Re: bike light optics

On Wed, 10 Apr 2024 10:35:34 -0500, AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org> wrote:

On 4/10/2024 9:27 AM, Zen Cycle wrote:

On 4/9/2024 10:33 AM, AMuzi wrote:

On 4/9/2024 7:32 AM, Zen Cycle wrote:

On 4/8/2024 4:53 PM, AMuzi wrote:

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?

>
>
Was enslavement of american sailors by the Barbary
muslims set up as _legal_ international trade scheme
where governments of nations involved sanctioned and
protect the trade? Were the laws where the slaves were
traded set up to protect the slave owners and sanction
the sale of humans?
>
Conflating international piracy with a legally sanctioned
and protected slave trade is a desperate grasp at
rationalizing the practice - an extreme case of
"whataboutism".
>
The point is that you claimed the US lead the way via
>
"the Framers set up a system incontrovertibly aligned to
destroy the chattel system well before anyone else on
earth had considered it."
>
which is unequivocally wrong and completely indefensible.
The Europeans - who admittedly started the african slave
trade - banned the trade and ownership of slaves _well_
before the US even considered it as a national policy,
and the US went so far as to protect the domestic slave
trade and ownership _after_ international trade and slave
ownership was banned by passing _federal_ legislation
doing just that including language implicitly sanctioning
slavery in our constitution.
>
The US held onto the barbaric practice long after other
nations banned it, and literally fought a civil war over
the issue. And yes, protecting the institution of slavery
and allowing the practice during westward expansion were
the main drivers of the civil war, regardless of how the
magatard "historians" wish to rewrite history and call it
"states rights issues" (I can hear our floriduh dumbass
parroting right wing drivel now).
>
>
>
>

I noted only, as did Jefferson, that a strong statement of
universal natural rights in the Constitution would
inherently lead to the dissolution of bondage. As it
eventually did.

 
I've yet to see any evidence that personal abolitionist
sentiments were reflected in any of the founding documents.
You're going to have to try much harder than that to
convince me that "all men are created equal" had even an
ancillary intent of abolishing slavery.
 

I did not say 'intent', merely noting that the statement and
reality itself were logically in opposition, a situation
which was necessarily resolved.

Before one gets all wound d up about slavery in the south do a bit of
research. Prior to the Civil war the cotton trade was far and away the
largest part of U.S. trade ' King Cotton". And cotton processing and
growing prior to the development of mechanized farming was largely
dependent on people.

Not that this justifies anything buy does explain, a bit, the South's
dependence on slave labor.

--
Cheers,

John B.