The first big treaty, Jay Treaty, between British and America during the French Revolution had the French at first rid the work Ben Franklin did to ally the two countries during the American Revolution (Franklin had already died at this time). This Treaty was for trade relations between Britain and American. Hamiliton was a huge prominent of continuing trade relations with Britain after the American Revolution along with other proto-party factions in Congress that still liked dealing with Britain and wanted a strong federal government. I know one other person who was involved with the American Revolution from start to finish, was a Continental Congressional delegate and the first American Diplomat (which was to France) after the American Revolution was over. He who was a huge advocate of applying strong relations with Britain and to not honor relations with France. His name was Silas Deane. Thomas Paine would have huge debates with him that created this proto-party structure before the Republican and Federalist parties eventually arose for different reasons. Eventually the arguments got so heated Paine voluntarily resigned as Secretary of Foreign Affairs. In time though most turned away from Deane eventually as buisness deals with Deane involved, Congressional members, and Foreign governments (namely insiders in France I don’t think other governments were involved but not precisely sure) came to light it was only in the mid-1800’s long after all involved died that British records showed that Silas Deane was a British spy working directly under King George III. America was able to bring their relations (France and American) back together in time even though Napolean still didn’t like America at this point. A business deal, the Lousiana Purchase, brought the French and Americans back to the dialogue table as the French desperately needed the money and Jefferson felt pressure from the then Western citizens to buy the land for safety reasons. Jefferson would latter write Paine on how he felt the deal was unconstitutional, but it was obviously too late, deal was done, and Paine by the way liked the land purchase for he thought it thereby extended the geographical power of the U.S. Constitution.
Man I got buried under this fast moving thread. [:P]
No time to say much right now, but I thought this would be the point of contention.
So I already have my question ready: Why?
Why are rights ascribed to ‘things’ at the point where those ‘things’ are recognised as being moral agents? Why can’t a society have a say regarding where rights originate? Animals don’t have the ability to determine what is moral and what is not, but their ignorance doesn’t negate the responsibility not to do things that society percieves as wrong, just as it doesn’t in the case of a mentally retarded person or an insane person.
Sorry if this is a ridiculously basic or stupid question, I’ve yet to get far into this topic.
I thought liberty was just the condition of freedom - in mindset and to a lesser extent, for me anyways, in political restraint.
In any case, I don’t really care about the “liberty” of the man who beats on smaller animals like this guy. Call me crazy, I think people with such lack of empathy are less of human beings.
Firstly the country England is a part of the soverign state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As it happens I don’t live in England, but I do live on the Island of ‘Great Britain’ which includes England. Secondly, UK law permits individuals to defend themselves, or others, from violence or the threat of violence by employing reasonable force.
If you would like further education in the history, laws and geopolitics of the UK feel free to contact me via private message.
But it is interesting you should mention spys. The historian Richard Deacon, who forged a career as a historian of various intelligence communities, alleged in his work A History of the British Secret Service (1969) that Franklin was a British spy. (pp. 112-114)
It was in a biography of Thomas Paine by Craig Nelson called Thomas Paine.
Here’s the quote it’s interesting from the chapter entitled “The Silas Deane Affair”:
“After Silas Deane’s death, his heirs sued the American government for compensation, and received $35,000. When archives of King George’s letters were released in 1867, however, it was revealed that Deane had in fact been working as a British informant for the whole of the Revolution, holding regular midnight meetings in France at the Place Vendome with agent Paul Wentworth (who described the American contingent in Paris as ‘Dr. Franklin is taciturn, deliberate, and cautious; Mr. Deane is vain, desultory, and subtle; Mr. Arthur Lee, suspicious and indolent’). It is unclear whether or not Deane knew that his secretary, William Bancroft, was also working as a British spy, for four hundred pounds a year.”
lol… I don’t believe it. Franklin was too involved with the Americans and never did anything that would seem out of line. I wonder what proof Richard Deacon has.
Natural rights are “of” the individual. Not “of” society due to that would be the opposite and “for” the individual. Do you see? That’s also why rights in this sense are natural being naturally “of” the person.
The mentally retarded person or insane person are “person”. They are potentially fully human, but because they aren’t actually fully human, if medical science has concluded this to be correct meaning they don’t have the ability to participate in a human society individually, then this is why they have guardians to help them decide on issues.
Animals are not potentially human they are of a different species and outside of Primates of a different genus. Rights being “of” the individual, first, I don’t see animals participating in human society without guardians, and secondly animals are not abstracting these rights “of” themselves and declaring them to us. Thirdly, rights of humans and to apply them to animals is to blur the applicability of rights which is law. The deer would be breaking it all the time, but do I really want to put deer on trial for eating anything in my garden (luckily I put fence up, not because they are criminals but because they are animals which a whole differing biology that includes habits, etc…
Liberty is the absence of initiating physical coercion.
I find it horrible that a man would beat a smaller animal too and I agree they are less human in a sense, but I really don’t want to set precedence on allowing natural rights to be violated when there are other means of subjecting this particular man to ways that are possibility more long-suffering that would really teach him a lesson and potentially rid his urge to do such a thing.
Which, is out dated and largely false and tells us that you are far more likely to be murder or raped in the US than you are in the UK. Did you even read it?
I suggest you try again, but this time to some research. I advise you start with the British National Crime Survey, and work from there.
Is that the survey that under reports crimes as accidents until proven otherwise???
I cannot trust a person who is happily in a place where the means of defense are out of his reach…
And apparently you did not read the article…
“Nearly five centuries of growing civility ended in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing ever since. Last December, London’s Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was “rocketing.” In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.”
“Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England’s rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America’s, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police.”
“That willingness was further undermined by a broad revision of criminal law in 1967 that altered the legal standard for self-defense. Now everything turns on what seems to be “reasonable” force against an assailant, considered after the fact. As Glanville Williams notes in his Textbook of Criminal Law, that requirement is “now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it [self-defense] still forms part of the law.””
A ludicrous question if there ever was one. Perhaps we should proclaim that all accidents are crimes until proven otherwise. Beyond pointing out the irrelevence of your question, I must confess I do not know because I haven’t considered it, largely because it is an irrelevent point.
But, as of yet, you have yet to prove that British citizens are without adiquate defence. But let us discuss this issue, presumably fire arms are what you consider to be ‘defence’. There are well over 200 million fire arms in the USA, and a murder rate of around 5.6 per 100,000 citizens, while there were less than 800 murders and vertually no legal fire arms in the UK. These are facts, so how do you presume to tell me that the US is safer, with all its guns, than the UK when it quite clearly isn’t.
Which is, of course, nonsense.The crime rate was far higher in the past than it is today. Hell, it was far higher 15 years ago than it is today.
Which is wrong, like I told you read the National Crime Survey. You could also read the police statistics. Both will tell you that crime significanly reduced after 1996. 1996 saw the Dunblain massacre, and with it the banning of hand guns in 1997. As an educated fellow I realise that corrolation does not equate causation, but it is a fact that disproves your central thesis, that better armed citizens reduce crime. Manifestly, in the case of Britain, after the public had been disarmed crime reduced across the board.
That’s a better argument, I think. It’s almost impossible for most people to even fathom defending the man, but advocating punishing him in a better and more effective way - though perhaps not violent - seems entirely reasonable.