, Ltd.
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On 4/8/2024 10:42 AM, Zen Cycle wrote:
> On 4/7/2024 5:11 PM, AMuzi wrote:
>> On 4/7/2024 3:35 PM, zen cycle wrote:
>>> On 4/7/2024 1:26 PM, AMuzi wrote:
>>>> On 4/7/2024 11:54 AM, Catrike Ryder wrote:
>>>>> On Sun, 7 Apr 2024 12:25:03 -0400, zen cycle
>>>>> <funkmasterxx@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> bullshit. Constitutional originalists  - those 
>>>>>> claiming _such_ things as
>>>>>> "original Constitution had a better ethos" come up 
>>>>>> empty when reminded
>>>>>> that racism and misogyny were quite literally written 
>>>>>> into the original
>>>>>> version. Sure, when asked about the 3/5ths compromise 
>>>>>> they say 'oh,
>>>>>> yeah, except for that', then when asked about giving 
>>>>>> women the right to
>>>>>> vote they say 'oh, yeah, except for that'.
>>>>>
>>>>> Only fools believe the 3/5th compromise was a racist 
>>>>> thing.  What it
>>>>> was an attempt by the non-slave states to reduce the 
>>>>> politcal power of
>>>>> the slave holding states, who wanted to count all the 
>>>>> slaves.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yeah, the slave states wanted to count them all.
>>>>
>>>> Exactly, as anyone who has read in the period knows.
>>>
>>> Maybe you should try reading in the period then.
>>>
>>> from The Federalist papers, #54
>>> "The federal Constitution, therefore, decides with great 
>>> propriety on the case of our slaves, when it views them 
>>> in the mixed character of persons and of property. This 
>>> is in fact their true character. It is the character 
>>> bestowed on them by the laws under which they live; and 
>>> it will not be denied, that these are the proper 
>>> criterion; because it is only under the pretext that the 
>>> laws have transformed the negroes into subjects of 
>>> property, that a place is disputed them in the 
>>> computation of numbers; and it is admitted, that if the 
>>> laws were to restore the rights which have been taken 
>>> away, the negroes could no longer be refused an equal 
>>> share of representation with the other inhabitants."
>>>
>>> yeah....that's not about race at all.
>>>
>>> You should know better than to follow the lead of a 
>>> willfully ignorant dumbass.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Ditto Hammurabi's 'An eye for an eye'. That was not a 
>>>> call to mayhem but rather a groundbreaking call for 
>>>> mercy and limited reprisal.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Thank you , yes I've read The Federalist a few times, 
>> years apart. It's always a good read and I must say 
>> generally underappreciated.
>>
>> Avoiding presentism, the issue at hand was a seemingly 
>> insurmountable barrier to union. Union being considered of 
>> exceptional even existential import, something was 
>> desperately needed to bring resolution.
>>
>> Nowhere on earth were slaves*, at that time or before, 
>> voting in general elections. Note that our Constitution 
>> even precedes William Wilberforce's eventually successful 
>> campaign in the British Empire.
>>
>> The distorted Southern economies relied on bondage (that 
>> reliance only increased after the Founding) but preferred 
>> to count 'all persons' for Congressional seats.  The 
>> Southern leaders had probably never heard of an irony 
>> meter but if there was one it would shoot off the end at 
>> that proposition.
>>
>> For both economic but also moral reasons the northern 
>> states did not generally allow bondage (Pennsylvania 
>> formally outlawed it in 1780, well before our 
>> Constitution, before Wilberforce, before anywhere else on 
>> earth AFAIK.) and were firm on not bumping the number of 
>> Southern representatives in the Congress.
>>
>> Even before the now mostly misunderstood 3/5 rule, several 
>> of the Framers including Jefferson privately wrote that 
>> the practice would necessarily have to end, albeit as St. 
>> Augustine pleaded, "not yet".
>>
>> p.s. Although the general practice in the Americas at that 
>> time was of black slavery, there were black freemen 
>> (including early patriot fatality Crispus Attucks) and 
>> there were not-black slaves. Still, I agree with you that 
>> this was and is inherently race tainted to our greater 
>> loss, then and now. It is also critically viewed as a rift 
>> between universal liberty and its selective denial, a 
>> fundamental conflict then and now, here and everywhere.  
>> Humans are imperfect but the Framers set up a system 
>> incontrovertibly aligned to destroy the chattel system 
>> well before anyone else on earth had considered it.
> 
> ?...As far as I know, international African slave trade and 
> the practice of holding african slaves was generally banned 
> by every nation which had practiced it well before the US 
> did, while the US not only maintained slavery as an 
> institution, but passed at least two laws - fugitive slave 
> acts - as late as 1850 that reinforced the institution. 
> Further to that, the Fugitive Slave acts were abused by 
> domestic slave traders such that free blacks - either 
> emancipated or born free - were abducted and sold into 
> slavery in the south.
> 
> "The historian Carol Wilson documented 300 such cases in 
> Freedom at Risk (1994) and estimated there were likely 
> thousands of others"
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Risk-Kidnapping-America-1780-1865/dp/0813192978
> 
> Then there's Solomon Northrup:
> 
> "born free around 1808 to Mintus Northup and his wife in 
> Essex County, New York state.....In 1841, Northup was 
> tricked into going to Washington, DC, where slavery was 
> legal. He was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery, and 
> he was held as a slave in Louisiana for 12 years. One of the 
> very few to regain freedom under such circumstances, he 
> later sued the slave traders involved in Washington, DC. Its 
> law prohibited Northup from testifying against the white men 
> because he was black and so he lost the case."
> 
> Northrup published his Memoir "12 Years a Slave"on the 
> experience.
> 
> 
>   Then
>> 2 generations later the nation sacrificed 3/4 million of 
>> her citizens to end it. Not the first instance on earth, 
>> but early to the change.
>>
>>
>>
>> *Of all descriptions, none in greater numbers at that time 
>> than the mostly Balkan/Slavic slaves within the Caliphate.
> 

And of the American sailors enslaved by the Barbary moslems, 
many were killed, half the survivors were castrated. 
History, ours and everyone's, is full of violence injustice 
and general savagery.  Who could dispute that?
-- 
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971